in egypt the government crackdown on pro-democracy protesters shows no sign of slowing with the death toll closing in on one thousand people while clashes continue the egyptian court may soon free former president hosni mubarak more on the new developments up ahead. and we may soon have a sentence handed down for bradley manning the army whistleblower faces a potential ninety years in prison for leaking government data to wiki leaks both the prosecution and defense made their final arguments today more from fort meade coming up. plus the secret international trade deal is the completion the transpacific partnership that is the proposed trade deal dealing with twelve different countries including the u.s.

and other economic powerhouses more on the newest developments and today show. it's monday august nineteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm maggie lopez and you are watching r t well we begin in egypt protests in the country continue to result in bloodshed as pro morsi demonstrators clashed with military forces. they were ok. it was the death toll of the country continues to rise on both sides thirty six protesters died while in police custody over the weekend meanwhile islamic militants ambushed too many buses carrying off duty police officers and northward egypt killing twenty five of them execution style wednesday marks the seventh week of clashes since president morsi was ousted if the turmoil spreads to other

countries some analysts are worried that the suez canal could shut down disrupting oil supplies and driving up my. prices that is something that didn't even happen during the arab spring uprisings so obviously the country is very unstable at the moment everyone has their eyes on egypt hoping for a quick resolution but as our teams belcher reports that is a long way off two very bloody incidences that took place sunday and of course today the first incident yesterday was apparently a botched prison break outscore state media reports it was on sunday thirty six thirty six prisoners who had been picked up during the ramses square crisis on friday when security forces were engaged in bloody street battles were basically in a police truck being moved from a security directorate to prison pending fifteen days in jail pending investigations now according to state media they were attacked this police truck was attacked by armed groups the police responded with tear gas

a officer with an allegedly kidnapped and in the in the meantime these prisoners were basically suffocated to death however the muslim brotherhood have a different story they say the prisoners were in fact killed by the police forces and more and more than thirty six were actually dead now the second incident happened in sinai this very very difficult area of egypt's what the related reports are saying are actually conflicting one source talking to a.p. said that armed gunmen attacked two police cars with weapons and basically mowed down these police officers during a game. of the source is a saying that's a rocket propelled grenade was fired at the police and that's what led to their death this is basically the single biggest death toll in sinai in the last few years so it's a significant event as that particular area continues to heat up because dozens of churches christian businesses and homes torched ransacked and raided by supposed islamist supporters of ousted leader mohamed. christian family down south where

most of this violence actually occurring in the area who told me that a local islamist family had actually threatened and demanded extortion money to protect her business so what we're looking at here is really serious crackdown on the christian communities to the point where some of the senior members of the churches suggesting that they don't have public appearances christians themselves of feeling that they have to stay at home meanwhile churches are going up in flames almost every single day what the people are actually saying is security forces are not helping the situation they're not responding to calls for help so the actual citizens themselves about to for human cordons around these churches to protect them from the good the onslaught it's really the same kind of culture of impunity contributing to this crisis which is the story that we're going to be watching as it develops in the coming days that was artie's bell true reporting from cairo egypt also coming out of egypt today a court may release former egyptian president and longtime ruler hosni mubarak and

his potential release could result in total chaos from a situation that is already extremely volatile to talk all things egypt i was joined just a short time ago by arabic correspondent rima dia and i started off by asking her what effect the release of hosni mubarak could have on the egyptian crisis. just like everything coming out of egypt this is also debatable a lot of people saying that he is not going to be released just the fact that he was acquitted of one charge today does not mean that he will be released from prison and i think the court system is going to look at the fact that egypt is already in. us and that means that releasing someone like mubarak at this point will probably just add to the flames in egypt and honestly i was just talking to someone who was very much involved in the just do a show. he said this guy is not going to be released this time is over there's no going back but what about the idea what if he is released you say there's no going

back he said there's no going back but are we back to square one from where the country was a couple of years ago to today egypt is divided it seems into these two different groups right now one group that says we are not back to square one we got rid of mubarak's regime and now we got rid of the muslim brotherhood the other group however says that we are definitely back to square one we did get rid of mubarak but mubarak's regime for the past year has been working to restore the government to restore its power and that's exactly what they did ousting morsi ousting the government of morsi of the muslim brotherhood meant for them that mubarak's regime is back a lot of people on the street though will tell you that no mubarak's regime is definitely not back and we will not allow this to happen and there is no one in egypt whether pullet this in or from the military who can sell the egyptian people now let's talk about some of the media coverage that the people of egypt the ones that you're talking about are experiencing and seeing and how that reflects on the

country and reflects personally on them so i know that numerous news stations there have stopped reporting on people saying that the coverage is biased can you explain that a little bit more in detail and what the controversy is there a lot of controversy when it comes to media coverage in egypt right now a lot. of controversy that has to do also with the arabic media and even with egyptian media there seems to be egypt is becoming a sort of rumors factory right now everybody just would be one and attributing this to whatever source source they think would say or might say or maybe have said something like they believe or they want him to say what's going on in egypt is there is a media war people are saying. this is what we want the media relays this is the way they want and the media is control who is the media in egypt there is the international stations and there is the arab media and there is also the

locally owned media and each one of them sees the truth sees what's going on in egypt the way they want to see it and this is why it's very controversial at this moment because everybody is the embers from their own i would say a very narrow perspective and not the whole picture not what's going on actually on the ground so some of the chaos is actually translating into to how people are seeing it on the television screens we can just take one story the killing of the thirty six or the death of thirty six and meets yesterday the way this was reported in different media just tells you how different the media is looking at these issues at these stories that are happening in egypt the first story that came out was that gunmen attacked those inmates attacked the soldiers who were protecting the inmates wanting to free them the second story was that the police fired tear gas at the inmates because of the gunmen who were trying to free them the third

story was that they were killed by police because they were trying to escape a lot of different stories and a lot of different narratives in egypt right now and unfortunately it's very hard to discern what exactly is the truth because it's very hard to get into that country to be safe as a reporter in that country there are so many different reasons but let's bring it back here at home. many lawmakers in the u.s. are asking for aid for egypt to be cut off on the other hand you have saudi arabia saying that whatever the u.s. decides to cut off it will make up so what would cutting off usa do really they already. ready is supporting egypt already is showing a lot of support financially and diplomatically to egypt. the u.s. seems to be split on this there are lawmakers who say that we should definitely cut off aid since the law says that any military coup we are not going to support any military going in the region and a lot of people see this is not as

a coup they do not see it as a coup and therefore they don't want. to be cut off however. varying all of this on the ground in egypt what does the aid do to the egyptians the egyptian people have not felt the aid of the americans and therefore there are petitions now on the street in egypt asking for the government asking the government to actually demand the stop of aid from the u.s. they're asking the u.s. to stop its aid to egypt any kind of influence the u.s. aid in egypt i don't see this at all at the moment i don't think there is an influence of the u.s. in egypt it seems it's a very very difficult situation right now thank you for bringing us the latest our correspondent with that. the fate of bradley manning could be determined as soon as tomorrow army judge denise len heard closing arguments today against the wiki leak or this was the government's a last chance to explain why the twenty five year old army private first class

should spend the rest of his life behind bars are to correspondent liz wahl is in fort meade maryland with the latest hi there liz so what was the prosecution's closing argument today. yes today we heard closing arguments in the sentencing phase of this case so this trial is winding down the captain joe morrow delivered the prosecution's argument and he asked that manning basically they asked for no mercy for manning sixty years at least is the minimum that the government is asking for they're asking manning to pay us. one hundred thousand dollars and to be dishonorably discharged from the military clearly from what we heard today the u.s. does not take this case lightly at all and they're definitely making that clear they said today he created a great risk of harm nationals to national security due to the volume and this is something they brought up they really wanted to highlight due to the volume of the information that he disclosed. captain morrow said quote every day on the super net

was another day to stick his finger in. the classification system now in this hearing the sentencing phase of the hearing and we heard a lot of testimony very emotional testimony about manning's dysfunctional and upbringing and today the government said that they tried to downplay these mental health issues that manning may have been suffering from at the time but he leaked hundreds of thousands of classified information they said captain morrow said that there were other gay people in the unit and that he was open about it and . people were open with him about it this is according to the government at least today so trying to play to downplay the fact that he may have been lonely and had nobody else that he could have reached out to at the time and that he was suffering mentally and that could have led to some of the decisions the defense today or what we heard from coombs is just said that the government is showing no mercy and this

is something that coombs opened up right away and said the argument by the government today is interested in one thing and one thing only and that is punishment and coombs said that the. should take several things into consideration when they do deliver this sentence and one of those things is manning needs twenty one years old at the time when he was deployed in iraq had limited experience he cited of failures of his superiors to act to step in and notice red flags that manning perhaps was in an unstable emotional state and somebody should have stepped in and help and he should not have continued to be in the. position that he was in at the time as an intelligence analyst working with classified information they also said that you know what the information that manning leaked wasn't all that destructive if anything was temporary in nature and that any long term damaging impacts to the united states is speculative at best according to coombs he

also said that manning he is accepted responsibility he has accepted guilt and another thing that can was really focused on today was rehabilitation he said he has proven that he is an excellent candidate to be rehabilitated another interesting thing that coombs did today it's a kind of put this into perspective to put this sentence into perspective as you showed photos from throughout the decade started with the photo of a man walking on the moon and other things that happened significant events throughout history of roe versus wade movies that were blockbuster had showing that this is how. this is how long sixty years trying to really put it into perspective he said by the time that this information that was leaked becomes declassified that the government still wants manning to rot in jail and coombs says that is not fair so today coombes really trying to ask the judge to take several of these factors

into consideration so that in a fair sentence for manning very interesting and as we heard the sentence could come down as soon as tomorrow we expect you will be there reporting. for us r.t. correspondent liz wahl out in the field in fort meade maryland thank you so much now to london where the snowden saga is having an effect on the partner of an american journalist who published the leaks revealing the national security agency's surveillance programs on sunday english authorities detained twenty eight year old david miranda for nine hours while he was passing through heathrow international airport in london when he was on his way to rio de janeiro where he lives with his partner guardian columnist grin glenn greenwald here's miranda describing his attention to the b.b.c. . in most of them citizenship and then i was kept in a room with six agents coming in and now it's an ostomy about everything my whole life has. to do live and they took my computer my video games my mobile phone and

memory everything to know miranda says authorities told him that he was being question under schedule seven of the terrorism act of two thousand that is a powerful british law that allows the police to stop and question travelers at u.k. airports and ports for up to nine hours in order to determine if they are a potential terrorist miranda was travelling through london after a trip to berlin where he spent time with laura poitras she is the u.s. filmmaker who worked with glenn greenwald on the snowden stories and the video you're looking at the guardian newspaper it funded this trip now the white house says the u.s. was not involved in the questioning but was alerted by british authorities before miranda was detained for more on the potential fall outs of this latest episode i'm joined now by political commentator sam sax sam what is the message do you think that british authorities were trying to send here or is there a message it's purely intimidation and i think everybody involved from glen

greenwald to mr murray and to everyone who's written about this is your nose can see right through it that this was strictly about intimidation you mentioned the section seven of the terrorist act here most of the people who are detained here well over ninety percent are released very quickly almost virtually no one stays more than seven hours let alone the maximum nine hours which mr miranda was held there but as unprecedented as this is i mean really journalists know that certain things come with the trade laura poitras who he was who he was visiting she gets stopped routinely when she comes back in the united states journalists you know sort of weird as a badge of honor the fact that they have to deal with stuff like this even though they shouldn't but but targeting a loved one of a journalist is something completely. a different thing glenn greenwald compared to mafioso style but it does fit in with the u.k. government in the united states government in allies string of unprecedented tactics whether it's threatening to invade the ecuadorian embassy to julian assad

whether it's grounding. evo morales his plane a few weeks ago so really the shows that more and more desperation coming from these governments to try and claim to own these leaks and journalists who oppose them now glenn greenwald actually did respond to this he responded in a column to the guardian saying quote if the u.k. and u.s. governments believe that tactics like this are going to deter or intended us in any way from continuing to report aggressively on what these documents reveal they are beyond deluded if anything it will have only the opposite effect to embolden us even further so if this was a form of intimidation did it work i mean obviously glenn greenwald is saying it didn't though and it did none of these strategies have worked look the obama administration has now used the espionage act eight times i believe in hopes of frightening other people from doing the same sort of whistle blowing the has not worked at all and really. glenn greenwald has exposed secrets about the u.k.

government and now there's going to be more secrets coming out directly because if he's exposed to talk of the u.k. a g.c. h.q. is tapping into basically all the fiber optic cables around the world and collecting information expose that g.c. h.q. working with the n.s.a. was creating a fake internet capital lure diplomats who were there for the g. eight in two thousand and ten so look the british government's going to probably be dealing with a lot more stuff now as a result of them than doing this do you think is a fair argument to say that the british government is exposing itself by doing this so i'd say so and really with the in the united states government is in the same boat i mean every response they've had to these leaks has shown that they have no credibility in the leaks are being time now edward snowden's leaks are being time so that once and ministration responds to one leak they release another leak showing that the administration hasn't exactly been truthful so what hand since we're speaking about the us has the us planted and as i mentioned in my intro obviously the british government informed the us before they even detained him so does that indicate that the u.s. is in fact playing a role i don't know how much of

a direct role the united states but really i don't think it's that important to make a distinction between the u.k. and the u.s. government when it comes to this issue what these leaks have revealed is a global security surveillance apparatus we've learned from these leaks that it's the n.s.a. working very closely with g c h q so it's not just these isolated intelligence agencies that individual governments are trying to protect their own intelligence agencies we're talking of a global internet global intelligence surveillance apparatus with the united states the british government the german government all working together so really when it comes to who detaining them it's this entity and obviously this is a very scary notion for journalists around the world can you talk about some of the implications for journalists in journalism in general sure will practically journalists know going through heathrow or going through other airports in london they have to worry about what they going to carry on them i mean mr miranda had documents he had electronics all seized from him so journalists when their travel. you have to consider that plus it really validates this fear that journalists have

had for several years that anti terror legislation is going to be used against them this was anti terror legislation being used against an associate of a journalist here in the united states we've had the national defense authorization act indefinite detention provision which analysts have said can be used against journalists who work coordinating with people anybody who might be quote affiliated terrorist you know the governments of all the isn't the point of it but now that we see these laws being used to target journalists this could have serious serious implications and we have seen and heard a lot of those people come here on our t.v. people like chris hedges saying that this will be in fact used against journalists and an important thing to note i think is that the miranda told the b.b.c. that he was not asked a single question about terrorism but rather about what the guardian was doing in terms of n.s.a. stories so talk about the international fall out here well this is a long shot i mentioned earlier the grounding of evo morales as playing the threat of threatening to invade the ecuadorian embassy these are all actions that are being taken by western governments against south american governments and we saw

all. reaction to the threats to storm the ecuadorian embassy we saw even more anger and even action taken against diplomats when they vulnerable says plane was grounded we've seen brazil really released a statement showing grave concern over over this look south america is not nearly as dependent economically on the united states and west anymore and that gives them more opportunity to stand up and defend themselves from things like this happen our key political commentator sam sacks thank you so much for weighing in on this case . and on saturday a senior reporter for time magazine tweeted quote i can't wait to write a defense of the drone strikes that take out julian assad after facing flack for the tweet about the wiki leaks co-founder michael grunwald promptly believe it his employer released a statement saying quote michael grunwald posted offensive tweet from his personal twitter account that is in no way representative of to. buz gretz having tweeted it

and he removed it from his feed but the damage was already done and wiki leaks is calling for grunwald to step down saying quote we have written to time magazine to ask for michael grunwald resignation now with reporters under fire and under investigation by the obama administration for doing their jobs like fox news reporter james rosen and writers for the associated press plus the crackdown on whistleblowers and leakers like john kiriakou when bradley manning as we just discussed edward snowden grunwald tweet is surprisingly live about the death of a transparency advocate wiki leaks co-founder joining us on has been trapped up in the ecuadorian embassy in london for more than a year now awaiting a safe passage to ecuador where he has been granted asylum while a drone strike is far from likely threats from britain to storm the embassy demonstrate that britain and potentially other countries may be willing and able to use force and to make

a songe bend to their will but at least now we know where grunwald stands on transparency. so are you down with the t.p. the transpacific partnership is the proposed trade deal involving twelve different nations it's being negotiated mostly in secret since the obama ad are since the bush administration now the u.s. trade representative is in japan for a new round of conversations regarding this white spanning free trade deal which will affect everything from medicine to patents to internet freedom the next round of talks kicks off in brunei on thursday and this will be the first time that japan fishley participates in these talks and the ambassador from new zealand said that a deal could be reached get this as soon as this year to discuss the latest on t v p and what it means for you well in the state lewis is the international campaign director at public citizen's global trade watch and she joins me now melinda thank you so much for joining me let's first off by talking about what you were hearing

about the latest information coming out well the tepee as you mentioned are talks between the u.s. and eleven other countries and it's it's important for listeners to understand that this is not so much about trade there are twenty nine chapters only five of them have to do a trade what actually is happening in these negotiations are negotiations that have to do with our access to medicines they have to do with our freedom on the internet have to do with the financial regulation of food and product safety and what we're seeing is that after nineteen rounds of negotiations multi years they've missed deadline after deadline of conclusion and yet now they're planning to say claim that they are nearing conclusion but what we're concerned about is what that will mean is that the negotiations will go further underground very interesting now one of the things that your group and others push is that the t p p is so secretive that it's very hard to really get on either side to agree with it or to not agree with it one of the things in order that has to happen in order for the t.p.

to go through is that congress and lawmakers from all these different governments have to debate. agree upon it do you think that that will be a time where finally we'll be able to know we'll have this can of worms opened i will know what's going on that transparency that you're looking for or we certainly hope that that's the case in the u.s. congress congress has the authority over trade agreements however the administration and some and congress are hoping to fast track the authority so to give the authority completely over to the executive so that they can only vote yes or no with no amendments and this is a multi thousand page document to that that they would only be able to vote yes or no and we're hoping that that is not the case because if if indeed congress is able to debate and able to to to change things to make sure that it actually is in the public interest then we then we can have something but unfortunately they have their nineteen rounds of negotiation they want to sign an agreement before congress can even have an opinion about it now

a deal of this magnitude you're talking about the complications of deal of this magnitude has never actually happened before obviously all of these different governments want to have a say and have specific things for their government how likely is it that something like this will actually come to fruition well it's very unlikely in the in the circumstance that we're facing right now because what we're seeing is the actually there are enormous controversies in the negotiations there are two chapters where there isn't even text on the table and so for them to actually say that they're going to try to conclude an agreement what that's actually spin to try to put the negotiations underground they don't have agreement on intellectual property in fact many of the other countries are opposing the u.s. position because they're pushing extreme provisions by the u.s. pharmaceutical companies to expand their patents and to make it so that generic drug companies can't compete to keep drug prices low so that's just one example of the extreme controversies in the negotiations we can understand that there is

a push for them to try to claim that they're nearing conclusion because we know that the longer this these negotiations take place. the more people will actually be able to see what's happening and there and it will not be able to survive because of the very extreme proposals that we know are being negotiated and that are being pushed by the largest corporations now something interesting to notice even some of these governments are expressing hesitancy japan's central union of agricultural cooperatives and adopted a declaration on august eighth saying that it has grave problems with the t.p. and that it could jeopardize food safety and universal health care services and essentially undermine the nation's sovereignty is what they went so far as to say so obviously others are having problems with this it's not just advocacy groups and and opponents to this but break it down for the average american you started doing a little bit ago what will it mean for me in my daily life when i get up and use the computer or go to the pharmacy what how little fact me well if the extreme proposals go through the concern would be that if you go to to the pharmacy and for

people around the world lifesaving medicines the cost of those could actually increase if if in the intellectual property provisions of this agreement they actually extend the patents and what that means is it extends monopolies that's if this is a free trade but extend monopolies so that drug prices are higher. and that has life and death consequences for people for example in vietnam which is participating in the negotiations the other concerns around the internet they actually there are positions there are proposals in the in the text that would police the internet even small scale copies that people use just to be able to post to facebook and so forth those types of things could be policed and those types of provisions were actually thrown out of the u.s. congress in the big debate the stop online piracy act now through the backdoor they're trying to get it in the tepee very interesting linda st louis international campaigns director of public citizen's global trade watch thank you so much 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. well. technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia we've got the future are covered. her face one. isn't.