me live mikes concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cons a report on r t. coming up on our t.v. in new york the u.n. general assembly continues diplomatic talks circle around the syria crisis and the possible improvement of u.s. iran relations we'll have the latest on today's events ahead. and the u.s. military claims that the guantanamo bay hunger strike is over but that's not the only news coming out of good mo we'll tell you why the detention facility was seeking millions of dollars for upgrades coming up. and a florida man was struck and killed by a police officer now the man spam lee is pressing for criminal charges against that officer but so far that hasn't happened more on this case later in the show.

it's wednesday september twenty fifth five pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sachs and you're watching our team and we begin with continuing coverage of the united nations general assembly in new york city speaking in front of the general assembly today are leaders of roughly two dozen countries but the real business at the u.n. headquarters is what's taking place in smaller meetings throughout the week one on ones or group meetings among diplomats to hash out some of the most pressing international crises to begin with an iranian nuclear deal may be back on the table for president obama a newly elected iranian president hassan rouhani didn't end up meeting face to face secretary of state john kerry is scheduled to meet with his iranian counterpart on thursday for further talks over iran's nuclear program elsewhere the u.n. security council is busy considering a resolution on syria's chemical weapons also keeping john kerry busy this time

with russian foreign minister sergei lavrov who helped author the deal so what might come out of all of this well joining me now from new york for the latest on the happenings at the u.n. general assembly our team is on a stasia churkin. a saucy a welcome let's start by talking about iran much hyped meeting between president obama and president hassan rouhani never went down but president obama did talk about dispatching john kerry to work on an iranian deal kerry will meet with his iranian counterpart tomorrow what can we expect hear this deal through believe elusive with ahmadinejad what changes with rouhani on board now. well. what exactly changes i think we will see tomorrow when this meeting happens on thursday what we're talking about specifically is going to be a meeting of the five permanent members of the security council pro plus germany plus iran to discuss the situation and around. richmond program this will be the first time a u.s. secretary of state meets with the iranian foreign minister which is certainly seen

as a big step forward as opposed to you know if obama and rouhani did meet that would have been the first president to tween leaders of these two countries in over thirty years so definitely talks are going to happen tomorrow we'll see what comes out of them but to just understand better what has really improved we have been hearing speeches from obama and the iranian president talking about basically being ready for more dialogue iran in particular the new president has. iran is not interested in building up tensions between the u.s. and tehran it's certainly willing to get rid of and remove any concerns around its uranium enrichment program and has said that basically new nuclear weapons don't have a place in iran's political doctrine and we have seen from obama say that he is kept the door for diplomacy open for iran to step through so we'll see if that actually tomorrow we might see the first signs of that take place let's move on to syria

here john kerry and russian foreign minister sergey lavrov held a biological meeting last night a resolution they've worked on is now being considered in the u.n. security council what hurdles are still in the way of passage and what sort of timeframe might we be looking at here well sam in terms of the hurdles certainly the major topic of disagreement remains the potential use of force as we know of course russia and the u.s. have worked out a deal that syria would proceed to hand over its chemical weapons under international control so now the security council is working on putting that in. a document that they could vote on to ensure that actually happens we're still waiting for that to take place we new do know the security council is working around the clock on this there have been some reports that some document might have been agreed upon however there's been no confirmation or official statements made by the actual diplomats working on those documents yesterday when love robin kerry met lavrov said that there was in fact

a productive dialogue there on the same page to move forward meaning sticking with the agreements for a political transition that was agreed on in geneva earlier for all parties to agree on a political solution so far it's hard to say what the timeline on this issue is going to be we are literally expecting developments any minute and any day let's move on to economics here in his speech yesterday president obama mentioned the financial crisis the world is emerging from now the european union has been sort of the epicenter of this financial shock since two thousand and eight we've seen austerity put in place with in some areas pretty disastrous results we've seen suicide rates spike was there anything in the european union actually address the general simply today was there anything in the speech that addressed these ongoing economic hardships i guess just have that is definitely the case surprisingly with all these hardships going on much of the speech made by the president was concentrated on syria but he did talk about the attempts to rebuild the economy

certainly a lot of it was it were very generic statements he did say that we're putting our house back in order after the crisis it's obviously a slow process that is going to take time he did try to reassure i guess the international community that a long term plan for jobs should make the situation better but obviously if we look at the real numbers on the ground and cut in countries economies that were hit the hardest like spain for example where we're a quarter of the population is unemployed it certainly seems like a bigger words than actual results at this point but this was addressed in the president of the you did say that all but one out. twenty eight countries should see growth growth in the in the time to come i mean while the united states here is two and a half years into our own. economics as well this u.n.g.a. comes a few weeks after president obama has been trying to lobby support from the american people for military strikes in syria there's a new c.b.s. new york times poll out that shows that

a plurality of americans now disapprove of president obama's foreign policy forty nine percent disapproving to just forty percent and those disapproval ratings have grown since july of this year what do you think's behind this growing disenchantment and how might it hinder what president obama is trying to do at the u.n. this week well some you know what's behind the growing disenchantment i guess is the issues the foreign policy specific concerns that are now americans are unhappy with such as interesting this poll goes for to specifically also into iran and syria where americans don't really have a lot of faith that these these issues will be improved under obama and i guess the flirtation for that would be that both the difficult relationship with iran and the crisis with syria has to have both been at a stall so people are questioning whether or not the approaches that are being taken right now are going to be able to help come come up with some solution and there are some also interesting numbers in that poll that only twenty two percent

of americans expect any kind of improvement with iran and when it comes to syria of course we do know that when the military option was being weighed huge majority of americans oppose this they continue to do this and largely because many people are just afraid of a constant military option kind of state of mind and potential warfare that was archies on assad from new york city with up to the u.n. general assembly. the movie on to the detention facility at guantanamo bay the new york times reports say the pentagon has rejected the nearly two hundred million dollar renovation project for demo that included nearly one hundred million dollars for new guard barracks twelve million for a new mess hall and fifty million to replace camp seven which currently houses what are referred to as high value detainees pentagon's cited lack of congressional support as the reason for denying the renovation of the facility a facility that is beginning to deteriorate after more than a decade of so-called temporary operation meanwhile according to the military the

hunger strike that brought renewed attention to the facility over the last several months is now over artie's making lopez has more on this new development. for over seven months now we have been reporting on mass hunger strikes happening at the guantanamo bay detention facility on monday military officials announced that a poor group of nineteen are left but before we declare the mass hunger strike more or less over let's take a quick look back at how the protest played out and what has changed since it started on february sixth the hunger strike reportedly began lawyers and humanitarian groups said the detainees initial reason for the strike was the constant invasive searches that parents conducted on the cells as well as the confiscation of several korans however it took weeks before prison officials formally add knowledge what was going on but even though their numbers of how many people were actually participating was significantly lower than the other reports

over two months into the strike the spokesman for the high commissioner for the un human rights body wrote a letter to r.t.e. saying that they are looking into the details of the mass hunger strike and throughout this time the more the public knew about the hunger strike the more protests and petitions actually took place across the country one time zero detainees saw a new change of command on april twelfth when the obama administration appointed rear admiral richard butler as the new commander of the joint task force guantanamo on april twenty third the military realized how serious the strike was and it sent forty additional medical personnel to guantanamo bay seven days later president obama formally acknowledged the hunger strikes in his speech and reaffirmed his commitment to permanently closing down the facility a little less than a month after that the president held his first major foreign policy speech in years at the national defense university where we get to lay out his plans to

transfer detainees out of gitmo he also announced that he would assign a senior envoy to lead that task it was the moment human rights advocates and prisoners themselves have. waiting to hear for months during the hunger strikes and also during those forced feedings but that momentum stopped abruptly on june fourth when the house of representatives not only voted to keep the facility open but to block the use of taxpayer money to housed detainees transferred out of the prison but some members of congress wanted to see for themselves just how bad the conditions really were and get no president obama's chief of staff denis mcdonough along with senators feinstein and mccain traveled to cuba when they came back they announced that one hundred four people were still refusing to eat forty one of whom were being force fed now in order to bring attention to the cause and to show how inhumane force feeding can be one protester went on a sixty one day fast on september seventh he allowed himself to be force fed in

front of the white house and then monday military officials announced that they will stop releasing daily hunger strike updates because the number of protesters steadily dropped to a core group of nineteen defiant protesters now keep in mind that throughout all of this lawyers of the detainees complained that the military was trying to force the men to end their hunger strikes by denying them water or even visiting rights lawyer david remes described on r t how guards were subjecting detainees to invasive body searches before they met with their lawyers the guards actually felt up the men's genitals and that is something that is strictly forbidden in islam so many men simply stopped going to their appointments those searches were temporarily halted but then they started once again also the military was show slow to realize that the hunger strike was actually happening and that the numbers vary

dramatically from the reports from lawyers and human rights groups they'd take a look at this this is the line that shows the official prison count for the hunger strikers as as well. reported by the military the official start of the count on march fourteenth with nine and then slowly slowly very slowly moved up that line to over one hundred six participants meanwhile this is how human rights lawyers and humanitarians say the bhangra strike played out so obviously there is a huge difference when it comes to the hunger strike and when it started and also how many people were participating but eventually officials did acknowledge that one hundred six men were participating at one point in time and that's where we are today a lot is changed since the hunger strike began but whether it was truly a result of this mass hunger strike depends on who you ask in washington meghan

lopez r t there want to capitol hill for those of you who are obsessed with watching c.-span and i know there must be dozens of you out there you may have been surprised when your regularly scheduled capitol hill programming was interrupted by this marathon speech what was routinely mislabeled as a filibuster by texas senator ted cruz who spent the night trying to make his case against obamacare and get his republican colleagues to join him in defeating any spending measure in the senate that keeps the government funded while also keeping obamacare funded despite obamacare being senator cruz's main motivation alongside perhaps boosting his own profile the speech tended to meander into the absurd would you like them here or there i would not like them here or there i would not like them anywhere i do not like green eggs and ham i do not like them sam-i am what

americans tried if they discovered they did not like. green eggs and ham and they did not like obamacare either one of my favorite children's stories actually from when i was a kid was the little engine that could on a saturday or sunday morning when your dad's making pancakes it is very cool when he can like flip of a make a make of do a flip high in the air and catch you know some time ago i tweeted a speech that ashton kutcher gave and i will confess that phrase a rebellion against oppression conjured up to me the rebel alliance fighting against the empire the empire being the washington d.c. establishment and indeed immediately on hearing that phrase i wondered if it some point we were going to see a tall gentleman in a mechanical breathing apparatus come forward and say in a deep voice mike lee i am your father the screen image that has. now been the mortal eyes in the congressional record thanks to senator ted cruz now

all this takes place as the government is scheduled to run out of funding on monday and then hit its debt limit a few weeks later artie's period boring has latest from the circus that is capitol hill all eyes are turned to washington d.c. of congress with an eight ball up led to a debt debate this afternoon senator ted cruz completed have talked on it after spending over twenty one hours trying to delay biffin it from proceeding with the house passed funding bill take a life in this fight is not about any member of this body this fight is not about personalities look most americans could not give a flying flip. about a bunch of what politicians in washington who cares. you know almost all of us are in cheap shoes with bad haircuts who cares but you might be asking yourself what were they talking about and what did he accomplish well his efforts were fruitless

because at noon today the senate joined to forcing him to yield control of the floor so it was not technically a filibuster since he was not able to delay a vote but this was to bring awareness to the negative and pacs obamacare would have on the economy which he was successful with as a hash tag stand with cruz was trending on twitter through the night and into the afternoon today but why did senator cruz want to delay proceeding with the bill before word by his own party and basically he wanted to stop senate majority leader harry reid from having the opportunity to amend the house passed bill and remove the provision that defines obamacare this is how he voted on friday or saturday of this week we will vote on cloture. anyone who votes yes for cloture anyone who votes to cut off debate on this bill is voting. to allow senate majority leader harry reid to fully fund obamacare. the senate

agreed to proceed with the government funding bill this afternoon so no matter what now leader reid is going to move forward as the already committed to strip the obamacare to funding provision a vote on final passage will take place no later than sunday and it's expected to pass as clean bill will then go back to the house and it's anyone's guess if the house will pass the senate cemented bill the possibility of a shutdown is becoming more real the administration told us this would be dangerous and cause economic ruin but not everyone agrees as glenn jacobs a wrestler who's taken to politics told us. we will not have a complete economic collapse you know the first thing the government always talks about when there's fear of a government shutdown is that planes are going to start crashing in the world's going to come to an end and then there's going to be giant jenner's quakes and it's

going to be a catastrophe of global proportions and nothing ever happens except people generally find out that maybe we don't need these politicians as much as they think that we do. the house is also expected to bring up a separate bill to encrease the government's borrowing limit treasury secretary jack lew sent a letter to congress today a warning the treasury now estimates that were extraordinary measures will be exhausted no later than october seventeenth this brings the possibility of a debt default closer as well the government shutdown does occur essential services such as national security law enforcement and air traffic control will continue manchuria benefits checks will still be mailed out as well as other means the postal service will still be in service in the case of the debt limit is not raised the united states would not be able to meet all of its obligations as does not necessarily mean we would automatically default on the debt though you would think washington complete shambles but it's

a lot of pomp and circumstance too and washington d.c. perry and boring party. we now go down to florida in the story of this man thirty eight year old marlon brown he was killed last may when a police officer in florida ran into brown with his police car. as you'll see in this dash cam put it showing the incident brown was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt he fled from the officers and that's when deland police officer james harris sped on the scene drove past the officers in pursuit and slammed his cruiser right into a brown who had slipped and fallen on the ground roberts died from his a dirt brown died from his injuries and officer harris was fired but is that all that should happen in the city of deland did pay a settlement five hundred fifty thousand dollars to brown's ex-wife for his debt settlement also protect the city from any further legal action but the family of

marlon brown wants the officer who killed him to face a vehicular manslaughter charges earlier this month a grand jury looked at the evidence and decided not to charge former officer harris with any crime but according to an attorney representing the family marlon brown was executed in a vegetable garden i was joined earlier by matthew feeney assistant editor for reason dot com and the reason twenty four seven news i first asked matthew assuming officer harris stopped his vehicle jumped out and fired three shots into marlon brown and killed him would he be facing some sort of murder charges but the fact that he used his car to kill him and he did not receive any charges does that make any sense. well i'm i'm obviously not a lawyer but it does seem very strange to me that particularly in light of the video that was released that he's not actually facing any criminal charges i'm totally bemused by the grand jury decision here not to actually have criminal charges perhaps it is very strange indeed and what is i think it's also worth remembering is that the medical examiner initially said that brown wasn't killed by

the impact of the car but as the just showed reveals it's hard to see how he wasn't the medical examiner said he was expected at from being trapped under the car and then we have the funeral home. very brown saying look at the bodies this is a massive trauma. that almost looks like and i don't want to i don't want to speculate but almost looks like they were trying to do a cover up here of what actually happened not knowing that a video might be released or something we all know and then the video was only released after the initial incident was reported and i think what is also sort of interesting is that the settlement given to the family. is in place but the officer is still not facing criminal charges so the family are going to get money but the the officer involved is not in any trouble and like i said earlier if you look at the video it seems like that is you know ample space for the officer to stop his car and it's also worth remembering that there was you know this was a chase that started because of a seatbelt violation this is hardly an armed robbery

a drug case or anything like that we hear about these sort of wrongful deaths at the hands of police fairly often last week we had jonathan ferrell in a florida a and m. university study he was in a car actually was trying to seek help and i guess he was waving his arms to wildly in the street and was shot and killed by police we just had five officers who were charged with civil rights violations in new orleans post katrina for shooting and killing unarmed people civilians on a bridge their conviction was recently overturned does this sort of culture of impunity police not really facing any consequences when they step over any boundaries fuel more police. brutality moving forward well i think you're absolutely right that police are getting away with sort of these outrages away with murder well yeah and i think it not only fuels perhaps a culture of this perhaps in police forces but it also. sort of reinforces a culture in some parts of this country of people not trusting the police and you

know identify communities across this country where police are not viewed as people who in full faith feel protective of property and you know myself growing up i was always told if you're in trouble call the police or approach a police officer but that's not what a lot of people are told across this country but at the same time there seems to be a lot of difference given to the police i want to you know a resident told local news outlet the officer was just doing his job everyone knows that you don't run from the cops unless you did something wrong and have a reason to run you don't just run because you weren't wearing a seatbelt could there be a cultural problem here too i mean marlon brown was you know he had been arrested several times before he'd been convicted of some felonies before. is their problem where we just immediately assume this guy's a bad guy he doesn't deserve any rights or the choice and actually very reason in my former colleague who's now at the allen took my career mentioned that you know he had a suspended license and was on probation but that hardly seems with the of a high speed chase which into. this this whole case is full of so many tragic

elements especially because you know we have these stupid people will to begin with and why it's anyone's business if you know someone in i think it was you know in the very very early hours of the morning is driving around five seatbelts is is totally beyond me shows the importance of having the videotape evidence some place where their stash numbers are just citizens being able to board the cable so i say even with videos people get away with stuff. about defeating the system editor at reason dot com and reason twenty four seven news thanks. human rights workers traveling through the u.k. have been put on notice earlier this week on monday night. yet many human rights activists was detained at london's gatwick airport detained under schedule seven of the terrorism act you may remember that act it's also what was used last month to detain glenn greenwald's partner david miranda for nine hours at london's heathrow airport of course police found they had either men had no connection with terrorism

and they were both released but during his detention on monday mr shabaan was asked a series of questions about his charity work in particular his advocacy for victims of drone strikes in yemen according to mr shape on a border agent questioned what if your organization did something bad to your government what if you were here because of the bad things your organization has done to your government the relations between yemen and the u.k. are important i want to know that your organization is not disrupting that again we're referring to a charity organization an organization known as reprieve and following this incident the strategic director at reprieve corey kreider warns. this is part of a worsening campaign of intimidation of human rights workers going on at the u.k. border especially if they are critical of the so-called war on terror if there were any doubt the u.k. were abusing its counterterrorism powers to silence critics this is it and may of

this year mr shabaan testified in front of congress on the u.s. as covert drone war program in yemen a spokesperson for the sussex police confirmed the incident at the airport saying border agents actions were legitimate justified and proportional. and finally more discontent is brewing between members of congress and the top secret house intelligence committee one of the gate keepers of the national security state's secrets speaking at the liberty political conference action. congressman justin amash retold a story about something that happened to him in august when he and other colleagues were trying to access a national security document from the intelligence committee hording to abolish rather than notifying members through the proper channels that the document would be available for viewing the house intel committee instead sent out a mass email via the cluttered spam filled dear colleague system they said

ok we'll make this document available to you but we're not really going to give notice to anyone they send it through the dear colleague system this is a system that it's almost like a spam folder frankly not everyone in congress has signed up to it and basically it's a system where you. send letters to your colleagues about different issues will you co-sponsor my bill will you sign my letter that kind of thing normally if you're getting. information about an upcoming briefing or an upcoming document that's going to be available to members of congress you would get an e-mail an e-mail a normal e-mail would come to you to all members of congress saying hey there's a document it's going be available come stop by. but no we got it through the dear colleague system so basically the house intel committee wants to notify members of document disclosures in the same way your crazy aunt wants to notify you about cheney e-mails that you have to then forward to ten people or else

a cat dies or something not only that the document was made available with less than a twenty four hour notice on a friday just before congress was set to go on a five week recess and anyone who knows capitol hill knows that on a friday before recess the place is a ghost town remembers our own jets flying back home so naturally the house intel committee which has been dogged by criticism for its reclusive eighty and penchant for secrecy chose that friday as the ideal day to make this disclosure and for those lucky members who did stumble into their easy dear colleague spam folder that day and found out about it well hopefully they forwarded the email to ten people you know for good luck and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our website r t dot com slash usa you can follow me on twitter at sam sachs we'll see you back here at eight pm

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