we're. coming up on our t.v. n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden is speaking out what he has to say about allegations he gave top secret intel to the russian and chinese government government details just ahead and force feeding i get motion the u.s. government have the right to force feed striking detainees a judge here in d.c. is hearing a case that's asking for an injunction to prevent the inhumane practice we'll have a report from the court coming up and governing by crisis it seems washington can only make decisions when there's a looming catastrophe but is this hurting the u.s. economy we'll get some perspective on that later in the show. it's friday october eighteenth four pm in washington d.c.

i'm on your i david and you're watching r t. we begin today with the details from an interview with former n.s.a. contractor edward snowden and an extensive conversation conducted through encrypted online communications with james risin of the times snowden gave detailed responses to a myriad of accusations leveled against him by u.s. officials one major allegation was that snowden had leaked secrets to both the chinese and russian governments and that therefore that made him a traitor to the united states soon and says that before going to russia he gave all of the classified documents to journalists in hong kong and he reiterated that he did not keep any copies for himself saying quote it wouldn't serve the public interest in response to how protected the classified documents from china's spies stone had said that he was able to because of his background and training at the n.s.a. as a contractor snowden was well aware of china's intelligence abilities noting that he had targeted chinese operations while at the same time teaching

a class on chinese cyber counter intelligence the former government contractor also made it clear that he did not take any secret n.s.a. documents with him to russia which is of course where he is now and he did this he says to assure that russian intelligence officials could not access them but government officials portray snowden as a traitor privacy advocates have hailed snowden as a her roic whistleblower who acted in the government's best interest just last week some of those privacy advocates from the u.s. paid snowden a visit to russia attending a ceremony in which the whistleblower received the sam adams award for integrity in intelligence work and earlier today i had the chance to speak to one of four americans who were present her name is colleen rally a former f.b.i. agent and whistleblower first asked her to talk about meeting upward snowden and how she would describe his disposition right now. well he was in good health and he

was of course astute in responding to our conversation he he was he thought very clearly and. he had no prepared remarks for this ok jand so you know the little you can see from some of the snippets of video that have been released that he was extremely centered and focused and in good health and i think he was happy to see us and certainly appreciative of our award and what kinds of safety precautions did you take to prepare for this trip. we did not take any special safety precautions other than we did take our laptops along on the trip there have been searches not in russia of course but on really entering the united states there have been people who have had their cell phones and laptops taken from them and searched and so abundance of caution we do not take laptops with us but that was about it we met him at an undisclosed location and because we are

unfamiliar with moscow we really don't know where we met him you know because we're we don't know the streets and and we drove and of course we didn't really understand the location that much but it was a very nice event and we had a great chance several hours to compare notes with him about especially about these issues of n.s.a. surveillance reform we talked for hours about that topic. and of course what you want to long with the three other americans to which are former whistleblowers like yourself i want to pull up with the new york post wrote about it the article begins benedict arnold would have fit right in a fan club of us traitors went all the way to russia to give an award to their hero terror watch secret spiller edward snowden how do you respond to something like that. well ok looking on the bright side it's kind of telling that

a paper thinks it has to name call in a way i think most people in united states again there are sixty some seventy percent of the people who are are very appreciative of that edward snowden told them the truth about the spying that's occurring on themselves and when you see even articles written about this you'll see a large majority of the comments of people who are quite outraged and so this name calling is really a gross overreaction and of course it's completely false none of us were traitors and certainly edward snowden is a patriotic in the sense that he is disclosing these things in order to help the united states get back on the right track these these spy surveillance massive data collections are frankly not only unethical and illegal but they don't work and that's probably the main one of the main messages edward snowden is trying to get across that this is actually hurting america's security in every way i don't know

how you could be a traitor if you're disclosing information in order to get something fixed in order to help the united states government and certainly the effort to reduce terrorism if you're trying to help that effort how could you be accused of being a traitor sure and speaking of name calling accusations that word snowden is a traitor or a spy has been perpetuated constantly by political officials last week or one a step further when on a panel former n.s.a. director michael hayden jokingly said quote i must admit in my darker moments over the past several months i'd also thought of nominating mr snowden but it was for a different list to which then representative mike rogers chimed in and said i can help you out with that of course they were referring to putting snowden on a drone kill list what does this say about how they perceive snowden and the information he's provided to the public. well edward snowden himself for starters

does not take this this these kinds of threats that seriously he does have a year of asylum temporary asylum in russia and he he knows that this is kind of juvenile on the part of these leaders certainly they have taken some of this personally they should not have hate and for example should not have taken the safford it transparency of the programs he was involved with as a personal insult again this is about fixing the system and fortunately hayden does take this obviously he takes it personally and and he's got of obviously some vengeful. vengeful. stream in his thinking here but it's it's dogma and the many other more mature officials have actually in a way saying no to and for bringing this out they said this is a great opportunity now to start the debate the debate has started and laws have to

wait and see what happens in terms of snowden's ability to stay safe then and hopefully perhaps it's a cultural change occurs in united states maybe even at some point have the ability to return home will definitely going to continue to follow this story appreciate all your time coming on colleen rowley former f.b.i. agent and whistleblower thank you. last february more than one hundred men at guantanamo bay went on a hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention but instead of addressing the underlying issues pushing these men to put their lives on the line the u.s. military decided to force feed them now sixteen men remain on hunger strike but the technique to keep the men alive remains in question force feeding has been deemed cruel and inhumane by the international medical community and today the federal court of appeals in washington d.c. heard a case seeking an injunction against that very practice artie's sam sachs was there

and brings us more. u.s. federal court of appeals here in washington d.c. heard arguments that in a case challenging the force feeding of guantanamo bay detainees three detainees have challenge there for speeding and i've asked the court to put an end to it the issue at hand today was whether or not the court even has jurisdiction to do that because earlier this year a u.s. district judge ruled that while for speeding is painful and humiliating the courts don't have the power to stop it kuantan no but i would say that decision that's being challenge today right here and we'll have to see if this federal appeals court gives power to the courts to put an end to force feeding procedures kuantan about now at the prison sixteen hunger strikers are still being force fed on a daily basis of this is a procedure that's been deemed an ethical and even torturous by the world medical association and by the united nations after today's hearing a number of organizations gathered in front of the courthouse to protest the

continued use of force meaning cry. cry cry cry out and. it was there that activists on driscoll terrorists who's been on a hunger strike for more than one hundred days drinking only water under one to force feeding procedure himself force feeding is being done to prevent prisoners who would rather die in guantanamo then to live in the limbo of what they are living not knowing when they will be free but also the constant psychological and physical torture that they are living every single day then the force feeding begin . with. terrorists describe the pain. when the tube has gone in at times it has blocked my cut capacity to breathe it is felt like constant agony and it is these fire in your throat. as you saw it's absolutely gruesome and this happens out of sight in guantanamo to the men who are

force fed so the hope is. is that bringing visibility to the gruesomeness of in terrell's feeding will shock the conscience and make americans troubled by what the government's doing i cannot not stop and so i have gone in front of the white house why because we need to reveal to the light of day what is the torture that is happening in the shadows there will have to wait some time perhaps months before we hear the appeals court decision but activists here are confident that actions like this today and the strike still underway i kuantan about are working and they're raising public awareness and political will to do something about a prison that just can't seem to be closed and a hunger strike that just won't go away. in washington sam sacks are two. and may feel like the distant past now but it was only three days ago that the u.s. government was on the brink of disaster the country was hanging on

a ledge as it neared closer and closer to defaulting on its trillion dollar debt default that could have triggered an economic collapse and reinvigorated a global financial meltdown but despite the stakes being so high lawmakers in washington seemed more concerned about serving their political agendas instead using the political deadlock to force each other to make tough decisions it's a crisis driven approach that president obama called attention to earlier this week i want to thank the leadership for coming together and getting this done. hopefully next time. it won't be in the eleventh hour one of the things that i said throughout this process is we've got to get out of the habit of governing by crisis . but it goes beyond just a poor strategy to get things done in washington this brinkmanship is starting to have a real effect on the economy this according to a new study called the cost of crisis driven fiscal policy the study commissioned by the peter g. peterson foundation shows that this reliance on crisis driven governing just since

two thousand and ten has cost the us nine hundred thousand jobs so to talk about how this is possible and what these perpetual impasses are doing to disrupt the economy i spoke earlier with richard wolfe professor of economics americas at the university of massachusetts and amherst i first asked him about the process by which political deadlock translates into a loss of so many jobs. i think the basic problem has to do with how to handle an economic system that isn't working for the majority of the american people anymore i mean the basic issue the long term issue is that american large businesses have decided they can make more money by moving out of the united states taking advantage of lower wages in china and india in brazil in nigeria all over what we used to call the third world and basically they've left or they

are in the process of leaving that leaves the united states with an enormous problem there aren't enough jobs the people who lost their jobs crowded into the job possibilities that remain driving down the wages there and we have a fundamental economic crisis that requires a massive response if there's any hope of getting out of it the only agency in the united states that can deal with that problem that has the money that has the reach that has the broad scope for action is the united states government but the fear of the business community is that if the government takes this problem under its wing and goes after it that either they will be taxed to pay for the solution or that the solution will involve taking power and decision making away from big corporations and maybe even limiting their freedom to leave the country without

taking care of the mess they leave behind they're determined not to let that happen they work through the republican party but also the democratic party to stymie the government to get it into gridlock so it can't move in the directions they're fearful about that's our problem. and richard people talk about washington being more divided than ever at this point but it seems like gridlock has always. exists i can you point the thing to historical context for us is this government more pool polarized than ever before not at all it's only polarized around particular issues and it can swing into action when its interests are allied with those of business let me give me the clearest example in the last four months of two thousand and eight our economy came this close to complete collapse that's the period of time beginning with the bankruptcy of lehmann brothers in new york and

the cascade of disaster incomes the congress of the united states republicans and democrats mostly the same people who are sitting there now and in a matter of weeks they swung into action and they pumped trillions of dollars with a t trillions in the united states in a stimulus program in a bailout program they brought in the federal reserve everybody worked together there was no dispute there was no fighting there was no gridlock all the trouble came later after you bailed out the big banks the big corporations save general motors the whole story suddenly when it came time to maybe taxing the beneficiaries of all those bailouts so that the government could help the average american then we had gridlock then we had five big no no no we don't have a gridlocked congress when it comes to helping the people who call the shots we

only have gridlock when the question is what do you do for the people who have suffered five years of this crisis still around employed find their children having to borrow on questionable ballots and money to go to school and all the rest then when it comes to solving the people's problems then we hear about gridlock and division no no no the issues go much deeper than that and richard i think the scare . we thing is that we know that we'll be revisiting these same contentious issues in another four months when the debt ceiling returns lawmakers aren't necessarily fixing the underlying problems here but rather they're finding temporary solutions to them so how difficult is it to actually recover from the damage that's been done . i don't see any change in the basic contours of the u.s. economy four years into the future and i notice that one of the most why these commentators stephen roach used to work for many years at morgan stanley bank has

said the same thing in recent days we're not doing anything to solve this economic problem we're patching it over with a little bit of fix it here and there we've made our commitment to bail out the big corporations we thought as a nation that the bailout would lead the banks to lend money to businesses and people so we could recall by our economy they did no such thing the big corporations keep believing we have a political system that is subservient to the people who run our economic system and the truth of it is unless and until we face that we're dealing with the people who run our big corporations and we have to change how they work and the decisions they make so long as we don't face that we'll be dealing with their puppets their tools in the united states congress and the white house too and they will give us lots of political theater lots of raw material for news stories but they will not

give us real movement or decision making because they are held in check by subservience to the larger interests that control them share and speaking of corporations in response to everything that has happened politically one venture capitalists in silicon valley said this he said if companies shut down the stock market would collapse if the government shuts down nothing happens and we all move on because it just doesn't matter what's your take on that well i think there's a point to it all i mean it matters you know there were hundreds of thousands of people who lost their jobs for a few days there were businesses that therefore had no customers there were all kinds of hardships when the government doesn't. do the thousands of things we needed to do so i wouldn't underestimate that importance i wouldn't also underestimate the enormous significance for the rest of the world that used to look

upon the united states as the bastion of capitalist calm of capitalist functionality a safe place to invest your money the united states is looking less and less like a society that can control itself and more and more like a society beginning to fall apart the long run effects of that are enormous but i do agree with the silicon valley fellow that you quoted that the real issue is how corporations are making decisions since we have an economy in which we let allow the tiny number of people that control the biggest corporations to make decisions we all have to live with but which we are not allowed either directly or through our government to have much influence over at that as in the untenable situation i want to jump in there because i want to ask you very important question which is how do we even begin to break this vicious cycle that has really come to define this way that washington is operating will it take an overhaul of our political

system our economic system or both i think first and foremost the focus should be our economic system we should stop this strange american desire to blame our economic problems on our politicians you know the biggest problem of the last six years has been unemployment millions and millions of people were fired from their jobs you know who fired them private capitalist employers not government officials in the first line of criticism and anger ought to be focused where it belongs on the decision makers in our corporations who decided to move out of the country to lay off american workers and let's go from there we don't do that we leap over. the corporations who fire us to blame the politicians who had relatively little to do with it that's where we got to start and what do i mean we have to bite the bullet we have to face the hard reality we allow an economic exist system to exist which

is flagrantly undemocratic in most corporations a tiny handful of people major shareholders a dozen the board of directors another doesn't make all the decisions what to produce how to produce where to produce and what to do with the profits we'll all the mass of people who work in all these businesses making this economy go we live with the results that a tiny group of people make do we vote in no do we have democratic accountability for their actions no they do what's profitable for them they give themselves enormous salaries they pay themselves the dividends they decide to move to china we live with the results they make the decisions you know we had the american revolution not to have a king of england do that for us and we don't need a few corporate executives overpaid as they are to play the role of kings in our

modern time we have to face that question now to become a nation that can rule its own destiny just like we had two years ago visit being learned and i think until we face that we're going to look at all of these irritating theatrically in washington and be worried about them while the real problem goes on address well certainly a lot more to come and we'll definitely have to have you back on because that this is the news that doesn't stop giving richard wolffe professor economics narratives at the university of massachusetts amherst thank you so much for joining me thank you for the opportunity. and now to syria where the battle between president bashar al assad's government forces and the armed opposition continues while the assad government has streamlined its message saying they're fighting terrorism the rebel fighters have diverged into a confusing mix of factions fighting for different causes all competing for foreign

funding artie's maría for notion and syria and went to one rebel controlled area to find out more about this armed opposition but said oh yes rock next to the syrian lebanese border is just a few kilometers from the capital damascus but it is like a state within a state it has its own security forces police even the. symbols of new of so to see everywhere graffiti or restart that the free syrian army has control of the area they do in military cannot answer your brood is the center of a large mountainous area in western syria known as kalam moon in two thousand and eleven local residents room on the first to support the n.t. assad campaign it seems been cut off from damascus and run by the rebels i cover my head as always when he do because we are told this is an area under islamic law we have civil and local councils we have shariah law tribunals in normal courts we

have most teeth and lawyers the curio justice we run the town by ourselves the army can enter and even if they try we are ready to resist and defend our land my god calls these his land but in fact he only came here relatively recently born in kuwait and having spent two years traveling the middle east and the gulf this is his parents' native town merger the arrived four years ago months before series protests began we resist to the end we have a plan and we have forces to make it happen. this is who he's talking about the self-styled free syrian army but these fighters don't work with other militants functioning instead as an autonomy as armed brigade they leave in abandoned houses sleeping pray together and claim fighting bashar al assad is their only goal twice a week they hear an islamic lecture from a young man who everybody calls the shaikh he's taken part in the hellish

pilgrimage to mecca and started the qur'an in saudi arabia every monday and thursday we discuss the revolution the latest military developments as well as our daily routine we discuss what's holland what's her rom what's prescribed or forbidden by islam i ask them whether the job had the looser and al-qaeda affiliated radical islamic groups openly operating in syria no no no no no we have no relation with the nusra we say the news or a link to the outside they follow al qaida and for decisions they revert to their army or even i man al-zawahiri al qaida leader we have normal relations with them next we are supposed to meet with people from a list but when our armed guys learn of this they do all they can to stop us the groups controlling the area are not only fighting assad they compete with each other even for media attention being among journalists is seen as something

prestigious way scooted anatole to film from the car but it one point with talked by a group of gunman apparently from a hostile brigade the ask about who we are late our guards told us the men were kidnappers from rema village at least nineteen foreign journalists are held hostage in syria right now and the price of their lives varies. this area supposedly run by opposition fighters is in fact in the hands of a large number of separate brigades armed groups or just lone rebels with different ideologies and the only food and weaponry and these are locals who pay the bills we as christians have to pay so-called duty this is our input into society we go to church and pay it wasn't do also we pay for internal security brigades for relief aid and courts funding is not the only cost the situation in your brood is critical

a shortage of food in everything we are besieged trapped in their own country where more than two years of deadly conflict has only seen factions and goals increasingly diverged that was our teeth maria the notional reporting see right back here at five. pulls. child a little slice. of the. pain of the young girl's cammo for the future hunter. between two and three hundred million guns united states so you can act like they're not here and keep kids away from them. the plaza sound is

a large you know i mean this teaches them a lot of response ability to simply contemplate through the eyes of children if we can do it for our children love for our future what the country will say. and. i would rather ask questions to people in positions of power instead of speaking on their behalf and that's why you can find my show larry king now right here on r.t. question for.

polo there i am married and this is broom bust here's the story we're tracking for you today on the show welcome back to the new normal the s. and p. five hundred smashed its own ceiling today closing at all time highs and google peers the one thousand dollars bail look at all shiny and new but it's not just the earning season or america's favorite panda that's boosting the risk assets up the wall of worry yes we channel john hilson wrath and doubtful and some fed predictions with the help of chris martenson and tom hartman of the big picture dismisses the fray with a unique perspective on the debt ceiling let's get to the show.