the the. coming up on our t. friend or foe with president obama meets with the prime minister of pakistan and in washington will the meeting focus on drone attacks and trying to ease rising tensions between the nations details ahead inside get most the detention facility in cuba is shielded away from the public and the media but our team has gained access to get for a rare inside look at the story coming up and oh canada our neighbors to the north now find themselves involved in a spying scandal it appears a canadian intel agency is accused of collecting meditate on its own citizens which is a violation of law more details coming up in today's show. it's

wednesday october twenty third if i found in washington d.c. under the localism you were watching r.t. president obama met with pakistani prime minister nawaz sharif today to talk about relations between the two nations prime minister sharon reese is calling for a fresh partnership with the u.s. but he is simultaneously demanding and end to the drone strikes in his country or to correspondent liz wahl tells us more about this high stakes meeting at the white house. pakistan prime minister nawaz sharif's meeting with president obama aims to ease tensions between the two countries the meeting comes just a day after amnesty international released this report detailing how u.s. drone strikes in the north waziristan region have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of innocent civilians during anti american sentiment and emboldening militants they have to basically in the control the impunity that human rights

abuses have in that region be they the u.s. of the cia pakistani forces or the taliban and al qaida speaking at the u.s. institute of peace prime minister sharon have called for an end to drone strikes in pakistan. not only continued. integrity. meant to do which had risen from our country this issue has become a major. relationship as well. i would give for stressed the need for. the obama administration has maintained that drone strikes target terrorists with precision while aiming to minimize threats to civilians but amnesty international's reports suggest some of the strikes have violated international law the human rights group is calling for an investigation was a part of a broader policy was that it come at a command structure level that this was allowed to happen was that an individual

pilot was behind the killing who chose made that decision to do the killing it depends on public and this goes and what happened in these cases who was behind it which institutions which individuals ties between the u.s. and pakistan weekend after the navy seal raid in pakistan that led to the death of osama bin ladin pakistani officials complain that the obama administration didn't warn the country before swooping in the u.s. claims it didn't trust factions of pakistani intelligence with the information aside amending relations the state department has announced the u.s. will resume one point six billion dollars in aid to pakistan in tuesday's speech sure we've highlighted the two countries common interest of a stable afghanistan a nation with an uncertain future as the u.s. winds down troops i mean how it would if they're the greatest challenge to pakistan comes from good reason and extremism. but by the standards united is sure she'll

know that it should. not be the simplest it isn't as is sometimes alleged all the rhetoric has toned down at the dispute between the u.s. and pakistan but there remains a deep divide between the two countries while this meeting at the white house is seen as a significant step it's unclear how much it will really lead to rebuilding relations with washington visible are. well on this day two years ago the national transitional council in libya declared the country liberated after a long time dictator colonel moammar gadhafi was found and killed by a militia however it since that declaration the country has still been plagued with unrest and is dealing with a very uncertain future political commentator sam sacks brings us a look back over the past two years. i think. two years ago today with moammar gadhafi dead in tripoli and most of libya firmly in rebel hands. the national transitional council declared libya. liberated that liberation came with

a price plus two years of been a chaotic ride for the nation filled with violent clashes assassinations parliamentarian dysfunction and most recently the brief kidnapping of the prime minister of the united states which along with nato is instrumental in enforcing a no fly zone and bombing campaign that led to the ouster of gadhafi. has paid a heavy price as well in september of last year terrorist attack the u.s. consulate in benghazi killing ambassador chris stevens and three other americans so two years into its democratic experiment there are serious questions about libya's future amnesty international released a report this week about the plight of tens of thousands of libyans who have been displaced and victimized by roaming militias seeking retribution for gadhafi era crimes the libyan government which is dealing with fresh accusations of corruption has failed to rein in these militias across the country which are comprised of more

than two hundred twenty five thousand libyans and many of these militias run entire resource rich cities in libya declaring themselves independent of the national government tensions are strained further after u.s. special forces abducted an al qaeda suspect from the streets of libya two weeks ago and militants accuse the libyan government of being complicit with the united states. doing the ongoing unrest in libya are lots and lots of weapons enormous stockpiles of weapons from gadhafi is forty year rule that flooded into the streets not just strengthening the hands of militias within libya but also cross the border helping rebels in mali and syria so remains to be seen if post gadhafi libya can succeed and if the nato operation to the bows to. move crew did more harm than good but given the onerous taking place in other nations also swept up into the arab spring like egypt which is under military rule in syria which is a civil war libya's problems are not unique to the region and in washington same

socks are to joining me now to discuss what it is like on the ground in libya today is david swanson journalist and author of the book war is a lie hi there david thank you so much for joining me again now in the run up to the intervention in libya was the case that that u.s. gave for getting involved in the conflict well of course there was not a big question put to the u.s. public or to the congress as there was with the missiles into syria and you saw the result there should have been on libya this was done outside of congress this was done with lies about a u.n. resolution that didn't authorize overthrowing the government it was done with lies about a crisis and a humanitarian need to intervene and the idea that it was an intervention was of course a lie because western countries including the us had been arming the government of libya right up until the point that they were arming and working with. the government of libya and the idea of course was sold as

a short term intervention that would get rid of a bad government and then things would go well and of course that has not been the case it's predictably not been the case and it's not been the case with any such military intervention that i'm aware of through history so what you're saying is do you think that we learned from we learn from libya in order to act in syria have we learned that lesson. i think it helped a little bit in combination with iraq and afghanistan and the drone wars and the incredible expenditures of the past decade on weaponry and military adventures and failing economy and the distrust and the lies and things coming out like the u.s. working with foreign governments in yemen and possibly pakistan and now maybe libya on things that the those governments lied to their public about and say it was just the u.s. whereas actually the local governments cooperated possibly in that in that kidnapping

. i think that the level of distrust has grown and perhaps people have learned a little bit of a lesson from libya so here we are on the two year anniversary of the day that libya was reportedly free what does a free libya look like today well it's worse off this is the thing i don't know that the oil companies and the bankers and the weapons makers think that they got a bad deal and they're worse off but the people of libya or worse off and the only people who care about that fact are people who really care about humanity which is of course not by any means everybody who clamors for humanitarian wars and so the us media is lying now primarily by avoiding the subject by not talking about it we're not hearing much about the hell that libya has become and the violence that has overflowed its borders and the fact that the ordinary person in libya tends to be less secure less well off now than before as with iraq we aren't told about

these predictable and consistent results of these military adventures now the phrase the leading up from behind was coined in response to president obama's stance in libya so what does that mean and is this kind of president obama's foreign policy model for that region in general. well we now have u.s. troops supposedly completely gone from libya the cia of course was there before the intervention and all the talk of no troops on the ground excluded mention of them and their use of diplomats in benghazi as human shields and all of that disaster and now you talk about nato sending people in and this of course is a preference in washington to have nato do work rather than the united states but the united states is the leader in nato is still going to be calling the shots is still going to be involved and when things blow up and get worse there will be

every temptation for the u.s. to again use the only tool it thinks to turn to and that is violence so rose by any other name is still the u.s. military. but on gallup's this unrest in libya affecting the neighboring countries in the region. well you have seen violence overflow into mali you've seen arms shipped out to syria and. fighters shipped out to syria and you've seen a lack of stability in libya impacting all of the nations around it and you compare that with tunisia which is not violence free and not perfect by any means but engaged in a largely nonviolent protests this is the difference between a country that overthrows a government largely nonviolently albeit inspired by a suicide compared to where massive violence is used you can't switch it off like a light switch you can't switch the resentment off and it's going to be there for

years and it is very important on this two year anniversary to really look at libya as a country right now and also look at u.s. involvement if it to kind of understand what our impact is when we go into these countries whether we put soldiers on the ground or not david swanson journalist author of war is a lie thank you so much thank you. breaking news now coming out of syria an explosion near the international airport in damascus caused the capital and much of the southern part of syria to go dark power was a part of the cut after a gas line near the airport was hit by rebel are teller ie the pipeline is located near the damascus international airport which is about ten miles away from the capital the extent of the outage was not immediately clear but the country's electricity minister says that manus crews are working to restore power. well since its inception of guantanamo bay detention facility has been shrouded in secrecy over the years a piece of information would come out here or

a possibly unnamed there are but the fact is that the world still has a very limited understanding of what is really going on within those compound walls even journalists that travel there have a harder time finding the truth now in this part of her special investigation are to correspondent ana stasia charkha tells us about the struggles that she faced while on assignment. transparencies a word repeated by u.s. officials working at guantanamo like a mantra by those few who are comfortable speaking on camera you see the conditions under which the detainees and you get to talk to the people who are responsible for garner we make it is transparent as possible and those preferring to remain on identifiable like the majority of officials we were permitted to speak to have do we get media like yourself international media or local media or whatever and they're welcome to come you know we tell them what we have any journalists workflow at guantanamo starts with

a mandatory introduction to media rules the so-called operation security briefing the material that you guys are gathering to make sure that it is biased by our policies here even though transparency is a word brought out by all the personnel we talked to on the ground we as journalists access to detainees aside are asked to be very careful about the shots we filmed all the backdrops and at the end of each day videos are reviewed and any shots deemed unacceptable are deleted this one will be ok because palm trees are not too controversial remind you of any frowned upon seaward like censorship it's in this series the program established to her. program accomplished within her regulation sorry old video and audio recordings and even sketches are carefully studied cellphones are banned from campus we're not supposed to anything on facebook or anything like that or you know even worry about talking about it over you. anything over the phone the said purpose of these ground rules to protect the safety and security of getting the operations the detainees you're going to get

their vision so we try to photograph them they're down we are warned violations of media ground rules may result in restricted access denial of future visits and over move on from guantanamo bay. people just kind of mislabeled it and they have a call to go for b. and just not leading. giving the true picture i mean the only people who knows what goes on get more is under the twenty's and getting the detainees side of what goes on and get most apparently just couldn't be done after an extensive explanation of how exactly we are to film the prisoners the amount of detainee face time we get a total of one minute and five seconds through a dark glass window the reason we're given out of respect for them and not using them is as you know. you know. making them some kind of curiosity you know on film the thing like that we don't want to do that despite our requests to not even film but at least witness more real prison or

life a high ranking guantanamo admiral convinces us that we actually have a lot more access than we think you're seeing what there is to to see you know. given the amount of time that you have here to to see if we are as transparent as possible after one minute glimpse at one detainee our schedule is in fact all booked up i think i mean they they were taken to the detention camp kitchen to witness how well things run their will since we're not really being allowed to close to the detainees this might be the closest glimpse of their life we might be getting today we're being told the that these are the meals that they're offered on a daily basis. we're also taken to the only local radio station all made up like zombies in the audience military personnel serving at the base do you do any news related to the time to teach him. to public media because you know there's enough journalists over there covering the music sports

and talk radio pure infotainment rains here. and so we learned there were not the only ones simply being treated to a show and party one ton of moby. meanwhile the lawyers for five men who are accused of playing a role in orchestrating the nine eleven terror attacks are meeting with a judge this week to discuss the upcoming trial yesterday the attorneys attempted to have the death penalty removed from a possible sentencing the lawyers also attempted to talk about the torture of these men underwent while in secret prisons but they were stopped by a judge who said that some of the president's treatment involves a classified information and therefore could only be discussed in closed door legal sessions for more on this case on and on the military justice here and there at guantanamo bay i was joined earlier by martha rayner she's a lawyer who represents detainees at gitmo and is an associate clinical professor

of law at fordham university school of law and i started off by asking her what it's like to litigate on guantanamo bay and how it's different from other cases that she's done in the past. well certainly litigating a case far away you know on an island is very difficult just to be clear i'm not i'm not litigating in a military tribunal right now but i'm familiar with what's goes on there because i represent clients i kuantan a moment of travel there first of all it's just very hard logistically there's been lots of problems. just basic internet access. there's been lots of problems with security around defense counsels. for example there's problems with having proper space in which to work there's been problems with mold and. other you know sort of. you know hygiene issues just trying to find clean

offices to work in so. there's just awesome a logistical problems of getting to one tunnel right you have to travel there. that's extra time and it's one time i was subject to hurricanes in many military commission moments that have been just because the various storms and hurricanes that frequently sweep through. cuba so it's most of the challenges are really the logistics but in a minor substantive level another challenge is that this military commission law is emerging while the lawyers are lawyers right much of the law is not in place and so that needs lawyers aren't trying to. do them was to be decided as they're moving along and that's that's very difficult now as i understand why as more quickly interrupted on tuesday during the military tribunals for the alleged nine

eleven conspirators when they were talking about waterboarding and an attempt to get execution off of the table have you ever had experiences like that where you were prevented from discussing something that would have potentially helped your client's case out. well sure i mean the. the rules and regulations that are governing the military commissions are incredibly confining for defense counsel they're subject to very strict protective orders that require them to keep classified information classified. and it means that they cannot share their classified information with people that actually may be able to help their clients so for example the lawyers representing the men accused in the men now called the nine eleven five they are seeking to disclose facts of their clients torture to various international tribunals that they're seeking to look at the charges the

allegations of torture and they're unable to do that right i mean there is there is no doubt the u.s. government engaged in torture it's a it's it's publicly known at this point and these lawyers want. the individual acts of torture against their clients to be properly investigated and they're on able to do that because they can't share what their clients have told them with these outside decision makers and fact finders and it really ties their hands and limits the amount of advocacy they need. so the question becomes are these trials decided before they are even heard what are the chances that a fair trial there. well look you know this issue around disclosure of the facts of torture in many ways goes to the issue of punishment the the u.s. government is seeking the death penalty as were these men if they're convicted

they're seeking to have them executed and the question is one of the issues the defense attorneys want to bring to bear is whether they should be executed in light of the fact that the government the u.s. government has acted outside the law in supposedly bringing them to justice and should we really be killing someone that the u.s. government didn't you know broke the law in in how they treated these so you know can they get a fair trial well my feeling is if the defense attorneys feel as though in order to get a fair trial they need to be able to bring this information to the light of day they should be allowed to do that right if they feel they need it to bring this to the attention of outside try funerals outside decision makers they should be able to do that. it's just whether that's going to interfere with whether they get a fair trial it's really i can't really speak to that as i sit here today i don't

know the details of these particular individual cases that was martha rayner associate clinical professor of law at fordham university and a lawyer for guantanamo bay detainees. president obama you have some explaining to do that's the message german chancellor angela merkel is probably saying to the president at the moment after finding out that the u.s. might have tapped her personal cell phone and it appears not even world leaders conversations are safe from the watchful eye of the n.s.a. according to the associated press and der spiegel merkel reportedly called president obama personally to say that his behavior is unacceptable the us gov. responded by saying this quote the president assured the chancellor that the united states is not monitoring and will not monitor the communications of chancellor merkel but note that the statement did not deny the united states had in fact

monitored merkel's communications in the past if it did and it would not specify about that durst spiegel this is the first time in recent months that germany has taken on the n.s.a. for its overarching collection techniques we'll bring you more as the story develops. meanwhile one of canada's top spy agencies known as the communications security establishment canada is facing a lawsuit for violating privacy rights of citizens the lawsuit was filed by b.c.'s civil liberties association and the open media organization who are you that the bronner and unchecked surveillance of canadians directly violates the country's constitution steve anderson is the executive director at open media and he filled me on on how this lawsuit came about. you know it's been revealed. the community the communications establishment canada.

has the power to monitor any canadian at any time without a warrant and not only that we're being asked to foot the bill for this expense of online spying and that's why thankfully the b.c. civil liberties association has filed this lawsuit arguing that this activity is unconstitutional and media we're really happy to support them and you know similar to the us here in canada citizens are very upset there's a pledge on our website ok media dot ca and thousands of people just since yesterday have signed up to pledge their support for the b.c. civil liberties. and i'm hopeful that the government will listen but but so far the they they haven't said much on this and there's very little accountability or transparency with this issue so is it do you have any idea if they're collecting the content of the phone calls or collecting data data are they collecting e-mails anything like that. yeah well they're definitely collecting

data and so that could pinpoint you know where someone is you know who people are meeting with that sort of thing and if you're communicating with someone outside of canada which is pretty much most canadians then that information could be collected and we could be talking about listening to phone calls or e-mails that sort of thing but even what's worse is that we don't know what information is being shared between the n.s.a. and cia so for example the n.s.a. has definitely has the ability to sweep up our information and then canadian officials can then get we think and then get access to that and you know that sort of thing is really why i can medians want to know how many canadians law abiding canadians are being swept up with this activity and what information of ours is being stored and collected in these giant databases absolutely i'm sure a lot of people want to know the answers to those questions and so let's talk about

this lawsuit what are they suing for and what are we hoping to achieve here. yeah the c.e.o. is arguing that storing canadians law abiding collecting and storing and monitoring is unconstitutional under a charter and the hope is that we'll have some parliamentary oversight because right now even our own parliament doesn't know what's going on and you know if you look in the u.s. there is some move some measures being put forward where there would be some sort of oversight here in canada there's virtually no oversight and you know the government's own commissioner is supposed to be looking into this has said that he does not know how many comedians you know what information is being stored so the hope is that will be some sort of legal measures out there by the government and response to the kind of revelation that what is happening is unconstitutional so hopefully there's more oversight and how was it uncovered i know here in the u.s.

obviously we had the edward snowden leaks how was this a mass surveillance program uncovered. more or less it was uncovered. releases well there's been for example it's been in the news recently because it was revealed it. is really becoming out of control and is actually engaging in. with our allies in brazil and so those sorts of revelations and others. have come out and i think that's why the b.c.l. a has gotten involved and engaged i mean if you look at the u.s. there's a rally this saturday the we're actually involved there in washington d.c. with the stop watching us coalition and people are really upset with you know the revelations that have come up from snowden i think it's very similar up here in canada where the more canadians learn about this the more they learn about their privacy being invaded the more they learn about how is kind of secretive expensive in out of control of the more people are demanding oversight and accountability and

we have a little bit less than a minute left but i have to ask you what can the american public take away from this lesson from this lawsuit in particular about how canadians are reacting and handling it. you know what i think. people in the u.s. can take away the committed history basically with women being very upset about this spying that's going on i'm really happy that people in the u.s. are calling for the n.s.a. to be reined in because we're swept up in that surveillance too and i think people up here as well are trying to do our part to make sure that our spy agency has reigned and there's more accountability because really americans could be swept up their data could be left to be able to cyber criminals you know lisa others and so hopefully people on both sides of the border continue to speak out on these issues will rein in the spying on both sides steve anderson executive director at open media thank you so much. thanks for having me. an update now to the breaking news

coming out of syria an explosion near the international airport in damascus caused the capital and much of the southern part of syria to go dark the power was cut after rebel artillery allegedly hit a gas pipe artie's paulus lior is in tel aviv and we will bring you more on this story as it develops and also in our broadcast but that does it for now see you right back here at eight. hello and welcome to cross talk we're all things are considered on peter lavelle serious.