it's. because you're going to. be. coming up on our t.v. battle and for lucia iraqi government forces continue to battle against al qaeda militants taking over two strategic cities in the country secretary kerry says no troops will be sent but we'll tell you how the u.s. plans to get involved just ahead and in chicago the battle over gun control rages on a federal judge has just overturned key legislation banning the sale and transfer of guns within city limits but what does this mean for a city with high crime we'll take a look at that debate coming up and cruising down the highway of life the american public has long had a love affair with the automobile buckle up later in the show artie will take you for a spin in the cars of the future. it's

tuesday january seventh four pm in washington d.c. and then you're a david and you're watching our t.v. we begin today with iraq where clashes have erupted between iraqi special forces and al qaeda linked militants just outside the city of fallujah that's the latest outbreak in a standoff that's taken hold of the sunni dominated province of on bar according to the associated press the fighting resulted from the capture of an army officer and four soldiers in the area just a day earlier also in on bar province earlier today in iraq a government airstrike killed twenty five al qaeda linked militants the clashes also followed a deadly attack in which a suicide bomber rammed his explosives laden truck into a police station in the northern city of perth kook the attack killed two people wounding fifty five more in recent days iraqi security forces and allies from sunni tribes have been battling militants to recapture two very strategic city. in the on

bar province but lucia and ramadi however currently the two cities are at least partially under the control of al qaeda the latest inviting is seemingly a continuation of the heightened violence seen and two thousand and thirteen a year that now marks the most bloodshed seen since two thousand and six when the u.s. military still had a presence in the country according to united nations figures last year the violence claimed the lives of about eight thousand nine hundred iraqis to talk about these latest developments i'm joined now by austin peterson editor at the live libertarian republic dot com austin thanks so much for joining me thanks for having me so ten years ago the u.s. military led to major offensives on militants and felicia you know even though the actors on the ground are different it kind of feels like deja vu is this you know history repeating itself it sort of is i mean the idea that we were going to be able to govern iraq in the long term was not tenable everyone knew that we were hoping that iraqi security forces would be able to step up and meet the challenge but we have a problem that's a multi-pronged problem here we have

a problem of hearts and minds and we have a military problem it's very difficult to defend the on our province it took it took the lives of one thousand americans a combat troops to take the on bar province i think there were something like sixty eight troops killed in fallujah in the worst urban combat since vietnam so it's all about a matter of how we fight our military strategy we're sort of still fighting these old first generation second generation styles of warfare and the way that terrorist groups work now they're very decentralized and so what they can do is they can move and they can they can change positions all over different part of the country so that they can stay alive and the way that we've been fighting our fights in the past again has always been to sort of strike an invasion route try and set up diplomacy and to install a new government but regime change didn't really work in iraq although the on molokai government is there it's highly unstable and they don't really have the sort of mandate from their citizens that they require in order to govern that large of a country really iraq is three separate countries there's the sunnis or the kurds as a. and they have always been sort of at war with one another so i think that the

problem here law's a misunderstanding of the middle eastern political situation because the americans try and look at everything in terms of first generation war like fighting some to world war two where you would take over the enemy's province or you would take over their city capital city and believe that you would be able to change their hearts and minds that's just not how this works in their tribal regions the andar province is an enormous region it's forty miles west of baghdad and it's sort of symbolic that it's so close to the capital but there's no way to really win the hearts and minds of the people in the andar province just because you may have taken over baghdad right at the very end via a very complicated situation and you know secretary of state kerry has said that we will not be sending troops into the region however the u.s. is excel orating deliveries of military equipment do you think the u.s. sort of has an obligation now and going forward to help iraq militarily i don't see an obligation to help iraq militarily i do see an obligation to protect american national security interests so to the extent that sending hellfire missiles to the

iraqi government or sending the drones to the will increase the security of the united states that remains to be questioned so you really have to ask yourself what are the interests of the united states are we trying to protect a fledgling democracy democracy in iraq are we really trying to protect american national security i think that arguably the sending of more missiles in drones to the maliki government isn't necessarily going to result in long term stabilization i think the long term stabilization efforts are going to have to come through diplomatic effort and you know secretary of state john kerry is sort of acknowledging this he's saying that you know we may be sending arms and weapons but we're not going to be sending american troops in there which will be interesting to play in the political season throughout to but the question is you know where do you draw the line what are the implications of doing this now well the implications of doing this now just means that there will be more bloodshed there will be more al maliki is absolutely going to try to hold on to power for as long as he can this is how people operate in this region so really what we're doing is we're trying to prop up a regime that has the backing of america but whether or not that actually has anything with national security of the united states is really what's in question right. i want to take

a look at something that congressman former congressman ron paul said in his weekly column he said last month the u.s. ship nearly one hundred air to ground missiles to the iraqi air force to help combat the surging al qaeda ironically the same al-qaeda groups the u.s. is helping iraqis combat are benefiting from the u.s. covert and overt war to overthrow assad next door in syria why can't the us government learn from its mistakes do you think he has a point here he have solution to this point and one of the things that's interesting is that the obama administration has signaled that not only will they not plan on sending more troops and but president obama has come out and said that he will actually vote to repeal the authorization of military force in iraq which is very big news the first time that that happened was back in two thousand and eleven when senator rand paul introduced that in the senate which was struck down the ministration so that it wouldn't sign right now so it appears that this may be some something of a short term strategy in the obama administration to send these missiles now but that may not be a long term commitment how significant is it is it more symbolic or is it actually i don't really see it is that significant to be quite fair because the reality is

is that we had this agreement with them for a long time if you look at what we did with egypt we stopped ships shipping certain arms to egypt because of the strife that was going on down there you can take a look at what happened in syria i think that the president right now is sort of been rocked back on his heels from the inability to use military force in syria so the administration may be taking these conciliatory steps and just saying well we have an obligation to provide them with arms and weapons but there's no way they can have a long term agreement and it seems as if they're signaling that they're not interested in sort of a long term here try right well of course iraq border syria and that's another highly contentious situation you know there's so much instability that's growing in the region as a whole how do you think the international community should really be dealing with this says as a threat going forward what i think really that how they have to deal with this is they have to start to win the hearts and minds with the battle for what we call property rights basic property rights and that's one thing that hasn't been introduced to the discussion yet is that the idea that people should be able to. on

their own property and this is something that in the middle east they haven't necessarily had a long tradition of and i think in the united states we have this tradition of classical liberal classical liberalism the property rights and when people are invested in their own countries when they're invested in their own communities when they own businesses if you encourage that kind of a culture it leads people to not want to bomb these buildings if they don't if they don't own something if people feel like they don't have a stake in their communities then long term there's no way that you're going to have security because people don't feel invested and so i think that the idea of free market capitalism laws before laws a fair entrepreneurism these are the ideas that we have to introduce the people of middle east because i think that's the only way that they're going to feel invested in their own communities well unfortunately that's all we have time for but awesome peterson editor the libertarian republic dot com thanks so much. and the first shipment of chemical weapons material has left syria according to the u.n. the vessel left the northern syrian port of latakia today and it was as courted by russian and chinese warships removal was supposed to take place before december thirty first of last year but the logistics were held up as

a result of syria's worsening conflict the export and destruction of the most dangerous substances in the syrian arsenal have long been considered the most hazardous part of the operation which syria agreed to carry out as part of a deal reached three months ago the pledge came as a result of intense talks between russia and the united states which ultimately averted u.s. military action in the country. and a federal judge has overturned chicago's ban on the sale and transfer of firearms ruling that the city's ordinances aimed at reducing gun violence are unconstitutional the ruling is the latest in a series of legal blows to the city's efforts to restrict gun ownership since the supreme court ruled chicago's handgun ban on constitutional back in two thousand and ten and regards the city's latest law attorney as head argued that the gun sale ban makes it harder for criminals to get their hands on weapons and a thirty five page opinion published on monday district court judge edmund chang agreed but the city had a fundamental duty to protect. to citizens and acknowledge that quote the stark

reality facing the city each year is thousands of shooting victims and hundreds of murders committed with a gun but he added that on the other side of this case is another feature of government certain fundamental rights are protected by the constitution put outside governments reach including the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense under the second amendment ultimately judge chang found that the city failed to give than ten that banning the sale of guns by licensed dealers was necessary to reduce gun violence but here to talk a little bit more about this ruling and what it means going forward i'm joined by ben swann investigative journalist and founder of bens dot com so bad as i understand it chicago was the last city to allow residents to have handguns in their homes that also once had one of the strongest handgun crackdowns in the country so first of all explain to me you know how big of a win is this for gun advocates. well i think it's a big win on several levels first of all if you consider the fact that the judge

went back to the second amendment and ultimately said that this is something as you just read a minute ago that comes down to the government does not have the right to restrict or prevent people from owning guns lawfully and he says essentially that's what the law did here though i do think and i want to say there's a little bit of a slippery slope here because one of the things the judge saying did was he specifically mentioned the issue of chicago's almost failed policies even though they have this ban in place the fact that there are so many gun deaths in gun murders in the city of chicago and almost use that as a justification for why he was saying that this ban was unconstitutional in doing so he's ultimately saying that the metrics by which this the success of this law would be measured have bearing on whether or not it's constitutional or not and i don't agree with that i think the judge got it wrong in that case that whether this issue is unconstitutional has nothing to do with whether or not it's effective in preventing gun violence we'd have to get a little more more into that in terms of the detail but i think that that's the one

slippery slope that gun rights advocates even though they consider this a victory they need to watch out for is that greater good concept creeping its way into constitutional rights ok now considering what we're seeing happen in the city of chicago with unprecedented rates of gun violence and so forth do you think this is a city that could have maybe benefited from the now struck down regulation. well it really hasn't benefited from really any of the things that chicago's been doing look illinois was one of the last states in the country to allow concealed carry a chicago has numerous gun restrictions one of the toughest cities in the entire country when it comes to gun laws and yet they just they have not seen the net result of that you would expect that if you have more gun laws and fewer legal guns you would have less gun crime and the exact converse is true in chicago when you take chicago and you take houston which are two cities with very similar demographics very similar numbers in terms of rates of of nonwhites rates of

poverty the size of the city population and yet the number of gun deaths in those two cities isn't even close houston is about half the number of chicago and those of the third and fourth largest cities in the country and so you have to be able to look at that and say so far what chicago has been attempting to do in terms of controlling guns has not resulted in controlling gun violence now ben and response of the ruling roderick drew drew is a spokesman for the city's lot of apartment had this to say said every year chicago police recover more illegal guns than officers in any city in the country a factor of lax federal laws as well as lax laws in illinois we need stronger gun safety laws not increased access to firearms within the city if other jurisdictions surrounding the city had maybe tightened their gun laws do you think you know chicago would be better off. again i mean i think it goes back to the fact that look the argument can be made that if everyone around chicago would have tighter

gun restrictions there would be fewer gun crimes but again you go back to that comparison between houston and chicago in houston you have much more lax gun laws and in texas of course is a state where you can conceal carry in some places you can open carry in some places and in the state of texas and in specifically literally in houston there's a lot more access to these guns and again they don't have the same kind of gun violence so the issue in chicago look is really comes down to a gang issue it comes down to a drug culture issue it comes down to. the turf war issues it comes down to family issues there are a lot of of different issues that surround what's happening in chicago and we shouldn't downplay what's happening there we should really look at it but legislating your way to fixing this problem does not seem to be the answer it seems to be the answer that that the mayor of chicago that the administrations there for several decades now really have pushed for we need to legislate our way out of violence and out of crime but it doesn't work that way you can't legislate your way out of crime and you mentioned the mayor you know the judge did leave open

a window for the city to appeal the case and mayor rahm emanuel has already hinted that you know that city will probably do so are there any other options you would consider that would be more you know you would consider more fair i guess to regulate the sale of firearms. well look i think again the issue and i agree with you i think this will be appealed and i think of the judge left it open to appeal again that's concerning to me because of the fact that the judge really pointed to the numbers here and said hey if chicago had essentially seen fewer gun deaths as a result of these laws we keep them in place that's what it sounded like to me as i read what the judge is essential he wrote there and if that's the case then you're leaving it open to appeal essentially saying prove to me that this is working and it should stay if it's unconstitutional it's unconstitutional and that's really the point here. you know what are the steps that chicago can take in order to restrict this those are really good questions and again it gets down more into the i think

the discussion of what is driving the violence there i don't think that we can have a reasonable conversation that guns are driving the violence in chicago it's not the guns are driving it it's the factors again going back to the turf wars going back to the gang violence they're going back to so many of the socioeconomic issues that are taking place in chicago lead to the violence that ultimately is perpetrated with guns but it's not guns driving the violence well i want to turn to the n.r.a. because many people say it's disproportionate influence has played a role in all of this recently one campaign director for the illinois council against handgun violence said that this is all a result of a systematic breakdown he said that that's the n.r.a. and ari's game plan they keep filing suits and filing suits to chip away laws and get to their ultimate goal of a complete armed citizenry what do you make of that argument. well look i think the n.r.a.

certainly they they lobby often they lobby very effectively and we see that happen whether or not that played a role again in what the judge ultimately ruled i can't say one way or the other whether it did or it didn't because i really don't know i would suspect that lobbying the judge by the n.r.a. would necessarily help the in are a look they have a vested interest in seeing americans own firearms and the n.r.a. has almost become kind of the poster child for the big bad gun lobby and they're this terrible force that is attempting to you know create chaos in america times i feel like the n.r.a. becomes the red herring here where we're so focused on what the n.r.a. is doing the bigger question should be what is being done that's effective in terms of reducing reducing violence and not just gun deaths and that's the other problem i think we have in some of the media coverage of this is too often we look at just gun deaths what's the overall rate of violence and what are cities and communities where we're seeing those rates drop what are they doing it's not ever just

a gun thing you know some folks will tell you well you look at the comparison of states where they have instituted concealed carry you get concealed carry in and violent crime rates drop and that's true in some cases in the state of ohio it's certainly true that since concealed carry came into law the rates of violent crime not just deaths but rape and aggravated assault those numbers have dropped but it's never the result of gun versus gun more guns less guns as being the sole factor and i think that's where we get out we really get off track here especially with media it's easy to have the good guy in the bad guy and i guess we just fill in the blank of who's who are a or government but at the end of the day these issues really are much more complicated than just how many guns are on the street and how many or not it is very complicated indeed will be very interesting to see what happens after it is appealed abend swan investigative journalist and founder of banks one dot com thank you so much thank you mary. and los angeles county sheriff lee baca announced

today that he will step down from his post at the end of the month and will not run for a fifth term as the county's top cop because he doesn't want quote a campaign of negative contentious politicking the decision comes out on my terms. i'm not going to seek reelection for a fifth term as sheriff and i will retire at the end of this month so in conclusion as your elected sheriff for the past fifteen years. i have held. to the core values. of this great department. the decision comes just a month after federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against eighteen of the sheriffs current and former deputies the deputies were charged with beating jail inmates and attempting to intimidate an f.b.i. agent following an in-depth investigation into the l.a. jail system at a press conference today baucus said the decision was out of the highest concern for the future of the sheriff's department. and to the news of another county

sheriff who has been sentenced to two years probation and find a thousand dollars for installing a key logger onto his wife's computer miles j. slack was the sheriff of clay county in west virginia and going through a divorce at the time he suspected his wife was in another relationship in a place to find out more information about the affair he entered his wife's workplace after business hours and installed a key logger between her keyboard cable and computer that he longer had the ability to record his wife's e-mails instant messaging chats usernames passwords and much more but beyond the fact that this was illegally carried out by a county sheriff slack made the offense worse by installing the device onto a computer that was the property of the west virginia supreme court slax wife was employed by the clay county magistrate court and therefore by keylogging her computer slack had also inadvertently obtained access to private court information but the snooping was short lived because less than three weeks later

a supreme court technician discovered the key logger on her computer and reported it at first slack denied even knowing what the key logger was but ultimately the truth came out soon after he resigned and pleaded guilty to a federal charge of wiretapping slack was sentenced to two years probation and one thousand dollars fine. in twenty fourteen the race is on to bring a driverless car to the masses google's driverless car has already logged thousands of miles but all the major carmakers are also getting into the game some are hoping to make an affordable autonomous car in the next few years artie's ramon glynn doe's shows us some of the driverless technology already in use today. gridlock crashes and high levels of stress it's all part of driving in america's cities but pretty soon people will be able to cruise in their car while playing on their tablet or reading a magazine and today's cars actually can drive themselves not literally but

practically they can have more than a half dozen auto makers are working on self driving car technology both those autonomous driving project will have one hundred self driving cars on public roads in sweden the goal is to have the cars on the road in just three years twenty fourteen there is going to be this kind of in the marketplace we are where you see receipts from the elements to take a magnitude of the leap forward if you will nice on has the ambitious goal of making their fully autonomous car available to us consumers by the year two thousand and twenty when we have cars driving themselves around california today you've got lane keeping technology which keeps you generally turned you into the lane if you get out of line this lincoln equipped with parallel parking assist can pretty much park itself without me even putting my hands on the wheel while driving this cars are being made in mass quite yet underlying technology like this is already in many vehicles i pride myself in my parallel parking but this car does it

on its own it's not quite an autonomous car but it does. do a lot of the work. mercedes perhaps has some of the most technologically advanced driving systems from radar to cameras to sensors that can detect vehicles in front this is probably as close as you're going to get to fully autonomous they can remove the human ear and bring down the road that would significantly raise the safety of travel in vehicles in the u.s. california michigan florida and nevada have all adopted laws for thomas vehicles where the biggest obstacles might just be drivers and their reluctance to let go the wheel there's the individual am i ready to do that am i ready to get into the passenger side of the vehicle and have no one on the driver side and then go to l.a. i don't know if i marry or whether or not people are ready for driverless cars i

don't makers are moving forward with the technology hoping to put them on sale suit each in san diego california ramon galindo r t an apple a day keeps the doctor away that's the phrase most children will hear as the guaranteed way to stay healthy but over the years maintaining good health has come to mean something far more extensive with many adults now depending on troves of different vitamin supplements to fight off a myriad of ailments but are vitamins really all what they're chalked up to be our teas liz wahl has the story. well if you're one of millions of americans banking on multi vitamins to make you healthier you may not be doing your body any favors a series of recent medical studies show that multi vitamins have no proven help benefits and may be doing more harm than good according to an editorial in the annals of internal medicine quote the message is simple most supplements do not prevent chronic disease or death their use is not justified and they should be avoided this message is especially true for the general population with no clear

evidence of micronutrient deficiencies who represent most supplement users in the united states and in other countries that conclusion is based on three large scale studies but about half of americans take a daily multi-vitamin making dietary supplements a profitable industry take a look the vitamin industry rakes in twelve billion dollars a year just for multi-vitamins and thirty billion dollars a year total for dietary supplements but not everyone totally agrees with the study critics say the findings apply to americans that get enough nutrients from food naturally but high obesity rates and difficulty getting affordable healthy foods leaves socio economically disadvantaged people nutritionally deficient the host who didn't really minuscule. industry and so their foods while holding some of them getting some subsidies it's newsgroup compared to

the big businesses so the cost of food is greater too is that a time to put. the best way to stay healthy experts agree is to get your nutrients from a real nutritious foods rather than pills the number one tip. that my grandmother creates of vegetables and. dairy products is very. nutrition. according to this most recent medical consensus for the most part taking vitamins and other supplements is a waste of time and money and washington lives wall. you may remember the blockbuster film limitless in which a pill turned the protagonist into a talented genius. that we can only the story presented.

serious. with their lawyers. while this may not just be a hollywood fantasy scientists are studying a drug that can recreate the plasticity of a child's brain which would allow adults to pick up skills like new languages perfect pitch and more it's much harder for adults to gain fluency in new languages and near impossible for them to learn perfect pitch without early life exposure but that might change with the development of the acid let's hope that this story ends less violently than the film limitless and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com port slash r.t. america check out our website r t dot com for its i should say you can also follow me on twitter at a mirror david stay tune boom bust is next and i'll see you right back here at five .

i think. everybody. did you know the price is the only industry specifically mention in the constitution and. that's because a free and open press is critical to our democracy shred albus. role. in fact the single biggest threat facing our nation today is the corporate takeover of our government and our crowd cynical we've been hijacked why a handful of transnational corporations that will profit by destroying what our founding fathers one school class i'm tom are going to get on this show we reveal the big picture of what's actually going on on world we go beyond identifying the problem to try to fix rational debate and a real discussion critical issues facing america if i ever go ready to join the movement then walk a little bit. wealthy

british style. that's not tied to the tide of the times when. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cons a report on r g. i got a quote for you. it's pretty tough. if they were it's a story. but if this guy like you would smear about guys in stead of working for the people both issues the mainstream media are working for each other bridegrooms didn't find problems. they did rather it was.

hello there i marinate and this is boom bust here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. first up the winkle vi brothers enter the world of microcap trading with their new hedge good hedge fund scuse me briarwood chase and management now does this mean that they're battling out of the big coin race i'll tell you coming to break up and also jim hamilton he's going to try and join me later on the show we think we have him we'll find out soon enough he is coming from san diego to talk about oil economy and the first lady of the fed janet yellen hopefully we'll get back to you and finally branding is a powerful powerful marketing tool but why do so many companies get it so so wrong rachel corrie's is and i discuss this in today's that big deal it's all coming up and it all starts.