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tv   BBC Newsnight  WHUT  October 22, 2011 7:00pm-7:30pm EDT

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>> this is bbc news night. funding is made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vt., and honolulu. newman's own foundation. and union bank.
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>> union bank has put its global expertise to work for a wide range of companies. what can we do for you? >> and now "bbc newsnnight." >> this week, the violence and syria looked increase unlike the early stages of a civil war. >> these protests are taking place every night in homs. >> the "occupy wall street," movement has spread around the world. what they hope to achieve? >> you are watching the birth of a massive worldwide movement against the banks, wall street, against the city. people have literally had it and cannot take it anymore. >> colonel gaddafi was captured
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and killed this week. he was a brutal dictar but also an eccentric one-of-a-kind. syrian government troops are reported to have killed more than 20 people in the city of homs this week. no one can be sure of the amount people killed because the syrian regime has stopped independent witnesses from entering the country. our correspondent smuggled herself into the country. her report contains images of severely injured and deceased individuals. ♪ ♪ >> homs, the so-called capital of the so-called syrian revolution. despite the daily death toll, the protests continue. but the tactics have changed. most demonstrations are being
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held at night in an effort to minimize casualties. as the only journalist here to view the protests firsthand, i noted another significant difference. back in march, when they began, the protesters called for reform. then they called for the fall of the regime. today, as the name of it each massacre and tragedy it carried out by assad and his regime, the crowd called for the death of the president by hanging. these protests are taking place every night in homes with apparently unabated enthusiasm, which is impressive because they have been going on for at the seven months now and so little has been achieved. this, i am reminded, is not the point.
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>> i have not seen anything like this in my life. the old, the young, but women, everyone calling for freedom in syria. >> this revolution will win, god willing. >> i am told to run as shots are heard and soldiers are seen at the end of the street. >> you should hide because when they attack, the first thing they'ngre for are the cameras. >> homs was one of the first cities to join the syrian uprising. they gathered and called for the lifting of emergency laws and for genuine democracy. the government was not in the mood for listening. this was a member of the military security whose job it
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is to choose soldiers to fire on the protesters. -- who refused to fire on the protesters. he resigned. >> it was a genocide. i was there. the protester has started and there was a call for extra troops. i saw on soldiers who refused to fire on the grounds. we were in the same tanks as them and they were shot. [gunfire] >> i don't know how many protesters were killed, but it was more than 300 because i was stepping over dead bodies. they threw the bodies into trucks and then used fire engines to hose down the square. it was like a river of blood. yes, there was a massacre.
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>> i was taken on a tour of one of the most besieged parts of the city. >> don't look at this. look at this there. my guide and quick to me with a fake local id to get us past a checkpoint and told me to pretend to be his sister, which suited me fine. >> most of the time, the city is under attack. mothers cannot even go out to buy bread or milk for the children. people are hiding in their houses. they cannot go out. buses are used to transport the army. even schools are attacked and they are using some of them as prisons for the protesters. they want our children to remain stupid and an educated. -- uneducated.
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look at the rubbish in the streets. this is how they treat us. we have no water, electricity, or communication. >> there is an army patrol ahead. we have to go another way. he took me to meet one of the soldiers who was ordered to attack the people. >> when it came, we were ordered to kill everything that moved. everyone was walking the streets. there were children, one of them called his friends to come into his house for safety. as they were crossing the street, they killed the boy and another six children. >> he told me he had just
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defected from the army to join the opposition the day before. >> of our orders were to kill the syrian people, it was never the plan to protect them from the armed gangs. we were being ordered to kill our own people. they are our own flesh and blood. [gunfire] >> with the city in virtual shut down, there's nowhere to go. no wonder angry people spilled out into the streets at night. at another demonstration the next evening, they had clearly been to adopt that the bbc was in town. they expressed fury at russia's
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and china's refusal to back a resolution against china and continuing to supply arms to a murderous regime. >> members of the revolutionary council may look as though they are taking an exaggerated approach to their anonymity but it is understandable. is syrian not close to civil war? >> the regime is trying to push us into this but they will not succeed. we are aware of enough of this risk. you can see the muslims, the christians marching together and shouting for freedom for all people. our real enemy is the regime itself. >> on friday, protests take place after midday prayers.
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the protesters attempted blocked off roads, to delay the arrival of the security forces, and in a network of field hospitals, they are preparing for the inevitable casuty's. doctors have been arrested and tortured for helping gunshot victims. >> the normal thing would be to take the injured with gunshot wounds to the hospital. to our astonishment, we found that when we did that, the injured were arrested or killed. a man would go into the hospital with a treatable injury and his family would be summoned to collect a corpse with a shot in the head or in the chest. . >> these and medical points are hopelessly inadequate. they have to move to escape
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detection. they are short on equipment. >> even at this place at any time we are in danger of being broken into by this tree forces. -- by the secu them suffer from head or neck wounds. we just don't have the means to treat them. no one brought here with a head wound has survived. >> that day at the friday protest, his worst fears were proven. security forces shot and then as they tried to leave the moscow to join the demonstrations. -- security forces shot at men as they tried to leave the m osque and join the protests.
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two men suffered severe injuries and were rushed to the field hospital. we followed them there, their injuries were too gruesome to broadcast and the doctors to do m.thing to savehe they were buried the next day. a day in which another 13 were killed in the city. jim boyling -- homs might boast the title of the home of the revolution. and 3000 people have been killed. people believe it is much more.
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they try and save lives by taking be injured across the border to lebanon. that is where i found this man. >> we were protesting and the security forces opened fire. they manage to sneak me to the hospital where they gave me life-saving treatment. then, the security forces broke into the hospital saying that they wanted to kill the wounded. i was smuggled out of the back door and they brought me here. >> sympathetic lebanese have flown to rooms and houses to increasing numbers of wounded and affected soldiers now in hiding. tens of thousands of soldiers are believed to have left the syrian army. those who can have grouped
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together to form what they called a free syrian army. this man was asked to shoot on unarmed demonstrators. >> this is not the real army. this army consists of a lot of groups created from a lot of syrian places and cities trying to protect the protesters from being killed on the streets. without the free syrian army, they would be killed like sheep in the streets. >> weapons have never been hard to find in lebanon but this dealer shows me how the coverage is almost bare. he is importing from all over the world. the price of a kalashnikov has doubled from $1,000 to over 2000
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of the past few weeks. who is buying them? >> they are being bought by sunni and they're smuggled across the border. for sure with the amount of weapons we are smuggling over there, there's going to be a civil war. >> when demonstrations erupted just 50 kilometers from homs, a group of army defectors, members of the free syrian army, not promise to defend the protesters. -- promised to defend the protesters. they held out against government forces for a week before the syrian army crushed the rebellion. the rumor is that the survivors
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are regrouping and preparing to defend homs. a possibility which the leaders here welcome. >> we have now two lines going together. this is a peaceful demonstration and a creation of the syrian army. the basic duty of the army of any state is to protect the people. >> we will win. we see the victory in the eyes of the kids, the women, the elders marching everyday. >> they are marching again in the brave display of the triumph of hope in the seven months' experience. legal continue telling bashar all this ought to go, even if he kills all of us. -- we will continue telling
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bashar al assad to go, even if he kills all of us. >> the occupy wall street movement is growing. my colleague spoke to a prominent member of the movement. >> michael moore, how significant do you think these protests are? >> i think they're quite significant. i think this is something that is spreading all over the united states. our new occupy movements beginning in towns and cities every day and now it has spread across the world. this has really touched a nerve. >> it is not clear what the objective is. what it would take to get the campaign called off. do you understand what this is for? >> there are a whole bunch of reasons and they all lead back to the greed of the economic system that is built around in this case around wall street. people are fed up.
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we have 50 million people in the nine states that have no health care. 50 million. we have millions who have lost their homes due to foreclosures. we have 46.2 million living in poverty. that is at least a 13-18 million every night going to bed malnourished. people, you have millions of people have been abused by the system and they have had it. we are just in the first 31 days of this movement. this is enough that people have just gone up off of the sofa and gone and fault. people have pushed through their despair to say i will not sit by and do nothing. first, you have to get up and move. we are in this first phase. this will turn into something with various political demands to out and this system that has cost so much pain for so many
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people. -- >> is this to reform capitalism or end it? >> as far as i'm concerned, it has to be ended. i'm talking about 21st century capitalism. i'm talking about a system that was set up so that the richest 1% get 40% of the pie. the richest 400 americans have more wealth than 150 million americans combined. >> what will you replace it with? >> it is not like replacing something. here is what is confusing, especially some people in the media. they are wondering why aren't they participating in the political system? the way it has always been done has gotten them here. they're not interested in passing a particular bill in the senate or having a congressman
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say the right things to them. >> you just said this would end up with political change. how would you not get this is not by political action? >> you don't know that now because you are watching the birth of a massive worldwide movement against the banks, against wall street, against the city. people have had it and they will not take it anymore. things are going to happen. we don't know that now because we are really in the actual birth of this movement. >> what do you imagine will replace capitalism at the end of all of this? >> i think what people would like is a democratic economic system. we say that we live in a democracy, we should have economic systems that the people have a say where the systems are set up and how they are run and the pie is divided fairly among the citizens. those that have more are taxed
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more so that they can pull what is their fair share of the weight. that is ultimately what people would hope. when i was a kid, people were really not mad at which people because the rich people had built the factories and it was like, ok, they gave my dad a job. now, we can have a house and a car. that is all gone now because there was never really enough for the rich. they wanted more and more. and now off is the dirtiest word in capitalism. we need an economic system that is fair and just. -- enough is the dirtiest word capitalism. i believe that people have had it and they want something new and maybe something will have to be invented out of this. >> what would it take to persuade you that it was not necessary to have this campaign any longer? >> any of a number of things.
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a fair tax rates that the rich pay their fair share of taxes. bringing back the controls and regulations on wall street so they will not able to do what they did in 2008. there are a whole bunch of specifics that i would be happy to see happen. ultimately, i don't think that -- we have a political system where essentially are candidates can legally be bought lead billionaires'. money has to be completely removed from our political system. if you go online to the wall street, there is a declaration that the general assembly voted on and you can see 19 or 20 different points that people are concerned about. it is not that people have not expressed these concerns, it is just not like the old way or we can get someone elected president. we are way beyond that now. we are not about fixing, reforming.
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this is something that must end. >> michael moore, thank you. colonel gaddafi, the brutal dictator ruled libya for 42 years, was captured and killed this week. he is one of the striking world figures along with fidel castro, yasir arafat, and others. he is kind of a♪ ♪ >> of the colonel. he never promoted himself above colonel. love him or hate him, how long you need for that one? you could not ignore him. he was the mixture of the terrible and the eye-popping. a tyrant wardrobe by lady gaga. ♪ the desert can be an unforgiving
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environment. it takes a particular stripe of man to carry off all look. think of lawrence of arabia, the classic french foreign legionnaire. more recently, colonel gaddafi. >> where he was completely over the talk. his own get sore special. special.ciawere it was like a mixture of michael jackson and some crazy cartoon figures. the older he got, the crazier his get up looked. if you had watched hollywood
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films or maybe his dressers had watched hollywood films. there was one which had a fur hat and a trapper leather jacket. >> he entrusted his per formal safety -- his personal safety to a phalanx of female bodyguards. some saw enlightened attitudes in his promotion of women. >> this was from his personal means to be unique and standout among arab leaders. he viewed himself as liberated from the backwardness of the east. he wanted to show that he was the new empowerer of women without necessarily resorting to western feminism. >> be on the close, interiors, he is making himself up.
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you my star with a man but you want to end up as a god. -- you might start off with a man but you want to and off with a god. policy wonks don't think it matters because they don't understand it but they think it is trivial. oscar wilde said, only a fool is not judged by appearances. this appearance tells you that here is paranoia and insecurity on a massive scale. the wish to intimidate and in press on a massive scale and there is danger in that. at one time, there was method in the madness, a point to all of that showmanship. it was marking out gaddafi's
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libya as different. a bedouin revolution. at times, it seemed as though there was a whole caravan of gaddafis, each one more exotically guard than the last. even after his downfall, the deconstruction might go on for awhile. >> that is it. from all of us, goodbye. >> funding for this presentation is made possible by the freeman foundation of new york, stowe, vermont, and honolulu. newman's own foundation. and union bank.
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>> union bank has put its global expertise to work for a wide range of companies, from small businesses to major corporations. what can we do for you? >> "bbc newsnight" was presented by kcet, los angeles.
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