we are putting our hands inside the pants of six year old children. but all of this in the name of national security so as politicians vote to extend the patriot act yet again is the safety of society more important than individual freedoms right absolutely if you consider it so. absolutely i think everybody with the economic situation that we're in is probably all in the class really. doesn't matter if you're rich or poor or somewhere in between seems everyone thinks they're part of the middle class these days so why are americans ignoring the income inequality proven by statistics.

and with that as the warning a swat team boss into an x. millions home shooting and killing him so as reports of police brutality rise in america is this a reason americans don't stand up for what they believe. and that's all folks is the g eight summit comes to an end it promises billion dollar aid to arab states urging gadhafi to go we'll have a report from jodi from us. good afternoon happy friday it's friday may twenty seventh four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and your watching r.t. now provisions of the patriot act were set to expire today but lo and behold at the eleventh hour last night congress voted overwhelmingly to extend those provisions until two thousand and fifteen now in case you need

a refresher the patriot act provisions that were extended allow for example wiretapping without identifying who or what you're surveying and also law enforcement to access any tangible thing during about. to gay sions also soon it will be required that your cellphone has a chip so that the government can reach you directly via text message you can get intel from president obama and speaking of intel intel from osama bin ladin blair has lawmakers calling for an amtrak no ride list and the department of homeland security is now talking to you through public service announcements out wal-mart asking you to look for terrorists now in all of this what is happening to privacy and individual liberties is it being replaced by fear and more importance paid to the security of the collective society before we get to that analysis first though our tease marina port and i is going to fill you in and tell us what kind of presidential texts you can expect to be getting on your cell phone. the country

that created blackberries and gave birth to i phones. has more than three hundred million wireless users and in the name of national security the u.s. government will soon have a direct link to each and every handheld device it's like a police officer's gun it's there for a good reason but we hope that we never have to pull the trigger gathered at the scene of the september eleventh terrorist attacks federal in new york city officials joined the c.e.o.'s of the four largest wireless carriers to announce the nation's new tech tools and alert system enabling the president and government agencies to blast every american with text messages warning of terror threats weather disasters and kidnappings the cell phone alert system will launch in new york city and washington d.c. by the end of this year expanding nationwide there after wireless users may have the option of not receiving certain alerts though americans will not be able to opt

out of its messages sent by the u.s. president opponents say politicians are promoting more fear while providing little protection now we have a system of mandatory and inescapable alerts through every cell phone in the land and the event the government decides that something's happening the we ought to know about now just as the introduction of the patriot act came right after nine eleven so this new kind of technological invasion comes to us without any public discussion right after the assassination of osama bin laden and why you professor and author mark crispin miller says americans are living in an age of authoritarianism and scare tactics the use of fear for any kind of government that craves more control over people's lives and thoughts is that it makes people. malleable it makes them obedient i mean you go to any airport today and you can see

this in action people are taking off their shoes making they're getting groped under the auspices of airport safety babies senior citizens and everyone in between must now endure pat downs or pass through body scanners before boarding in the case of muslim americans that may not be enough sixty's following the killing of osama bin ladin for him mom's on two separate u.s. flights were illegally kicked off planes for looking suspicious and you have a few hate mongers who the who can can can and rousing evoke emotions you know enough of people bill they play on people's emotions to play on people's ignorance about islam and muslims you see and also this war is creating a climate of fear and see if you see something suspicious in the parking lot or in the store say something immediately in december the department of homeland security began encouraging americans to report suspicious activity to the country's largest food retailers wal-mart partnership with washington has been accused of

perpetrating a climate of panic and subsequent need for more surveillance you need to create an entity for people to rally behind and list wars and the fact that we're spending over fifty percent of our taxes on war and our national defense and there's really no threat directly to this country and they need to keep validating this following the assassination of enemy number one an american lawmaker called for an increase in rail safety funding and the creation of a no ride list as u.s. officials warn of more terror threats following bin laden's death many americans remain concerned others are left wondering about the dangers of for seeking too much liberty for security. artsy. a lot going on when it comes to security but from our earlier on the patriot act i was joined by john whitehead is president of the rutherford institute first part of our conversation as they were more like china today than china's like. and if it

was what we're seeing in terms of swat team or a f.b.i. raids of people who are who are free speech activist in their homes seizing their laptops what we're seeing is we're moving into a police state in fact i would say we're we are in a police state the fourth amendment which is the key provision here all this requires that judges carefully look at the evidence of war see if you're doing something criminal well under the patriot act you don't have to do that more. warrant to rubberstamp and you have always done you have a least a standing in your apartment that you go through your door now they really don't need a warrant to do so i'm not the only one saying this but many of the people out there i work with and civil liberties organizations on the left wing in the right way are saying the same thing lately that you're not only one thing i want to play a little bit of what rand paul had to say yesterday when he was opposing these provisions that i just want to play all of that now and then talking more about

this. let's have some constitutional protections let's have some protections that say you must ask a judge for a warrant others have said no we've captured these people to the patriot act we never could have gotten him the problem with that argument is it's unprovable you can tell me that you captured people to the patriot act i can believe you captured them and you prosecuted them but you can't prove to me that you would have captured them i just not ask for a judge you don't have to give up your liberty to catch criminals. what do you what do you think about that he says you don't have to give up their liberty to catch criminals he also says the you know that the government can't prove that the patriot act is working do you joy there everything is done in secret that actually we really don't know and it's like again ron wyden the democratic organ on the senate goes from they says there's a much broader paper that we don't know about more intrusive and it's right and. that everything is secret that's the point and. ron paul's right why we have the

fourth amendment our bill of rights is that it's supposed to be probable cause the truth premeal for the government to be looking at your records infiltrating your peace parades coming season your laptop that's a lot of troops on the fourth member. let me ask you this though for example well first i want to know you know if you did have proof that this worked to catch very important terrorists that wanted to do something horrible to the united states would you be for it. i will be forty stores legal guidelines for follow the guy on this our soil is a person of the constitution with the fall across you should guideline if not then the only alternative is the police state people have to ask themselves do they want that i'm afraid that many americans about ten or fifteen years are going to go wow what happened when you don't have freedom and if so you think everything is a slippery slope and i. think i think it's really important which seems unfortunate

the schools today the public schools i mean the kids are not taught the bill of rights and freedoms and have cody and conform conforming policies in school. going up saying hey at least that may be the best thing ok really quickly i want to get to the little bit of practicality that you know you mention some real issues that you see with the patriot act with wiretapping with her grandpa you want to warrant you know go to a judge will but here's another question you know when you talk about wiretapping before the patriot act for example if you had a warrant for a wiretap and you got information through that warrant that was important for a criminal case but it wasn't with a warrant with the physically for that would get thrown out and now under the patriot that you can use that information which you have which is criminal it is information that's important to a case may not have been the case for the original warrant but you know that is an example of how the patriot act has helped so is that a bad thing is it is a totally a bad thing. exhibit circumstance rule of the fourth amendment anything and there

is no judge go through with serial showing that a terrorist threat to the united states i mean under existence or circumstances under the floor of the member will not now because the patriot act or not now because of the patriot act and before the war if it was if they were wiretapping it was a part of the warrant that have happened i mean i'm not a legal expert but from what i've heard i remember when the paper that was first passed and i got a telephone from an f.b.i. knew and he says what do you mean the talking points is what he complained about john he says we've been doing all this. the for years anyway so they believe in doing this all the paper that is coated by. a much broader thing but what senator wyden is there something else there even more evidence that the government is doing whatever they wore. the thing the key thing here isn't there americans understand this what stands between us and the ordinary state is because. i don't recall weeks or during government that that's the choice i was gine john whitehead he is

president of the rutherford institute we'll have much more from him later it's an interesting things to say about what this says ideologically about the united states meanwhile the gap is growing steadily in this country between the rich and the poor widening as study after study shows the wealthiest are controlling more and more of the wealth and the poor are hanging on to less and less of it and whether this surprises you or not it is most likely not compelling you to do anything about it at least if you're like the majority of the population and in our tease christine for that i found out there is a reason for this most people in the upper and lower classes aren't even aware of it. you could say it's a typical afternoon the sun is shining and people are out shopping across town the same thing only here those who live in the area describe it like this i think it's one of the two or three neighborhoods in washington that really still functions as

a village it's like a village in washington i think it's a paradise actually. paradise not a word you likely hear spoken about this part of town first of all for good. but guess what we are straight from southeast both a few miles and worlds away there are instead other ways of describing life. and the greedy guess what we do we live in just the organ a less musical version like this everybody here is striving for jobs what we found to be surprising is when we ask people what cross they see themselves and we got very similar answers here in this neighborhood in southeast washington d.c. for the median income is twenty nine thousand dollars and housing looks like but. i'm here in this neighborhood in georgetown in northwest washington d.c.

and the houses look like this and the median income is nearly one hundred forty thousand dollars a year and you can call it or better really closely around this area i think there are a lot of them yeah yeah reston our current president might think we're filthy rich but you know i don't think we're absolutely consider myself middle class absolutely do you think this is a lower class neighborhood our neighborhood or a middle class neighborhood it's a middle class neighborhood to me we're right in the middle economists like gary burtless isn't surprised i can tell you what people thought about five years ago i think over eighty five percent of americans thought they were in the middle class for reasons. only found that americans believe the richest twenty percent only hold about fifty nine percent of the wealth the actual number eighty four percent but ideally they said the breakdown should be much more equal though clearly it's not america was a country that sort of stood stayed together historically with great unity and the

glue that we all figured if we work hard we play by the rules we do better than our parents and they would do better than their parents and our kids would do better than us economists say that is no longer the case in the united states and that we've gone from being one of the most awfully mobile countries in the developing world to the least a trend that change course in the one nine hundred seventy s. perhaps one reason can be seen here take a look at this the blue line shows how much the pay of c.e.o.'s has gone up since the ninety's that yellow line at the bottom well that's the pay of minimum wage workers and it has gone down nobel prize winning economist joseph stiglitz says the increase in concentration of wealth has been enormous would happen in the last couple decades is twenty five almost a quarter of all the income goes to the upper one percent around forty percent of any i you measure it all the wealth goes to the upper one percent it's a reality that doesn't seem to trickle down to those in the lower tiers and terms

of class i think everybody with the economic situation that we're in is probably in the class nobody's above and nobody's below in washington christine for south r.t. . joining me now for more is jordan asked about he is from the national people's action he's organized actions against the banks and is a very active in all of this my first question to you is why aren't more people active in rallying against the increased stratification of wealth and social inequality that has happened in this country is it because as you heard in that report people really aren't aware of it well i'd say that a lot of people you know it's one level or another where they might not know the statistics they might not. be thinking about it in those terms but i think a lot of people you know they feel that they are struggling to know that they are struggling they might not think of it in terms of percentages of you know their percentage of the wealth united states but they think of it in terms of i can't

find a job i can't pay for an operation and so forth so the people that we talk to in neighborhoods all over the country every day are well aware that there is a great injustice being perpetrated in this country now then why aren't they taking to the streets why aren't they calling for major change why are they calling for even as you know some analysts that say revolution citing abraham lincoln in his inaugural speech talking about how it's the people's right to revolt against a government that's not serving them absolutely well i say that there actually are more and more people taking to the streets particularly in recent years and in recent months just on the seventeenth we saw a thousand people protesting at the at the shareholder meeting of j.p. morgan chase this is in columbus ohio. a lot of us were actually great attention what was happening in wisconsin when there when workers' rights are being attacked i think that a lot of people are getting more money more more and more angry it's a big country and a big ship takes a longer time to turn and you know that's a really interesting question that i have for you what would you say is the average turnout just in general for your events aside from that ohio one so ali on its own

made to order a lot of these and there's a lot of times you know there's more media than activists in many of the protests that we cover but quite often it's the opposite as well where there would be tens of thousands of people isn't as was the case in wisconsin as well here as well. since i was nineteen i thought i'm just curious just in general over the last couple years what have you seen is the average just on may twelfth in new york city there were about ten to fifteen thousand people protesting against wall street abuses saying that wall street needs to do their fair share to go back to those that increased over the last few years what would that what would the crowd have been like one when you're one year ago would it actually one year ago it was about ten thousand people dish it was about fifteen thousand people what's interesting is that the mainstream media particularly doesn't cover of these things as well as they do say you know some smaller right wing groups ok so this is really interesting because one of the things at a forum that i was at with a lot of economists that they kind of saw as being a turning point as far as what we really need to pay attention to this social inequality think this is wisconsin they saw that as

a turning point and it's interesting that in ohio you saw that big turnout is able to morgan shareholders meeting because we've seen when i was reporting in new york we've seen some similar events that you're a handful that's right people so do you think that there is a real kind of reaction to this inequality happening in the midwest i think more and more people in you know in urban suburban and rural areas are waking up to the fact that you know large corporations and particularly the financial industry need to do more to pay their fair share to fix the economy that they grow they need to pay their fair share in taxes for bank of america got a six hundred sixty six million dollars tax reform last year jamie paid no taxes last year as you know but why focus on the banks because they're just doing what they can get away with under a law well the banks. one of the financial industry and their practices predatory approach predatory lending and mortgage speculation led to the current financial crash that we're in right now secondly they're doing better than ever in fact you know jamie diamond for example made forty million dollars in bonuses in

compensation last year c.e.o. pay goes to the chart that we just saw that you know there's a scene an astronomical increase in their pay wages have stagnated for the last thirty years that everybody else but we just saw our most recent statistics that came out showed that actually corporate profits. contract a little bit in the first quarter declining point nine percent compared to the growth the prior quarter three point three percent and we've had several quarters where the you know the story that we've been telling is that corporate profits have been a record and meanwhile unemployment is still horrible but now we're seeing corporations being hit a little bit does this show that maybe everybody is getting a little bit worse because there's also some negative economic statistics about unemployment claims going up unexpectedly and and things like that as i say well there's a lot of reason for the unemployment claims are not going up but they did go up. for the unemployment claims going up. but what we're saying is that the financial industry in particular is doing very well and other corporations you know or are hit and miss but the financial industry is doing very very well right now right

that's true that's true at the same time. you mention that all these people are protesting what are they hoping to get because we don't really you mention the mainstream media doesn't really cover them and we cover those protests we've covered these movements but they're not getting across attention and they're not calling for revolution you know where's the outrage where is that sentence i think the outrage is there it's i think it's under the surface and it's we're seeing more and more that you know just last year we passed a financial reform bill that creates a consumer a consumer protection agency that banks fought tooth and nail against that and lost that fight and they wouldn't have lost it but for the fact that people were taken the streets in protest protesting in favor of it. but also on that financial reform bill though a lot of the banks got a lot of loans a lot of economists and financial experts say it's too big to fail still exists then into reform didn't didn't address this so there is still that huge issue of corporation out of i want to ask you something of along the lines of the whole well while stratification wealth distribution one thing that's interesting the study that our reporter cited another part of that was that they asked thousands of

people to pick what country they would want to live in based on the wealth distribution and blindly they chose sweden ninety two percent of people ok sweden as a country with a very very different idea about well about welfare and then you know. states critics in united states will call it socialist but does it show that most americans actually would rather have these kind of policies in place you know i think maybe if maybe they would have had firsthand experience with them you know i say that you know what we know about wealth inequality is and this is an important point is that it's not just bad for the people at the bottom but countries with wealth with great wealth inequality by and large have worse worse health in the population you know whether you're rich or poor worse education with lower. education which even whether you are poor or rich more violence in society which no one wants higher rates of incarceration and the key thing is economic instability the last time we had seen it some would say in tunisia and egypt it's not unlike

what happened here i want to get to something else because it is something i think it's interesting i'm wondering if you think that this that we're going to watch has anything to do with fear or for people of speaking out i want to play a video that we're going to play for the audience of first of all all i'll tell you more about it afterward there was a swat raid that happened earlier this month and arizona the sheriff's department did release the video and what you're going to see comes from the helmet cam of one of the officers all talking there a little bit but let's go. running over and over. that siren according to authorities as opposed to one of the people in the home that the swat team was outside getting ready to bank on their door. there this morning with a koran. going off. and he just and on the door.

now. what you just heard that second round that they fired grayness sixty times they killed him the swat teams attorney said that he had a rifle ran out and said i've got something for you and then a team opened fire originally that teens said that they call ran a head shot it was found out later that he did not the suspect who was killed his wife told a.b.c. affiliate that she and her husband didn't know the men breaking into her home or softness ors you heard that alarm you can get the siren you can decide for yourself whether you think that that would have warned you it's watching was coming into your house this guy is a father of two he was a marine and served twice in iraq the swat team believes he was associated with a marijuana smuggling operation they found no illegal evidence of that in his home he had no prior record his four year old was in the house at the time he was shot no disciplinary action has been taken against the swat team i'm wondering what toll

you think things like this which i know that we're all looking at this is is a you tube sensation as it's been but you know the cato institute an analyst says that these kind of searches and raids are have grown and that they often target nonviolent offenders for you know drug or insight we just saw and they've really increased violence i wonder what cost these kind of things happen on people's psyche in terms of what they think they're able to do and what the consequences could be you know it's absolutely shameful what happened there. you know what. you know one of the great lessons of history is that in the face of violent oppression people have great great courage when they have an eye for justice and time and time again they tend to win so i think that. you know that you know. these kinds of things are horrible but i don't think that in the end it will stop people from fighting for what they believe in which. a lot of people that i've

interviewed or talked about this or write about this say that these kind of things breed a culture of fear eva things like the patriot act also twenty six hundred activists have been arrested since president obama took office that all those things create something where you're afraid to speak out you know by that you know believe that i think there's an element of that but i don't think that that that is going to be anough to stop the bubbling up that we're seeing around the country of protest what do you think is going to happen i think that you know. that people are going to keep on organizing keep on coming together but more and more people going to realize that it is in their best interest to band together to get involved and to and to that and to fight against these things growing up that of course he's going to see if that all pans out but i want to thank you for coming in and trying extensive some of that with me that was jordan has to go with national people's action now as concern over the economy continues as we've been speaking about the united states continues to pour money into the nato operation in libya but now

a possible new hope for diplomacy the g eight summit in dovi france has wrapped up russia has now joined the international pressure pressure against colonel gadhafi in libya speaking at the close president to meet and they did have confirmed that russia will be sending an envoy to meet rebels in benghazi moscow is also agreed to become a peace mediator in libya for more r t correspondent and he said now we have a story from france. new world new ideas host france but that concept on the g eight table at a time when it looks like the old ways aren't working a war in libya on the front line with the euro crisis in the background leads to questions like this will sarkozy be known as the man who saved tens of thousands of civilians in benghazi or will he now is the man who brought from strike a moment ruined in a never ending war in libya he must go g. eight leaders agreed word for word in their declaration about gadhafi saying he has lost all legitimacy now it's understood behind closed doors there was harsh debate

on the sidelines russia was asked to step in and broker a cease fire and accepted and will send an envoy but we are in touch with both sides the new forces in benghazi and representatives who could not free we haven't broken a diplomatic ties but do you think it's useful in any case because we're trying to make closer approaches if you see any reasons for the escalation of violence which is still ongoing we discussed it at the g eight is not a creation says that we can have a regime that has lost its legitimacy to be must step down russia's approach to interfering in the internal affairs of sovereign nations differs dramatically from the west which appears eager to back some countries but not others it's just to intervene in libya it does not suit has been in bahrain those and those rational economic geopolitical and should not about. g eight nations agreed up twenty

billion dollars support package the arab nations have toppled autocratic regimes and are struggling to build so-called new democracies but on the euro there were statements like this. because the euro easier everything to raise in the future the euro will threaten europe there's a whole the whole huge spending cuts continue in an attempt to prevent euro extinction so will the mission in libya and the spending of billions g. eight leaders my. we have reached consensus on khadafi but can the us no afford to push pick and choose politics even further russia's deputy foreign minister claims a resolution on syria won't even be read let alone signed by russia after the disaster in libya and he's in no way artsy movie fronts and that's going to do it for now but one of the stories we covered go to our t.v. dot com slash usa check out our you tube channel as well you tube dot com slash our team america and follow me on twitter at go.