tapping into america's energy potential and billionaire pocketbooks ohio has a certain air to it these days or should i say gas and gov case take is more than willing to make the state the next hydraulic fracturing frontier but is the natural gas worth the high price to american citizens or could it be just wasted energy. in thirty one the state where the forty to thing does apply to american citizens and it doesn't know the world is the battlefield including the homeland from the war zone to your home the u.s. senate is looking to redefine the battle lines and extend their military might both abroad and on the home front all in the pursuit of national security but whatever

happened to some liberties. they can go where people will still forty three thousand dollars all they want ok sugar we approve but what about on the war. from the bottom up that money is literally hemorrhaging out of iraq money that was meant to help rebuild the nation after a decade of war so why is nothing being done to stop the corruption that's cost u.s. taxpayers billions of dollars. evening it is tuesday november twenty ninth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team. well it's begin this hour with a deeper look into an industry that could be coming to a backyard near you i'm talking about the fracking industry and we've talked about fracking quite a few times here on r t i personally spent several days in a small town in pennsylvania called dimmick in which many of the people who live

there say fracking has ruined their lives and we need a little refresher fracking is short for hydraulic fracturing or natural gas drilling now this is the process of releasing natural gas and oil from underground formations so drillers come in and use it stream we high pressure up to several million gallons of fluid made up of water sand and chemicals the process creates fractures in the rock that extend out from the well and allow additional gas and oil to flow to the surface this has been billed as the answer our country needs to wean us off foreign oil natural gas food safe and wonderful at least that's what the franking industry wants you to believe that wasn't the story many of the people i spoke to told me they talked instead about poisoned water supplies one man led his water on fire a woman showed me a rash on her arm she got just from showering and another home where a woman's well literally blew up in her front yard now these are just

a few of hundreds of stories in which there is now a new chapter looks like ohio is stopping at nothing to let the drilling happen even at state parks and if you want to know why you might want to ask the governor republican governor john casing who signed a law allowing this to happen or you might want to ask the koch brothers bill and david koch who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars into the governor's two thousand and ten election campaign well we decided to ask mike ludwig he's a reporter with truthout in buffalo new york and has been covering so many aspects of tracking story for years mike let me just start off by asking you why the koch brothers care about what happens with fracking in ohio. well you know they. found our industries. worked with another drilling company in colorado to. hide your friends and also you know his brother was killed industries.

they have several gas pipelines they're connected again this year they're connected to a lot of fossil fuel industries but they most certainly are involved in the national gas industry and and also support case got to watch well let's talk about the regulation of the fracking industry i know. here in washington about a decade ago or several years ago during the bush administration bush jr the american is safe drinking water act passed but there's an exclusion that makes it so the e.p.a. the environmental protection agency cannot regulate hydraulic fracturing it's called by many the how important loophole of course remember dick cheney the former head of halliburton also the former v.p. of this country. so according to your reporting the fracking industry has spent seven hundred forty seven million dollars to lobby congress to keep fracking unregulated how does the fracking industry deal with this i mean if it's so safe why shouldn't it be regulated. over and over again that isn't exactly same we've

seen a lot of pennsylvania earthquakes in arkansas to blow up in pennsylvania the past two years but you know they're running pretty intense public relations campaign to convince you of that and also to convince lawmakers not to regulate it you know we've been regulated limited regulation we've had you know fracking is going on a state by state basis new york took on more. than ohio pennsylvania the basis to open their doors but you know the e.p.a. is study right now is due out next year that could pave the way for federal regulation and that's why we've seen so many companies rushing to get. let's talk specifically about what's going on in ohio now despite these major campaign contributions to the governor the united states forest service just renamed on a plan to allow more than three thousand acres of public lands to be fact this is of course a victory for fracking a palm opponents what is your feeling is this policy going to stay in place or will

you know those in favor of fracking figure out a way to get around this. i think the u.s. forest service is doing what a lot of. government affairs are doing fracking right now saying which they basically said was we want to take more time to study the possible that they basically just put a moratorium so to speak on it in that area doesn't mean it can be in the future there's going to take more time to look at the actual effects of it but also they made this decision after getting you know hundreds of letters from concerned citizens and local leaders who were opposed to rain fracking. i mean you said that they're going to conduct a more thorough study about the dangers of fracking how much do you think is already known about fracking that is out there and how much more just simply needs to be investigated. you know it depends on who you're talking to a lot of environmental groups are is on pretty in-depth research on it and you know we have to remember the fact he's been happy for thirty years this is the first time that we have or is on fracking you know where there's there's lateral lines

going out with huge amounts of underground you know basically you know an interim president well compared to what they did in the past so there is a lot known about oppression which isn't always known as what chemicals are using along with water going to the rocks also we have to remember that we're not going to with all the waste water lot of states are battling right now over who is going to treat what is a lot of public utilities or private utilities are and that's also part of the debate not just of niagara falls if you look there a little bit because are opposed to bring fresh wastewater to niagara falls so you know there's a lot of different issues here it's not just drilling it's wastewater it's right things need to be studied and i was really surprised like to see that this would be allowed to happen at state parks and i know that this is the major controversy in a lot of places but in most cases you know people's private homes they're sold a deal by whatever oil and gas industry knocks on their door and says you know if you let us drill we're going to pay the big bucks not realizing that i know in the

case of at least one family i met their home is now valued at zero dollars because their wastewater is completely destroyed but talk to me about why would state parks ever be allowed to be drilled well i was going to lot of them and they have a pro-business governor and now we want revenue for the state and he bases story on the doors you know like you see in you know states and west virginia and silvain you know where they said hey we're open for business coming out we'll even give you our public lands to drill on because we need money it's tough an economic time that's his argument is the best thing to do by i mean the state of ohio is the best thing for ohioans you might want to use these lands it is the best use our resources you know that's up for debate i think that's a really good point because that was certainly the argument a lot of people that i spoke to. or in favor of this expanding say you know we're tough economic times we need more jobs in our state we need this extra money coming in just last question for you mike i want to talk to you about what you see i mean

you've been covering this for several years now what's next will regulations be come stricter or will this be just allowed to expand as an industry will be better in the about the next year i wouldn't be surprised but around regulations are the next few years the drillers are going to rush to get as many in the ground or that happen without them grandfathered so they won't be affected by the regulations so they want to see more drilling i think when you see more fighting in washington over how to deal with it they're going to. let scientists take some time to really look at the safety measures these companies are using and are using and you know there's a lot of. state park in ohio it could ruin a lot of public land certainly maple makes a lot of bells goes up go off in your head too when you think about just how many millions of dollars is spent in lobbying on this truthout reporter mike ludwig in buffalo new york thanks so much for sharing your insight on this thank you. well from drilling into ohio's natural resources to gutting out american civil liberties

here's something you as lawmakers are working on that you probably haven't heard about it's a bill in the u.s. senate called the national defense authorization act and may be voted on as soon as tomorrow as with most bills it is chock full of flowery language about protecting the homeland and giving the military the tools they need to do their job but the bill also does something unprecedented and gives the president this one and the next ones the authority to indefinitely imprison people without charge or trial both in other countries and here in the united states but don't take my word for it take a look at this this is the text of the bill senate bill eighteen sixty seven it says congress affirms the authority of the president to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to the authorization for use of military force includes the authority for the armed forces of the united states to detain cover to purses persons pending dispositions under the law of war all right so i know that's an

example exactly simple language so instead i want to play for you something that one of the bill's backers senator lindsey graham from south carolina said on the senate floor today is it ok to hold an american citizen who's suspected of helping al qaeda under military control you better believe it's ok all right so that was senator graham who also said that the battlefield when we talk about war in the battlefield that it's actually also here in the united states according to this bill it's in your front yard and mine and he says american citizens if they are suspects suspects well they should be able to be detained and held without charge why well in the name of information gathering it seems we're simply saying you have the option to make sure that you could put intelligence gathering as the top priority. all right now this isn't just republicans the bill sponsors are republican senator john mccain from arizona but also democratic senator carl levin

now levin spoke to reporters and brought up a situation hypothetical situation in which a member of al qaeda gets onto u.s. soil and attacks a military base senator levin wants to make sure that that person would be able to be detained by the military in that situation that's the reason for this bill now i should mention president obama has threatened to veto the bill if the indefinite detention without charge or trial provisions are not removed and guess what an amendment to have them removed by senators mark udall and jim webb just failed in the senate today so what's going on here are all the talk about sticking to the constitution it's a question radio host alex jones is asking also so i talked to him a little earlier about it and asked him what he makes of this bill and what it could potentially mean for the u.s. take a listen. there's a story inside of this story i've for sixteen years or more have been pointing out

that there is a open plan to start using the us military on the streets of america and in the my ak and homeland security reports that law enforcement gave me over three years ago it states none of this has to do with al qaeda it's all about returning vets gun owners libertarians conservatives and you or activist who are listed as terrorist in these databases that's in the news today so the bill itself is incredibly agree just but it just expands upon the military commissions act and other things where they now kill u.s. citizens abroad and say they'll kill him domestically so they're setting that precedent always claiming well it's for al-qaeda because they're so scary but when you get in the meat potatoes they want to use this against the american people and just a few years ago they'd say it's preposterous we don't want to use the army and marines against the american people why that's charity that's a third world country you know that's martial law now they're like well yes we want to keep you safe from al qaeda but it's in the london telegraph and all of the news that al qaeda under nato control has been given libya is now being sent to syria

was used course in the eighty's against the russians used against the serbs in the ninety's i mean this is a joke al qaeda is the bogeyman they used to do this but the whole thing is pointed at the american people but here's the key when we started reporting this last week when they brought this bella it has a section saying americans are exempt but it has another section saying unless we say so so it's got the fine print. and then i had noticed all these ip addresses hitting our article then minutes of it going up which they don't even hide it goes back to military bases and p.r. firms they were ready saying i was a liar and force dot com was lying using the lying section and in fact it was in the grand rapids press congressman justin amash said quote it's carefully crafted to mislead the public they had all the war mongering neo cons and others come out in the last week and say it's not in there it's not true it doesn't affect citizens

a few things out of the things that you want that you mentioned as you brought up a lot of good points here one thing is that you said a few years ago people would find something like this outrageous preposterous it is surprising on one level today but this treatment being detained and held without charge even tortured has already happened to an american citizen on american soil private first class bradley manning accused of leaking those classified documents to the whistle blowing web site wiki leaks so if this is already being done what's the point of having congress vote on it. well they want to say it's the law like hitler passed laws saying you can round up groups they wanted we had laws in this country saying blacks weren't human beings doesn't mean it's right tyrants always want to say they have along their side but as marbury vs madison supreme court case states anything that supports to common law the constitution or organic law is now in void they can pass a law tamara saying all you know children with with black hair have to you know show up at the local government building to become slaves i mean it's

a fraud we have a right to resist that and the military industrial complex owned by the big banks has hijacked america i keep explaining this to people and now it doesn't just want to dominate the third world or the middle east or asia or in circle other countries in europe it wants to dominate this country and the military industrial complex is a bunch off for corporations they run the red light cameras they run the federalization local police they're just occupying america through north com they set it all up for this clinton bush obama it's all just continuing and you're right obama is saying he'll veto this is getting attention but he's already gone along with saying they can secretly arrest and torture and it says and here you can be grabbed and no one ever even knows where you go for ever i mean this is a literally right out of stalin a stalinist russia maoist china pol pot type stuff this is right out of east

germany right out of nazi germany this is one hundred percent naked classical nineteen eighty-four in your face tyranny and they sit there in waddle around up their congress it's come out most of these members who have a nine percent approval rating know the american people are awake too and they say it's legal that they're allowed to insider trade and give government contracts and pass bills for companies their wives and husbands own they set up there most of them. blackmailed criminals and say we're allowed insider trading which is a felony all right alex i mean certainly that was another big story that we talked about here on our really important to talk about but i really want to stick to this especially because. there are critics that want to military to protect their criminal activity i'm sorry and that's ok i want to talk about this specifically and the coverage of it as we said this is happening right now certainly congress and what lawmakers is working on is the priority for much of the mainstream media

c.n.n. and that's and we see fox they have congressional correspondents why haven't we seen this covered. because it's a pentagon run psyop of the american people are the enemy america has been hijacked and they listen we had pentagon department of defense spammers hit our site when this went up within minutes they were waiting with the part of the bill that says you're exempt in that carefully crafted deception that the congressman talked about to mislead the public they were waiting hitting within one hundred twenty seconds ok so first they said it doesn't exist now that it's come out they're saying ok it's good for you because they don't want this debate to go forward they want to be able to go it is going to tell the troops the carefully chosen god race now you're ready to operate america listen they've been operating for twenty years secretly in police uniform i've interviewed the people they've been doing gun confiscation drills that i've been to i have literally had if i told you the stories it's it's in my police state films it's like a movie there is

a giant secret government program that now wants to uncloak it's already here. let's broaden this to alex i want to show you the cover of time magazine this week the first i'm going to show you the cover of time in europe in asia and in south pacific. this basically shows a fighter wearing a gas mask in a village still very much in the midst of chaos and it asks the question i know it's hard to read but it says our free elections and the promise of an arab spring at risk and under the larger title of revolution redux one i want to show you this week's cover of time here in the u.s. it basically says why anxiety is good for you and hopefully you can see this everywhere else in the world they're talking about the arab spring they're showing a picture of revolution of chaos in the streets and here we have a little cartoon guy you know tying a little piece of yarn under the headline why anxiety is good for you let's talk about that in terms of the mainstream media and the coverage of bills that you know

things that washington lawmakers are working on right now that are just getting know what tension. well you're right i mean the corporate press to the new world order media fifty years ago the u.s. was number one in education number one in being informed now we are the least inform of the industrialized world by design and we are spoon fed propaganda we're not told how the rest of the world sees us and they try to keep us in this cocoon. and that was radio host alex jones in austin. meanwhile vice president joe biden just arrived in baghdad for a surprise visit and to mark the end of the war in iraq as u.s. troops there prepare for withdrawal to withdraw nearly all their forces by the end of this year but they are not leaving the country as they found it not by any stretch of the imagination and new questions are emerging about what may have been taken from the country in terms of money with reports surfacing and even arrests

being made in the cases of some soldiers trying to make some cash on the side is going to take on looks into this and in her report. not everyone leaves the war zone empty handed the number of people indicted and convicted by the us for bribery fraud and there in iraq and afghanistan has never been so high among those a marine in iraq who sent home forty three thousand dollars in stolen cash by hiding it in a food locker among american flags a soldier who shipped thousands more concealed in a toy stuffed animal they can go after people to steal forty three thousand dollars all they want necessary ok they should go after them but what about on a larger scale in two thousand and six michael o'brien was tasked with helping build the iraqi military he says those who have pocketed mili is enjoyed complete impunity they rebuilt an iraqi army base and i'm telling you the condition of the

space and this is just one example was so deplorable it was so pathetic and when i asked the american construction project manager well what did this cost how much money went into this i really thought he was going to say three million or five million is one hundred sixteen million dollars my jaw dropped the commission on wartime contracting estimated that between thirty one to sixty billion dollars has been lost to waste and fraud in iraq and afghanistan the figures seem even more staggering considering the overall amount the u.s. has committed to rebuilding iraq roughly sixty two billion dollars we did get around beer and was the head of an iraqi reconstruction team working for the u.s. they department the squandering of resources occurred at very small levels of thousand dollars a couple thousand dollars here and there and all the way up into hundreds of millions of dollars that were spent on hospitals that never opened or prisons that

never took any prisoners in the commission on wartime contracting is out of business now after congress cut its funding. the details of their probe see. until two thousand and thirty one they don't want certain people in high places. to come under scrutiny that the u.s. congress wants to put the whole of our iraq invasion behind it the scope of the waste and fraud is enormous the u.s. justice system goes after individuals who have stolen a few thousand dollars here and there but not after the big players the big contractors that have really made a killing on the wars i'm going to check on reporting from washington r t so when it comes to waste and fraud certainly iraq is not the only country where this goes on but it is a country the u.s. military promised to help rebuild so how does this money just disappear without anyone being held accountable is a question i posed earlier to write a blogger an iraqi american activist here's what he had to say. the money that's

not the see if someone is thinking that these tens of billions of dollars that were spent by the iraqi government and by the u.s. government this is not vanished. they were taken by someone and this someone. could drop a public official or a corrupt contractor we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that were spent by the u.s. government and other hundreds of billions of dollars that were spent by the iraqi government and there are contained today has no electricity has no water street. so you can't really see where the money has been spent in the country i know it's so interesting when you see where the money were supposed to go several million dollars the first to go to a school that never opened or several million was best to go to a prison that's not even holding anyone what's going on with you know the bookkeeping here isn't there anyone responsible for i think the u.s.

occupation of iraq created a new country a culture of corruption and no accountability and that is from the u.s. and from the iraqi side. this is one of the most corrupt countries in the world it's actually the fourth most corrupt country in the world according to transparency international situations it is indeed a mystery but when i go there you can feel the level of corruption in different every transaction. you know transactions with small organizations small companies with the government everything to score but there is not going to be dissing and unfortunately the u.s. presence there's nothing better it actually means this war what do you mean when you say when you visit iraq you can actually feel the corruption i mean here in the u.s. for the most part you know we go to the store we buy something based on how much we

see the cost to give the money we get the item that that i'm. and is that what you mean in terms of you know just marketplaces and even even on that scale in iraq i think the corruption that i see when i go to iraq i see it on two different levels one of them. of people who want to take a mission for example which is very common. people who. backs from government spending or private spending it's extremely common actually becoming a new norm in the country or that is the conversion of no accountability people who are spending u.s. taxpayers money or iraq he money and have no accountability this spend tens of thousands of dollars on issues that are completely inappropriate that it was about the u.s. diplomatic presence or organizations affiliated with the u.s. diplomatic presence or that it was that off the government itself or contractors affiliated with the government unfortunately there is no accountability on how much

money they have been spending in iraq so you go there and you see the amount of monies that are being spent unbelievable and there is no one who ask any questions from the iraqi side or from the third let's talk about this problem because this is multilayered and i think it's really important that you say because i know there's been a lot of finger pointing oh it's all the iraqi people that are taking it all the u.s. people are taking i mean i think everyone seems to sort of have their hand in the cookie jar on the one hand you have these multibillion dollar corporations these contractors that are literally in iraq they're supposed to be rebuilding infrastructure or something building you know major buildings money on a large scale it is appearing on that and then you have as guy in charge in her report you have soldiers who are sending you know several thousand dollars forty three thousand dollars home you know in a teddy bear because they come across that and then you know you also have iraqis either you know iraqi bankers or iraq is working with the u.s. that are also taking the money how does. any mention of. your time there's no

accountability but how can there be any accountability in the future when i think as long as the u.s. occupied iraq there was no possibility that iraq would become a transparent and accountable country now with the us departure at least the military departure i think that is more hope that iraq is well managed to create a better government system that has more legitimacy and has more accountability and can account to where the money is being spent so it is something that must come from within many people for the accountability and of course the option to come from abroad from the u.s. the u.s. invasion unfortunately that's made the situation was a lot of money actually belongs to the iraqi people as we say and there's talk right now that some of the people in iraq plan to file lawsuits to recover it how

they go about doing that considering that there's very little evidence you can't pull out the paperwork that says you know this infantry division was given x. amount of dollars and then you get i mean there seems to be no paperwork even so how do these lawsuits actually bring forth any action that are actually i know of many lawsuits that are being being considered by the u.s. courts asking the doc you suing the u.s. army the u.s. army corps of engineers or other u.s. institutions because of disputes and i think there are some limits to how much money can be stored in without any evidence but more importantly than that i think iraq and iraqis seem to be taking some steps towards to questing compensation for the destruction that happened in the country and that was blogger and iraqi american political activist right gerard and that will do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to r.t. dot com slash usa or check out our you tube it.