well convey a lot of show where you get the real headlines with none of them or see come alive in washington d.c. now that i will ask if we should believe the current n.s.a. director or former n.s.a. employees who say the agency is building a huge new hub to gather not only international intelligence but also to monitor your communications then despite the mass criticism towards and like p.t. for its unveiling surveillance program some of the muslim population support the agency's moves we're going to host a debate to see what exactly it is that divides the community and for the for

profit industry they're promising growth could be investors we're going to show you the troubling power point presentation we're going to have all that barfi tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look with mainstream media has decided it's. art so today i'm going to keep it brief but if you haven't noticed everybody is talking about the new budget for twenty thirteen the paul ryan released yesterday. i presented a paul ryan is chairman of the house budget committee and he released what he calls his path to prosperity plan for new fall congressman paul ryan's proposed budget for two thousand and thirteen and he's defending the vigorously the headline is lower tax rates and a total overhaul of medicare but there's some headline is if you believe any of those things are actually going to happen it's a ninety eight page budget which calls for spending cuts two tax brackets of ten

and twenty five percent of the budget is shaping up as a key political issue in this election year it looks right now as essential large transfer in which a sense largely health care for poor people is paying for consequence deficit reduction and increased defense spending it's not actually clear that you could ever get congress behind the kind of medicare overhaul that ryan is proposing medicare is not the biggest part of the budget savings it isn't even the second biggest part of the budget so you can see things like the bowles simpson commission were for was a degree of balance of shared sacrifice in his budget just disappoints deeply lower taxes rein in excessive spending the talking points we've been hearing all along as well right. art so i wasn't necessarily going to even bring the budget up because just like the budget that was last year it's not necessarily going to go anywhere but there are few really good insight into the republican party's mind the hypocrisy of the militarism certain cases the resulting stupidity let me explain

yes paul ryan's budget wants a huge overhaul of medicare he wants to slash taxes and these are all things that we already know about where the party stance when it comes to defense right is also making sure the defense is going to go back up again even after those cuts that everybody in congress signed onto last year after the debt deal was made so he's going to find some funding somewhere else and a cut social programs. but here's a great piece of insight that was pointed out by the cable foreign policy while the fence budget would rise from five hundred sixty one to six hundred three billion by two thousand and sixteen in ryan's dreamworld international diplomacy and development would get slashed as it would be slashed every year starting from fiscal year two thousand and twelve where it's forty seven point eight billion and by twenty think fifteen it would be down to thirty eight point one and you know why this matters why it's kind of scary well just think of all the stuff that's going on in the world right now us foreign policy we have

a war in iraq that's finally been wrapped up although i can't exactly say that and it well there considering there have also been attacks in recent days it is claimed responsibility and you know the war in afghanistan it's turning into a bigger mess every day with the fallout from the koran burning a massacre of sixteen civilians and you know the whole ten years of war part shadow wars in yemen pakistan somalia you have war drums beating louder every day for a conflict with iran and let's not forget that there are always the fear mongers over china's rising power of the cold warriors who don't want to cut out nuclear weapons because they still think that russia is a huge threat and yes this is a simplified version but clearly there are a lot of complex relationships whatever you want to call them it's geopolitics interest by the massive failures of our global war on terror over the last ten years this budget just wants to increase defense spending and reduce international diplomacy and development efforts and this is one of those not interventionist ways of looking at things it's clearly choosing more weapons and bombs over diplomacy

and this is the route on which paul ryan all the other war hawks and take this country and it's a scary world and these guys just want to keep bombing it or you can say that if they steer world because these guys just want to keep bombing it. now one last head that i want to point out of the cable how to get a lot to in ryan's budget he wants to cut one out of every ten federal workers if he forgot to think it through the bamiyan you know all those employees working for defense and related agencies now they also count as federal workers and there's a lot of them so you could be saying goodbye to about one hundred thousand right there doesn't quite make sense with the rest of your plan now and we're going to stop there but will be really nice that the mainstream media wallops us of we covering this budget could notice what this means for how the republican party wants us to approach the world and unfortunately they choose to miss.

our earlier this month james bamford published report of wired exposing the n.s.a.'s massive new complex that they're building and kill you top a two billion dollar data gathering big brother sounding like up the complex five times the size of the u.s. capitol but the purpose of intercepting the ciphering analyzing and storing vast swaths of the world's communications but according to bamford three sources all former n.s.a. employees the world's communications that includes those americans i want to sources says that we're close to a turnkey totalitarian state and the reporters raise a lot of eyebrows it sounds a lot like the bush administration's total information awareness program that was killed by congress in two thousand and three because of privacy concerns so yesterday as a chief general keith alexander had to face off with members of congress for questioning there's an example. but

if dick cheney were elected president and wanted to keep. waterboard every american who. can sort of. mishaps. oh would like to know is still is the unit see the technological capacity to identify those cheney bashers based appoint a cunt to their emails you'll soon know. i well the question and of itself may sound a little funny like the alexander saying if the f.a.a. does not have the ability to do that within the united states why do we believe well joining me to discuss if even webster senior editor of raw story thanks so much for joining us tonight steve and i guess before we talk about this hearing necessarily it was said let's go back to the original story in the bamford row and you know what was your biggest takeaway some of the things that you found i guess most troubling about what they're planning on doing with this just gigantic massive

n.s.a. complex that they're building well obviously to me what's most troubling is that we have to rely on whistleblowers insiders speaking to intelligence reporters who spend their own careers covering this agency in order to find out what our government is doing in numerous lawsuits or yours on privacy and civil rights advocates have really turned out not much because the government is consistent even to clinton state secrets as you since this battle secrecy is disturbing to me and lots of others so in that sense when we see general alexander testifying before congress i mean he is testifying and he's saying that no we don't have kept asking to do that now not necessarily saying that we never did or we didn't pass he's talking about the president do you think that i mean you know because we have whistleblowers speaking out because of certain things we learn in the past or in the bush administration that we have a right to be skeptical there. of course well wiretapping political opposition

reporters democrats was the reason why impeachment proceedings but yes the nixon administration but in this modern right seems to have been. pretty much legalized all of those crimes the bush administration particularly. had to cope with a lot of controversy after president bush and so claimed all wired house reporter work when in fact it was later in the n.s.a. had been wiretapping lots and lots of you know without warrants so they had to go back in a minute i support process which is the secret court that allows them to even before the rules changed allow them to issue a story or once after the fact. it was an unprecedented power grab and essentially what's happening now which many would argue goes out so get a six minute. now one of the answer is that general alexander gave there was that

we don't do this at home we are capability and if somebody wants to do it at home it's the f.b.i. that fills out the paperwork that goes and gets the warrant and so in that sense i mean it would i guess i guess that that's what make us feel any better if it's a family is doing it it's just the f.b.i. don't worry they're going to be judged can we even be so sure it's. sometimes we can be. even the better car was we seem so overused on privacy issues well before so really what we're looking at is you know how a lot of you are concerned about who your service is an individual privacy contracts well this is kind of like that sort of u.s. government u.s. government's intelligence apparatus for sharing information now so it could prove or even. in order to enable an n.s.a. system but wired. but we don't know but it's not just the government agency is

right but we found out is that this is private industry that's also involved not only the companies out there that are actually creating some of these technologies but it's the telecoms that worked with the n.s.a. you know to help in this in the past then who were given legal immunity and so now if you think about it if you look at whatever it is written to the telecoms are still helping them monitor all of your communications every step of the way and so in that sense you know what do you think we can do is there are other kind of accountability that we can hope for or is there just not really a difference anymore between private industry and you know our national security agencies. well there's still a pretty big difference between private industry national security agencies but there are efforts in congress right now there are splits to merge corporate america with the n.s.a. under the auspices of cybersecurity and that's reason a lot of worms with p.c. you know you were warned you know the n.s.a.

is not really allowed to operate with the united states so we should have that sort of cyber command or cyber sense under a more accountable civilian agency and i think that's a very reasonable concern but it's also reasonable to say cyber threats to publish your research or have a look at stocks not look at what the israelis follow somebody not that i think we've used release we don't really know whether what was done to iran's nuclear facilities with a computer virus i think that we. have a high he might be back i think we might thought even thinking hey there yes ok great things that have a little bit but that kind of finish your answer there are you're talking about technique and what it's done yes well just look at why such that the syrians don't buy your program stylee them for years and who we destroyed many fashion hydrous and this is this is not just

a high risk this is an additional weapon and other weapons like his will emerge for if they haven't already so we need to be able to space these are merging threats that he's changes and in our cyber security policy but it's very reasonable to say that merging pervert america and the n.s.a. like congress has proposed is a very dangerous thing we know that it hasn't happened already. yeah i'd say that it's very scary to you and you know i mean if you think about this facility it's five times the size of the capital they have to increase the thinking limits just to even build this thing it has its own water pump it fell sustaining you know if something happens that it can go on for three more days and the energy that energy that it's going to cost is about forty million dollars a year so you know do you think that most americans when you talk about the need to you know safeguard our infrastructure they think about ok those costs are all worth it they would from many would probably object on the basis that because it sounds

awfully like big brother it sounds like somebody picked up a copy of macy's or he just decided to use those search and books and that was start. this thing they are hooked up to a network of satellites looking similar to go or world who would have to be on the internet you could be having a conversation on an encrypted private network and they would know what you're talking about and that's an unprecedented local oh it's held since. essentially constitutes a new projects underway. of course as we saw yesterday. just denies everything so we really don't know what's going on. yeah i think that you know you're right in the sense that unfortunately i have to rely on whistleblowers or just the passing of time to find out about these things that's a scary thought stephen thanks so much for joining us tonight oh my pleasure. i

think back to january we saw protests all over europe as the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement was notable protests came about when thousands gathered in front of the european parliament office in warsaw an international agreement combines piracy and counterfeiting honor one nice little umbrella and supposedly a global effort to stop counterfeit goods music to software and sports apparel that's been ongoing effort for about six years now all this work out behind closed doors and so far almost all of the e.u. so it's australia new zealand canada morocco singapore and south korea have signed on oh and by the way president obama also got on board last year by signing an executive agreement without ever talking it over with congress seems like it's got a funny have about that he states now here's the best part is that we're not even really supposed to know about it the government says it would be a violation of national security to tell the public about these international agreements we only learned about it because the shared through that was supposed website wiki leaks so as you can imagine as word got out

a lot of people were none too happy and it's and says clarke explained in a previous interview that people want to be involved when it comes to issues that are important to them like the way. obama saw the agreement signed last year and when he did he did it he did it without the need for congressional approval because he said was operating within existing u.s. law and i think that what we find out especially once we saw what happened with the protests against sopa and pipa is that the u.s. public does want to be more part of these conversations because at the end of the day if you notice something that we all use it's something that we're all part of. correction on the name that was adam clarke as to the point is there is a lack of transparency isn't the only concern activists also said that signing off on this will block the u.s. government guidelines that could prevent them from revisiting the issue of copyright reform and even though we were kept in the dark about this agreement our

people don't washington they're trying to look out for us on the run wide it happens to be one of them back he's going to try to put his foot down after by using an age old trick sneaking an amendment into a jobs bill from house republicans now on a side note i think that it's unfortunate another side of the problems within our political system when these amendments are typed on the larger bills that have nothing to do with them so we have to take this with a grain of salt but word has it the ones efforts are already gaining attention from both sides of the aisle so what are these efforts well oregon senator plans to include two amendments on the first one would ban the president from entering a legally binding trade agreement with outs insulting congress and is a direct response to have on the court and why it has included language to make this retroactive for after the second amendment that the secrecy around the process and call for more transparency by the u.s. trade representative so the everybody knows what their government is getting involved over as our second to point out right and second amendment would also force the u.s.t.r. to publicly acknowledge another agreement they're working on called the

transpacific partnership that partnership made with nine other pacific countries is supposed to enhance trade between the group rumor has it that it's going to have a language that's even broader than what we found in act up so i guess we know why it's rumor right now but i also think that everybody should be allowed to know what the u.s. might be agreeing to write the bigger point here is a lack of transparency the secrecy around these agreements and not betty fanning anybody except for maybe the copyright holder but it's not right to keep people in the dark about what their governments are signing into law so i don't necessarily like the method that why didn't you thing to keep active from becoming official as you appreciate the fact that somebody in congress is at least trying to call attention to it. outside for our first break of the evening but when we come back the muslims are speaking out and favor of the n.y.p.d. widespread spying program across the northeast we're going to be. there for. a story. to understand it and the. other part of it

and realize that everything is. welcomed as a big issue. in this. we'll get a real headline that says the problem with the mainstream media today is that

they're completely disconnected from the viewers and from what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why don't people just don't watch t.v. if they want news they go online and read it and we're trying to take the stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us.

then why appeasement taking a lot of heat as an investigation by the associated press is over the last month revealed the extent of the agency's surveillance program post nine eleven and the extent that was monitoring communities and individuals based on their religious monitoring business is elevated frequented by muslims muslim students in universities across the northeast even sending an informant are rafting trip and it turns out the n.y.p.d. was stepping outside of its jurisdiction and conducting surveillance in new jersey without notifying notifying local law enforcement or the feds something which is contributing to a growing rift between the f.b.i. and the n.y.p.d. now these are clear civil liberties violations if you go after somebody solely for their religion and the outcry is called the justice department to look into it but there is a group of muslim journalists activists out there some people that not only support but thank the n.y.p.d. for their actions let's talk about this division within the muslim community here to discuss that with me here is progress of journalists and oscar nominee author of standing alone an american woman's struggle for the soul of islam ana thank you

guys that both for joining me tonight and so also i want to start with you because i think that this is maybe the minority view or definitely the view that we hear a lot less and so why is it that you want to defend the n.y.p.d. in their actions you know i've been a muslim that's growing up here in america and i call one number if i'm in trouble and it's going to be nine one one because we are not a police state we're not a state where we have to worry about the police we do in other countries and i think that it's fundamental to realize that we have an eighty ology inside of our muslim community that unfortunately our own people have not policed well enough and so we should work with the n.y.p.d. and instead of correcting them instead of criticizing actually work. position and actually try to clean up our own communities which we've failed to do and then why p.d. is the first line of defense in. new york city for so much of what is already. i mean it's i feel. like the n.y.p.d.

has the correct thing to do i think of the justice department might agree with me because they're looking into it. well i certainly think that you know america was definitely speak up in their community against extremism and terrorism which is i think every community should i mean it's sort of imperative in what's happening in communities but i think what's problematic about what the n.y.p.d. did is that they basically laid out maps of mosques they laid out. a very just various places that american muslims sort of frequent to sort of surveil now there's really three problems with that one there is an ethical and moral problem that we're americans we don't target people just because of race or religion or at this city or culture there is this sort of the tactical problem a tactical problem that the dragnet you're creating is too huge you're going to miss a lot of people if you if you sort of create a specter of just sort of targeting one group of people a few years ago i had the opportunity to work with department of homeland security and actually help train people to sort of locate sort of tears style activity terrorist surveillance and we never mention rate race or ethnicity because we knew it was in effect and we knew that we knew we would be missing the next eric rudolph

or the next brevik you know in norway if we just targeted one race or ethnicity and finally there's a strategic problem one out of every three or related plots since nine eleven have been foiled by help of the muslim community coming forward and talking to the f.b.i. talking to the police department and saying these are the terrorists we don't want them in our community please help us and i'm i'm afraid that if you if you make these people feel like they're singled out if you make american muslims feel like they're being unfairly looked at and like their coffee shops are being infiltrated just go there and i'm afraid they'll start coming forward and working proactively with the police department with the f.b.i. you're not dealing with you know an officer what's your take on some of the stuff that we hear is definitely not complimentary for example today there was an interview in the guardian that a former informant this guy had been in southern california and given to them and he said that he regretted that he felt like entire purpose was entrapment and he said he got to the point where he was even asking f.b.i. you know should i sleep with these muslim women and then record the conversations that we have and they are saying yeah go go for it and do it and so you know why

wouldn't that create mistrust and fear just from the last segment you talked about the value with employers and i think if you want to call an informant a whistleblower it takes on a completely different. cultural communication in fact you know right now if you talk about in this informants it seems like it's problematic but the truth is there's been times when learnable let's be honest because a lot of these informants what happens is they're actually pressured into these things right because they're p. i get something r.n. and they say that if you don't help us then we're going to expose an affair you're going to get over that reality whatever it is right on a deeper level i mean they'd families from pakistan and from karachi and having lived in karachi also having worked with the pakistani police there they do surveillance on their mosques because they know that inside of our mosques we have the ology that does sanction sexism violence and extremism now if it's the russian mafia and you know that there is hanging out somewhere you're going to target them based on issues of ethnicity if it's a colombian drug cartel same issue if it's

a black panthers or if it's a white you know extremist you're going to do the same thing and so to take this kind of approach that you know we can't look at muslims or we can't look at certain ethnicities i think is very naive and doesn't take into account the really serious threat that we've got from within the muslim community but have we actually seen you know this threat materialize we hear about a lot we had peter king hold hearings on capitol hill he's still doing it on homegrown radicalization and at the same time you know the statistics don't necessarily back it up well there's one for this is asserting peter king sort of already was that there's been twice as many sort of terror plots from non muslims than for muslims and eleven now i you know i certainly think that if the police were tipped off that there is possibly an extremist in this mosque here goes to build a mosque that's perfectly fine but if you're so really the most just because there's muslims there a suspect would be you know maybe involved or something because they're muslim and

that would sort of borders on a civil rights violation i mean no one would accept it saying that we need to surveil all the cigars because we suspect the jews as a people as a religion are doing as are all christians are and unfortunately i don't think the department of justice would really. allow that sort of kind of because it is a civil rights violation and in the united states law enforcement typically does not behave like that and that's why you have sort of a moderate mayor a great mayor cory booker newark was outraged about this and you also have a far right wing governor one of the most you know outspoken right wingers in the country chris christie was the governor of new jersey he also said that this is completely unacceptable is foolish a new york city is a c. has plenty of crime if you're going to be focusing on jobs because you think muslims inherently have some sort of problem going to this a lot of rapes are going to sort of violent crime but honestly it's just not the way to do it is not the way that we did a department of homeland security when i hope working with them and i hope that the n.y.p.d. learns you know not only from this but their conduct of the occupy wall street protesters that they're sort of overstepping the sort of the lines of logic and what sort of policing will sit in a lot of areas that when it comes to environmental activists animal rights

activists occupy wall street protesters that a lot of the time fortunately they do start just bought a touring people and they're really silly reasons and you know there's no we think there's a silly and they've mentioned shops a couple times that i'm going hungry for dinner yet but the point is that in karachi police have a surveillance over student me a restaurant because they know the bad guys hang out here just like we monitor the italian mafia perhaps there would be restaurants maybe have watched a few too many godfather movies but nonetheless restaurants are places of gathering and so while there are a lot of jealous jokes about he doing as agates you know two restaurants in new jersey the truth is that the men who were involved in the first world trade center bomb and the second world trade center bombing organize got their ideas and collaborated in mosques and so that's why we in our muslim community have to recognize that these places are not sacred to those who have all teary motives that

are various and we need to monitor ourselves and if we don't do it because we have a culture of denial and we have to work with the police instead of trying to shut them down and protest that they're. hating on muslims ok i've got i got a rap in a second i think there's a culture of denial so i don't think that's really. you know if you know there's a terror plot being taught in a mosque or joe's crab shop go to that but don't target them just because they're mosques or they just project that's just not logical policing right i want to be we need to be realistic as we don't know how the police now are i want to thank you guys both for joining me you know i mean i think it's something that concerns a lot of americans but the same time we do have our civil liberties and certain values in this country that the. feds are all supposed to. respect. thanks so much for joining you. guys it's time for a quick break but when we come back he said i.