top stories this hour on r.t. crackdown in power rain security forces attacked anti-government demonstrations with rubber bullets and tear gas group of doctors who treated protesters a stunning trial as the western backed regime continues to target opponents. of the governed under siege interludes has been confirmed there over thirty hours after french police surrounded his house he's believed to have killed seven people in claim to have links with al qaida. china condemns washington's latest sanctions against iran aimed at other countries as the u.s. compiles a list of nations to be punished for continuing to import the regime boiled. i'll be back with more news stories in half an hour from now in the meantime it's the

early show with all the latest from washington thank you. welcome to the lower show where you get the real headlines with none of them or c n n live 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 life for its surveillance program some within the muslim population support the agency's moves we're going to host the 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 and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look with me three 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 two thousand and thirteen the paul ryan released yesterday. ok senator paul ryan is chairman of the house budget committee and he released what he calls his path to prosperity plan. congressman paul ryan's proposed budget for two thousand and thirteen and he's there for a new bigger story the headline is lower tax rates and a total overhaul of medicare but the subhead line 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 tax cuts 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 that isn't even the second biggest part of the budget savings things like the bowles simpson commission or four was a degree of balance in the degree 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 the ryan proposed last year it's not necessarily going to go anywhere but there are people who are really good insight into the republican party's mind the hypocrisy the militarism certain cases 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 take a look at social programs. but here's a great piece of insight that was pointed out by the cable it foreign policy while the defense budget arise 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 at forty seven point eight billion and by twenty 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 u.s. foreign policy in a war in iraq that's finally been wrapped up although i can't exactly say that ended well they're considering they have also been attacks in recent days it is claimed responsibility and you have 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 they 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 conflicts 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 non 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 won take this country and it's a scary world and these guys just want to keep gone but i guess you could say that

if they steer a world because these guys just want to keep on the. now one last had become to point out the cable had a giggle at two in ryan's budget he wants to cut one out of every time federal workers get that he forgot to think it through the ban means that you know all those employees working for defense and related agencies yeah 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 but the rest of your plan does it and i will stop there but will be really nice that the mainstream media wall obsessive we covering this budget could notice what this means for how the republican party wants us to approach the world but unfortunately they choose to miss. earlier this month or james bamford published reported wired exposing the n.s.a.

as a massive new complex of their building and failure top a two billion dollar data gathering big brother sounding like up a complex five times the size of the u.s. capitol for the purpose of intercepting decipher and analyzing and storing basta swaths of the world's communications recording bamford's three sources all former n.s.a. employees the world's communications that includes those americans and one of the 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 here's an example. if dick cheney were elected president and wanted to. waterboard every american who's. one of these well known mishaps.

what i want to know is does the inner see the technological capacity to identify those cheney bashers based upon. their e-mails yes or no. i want to question and of itself may sound a little funny like alexander saying if the n.s.a. does not have the ability to do that within the united states so do we believe it will join me to discuss this if even wester senior editor of prost ory thanks so much for joining us tonight david and i guess before we talk about this hearing necessarily it was said let's go back to the original story 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. insiders speaking to intelligence reports to spend their whole

careers covering this agency you want to find out what our government is doing so numerous lawsuits over the years by privacy and civil rights advocates have really turned out not much because the government has consistently able to claim state secrets if you suits this most but that of the secrecy was disturbing to me and lots of others so in that sense when we see general alexander testifying before congress i mean he is testifying but he's saying that no we don't have kept asking you to do that now not necessarily saying that we never did or we didn't in the past 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 learned 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 against the nixon

administration but in this modern age we're right seem to have. been pretty much legal almost all of those crimes the bush administration particularly. had to cope with a lot of controversy after president bush himself claimed that all wiretaps require work when in fact it was related to the n.s.a. wiretapping was last year or without warrants so they had to go back in a minute i support a process which the secret court that allows them to even go through the rules and use allow them to issue a story or once after the fact. it was an unprecedented power grab and essentially enable what's happened how do you know which many would argue those outside yet it's minute. now one of the answer is that. there was that we don't do this at home we have capability and if somebody wants to do it at home it's the f.b.i.

that fills up the paperwork that goes and gets the warrant and so in that sense i mean i guess we just it has both make us feel any better if it's a somebody is doing it it's just the f.b.i. don't worry they're going to judge can we even be so sure. sometimes we can be but even then it's not that accountable as we seem to have. over recent privacy issues before so really what we're looking at is you know how a lot of you were concerned about who burgeoning older services and doing away with individual privacy contracts well this is kind of laid back to us government u.s. government's intelligence gathering apparatus has or sharing information now so it could very well be going through yet in order to enable an n.s.a. system the wiretap somebody but we don't know but it's not just a government agency is right what we found out is that this is private industry i thought though in pop and i don't like the company is out there actually creating

some of these technologies but if the telecoms that worked with the n.s.a. to help us in the past then who were given legal immunity and so now if you think about it if you look at what bamford has written to you on telecoms are still helping them monitor all of your communications everything happened away and so in that sense you know what do you think we are friends anymore between private care to agencies. well there's still a pretty big difference between what it is through the national security agencies but there are efforts in congress right now there are splits you merge corporate america with the n.s.a. under the auspices of cyber security and that's reason lot of worms with you know you who warned that you know this is not really allowed to operate in the united states so we should have that sort of site or communion or cyber spends under a more accountable civilian agency and i think that's

a very reasonable concern but it's also reasonable to say that cyber threats so you publicly restructure have or look at stocks not look at what the israelis follow somebody not release we don't know but look at what was done to iran's nuclear facilities with a computer virus. i think that we. have way high he might be back i think we might still have even theory there yes ok great so you got cut off a little bit but go ahead and finish your answer there are talking about stuxnet and what it's done yes well just look at what sorenson we're programmed to study their ears and. they fracture in order so this is a this is not just a virus this is a digital weapon and other weapons lives will emerge or already so we need to be able to face these

a reason for us then he changes and in our cyber security policy but it's very reasonable to say that programmer is to say well congress has proposed is very dangerous think we know it hasn't happened already yeah i'd say that it's pretty scary to you and i you know i mean if you think about this facility right it's five times the size of the capital it increased the city limits just to even build this thing it has its own water pump itself sustaining you know if something happened to go on for three more days and the energy of 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 of that's ok those costs are all worth it. they would from many would probably object places that because it sounds awfully like a brother it sounds like somebody picked up a copy of maisie or and just decided to use that as

a handbook and i was just start. this thing they are hooked up to a network of satellites that it's that electronic nuisance all over the world you know you 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 level of intelligence that essentially constitutes a new mission and projects underway in utah of course as we saw yesterday you know so it's just denies everything so we really don't know what's going on well subsequent bamford's work or yeah i think that you know you're right in the sense that unfortunately i have to rely on whistleblowers or death a passing of time to find out about the thing that's a scary thought stephen thanks so much anything oh my pleasure. now think back to january when we saw protests all over europe because the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement it was notable protests came about when thousands gathered in front of

the european parliament office in warsaw and international agreement combines piracy and counterfeiting honor one nice little umbrella that supposedly a global effort to stop counterfeit goods music to software to sports apparel has been an ongoing effort for about six years now all this worked out behind closed doors and so far almost all of the e.u. so 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 i signing an executive agreement without ever talking it over with congress seems like he's got a funny having 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 and we only learned about it because the shared through that was the building website wiki leaks so as you can imagine as word got out a lot of people were not happy and it's and explained in a previous interview that people want to be involved when it comes to issues that are important to that like the way. that obama saw the agreement signed last year

and when the he did 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 is that the u.s. public does want to be more a 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 here is the 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 for a few people in washington they're trying to look out for one of the ron wyden 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 it's unfortunate another side of the problems within our political system when these amendments are tacked on to 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 winds efforts are already gaining attention from both sides of the aisle so what are these efforts well oregon some of the plans to include two amendments on the first one would ban the president from entering a legally binding trade agreement without some salt in congress and as a direct response to obama's record and live in is included language to make this retroactive for accept the second amendment with some 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 it over is ours technical points out writing second amendment would also force us to are to publicly acknowledge another agreement they're working on called the transpacific partnership that partnership made with nine other pacific countries it's going to enhance trade between a group rumor has it it's going to have

a language that even broader than what we found in actor 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 right the bigger point here is the lack of transparency the secrecy around these agreements and abetted finding anybody that for maybe the copyright holders and 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 wyden is using to keep active from becoming official so 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 some muslims are speaking out and favor of the n.y.p.d. is the widespread spying program across the northeast where the debate at issue of the for.

the by. the but. it's. 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 eldred 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 bet's 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 outcries called the justice department to look into it but there's a group of muslim journalists activists out there some people that not only support the thank the n.y.p.d. for their actions to talk about this division within the muslim community here to discuss that with me here is progress a journalist said jelani and a friend of mine author of standing alone an american woman's struggle for the soul of islam i want to thank you guys of both for joining me tonight and so also i'm

going to start with you because i think that this is maybe the minority view or definitely the view that we hear a lot less up 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 that'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 a navy 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 their own communities which we failed to do and then why 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 with their take well i certainly think that you know america was definitely speak up in their own community against extremism in tears which is i think every community should i mean that'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 quick to sort of surveil you know there's really three problems with that one there's an ethical and moral problem that we're americans we don't target you just because of race or religion or that this is your culture too there's the sort of the tactical problem a tactical problem that the drag that you're creating is too huge you're going to miss a lot of people if you if you sort of create a specter 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 terrorist activity terrorist surveillance and we never mentioned 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 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 they're going to have shelter being infiltrated just have their jobs and i'm afraid they'll start coming for and working proactively with the police department with the f.b.i. you're not going to. take two because 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's felt like the entire purpose was entrapment and he said that it got to the point where he was even asking the 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 in just the last segment you talked about 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 a myth informants it seems like it's problematic but the truth is the only time when you don't have a let's be honest because a lot of these informants what happens is they're actually pressured into these things right because they that be i get something out and they say that if you don't help us then we're going to expose an affair your homosexuality whatever it's right on a deeper level means a families 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 in the ology that does sanction sexism violence and extremism now it is 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 extremists 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 it is very naive and doesn't take into account the really serious threat that we've got from within the muslim community have we actually seen you know this threat materialize we hear about it 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 up 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 nine muslims been from muslims in islam eleven now i you know i certainly think that if the police are taught that there is possibly extremism this much here goes that's perfectly fine but if it's really the mosque just because there's muslims there he's a speck of the you know may be involved or something because they're muslim and that would sort of borders on

a civil rights violation i mean no one would accept and saying that we need to surveil all the cigars because we suspect that jews as a people or 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 who is 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 it's bush in new york city is a c. has plenty of crime if you're going to be focusing on shots because you think muslims inherently have some sort of problem going to us a lot of rapes going to sort of violent crime but honestly it's just not the way to do it is not the way that we did it 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 line the logical and what sort of city and a lot of areas that i would consider viral activists animal rights activists occupy wall street protesters that

a lot of the time fortunately they do start just about assuring 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 i don't know hungry for dinner yet but the point is that in karate the police have a surveillance over student restaurant because they know that the bad guys hang out there just like when we monitor the italian mafia perhaps there would be restaurants maybe i've watched a few too many godfather movies but nonetheless restaurants are places of gathering and so while there are a lot of job jokes about. you know two restaurants in new jersey the truth is that the men who were involved in the first world trade center bombing 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 but do you think it is a culture of denial affairs i don't think. you know if you know there's a terror plot being taught in a mosque or joe's crab shack go to them but don't target them just because they're a mosque or they're just like that's not logical policing right i want to be we need to be realistic because we don't know how the police know i want to thank you guys 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 n.y.p.d. that the feds are all supposed to. respect. certain law thanks so much for joining . our guys it's time for a quick break but when we come back he said i read.