her hooker the. the first person in the world is someone who is legally carrying far america is a country was founded with the basic understanding. that. to somehow makes the us more dangerous to millions of gun owners it's pure democracy locked and loaded into a weapon of their choice so why does it seem americans are only concerned with protecting their second amendment rights. so yes we're going to keep on drilling yes we're going to keep on if this was in production yes we're going to make sure that we can get. drill baby drill drill your little heart out mr president but that doesn't necessarily mean gas prices will go down so why are we so gung ho for oil

exploration when some of our methods are making people sick to their stomach literally. and gas prices aren't the only things that are record high these days so are tensions with iran but if the world was a playground israel would be the kid pushing the u.s. down the slide toward war so is there any stopping it now the question more. it's thursday march twenty second seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. well the tragic case of a trayvon martin the seventeen year old boy fatally shot in florida has highlighted the debate over america's gun laws but it seems that the momentum in america is on the side of gun rights not gun restrictions for most of the country the rights of bear arms is synonymous with liberty and if guns means freedom or genya just got

a whole lot more free last month to say repeal the law restricting handgun purchases to one every thirty days and then as artie's lucic have now reports it's done. locked and loaded. just across the river from the nation's capital virginia a slice of traditional america green spaces and tranquil farmland south a refuge from urban life a place where red white and blue is displayed with pride but here the symbol of liberty isn't just a flag it's this. it definitely is a sign of freedom you know to be able to own one and until now wind was all you could buy in virginia every thirty days the law was supposed to curb gun trafficking but many here felt it curbed freedom instead of writing one business how many guns they own or. why the problem really we have the second amendment for a reason. bridge and you repeal the one handgun permit law in february and come

summertime the right to bear arms will mean the right to buy as many of these. as you want but there are so many different makes models and brands you know you got to have a more it's a victory but for much of the world this kind of freedom may seem bizarre to young man apparently dressed in a long black trench coat open fire across the globe guns are associated with tragedies. or bloodshed in battlefields of war. but for gun owners like jim hansen the guns belong in the hands of american citizens the safest person in the world is someone who is legally carrying a firearm america is a country that was founded with a basic understanding that guns are a bad thing in this world to people my friend. as the most heavily armed in the nation in the world there are few diggers to be found

in america as of two thousand and seven there were an estimated two hundred ninety four million guns in this country that's nearly enough to arm every man woman and child. at your local community and in virginia gun shops like this one people just can't seem to get enough whether it's handguns assault rifles or shotguns sales are better than ever they are booming they are definitely through the roof or in. and in a place for guns mean freedom that trend isn't likely to change an armed society is a polite society you know we are here because of guns as bad as i might sound we've defended ourselves and we are the free nation that we are because of. thirty years after a powerful gun control movement plus the nation americans are returning to their roots embracing the idea of opening and carrying firearms like these with his deal and seeing the days of muskets and militias for many freedom is symbolized by the

barrel of a gun it's democracy locked and loaded for r.t.m. lucie county in virginia and here to talk more about america's fight to protect their second amendment rights kevin powell activist and author of rock obama ronald reagan and the ghost of dr king joins us now hi kevin so why are pro-gun people so passionate about their second amendment rights when it comes to guns many of them don't want any restrictions whatsoever. you know what are the foods it's one of if it was present the sound would believe it personal is right however i don't think that down the far that old place it was. it's no good it's made its way with the painted by either of us and if it was put in a very large with lawsuits we could. hear it in how or even if we did it was useful to look up because it would give the favorability a novice even strategy it would build right there with face trayvon martin for the

standard ground law that prohibits states from the country but i do think that it is some sort of progress that it take guns away from people i profoundly disagree with their honor and i know that my grandparents program probably because i think they are not i don't believe that but they have that right to feel the sort of been done for each other and there are people who are more fair so there's a sort of credit there's a problem. but have it what about get the right to bear arms as a constitutional right why stop people of this right. well you know. as with the civil rights record we were banned from the right to vote because black people or people called were banned from the right to vote for third place that was part of the country we are this was first even the founding fathers thomas jefferson another said there may be times when we need to relook at a quick look at what has happened to moccasin in transforming the fact that the gun violence in our country which is why my mayor mayor mike bloomberg of new york city leaders around the country deal with this is where i live in brooklyn new york is

so far from the as we might do something wrong with that when people are going back to back to done what. they were going there to do that god is proud of all of. them border leadership is presidents read on a mars mission i have a blog this is a background check. and in light of these recent tragedies the most recent the teenager that was killed unarmed teenager that was killed in florida you know is it going to be hard to argue or lack is on not well i think we will but we're going to be. a the. bugles of the standard by the pa and so. this is where the. place. was and the people know something let's do this and the fact is. i want to call you a queer thing if you haven't been there and they're gone and you and they'll be

your. best bet for the family. and the argument that pro-gun people bring up all the time and the right to protect yourself the argument that a law abiding citizen should be able to have guns to protect themselves because criminals will get ahold of them illegally anyway. well you know that we need to have more faith in our police department i do believe you have more faith in nazi party may be large organizations but i don't think that. is the problem there with her and we have looked on the cities like new york city there but the basic laws of new york and i can tell you you know you do a double take and always assume other ways of birth news for the saudis i think it does actually encourage we're going barbara thank goodness ours is one of the biggest not just for criminals by by so although a body is well enforcement and but at that same time right now to have an interesting laying gun sale and then you lap around an all time high paying black friday bad record jail why have that. we were going to go through i mean this is.

a movie and t.v. and you know i mean also just yesterday in my neighborhood young man was murdered the they would ironically i was going with trayvon martin rally and gold yellow pages and everything and children standing there literally able to describe for me what happened you know. it was there was a silence on it both even children growing up in a culture where they become. violent homes for the foreclosures but at this time as we just saw and lucy's story there so much of america so passionate passionate about maintaining their their constitutional right to own a gun they don't want any regulation whatsoever so do you see that be if you see these laws lose or i guess a gun lot of tightening up any time soon when so much of america is so it's so passionate about maintaining their right to bear arms. and i hope it wasn't because

i love our country and our one good one state and living in nonviolent. you know i feel that you know food works especially that more tragedies like this is a different god and goddess thought that was more and i think that's. the way that we realized maybe. the other little john's going to be probably in the dark to say the whole cult of you for folks said we need you for the drugs in our society and we can't allow to do that that would be tragic for a nation. hopefully that it doesn't get to that kevin thank you so much for coming on the show that was kevin powell he's an activist and author of barack obama ronald reagan and the goat dr king. thank you. all more controversy this week surrounding the practice of fracking the u.s. department of agriculture has dropped a plan to require an extensive environmental review before handing mortgages to people that plan to use the land arroyo and gas drilling now this has outraged

opponents of hydraulic fracturing who say it eases up on rules on this method of drilling be able to leave the practice comes with extremely harmful health and environmental risks so another debate over energy rages on and america let's talk more about this i was joined by greg palast he's an investigative journalist and author of the buck vultures picnic and person of petroleum pegs power pirates and high finance carnivores it's out in bookstores on november fourteenth take a listen. well fracking is a brand new wave getting gas and oil only out really really used for about a decade or so. it is what we they do is they drill down then they go horizontal through shale deposits which normally couldn't get gas out of except then they use an explosive and flow through an explosion they blow sand through the pipe zillions of holes and then they dump chemicals and high pressure waters that wracks

fractures the rock around the pipe when that pipe but when all that rock is fractured then the gas little gas bubbles within that rock start pouring through into the pipe and up the pipe now sounds good because this is now increased the amount of the actual gas that we can pull out of american the american soil by a good five hundred percent i mean just quintuple the amount of the actual gas supply in the united states easily but what's the problem the answer is it can kill you if you're poisoning two ways number one. the fracturing process b. could just use e o two in sand and water but these characters who are doing it like halliburton have been filling these holes with mystery chemicals everything from diesel fuel every type of toxin you can imagine anything that would help them fracture that rock or that they think might help them fracture that rock when the

gas comes up all that poison sucks back up and they've got to get rid of it and often it's just dumped in in ponds. dumps where ever so you have a tremendous amount of utterly poisonous toxic residue and the second thing is you're fracturing rock if fractures all the way up into a water awkward for now you're drinking the stuff and but really what might be in lately is discovered might be the most dangerous part of it is the drilling itself the drilling down vertically you have to put cement around every drill casing they have to be. encased in cement otherwise gas comes up around it it poisons the aqua for as it goes all the way up so if there are ox for said i'll go first by the way you're drinking water you're underground freaking hard if it if that it was poison get into the underground drinking water forget it we've seen just all over america now this is happening and these wells can then explode the cement jobs are

being done on the cheap there are thousands and thousands and thousands of wells being dug there are nearly a half million oil and gas wells in america and they're drilling so fast that they are not properly cementing these wells while letting said greg i want to show you one of our correspondents headed over to pennsylvania and i wonder what happens when they when they get a little water on tap water let's take a look at what happens and sound. it got so bad that you leant his cousin who lives down the street this money to find out what would happen if they let their water on fire. a lot of flame good come a gal would like was here with the right kind like that i think. i mean that's pretty shocking right there how does that happen where somebody is tap water becomes flammable all of a sudden and what are the health consequences of being exposed to water like that.

well two things how it happens is that the most part it looks like the will casings the cement jobs are done poorly it just like the deep water horizon that's what happened deep water rises that the cement that is supposed to plug the drill of the bore hole gave out the cements all schools around these pipes so it doesn't leak and obviously we have a leak you're into a locker for what's really dangerous about it besides if you explosive drinking water. is that if if there is gas in that drinking water almost certainly you're going to have all that toxic crap that they put into these fracking wells diesel oil and and we literally don't even know the toxicity putting it because halliburton has made a big point of keeping these so-called secret formula. you know a proprietary secret you know it's going to your water supply and that's the problem i mean just by the looks of it it looks pretty dangerous i mean i wouldn't

want to drink water that you can catch on fire but at the same time right now the u.s.d.a. is going back on their plan requiring this environmental review do you find this troubling. yeah because see the review is about mortgages the agriculture department for farms and we have f.h.a. and other government agencies which guarantee home mortgages if you have homes where you have fracking under those homes these fracking lines can run eight miles under under houses and those houses end up contaminated the land becomes poisoned the water systems are destroyed those homes are worthless then the us government is on the hook for those people who are in real trouble because they think that they've allowed something safe to make it five bucks a month and royalties on our homes worth we have to find out i mean it's just like having a termite inspection they're literally saying. we're not going to look you know if

there's no problem what's the danger in looking they don't want to look because they're afraid of what they're going to see except that means that u.s. taxpayers are on the hook. there's a disaster and a half million houses become worthless and of course homeowners are going to lose everything now greg energy is becoming a is a hot button topic today especially during campaign season and many are blaming president obama for the high gas prices you know they're saying he's not drilling enough but it shows that statistics show that the more you're more drilling doesn't necessarily mean lower gas prices how could i mean gas prices are set by the world market including the world monopolies the oil companies a pick maybe these people who are saying drill baby drill have never heard of saudi arabia and opec saudi arabia only produces seven billion barrels of oil a day if the united states by some absolute miracle increased production by million

barrels a day the saudis would just knock it down by their production but a million barrels and they'd be ciro effect on yes it's up to opec it's up to the international oil markets it's up to the big oil companies we could drill ourselves to oblivion and have fracking in and the excell pipeline and move every polar bear out of alaska but that will not change the price of gasoline i three since it's not even toxic now despite all this greg there are some proponents to fracking people say it creates jobs allows them to drill for our own natural gas and in turn makes us more competitive it can give us and over china and we have some examples here are some some of the arguments for why people support it. we did sign on and not sorry that we did have a county is kind of a poor county so a lot of people did their work and they got jobs and they made good money so to me

that's a plus how do you make of that argument greg here folks in pennsylvania who say they have benefited by fracking and their town per say there's nothing wrong with oil and gas drilling but you have to remember the argument well this creates jobs it's true of nuclear waste dumps that's true of the coal mines when you when you look at some on it why is it so poor they had coal mines there and the coal mines devastated their department devastated their economy and for a while it was live in high people high good paying jobs at the coal mines now they're going it's kind of like coal mine part two haven't they learned anything i mean that's basically resource extraction it's never been a long term solution for any community or any nation it's all right greg is more telling us is the answer what is. well you know sustainable sustainable energy

operations like solar wind etc it's not tree hugging greenie stuff it's how china's economy is zooming in and of the u.s. economy they're deep committed into production that keeps going not just extracting until the land is depleted and poisoned we have to have sustained it's when we're talking about sustainable energy we're talking about sustainable industry sustainable chops that's very different than saying let's suck out all the stuff under my house or under my farm for a while and then we go bust and then it's all poison that's not an industry that's on the company that's resource extraction it's a disaster but we need is is new energy industry it's just nuts to let china take over that industry while we are just putting holes in the ground and hoping that our water doesn't blow up greg thank you for coming on the show and wayne and i was greg palast investigative journalist and author of the buck walters

picnic and pursued a controlling mpeg power pirate and high finance carnivores and it is coming to a bookstore near you and i remember fourteen. and since airing this interview we have gotten a lot of responses and i want to take the time to read one of them to you this is an email from niles make naro it reads in your story today you all talked about how we do not know what chemicals are used in fracking the main chemical used to extract oil via hydraulic fracking is acid over twenty five percent of acid production in the usa is going to oil operations i have to use it for work and i've seen a thirty percent jump in prices due to the nand in the last month look into it last time i checked it was not good in water supply it's an interesting perspective and some things we will be looking into keep your comments coming we are listening. the energy is part of the picture when it comes to the conflict with iran the

country is there and to shut down the critical strait of hormuz where much of the world's oil passes through meanwhile an article in the new york times details elite u.s. a war game it's a simulation of foreshadows what could happen should israel launch an attack against iran and well played out was a strike leading to an all out regional war and the us inevitably drawn into the conflict so what are the real consequences of a war with iran who stands to benefit and who would lose out earlier i spoke to trita parsi founder and president of the national iranian american council and author of the book a single roll of the dice i asked him how much does the conflict in iran play a part in the pain at the pump for americans take a listen actually has quite a lot to do with it and the president is putting the blame right back at the feet of the republicans if you took note of the speech that he gave out the apec conference about two weeks ago or so he really warned against what he called this

reckless talk about war because what that war is doing the talk is doing is that it's being a lot of risk premium to lower the prices which is causing them to. rise which is actually causing the iranian government to make more money out of the war that they can sell so the only losers in this actually would be the president himself the republicans don't seem to mind too much at all prices are rising because they hide all prices go the more difficult it will be for president obama to create jobs and that's going to be the critical variable for his reelection and obviously the republicans don't want him to work so you think the republicans there and favor of high gas prices at this time because they don't seem to have it or not obama they don't seem to be too bothered by it and here is what president obama had to say today about this topic that's. the price i will still be set by the global market and that means every time there's tensions that rise in the middle east

which is what's happening right now so with a prayer the price of gas the main reason that gas prices are right now is because people are worried about what's happening with the wrong. so the president is saying hey this is not my fault this is out of my control he's blaming for that he's blaming the turmoil in iran on the fact that gas prices are rising what's your reaction to his remarks today well i think it also has a lot of pressure to himself to make sure that there is a much more robust and much more persistent effort at the plume a c. in order to resolve the conflict with the iranians over the nuclear issue and there seems to be now increasing information that says that there will be meetings held sometime in april and it might be a series of meetings and if that happens if the tensions are reduced to things will happen it will significantly if there are ongoing negotiations will significantly reduce the chances of the risk of an israeli military strike and it will also slowly but surely push down whole process that will benefit the president that will

benefit job creation in this country and he will be able to use that as a major plus but it will require a lot of political will from his end to make sure that the pressure to make the negotiations feel or push back and also you know people are playing the blame game as to who is responsible for these rising gas prices but we should mention that really what are a lot of what's behind it is the fact is wall street the way that there is speculation on energy that certainly is one factor but i would say right now it seems like the biggest portion of the oil price right now the reason why it is a one hundred twenty three or so dollars is mainly because of the risk premium and the fear that exists in the market particularly the last couple weeks that there would be some sort of a clash between israel and iran and potentially between the united states and iran that causes a lot of panic in the market that so far has pushed up oil prices about twenty or so dollars if you actually were to lead to a full scale war and then there are speculating that it could actually reach about

two hundred they are saying that this the fear that the conflict in iran is leading to. yes prices that's really is and i don't think it is a coincidence that the iranians have been making a lot of billy calls statements because he wants all prices to go on the way for them to put pressure back on the west in response to the many sunshines that the west has been imposing on the run and in a way that shows that the same chance are kind of backfiring and it's affecting their pocketbooks at every every person every average that sanctions that by it's by both ways so if you have any sanctions that actually do put a lot of pressure on the iranians it will also put a lot of pressure on others including those who imports them i also want to talk about this so-called it's a us war game it was a simulation and basically what this simulation showed is that if israel were to launch an attack any any tack on iran that it would lead to this all our regional

war and that the u.s. ultimately are inevitably get involved so what can we take away from this simulation a couple of things first of all it's not a coincidence that you know leaks there's been an ongoing campaign for the last couple months in which the u.s. military is leaking information about how dangerous it would be if the israelis were to attack iran how counterproductive it would be and what it would do to the united states because it would drag the us into a war that its main objective is really difficult to achieve militarily if not impossible so this is a way also for the military military to push back and make sure that the politicians or the civilians don't make a decision that would put the military again at the center of a disaster and now in light of all this we're seeing how even just the fear of war and this rising tension in that region is not benefiting our economy here in the u.s. who does who would benefit from a conflict with iran well from one perspective one can say that the north and yahoo

government seems to be more fearful of a negotiated settlement on the iranian nuclear issue because of a fear. that's the you were swayed to go with a compromise that will not meet the israeli red lines and as a result they actually seem to be more comfortable with the idea that there would be a military confrontation but i think that is also a miscalculation or would lies in israel's interest because in the long term a war will not be in israel's interest either because it will bring about not only a tremendous amount of turmoil in the region but also so far israel has not had a military confrontation with any of the middle east's non arab states in fact between iran and israel over the last two and a half thousand years the relations have more often than not being good it would be a very strong red psychological red line if a war were to break out between israel and lastly just want to ask you at this point how optimistic are you that a diplomatic solution can be reached with iran well you know there's

a lot of talk about how difficult this would be and it would be difficult but at the same time this is not the most complex problem that humanity has encountered is not a technical aspects of this problem that is difficult it's the political side of it but it's tricky if there is a significant and sufficient political will to put into place a diplomatic process that is sustainable and persistent but i do believe that this can be resolved the problem is that the political will does not seem to be sufficient on all sides at the same time are a pleasure to have you in the city areas that are coming and that was treated parsi the founder and president of the national iranian american council and author of barclays single roll the dice and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered you can head over to youtube dot com slash artsy america you can also check out our website it is r t dot com slash usa and you.