lock down loaded the u.s. government is buying up as much ammunition as it can get its hands on and the intended targets aren't on the battlefield. and while the u.s. government arms itself is the tarion violence in syria rages on this despite u.n. peace talks and a promise from president bashar al assad it to end the violence so what will it take to end this bloodshed. your mission is simple mr obama one learns to make sure to keep a check box ability to finance the republican presidential campaign is definitely

one for the history books with more money spent than any other order to save some of the men in the money. it's monday april second four pm in washington d.c. and christine you're watching r t well the u.s. department of homeland security along with the u.s. immigrations and customs enforcement office have placed a large and rather interesting order they've ordered four hundred fifty million rounds of ammunition to be made in the liver to them over the next five years now the company alliance tax systems are eighty k. was awarded the contract to manufacture forty caliber ammunition high performance bullets apparently apparently these bullets quote provide optimum penetration for terminal performance this refers to the way the tip of the bullet passes through barriers and expands all the while holding its jacket in the toughest conditions.

all right so this is interesting because this is not the pentagon making the order for the military it's d.h.s.s. and ice and give you a little perspective here and there are only about three hundred eleven million people living in the entire country so it begs the question why such a massive order four hundred fifty million points david seaman is a journalist and host of the d.l. show he's in our miami studios and i'm hoping i'll be able to give us a little perspective on this david why does the da just need a four hundred fifty million hollow point bullets. hi christine well the department of homeland security just to be clear with your viewers consists of the t.s.a. the transportation security administration and immigration services among other divisions so exactly this is not the u.s. military this is the domestic law enforcement agency and the t.s.a. are basically glorified bag screeners and airport screeners that was that was their

original congressional mandate was to screen passengers before they go on an airplane so the question the question really is why do they need four hundred fifty million rounds of ammunition and to be fair some people online who don't want to believe what's going on who said that this is just going to be used for target practice or also it could be that the government is simply stockpiling ammunition because they don't want to get into a situation where there's an ammo shortage and our law enforcement officers don't have any ammunition and those are both fair points but that kind of ammo that they purchased from eighty k. hollow point and you dish and as you explained it's designed to tear through human flesh and then expand it's designed to kill people this is not the optimal kind of ammo you would buy for target practice that's more expensive and it's more precise i think that's a really interesting point to bring up and i'm wondering too i mean certainly there are a lot of layers here when we talk about the d.h.s.s. purchase thing there's there's not really been sort of a concrete answer as to why but i'm wondering if there's not you know

a larger discussion to be had here i mean we're seeing gun sales in the u.s. and all time high we've already seen the d.h.s.s. began hiring armed security guards to protect federal buildings do you think there's a fine if they're preparing for some sort of mass civil unrest. well the people within it. they are not federal agents so they're not as well trained they're not as well vetted these are the kinds of people who think that grandmothers and little children are a threat to national security when they go through an airport and to give all of these these agents so much firepower it really does make you wonder if they know something that the american people do not know about and they actually place they have an open big right now for even more ammunition for one hundred seventy five million rounds of two twenty three caliber rifle ammo which some people online have brought up is almost identical to the ammunition used by nato peacekeeping forces so it's very interesting are they planning on some kind of widespread economic

arrest in the u.s. that would require nato forces to help us out i really don't know but one thing i do know is that i don't want to inject my own opinion into these reports all the time but if the founding fathers were alive today they would be disgusted we're rapidly militarizing our domestic law enforcement officers and you know i think a lot of people are scared t.s.a. is scary enough wait until they all have guns i mean can't speak back when they're when they're groping you at the airports the t.s.a. i mean as you say they are part of the department of homeland security certainly the largest terrorist attack and our number one history happened due to more screening in airports i guess you could say but it is also a immigrations and customs enforcement i mean have you seen any indications that perhaps there's going to be a larger crackdown along this nation's borders i mean could that be part of it. certainly that's a possibility although i don't see hundreds of millions of people flooding into america from mexico or canada any time soon the jobs that were once here are no

longer here i really don't understand it i keep trying to put my head around it and you know you try out different scenarios why do we need this much ammo and certainly target practice is one option but even if they're burning through twenty million rounds a month to train their agents this is still overkill this is still too much so best case scenario this is sort of a waste of taxpayers' money and worst case scenario is as you said they're planning for economic unrest or violent protests or something that requires how to point and you nation on a wide scale and some of the largest protests that we've seen certainly just happened in the last six months or so the occupy wall street protests and you know like you david i was kind of reading up on this and there are a lot of a lot of theories as well that there's sort of a connection between v.h.s. and the police forces in this country particularly in the occupy wall street crackdown i know da da just agents it's been confirmed have been involved in various ways in many of the occupy movements around the country but i'm wondering what's going on and terms of i mean is there

a line is that line now blurred between v.h.s. and local and regional police forces. i think there has been from what i've been reading online there has been some federal involvement in local police crackdowns on peaceful protesters and we're really seeing a shift to where the government both in the court of public opinion and in our laws is trying to criminalize peaceful protesters and turn them into something more than what they actually are you know when you have a bunch of college kids banging on drums and you know asking for people to address issues like income inequality or the foreclosure crisis those people are not really a threat to national security and yet the department of homeland security as i've seen online they might be involved in some of the intelligence gathering and it concerns me and i think it concerns pretty much anybody out there who's seeing what's happening certainly a lot of people concerned and again we still have no sort of confirmation as to exactly what these will be used for who knows if that will ever come out but it's

an interesting discussion i think it's important for our viewers to see exactly what's going on here again that this purchase was made not by the pentagon but id h.s. for four hundred fifty million rounds of ammunition david seaman journalist and host of the d.l. show. let's move on now to syria where syrian president bashar al assad has agreed to a peace plan beginning on april tenth that's the deadline for an un for a un supervised cease fire that's said to include withdrawal the withdrawal of soldiers and heavy weapons from cities and the delivery of humanitarian aid now this of course will only work however if the rebels put down their weapons as well and that might be difficult to do if the rebels get additional outside support over the weekend several world leaders met in istanbul turkey to try to work out a plan to deal with syria part of that plan involves sort of redefining or blurring the lines between lethal and nonlethal weapons that they hope to send into syria for the rebels and the united states joined by dozens of arab countries have

started to come up with a plan to pay some of the rebels salaries and also to purchase and send in high tech communications equipment to assist the rebels now obviously we know russia and china blocked the u.n. security security council proposal to intervene militarily but the group that calls itself the friends of syria coalition is still hoping to have more of an influence in as far as what happens inside syria so we want to take a closer look at all of this with middle east analyst on that fanti. hammad what do you suppose this is about giving rebels a salary us than in sending the stuff in that may or may not be weapons. as for the lucian's. and the agreements reached in istanbul during the friends of syria conference it sends a little bit of mixed signals the first mixing signal is that there is two.

main streams of ideas one supporting arming the syrian rebels and the other one supporting. assisting the syrian rebels with non-lethal equipment and that is led by the united states and western allies. the saudi predatory kuwaiti initiative who are going to be fitting the bill for paying the salaries of the syrian rebels. on the first examining four it's a little bit positive as it will provide an incentive for other syrian soldiers to defect the syrian army and join the. liberation of the syrian free syrian army which is consisting of the rebel forces on the u.s. the administration is reluctant to provide arming the rebels until

a proper vetting process will be taking place i think that's an important point i think a lot of people wonder as we did with the situation in libya and lot of people wonder who are the rebels and how do we figure that out when you start sending even when we're not talking about weapons we're just talking about communication equipment they're talking about sending night vision goggles and how can it be determined that these are going to end up in the right people's hands. this is the million dollar question christine and no but you have concrete. u.s. administration obviously reluctant to proceed was arming the rebels in spite of pressures exerted on it domestically republicans in the senate to. nobody wants to see the mistakes done in afghanistan in the eighty's or was arming assisting the libyan rebels as it turned out to be

islamist groups and the administration is not going to fall into their trap specially during an election year and i think it's really important to talk about sort of some other aspects here throughout the last year this conflict in syria which has claimed the lives potentially at least of nine thousand people it's been portrayed in sort of a simple manner it's been sort of you know assad the evil dictator and those rising up against him but i think it's really important to point out that this has really become a sectarian conflict a war between religious groups with sunni muslims in syria in the majority but of course president assad is a shiite so so many sunnis now view this violence as a campaign to sort of squeeze them out of their homes and their villages and i know the new york times had a recent article about this last week the writer and barnard said this she said they said they felt threatened as soon as and several said that they saw the military give out rifles to residents of neighboring alawite villages numbers of

the same heterodox muslims such as mr assad and that their neighbors then opened fire on them. so i guess i just want you to talk a little bit about. that this is a little more complex than just those who support assad and those who don't. it is very complex but other than the sick theory and different differences it's ethnic differences the other whites are different then the sudanese will have an arabic background syria is a mosaic of ethnic groups you have the arabs you have the. poor it's you have the sure people. and you have the sherpas who have. roots. this all makes this may launch makes it difficult to separate. who's who as far as the sectarian i don't think that if this sectarian but

those who have started the. opposition in syria were predominantly belonging to the muslim brotherhood the american administration is playing it very very careful in syria the are with the principles of freedom democracy and human rights for the syrian people but the have their concerns that if when and if they will supply weapons to the rebels it might be used against them exactly as it happened in afghanistan when you supported the group. because tory made its turn and we ended up was temporary love and nobody wants to see that anymore as far as the. saudis the rich oil states paying salaries for the opposition. as i said earlier it's going to present an incentive which supposed to present a situation new situation on the ground. the syrian foreign minister

have sent to kofi and them yesterday a letter stating bed we are ready to suspend all military activities and was draw from the civilian centers by april tenth. yes there is no trust in credibility for. we have to wait for this week to see where it's going to. as far as the theory of conflict partially is true but it's not because of the conflict in syria i think that's a growing good point there's a whole lot of different elements going on here a lot of layers to pick pill back and of course that is difficult for western countries to really understand exactly what's going on when they talk about getting involved militarily or not middle east analysts all that forty we do appreciate you joining us and giving your insight here. thirteen years it is now april and in this

election year this is the time when it starts to get good when the gloves come off and each campaign starts pulling out its big guns we're starting is already see something a you know some of the more creative and visual ad attacks launched by for example last week after president obama and outgoing russian president dmitry medvedev accidentally had a private conversation but their microphones and the group american crossroads wasted no time using that to attack obama your mission is simple mr obama we need one last elections to. civility we cannot afford since and please. let me to be will transfer the information. as president likes me treatment. a lot of your. look. all right created very so american crossroads was founded you may remember by

karl rove and is funded by some other people harold simmons an eighty year old billionaire who more or less copyrighted the phrase obama is the most dangerous american alive now also behind the american crossroads money machine is perry another eighty year old billionaire from texas who was i remember him he was the mastermind behind another very effective political ad the swift boat campaign back in two thousand and four designed to discredit the democratic presidential nominee john kerry. you know in cures nor do you know him and he lacks the capacity to leave all that you. know i'm sure you're going to hear the word hero maybe treat all shipmates he lied before the senate and john cured. more of them and served with him to the designers country most certainly. are these type of values are certain to dominate the airwaves and there are a few reasons for that the most significant of which is of course the citizens united case in which the supreme court ruled that corporations are people and their

political expenditures therefore cannot be restricted by the government as a result we've seen it's really what amounts to a few dozen people play a major role in who sings and who swims in this election cycle so when you take a closer look at many of those people are in fact pretty similar we showed you two what about the koch brothers and in particular david koch he's seventy one years old and he's got his hand in several organizations including americans for prosperity and freedom works the money is simply too much to count and some of that money of course funded the tea party its message and many of those conservative republican candidates who won those elections back in two thousand and ten but others have championed the causes of less government and a whole lot of people are still i'm sure just how much power they have it seems on many fronts to be limitless and it seems that they of course will stop at nothing to see that president obama is defeated i think when people this year will be watching it is what george soros decides to do he too is up there in age is eighty

one years old and has given about thirty million dollars in two thousand and four two thousand and six and the two thousand and eight election cycles for democrats and of course a major john f. donor for obama's two thousand and eight presidential campaign if he gives again he may well be up against a whole lot of donors supporting mitt romney one of the biggest donors so far it to the program the super pac restore our future has been frank vandersloot and he's a young one he's just sixty three years old but he's made a name for him so. as being sponsored anti-gay and history back as the recent restore our whatever it was up there certainly a vendor salute is very conservative and we no doubt haven't seen a lot of him already so people are going to we can call it follow the money monday and take a look at foster friess seventy two years old today happy birthday foster freeze his super pac is the red white and blue fund which really helped to keep rick santorum in the race to become the republican nominee and then there's

a sheldon adelson seventy eight years old his super pac is called winning our future and in his mind at least for a while he'll do newt gingrich would be a leader in that future he's been the single largest contributor to gingrich and also a major backer of israel. so as we said these wealthy candidate backers are very much alike most of them in their seventy's and eighty's and they seem to feel very entitled even though i mean let's be honest they're not going to be around for that much longer but they plan to see that the legacy that they leave is a strong foundation for the continuation of their ideologies but you may have noticed there's one candidate i have not yet mentioned ron paul he is still in the race and has some significant financial backing from this man peter teal he's just forty four years old he was born in germany and he made a fortune as an early investor in facebook and also is the founder of pay pal and he's given about two point six million dollars to the ron paul supporting super pac endorsed liberty now he is very different from the other fellows i showed you he's

openly gay he again is different from his counterparts he's given see consider all the of amounts to a lot of interesting foundations you may have never heard of the methuselah foundation that seeks to expand the human lifespan to one thousand years and he's just not your typical money man a matter what an interesting thing and we thought it was important to point out. all right now there's a proposal law in the u.k. that's making some waves and it looks like it might pass it would give one of britain's national security agencies the power to monitor all phone calls texts e-mails and online activities all in the name of quote investigating serious crime and terrorism to protect the public and this is interesting because it means internet companies would be required to install a special kind of hardware that would give the agency the ability to access who an individual or group or individual or group is in contact with how long and how frequently and they would still need a warrant to gain access to the content of the e-mails and phone calls but still

this is causing quite a stir aaron swartz is the founder and executive director of demand progress. aaron let's talk about this i mean this sounds a whole lot to me like the u.s. patriot act is that essentially what we're seeing here. yeah i mean it's very similar like the patriot act there's not a lot of details in the proposal and like the patriot act it's going to allow the government to put these boxes in that allow them to make full copies of pretty much all the internet traffic that's going back and forth on british government servers and so another thing like the patriot act is they say they're only using it to look at who you're talking to and where the data is coming from but the fact is once you put these boxes in once the government gets a copy of everything you're visiting on the internet every e-mail you're sending who knows what they're doing with it and we've seen in the u.s. that the government has all these classified programs to make other uses of the data that they refused to disclose exactly what they are and i know that there was a similar proposal and britain back in two thousand and six but there was so much

opposition that it was canned so i'm wondering i mean why do you think you know they changed why are they bringing this back up what's different now yeah i mean it's interesting that the patriot act they had to wait for a major terrorist attack before they could push through this sort of thing in the united states but i think what's happening is you know the government in britain has shifted previously it was under the labor party and so left wing activists and people on the left who protested it were able to have some influence now we have this sort of conservative and liberal democrat coalition whose support levels are already extremely low they're probably figure they can't alienate anybody else so they might as well push through their wish list of civil liberties trampling policies and you know just going off what you said i mean you said it took nine eleven to sort of push to the patriot act here let's not forget that lasted for ten years and that was reinstated as law here so i guess i'm just wondering i mean what do you think is there some sort of international opinion that the patriot act is a fact and

a really good. well i think there's an international opinion among governments everywhere that it's nice to spy on your citizens i mean who doesn't like the power to listen in on people's emails to look at what web pages people visit every government loves the ability to do that and so what we see is you know these authoritarian forces with finn every government looking for opportunities where they can increase their power and increase the scope of what they can look at and pass laws like this one now it's hard to say of course neither of us have a crystal ball but i'm wondering i just want to get your take this is obviously a cause that you believe in i mean what are some of the ways in which this can backfire what are some of the most detrimental ways that this can harm the citizens of you know the great great britain and the united states but i think you know it's an enormous threat to privacy both you know on a big scale with the government looking over everyone's shoulder but also in a small one you know the fact is just technically to make these sort of things happen they are making copies of everyone's e-mails copies of everyone's internet

traffic all it takes is one rogue government employee or a road person who set up the equipment you know they can start spying on their girlfriends they can you know there's all sorts of misbehavior that can get into even at the smaller level and you can imagine at higher levels of government you know imagine nixon was president i'm sure he would be using this kind of stuff to track his political enemies to dig up dirt about them and weaken various information to the press and you know there's organizations like yours aaron and quite a few others but the bottom line is we still haven't seen a lot of people really openly oppose the patriot act here and it looks to me and great britain at this law is going to pass there so what do you think is the reason that a lot of people are not standing up and saying wait a minute this is a very bad thing. but you know i think part of it is certainly the mainstream media you know the patriot act didn't get a lot of discussion it was rushed through without a debate and even when it came up for renewal ten years later like you said the

media still didn't cover it as a story you know it occasionally gets discussed here and there is a sort of excess of the bush administration but there's been very little ongoing coverage of exactly what it does and what it means and so people just don't know how much it's trampling on their rights and they don't know when they can take action to stop it you know these moments like patriot act renewal or like this bill going on in the u.k. they receive coverage on networks like this point but you know the vast majority of the mainstream media is too busy hacking into voice mails and things like that to cover these important civil liberties stories well it seems are the interesting though because you know like you that i can see why a lot of top government officials might enjoy that power but when you talk about the media media mainstream or alternative you'd think that the mainstream media would have a stake would have a reason to make this you know a lead story why do you think they have it. well in britain we saw they do have a stake in their state is on the wrong side i mean there's been enormous revelations about british media paying off the cops in order to spy on people to

hack their phones to have their voice mails to get this data you know if you're paying off the cops and are able to look at this stuff who wouldn't want to have more data to be able to bribe the cops and da i'm sure there's a whole bunch of british newspaper and television reporters who are just eager to write the stories they'll be able to write once they're able to get everyone's subject lines well it is an interesting topic we like to bring it up as much as possible here keep this story alive because it is an important one that affects everything is that in this country and certainly a lot of those citizens in great britain where this will most likely path aaron swartz a founder and executive director of demand progress thanks so much thanks for having me. well for us here that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america you can also check out our website our team dot com slash usa we post all of our interviews on there so if you missed anything you can of course check out now if you're on twitter go and follow me you can find me at christine for sound

now we will be back here in a half hour with a whole lot more capital account with more or less star is coming up next. the issues that so much of a bill that doesn't mean we're going to be a lot of people have areas of the power in the social networking such as facebook you tube and twitter is undeniable but are these media themselves becoming. more used today is once again flared up. these are the images the world is seeing from the streets of canada. showing corporations rule the day.