there's a report on our. today on our t.v. maze right around the corner and that means another class of college graduates is ready to enter the workforce armed with today's diplomas and debt and in july deadline can set interest rates sky high we'll show you what some students are doing in retaliation. ever wonder what's in your meat or how the animals are treated before they're sent to the slaughter house well they answer those questions are now a little harder to come by coming up we'll tell you about a new gag law that's helping hide farm abuse. and don't count your delegates before the votes are counted it turns out ron paul actually won a majority of the delegates and i won minnesota looks like the oldest republican presidential candidate still has some fight left. my it's wednesday april twenty fifth five pm in washington d.c.

i'm abby martin you're watching r.t. the american dream go to college to get your dream job so you can own a home with the white picket fence and live happily ever after however for many college students and graduates in the u.s. the notion of the american dream has become a full blown nightmare coined one t. day today marks the day that student debt has topped one trillion dollars exceeding the auto loan and credit card debt in the u.s. one of the biggest problems is the exploitation of the predatory student loan industry sallie mae america's largest private investor assigns low income student interest rates of up to twenty five percent let's take a look at just some of the stats to wishin costs have risen six hundred percent over the last thirty years average in-state tuition has risen by eight percent just last year two thousand and ten graduates have an average of twenty five thousand two hundred fifty dollars in student debt. it's a hot topic on the campaign trail with obama and romney agreeing that the student

loan interest rates congress and stated to freeze in the two thousand and seven college cost reduction and access act should stay at three point four percent without intervention this year they'll jump to six point eight percent when the act expires which will add another thousand dollars burden of debt per student loan with this mounting debt on the shoulders of those entering the workplace it's almost impossible to get a job or actually own a home and respond to this crisis today the occupy the student debt campaign is holding rallies and doing direct actions in at least twelve cities nationwide now over the last year and a half we've seen thousands of students coming out to protest to wish in hikes university of privatization in london chile and just last week in montreal and they've all turned violent we have a crew of the student protests in new york and we'll bring you more on the one t. day later this evening. with mad cow disease on the rise ammonia treated being fat

and pink slime nuggets do people have the right to know what they're eating and what what how their food is made if it's left up to the big agribusiness and factory farms the answer is no and if you try to find out you could be charged with a third degree felony they're called agag laws which make it illegal to conduct undercover investigations into the treatment of livestock on factory farms i when you talk of already passed bills this year that bans the practice and missouri could be close behind so that these laws protect farmers and their businesses like legislators can claim or is this just a desperate attempt by the food industry to cover up their unsafe and inhumane practices i'm joined by matt reiss director of investigations mercy for animals so matt the big question i guess is if they have nothing to hide why are they hiding everything. that is a good question abbie and undercover investigations by mercy for animals and other groups across the country have exposed egregious cruelties unsafe work or working

conditions unsanitary conditions at factory farms and slaughterhouses nationwide and in response rather than improve conditions for animals and make things safer for customers pro factory farm legislators in some states are working to criminalize these undercover investigations and prevent the public from finding out what's happening behind the closed doors of these facilities what exactly do these bills criminalize and what are the penalties. well there's a number of different states and each bill is a little bit different but most of them focus specifically on making it illegal to take photographs or videos of anything happening on a factory farm or slaughterhouse or other facility that raises and kills animals for food these are blatant violations of free speech and freedom of the press and thinly veiled attempts to keep consumers in the dark about how and where their food comes from you mentioned before about previous undercover investigations that have actually led. to some legislation passed and you know we saw there is an act passed

that actually unstated safer practices for hens and things like that can you talk about some of these investigations that have actually led to safer food practices and caused practices a change. well one of the biggest beef recalls in the united states history was prompted by an undercover investigation done by the humane society of the united states in california and this was at a beef processes. excuse me a beef slaughterhouse here in california and what they found was just not only agree just cruelty to animals but unsafe and unsanitary practices and downed animals as animals who were too sick or injured to stand being pushed prodded forklift it and water boarded in order to get them on to the kill floor and into the human food supply and they found that this this beef was actually on its way to the national school lunch program and the scariest part is that there were u.s.d.a.

inspectors at this facility and yet these these things were going on and they were not being stopped and in many cases u.s.d.a. inspectors have said that even when they speak out all that happens is they get reprimanded and sent to another facility so really there are no meaningful watchdogs at these facilities and so it's vital that we are able to conduct these undercover investigations and expose these practices and get laws in place and protect not only the animals who are being treated cruelly but also consumers who have a right to know where their food comes from that's a really good point you know a lot of consumers expect that the u.s.d.a. apartment agriculture is really taking care of this and they really shouldn't care about it because of course you know they're being done safely why would these regulatory bodies allow these practices to go on package spoiled me abuse animals but really as you said it does go on and a lot of people are reprimanded for trying to expose that which is a huge problem who is backing these bills matt. well these bills are being backed

by the giants in the factory farming industry including monsanto one of the biggest ones and if you look at the legislators the pro factory farm legislators that are trying to push these through and almost every single case these are people who have been receiving massive campaign contributions from the agribusiness industry so it's a very thinly veiled attempt again to silence whistleblowers and keep the cruel and unsanitary in unsafe practices of the factory farming industry hidden behind closed doors with companies like monsanto and other huge agribusiness is backing and you know funneling thousands of money in a campaign contributions for these legislators how can the consumer really stop it . well the exciting thing is is that as people are becoming aware of these issues in these ag gag bills across the country consumers have been standing up and they've been contacting their legislators in many of these states and in so he says like new york and tennessee these bills have actually been shot down once the

public spoke and let their legislators know that this is not in their best interest and if you can think about it these this is an industry that's proven time and time again to be incapable of self regulation and no other industry has these kinds of protection if you could imagine these laws being passed to protect daycares so that people couldn't expose child abuse or sexual assault at a daycare or senior home that wouldn't fly but factory farming industry unfortunately has so much money and so much power they're able to influence some corrupt politicians to push this time legislation through often under the nose of their constituents but once constituents find out about it they're outraged and they want to know they want more transparency in food production not less and they're speaking out against it you know these two bills that are already passed seem to be passed to really quickly and now we have another bill in the forefront and it happened in such a quick period of time i mean are you worried that this type of legislation is

going to be mimicked and passed in more states and and if so how can we really rally to prevent that we are worried these bills that passed in iowa and utah are setting a dangerous person it nationwide to keep the cruel practices of the factory farming industry hidden behind closed doors keeping consumers in the dark about where their food comes from this is a dangerous precedent that runs public health threatens animal welfare and it's the wrong direction so people really need to speak up go to our website mercy for animals dot org find out more about these ag gag bills and how you can take action to stop them and we will be pursuing every legal avenue to overturn the bills that have already passed in iowa and utah. not to wrap up the segment is there any truth to the business side of it that says you know we're not doing anything wrong we just feel like these activists are coming in here and trying to bring us down and really put forward a slanted truth that that's an exaggeration well you really have to wonder if they

are unwilling to show the public what's happening behind closed doors what they have to hide and we're seeing every time we get into one of these facilities we're documenting. the shock and horrify most americans were documenting unsafe working conditions we're documenting sick and injured in diseased animals interim the human food supply that's what they're trying to hide and we're trying to expose that these industries are corrupt and they know it and the only defense they have against these investigations is to criminalize them and that you're right a lot of people are so detached with what we eat and it really takes something like this for people to wake up to how their food is really made that was matt rice director of investigations at mercy for animals. everyone stop the presses seriously stop the presses republican presidential candidate ron paul just won iowa i know first we were told romney won then it was santorum turns out it was ron paul even though they only won twenty one percent of the primary vote he gained fourteen

out of the twenty eight delegates in iowa bringing him in first place for the state don't believe me take a look at these headlines ron paul wins in iowa and also minnesota or at least tied for first place once again the delegate strategy poll predicted worked in the state where he got only twenty seven percent of the primary vote but gained twenty out of forty of minnesota's delegates even though the corporate press loves to tell romney as having the nomination locked in ron paul continues to throw an interesting wrench in the narrative and the face of the growing military industrial complex paul's ideas of smaller government and nonintervention isn't prove its place at the table has a base of grassroots support nationwide that remains ever village vigilant and the first quarter of two thousand and twelve alone paul raised over ten million dollars most of which came from under two hundred dollars small donors donations so the delegate strategy worked for paul in iowa in minnesota but could this an orthodox approach actually work it enough states to win him the g.o.p.

nomination to answer that more i was joined earlier by a volunteer an organizer ron paul supporter mary wilson i asked her if this strategy could actually work and here's what she had to say. yes absolutely ron paul's strategy has been brilliant all along the campaign didn't just start this year you know there was a lot leading up to it after his first campaign and the campaign for liberty began and the delegate strategy was quite brilliant and i don't expect to see him doing poorly in a lot of the states actually we've won now minnesota as well as iowa but i also think we've done incredibly well in colorado i don't expect to see anything. small out of nevada maine. washington there's a lot of states where this strategy is paying off big but a lot of ron paul supporters cite the nineteen twenty warren harding strategy as

really a means for paul to win is not really just an archaic interpretation of a system that's changed pretty vastly since then. i'm sure the rules of changing the system has changed but it's still a two party system the way that that the one thing that all delegates have in common what i like to say the one thing that delegates all delegates have in common is their patriotic they care they've gotten motivated to do something positive about the situation of things and i think no matter if you originally got on board because you supported santorum or michele bachmann or whoever you supported when you became a delegate i think at the end of the day when you get to tampa and you're there and you've invested so much and you come to realize that mitt romney is obama there there is absolutely no difference between the two of them and mitt romney has already lost the general election he can't even debate he's never want to debate

before if you put them on the stage together between obama and romney it's going to be a love fest they're just going to agree oh you win your obamacare here well you're the author of that so i think the delegates will realize when you have everyone talking among themselves and speaking out about why we all support ron paul i think that there's a lot of people who originally supported other candidates who are going to support ron paul it is interesting in the corporate press has already kind of locked and romney in you know when you see ron paul kind of sneakily getting ahead in this strategic way but you know every state has different rules when it comes to caucuses and their primaries and delegate strategies how i mean how many states can ron paul realistically do this in. well throughout the caucus states yeah the rules are different in every state whether they're bound delegates or on bound delegates but like i said when you get to the convention that's when things will be to

determine you can't say right now who's winning because these are these delegates are people they're people who care about the future of our nation and they're going to you know not everybody's you going to do what's right for the party they're going to do what's right for america that's who these people are so just because you know everybody has experienced it before they've seen what you know when the party chooses the candidate like john mccain you know we don't win and we one thing that every delegate has in common not only are they patriots the one common thread is that you know the motivation is defeating barack obama getting barack obama out of office and most people know already that romney is obama that they're both financed by goldman sachs we already know that goldman sachs and you know five other banks are controlling our federal reserve system where they know that the media is controlled by five corporations americans are waking up we have access to the information now that's why they're trying so hard to take the internet away and censor it with their sopa and pipa insist on everything else because americans are

a lot more informed now and the ron paul revolution isn't just about a delegate strategy i mean we've got a senator we got an ophthalmologist into the senate without a hick up and there's a lot more people on the ballots for the this election and i know that there's one hundred thirty liberty republican candidates on the ballot in my county alone who are you know becoming the new party so or you know reviving resuscitating the republican party that's on its last legs so. it's truly i reseated us so far we still have a lot of military support for ron paul a lot of the political action committees for you know obviously has his message is ringing loud and clear for a lot of people and a lot of people in. military active duty are giving him contributions and that really does say something that the corporate media doesn't really like to talk about but let's just say this very let's say that november fifth comes along and

ron paul for whatever reason his name is not on the ballot what then would you write him in. i believe as they will be on the ballot i like i'm like i'm saying there there's no chance of us having a mitt romney presidency it's not going to happen there's no doubt in my mind that ron paul is going to win the nomination i know but what if he doesn't win and i mean i mean let's just say hypothetically. that he doesn't would you write him in i mean would you say would you recommend that people do right and then sure absolutely i'm not going to recommend that somebody vote for romney or obama obama any night. you know in two thousand and eight mary a lot of ron paul supporters were pretty upset after giving him millions of dollars for his campaign that he didn't run as a libertarian i know that he was also going to run for congress again and maybe had something to do with it and people like to you know put him in a box of you were

a libertarian are you republican libertarian or what not but would you say i mean would you support him running libertarian you think that that's a chance that he would run as a libertarian if he does not win the nomination i mean it's his last hurrah you know what does he have to lose. i really don't know if running as a libertarian is the answer i would definitely encourage him to run i will make as big of an support for him as i can no matter what the name of the party is or whatever but i really strongly feel our roots are in the republican party people are joining the republican party getting back to its roots and this is after his two thousand and eight election the campaign didn't stop there just because he didn't run as a third party that was just not winnable but he's very conscious of what he does with the money that people contribute and the campaign for liberty began that's how senator rand became you know got into the senate and there are so many other people

now who are also coming into the party and coming into politics i don't want to be in politics whatsoever i much prefer a real estate but i'm willing to do it because i care about freedom and mary last question a wrap of the segment would you support his son rand in a future presidential race. quite possibly rand i think has a little bit more maturing to do i'm really a lot more supportive of ron paul but i like grant ran to scrape i think he can can use a little bit more experience and i could use a little bit more clarification about his positions but sure he's definitely better than the alternatives that we've got so far and he seems like a pretty great human being and i think i'm really proud that somebody like him is actually in the senate now i think we've got a lot more people like him coming in regular hardworking americans who care about our country not career politicians. it is great to see another politician really on

the civil liberties front like rand i agree that he definitely has a lot of growing to do to embody his that in the ideal that is that stands for that was volunteer organizer and ron paul supporter mary wilson. still ahead on our t.v. it's a bird it's a plane actually it's a drone so what's the likelihood you may see one flying over your backyard details after the break. r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to u.s. .

interests. but in the alone a fellow you know gets a real headline with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and for what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back to t.v. . what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to break through that sort of deeply and made who can you trust no one who is you know in view with the global machinery see where we had a state controlled capitalism it's called sessions when nobody dares to ask we do r t question more.

drones coming soon to a protest near you and addition to obama's expansive drone killing out for us in the middle east congress just passed a bill earlier this year that opens the u.s. skies to unmanned drone surveillance for domestic and military operations in a surveillance society where people are already accustomed to being filmed on every street corner the constant aerial surveillance of drones will make privacy even more obsolete there are currently three hundred active drone permits in the u.s. held by varied institutions according to foil requests those include dozens of universities and small law enforcement agencies remember this story from north dakota. nelson county north dakota sheriff tell y'all q. was looking for six missing cattle before but three are brought her brothers chased him away now called the highway patrol so what's in the box one at a predator drone operated by u.s. customs and border protection the drug was used to surveil the property until the browser brothers were observed to be at our business what to do to make the arrests

the drone industry is a huge one fifty companies are already developing over one hundred fifty systems ranging from miniature models to those comparable to airliners many of them will also be armed taking the weapons of the u.s. at war right here at home although the government claims that the drones will only be used for specific cases and not just on surveillance we see time and time again constant abuses of power within the expanding security and surveillance industries so are these drones essential to our national security or are they the latest infringement on our liberties for this topic i was joined earlier by amy stepanovna the national security council for epic here's her take. well congress passed this bill as you said earlier this year that allowed drones to well facilitate drones operating the united states and they did it without a hearing without really anything they passed it very quickly and it went through and nobody really heard anything about it two senators just recently have come back senator markey and senator barton and said wait

a second there are privacy issues with this we need to have the f.a.a. and we need to have the manufacturers answer a few questions about what's going on but this kind of butts up against deadlines that have already been passed into law that the f.a.a. has to meet in order to increase in the air space so there's some tension there between if we're going to address the privacy issues which are very very real and serious or if we're going to move forward with the firm deadlines in place and if the skies are going to open up without privacy protections which would be very bad . that would be awful and i'm you know they still use really in the forefront of this trying to push for these provisions and really. congressional oversight on what this would mean for the privacy of americans and you know when i when i think of war technology being used right here at home it is a really scary concept i mean when you think of the tank the news out of afghanistan you don't really think of it being in a park nearby and what would that do to the psyche of the american people bringing this war technology that we're using right here at home well

a lot of people believe a lot of researchers and security experts including ryan kalo who's on ethics advisory board believe that using drones the united states will actually instigate a privacy renaissance that people are going to look up and see these you know flying machines flying around catching them on camera being able to videotape their every move and they're actually going to have a visceral reaction in a way that they haven't had before to persistent tracking most of which has been done online and you can't watch an online tracker watch you from web site to web site but you can see a drone and you can see it in the air keeping track of you for the most part there are the ones that that. you can't see that flies and do you think that this would be detrimental to the growing discontent and dissent that you see in america you're talking about that this would cause a kind of retaliatory thing and do you think that that's the case do you think that these people are not going to accept this and that it's really going to or do you

think it is going to stifle dissent and really create a chilling effect where people are going to say i don't want to do anything because i'm scared that i'm being watched i think that is definitely part of the concern we see in studies again and again reveal that when people are on camera and people know that they are being watched they're less likely to speak out they're less likely to protest actually in washington d.c. it came out that cameras were being put into place in order to watch areas where protests were about to occur in order to stifle dissent which is a big problem and i think that that might be something that happens but i think that even more than it stifling dissent is people are going to come back and say no i think people really think that this might have crossed a line and less privacy protections are put into place before drones and or the air space i don't think people are going to let it happen i think people are going to come to know though it seems like a lot of people are so out of touch and detached from the surveillance state it's so you know we're so conditioned to just accept these small incremental

surveillance provisions in our lives do you think that people really even know that they're being surveilled by drones well the studies show that after these regulations are put into place after these deadlines come and the f.a.a. allows drones in our airspace to actually tens of thousands of drones are going to enter our airspace in the next ten years and i don't think americans can ignore that that's an incremental change it's a huge change and you're seeing him like you said earlier on the same thing at universities law enforcement all over the place being used for things that you just don't really think about drone aircraft being used for and they might have very positive implications they might be used to identify where forest fires are or one drone actually states. was used to see that a plant was actually polluting the water however they also have very serious privacy and civil liberties repercussions what about the people who say well i have nothing to hide i don't care you know i can be surveilled and i'm not doing anything wrong why or why should the average american care well i think that

whenever you come up against surveillance you find that any widespread method of surveillance is going to catch certain instances of bad actors doing bad deeds and miss instances of people who are doing anything wrong however when catching those bad actors comes at the cost of widespread near constant surveillance of the american public it's not in line with our constitutional values and son in line with what we as an american country stands for and what of our you know hearing you talk about this makes me think of the patriot act and it's like these provisions were set in the place over ten years ago and so many people are just just accept them now it's like maybe you first will be up in arms about and say you know we don't want this is this really necessary to have this wanton surveillance of everyone just to catch a few bad apples or whatnot i mean how likely are we to really repeal this or do anything about it if you know these provisions are put in place that the privacy provisions well i think there's there might be a little bit of a difference i'm hoping there's a little bit of a difference first of all we're catching this very early on the patriot act or

stuff passed very quickly and went into place very quickly and nobody really had a chance to say wait a second we need to stop and think about it we're catching this right after the actual been passed people been talking about drone surveillance for quite some time now and i think people are on the issue quicker the other issue is that this isn't military this isn't for terrorism the patriot act kind of came into play under this very real threat that people thought that that we were going to be once again the attack of a large they're the target of a large scale terrorist attack and drones operating the united states under regular law enforcement police surveillance and conducting just normal watching of every day american citizens is not they're not out to catch terrorists they're out to catch just normal everyday people maybe doing something bad but it's the threat is very very different. that was amy's the bomb of the national security council for epic and that does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america or check out our website.