it looks like a good week for monsanto when act was signed that protects it from potential lawsuits over any damages it seems may cause we'll tell you more about the bill's supporters. and the gravel novick says the graphic novel series persepolis faces a ban in chicago schools seventh grade classrooms are no longer allowed to use the book in their curriculums but students and teachers are calling this censorship more on this page turner just ahead plus it's no surprise that as soon as your tweets leave your complete computer they enter the public arena they could even land you in hot water but imagine having a system that ranks your tweets and could predict if you're about to be fired details on the fire me out later in the show.

it's friday march twenty ninth eight pm in washington d.c. i make a lopez and you are watching r t well it was supposed to be a temporary budget bill that would curb threats of a government shutdown and fund the country for the next six months president barack obama signed house resolution ninety three into law on tuesday but hidden within the text of this budget bills a section critics are calling the monsanto protection act this section actually protects the biotech industry from being sued the farmers assurance provision takes away the federal courts right to halt the sale and use of genetically modified seed crops were guard list of public health concerns now food safety groups are calling foul they say this provision is a major violation of the separation of powers here in the u.s. to discuss this issue earlier i was joined by jeffrey of smith he's the author of the book seeds of deception i began by asking him who this provision effects. it effects the biotech industry they're trying to introduce new genetically modified

crops typically they break the laws in order to get these crops to the market without doing proper environmental impact statements and this is why they had to stop the introduction of rounds are pretty alfalfa in the past and they had to face lawsuits and court court statements that was how we would stop the introduction of sugar beets now ever had. with this provision even if the court tells the u.s.d.a. you have introduced a genetically modified crops illegally and you must stop and introduce a proper evaluation of the environmental impact this measure tells us da that they are mandatory that they're required to go ahead and allow farmers to plant it and wave their finger so to speak at the courts so it actually this members of normal balances of power and checks and balances between the courts and the executive

branch now from what i understand after a this provision will only last as long as this bill does so just about a year or so so what harm could one year really do considering the fact that monsanto and other biotech giants when the majority of their court case says how it affects us legally and environmentally well actually they continue to lose to the center for food safety because they turn they continue to introduce these products without proper environmental impact statements and so they recently asked a policy that allowed companies like monsanto to do their own environmental impact statement so now we have a situation where the foxes guarding the hen house and then also managing all the key positions but it could be that we'll have some very serious crops introduced during this six month window it's supposedly for the six month funding bill but that is doubtful that they're actually going to get to replace the bill in time in six months we may just extend the provisions of this bill which could make it last about a year as you mentioned so

a lot of damage can be done during that time right now like dancers trying to get crops on the market that can withstand doses of two four d. herbicide which is a proponent of agent orange there's other things in the line and any of these things could create major environmental catastrophes so once it's released into the environment there's no full recall that you can do because the judge. propagate through a hole in it because it's so propagating tradin exclusion that you know global warming a nuclear waste so potentially huge consequences now one of the major proponents for this bill is actually senator roy blunt he the new york daily news actually reported that this mizoram is oriya senator actually worked with monsanto to craft section seven three five which is an essential protection act here's a few other c.t. things that i was able to dig up about him first of all he's a ranking member of appropriations subcommittee is on agriculture we're all development and also the food and drug administration he also received sixty four

thousand two hundred fifty dollars from an santo for campaign committee for his campaign committee between two thousand and eight and two thousand and eleven that's according to the center for responsive politics and that actually makes him the largest party recipient of monsanto funding as of late so what should we make of all of this since he is the one that actually put this part of the bill. this is perfectly typical of the kind of things that monsanto does than the bottom give this to an agricultural industrial giants have spent tens of millions of dollars hundreds of millions of dollars in fact lobbying washington and paying for campaign contributions etc and i think we all know that the person in charge of all a c. at the f.d.a. back in one hundred ninety two when the general policy was created was bugged out his former attorney and later my sandoz vice president and now the u.s. food safety czar back at the f.d.a. even the u.s. secretary of agriculture don't sack the biotech governor of the year when he was

the iowa governor and gave auxerre to an award in year two thousand so we have a situation where there's key people in the obama administration who are basically month sentiment or have been receiving financial support so this is why we are in favor of a market campaign to stop g.m. goes where people avoid g m o's because they're actually dangerous for health and then we'll see the companies eliminate them even if the government still works marching in lockstep with the biotech industry so obviously they're very influential when it comes to both the biotech industry as well as possibly a lawmaker that you're saying now is some democrats are simply claiming that they didn't know anything about this particular part of the bill the entire bill which was h.r. nine three three was about seventy eight pages long i read the section seventy five myself i found the text to be rather cryptic but i'm not a paid to vote for these things is this an assertion that the democrats simply

didn't know about the monsanto protection act a valid excuse or does it highlight perhaps a bigger problem about our legislators i think yes and no this did not go through the normal committees for the digital committee or the agricultural committee and it should have because it really is just to rate the checks and balances of the government and is probably ok. to chanel's in fact even secretary don't sext office mentioned in a response to the press is going to check with the digital branch because it may be unconstitutional this was done the appropriations committee kind of is in and around so that shows if the entire mechanism of government has been hijacked and it explains why some of the senators and congressmen didn't really notice the time because it didn't go through normal channels however tens of thousands of people have contacted their senators and congressmen and over one hundred thousand people called the white house demanding that president obama veto this particular section

he ignored the callers the senators and congressmen ignored the callers as a whole and we end up with this extreme we don't come to to show acid which could really result in significant damage to the environment something we're going. to show you something we're definitely going to have to follow up on jeffrey smith author of faith of the steps and thank you fer opinions. and as if the because chicago pulled public school system wasn't under enough fire for planning to close fifty four schools this year the school district is taking heat for removing the award winning graphic novel persepolis from the seventh grade curriculum at first a notice was sent out to schools ordering teachers to remove all copies of this book from classrooms and libraries but then the blanket ban was reduced to a ban from using this novel in the seventh grade curriculum this book has only ever been banned in one other place a run leading to a public outcry of school censorship by outraged parents and students alike they

rallied outside of schools to demand an end to book banning here's the justification chicago public school chief barbara bird bennett gave for banning the novel she said that the book quote contains graphic language and images that are not appropriate for general use in the seventh grade curriculum she also said it uses powerful images of torture however that assertion is one that the author majoris denies she claims that the only one of these parades that was actually in the graphic novel actually depicted torture or to correspondent on a saucy it you're going to take a different look at the controversy surrounding the book. this march has been a month of eyebrow raising decision surrounding the chicago public school system coinciding with the recent protests sparking announcement to shut down a record number of public schools for u.s. history a total of fifty four another recent announcement has been causing much to be controversy here in chicago now this internationally acclaimed autobiographical graphic novel called persepolis depicting the life of marjane satrapi focusing on

her earlier years during the one nine hundred seventy nine iranian revolution has currently been banned for seventh graders in chicago now it's interesting to note that this novel the film adaptation of this novel has been winning many international awards was also nominated for an academy award in the best animated feature film category take a look because she questions. to divest. you because should you best get. to she said. earlier this month instructions were sent out to chicago public schools demanding that all copies of this book were no longer to be found in classrooms and libraries although this band was later downplayed to just a bounce around to seven graders it's currently being debated whether or not this novel should also be bad for children in the eighth ninth and tenth grades now

initially was speculated that education system officials were concerned with the message of islamophobia being sent out by this book and that the feelings of muslim students could be heard but later the announced that in fact they were more concerned about some of the graphic language and graphic images depicted in this book and although there are certainly some scenes surrounding topics such as violence sex and torture critics say that really nothing in this book is not something that students in chicago. we have already seen on t.v. news and more sadly in their neighborhoods here in chicago they're saying that possibly officials are concerns that students could draw one parallel to many when it comes to their own lives now it's important to note that many free speech groups scholars and the chicago teachers unions have spoken out against this ban they have said that this book has a lot to teach to students that it's been taught for years here in chicago as well

as throughout the united states and they believe that this latest ban this act of censorship is quote constitutionally suspect now they're also saying that it's important to remember that as many as ironically and sadly one hundred sixty schools here in chicago don't even have libraries so maybe education officials have better things to concentrate on and also we have to point out that ironically this book another country where it's bad the only other country in the world is iraq and . chicago illinois now the graphic novel itself was published back in two thousand and a film adaptation came to life in two thousand and seven as a result the film was nominated for an academy award for best animated feature film here's part of that film. trade. show. the original track the best something graphic novel. i love comes from

life in life everyone always has to try. saying the straight. forgive. yourself for twenty years. now in essence a graphic novel is an autobiographical account of marshawn such properties childhood in the one nine hundred seventy nine iranian revolution here's how she describes the novel. it's a human point of view and greedy if there is one missing in this movie is the humanistic message is that human beings anywhere is the same and they have their life through their right to leave because they have dreams because they have love because they have parents and kids. for food all of us worth something and then we have to understand that the situation is not as easy as we think so why is this book being banned on the seventh grade curriculum and why now earlier i asked those

questions to acacia connor she scored nater for the kids rights to read project at the national coalition against censorship. oh why this book i really wish i could tell you i think that there's been fortunately a complete lack of transparency and growth before the ban and when the ban was first handed down and then afterwards when the school was backtracking to try and decide what it excuse what excuse it would use and it finally settled on this panel in the book that does depict a man who was a family friend of the main character being tortured and then ultimately murdered but that is something that obviously goes hand in hand with evolution and it's portrayed in a very almost quieter sanitary way in the book and the book has many affecting parts and i think that. reporter rightly noted chicago public school students have seen their share of violence and this this book i'm sure is nothing shocking or

alarming to them now the books offer claims that torture in this book is limited to one frame and that children these days are exposed to much more gruesome things than one drawing in a graphic novel here's the frame that is being contest it now as you can see its show was a man being peed on and whipped and burned with an iron and being cut into pieces it's unsettling yes but it's also very real so we should be trying to hide these realities from our children i mean by the seventh grade to our children have already learned about the holocaust so why hide this. absolutely and i think it's really unclear why they're hiding it but we see it all the time that we have kids right to read we have challenges on a daily basis that come up where people are trying to hide information from students whether it be about sex or violence whether it be profanity related religious issues things like euthanasia that are they're sensitive there's a real need to control information and limit that in certain when it comes to

certain parents certain administrator is and it's or is really unclear what's going on here in the show how chicago public schools and they really have not offered any justification for why this ban had to happen in the first place and it was very sweeping at the beginning it was to be removed from all libraries and all classrooms immediately without any explanation and they backtracked and sort of said only it must be removed suddenly from seventh graders and then teachers would be required to take training through a through tenth grade but even so why and why now in the middle of the school year at the you know this is march why so suddenly and it's i think that. the main problem with chicago public schools of there is a huge lack of transparency and they do not have what many school districts have which is a district wide policy for handling materials complaints and having open and

transparent and consistent clear conversations about whether materialism is appropriate and including their teachers and students in that conversation that was acacia o'connor carbonator at the kids' right to read project at the national coalition against censorship. well most of us have learned by now that posting something on the internet is more powerful than ordinary ink even if you delete it copies can surface years later congressman anthony weiner found this out the hard way when he accidentally tweeted out a picture of his genital region to the world but even that horror story hasn't prevented people from going over the line online across the country employees are using their twitter as a place to vent about their jobs and their bosses but a new internet application called fire me can actually track what people are saying about their bosses to explain more about this app and a few other digital developments digital media specialist ashton moore joined me earlier he began by explaining what exactly this fire is all about so the fire me

is actually following everybody if we treat tweet right now it will show up on the live web application and its website to anybody can access and on there they have a list of tweets that they call most offensive or mostly because you fired and even go so far as to have a section is most likely to kill their boss so how can this potentially her employees is this enough evidence to have some fire. absolutely without a doubt people have been fired for less and. today i think that a lot of social media sites are over utilized by people who don't understand the real breach that they have everything that you tweet unless you have your account locked is public everything that you say is looked at by employers unless you've lost them and also potential employers if you're on the job search but at the same

time ash and i have to ask you i mean it's kind of their fault right i mean you can only blame the employees because they're the ones that are putting this up online it's no secret that this stuff is going to go up online i agree completely i would call it all night i did it he managed right and it's extremely important today to make sure everything from your linked in profile to even your facebook profile if you don't have the whole thing locked down to the things that you tweet to everything that you put out on the internet is saved and a tweet these days talk twitter users or their tweets are catalogued and saved immediately so even if they go and delete it it's still there it can still be found now and we know that the library of congress also keeping track of those they want to keep it as part of history so it could be you making fun of your employer bashing them or whatever but twitter isn't the only social media site where employers can actually employees can actually get in trouble facebook for instance knows if you're procrastinating because it knows what you're doing and what you're signed into and if you're signed a network also should be concerned about this well i think it really depends on the

work environment that you're in a lot of for example for arms in d.c. actually like their. staff to engage on facebook to tweet about the company and to talk about the company on linked in whereas if you're a air traffic controller you probably should not be on social media so it really depends but all things they were using it for what you're doing with it and how much you're using it in your workday and technology helps people connect when we're getting to a point. where we're connecting too much doesn't actually hurt they the basic point of this technology the point is to help us get information but can also be very damning against us on the flip side i think is wonderful and the reason why is you can actually project to the world exactly what you want the world to think of you so if you say like i for example i do digital media so if you look for me you'll find me you'll find stuff about me if i mean doing that and the same for any

specialist you can make sure that your message is crafted to connect to the people that you want to connect to you can make sure people just stumble across you find the image of the person you want to be online and you just have to know what your limitations are you have to know the things that are public or public in the things that are private probably aren't as private as you think sure well and i think the big question here is really what are the lessons that we're teaching our children when you're in the seventh grade or the eighth grade you're not really thinking about how this picture or this post can affect your future what kind of lesson should we be instilling in our kids about the things that we post now that can affect us years later i think today we actually live in a new era of this today i mean sit in the library of congress today everything that we say and do will be looked back on and i forget it was somebody very famous maybe it may be obama who said children if i can say anything to you today if you want to career in politics to think about what you post online be cautious and be wary and

be just be very pointed with what you project and what you say now some assume the people that are running for political office will have a facebook long before the elections i mean we when we had president obama first coming out as a candidate you know everyone was very worried about the fact that he smoked what will we see is the future what we've learned is this just another door to transparency with our elected officials or does it go too far well i think that if if you do have plans for office to say a teenager and her. school and you plan to take that that should be something you're thinking about now you should think about what you say and they where you check in on foursquare you should think about where you're seen and you should just say to yourself is this something that i want people to know that i've done twenty years from now because twenty years ago we didn't have this today we do so today we just have to be very careful and very aware of it it's certainly going to change the way people learn about others in the future and it's already doing that

actually more digital media specialist thank you for joining us well even though we're in the middle of a sequester there are plenty of programs that are completely safe from being caught on the chopping block bank with the missile defense program that the pentagon doesn't want and considers entirely too expensive artie's the president tells us more. the medium extended air defense system mean for short that is you should americans because your government is spending three hundred eighty million of your dollars on it it's one of those spending to spend system that is

supposed to intercept the missile which of course we want those those are the coolest the job is contracted to lockheed martin to get all the cool defense contracts from our government they got close to forty billion of our tax dollars in two thousand and eleven alone they must be awesome at making super cool defense pigs right not really actually at least not in the case of this meade system because according to the office of our secretary of defense needs has not met any scheduling or cost targets the project has been a total mess and that was introduced in the mid one nine hundred ninety s. and everyone in washington knows this one senator even referred to it as the missile to nowhere which is pretty hilarious but nowhere so in twenty eleven the department of defense was like ok let's cancel this means thing because it's not coming together a and b. we actually already have another duplicate missile intercepting program the patriot

missile program for real work funding to about so this month congress finally agreed to stop funding the broken which dundon the program but then just about one minute later they decided to keep funding guests so we are continuing to spend millions of dollars on a defense system. we all know socks that the pentagon doesn't even want why you as apparently italy and germany are working with lockheed martin on it and they would be very mad at us if we pulled out because they want the money we don't want to hurt anyone's feelings but more than that we don't want to pay the termination fees if we didn't curry if we suddenly pulled out but ponies of the project say it cost us almost the same amount of money to pull out of the projects as it were to finish it so we might as well just finish it detractors say that's a load of crap that if the project continues it will end up costing us a lot more what a total utter quagmire why don't we operate like this it could be the fact that

lockheed martin has a political action committee that spent over four million dollars last year which puts thousands of dollars directly into a four hundred and thirty two congressmen pocket seriously lockheed martin gave over four hundred congress meant thousands and thousands of dollars each through their pac that might be why they keep getting their funding that might also explain why congress to follow expensive war toys or it could just be that we're terrible at contract negotiations and the italians and germans goal of terminating clauses boom but no matter what the resent the bottom line is that america you will continue to pay for me to project no matter how crappy and useless it might be tonight let's talk about that by putting me on twitter at the read.

and that's going to do it for the news for this week but stay tuned we're working on a whole new lineup of stories for you from next week first dozens of federal agents raided the home of you tube celebrity kyle f. f.p.s. russia myers will have the skinny on this. public property that came out and d. handed and we may be entering the new age of super diseases decades after the world has benefited from antibiotics there is a growing case of bacteria becoming drug resistant we'll take a look at the microscope next week and as the suffering u.s. job market recovers wall street billionaires still stand on top r.t. will explore how the one percent has not only gotten wealthier during an economic downturn but downright rich as numbers go up. and those are just a few of the stories that we have in store for you next week along with more news and in-depth interviews so keep it tuned in right here to our t.v. and that's going to do it for me for tonight's but if you missed any of today's

stories you are in luck we pose all of our interviews online in full just go to our website youtube dot com slash r.t. america and there you can click comment and forward our stories to your friends and for the latest and greatest information on all the stories that we cover today and a bunch that we just did not have time to get to go to our web site r.t. dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at meghan underscore lopez now today i asked the twitter verse should g.m.o. foods be labeled it's estimated that seventy percent of food in grocery stores contains some sort of g.m. ingredient proponents say that it makes for greater transparency critics say will actually deter people from choosing g.m. foods and could hurt farmers in the process so should they be labeled well here are some of your responses occupy phoenix said quote absolutely and it would help remind people to look what's in their food and make the public healthier and this

from ronald after obama signed h.r. ninety three the concept of g.m.o. will become conspiracy only whispered about next will be asked pardon me hiding i sorry the is of course a type of sugar that is allegedly causing cancer and for a says ask your government to follow hungry they destroy all monsanto g.m.o. corn fields now voris i researched your story and guess the ministry of rural development in hungary actually admitted to destroying almost one thousand acres and acres of maize they found to have been grown with genetically modified seeds now that's because g.m.o. seeds are illegal in the country in congress anyway during the g.m.o. investigation in that hungry controllers found pioneer monsanto products among the seeds that they planted hence they were destroyed along with all other types of g.m.o. seeds so is hungry on to something or are they freaking out keep the comments coming and let's get this discussion going at meghan under.