three brown the deals for your media projects three of the deal done to our teeth dot com. coming up on r t the world watches the see if the u.s. will launch a military strike against syria u.s. and allies insist that syria has used chemical weapons on its own people more on the latest developments ahead and through another n.s.a. snowden leak it was revealed that the u.s. is spying on allies at the united nations and the u.n. isn't happy about it will ask if this surveillance is against international law just ahead and there's a new case of racial profiling with the t.s.a. airport security a man was detained for hours without food or water he was interrogated and much more will look at flying while muslim later in today's show.

and it's wednesday august twenty eighth four pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sachs and you're watching r.t. and we begin with the united states on the verge of military action in syria today president obama gave a speech at the lincoln memorial to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the march on washington but more pressing on his mind is how the united states and its allies will react to an alleged chemical strike in war torn syria today the u.n. special envoy to syria acknowledged that some kind of chemical substance was used last week outside damascus claiming the lives of more than one thousand people and nato called the attack quote a clear breach of international norms president obama is reaching out to allies in planning for a round of military strikes against selected targets of the assad regime the white house stressed on tuesday that the goal of the strikes is not to remove assad from power but instead to punish his government for carrying out the strikes but president obama. is unlikely to find any support in the arab world for this move

the arab league though it blames the syrian government for the chemical attack that has already expelled president assad won't endorse military action in retaliation and here in the united states congress wants to have a say before any military action is taken twenty two members of the house of representatives have written a letter to the white house demanding congress approve any military strike democratic congresswoman barbara lee from california said while the use of chemical weapons is deeply troubling in unacceptable i believe there is no military solution to the complex syrian crisis and the harshest words against u.s. intervention came from former u.s. congressman dennis kucinich who said so what we're about to become al qaeda is the air force now this is a very very serious matter that has broad implications internationally and it's trying to minimize it by saying we're just going to have a targeted strike that's an act of war it's not anything to be trifled with.

meanwhile the u.n. security council received a draft from british prime minister david cameron authorizing what he calls the necessary measures to be taken in syria but such a resolution can't gain approval on the security council given that both russia and china have a veto and are both critical of military strikes in syria of course the united states already knew this after all they know what everyone is talking about at the united nations at least that's what we learned over the weekend when a new n.s.a. leak from edward snowden revealed a spy program known as apalachee where in the n.s.a. is spying on allies in europe the u.n. and elsewhere around the world among the targets bugged the european union building in new york city as well as the e.u. embassy in washington and the international atomic energy agency in vienna computer networks were hacked into video conferences were eavesdropped on and hard drives were copied and it's more proof that the n.s.a.

is global surveillance activities reach far beyond counter terror efforts of the u.n. is responding harshly to these new revelations and a spokesperson for the secretary general spoke to r.t. about it all. we are with these latest reports and we do intend to take this up with the u.s. authorities when we can as far as that goes. point of principle on this is a consistent one that all member states need to respect the inviolability of diplomatic premises their number of international treaties including the convention on the privileges and immunities of the united nations as well as the vienna conventions that covered the inviolability of diplomatic premises as a standard norm and that needs to be respected now for more on the fallout from this latest leak i'm joined by jeannie meier co-chair of the international committee of the national lawyers guild gini welcome to the show i think you know the united states has operated with relative impunity at the u.n.

for quite a while i mean from up to. most recently you were going to war in iraq here what might these revelations do to that relationship that the u.s. has had with with the u.n. might this change anything. well hopefully the kind of rebukes that are coming from the united nations would would. change things i think this is a very dangerous precedent that the united states asserting in my the the need for missions and. diplomatic. missions to have the kind of privacy. that they need to conduct diplomacy. you know this is a this is like being a lawyer your your need to be need to do things in secret and have confidentiality with you or your clients and so forth and this is the same kind of problem that you get into when when. when the various states is listening to

all of your strategy all of the things that you want to do and these are our allies in many respects. so this is it really does. to chill the ability of the united states to have the trust of people to engage in diplomacy without thinking oh what do they already know that they know my strategy they don't my bottom line. have they have they are they going to retaliate in some kind of way i mean these kinds of things are are very very dangerous it's a dangerous precedent and you mention that we're talking we're not talking about counter terror here we're talking about spying on allies it's hard to think of any allies who are stronger with united states than in the union and yet they are the main targets of this program could there be any blowback from our allies when they now that they're aware that this stuff is going on. and i'm i'm sure there will be

the question is what form will it take it's going to chip relationships at the u.n. whether it's going to undermine candor whether it's going to undermine our ability to engage in the kind of diplomacy that we actually need so that we're not. doing more wars around the world if anybody's ever gotten involved in trying to negotiate a treaty it's a very depicts a very complex thing where every every country has to be involved in getting their views across and having. you know their positions understood and. it really is a chilling effect on people to be able to say with candor and in private discussions what they need if they think somebody else is going to know about it. and take countermeasures even as our allies it's not it's not appropriate president

obama to defend the president defended this sort of spying by saying look this is something that all the countries around the world are doing and really the only difference is the united states got caught doing it is that a fair defense i mean isn't the n.s.a.'s job really to do this sort of stuff. well the n.s.a.'s job is to gather. certain types of intelligence for only security is the national security agency. the ats the purpose of it the fact that it has tried to it is in fact invaded the lives in the privacy and the entire ability of missions is is not something that should be tolerated it's going to be if it's going to be true to its mission it should be gathering information that is available is readily available for its purpose of. promoting security fact that other countries do it doesn't mean that two wrongs

make a right i mean in fact in fact the. and this is a problem you know right now president obama is. senator kerry and secretary of state kerry is getting. very self-righteous about chemical weapons when we haven't had accountability for agent orange or any of the other chemical weapons we've used and it creates this kind of hypocrisy and undermining international law and as somebody who cares deeply that the world actually follows. to promote peace this kind of thing undermining international law it's not should not be acceptable it doesn't two wrongs don't make a right i did i just the united states has to deal with this question just because they have the technological capability to spy on the entire world whether or not they should is the question but we're out of time gene myers thanks so much for

coming on co-chair of the international committee of the national lawyers guild. moving on to everyone to really happened at area fifty one or if there was a second shooter outside the book depository the day president kennedy was assassinated well lots of people wonder these things and it turns out that pesky bug. it's sequester that took effect earlier this year might make it more difficult to glean important answers from past historical events as the sunlight foundation reports thanks to the sequester the cia is shuttering its historical collections division which is in charge of declassifying important historical documents now instead the cia's freedom of information act office will take over the duties unfortunately that office is dealing with a massive backlog of ever increasing foyer requests meaning it's unlikely they'll get around to declassifying any answers from the past and each time soon yet another setback for an administration that pledged to be the most transparent in

history. now earlier this month we learned of the extreme actions taken by the british government toward david miranda the partner of glenn greenwald who's been writing on the n.s.a. leaks while travelling through the u.k. miranda was detained at heathrow airport in question for nine hours before eventually being released british authorities say miranda was stopped out of suspicion suspicion he was carrying sensitive documents miranda responded by filing suit against the ukase home office but these sort of airport detentions are an exclusive to the u.k. and they aren't exclusive to people suspected of carrying sensitive documents they're actually rampant here in the united states and those who face them the most are completely innocent individuals who are being targeted strictly based on how they look strictly because they look muslim and it's experience that far too many of us who are muslim know nothing about join me now is when our mill base l.a.

regional director at the muslim legal fund of america thank you so much for joining me. can we sure by tell us the story of a teacher who cares. mr mukherjee is a new york based scientist who opted out of wave screening at the airport and decided to undergo a pat down instead and during that procedure for unknown reasons the swab that was taken of his hand made the machines go off and that spurred various incidents which included hours of interrogation without food or water. various interviews from law enforcement agencies eventually t.s.a. cleared him as well. but jet blue under the assumption that he was muslim would not allow him to board the flight now how frequent frequently does stuff like this happen what do. people need to know about the difficulty of flying while muslim

or while hindu which people have mistaken for being muslim. unfortunately this is a frequent occurrence and i know this both from personal experiences of being so-called randomly selected at the airport as well as various incidents that have been reported in the media of people being targeted because you know perhaps their name sounds foreign or they speak another language so it does happen quite often and it makes traveling for a lot of americans a complete nightmare they're forced to undergo prolonged security measures and you know extensive and base of enter views merely because of a religion they identify with so i would say it's pretty often so when it comes to doing something about this is this something that needs to be addressed legislatively with new laws to protect muslims or or by repealing laws that allow them to be targeted to begin with where do we do we go to tackle this. ultimately i don't think the focus should be on most systems this is an issue that

affects all americans so we definitely need to see legislative measures that will ensure that no american citizen is going to be ethnically religiously targeted at the airport or any other area for that matter so i think legislative measures and new laws on this issue is beneficial to all americans and not specifically to muslims or. there's news from new york city that the n.y.p.d. designated mosques as a terrorist organization so they can spy on religious leaders and use informants what do you make of this news. this is i mean they're completely blows my mind designating a mosque as a terrorist organization is basically saying that any individual who attends service at that mosque can be a subject of a terrorism investigation there and officially and dieting millions of americans as a possible terrorists it's you know a violation of our freedom of speech freedom of religion and it infringes on our

rights and it's unconstitutional to say the least and some organizations like the council on american islamic relations are calling for a probe into the n.y.p.d. do you think that will be effective. i mean i guess only time will tell i don't exactly know i know that they've had other hearings where the n.y.p.d. themselves actually have admitted that years of spying on the muslim community a muslim neighborhoods did not generate any leads nor did it lead to any terrorism investigation so i mean they've admitted that it's quite pointless a waste of our tax dollars as well as extremely unconstitutional so hopefully it will be effective but only time will tell this this sort of suspicion of muslims in these increased rates of islamophobia really became institutionalized after september eleventh unfortunately here we are twelve years out do you think there's any sign of this abating and what keeps fueling it so far removed from an eleven. i mean at the current moment i would say no i hope eventually it well you know

people are just kind of. like the laws that we have are having focusing on muslims as being you know terrorists or the individuals or profiling them as individuals who would carry out terrorist acts but terrorism has no religion has no ethnicity we've seen terrorist acts committed by various individuals and focusing on a single group is actually very harmful and it doesn't protect us because it allows individuals who are actually terrorists to go by freely because they might not fit that so-called profile of what they believe a muslim i mean terrorists should look like who if anyone who is muslim or middle eastern they might assume is muslim that's who they're targeting and example is richard reid who also known as the shoe bomber he was able to go through easily if law enforcement agencies focused on you know profiled weird behavior or anything that's unusual he probably wouldn't have been successful in boarding the plane he

bought it one way ticket using cash you know he had no luggage those are all red flags but he didn't fit the profile in terms of image and so they didn't target him and that's an example of why profiling doesn't work and it doesn't keep us safe when our regional director of the muslim legal fund of america thank you you thank . now when it comes to the future of oil production we shouldn't just be looking toward the middle east we should also be looking toward africa and over the next ten years about a dozen nations in east and west africa including kenya ethiopia and gonna will become major oil exporters thanks to new technology that means huge amounts of money will flow into very poor countries in fact all twelve of these african nations projected to be major oil players over the next decade are currently in the bottom half of the un's human development index but these new oil and gas exports could inject three trillion dollars into their economies that have a combined g.d.p.

in two thousand and eleven of just one hundred eighty one billion dollars so what effect might that have well history tells us it could mean bad news for the people of those countries that's because when countries suddenly discover a valuable resource and receive an influx of cash they succumb to what's known as the resource curse wealth inequality surges corruption is rampant and democratic institutions and quality of life break down perhaps it's worth noting that of all the developing nations that are now receiving a majority of it of their export earnings from oil and gas not a single one has a functioning democracy so why does this happen and what can these soon to be oil rich african nations do to avoid this resources curse well here to answer that is richard america an adjunct professor at georgetown university and founder of the democracy and conflict research institute gentlemen thank you so much for coming you so richard i want to start with you do you expect given that these these

nations are going to be receiving are going to be major oil players it's projected to be at least do you think that they will fall victim to this sort of resource curse we've seen in the past or might they be able to work around it in actual prosper from it well i think the africa's has a problem with weak management and the resource curse is a misnomer. it's really a weak management curse and we know how to fix that for you know how to create institutions and programs that will dramatically and consistently improve the quality of management if that happens and it can happen. the the resources available will be put to good use so history would not repeat in that case i mean this is a pretty eye opening fact here if it's true i presume it is that of all the developing nations that have a a bulk of their export revenue coming from oil and gas and none of them have a functioning democracy why do you think that is it is it is

a startling fact and it is a fact but i think the reason that it happened you have to look at the histories before discovering oriel that my dear idea of them were goven from outside. entities and nothing is more undemocratic than colonialism the colonial is never developed democracy so they leave these poor countries without any stunted all the institutions of democracy and then of course when oil all any other resource becomes their lebel it becomes a scramble for for leads to get the wealth but i think we also have to again look at the international angle the oil companies are coming to exploit these resources on international and a lot of them exacerbate the corruption in the corrupt local leaders and so i think i reach it is so right i agree with him it's a problem of a case over not of democracy a civil society you see in those countries have to work very hard to make sure that

they bring democracy the resource itself is not a curse the absence of money and the absence of democracy is what the currency is one thousand said that can be fixed maybe think of when people there's a story about when people win the lottery in the united states their life ends up going into shambles they don't know how to manage that they don't know how to do this so you're saying you're saying that. not necessarily just the resources that are and causes problems as long as these governments know how to handle them appropriately so let's get to get to how they can go about doing that now a lot of these twelve african nations that are going to going to be players in the oil market they don't really collect taxes from from their their citizens it's not a huge percentage of the government revenues now that they start exporting or they're going to be even more money not from taxes but from selling this oil does that tax structure and i'll start with you neither will the rich or does that affect the way that these countries either prosper or are damaged by it certainly

does and it has in the past but a good and if you to the prison in the future is not you know wedded to the past number one you've got democracy breaking out most of the continent to civil society strong values in social media and so they've become a city these see what's going on iran i mean my country donna is a perfect example we are neighbors to nigeria and we are a lot of these civil society don and i always insist in that we have to see what made you did wrong and now boyd doing dot the sometime they did international hope that something called publish what you pay when the the citizens find out what the government is getting from the oil revenue if it is not kept secret it gives them help in trying to see where does the money so yes i think they are going to make efforts to make sure that they don't do the bad things that are those preceding them have done richard do you agree i mean james davies has written

a lot about revolution as this j cover curve of revolution he says you know populations don't start demanding more things demanding new rights until expectations are no longer being met so it sounds that things are so bad they start demanding you rights that suddenly their expectations go up and they start demanding you rights could seeing what other countries have done and then seeing this influx of cash coming into their country be something to motivate them to do. mandy's changes well again i this is a value chain issue to significant extent for all discoveries and natural gas that will increase exports but much more refining and processing in value added can and i hope will occur in africa in other words again back to technology and good management taking those resources and converting them into intermediate and even final products in africa is the job of managers and investors and if the institutions are you business schools and engineering schools are strong enough and we're working to make that happen then this will be the outcome it will mean that

these natural resources and others copper iron or steel you could name all the major natural resources extracted will be. value will be added in africa and the manufacturing sector is the really the key improving the manufacturing sector in africa will be the difference maker made these countries rely on foreign aid as is how might that dynamic in foreign aid often comes with a lot of strings attached to it how might that dynamic change once they become oil exporter i think you said often comes i will say always counts there's no foreign aid without without straining so in fact you know i mean. if i might make a sort of attendance link for instance if you take it that comes from the united states there's a growing community of activists here in this country who are looking out what ties us was on its aid to africa when i was nigeria all gone now so i think one way that

you can get the aid to help with transparency and democracy in those countries is to make sure that there is an insistence what it's tied to that democracy is not that we want that dictate of luton with us in the un by rather we want real democracy to take root so i think aid it's probably probably properly lou. and can be helpful to introduce aspect of the corporate social responsibility c.s.r. whoever these outside investors are the major multinationals to the extent that they practice c.s.r. as a form of economic development they can affect the outcome for for better as well and we're going to make that happen to support he is good business schools in africa the faster they develop the world standards the better everything will be in transparency and more democratic control there richard america an adjunct professor at georgetown university and founder of the democracy and conflict research

institute thank you thank you thank you and a setback for first lady michelle obama's plans to get young americans eating healthier more and more schools around the country are dropping out of an eleven billion dollar national school lunch program that incentivizes schools to serve healthier meals to students the reason why the students just don't want to eat healthier the program works by reimbursing schools for some of the cost of buying healthier foods like whole grains fruits and vegetables but some schools are noticing they're actually losing money when students refuse to eat the healthier options and instead bring their own food from home or just skip lunch altogether for example a school system in the schenectady area of upstate new york says their five lunchrooms lost over one hundred thousand dollars last year according to a survey from the school nutrition association one percent of schools participating in the program plan to drop out during this upcoming school year another three percent are considering dropping out as marie answer not might have said in her

younger years just let the kids eat cake. and you know of abercrombie and fitch as a clothing line appealing to teenagers but do you know of abercrombie and fitch the hospital after giving more than ten million dollars in donations to the ohio state university medical center the school plans to name its new emergency department after the clothing retailer already one other columbus ohio hospital has named its emergency center after abercrombie and fitch in ohio state university has also expressed their thanks to the clothing brands generosity by creating a faculty position called the abercrombie and fitch chair in flame a tory bowel disease because i suppose the chair and urinary tract infection faculty position already had a sponsor now given abercrombie and fitch is recent foray into the field of medicine get ready for the new fall line of medical scrubs acid washed filled with holes and frayed at the bottom i am sam sachs see back here at five pm.

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video for your media projects a free media oh god r.t. dot com. but i was sleeping when i was around six am. what i remember hearing on like someone breaking the law. although you know i was surrounded by people with machine guns helmets stuff you see in movies. the moment they examined my mouth they'd seen too many james bond movies i thought i had signed up there. they told me i was under arrest but i asked for walks they said you know. cubans busted here in the us.