coming up on ard t. the world watches the sea if the u.s. will launch a military strike against syria the u.s. and allies insist that syria has used chemical weapons on its own people more on the latest developments ahead and there's a new case of racial profiling with t.s.a. airport security a man was detained for hours without food or water he was interrogated and much more a look at flying while muslim coming up we hold these truths to be self-evident. that all men are created equal and today is the fiftieth anniversary of the nine hundred sixty three march on washington a day when many americans learned of the dream but fifty years later is the dream realized an in-depth look at today's events ahead.

it's wednesday august twenty eighth five pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching our team 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 allies will react to an alleged chemical strike in war torn syria 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 a clear breach of international norms as an 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 attacks but

president obama is unlikely to find any support in the air. world for military strikes against syria the arab league though it blames the syrian government for the chemical attack and has already expelled president al 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' approval of any military strike democratic congresswoman barbara lee from california said while the use of chemical weapons is deeply troubling and unacceptable i believe there is no military solution to the complex syrian crisis now the harshest words against u.s. intervention came from former u.s. congressman dennis kucinich who said so what where about to become al qaeda is the air force now this is a very very serious matter that has broad implications internationally and to try to minimize it by saying we're just going to have a targeted strike well 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 necessary measures to be taken in syria but such a resolution can't gain approval in the security council given that both russia and china have a veto and are both critical of military strikes in syria now for more on this r.t.s. marine important joins me from new york right now welcome. i sam what exactly did david cameron's resolution call for well that's hexed of the u.k.'s draft resolution reportedly condemns the august twenty first alleged chemical weapons attack on rebel held areas in syria is false the syrian government for the alleged attack and this driver solution also seeks council authorization as you mentioned for all necessary measures to be used to protect syrian civilians from chemical

weapons is it fair to assume by necessary measures targeted military strikes it's very fair to assume that all necessary measures under chapter seven of the un charter or allows for the use of force to be used the same wording was used in the security council resolution that was adopted and subsequently paved the way for the u.s. the u.k. and france to launch military intervention into libya so yes of course it's fair to assume that if the security council were to adopt a resolution that allows for all necessary measures to be used in the case of syria then we would see military intervention that would have a stamp of approval from from the international community so the u.k. british this draft of the security council what happened while the five permanent members of the united nations security council failed to reach a consensus failed to reach an agreement we have the u.s. the u.k. france russia and china the u.s. and france of course support the u.k.'s draft resolution russia and china are not

certain that the syrian government has used chemical weapons and have warned about jumping to conclusions russia has publicly stated that the council should wait for the report of weapons inspectors the report from weapons inspectors that are in damascus right now before discussing any resolution on syria now the u.s. of course is claiming to have evidence that it promises to share in the coming days it's important to note though that the u.n. secretary general ban ki moon has also said that the u.n. team needed to be given more time to a stat. blish the facts of the alleged chemical weapons attack and also at a press conference in geneva the joint special envoy to syria lakhdar brahimi also said that any military strike in response to the use of chemical weapons in syria needed security council approval will doesn't look like they're going to get that security council approval so i mean does the u.s. go it alone on this we have a u.s. representative said that we're past the point of no return here that seems to suggest. that an attack is imminent if anything absolutely i mean it seems as

though the u.s. has made up its mind the u.s. and its european partners of france and britain they have a plan in place this might have just been a protocol to make an attempt to go through the legal norms because if they act outside of the united nations and act unilaterally it is a violation of international law i don't know if they want to acknowledge it or not but if they do strike militarily without approval from the security council it's a violation of the u.n. charter but it seems as though that is the path they are choosing to go with and i know you mentioned there's weapons inspectors in syria right now investigating this this alleged attack near damascus what's the timeframe there do they still have more work to do is it feasible that the united states and allies would begin launching strikes against syria while weapons inspectors are currently on the ground there i don't think that's the ideal plan there have been reports that the secretary general ban ki moon has asked the u.s. please wait until we get the the investigators out of the area i don't know what

has been decided behind closed doors i do know that this investigation is ongoing because you want to fish oils have asked for the u.s. to be cautious to make any moves into all of the pollution has been reached by people that are there that are on the ground that are taking samples from the soil that are gathering testimony from the syrians there but it's not clear if the u.s. and its european allies are going to dismiss what everyone say and just strike whenever they want to there's been reports that the strike can happen within twenty four hours maybe it will happen over the weekend we don't know but if you are. bresson words in a tone that is. you know put forth by the u.s. and europeans it seems that this strike as you said is imminent i was r t correspondent in a point i am. now moving on 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 to 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 he was carrying sensitive documents miranda responded by filing suit against the u.k.'s home office but these sort of airport detentions aren't exclusive to the u.k. and aren't exclusive to people suspected of carrying sensitive documents they're actually rampant here in the united states and those who face in the most are completely innocent individuals who are being targeted strictly based on how they look strictly because they look muslim and it's an experience that far too many of us who aren't muslim know nothing about now was joined earlier by him in our mill bit sell a regional director at the muslim legal fund of america and she started by explaining the story of a d.j. who cares she. 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 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 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 sons 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 tackling this issue is beneficial to all americans and not specifically to muslims

or hindus 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 there but it 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 so more decisions 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 in

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 the 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 individuals or profiling them as individuals who would carry out terrorist acts but terrorism has no religion it 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 a terrorist should look like who if anyone who is muslim or middle eastern they might assume 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 housed lot law enforcement agencies focused on you know profiled weird behavior or anything that's unusual he probably wouldn't of 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 but and that's an example of why profiling doesn't work and it doesn't keep us safe when our members sell a regional director of the muslim legal fund of america thank you thank you fifty

years ago today dr martin luther king jr stood before the lincoln memorial and told a quarter million people sprawled out on the national mall that he had a dream today commemoration of the speech president barack obama returned to the side of king's speech to give his own speech making lopez was there and she has this report. it was one of the greatest demonstrations of freedom in the history of the united states fifty years ago standing at this very spot in front of a memorial of a man who signed the first ever emancipation proclamation martin luther king jr and civil rights leaders through over two hundred thousand people to the nation's capitol to demand equality for all and his famous i have a dream speech martin luther king jr told his followers that he was here to cash in a check a check for the black community that promised justice and equality and freedom of all now he says that that check was written into the words of the declaration of

independence as well as the constitution this week to mark the anniversary of that great speech thousands once again descended on d.c. to remember the legacy of the march on washington and there on the lincoln memorial steps five decades to the day after dr king's spoke those famous words america's first black president told the crowd there is still more work to be done we now have a choice we can continue down our current path in which the gears of this great democracy run to a halt and our children accept a life of lower expectations for politics is a zero sum game. where few will do very well while struggling families of every race fight over struggling to do not a that's one per. or we can have the courage to change so let's take a look at some of the major issues african-americans faced in one nine hundred sixty three and see where they stand today as a result of his i have a dream speech

a man has leadership throughout the entire civil rights movement martin luther king jr has had streets named after him he's had schools and post offices named after and he's had libraries across the country named after him and he is the first african-american to ever have a memorial on the national mall to commemorate him but where does the u.s. stand today in terms of equal rights and what i see in the capitol or just use the in the government now is a lot of stalemate because of truthfully i just got to have it i believe because of president obama you know that think there's a racial. aspect that's put into this new enter active map created by university of virginia research associate dustin cable brings us a visual manifestation of lingering racial divides in the us blue dots represent white people green dots represent black people and so on the divide is especially clear in cities like chicago where streets and neighborhoods are split up into one

color or the other so what about income inequality and poverty the number one issue is economic disparities and. the fact that we are now challenged in many states on our vote voting rights today twenty eight percent of african-americans live below the poverty line compared to ten percent of whites unemployment for black americans is double that of white americans standing at twelve point six percent something modern civil rights leaders saying must be addressed. make you very well put the number of those in public. for us last will the second class clamor of them are going to prison for over half that for them or what. the most important rights of dr kane other civil rights leaders fought for was the right to vote today there are forty four black men and women serving in congress showing that the voting rights barrier was trampled but

with the u.s. supreme court's recent repeal of the one nine hundred sixty five voting rights act civil rights advocates are worried the u.s. could be moving backward i don't want to see this lose any of the gains of me because we still have a long ways to go and if we're going to have people being a part of the process we don't want to put up roadblocks finally perhaps the most famous aspect of dr king's dream the dream that his children might one day have the same educational opportunities as everyone else the dream of attending school with white children has been realized however graduation rates among black students still fall significantly behind white students and for those who don't graduate high school they are more likely to go to jail than to find a job in the end the one recurring theme throughout the rally was that dr king's speech from fifty years ago was an important landmark in american history but more needs to be done to keep the wheels of progress turning in washington on the steps

where dr king spoke those famous words meghan lopez r.t. . when it comes to the future of the oil production we should just be looking toward the middle east we should also be looking toward africa because 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 a major oil players over the next decade are currently in the bottom half of the un's human development index these new or 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 which is wealth inequality surgeon corruption running rampant and democratic institutions in quality of life breaking down perhaps it's worth noting that of all the developing nations that are now receiving a majority of their earnings export earnings from oil and gas not a single one has a functioning democracy so why does this happen but answer that question i was joined earlier by richard america and adjunct professor at georgetown university and nia quiete founder of the democracy and conflict research institute and i started by asking richard if he expects these oil rich african nations to fall victim to the resource curse well i think the producer has a problem with weak management and the resource curse is a is

a misnomer it's really a very weak management kirsch and we know how to fix. 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 n.e.t.'s a fact but i think the reason that it happened you'll have to look at the history is before discovering oil the majority of them were goven from outside they were colonial 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 or any other resource becomes available it becomes a scramble. for elites to get the wealth but i think we also have to a good look at the international angle the oil companies are coming in to exploit these resources on international and a lot of them exacerbate the corruption in the corrupt local leaders and so i think i recently saw right i agree with him it's a problem of a case of lack of democracy a civil societies 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 management 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 it's not necessarily just the resources that are causes problems as long as these governments know how to handle them approach. really 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 revenue 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 anywhere richard does that affect the way that these countries either prosper or toward are damaged by it certainly does and it has in the past but a year in the future the present in the future is not wedded to the past number one you've got democracy breaking out more but the continental civil society is stronger use 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 of these civil society

insist in that we have to see what made you did wrong and i voided. the sometimes 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 google so yes i think they are going to make efforts to make sure that the 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's not that things are so bad they start demanding new rights that suddenly their expectations go up and they start demanding new 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

demand changes well again i this is a value chain issue. significant extent oil discoveries and natural gas will increase exports but much more refining and processing and 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 they if the institution i.e. 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 we could name all the major natural resources extracted will be. value will be added in africa and the manufacturing sector is really the key improving the manufacturing sector

in africa will be the difference maker many of 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 exporters i think is that often comes i will say always counts there's no for a bit out without straining so in fact you know i mean. if i might make a sort of a tennis link for instance if you take it that comes from the united states there is a growing community of activists here in this country who are looking at what ties the u.s. has on its aid to africa when i was nigeria all gone now are they 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 latine with us in the un by rather that we want real democracy to take root so i think aid it is properly lit properly

linq can be helpful factor i'm sure there is an aspect of this it. 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 the better as well and we're going to make that happen but key is good business schools in africa the faster they develop the world standards the better everything will be and transparency and more democratic control there richard america an adjunct professor at georgetown university and you're creating a 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 well students just don't want to eat

healthier the program works by reimbursing schools for some of the costs 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 schenectady 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 programs plan to drop out during this upcoming school year another three percent are considering dropping out as marie antoinette might have said in her younger years just let the kids eat cake. and you know of abercrombie and fitch has 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 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 and ohio state university also has expressed their thanks to the clothing brands generosity by creating a faculty position called the abercrombie and fitch chair in inflammatory bowel disease because i suppose the chair and urinary tract infection faculty position already a sponsor now given abercrombie and fitch is recent foray into the field of medicine get ready for their new fall line of medical scrubs acid washed filled with holes and frayed at the bottom and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america and check out our website r t v dot com slash usa and you can follow me on twitter at sam sachs see you right back here at eight thanks for watching.

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for life you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. the for. the missing woman. is a.