coming up on r t at the u.n. general assembly a resolution was passed over syria's chemical weapons u.n. inspectors are now on their way to take inventory and dispose of them the latest on that ahead. and we are just hours away from a government shutdown with the house and senate still at a standstill over this spending bill parts of the federal government may be forced to close more on this shutdown showdown coming up and government use of divestitures drones seems to be expanding millions of dollars have been spent on the way these for the f.b.i. and local police departments more of the drone spending later in the show.

it's monday september thirtieth five pm in washington d.c. on meghan lopez and you are watching r t well u.n. weapons inspectors are due to arrive in damascus syria tomorrow to begin taking inventory of the country's chemical weapons arsenal it is the first to step in ridding the country of all of its stockpile as a result of a unanimous u.n. security council agreement now that agreement passed after a point of contention between the u.s. and russia was stripped from the resolution the requirement of punitive action against the syrian government if it did not comply with the disarmament for his part syrian president bashar all also it has vowed to fully cooperate with the mission a mission that aims to destroy the whole chemical arsenal by mid a twenty fourteen for the latest on this u.n. agreement our correspondent on a softie a truck hi there on a stasi a syrian the syrian foreign minister walid all wall of address the u.n. general assembly this morning did anything notable come from the speech. well let's

make it you know it definitely the syrian delegation is breathing out a sigh of relief here in new york city following the late night friday vote on the united nations security resolution which calls for the no use of force and removing chemical weapons from syria under international control some of the key points we heard today from the syrian foreign minister he basically reiterated the government's belief that syria is not fighting a civil war but rather a war against terrorists because of the questionable groups that make up the opposition he said that syria doesn't fact plan to stick to its commitments and follow through with this latest agreement reached by the international community and the syrians and he also spoke quite a bit about the double standards in terms of how certain countries deal with fighting terrorism in one area and then in other areas they end up supporting groups with this dubious reputations take a listen some countries. have launched destructive major wars under the pretext of combating terrorism while at the same time they are the

ones supporting terrorism in my country in contradiction of old united nations resolutions and only human and moral values. here once again. the same question i had already last year was the international consensus on combating terrorism a serious commitment undertaken by the member states of this organization over was a just mere rhetoric. another important point to make in the syrian foreign minister walid moallem made was that syria believes that the middle east should establish a nuclear free zone and humanely again reiterated that israel needs to sign up to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty while this kind of chemical weapons and dangerous weapons conversation is going on about syria this would be a good time to do that now how is the international community responding to the foreign minister speech particularly the part about him still calling this an act

of terrorism versus a civil war. well let me again you know he's not exactly calling it an act of terrorism he does certainly refer to the opposition as being made up of groups related to al qaeda something that has been talked about widely but seems to have largely been ignored by the west and the countries that were supporting the opposition and calling for the assad regime to step down but in this particular case we have not really had specific latest reactions to the speech earlier today because the positions of the international community and key negotiators are really known when it comes to the syrian crisis we know that the u.s. and russia have been butting heads over whether or not to include a use of force clause in the resolution that came out of the security council this is certainly been not the case as russia has been pushing all along so you know he didn't really say anything that was on no one in terms of the position of the syrian government so we haven't seen any new reactions and most certainly with this latest diplomatic breakthrough on the resolution on friday we're not really expecting any reaction from the community rather really these steps to now be

implemented that were voted on and on a stall sale let's talk about those steps and take a step back ourselves can you go ahead and walk us through what the u.n. security council resolution outlines will make and what it outlines is basically the fact that the international community now believes even though we had calls from the u.s. to potentially strike syria that the use of force is not acceptable they obviously condemned chemical weapon use that took place on august twenty first they did say that what they want is for the chemical weapons to be moved under international control destroyed and then for negotiations to take place the so-called geneva two conference meeting that would allow for more political transition diplomatic solution that really russia for one has been calling all along for to be able to take place so and if in the case that syria again a chemical weapon use occurs on the ground then there will be a whole new vote a whole new resolution to be looked at by the international community and hopefully

and obviously all the members that are involved hope that will not be the case is there any indication of what would happen if those outlines are not met. well what would happen if those lines are not match the security council would have to convene again to vote again but we know the positions of russia in the united states the u.s. would most likely if another attack were to take place would reference strikes again russia does not believe this necessary and does not believe this is a solution and because there are permanent members of the security council then in this negative scenario they would have to find a common ground yet again but for now the plan is to as we as you mentioned inspectors are arriving in syria they are supposed to get rid of the month manufacturing possibilities by november first and they're also their plan is to destroy all the chemical weapons by mid twenty fourteen in order for the syrian government and the parties of the conflict and key negotiators of the international community to meet again for talks and finally on a stasia we have

a very short amount of time left but can you talk us about the recent accomplishment at the u.n. g.a. between president obama and rouhani right making we had president obama iranian president rouhani speak out had such high level talks for the first time in over three decades they had a phone conversation we know that a kind of thaw seems to be in place between the u.s. or at least the first steps forth are taking place we do know that israel of course today benjamin netanyahu meeting with the obama administration is quite unhappy with this hoping that. the u.s. does not act naive and really believe in these friendly kind of more. conversational really gestures that we have we have seen from iran before but it looks like iran in the u.s. are warming up in terms of talks although the u.s. is simultaneously trying to ensure its ally israel that they're going to be stepping carefully and making sure iran actually means deeds and not just words are to correspondent on a staffie a checking up bringing us the latest from the u.n.

general assembly thank you. well it's the shutdown showdown that won't seem to go away all because our congress can't agree on a spending bill we are now t. minus a seven hours to the official government shutdown it will be the first since one thousand nine hundred six when the last democrat president was in office bill clinton over the weekend house republicans passed a bill that would fund the government on until december fifteenth but would also delay the implementation of the affordable care act until a by a year and repeal the medical device tax that funds the health care law now on the senate side democrats quickly stripped the obamacare delay from the bill when they met this afternoon at two o'clock and volleyed it right back to the house and so now the political games continue for more on the uphill battle on capitol hill political commentator sam sachs joins me now hi there sam it is it avoidable at this point a government shutdown are is it inevitable. well there are

seven hours less than seven hours now until midnight until the government shuts down and at this point it looks like there's only one way that we don't hit that deadline that the government doesn't shut down and that's if the house takes the senate continuing resolution that was passed earlier this afternoon that you mentioned and passes it as it is now to do that speaker the house john boehner would need to get democrats on board to support the measure their their their wanting the vote but of course that the speaker would then have to rebuff his own side the republicans which doesn't look like that's going to happen instead what looks like it's going to happen is that the republicans in the house are going to take the senate bill that was passed again this afternoon and attach more obamacare stuff to it looks like a senator vitter from louisiana had an amendment that affects how congressional staffers get subsidies for the obamacare exchanges that's what this amendment deals with house republicans look like they're going to touch it back to the spending bill and ping pong it back to the senate of course during that there'd be no time

for the senate to consider it even though they were just strip it out anyways and we'd hit the midnight deadline in the government would indeed shut down now president obama spoke this afternoon here's part of what he had to say about this shutdown. of all the responsibilities of the constitution and to congress too should be fairly simple that's a budget and pay america's bills. so there you have president obama shaming congress and saying that it would be the republicans fault on the other hand you have republicans saying that it's obama's fault what are we expecting at this point. look we can we can say that this is you know typical congress dysfunction at work here but there's a really important point to make to matt is that this is a spending bill and when it comes to the actual spending numbers the republicans have gotten the levels they want they've gotten the sequester and they've got the

spending cuts they want moving forward democrats have completely conceded the spending issue to the republicans here but if the republicans are coming back still and making it beyond spending and adding these obamacare measures to it so it's hard to figure out that this is it's hard to say that look these are both sides having problems democrats have given a lot to republicans so far in the spending bill and republicans keep asking for more now the last time we had a government shutdown was back in one thousand nine hundred six and republicans were blamed for that and it helped bill clinton win a second term fairly easily but nobody here on the hill really remembers that only about a third of the senate was here around that time in about a fifth of the house was here around that time so a lot of these members don't remember how the republicans were blamed last time so you could foresee a situation where the government shuts down today speaker boehner goes to his far right caucus and says look we we did it we shut down the government and then the blame starts rolling in people are and they eventually have to cave and pass

a clean spending resolution a few days later but who knows whether that will actually happen will have to say now house republicans have made as you said obamacare the sticking point and this issue where do we stand on this issue and the future will this debate affect obamacare. this is the sort of funny thing about the debate is that if the government shuts down it's going to have no effect on obamacare republicans have said they're willing to shut down the government to defund or delay obamacare well that's not going to work obamacare kicks into high gear tomorrow when the exchanges open up and individuals can enroll in those exchanges to get health care and a lot of the spending behind the set up of those exchanges in. subsidies that people are going to get to get health insurance that's mandatory spending which isn't affected by government shutdown at all and all the employees that are going to help people assist people into those exchanges a lot of those has been doled out to private contractors who again won't be affected by the government shutdown plus president obama can say he has the power

to deem certain people essential personnel in case the government does shut down and he can deem any of the people who are responsible for the rollout of this law as essential personnel so no matter what happens over the next seven hours. whatever antics republicans want to pull to delay obamacare obamacare is going to at least these exchanges are going to go into effect tomorrow we're guard less as you say it's going to happen regardless of the shutdown or not but a serious the government does shut down what would happen on capitol hill tomorrow . not that much i mean congress is pretty much unaffected by anything that if the government does shut down there's a whole schedule of hearings and briefing is going to be another day on capitol hill but as i said the day after the shutdown there's going to be a lot more pressure on republicans in the house to pass a clean continuing resolution because they've lost their leverage of a government shutdown we're already there now so you could see this finally

resolved post shutdown. that's always the key to these things is that there can be retroactively taken back but moving i had to say i mean moving forward in a nest of debt money kind of situation that we're in how does this current debate affect the upcoming debt limit debate. a lot of members here are pretty uneasy about that upcoming debt limit debate look whatever happens here in two weeks from now we're going to have the same debate again when we hit the debt limit or when the treasury can no longer afford to pay all of its bills until the debt limit is raised and already republicans are attaching demands onto a debt limit increase more obamacare demands demands have the key. they're an x.l. pipeline approved approved to rollback the e.p.a. regulations and we know the democrats aren't going to go along with those so we're going to run right up against the deadline to get only this time you know we've never had a situation where the government hasn't paid a cent we've had government shutdowns before ninety five ninety six so this would

be completely on chartered territory and many economists think it would be far more damaging to the economy than any sort of government shutdown and sound saxes there in the middle of all of this political gridlock on capitol hill political commentator sam sacks thank you so much. all right so we keep hearing from lawmakers on capitol hill that this government shutdown is a big deal but the question on everyone's mind how little effect me at least eight hundred thousand federal civilian employees will be for a load and the stock market could tank as a result of the shutdown if you remember two years ago just the threat of a government shutdown was enough for standard and poor's to downgrade america's aaa credit aaa credit rating so a real shutdown will no doubt have tangible effects on our economy overall but it will also have effects on the day to day smaller services those will also be impacted our day correspondent liz wahl gives us a rundown. we are getting hours away now before

a government shutdown potentially goes into effect their congress doesn't strike a deal by the stroke of midnight the federal office will shut down several leave her alone so let's take a lot now at how the failure of. the budget will back to you that are all air traffic controllers will remain working so will the majority of the department of homeland security everything from the u.s. coast guard to the transportation security agency will keep operating federal prisons will stay open the state department will keep processing passports but there may be delays social security and medicare payments would keep coming food stamp benefits will be available but many other services under the snap program that help needy mothers and children would be suspended the u.s. postal service would remain in business so don't worry about the mail turns out neither rain nor sleet nor shutdown will stop the mailman from delivering at

federal courts are exempt so court will remain in session at least until mid october but if the government stay shutdown longer than ten days judiciary jobs would be at risk for furlough active duty military is considered essential so men and women in uniform will stay at work but if there's a shutdown it's likely paychecks will be delayed that's because even though the military is considered critical about half of the department of defense is not on the chopping block nasa most of its employees would be furloughed a few workers would remain on the job to man mission control the food and drug administration would suspend most safety inspections perhaps taking the biggest hit tourism national parks across the country will close so will museums here in washington d.c. that includes the smithsonian. museums and the national zoo the twenty four hour

panda cam would go dark the national zoo tweeted if the federal government shuts down on october first the zoo will be closed to the public all programming and events will be canceled ultimately it is up to the executive branch to decide who is essential and who is not right now it looks like roughly eight hundred thousand federal workers many of them here in washington would temporarily be out of work and the first government shutdown nearly two decades in washington liz wall r t well the government might not have enough money to keep the panda cam on but a newly released report by the apartment of justice office of the insect inspector general shows just the opposite when it comes to unmanned aerial vehicles here's what we found out between two thousand and four and two thousand and thirteen the d.o.j. gave the f.b.i. nearly three million dollars for you avi's it allocated the bureau of alcohol

tobacco firearms and explosives six hundred thousand dollars and the u.s. marshals service almost seventy five thousand for similar projects in addition to that the office of justice programs and the office of community oriented policing services within the d.o.j. awarded seven local police departments and nonprofits over one point two million dollars for you eighty testing and you so yes unmanned aerial vehicles are only being used but the number of departments who have access to them is growing and a letter sent to senator rand paul back in july the f.b.i. outlined how it use these machines in ten separate instances since two thousand and six for surveillance on kidnappers for instance as well as for search and rescue missions however the a.c.l.u. is worried about other more nefarious uses for the z u a v's senior policy analyst j. stanley responded to the report by saying quote no agency include. the f.b.i.

should deploy domestic surveillance drones without first having strong policy guidelines in place he went on to lay out one of the a.c.l.u. is a main demands for using these vehicles congress should pass a legislation introduced by representatives ted poe and so lofgren that requires law enforcement to get judicial approval before deploying drones and explicitly forbidden the arming of these machines to discuss this report i was joined earlier by amy stuff on of edge she's the director of the domestic surveillance project at epic and i first asked her if these new domestic drone revelations are really all that surprising. we've known that the f.b.i. has drones we know that they've been using them it actually was reported earlier this year there was an incident now about where a little boy was kidnapped and the f.b.i. flew drones over the bunker where he was being held to get a better view on it i don't think anybody really would object to their use to help rescue kidnapped children it's more of when they can be used on

a legit. wrongdoers are just members of the general public without a warrant without any legal process in order to collect information and really just clock surveillance so did anything new come out from this report we know they reiterated something that we already know and actually expanded on that point and that's first that the f.b.i. and other d.o.j. agencies think that it's totally unnecessary to look at the privacy implications of using drones in the usa i think that they can use them in line with just typical aviation guidelines which don't address privacy which have nothing to do with surveillance and that that's ok and i think that. how much they stress that is telling so with these machines already in use how likely are we to actually see any meaningful privacy guidelines be implemented or signed while the industry is pushing back hard against this they think that drone you should be totally unregulated that privacy is kind of not

a big deal the problem is in the report highlights this when a traditional aerial vehicle would go up in the air and make six hundred fifty dollars to operate with a drone it cus twenty five because it's so much cheaper and because they're able to operate much closer to homes much closer people the surveillance risk just skyrocket and this ignoring the privacy concerns doesn't take that into account now even if these privacy guidelines are somehow passed somehow brought into effect the ones that are already in use right now do you a view do we have any indication whether they would be grandfathered in or whether they would be exempt from these type of guy. lines on the seventy something they could choose to do they could build that into a law or regulation that the they have the terms they have would be exempt i can't see that happening the policies would likely have kind of universal impact and that's what we would push for there's right now a lot of guidelines in place that are voluntary which means they're not binding and

they can change them at any time so there's nothing that happens if a law enforcement officer the f.b.i. operates outside of the guidelines now we're talking big picture with the department of justice five million dollars really does not seem like all that much money is this something that we should be warned about at this point or is this something that maybe in the future could grow exponentially it actually is something that's going to continue to grow five million doesn't seem like a lot but first of all we're not talking about buying airplanes seven forty seven telecasters which are much more expensive to buy a lot of drone for five million dollars and then in two thousand and fifteen the f.a.a. is supposed to streamline and make the process a lot easier to license drones within the united states so i mean the two five million dollars spent up till now in this very difficult process to operate however when the operation is made easier if the money is made available to you you can expect to see many many more drones flying so what kind of privacy guidelines should be passed at this point is there

a bare minimum of standards that epic or other groups like i think want to see literally we need to have a warrant before they can conduct surveillance and and some measure that prohibits them from doing broaden targeted surveillance you shouldn't be able to throw up a drone over a protester demonstration to pick up information on who is speaking out against the government we think that the peeping tom laws there should be a federal peeping tom law so that individuals can't buy drones and use them to spy in stock on other people because that technology is going to make it much easier for bad actors to do this and we also think that there need to be guidelines in place for commercial use of drones. something that makes transparency accountability built in so you're not going to be opening your your physical life to companies who want to come film you and this is so those are questions that are so hard to answer because we really are in a new frontier when it comes to these you have these being able to fly around and hover and stay in one place also when it comes to backyards and things like that so

how are local law enforcement agencies playing into this whole matter the local law enforcement agencies many of them that are operating drones have voluntarily picked up some of these guidelines which we think is a great step and we think that recognizes we think that they have recognized that privacy is a concern again the problem is that the guidelines aren't binding so any time that they want to break out of those guidelines they can do that and there's no record question for that other thing i want to fly it over a person's property if god forbid and we've seen over and over and over again with local law enforcement all the way up to the n.s.a. recently instances where surveillance technologies or abuse or you have not only acting outside of their policies in day to day operations but acting outside of these privacy guidelines in just horribly abusive ways to maybe conduct surveillance you can imagine on an ex boyfriend or girlfriend so just the latest

example of you evy is not only coming to the u.s. but becoming more prevalent here amy soprano as she's the director of the domestic surveillance projects at epic thank you so much thank you. teaming up to take down the n.s.a. journalists glenn greenwald and jeremy scahill have announced that they are working together to prepare a report on the national security agency's role in the so-called us assassination program speaking to movie goers at the rio film festival in brazil scale announced the partnership and provided some details on the new project however neither scahill nor greenwald provided any evidence to support the claims of the excess. since of the assassination program or the n.s.a.'s role in it yet anyway scale is the author of the book dirty wars the world is a battlefield has come on r.t. america numerous times to talk about america's covert wars take a look we're moving back to a narrow like the one nine hundred eighty s. when the u.s. was fueling all of these dirty wars in central america in nicaragua honduras el

salvador and elsewhere i mean the under the obama administration we have kind of full spectrum covert war you have the drone strikes continuation of the use of mercenaries use of special operations forces cruise missile strikes proxy warlords in somalia so it's all very very dirty right now and while people paled a lot of attention to drones right now this is really full spectrum meanwhile glenn greenwald is the guardian journalist who worked with edward snowden on the n.s.a. surveillance leaks and who promised that much more will come out apparently he's making good on that promise now as i mentioned before we don't know yet what these leaks and tail but as soon as we know you'll know. well it's a vehicle known as much for its intimidating look says it is for its lethal efficiency a mine resistant ambush protected vehicle or in rap for short these are the trucks that our troops use in war zones it has a v. shaped hole to deflect bomb blasts bullet proof doors and tires it's strong enough

to withstand blasts from improvised explosive devices mines ballistic missiles and much more this bad boy weighs about one thousand tons costs six hundred thousand dollars and its lifespan is that ten thousand miles pretty intimidating right so why am i telling you about this well because one texas police department has just made it the newest addition to its tactical fleet so what is it doing for the dallas county sheriff's department is it sweeping mines or is it dealing with nuclear explosions no none of that accord. to the dallas observer the dallas chief deputy marlin swell wrote to commissioners that quote having a tactical vehicle will not only provide warrants execution with the equipment to assist in performing their jobs but will provide an overall safety arch that's right this truck is holing up on tao's driveways to deliver it warrants so if you

have a warrant out for your arrest this vehicle could be the one to reach you at your home and texas is not alone one city in tennessee and ohio state university have also got their hands on their very own military grade armored s.u.v.s now obviously they are not being widely used in the u.s. the military itself has twenty four thousand in wraps many of which by the way will be locked in warehouses to collect dust or will be broken down into parts if they are not bought so at least we are getting some use out of a few of those though i doubt that designers thought that these machines would one day come back home to be used on american civilians and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r.t. america and don't forget to check out the latest and greatest stories that we cover today and a few that we just did not have time to get to our to dot com slash usa follow me

on twitter at meghan underscore lopez and i'll see you right back here at eight pm . it's technology innovations all the developments around. the future however.