it's. coming up on our t.v. it turns out that the n.s.a. isn't above watching you watch more documents reveal that the n.s.a. has been gathering records of online sexual activity hoping to shame radicals with that the steve your side of surveillance. and the u.s. government is planning to empty out its embassy at the vatican the stated reason security concerns but is there more to it than that look at the divide between the u.s. government and the vatican coming up and a new video puts a damper on the thanksgiving turkey undercover investigators recorded footage of the crowded sickly conditions out of turkey breeding farm more on that later in the show.

it's wednesday november twenty seventh four pm in washington d.c. i'm lynn neary david and you're watching our t.v. . and we begin today with new revelations regarding the national security agency according to secret documents obtained by the huffington post through edward snowden the n.s.a. participated in tracking the online sexual activity of people the agency considered to be quote radical wiser's it was all part of a proposed plan to target six different muslims thought to have been influencing the opinions of others in carrying out the surveillance the agency was hoping to harm their reputation and undermine their credibility as muslim leaders in the community the documents reveal that the n.s.a. was monitoring those who were viewing sexually explicit material online and using sexually explicit persuasive language when communicating with inexperienced young girls here's what adult film performer janine had to say about the tactic trying to

discredit someone for watching porn the kind of makes me wonder was that person is doing or what our government is doing. the document does not accuse any of the six individuals being involved in the terror plots and the agency says it believes they all live outside of the u.s. but to discuss this latest revelation and its implications i'm joined now by matthew kelley grew legal fellow at the bill of rights defense committee matthew thank you so much for joining me thank you for having me sure now none of the six individuals targeted by the n.s.a. in this case is accused in the document of being involved in any terror plots whatsoever so how were these people even vetted or chosen for this kind of surveillance. that's a fantastic question i mean the way that the n.s.a. describes it is that they have controversial political beliefs which right now. in

the current political climate means terrorism which is a broad term but they fit a profile that the f.b.i. is looking at now or the n.s.a. is looking at now or the cia or ga or any of the agencies that they cooperate with . and i profile could change at any time so these people got selected because of their affiliation with the current focus of those agencies sure well in response to this leaked report the director of public affairs for national intelligence had this to say he said it should not be surprising that the u.s. government uses all of the lawful tools at our disposal to impede the efforts of valid terrorist targets who seek to harm the nation and radicalize others to violence do you agree well i mean the operative term there is lawful right like. on the basic premise sure but on the definition of what is actually lawful particularly in terms of this program i think

a lot fulness is highly called into question the secrecy of the n.s.a. certainly doesn't do anything to support the claim that these practices are lawful . so in spirit of course but in practice i have serious doubts as to the legitimate lawfulness of these operations right and there is one question will target who was identified in the documents as a u.s. person but the majority of the people targeted here were foreigners living outside of the united states some people living here would say well if they're not americans if they're not flying on need personally then i don't care you know what's your response to that should should all americans care about this. i think all americans absolutely should because the focus of the n.s.a. and specifically the focus of intelligence gathering generally which is not just the n.s.a. it's dispersed across many different agencies for now could be focused elsewhere but you know the world is a big place and the united states and countries and individuals generally play an

increasingly common role in each other's lives so the ability for the united states to pretend like it's an island divorced from the rest of the world and these types of surveillance practices are going to repercussions on american citizens is just being short sighted i think that the media focus on well it's not need somebody else i mean we've we've heard that before in other historical context and it hasn't played out well for anyone of course there's the danger that it could one day become americans well this isn't you know the first time we've seen an agency do this of course can you talk about how this surveillance compares to the surveillance and blackmail tactics used against martin luther king by the f.b.i. for example yeah that's the minaret program so that's that's a common comparison that's floating around right now about this specifically i think because of the religious leader nature of the focus of the n.s.a. these these operations are nothing new and i mean like i live here in oakland california and oakland has a long history with cultural pro you know dues operations are nothing new in terms

of environmental activists they're nothing new in terms of antiwar activists so what's really different here is the scope the scope of the n.s.a. is much much much much much more much broader than has been previously seen to other agencies right and in the case of these men who are all muslim watching pornography of course could seriously discredit them in the eyes of their peers and in their community what kind of activity could the n.s.a. be gathering through electronic surveillance for for use against non muslims. anything they want you know i mean what's strategic here is what the n.s.a. i mean what we can infer is that the n.s.a. is making it cultural determination that these are unpopular practices but from a constitutional standpoint it's also protected speech particularly reference to the u.s. citizen sort of neither here nor there what they could look for is anything they'll make a cultural assessment or a political assessment as to a group of individuals and then to look for anything that contravenes that and when you're talking about your personal e-mails when you're talking about your online

surfing habits that all of a sudden becomes a pretty broad power so they could look for anything on anybody and that the choke point is really is it going to run against or run counter to your stated political beliefs or religious beliefs which is a fairly frightening and frightening indeed of all and you appreciate you coming in breaking all of that down for us matthew calibur legal fellow at the bill of rights defense committee thank you oh thank you so much. and now more than three years after the anti-secrecy group wiki leaks rocked the us government with massive disclosures of diplomatic cables and other secrets officials say the group's founder julian assange is unlikely to ever face charges according to the washington post justice department officials reiterated that a formal decision has not been made but they say that there is very little possibility of bringing a case against a songe unless of course he is charged in criminal activity beyond releasing online

top secret military documents but former justice department spokesman matthew miller told the washington post that there is another issue he said quote the problem the department has always had in investigating julian a songe is that there is no way to prosecute him for publishing information without the same theory being applied to journalists and if you are not going to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information which the department is not then there is no way to prosecute a songe but don't expect julian a songe to walk out of the ecuadorian embassy in london any time soon we can leaks is skeptical about this latest report in a statement the organization said quote anonymous u.s. officials with obscure motivations and unknown authority do not have a good track record in this matter or in any other it remains to be seen whether the claims by these unknown anonymous officials are more than just an attempt to reduce public support for wiki leaks. and now to another culprit cut out caught up

in the silk road saga a delaware doctor has been arrested for char and charged for illegally selling controlled substances online to anonymous buyers on an underground web site known as silk road silk road is the web site that used electronic private currency bitcoin to make it hard for law enforcement to track buyers and sellers the doctor is a livia bolus who was the chief o.b.-g.y.n. resident at a prominent delaware hospital authorities are now accusing her of operating on the site under the identity m d pro and making approximately six hundred sales and over seventeen countries she's accused of illegally distributing xanax adderall and oxycontin among other controlled substances unfortunately for the doctor and undercover g.e. agent in florida was one of her best customers but that wasn't the only hitch turns out when bolus dropped off her packages at an automatic postal machine the machine

had been taking and storing pictures of her and when the postal inspector gave the agent the photo of the package sender he was able to easily compare it with her facebook and my space accounts needless to say it's very very hard to get away with anything in a digital world. and the united states has announced that it will be relocating its vatican embassy they say it will now be a part of the building on the compound of the larger american embassy to italy the state department notes that security and cost savings were behind the move with the department as to meeting it will now save one point four million dollars a year the vatican is a landlocked sovereign city state with the city of rome within the city of rome and it's the smallest internationally recognized independent territory in the world now the shift has drawn criticism from former u.s. representatives to the holy see along with others who insist that countries should

maintain embassies to the vatican and to rome and separate locations now this consolidation comes just after the holy seas representative at the u.n. weighed in on the debate about the use of drones the representative condemned targeted killings and raised both legal and moral concerns in recent days the pope also said quote how can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure but it is news when the stock market loses two points this is a case of exclusion can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving this is a case of inequality and also here is a picture of the pope with an anti fracking shirt so could it the new outspokenness of the vatican be behind the closure to discuss this development a little bit more i'm joined now by jimmy aiken a senior apologist at catholic dot com jimmy thanks for joining me my pleasure mira so this. curity concerns as one of the reasons to relocate this embassy and now

this might make a little more sense to me i guess if we were talking about and the things in the middle east but we're talking about the vatican what kind of security concerns could it possibly pose will there's been some people who try to connect it to the benghazi attack back on nine eleven and as you mentioned that occurred in a middle eastern country and you you sometimes have. kind of mobs develop i mean we've seen that across the across the middle east and and you had a mob apparently organized to break in and kill people but it's hard to imagine that happening in rome. so that couldn't be what they're thinking what they might be thinking is some kind of terrorist plot that would be trying to target u.s. interests in rome perhaps i mean it would involve a big mob or anything like that it might involve a bomb or something or

a sniper or something like that but you just wouldn't get that big mob effect in rome. of people trying to break in and burn everything in jail people so that's unreasonable there's been a lot of people have questioned whether that's really their motive at all right and so i would i would tend to be at least i would at least have a question in my mind about to what extent is that their actual motive same thing with cost savings a million dollars a year to a government that spends trillions is peanuts i mean it's less than peanuts. and you just know if you downgrade your embassy with somebody they're going to take that as a slap and so. a lot of people have suggested that the admin the administration is actually trying to to distance itself from the vatican well that's what i want to i want to actually jump and i want to talk a little bit about that as i'm sure you know the pope has been very vocal about everything from drawings to fracking and this is all been you know. the last few

months or so is it at all possible that this consolidation is a result of that tension of those criticisms that we're hearing i think that's easily possible on the other hand you can't underestimate government cluelessness so there could be that factor at work it as well it could be an attempt to distance itself from the vatican to signal displeasure with the vatican that's certainly how the vatican is going to take it whether they object publicly or not right and so it it's either deliberate or it's just clueless ok well i want to talk about something as a u.s. representative said a former u.s. ambassador james nicholson called the move quote a massive downgrade in u.s. vatican ties turning the vatican embassy into quote a stepchild of the embassy to italy right what's your response to that well i think he's right and it's not just him who's been saying that it's five of the recent u.s. ambassadors to the vatican from both republican and democratic administrations have

been saying this right well this is so is also getting some resistance of course from conservative catholics who prefer to maintain diplomatic distance from u.s. policy if can you talk a little bit about the u.s. policy that catholics you know take most issue with well. you know the u.s. and the holy see see eye to eye on some issues like helping poor people for example and that's very good on the other hand the current administration does take positions that are in opposition to those of the catholic church for example on the religious liberty question the current administration has been trying to force insurance policies on catholics that would violate their consciences and just yesterday the supreme court announced it was going to be hearing two cases that are challenging the government's health care mandate requiring catholics who object to

a bore. and to provide abortion drugs as part of their insurance policies so that would be an example you mentioned the subject of using drones to kill people remotely that's obviously something that the holy see has concerns about and there are a range of other things but in general this administration hasn't been particularly sensitive to the concerns of catholics yeah and you know we only have a thirty seconds left and you did touch on this a vatican hasn't publicly commented on these reports but given the kind of person pope francis is do you think it's likely that we'll see him object to this at all i don't think so i mean he could but i would be surprised if he did it typically with diplomatic stuff like this even if you're really unhappy with someone's move and you take it as a slight you tend not to say so publicly there's more in gestures then in then as often conveyed in words in diplomatic circles absolutely well thank you so much

unfortunately ran out of time but jimmy aiken a senior apologist a catholic dot com thank you thank you america today president obama crowned the national thanksgiving turkey and formally pardoned two turkey is one named popcorn and another named carmel the pardon is meant to ensure that the two gobblers escaped the carving knife this holiday season but while turkey seemed to escape the chopping block it seems human beings do not because president obama has a historically low number of pardons artie's perry and boring reports. and here is president obama pardoning two turkeys popcorn and carville earlier this afternoon pardoning has been a presidential power from the outset but burning turkeys is a relatively new tradition obama has now part in ten turkeys with only thirty nine people a record low president harry truman pardon or commuted one thousand five hundred thirty seven people by his sixth year in office but there's no records of him

pardoning any turkeys though he did around with them was ronald reagan who officially part in the first turkey under his presidency the pardons and commutations started dropping significantly reagan only pardoned three hundred thirteen people by his sixth year in office but barack obama's thirty nine pardons and one coming in is a record low even for modern day presidents bill clinton pardoned seventy seven and george w. bush pardoned ninety nine by their sixth year in office there are a few reasons for this one is as a political liability if the president were to pardon someone who committed a crime after their release the white house would have to take that responsibility and this is what happened to former arkansas governor mike huckabee when after he release convicted rapist wayne dumond the man proceeded to murder and rape other women now another reason is because only the department of justice has the authority to review clemency petition some say is a conflict of interest to have the d.o.j.

review petitions of the same people they prosecuted and according to the department of justice president obama has received more than ten thousand clemency petition a large majority of them are people asking for early release from prison but the obama administration is looking for other ways to lessen the u.s. incarcerated incarceration rate which is the highest in the world a good portion of these prisoners are behind bars for nonviolent drug related charges just in august of this year attorney general eric holder said the department of justice will no longer pursue mandatory minimum sentences for low level. non violent drug offenders and back in two thousand and ten when president obama signed the fair sentencing act that reduced the disparity and penalties between crack and cocaine which is another racially by its syncing issue crack is just the crystal form of cocaine but african-americans are far more likely to be convicted for crack cocaine which has severe less penalties while president obama

has said quote we can't continue to incarcerate ourselves out of the drug crisis the administration has not granted clemency to and mates that are still behind bars and the old crack cocaine markets over he has led the national turkeys walk free year after year pardon doesn't necessarily mean a long and prosperous life though cobbler and gobble are the two turkeys a bargain last year both died within just a few months. in washington d.c. perry and boring are to. when you sit down to eat your turkey at things giving do you ever think about the condition that turkey was in before it was slaughtered probably not what you're looking at is video from an undercover investigator who got a chance to see just that this footage comes from a turkey breeding factory farm in minnesota which happens to be the top turkey producing state in the us because at this particular farmer almost unbearable to watch there are twenty five thousand female turkeys that are locked in close

quarters where they suffer from a variety of annulments there are outright neglected in one instance the video shows how hands get in tangled in their nesting machines often getting stuck by their wings head or feet and their injuries are sometimes so severe that they die immediately to talk a little bit more about these conditions and what people can do to ensure these bad practices stop i'm joined by erica meyer executive director of compassion over killing which is the organization that brought us this footage erica thank you for joining me thank you so much for having me i have salutes so first of all this video it was just for me i can barely get through it but you do see a lot of turkeys with sort of sores and open flesh wounds all over their bodies you know what are these ailments and what kinds of other. illnesses are these turkeys experiencing as a result of their conditions so what we're seeing are as you as you describe these hens are packed inside these large cell never set foot outside this spend their lives inside this shed and these are specifically they're all females and they are

laying the eggs that will then be sold to have trees where the young turkeys will be hatched raised and slaughtered for their meat including for things giving dinner so these birds will spend their lives just being inseminated artificially over and over again and the squalid conditions that they're living in are causing some injuries to their feet making it very difficult to walk you can see in the video they have irritations all over their heads making it difficult for them to see and in some cases the injuries are caused by the. machine in the equipment itself inside the facility with broken wings that appears or other injuries throughout their bodies suffering a heart breaking to see and from what i understand turkey's raised on factory farms are bred to grow so obese so quickly that they can no longer mate naturally can you talk a little bit more about the process these farmers are using to inseminate the turkeys and treacherous it is for them well as you can see these circles don't look like the wild turkeys that people see sometimes in midge's or even in the wild itself so

what we're looking at are domesticated birds who have been genetically selected and drugged to grow so large so they can't because they can't meet naturally instead they are in this process they're grabbed by their legs they're hung upside down sort of shackled style on a rack and then there's a two with semen in it that is then inserted in artificially inseminating these birds and this happens over and over about once a week inside this facility these birds go through this. hatch and then what's that process how quickly do they go lay an egg maybe about every twenty four to thirty six hours that quickly wow well interestingly we wouldn't have even been able to see any of this video had an ad agag law been in place and i know there was one on the table in two thousand and eleven and thankfully it did not get passed but can you talk about what that would have meant for photographers and for journalists who want to document this and bring it to light sure well these ag gag laws that you

talked about these are bills being introduced in different states across the country and they are clearly attempts to stop these undercover investigations from happening and to stop the american public from seeing where their food is actually coming from and what's going on behind the closed doors of animal agribusiness and it's intended specifically so these videos won't be seen and in two thousand and thirteen eleven states introduce these so-called laws and thankfully in all eleven states they were defeated most likely be introduced again in two thousand and fourteen. and i think the extent to which the animal agribusiness industry is willing to go this desperate lengths to shut out the american public from seeing what's happening proves that it indeed has something to hide salut lee and what kinds of rules and regulations are in place right now on these factory farms like for example this this farm i forget the name of it but did they legally do anything wrong can may legally be held that's a fantastic question and that's one thing i think is definitely a misunderstanding with consumers is they presume that there is some sort of level

of protection for these animals and it's natural to think that there are entire cruelty codes in every state throughout the u.s. that protects dogs and cats unfortunately there are the state level laws are awful and adequate and exam for what are called standard operating practices on farms or something to the degree of common practices so if it happens on enough farms it's deemed acceptable within the industry and so it doesn't fall within the same cruelty code there are these farms are essentially exempted from state law and there are currently no federal laws whatsoever that protect birds from this cruelty what kinds of. advocacy work are you guys doing to change that well the first and most important thing that we're doing is exposing this we want consumers to know they have a right to know where their food is coming from and we believe once consumers find out it's really the meat industry is not happy about any of this they don't want these images to be shown to the public and so when consumers are horrified to learn a lot of this they want to know more and they want to change what they're supporting through their dietary choices and so we're encouraging consumers to look

at this see if it's something so hard to watch on video is it something that you truly want to support with your wallet and there are so many meat free alternatives available today so you don't have to support this cruelty is certainly something for everyone to think about when they sit down for thanksgiving dinner this year was that you have director of compassion over killing thank you so much for joining me thank you. have you ever heard of twitch it's the world's leading video platform and community for gamers the service connects to gamers around the world by allowing them to broadcast watch and chat from anywhere they play now mew play station four owners are able to access twitch through a new p s four camera and game called play room that can record gamers naturally the game is meant to be fun allowing gamers to see what their friends are playing live but when your living room is broadcast to the entire world things can get a little messy in the two weeks since p.s. was released which has had to crackdown on the people streaming inappropriate

actions online and one instance a man and wife drank themselves until they were drunk on screen and then appeared nude shortly there after there are also some unconfirmed reports of sexual is taking place but perhaps that's what should have been expected but the camera being opened up to a living room and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america check out our website r t dot com for its last usa you can also follow me on twitter adam you're a david stay tune boom bust is next. i'm i'm i'm. i'm i'm. a loser it's real men do deals with their own so this is the number one i would say

the only one so far victory for the obama administration with could be the beginning fall for obama's nixon in china movement fasten your seat belts ok richard nixon you know the nixon in china analogy is being brought up in the media and i tend to agree with pepe this could be the only positive thing we've seen in the obama administration do foreign policy wise in a while i'm not sure of this in a store or three man or the nixon in china analogy holds but we just don't know and certainly at some point some modest risk for a big gain so i think it's i think people are going to give the president the benefit of doubt here for a while well i think what's happening is that the the media and certainly congress is overselling this.

wealthy british style. is no time to write. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our.

no there i marinate it this is boom bust and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. first up some say that bitcoins nefarious connotation with the virtual black market is fading however a new web site may prove otherwise we'll tell you about the online assassination market coming up concerning now r t correspondent meghan lopez she joins me in studio today to discuss the n f l now a pop quiz is it a sports league the trade association or c a not for profit the answer is probably not what you're thinking and finally in today's big deal rachel courteous and i sit down to discuss the economics of thanksgiving double double it all.