i don't know. coming up on r t the u.s. has been steadfast in claiming that the syrian government used chemical weapons on its citizens but an alternative story seems to be making the rounds with others instead putting the blame upon syrian rebels a catholic nun from syria shares with us this alternative story up ahead major tech companies like google and facebook are demanding restrictions on u.s. surveillance programs well while tech titans take on government giants it looks like the n.s.a. is dabbling in fantasy spawning on world of warcraft players details ahead and the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms is targeting is the target of an investigation this month new reports reveal agents took advantage of mentally disabled then poor sting operations only to have them face jail time afterward

we'll tell you more about this of abuse of practice coming up. it's monday december nineteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm not a lopez and you are watching r t well for years now for over two years the world has been watching as the syrian government erupted into civil war were over one hundred thousand people have died and millions have fled the country now during that civil war we have seen in both pro syrian forces and anti-government rebels point fingers at one another for the mass deaths multiple you tube video showing a chemical weapons attack put a dark spin on a very serious a very volatile situation in the country. the chemical weapons attack outside of damascus on the summer led president barack obama to push for intervention in syria however the president later backed away from such threats when president bashar al

assad agreed to hand over all chemical stockpiles to the international community now one of the more controversial figures in the civil war is mother agnes merienda crew and she is the founder of the james of the multi mutilated monastery in syria and she disputes the claims of the obama administration and that much of them international community has made over the veracity of those chemical weapons attacks videos mother agnes joins me now for an exclusive interview thank you so much for coming into the studio now obviously your background is not in analyzing these videos so what motivated you to take on this report and especially of this if this magnitude i wanted to call attention of the international community for defeat of some children whose parents were very versions of. in the mountains of let the key. in the force of august the same year.

because. between. the victims of the attacks. the. children following. indications of the dependence and making them to observe many things to use and finish to conclude. some videos those who do have been viewing were staged now in europe or new cures the editors of manipulating the videos which children were seen lying on the ground you see that the children seem to be under anesthesia and that the bodies were moved to different locations now what evidence does your report have to support those claims that they were in fact staged by the rebels were. it is not only. videos that were chosen by community here in the us to present them to the congress. of putting

all the evidences but you have other videos that all saw. collating in the web. to make a compliment if superman of evidence is saw what we see on the video is number one six eleven and thirteen among the thirteen video shoes and by the international community. seen in other videos that compliment those events is did you work with any video analysts to come to this conclusion yes i have some friends among. reporters. to get inside. of the videos yes sure now molo is a city of great importance to christians it is one of the last locations or the last location or the language of aramaic a spoken which is the last language of jesus so here are the scenes that we are

seeing play out. obviously there's a lot of violence we've seen and heard of christians falling is there any indication of those questions were turning one of the like to be a question in syria right now where lead to be a christian or to be a civilian in syria today it's fairly adventure because the. daily bases big value relations of human rights nobody is safe to go because we have thousands of for the images that come to syria to spread. violence in my. mentee in the silence of the international community for these two beautiful lives he lived among the most. in the world that they speak i don't meet elaine wish that were speaking of course in its. different transformation and it is it world heritage. and there were no

law really nor no reason to put it to disappear pollution to slaughter people religious basis and now to a thirteen nuns and sickly workers from the most of the. monastery indonesian descent to take love when s. thirty who was hussein some particular disciple of simple and you put the blame squarely on the rebels and it turns out that of course they do it they have done it and they appeared on the video is such a shame to do so and what do you think the curious going forward for syria how do you see it becoming peaceful again i think that if the international community and especially those countries were fueling this for you and just to stop to send

for them fighters to finance them and those foreign fighters a lot of men fight the terrorists from the. faction if they stop to fuel these for you we will have the opportunities that syrian people will come one to another and we make we make a log negotiation and a peaceful settlement certainly some interesting. points that you argue there are certainly under reported here in the us media mother i guess mary and our crew founder of the james mutilated monastery in syria thank you so much. well as the thread that unraveled the undercover world of it as a surveillance in light of the leaks by former contractor edward snowden eight major u.s. tech firms have written an open letter to president obama pushing for more restrictions on government surveillance as well as a more open internet the letter reads the balance in many countries has tipped too

far in favor of the state and away from the rights of the individuals rights that are enshrined in our constitution this undermines the freedoms that we all cherish it's time for a change now a.o.l. apple facebook google linked in microsoft twitter and all who signed the letter and created a web site listing five areas of improvement meanwhile more revelations are out this week about what government agencies are doing with their surveillance tools we're for more on that we turn to our tease that sam sachs. this may look like your typical battle between alliance and horde members in the virtual world of warcraft but to the n.s.a. this could also be a secret terrorist gathering today pro publica reported that the n.s.a. and british spies have infiltrated online gaming platforms like world of warcraft and second life looking for terrorists that's what's outlined in an internal n.s.a. documents leaked by edward snowden that focuses on games and virtual worlds the

n.s.a. notes as virtual worlds become more popular pervasive and sophisticated so to will terrorist opportunities to exploit them also games provide attractive communications channels for terrorist groups and sympathizers because in game conversations often are difficult or impossible to monitor and games can supplement field training by familiarising recruits with the tactics weaponry and skills needed to conduct operations you know like when terrorist exploit the use of giant evil rabbits peter singer with the brookings institute found the n.s.a.'s concerns a laughable telling pro publica games are built in operated by companies looking to make money so the players identity and activity is tracked for terror groups looking to keep their communication secret there are far more effective and easier ways to do so than putting on a troll avatar and the n.s.a. zone documents provide zero counterterror successes coming from the agency's online

gaming surveillance what's but what if the n.s.a. or the f.b.i. could dig a little deeper what if they could not only track your world of warcraft tactics but also track exactly what you're doing while you're playing world of warcraft by hacking right in your computer camera as the washington post reported the f.b.i. has been able to covertly activated computers camera without triggering the light that lets users know it is recording for several years yet the f.b.i. can watch you. as you do whatever you do in front of your computer from playing world of warcraft to the herd to reading the news and drinking your coffee. to watching shocking viral videos ha to well use your imagination a girl. in april of this year a judge in texas rejected an f.b.i. request to hack into a suspect computer and use their webcam to take pictures of them the judge argued

the tactic was extremely intrusive and could violate the rights of others caught in front of that same camera the f.b.i. is actually borrowing a tactic used by hackers for years to spy on women through their web cams these latest revelation shed more light on the f.b.i. and n.s.a. counter terror tactics tactics that appeared just as intrusive as they are absurd and considering previous n.s.a. documents reveal an agency struggling to deal with the problem of ingesting too much data and maybe filling repositories with the latest hoard gold kalak over the live images of what people are doing in front of their computers isn't the way to go in washington sam sachs r.t. so what exactly does the government have to gain from journeying through the southern barrens with the blood hunt for the sky chaser tribe for the answer so that i was joined earlier by peter ludlow professor of philosophy at northwestern university take a look. i don't think so and that's the danger of this thing is that you know i

know a lot of people that role play as different you know military groups and you know some people roleplay as elbows and so hopefully as orcs and some of them are in their role playing as terrorists and they're you know attacking the mafia group and so forth so if they're in there looking for terrorists and you have these people wearing terrorist guards and running around as part of their role play you know doing. you know terrorist role play or whatever i mean it is kind of scary and there are some games that do in fact let you play the terrorists so obviously a lot of people play these games one of the understanding when it comes to world of warcraft or other digital video games is that there's a lot of other people in there you can talk to them you don't always necessarily know who they are a lot of people don't take video games very seriously and that a big deal that these games were being surveilled at all well it's a big deal in

a lot of ways and one way that i think we should really be thinking about is that what it means is that they're now surveilling every single part of our lives at this point it's not just our communicating in business and so forth in international communication but it's actually the stuff we do when we were roleplaying and having fun and they want to know what that's about i mean really they want to know it's like getting burrowing into our psychology and understanding like i guess what makes you take it to a deeper level now some of the country's biggest tech companies have sent out a letter calling for better or less invasive surveillance is that in the intentions of all those companies to protect the customers or to protect their own image in your opinion. oh it's definitely to protect their own image i mean i don't think there's any doubt about that it's you know one thing that. somewhat disturbing here

is that in this particular case with second life the chief technology officer of second korean drake actually went to fort meade and had a brown bag lunch with with the n.s.a. people and. i mean you know i know cory he's a friend of mine he's a great guy but this was not a smart thing to do you might say well that's just second life those are just nerds but i mean he's working at facebook now so the question is now that he's working at facebook as he's still doing the brown bag lunches with the people at the n.s.a. i mean that's a legitimate question that someone should be asking so are these tech companies calling for anything and specific anything that could better protect your or my digital privacy rights. i mean i haven't heard of anything that they're actually doing all i've heard so far isn't complaining in a way it's it's almost like crocodile tears because your google and facebook did all this stuff to basically expose everything we do and gather this information and

then all of a sudden they're shocked when it gets into the wrong hands or when they find out that when they find out that the n.s.a. has access to it i mean you remember a little while ago when the c.e.o. of google was saying well if you are doing anything wrong why do you care if google is looking at it it has completely changed to twenty five that they get as they was tapping into the google stream so. i don't i haven't seen any positive proposal coming out of tac accept a lot of leg gnashing of teeth in and complaining i haven't seen a single positive proposal coming out of those guys now one interesting thing that i do want to raise a point that i want to raise is that as soon as the n.s.a. scandal broke it became pretty clear that the director of national intelligence james clapper james clapper had actually lying to congress take a look at that. does the n.s.a. collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of americans.

no sir. it does not. not wittingly. now these days the author of the patriot act congressman james sensenbrenner is calling for clapper to be prosecuted for lying to congress what do you think about those efforts do you think they'll actually go anywhere i don't think they're going to go anywhere i mean that clearly he lied clearly with contempt of congress but people in that position get put on trial they don't you know they get a pass and he probably knew that going in and that's why people keep lying and you know there's no cost to lying to congress if you are in these you know national defense industry as it were thank you so much for weighing in on all things the n.s.a. peter ludlow professor for a lot of northwestern university. well a newspaper investigation has exposed how agents with the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms use mentally disabled men to help promote their undercover sting

operations before arresting and charging them with the milwaukee journal sentinel sifted through thousands of pages of court records and found numerous cases of the agency's abuse and failure and one case twenty eight year old chauncey wright was hired to hand out flyers promoting a fake store right as an i.q. in the mid fifty's which is considered extremely low agents paid right with cigarettes merchandise and money they eventually convinced him to bring them drugs and guns off of the street a month later he was arrested and charged he now faces up to life in prison now chauncey relatives say that the agents knowingly took advantage of a mentally disabled man and run into is not alone there are at least four other instances where a.t.f. agents use mentally disabled men before arresting them now congress and the department of justice want answers to talk about some of the other findings from this investigation i was joined earlier by john di direct he's a reporter with the milwaukee journal sentinel who has been investigating this

story for quite some time now and i first asked him to walk us through some of the other arrests of people who assisted the a.t.f. . the way this started was we had a sting here in milwaukee that had all kinds of problems including you mentioned at the outset a mentally disabled man being used to promote the operation we've been investigating this all year and what we've found in our most recent event gauging is this was not an isolated incident at the a.t.f. it used mentally disabled people at several locations around the country to promote their storefronts and then turned around and charge them at the end now i want to go ahead and talk about some of the other discoveries in your investigation things like a losing weapon things like damaging buildings can you walk us through some of the bullet points that your investigation found sure at the beginning and you're referring to a walkie one of the most shocking findings in that initial investigation was that a.t.f. agents themselves lost their guns and agent had his ins including

a fully automatic rifle stolen from his car which is parked at a coffee shop that machine gun has not been recovered to date there also was and this happened in other cities as well where the buildings were damaged and the a.t.f. refused to pay for the damage afterwards ran up the utility bills overflowing toilets cause problems things of that nature in the landlord and initially here in milwaukee but also. i pensacola and portland. and how did you discover all of this was going on. twelve initial malaki operation we learned through tips from the landlord and also from law enforcement sources and then we just continue to investigate talking to people in the neighborhood people who have gone to the the store themselves family members and things of that nature and what e.t.f. said at the beginning we've heard that began investigating this and what they told

congress that these were isolated incidents nothing outside of milwaukee that they could find and they stood by this technique i should just say what these techniques are is a set of fake store fronts to sell things like clothing or have tattoos parlors or things of this nature but what they're really interested in is buying guns and drugs in these in these operations and so what we found is these problems proliferating across the country that it wasn't just lucky it required a lot of shoe leather in terms of looking at court records from other places and again a.t.f. does not talk about or provide a list of all these places that they do these undercover stings however they do put out press releases occasionally and we also learn from sources where a number of these. stings where they employ these rogue tactics occurred and as i understand it as part of your investigation you also discovered that not only did they allow felons who had guns in their possessions to leave the stores they

allowed to smoke marijuana they also provided alcohol as i understand it to you it's now do you think that your reporting could result in charges being dropped for the people that were mentally disabled who helped the a.t.f. and then. well at this point i think that's unlikely all the people that we wrote about have already their cases already been achieved akkad they've been convicted and sentenced to prison or probation is the case may be one individual i think you mentioned at the outset the use of the mentally disabled the a.t.f. encouraged and paid for this individual and his friend a mentally disabled man and his friend to get tattooed and. the next promoting the store fronts thing what was interesting is well the judge did sentence him to eighteen months in prison he did order that the a.t.f. pay for the removal of that test too but at this point a lot of these cases they're all hands really on this high quality surveillance

video that the a.t.f. has from the store fronts so these almost never go to trial they usually lead to quick guilty pleas and convictions and in the federal system usually some substantial time even if you don't have a criminal violent criminal background is many of these did not have a very violent background and that's really what the a.t.f. is in its stated mission is out to get the violent offenders people who are at the top of the food chain if you will and violent organizations and things of that nature and talking to a whole host of experts who looked at these cases as well they just don't see it now as you mention the feds and just a few isolated incidents your investigation has uncovered a number of them so is that negligence on the part of the a.t.f. or is there something more nefarious going on. well you know those are questions i guess others could answer at this point what i can say is that you know as you look across the country what we found is very similar tactics for instance

a man in wichita was paid to ride his bike around to promote the operation this is very similar to what happened in the malaki a man named chauncey wright same thing around spike handing out flyers he was paid in cigarettes cash and merchandise the men in wichita was paid in cigarettes cash and merchandise and they broker deals going deals and drug deals dozens and dozens more than the cement in in which he talks and in both of those cases it's very interesting because they were really used as a traditional confidential informant to set up details except because of their i.q.'s which were both in the mid fifty's they had no idea what was going on and so not only do they face significant federal time at the end of this they also were in great jeopardy because everyone in the case thinks they were the informant a think that they got a deal or working for the a.t.f. and they're with the a.t.f. calls an unwitting informant but what the attorneys have said really that undercuts

the whole point of knowing what you're doing and taking on the risk that comes with it one other point that you raised about gun walking in this is very significant in light of fast and furious where a.t.f. agents allowed more than two thousand guns to trap travel into traffickers hands including into mexico where individuals were killed guns were allowed to walk in this case and in some cases the a.t.f. it or a felon working for the a.t.f. as an informant somebody who knew what was. encouraged individuals to take shotguns that were not cut down to sawed off shotgun size leave the store with the shotguns go unsolved saw them down and and in one of those cases he divisional call back in se agent sit in the hottest. don't sue the agency just had what kind of saw they might use it's very interesting we know the a.t.f. has said that they are investigating it the d.o.j. said that they might have an inspector general investigating this and congress has

demanded answers so we'll have to see if anything actually comes of that john dietrich a reporter with the mo walking journal sentinel thank you so much thank you well first there was the artist formerly known as prince but have you ever heard of the artist formerly known as president bush tonight's resident looks at the new found fame as an artist and how his presidential library is selling a limited edition christmas ornament of a cardinal that president bush himself painted take a look. here's a holiday story for you but instead of gathering around the christmas tree to hear it let's gather around the christmas bush because this story is about how the man

who started the horrible wars and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people all in the name of freedom is spending his holiday you see george w. bush is having a real swell time it just came out that to celebrate the season former president bush is selling his artwork on a limited edition christmas ornament and it's flying off the shelves of the bush letters museum store according to shop workers the ornament cost twenty nine ninety eight and peter's a painting of his of the cardinal proceeds from sales go back to his center the ornament comes with a little ribbon attached to it so you can hang it from your christmas bush earlier this year in an interview with a.b.c. news bush said he loves to paint and that it's changed his life in an unbelievably positive way he said it's been an eye opening for him no it didn't open his eyes to

the massive amount of death and suffering he caused or how he used freedom to dupe people into supporting him it opened his eyes about colors and shadows according to bush he hopes the ornament beats everyone's expectation i'm not sure what anyone would be expecting from an ornament painted by bush maybe for it to start shooting at you but really what it says christmas more than an ornament painted by a guy with this deal of blood on his hands. the man started the rocky war under the guise of setting the iraqi people free but a decade later it's a dictatorship again at least according to freedom house a respected authority on regime type and according to varied sources anywhere from one hundred thousand to over a million iraqis died from bush's war he did the same damage in afghanistan so i guess he was freeing all those people from their mortal coil yes nothing says christmas george w.

bush so it's great to see this man help us celebrate the holiday with his ornament but when you hang it on your own christmas bush just keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn the thing down to the ground like everything else bush touched in the name of freedom during because the president tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter at the risk of it. well the senate approved a bill today that bans plastic guns for another decade this locked and loaded debate has pitted changing three d. printer technologies against national security since plastic weapons are undetectible by metal detectors as well as x. ray machines now the ban was set to expire on tuesday but again it has been renewed the prohibition of plastic guns began during the reagan administration and has been renewed every decade sense now each time the ban has been supported by both

republicans as well as the national rifle association some senate democrats led by chuck schumer working on an extended bill to take anti plastic gun legislation one step further or it would have forced all guns with plastic components to have on the detachable metal parts within them republicans in the n.r.a. are against such legislation now this issue of plastic guns is perhaps the least contentious when it. comes to the gun debate in this country we are quickly approaching the one year anniversary of the newtown shootings and the cries for gun control are growing louder turn into r t this friday december thirteenth for our special coverage of the issue of guns in this country this will be unlike any coverage of the topic you have ever seen before we're going to talk with experts on both sides of the issue so tune in december thirteenth from five to six pm. and that does it for now i'm meghan lopez follow me on twitter at meghan underscore

lopez and for now have a great night. wealthy british. right. around the. right. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my extremes are the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to gaza report on our.