coming up on ard see the journalist who helped reveal the expansion of n.s.a. surveillance testifies before the european union at a parliament committee glenn greenwald shared what he believes to be the n.s.a.'s ultimate goal we'll tell you what he said just ahead then senator john mccain goes rogue again overseas his trip to ukraine is the latest of the senator traveling the trouble nations to exert foreign influence on the maverick and is their super war coming up. the u.s. senator releases a report on wasteful federal spending the waste book two thousand and thirteen covers everything from military spending to tax breaks for brothels an in-depth look at government waste later in the show.

it's wednesday december eighteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm sam sax and you're watching r.t. and we begin with a developing story the white house today released a report written by a review board set up to investigate possible n.s.a. abuses now that report includes forty six specific recommendations to reform the n.s.a. in light of what we've learned since the edward snowden leaks began in june recommendation one was to limit section two fifteen of the patriot act forcing the government to submit focused requests for data rather than bulk collection the review board also called on the n.s.a. to transition away from storing data on its own to having that data stored by private companies which the n.s.a. can go to for specific requests also the report calls on the n.s.a. to stop undermining encryption standards as revealed by. it's noted there are

a number of other recommendations including organizational changes to the n.s.a. and reforms to the top secret pfizer court the electronic frontier foundation which has been fighting the n.s.a. in court released this statement in response to the recommendations quote we're disappointed that the recommendations suggest a path to continue until spying mass surveillance is still heinous even if private companies servers are holding the data instead of government data centers supporters of edward snowden are arguing that these recommended changes compound with monday's court ruling that the n.s.a. bulk phone metadata collection is likely unconstitutional justified edward snowden's decision to spill the n.s.a. secrets will continue to follow this new development. meanwhile the man who brought edward snowden's n.s.a. documents to the world glenn greenwald testified today in front of a european union parliament committee looking into n.s.a. surveillance on e.u. citizens and you had some harsh words for governments working with the n.s.a.

. and governments are devoted to the elimination of hard to see what is the u.s. the u.k. means three partners are clearly devoted to doing that has profound consequences but we're everybody who communicates electronically or greenwald who's in possession of the cache of n.s.a. documents obtained by edward snowden revealed what he believes to be the n.s.a. the ultimate goal and he also made it clear what the that the n.s.a. his activities go far beyond counterterrorism. throughout b. and s. a guy. here is teaching us all sorts of references to the fact that the goal of the n.s.a. is captured by the phrase call out in all yesterday in an interview with a.b.c. news greenwald promised a more reporting on the n.s.a. noting that only a small fraction of the documents have been published and that there are still very significant stories to come meanwhile in the united states one of the n.s.a.'s top

defenders senator dianne feinstein the chairwoman of the senate intelligence committee made some surprising comments about the n.s.a.'s bulk phone metadata collection program suggesting she may be open to reform yet after all. this program in conjunction with other programs helps keep this nation safe i'm not saying it's indispensable but i'm saying that it is work and it is a major tool in ferreting out a potential terrorist attack i'm not saying it's indispensable that's what she said that is a backtrack so change may actually be coming to the n.s.a. sooner rather than later. they want to ukraine where the united states is trying to influence the protests that have been seen on the streets in that country of the last month senator john mccain went on one of his famous or infamous diplomatic missions this time to kiev where he met with opposition leaders and protesters and pushed for closer ties with the european union mccain whether the state department

likes it or not has become a maverick ambassador to the world in recent years though often with not so satisfactory results as the old highs or points out this week in the wire when john mccain comes to town talking freedom disaster usually ensues most recently mccain was in cairo in august following the egyptian military coup since then protests have continued in that country as well as violent crackdowns and now the former democratically elected president mohamed morsi is facing terrorism charges that could result in his execution. also mccain visited syria back in may where he met with rebels and became the biggest supporter of arming the opposition in the syrian civil war since then though that opposition has been routed and far more radical elements of the opposition are exerting more and more control and initiating violence within the ranks mccain also met with rebels in libya back in april of two thousand and eleven specifically he met with them in benghazi and we all know what happened there later so it seems like wherever mccain goes the situation

deteriorates which doesn't bode well for ukraine and one has to wonder how a senator like john mccain has garnered such respect in the senate when it comes to foreign policy today the united states is nearing a nuclear deal with iran but just a few years ago this was senator mccain's solution to the situation in iran and then over an old beach boys song bomb iran. but anyway i. at i think iran is a great threat. are continuing their average where a nuclear weapon mccain was also one of the voices who thought the war in iraq would be a cakewalk it wasn't he also thought the later troop surge in iraq that he supported was responsible for a drop off in violence it wasn't and said it was the sunni awakening which happened several months before the surge and as most u.s. troops have left iraq today mccain in two thousand and eight was calling for

a much longer occupation of that country. president bush has talked about are seeing in iraq for fifty years maybe one hundred is that long is that we've been in south korea we've been in japan for sixty years we've been in south korea for fifty years or so that be fine with me and so the question is why is john mccain's interventionist foreign policy which is subscribed to by many elected lawmakers still taken seriously earlier i spoke with j.d. to chile managing editor reason twenty four seven and i wanted to know is john mccain the foreign policy kiss of death you know i would say pretty much the man if nothing else he goes into a country opens his mouth and he gives a local authoritarian regimes great cover to say they're local nationalists look something leaned on by the u.s. you know this is what set up an area obviously we don't want to go into keynes direction even when he's right by accidents he doesn't there were always a bull in a china shop so he does an enormous damage at that around the world well mccain

isn't the only one who sort of subscribes to this belief lindsey graham is with him on a lot of these issues and connecticut's democratic senator chris murphy when with mccain to ukraine this week how is this hyper interventionist ideology still a g. demise despite its disastrous effects that we've seen over the last several years because more than anything it plays to the local t.v. audience and plays the media the united states i'm not even sure that it's intended to that effect on the international stage and certainly it's counterproductive in many cases on the international stage now over it makes headlines you and i are talking about him and that gets the politicians in front of a camera gets them incentives prints and that may be the end goal for at least a couple of these guys anyway when it comes to ukraine specifically mccain is aligned himself with an opposition party and a leader that has some questionable nationalist anti-semitic past. he just basically a step into a complicated situation here what's he hoping to accomplish. you know that's

a great question are you right now you've got a three way trade struggle going on ukraine is caught the middle the government there has a lot of problems it's also in an enviable situation and the people in the streets of our legitimate demands but an american politician steps into a situation like that and start throwing his weight around and give the give the local government some cover to resist the americans made a helpful of national fervor nationalist fervor and it's it complicates the actual argument you can place in that country it doesn't do anybody any favors they have a problem that as a result locally it's not something that john mccain is going to fix with nearly went to war with syria a few months back the president came very close to launching military strikes something that mccain and company have been calling for for more than a year now does that suggest that despite the rhetoric coming from president obama about diplomacy in the importance of diplomacy that this white house is a lot closer to mccain's interventionist thinking that lets on well you know we've had continuous flow of foreign policy continuity i would say at least since two

thousand that is no particular reason to draw a bright line between bush administration foreign policy and obama administration foreign policy it's fine to think there's a difference in the detail and emphasis but the fundamental premises are the same is interventionist our seats militaristic and it's one that sees its goals as being one with troops or these days with drones the president right now is pushing back against criticism he's received from the interventionist far right on this potential for an iranian nuclear deal but this deal wouldn't have been possible had the president gone through with military strikes in syria isn't that right. well i'm not sure what kind of a deal is going to is going to come out of this but these discussions have been ongoing for years are our regimes will be brought to the table with threats of course they are i mean that you're achieving you're in goals with threats to the people on the ground the people in the streets are better off at the end of the day

because you threatens you ship weapons that i think is more complicated if we look at these international conferences and whether the pressure is roughly interventionist on the right and the left because this tends to be a shared fetish the end result tends to be something it's the headlines with politicians meeting but the people actually suffered to be a little more anonymous and those are the people of in the streets on the ground if decade of war that we've seen increasing extremism so we've had we've gone on this war on terror for more than ten years as a result we've seen an increase in extremism the loss of huge amounts of treasure the amount of money we've thrown into this war on terror and intervention if all of this isn't enough to stop the interventionist when they go out there and call for us to go into another country then what will what will it take for people like john mccain and lindsey graham to see error in their ways. pushing them aside there's no way that people who have who have based their careers this type of god policy this kind of goal are going to renounce it decided that it's are rarely are they going

to renounce it decided they've been in error for decades they're going to push that aside we have spent a vast amount of money we spend currently somewhere around the forty percent of total military spending on the planet from this from this country and yes extremism has written there has risen around the world we have not achieved a safer planet and i would say the foreign policy that we've been pursuing has failed they're not going to admit that you know we need to push with them aside but different people in place to implement a different foreign policy should need to chose a managing editor at reason twenty four seventh's or moving on to syria where there are growing concerns over rampant lawlessness and violence at the hands of extremists working within the opposition or terabit correspondent aboutalebi albo hia has more. terror still fills the hearts of those who witnessed the militants entering the town about drugs they saw panicked disoriented people running for their lives and they ran themselves they will never forget the despair in the eyes of those who were forced to stay behind we have no reliable way to communicate with

people trapped inside address but officials are saying the atrocities against the civilian population are continuing how people are being tortured and even burned alive and every bit of news coming out of the town is doing a new blow to those whose families are still being held by the militants and everyone working for the local authorities was to be killed regardless of their religion organ aman ational they were all taken to be killed and they took everyone even those who supported neither the government nor the rebels they were all either tortured killed or used as human shields the things being done in the drawer unthinkable they're slaughtering children and throwing them out of windows and no one's there when anything about it just the syrian authorities say they have evidence confirming that massacres have taken place and address sadat and will attack here and many other areas which remain under the control of the armed opposition by that that the situation in syria has now down to the point that the international norms of combat are no longer being observed it. is an industrial

town with a lot of the us residents working both in the private sector and for government added so yes horrifying crying must have been committed in this town houses were set on fire without people travelling side. official from the syrian army which is a position just outside the town that continues to carry out surgical strikes well as part of their effort to liberate address which is now the only hope of the families waiting for news of their loved ones inside the town. along with the reports of indiscriminate massacres there are concerns that relations between christians and muslims in this area in the rest of the middle east are rapidly and. tear it in fact prince charles spoke about this topic in london this week telling a reception for middle east christians that we have now reached a crisis where bridges are rapidly being deliberately destroyed by those with a vested interest in doing so we cannot ignore the fact that christians of the

middle east are increasingly being deliberately targeted by fundamentalist islamic militants i spoke earlier with ahmed middle east analyst and i asked him what was behind what prince charles referred to as the deliberate burning of bridges in the middle east. we have to take into consideration that from two thousand and three and the us invasion to iraq the balance of powers and again the balance of. countries relationships have fallen apart we have to recall that there was more than one million iraqi christians who have been forced out of their countries right now in syria we have a total population of two million christians living there and out of those two million population about forty five thousand have fled the country. about eighteen months ago there was the bishop of the matter night church in lebanon who

is a supporter of the regime and he spoke very bluntly about the whole situation that his biggest fear is to witness in syria what will happen what has happened before in iraq so yes i agree with his royal highness prince charles it has and that energy that there is a deliberate action to bring down the relationships of the muslim christians relationship into a. stage we this is very evident in iraq in syria and in egypt as well it's so the u.s. it's been meddling in the middle east for decades and over the last decade actively engaging in warfare in several countries in the middle east are you saying that that exacerbates the problem of violence against christians do extremists see these populations as extensions of the west extensions of the united states. no it's not it's not like that it is perceived from the i would call them the mickey mouse

organizations such as the jemaah islamiyah or the islamic state in the iraq and the levant such as al qaeda such as the salafi movement that's now wash around all over the sunni world across the middle east these all wild seemingly. independent lies seemingly they don't have a central command in reality they all act and think they have a very clear message you just have to follow the. rhetoric in the countries that they operate in that they are anti christians and the jews and do you even muslims who might be secular or who might be shiites or home i'd be not agreeing hundred percent on the side of five dogma achmed what are the consequences of a christian free syria or more broadly even a christian free middle east if this continues. well now we have

a christian free iraq if they live on which is referred to as syria lebanon and palestine this is all have been emptied from the christians. not the over ruled that the ten million plus christians in egypt will also be next to follow would not overloaded the. christians in jordan also with would follow this this is very sad we are being captured as hostages by these sufiah movements these seem to be separate yet the united what do you make of how the u.s. is responding to this issue given the conflicting interests here for example in syria you have the assad government which has been friendly to the christian communities but the u.s. is opposed to the assad government instead favors the rebels which we're now seeing factions of the rebels not being friendly to christians can the u.s.

even play a role in mitigating this problem. nobody understands what the u.s. . game. at this at this time in the middle east the u.s. for the first time in a very long time. are perceived in the middle east even by its strongest allies such as saudi arabia and egypt as an unreliable partner this is quite harsh i have not heard such harsh criticism for the u.s. government probably since the height of the anti american sentiment in. the middle east in the sixty's and the seventy's. this is unheard of the u.s. unfortunately does not have a game plan the u.s. is dealing with the situation there in a very amateurish very inexperienced and very shallow way in

approaching the this is the whole situation that was middle east analysts are mad fathi thank you. moving on let's talk about government waste this week senator tom coburn introduced his annual waste book documenting one hundred examples of government waste one example coburn highlights is the national technical information services which wastes fifty million dollars every year compiling reports for other government agencies reports that are mostly available for free using a simple google search we go to out our cheesemaking lopez who reveals what else is in this year's waste book one million dollars on romance novels ten million on a new reality t.v. show two hundred thousand on a party at paramount studios these expenses might sound like extravagant hollywood expenditures but those are just three things the u.s. government spent taxpayer money on this year republican senator tom coburn released volume four of his government waste book this week detailing one hundred instances

of what he considers irresponsible spending inside the waste book this year is thirty billion dollars of stupid what i would consider stupid or at least poor judgment when it comes to spending money in a time when we have very little money to spare while the defense department and other government agencies say there is nothing more to cut senator coburn is telling congress to think again where the agree with my opinion are not in the issue the fact is if you look at the seven hundred billion dollars in deficits and almost eighteen trillion dollar debt. some grown up in the room has to question whether or not we're spending money wisely in effect to play so what does waist look like last year the government spent nearly three hundred million dollars on an unused army blimp fifty million on an unfinished parking garage that was started in one nine hundred ninety seven twenty nine million dollars on dale earnhardt jr is nascar team the list goes on and on and on in all the ways book

points out nearly thirty billion dollars in money misuse that's enough to cut the seaquest ration our country currently faces by one third one sweet spot for cutting a government program that's meant to protect sugar farmers from fees and all volatility it allows the sugar farmers to pay back their government loans using well sugar it's a sweet deal that coburn says wasted one hundred seventy one point five million dollars and twenty thirteen but the sugar alliance argues that government policy forces them to operate this way because mexico has flooded the u.s. market with unneeded subsidize sugar over supplies are near record highs and sugar prices are nearing record lows without the minimal safety net that kicked in this year many u.s. sugar producers would be put out of business and america would be more dependent on unreliable foreign suppliers for a key food ingredient and that would be

a recipe for disaster the sugar alliance says it's willing to forfeit the loans if the government levels the global playing field from sugar crops to sugar daddies in a section called pimping the tax code he took aim at nevada's brothels for receiving brakes on business and operating fees seventeen point five million dollars and all something the owner of the moonlight bunny ranch says is unfair dennis argues he already pays his fair share of taxes the first eight years of the biggest taxpayer. kennedy for why for brothels in lake county nevada i pay a half a million dollars a year in business license fees as for the deductions the women he employees receive nails here sell so close little i was photographing shoes dennis contends prostitution is like any other business

should a carpenter be able to write off a hammer these are business expenses her business expenses just are a little different in the end senator coburn blames congress and says the only way to stop the waste is to quit electing people that care more about being in washington than actually fixing it the only thing that's going to change is for the american people to quit sending people up here with a motivation to how do they stay here that's why term limits is something that has to happen in this country because i guarantee if you had term really strong term limits people the people who would be here would not be the people who are here today if not senator coburn warns that this waste book could get a lot thicker as politicians raise taxes rather than cut off the lifestyles of the rich and powerful in the waistcoat capital of the country meghan lopez r.t. so what's the deal with america and its love for violence rights resident takes a look at how the sport of football is becoming increasingly violent.

american football giants and the lamb into each other and make big and pile of the viral sport by nature but this event are a lot. hole of violence has guy rocketed on the field off the field in the stands in the parking lot of all around the game in fact it's been the deadliest football season in the years what's the hell's going on with football a marriage and three people were just stabbed outside the sports authority stadium field in denver home to the broncos amending tiles and winkles was murdered after

fighting with someone in the parking lot outside the arrowhead stadium in kansas after the chiefs played a female fan of the university of alabama crimson tide shot and killed a mom of three at a game watching party and then there's just been some really weird football that is given to like the father of a high school player dying in the stand while his son scored the winning touchdown and in the same game a referee collapsed on the field and died and had to be brought back to life with a distant relator another woman tried to kill herself at the oakland raiders stadium by jumping off the third deck there a construction worker was killed at the texas a and m. football stadium but it's not just the fans that are losing their lives their season either more than odds doesn't high school players have died from head and neck injuries directly related to football this season it's the most fatal season

for high school football since one thousand nine hundred six. meanwhile michael vick is back on the football field making tons of money even though he's a known convicted dog killer and tons of girls on twitter send their undying love to hiding former patriots star aaron hernandez even though he sits in jail accused of first degree murder american football is super violent and yet it's still super glorified here in the u.s. i think it's horrifying personally but maybe was going on with football makes sense we glorify violence throughout all of our movies and games and why because really with more than three hundred million guns and over seventy wars while and is embedded at the root of our culture so maybe it's time to make football our national sport since it fits right in there with the rest of our violent past times

tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter as the resident. finally to instagram can get you insta arrested that's what happened a nineteen year old to prove johnson has a thousand year old du pree johnson of florida after sheriff stumbled across johnson's instagram page rather than taking pictures of his broncho the shapes of clouds or something johnson has built a century and feed with pictures of himself with various guns saying that johnson had previously been arrested for grand theft burglary and firearm possession the police issued a search warrant for johnson's home where they further found more guns quoting a glock and a technology pistol plus roughly two hundred fifty thousand dollars worth of stolen jewelry electronics and more guns altogether johnson has been charged with one hundred forty two felony counts and he's currently behind bars police suspect

johnson may be involved in a series of more than forty. burglaries in south florida as they say a picture is worth one hundred felonies. and before we go don't forget to tune in at nine pm for larry king now tonight's guest is the academy award winning actress anjelica here's that here's a snippet of tonight's episode where she explains how it feels to win an oscar. it was thrilling and chilling and completely intimidating and. you know you see people year after year with that oscar in their hand at every at every. penny and you think what is it about this you know we watch this performance year after year what is it about this moment and it's because it's never happened to that person before and that does it for now for more of the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash our to america i'm same sex

until next time take it as it. technology innovation all the developments around. the future of coverage. a i marinate this has been both and here are some of the stories we're tracking for you today. first up j.p. morgan is.