coming up on r t in iraq two major cities have reportedly fallen to terrorists fallujah and ramadi are besieged by al qaeda militants while moony iraqis still experience a brutal insurgent bombings the latest on the unrest in the raf just ahead and a series of new developments on n.s.a. surveillance u.s. senator rand paul plans to bring the n.s.a. to court for violating americans rights while the n.s.a. sidesteps the question of whether or not they spied on congress more on that coming up and four states which have foster the nation's energy boom have found that there is a link between fracking and water pollution will look at the states that have found this connection later in tonight's show.

it's monday january sixth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you are watching our t.v. well over the weekend an already volatile situation in iraq turned deadly when all qaeda linked forces took hold of two key cities in the anbar province numbers with the islamic state of iraq and syria or the i.s.i. yes launched attacks on the cities of ramadi and fallujah now in full moon full lucia's sounds familiar to you that is because it is the location of some of the bloodiest fighting between u.s. and al qaeda forces groups back in two thousand and four at least twenty people died on sunday in bombings iraqi military forces have responded with air raids that reportedly killed sixty minute militants twenty two soldiers and at least twelve civilians have also died in the battles now u.s. secretary of state john kerry prong. military support to the iraqis but said no us

troops only put on the ground kerry said quote this is a fight that will longs to the iraqis we are not obviously contemplating returning we are not contemplating putting boots on the ground this is their fight but we are going to help them in their fight to talk about the current situation in iraq i was joined earlier by saeed are a cot a correspondent and political analyst for all koontz newspaper he started off by giving me a little bit of background about the region question this is the epicenter of the sunni heartland and it was the center of the surge is he back between two thousand and three and two thousand and eight until or until progress was able to create the awakening councils and so on so it is very important and the iraqi forces are not really really to handle this influx of huge forces or i mean relatively speaking as far as the regulars are concerned large forces. around the city and basically

taken the main the main center and this rounding areas and so on so that they are virtually control this for the you know which is the also a trade center it is a cultural center of the. province and so on so it's very important for them to control it for the for the. u.s. to control it but also it is equally important for the government take it back and let's talk about the specific importance of this area you had mentioned a couple of different issues regarding this area obviously it's a key area but also there is a sunni majority as i understand it in this area so how does that play into this whole situation. during the insurgency that was really the epicenter of the insurgency so it was basically the initiative of general petraeus back then who. created virtually created with his. visors the awakening councils where the

sudanese were. mobilized to fight and they did and they you know they threw them out of the the region and so on and returned they were taken back into the government and they were soon great many of their former positions understood them and so on a lot of them were you know these tribal chiefs and so on were in the military they had high rank and so on so they were going back to the prestigious positions and pay and so on so they were basically made peace with sort of speak by the americans so it is very very important that they don't get alienated they get that they're not going to side with the government and that will give you know sort of tremendous leverage for the client that basically are not there for the to grow and foster their own activities and we know that right now iraq is led by a shia majority followed by a prime minister nouri al maliki so i as i understand it reports that i've read some of those militants actually went to prayers over the weekend saying that they

were going to protect the sunni people living in fallujah and living in the anbar province the shia majority government which is an interesting point you know is this the biggest security threat as iraqi troops have faced since the u.s. left definitely is the most volatile. the most situation since the military the u.s. military withdrew from iraq in two thousand and eleven and now the problem is it's also playing on the sectarian differences that are now everywhere in the region in syria there's been a spillover from the syria war into iraq and so on that really the situation makes it far more complex and so on and in the absence of. good status of forces agreement with the united states iraq really is unable to defend itself i mean today we were told that there are good supply them with hellfire missiles and so on but in fact iraq has not even have the need to deliver those missiles they don't have fighter jets they don't have you know combat helicopters. and so on so.

basically directly and perhaps with some drone strikes as they do in yemen and pakistan is going to be very difficult to do for american troops and i'm really glad that you brought up the point of syria and how the violence in syria is spilling over to the us i know that some of the weapons that the i.s.i. us is using they smuggled from weapons that are in syria that were actually supplied by saudi forces so it is all of this directly related to syria or is there something else that's going on here without a doubt they work to do things to syria directly because it is called. iraq and the syria basically that's what it is and that's where they began and the acronym stands for that so it is you know it is sort of elastic group that goes across the border the border has always been porous across iraq so that's one and secondly there is also the sectarian divide that is being constantly through this war in syria that more and more have taken on sectarian aspect and another interesting

aspect to bring up is the ruin that we are seeing out to lawmakers in particular that are really criticizing what's going on in iraq as a fail or a button failure from the west for not leaving those troops out in two thousand and one was being senators lindsey graham and john mccain now the reasons we didn't leave those troops in is because there was no iraq harlem and terry decision to give immunity to troops were kind of conversely going through similar situations in afghanistan do you think that karzai should be taking note. i think that there should be a lesson drawn from iraq and what happened and where the failures it was basically a failure on part of the u.s. to sort of horn out some sort of agreement with the iraqis i was there during two thousand and seven when the person over agreement was you know worked out with the iraqis but then you know in two thousand and eleven or two thousand and ten. i was unable to work out any kind of. supporters of the iraq and so they were living

through their own device so to speak to fight terrorism and basically depend a great deal on iran and iran's influence well right now what we're seeing is a battle between araki forces and between this al qaeda i.s.i. yes but it could very easily slip into sectarian violence or the coming days we'll have to keep a very close eye on this correspondent a political analyst for all kids newspaper thank you so much for weighing in thank you for having me kentucky senator rand paul is making headlines once again this time he's attacking the national security agency with a massive class action lawsuit that claims that the n.s.a. violated americans constitutional rights with this bulk collection of metadata here's rand paul explaining the lawsuit. we everybody in america who has a cell phone would be told you will for this class action suit if any of your viewers have a cell phone they have to go to my facebook tonight they can sign up to be part of the lawsuit we want to overwhelm the government and we want to show publicly that

hundreds of thousands of people don't we object to the government looking a records without our permission so far senator paul claims that he has more than two hundred fifty thousand signatures on his website and that number is growing by the day in that same interview with fox news that rand paul was asked if he is afraid that the n.s.a. is spying on him he said he didn't believe that he was being spied on personally but the potential for the use exists which is right on point by the n.s.a.'s own admissions in a statement responding to senator bernie sanders questions about whether the n.s.a. is spying on members of congress the agency tells our teeth quote n.s.a. is the authorities to collect signals intelligence data includes procedures that protect the privacy of u.s. persons such protections are built into and cut across the entire process members of congress have the same privacy protections as all u.s. persons so looks like they are on the same page as the rest of us which means they

could have been had their medals data spied on and collected just as well as all of us could have earlier i spoke with rachel levinson wildman counsel at the brennan center i asked her if everyone with a cell phone could really take part in this lawsuit like ron rand paul alleges take a look. i think it's a legal matter this is still a little undetermined the n.s.a. has been a little closed mouth about which companies it's actually collecting from and we know in part from the presidential review boards report that came out a couple of weeks ago that they may not be collecting from all companies there's kind of some number that isn't public yet so i think it's hard to say that literally every single person with a cell phone is necessarily being affected by this certain. we know that a lot of americans are sure now how likely is it that a class action lawsuit like this could realistically result in a change for others monetary or otherwise i mean i think you know it has some legs

what's required for a class action suit is that there be a group of people who kind of have some claims of question of law in common and it's more practical to bring that lawsuit as a group than individually we have these two kind of competing decisions that have just come down from different district courts one saying the program is totally constitutional one saying that it's not but in both of them the pleased if in those cases had standing that is they were allowed to bring these lawsuits it's not inconceivable that some much larger group of people would have standing to given what we're learning about the program and i'm glad you brought up those two kind of differing opinions when it comes to federal justices and what they had to say or what federal judges anyway on the other hand on friday the fisa court renewed its program for another ninety days that bulk metadata collection so is a significant considering how contested this metadata collection program has become well i think if you knew that that defies a court we're going to renew the order i would have been stunned if the court had

said no we're not going to the court has had the information in front of it it has decided that it's comfortable renewing these orders that said this program is now being battled out in much more public arenas with these courts where they're adversaries on both sides there are people making the argument against the programs and so i think these cases are going to test the constitutionality of the programs really much more than has been happening in the much more secret files of court and absolutely you know you may remember this exchange between senator ron wyden and james clapper who is the director of national intelligence take a look. 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 or. now since then activists and even legislators have been calling for action some type of action against james clapper for saying that they say that he blatantly lied to

congress and the d.n.i. his lawyer actually shot back against the new york times for that saying that he blatantly lied to congress they said quote indeed it would have been irrational for mr clapper to lie at this hearing since every member of the committee was already aware of the program as mr clapper has explained he was surprised by the question and focused his mind on the collection of the content of americans communications in that context his answer was is accurate when we pointed out mr clapper is a mistake to him he was surprised and distressed what do you make of that surprised and distress this is hard to know because you sort of have different narratives coming from the center widens office on the one hand and from with office the lawyer for the d.n.i. on the other hand so i both agree with with the basics which is that senator wyden is off as had presented the question advance and then in questioning that mr clapper basically seemed to misrepresent the collection that was going on and senator wyden said he got the question vance he had a he had an opportunity considerate to answer it correctly or at least to say he

couldn't answer it in an unclassified setting and then when the mistake was pointed out to him he didn't take any opportunity to correct it by what on the other hand says he didn't see the question his staff saw it but he didn't and he couldn't really correct it because the programs had been declassified get i don't think we know exactly what went on behind the scenes that being said the you know mr clapper has been in this business for a long time he's been doing intelligence for a long time personally he's testified to congress many times so i think it's still troubling that faced with this question he somehow wasn't thinking of a massive metadata collection program on americans and didn't even at least fall back on answering in a classified setting he simply gave an answer that was untrue that's a very interesting point and you know in that same fox interview that we played earlier rand paul went on to say that if we are going to extend the law and prosecute edward snowden then we should keep that law and prosecute james clapper and he went on to say that he things would be interesting if the two of them were in a jail cell to dell are together thank you so much for joining me rachel levinson wildman

counsel at the brennan center. and today the senate made history confirming janet yellen as the first ever female chair of the federal reserve but the controversy surrounding wright point had nothing to do with her gender artie's perry and boring reports. janet yellen has officially been confirmed as the first federal reserve chair woman she sailed through the senate confirmation process and a record eighty nine days thanks in part to harry reid invoking the nuclear option making it significantly easier to pass judicial and executive branch nominee only fifty six senators voted for yellen tonight that's a four less than what ben bernanke he managed to get just four years ago if the senate rules had not been changed she would not have had the votes necessary to be confirmed tonight sense one hundred seventy five it took a three fifths vote or sixty out of one hundred senators to pass nominees now with

the nuclear option it only takes fifty one and democrats currently control fifty five of those many republicans saw this as a free vote against her so she was expected to win without any issues yellen previously the vice chair of the fed was an academic with a specialty and the labor markets before joining the central bank more than a decade ago she has been seen as a strong ally of previous chair ben bernanke her biggest challenge ahead will be winding down the trillions of dollars with the bonds bought by the fed under his predecessor janet yellen is the first major executive branch nominees to be confirmed since the upper chambers confirmation rules have been changed remember the nuclear option was voted on november twenty third the same day janet yellen was up for a vote in the senate banking committee some believe these rules were modified just to accommodate yellen but democrats say the system was broken and plugged bipartisan obstruction they say eliminating filibusters and requiring

a simple majority vote would ease the confirmation process for all presidential appointee but even without a fellow filibuster yellen didn't get through confirmation without a few minor road bumps first republican senator rand paul threatened to filibuster her nomination if his bill to audit the. several it was not brought to the senate floor for a vote to shortly after this the right is when the senate filibuster rules were changed and response republicans used other stall tactics to delay her vote causing it to be postponed by a few weeks still not satisfied however sen rand paul spoke on the floor tonight an opposition to the nomination of yellen is confirmation the complete lack of transparency continues to hurt and cheat the rest of us at the very least the american middle class deserves to know what goes on behind the curtain what decisions are made and how they benefit wall street and the moneyed class this bite

has calls to hold her confirmation until transparency is brought to the fed janet yellen has been confirmed to the most powerful position and finance and washington parian boring r.t. . and the reason for that low vote count with eighty two senators participating was largely the fault of the polar vortex which has disrupted the traffic plans of many americans even legislators while all twenty six senators voting against yellen is confirmation were republicans eleven members of the g.o.p. did in fact vote with the forty five democrats to make janet yellen the new chair of the federal reserve. still ahead here on r t and four you want to stay it's there are hundreds of complaints over hydraulic fracturing this process to retrieve deeply buried natural gas has left locals fearing their contaminated water supply or in the effects of fracking after the break.

welcome back while an investigation has began to shut the line on some of the dangers of hydraulic fracturing or fracking across the country the associated press collected records of complaints in pennsylvania ohio texas and west virginia

hundreds of grievances were reported by residents over the years pennsylvania had three hundred ninety eight complaints last year alone ohio reported forty was for ginia says it received one hundred twenty two letters over the past four years and texas presented the a.p. with a ninety four page spread sheet outlining two thousand complaints over the years however very few of these allegations were actually confirmed by the states now fracking is a way to extract natural gas from and oil from deep within the earth then previous technologies allowed how well horizontal drilling injects highly pressurized fluids into shell rock layers fracturing them then allowing that gas to escape and allowing those oil and gas companies to actually access it now earlier i spoke with tyson slocum the director of public citizen the energy program and he taught us more about why a water well contamination can actually be caused by this hydraulic fracturing i

first asked him if the a few investigation is the most point close one so far when it comes to the environmental impact caused by fracking. so far yes and what this study shows is that there's huge discrepancies between what kind of procedures each individual state takes in addressing these concerns about water and other environmental contamination from the hydraulic fracturing process what this investigation shows is that basically most of these states are just operating hotlines where people can call and we're port these concerns that they're having but we're not seeing a systemic follow up to to determine exactly what if any contamination has occurred and in fact what we've seen at public citizen is that once the oil or natural gas companies confront landowners they typically require them to sign what's known known as nondisclosure agreements which for bid these landowners from discussing if

there was contamination at all and so what we're seeing is that we do is that the lack of good information about well contamination and all of these gag orders on these nondisclosure agreements it's having a huge impact on policy because we're not getting the data we need to determine what the impacts of fracking are and so one thing that we've asked the oil industry to do is to release homeowners and land owners from nondisclosure agreements to allow them to talk publicly about their experiences of having their water contaminated from fracking now you touched on it a little bit during that response but i do want to address something in particular i'll overall i read a number of different complaints that have happened in all these different four states i had it turns out that it level two thousand and eleven for instance in ohio fifty four are for it only two are confirmed that seems to be the pattern

consistently why is it that so few are actually being confirmed at this case well a lot of it because the states. lack the resources to follow up on these they also lack the technical ability to assess whether or not the contamination has occurred and often at the same time that these folks are contacting the state with their concerns they're also contacting the local oil company and typically the oil company will swoop in and they'll want to hush this whole situation up and so the oil company will say listen we'll give you ten or twenty thousand dollars in cash will give you a year's supply of free drinking water all you have to do is sign this nondisclosure agreement that forbids you from ever mentioning this publicly and in fact there was a famous case that came out this past summer where one non-disclosure agreement forbid two young children of a family from ever talking about hydraulic fracturing for the rest of their lives

so these nondisclosure agreements are becoming more and more on arrests and it's inhibiting policy analysis to determine the extent of the dangers of fracking and i remember that case well we actually covered it right here on r.g.p. now this same associated press report said that the most common type of pollution is from methane and not from the chemicals injected into the ground when used during the drilling process what should we take that to mean well the methane is basically the natural gas and that's just the most common form of interaction between these wells the seismic formations and groundwater sources and so that's the the easiest and quickest thing to detect that's also i mean it's the easiest thing to detect the fact is that the hydraulic fracturing process as you mentioned in your overview is injecting millions of gallons of highly corrosive and highly toxic chemical mixtures into the ground and some of them are

in small traces it still is harmful. for health but it's more difficult to pick up especially. if different state agencies lacked the resources to do the full kind of testing required and in fact this rail car accident carrying frocked crude oil up in north dakota one of the things that we're seeing that caused this fire to be so combustible was fracking chemicals were mixed in with the crude oil as it as it's coming out of the formation which is creating problems in our rail transport system so we're seeing dangers with the chemicals not only for the environment and for and for drinking water sources but also on rail transport where you know seventy percent of north dakota fractal is being moved now we really don't have much time left but something that i noticed while looking over all these documents was that texas had that ninety four page spread sheet i have said it was very thorough but ohio and pennsylvania and west virginia they weren't as thorough

so can you quickly go over why there are such differences in this reporting and would it make a difference if the states kept track it would but again the texas did more thoroughly and what they were able to produce. in response to an open records were request was simply a log of all of the complaints that given the agencies received there wasn't necessarily follow through to determine the validity of these complaints and so it's one thing to have a clear catalog of all of the complaints and every state we need to have standards for that but the most important thing is actually the investigation and that's where the states aren't doing their jobs thank you so much for weighing in tyson slocum director of the public citizen energy program thank you my pleasure while with a starbucks on every block you what think that the company was trying to take over the world at least that's what some missouri residents might argue anyway

a local bar created a drink called the frappuccino but starbucks says that it's says are the only ones that are allowed to pour that drink and the company serves the bar with a cease and desist order tonight's resident takes a look at this curious case. i'm . with the store on nearly every damn street and starbucks is clearly trying to take over the entire world and they employ seemingly endless resources on their quest for global domination case in point there's a foursquare like website called untapped dot com where people check in and say

what beers are drinking and where they're drinking it at some point three people out of many thousands posted that they were drinking a beer called frappuccino at a place called exit six pub and brewery in missouri and because starbucks is taking over the world it has an army of lawyers and enough money to pay someone to go all over the internet to make sure no one anywhere is making a neg off of anything that starbucks could own so naturally the starbucks army saw the random three posts about the frappuccino beer at exit six and immediately sent the bar a cease and desist letter they alleged to be yours name was but medically identical to their trademark but chito drink so exit six had better change the name of the bigger or else. starbucks really needs to relax than try to take over the world already so that's what makes the pub owner jeff britain's response to the state and desist letter so awesome because he says he's never even sold

a beer named robert chino that he only sold local beers and the people who were at those posts were probably talking about of the military now he sells so he sent starbucks a very funny letter with six dollars enclosed in it in the letter he said that unlike starved. his pub was the proud owner of no trademark he wrote since both lawyers go a long way we also promised to stop production of our star both mcdonald's coca-cola marlboro honey lager for fear of repercussion he then included a check for six dollars to satisfy starbucks for the profit he made from those three customers he also promised to rename the beer the f. word but which he actually started selling good for you at the pub owner clearly starbucks like the rest of the other giant enterprises in this country won't be happy until they have every last damn nickel on the planet so the least we can do

is have fun along the way hopefully at the expense of these rappin corporate tyrants tonight let's talk about that by following me on twitter as the resident. that does it for me for tonight i'm meghan lopez have a wonderful night. he survived the atrocities. to make a psychologist and. is trying to his life i'm doing well to run. by giving. hope. lots to so many children.