all. the. brighton. from plans to crash. starts on t.v. don't come. russians

demanding equal justice as the spotlight falls on cases of influential figures using their connections to evade prosecution a fatal car accident involving eighteen year old daughter of a local government official prompted widespread public condemnation when she was let off with a suspended sentence. with the u.k. bracing for deep public spending cuts economists warn of more financial hardship on the horizon they claim policymakers are applying outdated principles of a complex financial problems the country faces. and heroes of the state brush honors the agents deported from the u.s. in the biggest spy swap since the cold war there were exchanged in vienna this summer for five years held by moscow those are your r.t. headlines up next a low and it takes a close look at the u.s. midterm elections to find out what makes the american voter tick more coming your way next here on r.t. . for the. we've got. the biggest issues getting voice seems to face with the news makers.

what can they alone or show will get the real headlines with none of the mersey we're going live to washington d.c. now today we're going to ask what issues really are important to americans in this election and guess what the war in afghanistan is not one of them going to get better and jake delivered his take on the shocking disconnect between the american people and the wars of the united states wages abroad next parents listen up because those dare drug education programs well they're turning children against their families in fact there have been numerous examples of kids narking on their own parents which then result in jail time so that tell you this program is doing bad or good we're going to reason magazines radley balko on to discuss the complex issue then is the term breaking news overrated you know many news stations are

using the words to invoke a sense of urgency even when they don't know all the facts or if the story's even real we've got twenty four hour networks like c.n.n. and fox using breaking news graphics several times a day leading us to ask what's the point of it all and our bloggers out to get the politicians tea party candidate joe miller thinks they are after he got one quote irrational blogger arrested at a town hall meeting so does this imply that the first amendment has gone out the window i thought that joe was all about the constitution so we're going to speak to sam seeder a blogger himself about that story then at comic con takes the big apple fans dressed up as their favorite comic book superheroes who spend their days saving the world of consumer heroes fix the real problems that are hurting us like the threat of a double dip recession artie's unless they see a chick in the went to the convention to find out she's going to tell us all about of the end of the show but now let's move on to today's top story. it term

elections are only a few weeks away and with american voters about to flex their most muscles to show what they find most important do you think that the war in afghanistan would be on their agenda do you think that a conflict that's been raging for nine years and counting which is cost more than thirteen hundred american lives more than three hundred billion dollars would be a priority at a new nationwide poll from the new york times and c.b.s. news conducted last month shows that only three percent of americans even mention afghanistan as the most important problem facing the country now not surprisingly the economy and jobs got a sixty percent vote but three percent for the war that isn't as stone dingly tiny figure in the worst part is that it's not just apathy the voters are feeling it's also helplessness or joining me from our studio in los angeles to discuss it is jake deliberate so afghanistan vendor veteran and co-founder of veterans for rethinking afghanistan jake thanks so much for joining us now first of all tell me

i mean are three percent of that number shocking at all we talk about you know the apathy when it comes to america's wars a lot but three percent that is absolutely tiny. yes three percent is amazing alone and you have to ask why do americans not seem to be interested in the afghanistan war i think one of the reasons is that because the pentagon and the u.s. house of representatives and congress in general has failed to make the connections . the current economic crisis we're in is directly related to the war in afghanistan i mean we're spending a million dollars a year per soldier it costs four hundred dollars just to put a gallon of gas inside of a humvee four hundred dollars for one gallon of gas and largely the american people are kept under a canard or a blunder and not informed about what's going on because it only allows the pentagon to continue the war effort and only allows the u.s.

congress to hide the reality of the issues to the american people i think i think what this is is this is pulling the curtain over reality just to keep americans in the dark when i you and i have definitely discussed this before about the fact that you know if if cutting our deficit cutting spending really is at the top priority for american citizens why don't we ever look at defense but you know tell me this i mean this war really in terms of who it is that's fighting it's being fought by really a tiny portion of the american population so you know disaster thing to do with it because the economy a bad economy unemployment that affects everybody let's get real this war does not affect all americans. no that's right if you look at their current recruiting status the people that are enlisted ranks that largely wage this war are from poor middle to lower class communities the the ratio of minorities to two to whites growth grossly outweighs this sort of populous situation and the regular public we

have something like fifty percent of the military is minorities as a related as opposed to population is something like twenty five to thirty percent minorities so that's why that's one of the real reasons why there are those that have power those that have a financial strength have been able to sort of keep it over keep the curtain for the american population but i think the biggest point about this whole situation i think america has slowly but surely turned into an oligarchy and what i mean by this is that those who have power the military industrial system those that are in congress the pentagon those are the people that are running the united states it's no longer the average day joes that are joe the plumber or or betsy the those are not the people running america america is now run by those that have the elite power well i'm really happy you mentioned that because lately we see a lot of you know very high ranking military officials that are constantly on the media circuit that they're telling their impression of how this war effort is going

and so it's well you know it's going to take more time but we're on the right track we're slowly getting there and this is the thing that really got me about this poll from new york times in the c.b.s. is that it's not that americans are completely apathetic or that they have no idea what's going on in afghanistan in fact the majority of them said the u.s. shouldn't be involved that the war is going badly but it's not a top priority for them because some people feel like well there's nothing you can do about afghanistan they feel like we're stuck and as if you know the constant war is something that's not an option that's just that's something that's a necessity. yeah we are in a state of purpose propecia a war we are in that state because those elites the generals the military industrial system they're the ones that get to dictate why we're that we're in war and why we shouldn't be there and eccentric such are not the everyday citizen and and the american population not because they've been forced to just because they've chosen to has farmed out their national security it's to something like point one five percent of the population and those that go there and you know the guys that i

served with they see this as an at decade old war and we keep asking ourselves when's it going to be over when will the generals finally stand up and i say i watched general colin powell meet the press a few weeks ago say that he himself is is one of the few generals who are kind of curious to what the overall goal is even though even the former joint chiefs of staff commander doesn't have an idea we're doing so i think that this is overall a situation to say it's time to get out it's time to bring the troops home it's trying to bring the war to an end and all people have interests in mind it's costing us something like four to six billion dollars a week and it's only going to get more expensive as the years go on. i want to thank you very much for joining us and you know you say that we only we only hear like we're thing of the generals perspective and for some reason that's not something that our media questions and often i think that we need to have more questions more answers being given to us as to why almost ten years and we're still

in this war thanks so much. thanks for having on the program. all right still to come tonight the online world can be harsh but one woman is fighting back in court after mean you do comments were left on her videos so could this be the end of the internet i don't know maybe i would have more on that in a moment and dare is a nationwide school program to teach children the dangers of drugs but is there teaching children that are on their parents we're going to highlight a california case where parents welled up in jail after their kid turn them in for having pot. every month we give you the future we help you understand how we'll get there and

what tomorrow brings the best in science and technology from across russia and around the world join knology update on our g. a recent court ruling could eventually put an end to the way that you use here too hallmark of which is anonymous users being able to write just about anything they want on anyone's video well there's one user who was so sick of the mean comments left on her videos that she decided to do something about it meet carla franklin a formal model and a graduate of columbia business school so when she found three users posting malicious comments about her and posting video clips of her from years ago she decided to sue google to determine who those people are kind of shocking. well the courts decided in favor of franklin and they've given google only fifteen days to give up the names of those three users who are leaving not so nice comments now i

understand franklin is frustrated about those anonymous comp anonymous comments left on our page but honestly the comments column is brutal it's just the way it is a vibe learned one thing is that in order to post anything on you tube you better grow think skin and fast you're not surprisingly yellow to show myself well we've been commented on a few times let's look at some of them you tube or one said at one point that he wants to know what bar plays r t so that he can stay away and we have full moco thirteen who thinks that i'm not intelligent enough to host a show because well he thinks i'm a twelve year old thanks i guess i'm still looking young and this one could be my favorite will gallus and says what we'll baron's daughter or mystery is alone to that she was given her own t.v. show for her birthday rush has got a lot of super intelligent people but this woman should not be their best face to the world seriously will do you think i would be working five days a week if i was

a mistress of an oil baron except now obviously these three users don't agree with my opinions and they're definitely not leaving any constructive criticism but that doesn't mean that i'm going to find them and hunt them down in court. come on people this is how you two works by responding to something in the cyber world it gives people the chance to say what they really think without worrying about looking that person in the face and i'm not sure if that's a good thing it's kind of cowardly but it's just how it is it's the internet where anonymity used to exist so commenters beware because the times are changing but in the meantime i'm going to tell franklin to get over it everybody on youtube gets called a whore at some point or another so i just consider it publicized if i freaked out about everything that was on there let's just say i just have about twenty thousand lawsuits under my belt. now if you attended school starting in the early one nine hundred eighty s. until now or if you have kids who've been in school during those years then you've

probably heard of daycare stands for drug abuse resistance education and it's meant to teach kids the evils of doing drugs with the overarching theme of just say no but what happens when the program has unintended consequences when it goes beyond a child's personal choices and affects their family what happens when a kid knocks on their parents it's happened before and now it's happened again and eleven year old student in the fifth grade brought his parents marijuana cigarettes to school and then reported them after a lesson about marijuana was delivered by a police officer who is part of the dare program and teaches the kids about the dangers of drugs alcohol and tobacco now as a result police arrested the child's parents both have been charged with two misdemeanor counts of marijuana possession and has possession of drug paraphernalia and the eleven year old and his sibling have been removed from the parents' house by social services so examples like these we have to ask whether this program is

doing more harm than is good well joining me from nashville to discuss it is radley balko senior editor for reason magazine and reason dot com bradley thanks so much for joining us now i guess first of all i just want to ask you your thoughts on this program i'm definitely a child of bear in school and the things that i remember most about it are i don't know perhaps making little skits where we had to role play and we made fun of it or maybe the biggest druggie in my high school sitting it is your book photo with a dare shirt a huge smile on his face eyes glazed over i mean really this program kind of became a mockery do you have any experiences with it. well yeah i think they're give us a large supply of ironic t. shirts or or it's yours to wear if you look at. a lot of these that troll academic studies of dare. just about all of them of found it to be at best ineffective then in some cases actually it was found to increase drug use among kids who keep their

sort of because it actually introduced them to some drugs that they they wouldn't have known about otherwise. is not always the danger of informing people they start getting all kinds of ideas but you know this really is a touchy subject because on one hand you obviously want to teach kids to resist drugs but are you also teaching them to narc on your family i mean is this something that day or encourages. it does actually you know there's a history of kids turning in their parents took their you know i'm sure the program buries by you know which particular jurisdiction or which it officer actually is teaching it but i know what i mean when i was will come and talk to my school they ask very much encouraged you to tell authorities that. you know you can solve these sort of illicit drugs the they specifically if your family so i do think and you know again yes we want to discourage kids from trying was secret service and we got that out there their parents' approval and you know you also

want to encourage kids to talk to the authorities that you know there is a body in the place simple but this idea of you know turning in their parents or a marijuana cigarettes i mean these are misdemeanors that the parents are charged with and you know it ends up with the kids being taken out of the home and you know the family if not ruin certainly. you know put under a lot of undue stress for all we i also have to wonder you know how much a child really knows in terms of why you know what the results are going to be from their actions because they might be told at school that drugs are bad you know tell us if someone around you is doing drugs but they might not realize that telling their teachers that their parents smoked a joint is going to put their parents in jail is going to put these kids in child services and essentially tear their family apart. you know when the other thing about there is that it i mean it lives they tell kids things about drugs that aren't true i mean it basically if they tell them that marijuana is that bad is cocaine is as bad as heroin status meth and when you like it i mean kids aren't

stupid and when you lie to them about the actual effects of marijuana. you know when they come to realize that's a lie the next time they're people come in or schools give them any sort of a probation about it was drugs are not going to listen to them anymore so i mean one of the big but i think this is one of the really big problems out there is it is it does give them the wrong information about drugs and of course you know then they get they don't really leave it up to the kid to make up his mind you know if you told the kid that marijuana really does no more damage to you than alcohol and probably is actually a lot safer than alcohol they're probably going to be less inclined to turn their parents and then you know comparing marijuana to p.c.p. or. so you know it's ineffective it is actually lies to kids and it leads to somebody or unintended consequences or actually no politician to really have the guts to stand up for the plug on the program because it makes like you are soft on drugs so yeah bill and how he wants to be soft on drugs nobody wants to be soft on

crime you know i don't know how much of the information they're giving out is actually false but it definitely follows the logic of is zero tolerance policy of the just say no everything is equally bad much like you know i guess you could say our prison system but how can you move past that kind of logic or you don't just treat everything as if it's equal. well i mean i think what you have to do could sleep for a way for things to get really ridiculous and then have the pendulum start swinging back to the way i mean we've seen this with the zero tolerance policies which have led to you know kids getting it rests or having aspirin in school or you know taking their bring in there as many hail or that one girl was suspended for giving it another child her asthma inhaler while that child was having an asthma attack. so you see that in those school districts there's usually a backlash and a change of policy but in generally speaking you know i don't i don't really know i mean we've got a generation now it's getting tougher on everything and you know it's led to

a lot of unfortunate consequences and you know it's still i think the politicians are lagging behind public opinion i mean if you look at the merit of medical more of the marijuana legalization effort in california from nineteen you know polls show right now a majority of california support it. i think last i heard only one or two candidates of the two major parties are supporting it everybody else is against it in all the newspapers the twenty minutes editorial boards are against it so there is i think this disconnect i think the at the general public is starting to realize that things have gone too far and we need to inject some common sense to these policies and force the i think the kind of the political class and the media class is lagging a little bit behind when definitely you know i have to wonder what dare is going to do with can have in the program if proper nineteen does get passed in california to think that it's going to start a little bit of trouble and rally thanks so much for joining us as they start me

out again. i thought to come tonight we're taking on the us media they love to interact interrupt programming with breaking news and to scare viewers but the only thing that's breaking is their credibility artie's prius reader has one and we come back. hungry for the full story we've got it for. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers. there are two words that surely get everyone's attention breaking news local and

national news channels alike have used the concept of poland viewers when most would argue that their reports aren't really that accurate or that urgent so could this be a method to put the withering television news back in the spotlight artie's preassure gives us a look at how the media and raises the concept breaking news. breaking mainstream cable stations to favorite words we're following some breaking news important breaking news that is it really news we're seeing or could it be something. what is this thing are worth what we call a global killer could it be the end of the world. ok maybe a slight exaggeration but what the cable news channels do when it comes to breaking stories isn't much better you have to engage people and the way to engage them is with six conflict and fear remember when the brooklyn bridge was shut down because

of a suspicious package i would also point out that this news comes as we've also reported this other story to today we don't know if there's any connection here but you know the news that the pakistani taliban wants to carry out an attack because the times square attack failed a potential terrorist attack oh wait five minutes later fox had this to say. moments ago we told you about the brooklyn bridge shut down in both directions because of a suspicious package well we have just now learned and why p.d. has declared all clear apparently a false alarm hoops no big deal what could have been the pakistani taliban turn out to be a suspicious flashlight we asked a media expert christopher chambers to have a look they can basically create their own experts who can back up whatever sin threat of corroboration it is and then they link it to this story journalistically even twenty four hour news cycle. that look good should probably be the last thing

that they say and that isn't the first time mainstream news channels have used flashy graphics and dramatic music to convince us of imminent doom and danger remember the failed christmas day bombing attempt last year while as the situation unfolded fox claimed that there could be a facon incident on the same plane and just as quickly as the story became a multi-pronged terrorist attack with multiple scary players fox had this to say this was not a big deal the second source it's a sick passenger i think with fox it's about the balls it's about the hits on their website it's about the ratings the evolution of the breaking news story is so ridiculous and over dramatize that it's become a laughingstock for popular comedic news sources that just sort of tend to feel twenty four hours of programming here so that happened somewhere today even members of the mainstream media have to laugh at themselves about the high news broke of a disturbance on board an airplane bound from washington d.c. to denver for that first hour or so after the news broke the story got

a lot of maureen components early reporting was that a man from qatar a diplomat from qatar embassy in washington had reportedly tried to light an explosive device from inside the plane's bathroom while it was in the air and of course after further clarification turned out the story went more like this the diplomat from qatar had not been trying to light an explosive device he didn't have an explosive device there was no explosive device on the plane he was however apparently smoking in the plane's bathroom with a twenty four seven cable news cycle and channels competing for a dying viewership it looks like just about anything flies when it comes to a story. preassure either r. t. washington d.c. . well prius here in the studio with me for more on this story you know one of the things i found the most interesting especially in listening to christopher chambers talk about it. is that you know today in a world where there are real threats of terrorism that should be the last thing you

go to if you're covering breaking news and you have absolutely no idea what's really behind it so why do you think it is that for some reason quite the opposite that's the first thing that a lot of news channels point well i think that's an excellent point and ten years ago you only saw breaking news when there was actually breaking news but now with the advent of this whole twenty four seven cable media cycle you know they are trying to compete with their competitors so you know you see the n.b.c. c.n.n. and fox and you know which one are you more likely to look at the one that has breaking news and all those flashy graphics and dramatic music or the one that just looks boring and so these days you know not only do you see breaking news graphics you see developing stories you know all these different words that we have that really want to what it you know what you actually think about it what does it all mean it doesn't really mean anything we see breaking news when lindsey lowe here goes back to court for drunk driving charge or jon gosselin from jon and kate plus

eight is getting sued for a reality show you know something so i think that really lots of us have become desensitized to breaking news so the more dramatic you can make the story the more likely you're going to get the viewers and you know i was even telling chris chambers back during nine eleven i remember when i first saw the breaking news i kind of you know side a little bit and thought oh hey what's going on now and then as the story developed and it was actually really breaking news that was dramatically going to change the course of history but you know for a while there like a lot of us were probably desensitized to all that stuff people were kind of shrugging it off and saying oh it must just be another kind of mistake and it's really going to turn out to be some guys smoking a cigarette in the bathroom of an airplane or something like you you stop believing it but you know that's that's both the good thing of the bad thing right about this twenty four hour news cycle because we have information at our fingertips you can you can have it as it's happening but when you have twenty four hours. of news to fill of air time to fill some point you figure these people have to start making

stuff up of me because they just bring in a random commentators that have absolutely nothing to do with the story and where do you draw the line you've got to start making it up somewhere well that's an excellent point and you know christopher chambers also pointed out that you know you can have your theories you can say that oh hey you know the fact that the brooklyn bridge was shut down must be because of the pakistani taliban then fox news their produce there is called call up their experts and quote unquote pundits who are going to back up whatever theory they've made up so you know you have a whole set of rolodex that's going to say exactly what you think and you know being on this side of the news business too i sometimes know what it's like you know i've worked for many stations and sometimes you get five minutes to talk about something that you know you don't really know what you're talking about so sometimes you start rambling and you start saying things in your googling that it's one thing breaking news and you're forced to and every other thing when you just start making it just for the hell of it which is also what we see a lot of cable networks do today yes.