a storm over the dmitri medvedev becomes the first russian leader to visit the island sparking anger in japan. the protests saying the president does not need permission to travel across his own country tokyo has claimed sovereignty of the island since the end of world war two. baghdad's christian community takes to the

streets over iraqi security forces handling of the deadly attack fifty eight dead many question if the police are capable of maintaining security in the country more than one million christians have been forced to flee the country because of sectarian violence. in egypt the enemy shouldn't exist it must be lived in history we view russia as a strategic we've got mutual interests russia and germany set the tone for the upcoming nato lisbon summit but moscow wants more clarity from nato about the alliances. in europe. up next to the alyona show following the attempted bombing of u.s. synagogues with packages sent from yemen looks at whether u.s. intervention in the country could light the tinderbox of a whole new conflict. welcome

the loner show will get the real headlines with none of the mersey are coming live out of washington d.c. now tonight we're going to turn our sights to yemen after a botched bombing attempt at a suspected to have originated out of yemen the powers seem to be clamoring for more cia involvement in the region but it's sending u.s. covert ops and kill teams really going to put out the fire or will it simply continue to fuel it then is minority report becoming all too real for some americans turns out the latest terror scare in washington d.c. was a plot hatched by the f.b.i. so are we going to start prosecuting people for their intentions rather than their actual crimes then according to a new study out of the u.k. alcohol is the most dangerous drug to both your person and of society it's worse than heroin and crack so how could this vote for advocates of across the board

decriminalization common to speak with jacob sullum of reason magazine on the reaction to this new study next we'll have satirical rapper go remy perform his latest rap saudis without he's live on the show with war recession the endless negativity surrounding tomorrow's elections maybe the only thing to do is to rap and to laugh and earlier we brought you the amazing story of karen o. she's a duke student who made an entire forty two slide power point presentation about all the fine duke men that she took to the sleeping bag and now the duke history department is holding an informal discussion on karen's particular historical context really does being a slutty college student really require an academic form that's going to be a piano tonight's show but now let's move on to tonight's top story. after last week's failed mail bombing attempt suspected to be planted. by militants in yemen rumors of escalated u.s.

force there are heating up according to the wall street journal support is growing within both the military and the obama administration to shift more control to the cia including putting in and leads hunter killer teams that can operate in secrecy now in their realm of logic this allows them to operate without the explicit blessing of the yemeni government and it would at the same time provide deniability to that same yemeni government whose population is reeling with anti-american sentiment but is expanding another shadow war really the best option or is this secretive and rather simplistic solution bound to make the situation even worse or discuss it with me is dr will lead far as senior fellow at the foundation for the defense of democracies dr frist thank you so much for being here thank you now just tell me i feel like i'm having a little bit of deja vu because when i hear about us waging a secretive shadow war where the government gets to deny it while at the same time they're really in support of it and we have special teams and that sounds

a whole lot like what we're doing in pakistan to me and that doesn't really seem to be working out does it well that's the problem we are under pressure on the one hand by the public would which is seeing those cases of attack the. yemen is an american citizen he has connections to even domestic terrorism on the other hand we know as you said in the introduction that we don't go well with the yemeni public and the government knows very well that if we show up even as. assets in the country it will be known at some point and he will have a political crisis so it's going to be a balance between both sides but i mean i thought that we already started waging these special operations in yemen after the failed christmas day bombing attempt right that was in december of last year so now here we are almost a year later and now they have to ramp it up again i mean does that prove to you that whatever they have been doing has been failing they haven't yet captured or killed any of the top. from the al qaeda in the arabian peninsula they haven't done

a lot that's correct because they did not arrest or stop or allow lucky because there was this extremely exotic told and quote because it was able to throw us through our lines of defense had it not been an intelligence given to us by the saudis who got the information from a decision from al qaida we could have a very big problem we could have had one or two planes blown up what is happening now is that we are realizing in america at least the government more particularly that the group in yemen is not just your usual group of taliban like a lot of people these are people who understand the technologies people who most of whom are american citizen including and i would argue but his supporters have connections in the united states so this is why there is a thinking in washington we do we need to do something else something different and that's why the cia and other agencies will be involved i mean is it really that different to me you know because i just feel like if you look at these these groups right a new network is going to pop up wherever they can go they're always going to find

some country where the people are living in poverty where the government is corrupt where they can infiltrate the system where they can convince people to then join with them and i just feel like where i where are we going to stop we're going to start waging these secret little shadow wars all over the globe if this is our only tactic you're point is absolutely correct when it comes to the fact that what we're dealing with in yemen and also in pakistan and elsewhere are multiple homes on the one hand regular al qaida fighters the guys you see with forty seven r.p.g. is running around with this is the army does the infantry but then you have those little war rooms of individuals who are not really warlike individuals who are the ones who work on laptops electronic etc now how to wage that sort of al qaida basically is not anymore based in one country we have the hub in waziristan we have now yemen we have also somalia. out of africa and even our cities in the west across the west so. new thinking i don't think the all thinking that continues to

spread now is going to solve the problem we need a new thinking specially after the elections tomorrow well what kind of new thinking when do you have to have an alternative view of a solution here what we saw two things are successful number one is that individual citizens have been actually in the forefront of stopping the early warnings the early happenings i mean who stop the christmas day bomber it was not the agency its citizens who gave tips on some of those citizens on the other hand allies we need to have the widest international alliance because if governments put together the resources they may find more information we may find ways to avoid sending a drone so on and so forth we haven't been good at forming alliances internationally but that's not all that surprising considering that we let the cia have free reign to the point where they're allowed to conduct these operations secretly without even really telling the government what's going on or these other governments are is just a formality as is there's no sense of trust well the administration must reform its thinking with regard to the war against al qaida and understand that this is not

just an american war against al qaida this is an international conflict with the terrorists. and once we are convinced of this they're going to have the. intelligence services and international help including. to sort it out as much as possible here i mean you mentioned that obviously in these situations it's been individuals that actually led us on to what's going on which is well that's kind of embarrassing right considering how much money how many resources how much manpower is put into these counterterrorism operations is put into all of these new technologies so how is it that you even convince people i mean you look at a country like yemen right where forty percent of the population lives for under two dollars a day they and their government it's not a popular one right they have separatist movements that are threatening them every day so how do you convince people that live in situations like this to to go against extremists and to want to turn them in well first of all it's not only by technology and military means that we can defeat the terrorists that's the defensive mode what we need to do is engage in civil society for science that you

have just mentioned and civil society we need to do not just with government because if you spend. most of that money up you need to work with. work with teachers was unions with forces which can help us not in the last stage of. age i mean if you have different type of support to teachers and school well ninety percent of the kids i'm going to be listening to this whole area is now abandoned we are not intervening we're not helping that's why we need international coordination and the soft side of society before we get to the middle to start now i want to ask you one last thing too is how do you get american people to really realize what's going on i mean i think the government realizes that nobody's going to support another fall out a large scale war which is why they waged the secretive operations but i don't think americans would be in support of that either they just aren't informed they don't know that the government is doing this and it seems to me like it's only a secret to americans the rest of the world absolutely knows what's going on that's

correct that means that we need to do a better job in public education and we need to do a better job in the debate in congress when we bring in experts let's have a myriad of experts we need to also show the american public debate between the. officials and i believe strongly that internet coordination diversification of the countering of terrorism is the only solution and less secrecy and it's our dr far as thank you so much for being here you are still to come tonight it's a technique of the u.s. government has admitted to using on high level terrorists and on a brass command is facing charges for waterboarding his girlfriend i'll tell you this disturbing story up next and could drinking actually be worse for you than cocaine or heroin a new study says if that's the case so could this information need to change.

the news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. trying to corporations rule the day. tonight a brass command is facing charges after police say he water boarded his girlfriend you've heard me correct twenty two year old trevor kay suspected his girlfriend was

cheating on him so what to do while he tied her up stuff socks in her mouth and then pretty short over her head and poured water on her creating the drowning sensation now the woman told police the incident happened after she came home from work she also said that he said he was going to kill her before the waterboarding took place which is crazy but somehow it actually seems more sane than using a torture technique that was reserved for terrorists on your girlfriend now if you're not sure what waterboarding is don't worry we have some video of it this is a form of torture that consists of immobilizing someone usually with their head inclined downwards waters then poured over the face into breathing passages thus triggering the experience of a drowning member in two thousand and eight the cia admitted to waterboarding high security suspects likely but don't worry they were promised that it only happened a few times now famously bush and cheney turned a blind eye to this i honestly just do not even know how to express how disturbing

i find this story especially since well it's not the first of its kind where is this where this country is headed using illegal torture techniques as a domestic violence tool now as for the man trevor he's charged with domestic assault false imprisonment and making terrorist threats in connection with the incident now as best as we can tell he's never been in the military so i'm guessing he probably picked up this waterboarding technique on the internet which is even more disturbing to remains behind bars on a one hundred fifty thousand dollars bond and cases already been convicted once before for domestic assaults against the exact same woman who has been involved in a relationship with for five years so maybe after being water boarded by this creep she's going to leave this big. very disturbed man for good. now in the post nine eleven world some people are being called criminals before a crime is even committed analysts say the u.s. is now prosecuting suspected terrorists on the basis of their intentions and not

their actions that's called preemptive prosecution and many argue the f.b.i. is concocting scenarios to incarcerate innocent people are important i have reports . i started with a case of you see no ref in albany it was the case of new york a mom accused of conspiring to aid foreign terrorists the thing i said was there was a conspiracy attorney steve downs was on the defense team but we became aware of other cases that were very similar to ours and entire wall of similarities in two thousand and six downs began researching and laminating building this ten foot wide visual he says documents victims of america's preemptive prosecution the administration they went around identifying people that they thought might be a security risk went after them with contrived crimes manufactured crimes to try to get them incarcerated just locked up one hundred and nine names more than two dozen cases all born in post nine eleven america. like preemptive strikes abroad

down says washington is waging a similar offensive here at home targeting citizens who one day could maybe possibly commit a crime. the holy land foundation their crime was building schools and hospitals and palestine. the government concedes not not a penny of that went to finance terror but because the schools and hospitals enhanced the prestige of hamas that was material support for terrorism a neuroscientist and mother of three a university scholar a civil rights lawyer all convicted and imprisoned though not one committed an act of terror these people were in no way homegrown terrorists they weren't interested in terrorism at all. the people that they managed in the newburg for a case to entrap one was home most one had a crack cocaine problem one was had mental problems they had to say start the new

birth for case appears to provide the terror plot is allegedly foiled by the f.b.i. with the help of paid informants orchestrate the crimes and use cash to recruit a practice normally considered entrapment. would they have pulled this off of the f.b.i. hadn't been the one selling them the inert weapons how come as the international human rights watch haven't said anything i think what they've done is focused on particular issues they've focused on the surveillance issue of other countries they put governments they start up campaigns for political prisoners yes in other countries and i think that's what hasn't happened in others they've advocated for the particular issue but they haven't connected it with the defendants from the cold war to the war on terror the u.s. has said decade after decade fighting and theory foreign enemy here in new york citizens are encouraged to report any kind of suspicious behavior or mind it that another terrorist attack could be just around the corner. allows the americans to

give up civil liberties that allows them to justify wars abroad to root for it yeah agents to advance if they can create a sting if they could make their case they get promoted and they understand how that game is played that justifies the funding how much funding eight point three billion dollars for the next fiscal year this as more are questioning whether the government is spending money to catch bad guys or to create them up with my own party. while marina joins me now live in our studio in new york with more on this story now maria i guess you could say is this necessarily a new development i mean can't you say that our government has always monitored people in the past that people like howard zinn or the black panthers or you know if we talk about cointelpro to try to take preemptive action. well alone i think that monitoring people is quite different than what mr downes is arguing that the

f.b.i. is doing right now preemptive prosecution because he says his argument is that the f.b.i. is crazy is playing a major role in creating this so called crimes to then war people into. through paid informants to then arrest them and call them suspects call them criminals and imprison them before a crime is even committed so that's why he is taking issue with this mr downs and he is monk one among many people that is saying that the f.b.i. is playing a major role in in basically creating these scenarios manufacturing crimes that would never have taken place if not for the role of the f.b.i. paid informants that are working with the f.b.i. to us set up these kinds of scenarios now does mr downs feel like he's getting anywhere when you mention the fact that you know amnesty international human rights watch they don't even take cases on like this so how does someone like him make a difference. well he's doing what he can do is the cone co-founder of of an

organization called project salaam which includes hundreds of activists and family members of all those that have been imprisoned family members and friends of the new work for fort dix five lackawanna six portland seven the list goes on and on and mr johns believes that a lot of the men have basically been entrapped by the f.b.i. and so every time a case like this occurs if in fact alone are the people that have been found guilty and imprisoned if they are innocent it is it is harboring a lot of resentment creating a lot of resentment in this country by the family and friends of those people that are so-called now labeled terrorists but the there's people like mr downs that believe that they are innocent and so the more of these so-called plots that are for oil by the f.b.i. the more people come out and say wait a second there's more questions that we have about the situation because pain informants played a role because these people that are so-called terrorists never ever spoken about

terrorism before the so-called plot was foiled so there's a there's a community that's growing that is trying to raise awareness of about preemptive prosecution now you definitely bring up a good question why. you know the eight point three billion dollars that's on the f.b.i.'s budget is this year do they spend more of it on creating these plots are actually stopping real platini you have to wonder because these days the bogeyman is of course terrorists and they're working to stop terrorism has their budget increased excuse me dramatically since nine eleven. that's a good question alona well according to what we've been able to find out from reports the so f.b.i. budget for fiscal year two thousand and one that was a reported three point three billion dollars and as you saw in my report from all the documents that have been released the f.b.i. is asking for a budget of eight point three billion dollars for fiscal year two thousand and eleven so that is a significance

a significant increase since nine eleven and as mr downs argues that they have to justify the reasons that they're asking for this increase and he believes that in order to justify it that they have to continue capturing so-called terrorists or would be terrorists and i just want to touch on one more point you asked me about amnesty international one thing that has been mentioned the criticism the fact that amnesty international hasn't spoken out about this issue of preemptive prosecution some argue it's because amnesty international gets twenty percent of their funding from the u.s. from from the government and from those that are within the united states and that's why amnesty international possibly wouldn't be first to step up to the plate to talk about issues like preemptive prosecution and. alleged victims in the united states as opposed to campaigning for political prisoners in other countries throughout the world well that definitely seems to make sense and it raises a lot of questions thanks so much. now do you know that alcohol is more harmful

than heroin or crack that's a new study out of the u.k. is found after reading the harmfulness of twenty different drugs ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole the researchers analyzed how addictive a drug it is how it harms the human body as well as criteria like environmental damage caused by it its role in breaking up families and its economic costs like health care social services and prison now out of one hundred points alcohol came up first with seventy two heroin and crack were both only in the mid fifty's and cannabis came in with just twenty. the study was led by david knott the former drug advisor in the british government who was fired with the purpose of reopening discussion of the government's drug classification system and it brings up an interesting question as to why drug policies in countries are dictated by politicians rather than by science so could this study change the system or earlier i caught up with jacob sullum senior editor at reason magazine and reason dot com i first asked him how he thinks this study will vote for advocates of across the

board decriminalization it hurts or could it help. i hope my fear is that maybe for the laws are going the opposite direction which is to say crack down on our whole more. becomes there are people that are all in many respects more dangerous than the currently illegal drugs that may start to be more receptive to use that restrict access to alcohol which i don't but do you think of as any chance i mean even the authors of this study say that they're in no way advocating for a return to prohibition they realize that that you know it's not realistic alcohol really is ingrained in our society these days so you think policy wise it might have that effect. well i hope that the takeaway message is that our cause has thirty years in many respects is more dangerous than illegal drugs but we still for the most part manage to use it responsibly that is to say that's majority people who drink do so responsibly it does not have

a negative effect on their lives it doesn't hurt other people and at the same time we know that there are some people who do abuse of and it does cause tremendous problems with them and for other people so we need to make those same kinds of distinctions when it comes to illegal drugs and i hope that by opening up the conversation to look at a wide range of substance ins and look at specific types of harm is depending on the thing you're uncertain about different drugs may rate differently if you're worried about acute over those for example alcohol is clearly much more of it hasn't been something like marijuana but when you see the completely prohibited drugs like marijuana but even more so things like l.s.d. and so side of mushrooms and m.d.m.a. also known as ecstasy when you see that these drugs do not come anywhere near alcohol in terms of the dangers of those i would hope that because people cause people to second guess the jury to consider the arbitrary distinctions that are that underlie the current was one of the things that i found very interesting as

leslie king who is one of the co-authors of this study also made the pointing out to say that just because governments you know they decide whether something is illegal or legal and most of the time it's not really based on science so do you think it should be based on science or in oh the same time if they're representing the people and their attitudes and their opinions should they go on with what you know social norms are in how and how people view certain drugs. when i was saved virtually never based on science it is very often based on prejudice for example the fact that out of that that marijuana is completely perhaps as are all these tolerant it is completely an issue of culture and history. it has nothing to do with the hazard by the substances and no i don't think that's good i don't think you should get the majority of votes based on your prejudice and ignorance basically majority should not rule especially when it comes to dictating what other people may do with their own bonnets and why i think it's better if the

scientifically informed i don't think the government should be trying to do this at all i don't think it should be trying to tell people what intoxicants the makings consume what substances they can put into their own bodies it's better if they do that in a knowledgeable way than doing it but it's better if they don't do it at all or one of the things i also found interesting that you mention about this study is that you know in looking at these scores the scores don't distinguish between the harm is caused by drug use or those caused by a prohibition what do you think those cutting those causes are that are caused by actual by prohibit. well you look at a substance like heroin which is very similar pharmacologically to narcotics that people legally use for extended periods of time without any serious arms it's clear that the vast majority of the harms we associate with illicit heroin use are actually caused by prohibition for example prohibition next the quality and purity

of heroin very hard to predict so that people can accidentally overdose or they may be hazardous additives that compound the health hazards because the prices artificially high israel's result prohibition people tend to inject which carries all sorts of additional hazards especially if they share needles which countries transmit disease and that is also encouraged by controls on injection equipment as paraphernalia so i always think things sort of fit together and of course everyone who uses illegal drugs has to deal with the black market they run the risk of arrest they run the risk of violence they run the risk of being ripped off even at these artificially inflated prices for which they have no redress because the dealing with a product that's illegal so why would they leave all that out of the stabbing is there some kind of political model that i don't think so i think these people wouldn't would and in fact did acknowledge that it's important to distinguish between the harm caused by prohibition and the harm caused by drug use itself but it's very difficult to disentangle us.