all.

right and if you need some from friends to parachute. he starts on t.v. dot com. russian diplomats finally gain access to businessman victor boot who has just faced a court in new york on arms smuggling charges he claims u.s. officials tried to force him to confess to crimes he didn't commit is he was being extradited to the u.s. from thailand on tuesday. u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton joins a growing chorus of officials are urging the senate to ratify the start nuclear cuts treaty before republicans gain the upper hand in the legislature. and european finance ministers start work on a possible aid package for debt stricken ireland in an effort to restore confidence to the euro zone. more in-depth coverage of viktor boots extradition coming your way next on the alona show stay with us.

welcome to the show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mercy are coming live out of washington d.c. now today we continue following victor boots case as a press conference was held to announce boots arrival in new york city parties unless they see a chicken that will give us all the details and what we can expect from the trial next is a civil war brewing over it and this n.b.c. seems as if the channel can't really decide whether or not to embrace its partisan side led by keith olbermann and rachel maddow or hark back to its days as an objective news network we're going to speak with the coeditor of media bistros t.v. newser about m.s.m. bases identity crisis then in a somewhat surprising move the tea party and progressives have come together to

protest the growing defense budget is the glaring hint that something has to be done about the way the government spending its money if both sides agree we're going to host a panel to discuss this rare political merger then it looks like the start treaty has come to a standstill republicans want to hold off voting on the tree making obama's top foreign policy success well unsuccessful so republicans really willing to put our national security at risk just for a political victory we're going to speak about the treaty with joe cirincione from the ploughshares fund and we all know that the u.s. has a relationship with their neighbor cuba and the recent shake up in congress doesn't really signal that we're going to be getting any cozier but does the u.s. media grossly misrepresent our island neighbor we're going to speak with an investigative journalist who just returned from cuba at the end of the show but now let's move on to today's top story. there are developments today in the case of victor boot the russian businessman charged with selling arms to colombian rebels

and conspiring to kill u.s. officials who faces four conspiracy charges over the alleged arms deals and could face anywhere from twenty five years to life in prison so now that he's here on american soil what are new york city's plans for him artie's on associate in that has more. even before presenting their evidence against victor boot in the u.s. criminal court of justice the prosecution has already labeled the russian an international arms trafficker they insist that no international or u.s. law was violated in extraditing saying he was conspiring in a fight against the u.s. the prosecution insists he was smuggling enough arsenals to be an envy of a small country after tycoons had maintained twice that there was no proof of guilt and that the case against him was political he's now being presented to a judge here in lower manhattan if convicted he could face from twenty five years to a lifetime behind bars the u.s. media meanwhile have been quick to butcher boot coming up with countless nicknames

and spinning the story in favor of u.s. officials pending trial victor boot is being held here at a correctional facility with over eight hundred other inmates experts say psychological pressure may be exerted on him to try to get him to cooperate with the prosecution by keeping him in solitary confinement this is also the place where ponzi schemer bernie madoff is being held as well as the times square bomber russian officials have always been against a possible extradition and moscow has done what happened illegal diplomatic procedures were not observed by the u.s. neither the russian foreign ministry nor the russian consulate in new york as well as brits lawyers and family were fishley notified about him being moved to the u.s. the russian consulate will closely monitor boots case who has always maintained his innocence that's the. new york. today there was a presser held officially announcing boots arrival to the u.s. as well as an arraignment so what was set and what's to come on joining me from our

studio in new york is our teams and i can add to give us more details now what can you what was said today aside from the fact that we know that pled not guilty. well i don't know today was a pretty busy day here in new york could kick. for the press conference the prosecutors who are really colorful in the language that they use when it come when it came to victor boots case they called him the merchant of death they said that tens of thousands of lives were saved because boot was arrested and is now here in new york they said they even called him an international arms arms trafficker and this is of course been raising eyebrows experts have been saying wait a minute whatever happened to the presumption of innocence the trial has not even kicked off and yet we already have the prosecution seeing all of these big names which i don't know maybe they picked up from the media headlines well tom it as i mean was there and media circus today at this press conference because this really has been touted as a huge victory for the u.s.

you have people like attorney general eric holder calling victor boot one of the biggest arms traffickers in the world so i'm assuming that there must have been a lot of attention paid to this. absolutely unknown at this press conference the room was absolutely packed we've heard some journalists see that they've never seen the police as full of media as it was today and it's interesting that in fact you're right the media has sort of been spinning the story and it sometimes seemed to out the day with the amount of aggression and all of these colorful adjectives used to describe brute without his case actually having been you know his guilt being proved is somewhat surprising because it sometimes feels like this is another russian guy that the u.s. media is kind of traditionally it seems trying to spin and really take the position of the u.s. officials which is somewhat surprising again because this trial has not really kicked off yet and the type courts twice said that there was no proof of his guilt and that this case is political yet here he is extradited to the u.s. well on the now when does the trial kick off do we have any details yet. it could

take a while you know i don't know for this case to really kick off we are hearing that the next court hearing is scheduled to take place as soon as generate ten so it's actually taking a while and we shouldn't be expecting any outcome or any sentence any time soon this is going to take. some time even though the media and some of the officials have been really quick to call this man guilty well now you know we are saying that of course there have been a lot of names to it this man is being called the merchant of death i know that you walked around new york today you tried to talk to some you know average new yorkers see what they felt about it did they even know who was. surprisingly to us a lot of them didn't we spoke to at least ten people they were just passers by on the street but as many as ten people did not know and have never heard the name of victor boot we did ask if they have heard of the merchant of death and they also said they did which was very surprising we spoke to men and women the young and the old and no one has really heard of him which is which is shocking considering how hard the media has been trying to portray him as

a bad guy but maybe people have just stopped watching one now you said that perhaps the trial might take until january to begin but do we know is there going to be a jury doing you know how many witnesses or perhaps people the government has on their side to testify against him. well i don't know most of many of these details are yet to be worked out none of this is really been announced and shed light on you know we're still at the very beginning stages today for example russian consulate officials have finally are being able to meet with this man as many as eighteen hours after here arrives in new york so really a lot of procedural steps to take place and a lot of them are really dragging out so it might really take a while for a lot of this to come into light definitely a high profile case and one of the media's all over so we'll be sure to keep following it and i guess waiting until the trial does begin in january but in the meantime of course a lot of people are saying that this is really unfortunate timing considering that both russian president dmitry medvedev and brock obama are going to be meeting on

saturday in lisbon portugal on this here thanks so much. for taking a break but still to come on tonight's show inside the civil war at m.s.n. we see the cable channel can't seem to decide if they want to be progressive with an opinion and an agenda or a. objective network it takes no stats how boring is that we're going to speak with alex waite brian coeditor of mediabistro t.v. newser in just a moment and progressives and tea party members uniting for a common goal we'll tell you why some members on the opposite ends of the political spectrum agree that defense spending needs to be cut in this country back in the. hungry for the food we've got. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers.

more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images those world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations rule the day. i hate to say that i told you so but. i will anyway don't worry i will make this

one short so earlier this week i expressed my skepticism as to whether a two thousand and fourteen deadline to withdraw combat troops from afghanistan could be taken seriously we all know that first of all in today's wars there are no clear cut distinctions between combat or advise and assist training roles because there are no clear lines drawn between the trenches perhaps the bases the safer zones but the point is that the nato summit in lisbon hasn't even begun yet and yet today we were inundated with statements coming from nato officials already saying that a presence in afghanistan could pass the two thousand and fourteen date and in fact they said that the transition could run from two thousand and fifteen and beyond that the most dangerous provinces khandahar koon are in helmand they may require more time but despite afghan president hamid karzai his request for a smaller military boots on the ground presence there is no other alternative if they want to continue putting pressure on the taliban now we'll be covering the

nato summit over the next few days and we will bring you the updated reports but it's already looking like there isn't going to be any kind of a consensus no definitive answer no kind of deadline date so i'm just going to say it again told you so. now what a sign of the times when the news or at least the networks the people who are supposed to be delivering it to you when they become the news themselves in the past couple of weeks have been no exception to that keith olbermann being suspended from m s n b c for political donations ted koppel writing an op ed in the washington post lamenting the days of objective journalism slamming the opinion personalities like keith olbermann bill o'reilly glenn beck and rachel maddow that of course came over minute o'reilly's rebuttals to koppel. this is a fact based news analysis broadcast here and the fact is that we've invited mr koppel on the factor more than a few times we want to discuss his ongoing beef but mr koppel is not up for the

challenge or so it seems would we be judged to have been wrong and what i have doing mr koppel does not have to wait until the vision journalism he eulogized has failed this country because when truth was needed all we got were facts most of which were wise anyway. but you see the thing is that it's not just about media personalities butting heads calling each other out now there is a much greater identity crisis that happened and m s n b c seems to be the confused party unable to decide if they're partisan or objective or some weird in between but perhaps what they need to realize is that it's about time that they do make a choice now earlier i caught up with alex the web coeditor of media beast rose t.v. newser i first asked him to give me his opinion on what he really thinks is going on internally and that's an easy. well you know it's an interesting story keith olbermann who is the network's number one host in prime time. donated to some

political campaigns that was a violation of n.b.c. news policy and his boss phil griffin the president of a mr b. c suspended him now olbermann is always fun for today and a lot of people when they announced it they said it was an indefinite suspension and it sounded like was going to go quite a bit longer so people were kind of surprised when on the second day of his suspension the network and i would be coming back the next day and i think that speaks volumes about the power that olbermann wields at the network is the channel's number one host he hosts their number one show countdown and without him as the anchor of their lineup they can have. a negative effect on the overall primetime lineup in the ratings that follow up what do you think because there are some rumors floating around that you know perhaps with this m s n b c n n comcast merger that olbermann might get kicked out of the thing there's any truth to that. it's still too soon to tell comcast is completing its acquisition of n.b.c.

universal and steve kavis the president of n.b.c. news is expected to remain in that role now comcast is known to be a little more conservative. than general electric in many regards however they are still a for profit company they want to make money and amazon we see has been doing great in the ratings they've been improving since they've made this kind of primetime turn leftward with the the opinion hosts and i think comcast is you know i'd be surprised if they rock the boat too much the executives there may not like olbermann that much but as long as he's delivering good ratings on the networks looking sol across the us i don't see too many major changes happening too soon you know even if we look at what you said since they made that shift to the left that's when their ratings have gone up that's when things have been going well for the for the channel but i mean are they facing some kind of an identity crisis here that they just don't want to admit that they are opinion that they are biased that they are partisan i mean it's it's so obvious. what you've got is got you've got two

schools of thought here n.b.c. news of course is a legendary news broadcast news organization on the n.b.c. broadcast network the n.b.c. nightly news the today show and then you've got the cable operation amazon b.c. and that has definitely skewed heavily opinion now there are a lot of staff that work on both programs and so you've got a kind of butting heads internally where the news people from n.b.c. news you know really feel strongly about you know doing objective journalism with no pinions and some of the cable folks like keith olbermann and rachel maddow that believe that you know yeah well we can do opinion journalism too and behind the scenes there's definitely you know people are talking employers you know employers talking about it with each other and it's very much a strong debate that's happening behind the scenes but tell me that you know and ted koppel's op ed that he wrote here essentially was lamenting the long gone era of t.v. journalism where i'm biased news was you know a part of the public trust but if we look at it today if we look at the shows that

get the highest ratings they are of course the opinion shows so you do you decide that you know mean that what people want to sifted that what the public wants or who they trust is all about opinion. i think people take comfort in watching a show that they really did where they agree with the host and also in some cases maybe they like to watch a show where they don't agree at all with the host just because it's entertaining and you know it's fun to watch i do think that people do value objective news it's just that maybe they aren't getting it from television anymore they may be getting it from other sources with the internet of course you know there are now an almost unlimited number of news sources many of them objective others not and the value of crime time t.v. news has kind of diminished somewhat which is why you've seen the rise of opinion new shows on m.s.m. you see in fox and why c.n.n. is kind of changing their primetime lineup to be less about hard straight news and more about you know characters like former governor eliot spitzer soon piers morgan

the british talk show host going to be joining them in january one different with you there you know if you're going to be watching something on t.v. i think that people obviously want to be entertained and sound forman thanks to the internet thanks to your i phone your smartphone whatever you have you can read all of the details the straight up news at any time that even you know those news articles that you read on line they claim to be objective they always come to some sort of conclusion so do you think that perhaps you know there's a difference between objectivity and neutrality that some people think you know that just to be objective and to show both sides but never come to any you know never add any analysis that that's really what's wrong. absolutely and why you and what you journalism professor jay rosen calls so-called neutrality the view from nowhere and he favors what he calls the view from somewhere which is to approach a situation with a point of view make that point of view clear but you know use facts and evidence

to come to whatever conclusion you come to. you know journalism is it's a method. a partisan give still do an act of journalism as long as they use evidence and facts to come to a conclusion that's based in truth so yeah i mean people people you know the idea that someone could be totally neutral is you know i think most people are savvy about they know that everyone has opinions about things and you know even though the old broadcast journalists would never reveal their personal opinions they had opinions and i think what you're seeing is kind of a modern take on that keith olbermann tells you exactly where he's coming from and hopefully as long as he follows you know evidence and logic will come to conclusions that are mostly correct now of course in some cases you know that's not always that doesn't always happen but that's that's the goal anyway that will keep the orion might be telling us where he's coming from but it seems like and this n.b.c. as a whole needs to decide you know whether or not they can make that statement because fox news definitely has no qualms about saying what their agenda is what they're promoting i mean even if you look at roger ailes today you know speaking

about president obama saying that you know his views aren't those of the rest of the american people it's working for them i think m.s.m. we see definitely needs to take a stance there thanks so much for joining us thank you for having me. progressives and the tea party the two groups seem like such polar opposites that they would never ever get along and they certainly didn't over the last year or so but now comes a ray of hope everyone is worried about the economy it doesn't matter what side you're on everybody is concerned about the deficit and of course there are some lawmakers who are unwilling to put everything on the table for cuts and by that i mean the ridiculous assumption. u.s. defense spending is and should remain untouchable despite the fact that the defense budget for two thousand and ten is a whopping five hundred thirty three point eight billion dollars not including the wars in iraq and afghanistan despite the fact that defense makes up the largest chunk of nondiscretionary spending and yet this is exactly where progressives and

tea partiers are like minded are realistic and want to make change happen so could it work and joining me to discuss it is jon cryer a staff attorney and communications director at the u.s. public interest research group and pete sad executive vice president of the national taxpayers union gentlemen thank you so much for being here thank you now i mean normally you would say progressive tea party or i think you guys hate each other what's going on well there's actually a long history of cooperation on issues like these my organization was founded by forty years ago one of the first issues we worked on are not a real tea party or that and we're in touch with the party but you know there are lots of things we can find in common to work on one of the first things we worked on was the supersonic transport the subsidies for it the environmental community hated the noise pollution we hated the corporate welfare we beat it that was almost forty years ago when that happened it's happening again and i think it's very

productive yeah i can agree with that i think one thing that you probably would have seen in this last election is that on both sides some of the issues were starting to bend then come back around especially around this issue of fiscal responsibility and better government and so i think it's not too surprising that we've been able to find some common ground there what we've specifically wanted to do and been able to do in this particular report that we did together is be specific and i think that that's where sometimes some of the problems have run especially in this last election cycle the specifics the talking points the problem is identified the solutions is something that we're trying to identify of course is no one ever talks about specific. right i mean in this completely polarized political atmosphere that we have it's just about being alarmist and pointing fingers and scaring people and yet nobody gets down to numbers into facts so tell me that you know exactly in your and your proposal when it comes to defense spending what are the areas that you want to touch that you want to cut well there

are a lot of them there's a whole lot of logistics. and process to start with which has been on the government accountability office as high risk list for waste fraud and abuse virtually since the list began about twenty years ago we also have the whole spare parts ordering process the government accountability office discovered there that some of the services are ordering as much as fifty percent more than what they need that amounts to tens of billions of dollars a year so we're talking about six hundred billion dollars of total savings by the year twenty fifteen that's a significant dent in the budget now are you also going along with the deficit commission here that saying it's time to get rid of some of these projects that take twenty years to you know to fulfill that cost billions of dollars like these f. thirty five joint strike fighters or the twenty two osprey is are they on your table you know one thing that we you do we can you talk about how we are activists and work for activist organizations but the the things that are going to in this report

the very specific things that we found they come from recommendations from government sources by bipartisan panels. defense acquisition panel different places where the agencies themselves have said you know these are no longer useful and necessary necessary so we're not i don't think spitting in the wind here we're actually following a some very specific recommendations especially with agencies say you know we no longer need these systems and so i think that that's extremely important i think there's definitely a lot of waste going on right now you can pinpoint it tell me that i mean do you take a stance on america's conflicts abroad do you. think that perhaps ending two wars that we're fighting abroad would would help us get in you know get out of the financial hole that we're in we don't there any type of consensus there or is that was that something this is a way for i don't think that either of us would say that this report that this six hundred billion that that we identified is the iceberg or the solution but we do

think it's the tip of the iceberg we think it's the place where both as you put it the the on the conservative side in the liberal side can come together and say these are so common sense that we don't even have to argue we don't have to stand up and fight and scream and yell we can actually just do these things immediately because they're so nobody that's so easy to say you know i mean i don't mean to offend you here but you know it's constantly we're all arguing for a little bit of common sense from our politicians please i am never seems to happen you know i mean how do you actually expect this to make this work i've been about to speak about the start treaty you think that was common sense to reduce the number of nuclear weapons in the world but now you can't get everybody on board well there is a lot of hard work to be done and it's up to both of us really to convince the wings of our political spectrum to go along with this because what we saw time and again on the campaign trail among so-called tea party candidates was let's freeze federal spending but let's do it for non-defense non-veterans non homeland security

categories and we've got to say that them that's on realistic well that's the thing about the tea party that i want to discuss with us because they seem to be rather fragmented they haven't really gotten it all together and we still don't know where a lot of these tea partiers stand especially when it comes to foreign policy because i mean that didn't even make a blip on the radar during the campaigns no one even spoke about it so how do you get them to come together it amounts to a lot of education this report is the starting point to show to them if you want real change if you're sick of the partisan tone in washington and you want to do something about it well here's your starting point read it take a look at it start sponsoring legislation will back you here. and i think there's definitely something to be said for getting beyond the talking points and especially when it comes to an issue like this i think this was top on everyone's minds it was definitely something that both again progressive liberals went to the polls and said i care about government spending i care about

a better functioning government and when you talk about common sense i mean think about what pete here identified agencies that order defense agencies that order fifty percent more of the parts than they need if you ran a small business and people want to be liberal or conservative out there in on the factory and somebody is district who is creating those parts and they're very thankful that somebody is probably ordering devil of them and i just want to ask you know one more question here is when it comes to social issues are there also places where the two sides where conservatives and progressives can get along with the because they're you know there is a push for that but then we have people like the jim de mint's of the world that are just saying no no no never there can always be common ground on some issues and i think social issues there's got to be some we have to because otherwise we have stalemate i think we can find them i think that for example we work together a lot on direct democracy issues using ballot measures at the state and local level we use them for different policies but the process works for both of us if we can

start thinking about processes maybe we can respect each other's viewpoints a little more but are there and the source is something coming to us that we can say to the first step in the game is is the step that we took in putting this report together is just picking up the phone and that's not what has happened to date and this was an issue where we decided to pick up the phone because we knew it was so important but i think as pete said there are others there are certainly others are intent on and i thank you both very much for and be sure and you know quite the there are rare partnerships i guess you could say but something that we should be seeing more of in america especially here in washington and we definitely need to cut defense thank so much that you care right still to come tonight joining to. bates' over those frisky pat downs at airports there is one group that wants to stop gays security agents from searching for their tonights tool time later and is start for good the white house says that it's not giving up but the treaty appears to have stalled in congress so to speak with the president of the cloud.