this is a cable from the u.s. embassy in colombo to talk about here an apparent june seventh incident of extrajudicial executions the military reported to the press that they've killed nine guerrillas desiccation by instructs you including you know and there are strongly suggest however that the nine were executed by the army and then dressed in military for to. explain how you know this kind of phenomenon where bodies are dressed up as guerrillas and presented as killed in action and this and this idea that you need to produce these actually encouraged paramilitary collaboration this is a cia document central intelligence agency they knew about these activities they knew they were happening about links to paramilitary groups and yet. usaid continued to.

well it's time for our tool time award tonight it goes to representative spencer baucus the republican room alabama who is about to become the chairman of the financial services committee now baucus who will assume the cherished gavel of the committee in two thousand and twelve is going to have control and oversight over banks capital markets housing and consumer credit so what does baucus hope to do with that newfound power well he plans to in his very own words quote serve the banks in an interview with the birmingham news the last week baucus said that he is bringing in al siders perspective to washington because quote in washington the view is that the banks are to be regulated and my view is the washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks. you know i almost feel like congratulating

bob as i just coming out and saying what other lawmakers have been doing while pretending otherwise for the last twenty years representative bob is just comes and says up front that he's going to serve the banks instead of the people now of course he later tried to clarify said that a regulator should set the parameters in which banks operate but not micromanage them but once again that's a washington has been doing all along setting regulations then having the regular regulatory bodies set up to enforce those like the as the c. completely failed to do so but now good old spencer baucus from alabama is in charge of the very committee that can make sure that the banks which already run washington d.c. which brought our economy down and got bailed out by the taxpayers get even more power so republican baucus representative baucus is tonight's tool time winner for being route to serve the banks. now a report from c.n.n. claims that a secret grand jury in alexandria virginia is meeting to consider criminal charges

in the wiki leaks case the story was actually reported out of sweden were off the ortiz there told the media about the secret jury in the u.s. now while this jury is currently under wraps u.s. attorney general tourney general eric holder did make claims last week that he authorized significant actions relating to a criminal investigation of wiki leaks founder julian assange much now as you know is currently being held in sweden for sexual assault charges but many speculate that the country is holding the founder until the u.s. forms a criminal case against him and rumor has it that swedish authorities will defer their interest in his son to america which would prove that a scientist currently just being held rather than actually facing sexual assault charges so with all of this information in mind we can't help but wonder what the likelihood that assad will will be extradited to the u.s. will be with a whole new set of criminal charges that frankly will make those sexual of salt charges just look like peanuts now meanwhile the u.s.

plans to hold the judiciary committee on the espionage act and the constitutional issues raised by the latest leaking cables to resign as web page and everything right now is very hush hush but the u.s. government is clearly working on finding out what they can do legally to punish a songe over his latest leaks but another question should be raised in light of all this evidence is that the department of justice and the u.s. government as a whole are they so threatened by these leaks that they're willing to bend the constitution damage the right to press for the sake of keeping it secret it's a question that i think we already know the answer to but one that will discuss further tomorrow. on sunday six american soldiers were killed and more than a dozen american and afghan troops were wounded when a van packed with explosives was detonated at a new jointly operated outpost in southern afghanistan those numbers just add on to the devastating figures when it comes to casualties in afghanistan especially casualties of improvised explosive devices id's killed two thirds of approximately

two thousand and fifty u.s. and allied troops who died in action in afghanistan in the past five years this year alone there have been about one thousand more wounded and dead from id's since two thousand and nine and yet we don't see those figures or those pictures of the fallen coming home in caskets on our front pages on our t.v. screens despite the fact that obama ended the ban on images so what does that mean for america's heroes the troops that we all supposedly support or earlier from our new york studio i caught up with tom engelhardt creator and editor of time dispatch dot com and author of the book the american way of war and i first asked him if he thinks that there is a market difference in the coverage of casualties between the war in iraq the war in afghanistan. when we're talking about the war dead yeah there's quite a difference. during the iraq war oddly enough while the bush administration tried

to shut off images of the dead the dead were in a funny way all around because while they were shutting off those images they were also trying to. deal with the troops as kind of almost demi gods in the dead were treated with a lot of attention and when they died they made the front page. but in this period a period when in fact it's no longer there is no longer a ban on images of the dead coming home a military band. actually the dead of disappeared as to a large extent has the afghan war once again the iraq war of course had. been a had i war movement attached to it in the afghan war doesn't and so the the the people who want to continue the afghan war into two thousand and fourteen two thousand and fifteen twenty sixteen they're just as eager not to have a lot of publicity for either the war or the dead and consequently except in rare moments like today when six americans were killed this was yesterday in a suicide bombing the dead tend to appear as nato casualties

before they become american casualties in the last paragraphs of round up stories. inside the pages of papers and deep down in news t.v. news broadcasts but why do you think that is and you know you mentioned correctly that the obama administration they in fact overturned this ban on images of the war dad so a lot of people of plot of that movie we thought that perhaps that could mean something different was going to happen and yet like you said we have in fact seen a reversal of they've somehow disappeared so what happened did did obama plot that move on purpose because he knew that the media wouldn't cover it after that or that it was fade away. no i don't think it was anything quite so conscious but i think there are several factors i mean one factor that makes it easy to forget the dead that people don't pay much attention to is that the american military is the dead of the of the of this american war tend to come not from big cities the

not new york chicago they come from. out of all proportion to the american population they come from small towns they come from rural areas. you know the there were there were six american soldiers who died in one a afghan policeman turned his gun on them in november and of those six the one who came from the largest town it was athens ohio it was a population of twenty one thousand the smallest town was a couple of thousand mexico maine so first of all the people who are dying come from out of the way places places you wouldn't know unless you've basically been born there. they come from tough the they come from economically tough times they're there they're easier to ignore so that's one factor the american dead are easier to ignore because the the burden of the war falls on a relatively small crew of americans who are from out of the way places on the

whole that's one thing the second thing is that the people who are running the war and who want to run the war into the distant future i mean this include say general david petraeus and other people in the american military in the pentagon and now in the obama administration. they're not eager to have the war be particularly negative news about the word be headline so i think for instance the very fact that the american dead are announced always first as nato dead they're never announced first as american dad that story which is less of a story tends to get picked up here as two nato dead one nato dead and and just i. i think everything comes together to make this a kind of an increase a striking leave nerd story even as the numbers of american dead go up if you look at those numbers in november fifty three americans died now that that if you add all the other novembers of the war to from the invasion two thousand and one

through two thousand and nine only six more americans died in all those november similarly in december twentieth americans have already died we're not even halfway into the month well security eighteen americans died in all the other years of the american war only twenty americans have died so this is the actual war the trend of the of the americans dying in afghanistan while still small if you compared to say traffic accidents or something is on the rise it's very distinctly trending upward in grim an ominous ways and you would think that that in itself would be a story but again it has been largely ignored but if we look at the american public right one of the lines that we hear so often is that we support our troops if you go to any kind of a sporting event there is always a moment there where you honor your troops and everybody stands up to sing the star-spangled banner and perhaps to applaud them to honor them but is that justice is that shallow the americans think that they're supporting their troops that

they're not really doing it they're not really questioning why they're there dying in this war that's been going on for more than nine years to begin with. yes when when the president paid a surprise surprise visit to bagram air force base in afghanistan a week or so ago he said the one thing you soldiers should know he addressed the soldiers and he said the one thing you should know is that the american people are behind you in an utterly unified way what i'd say is if they are behind the troops and undoubtedly most americans think they are behind the troops they are way behind the troops i mean far behind the the truth of the war is that the that america is perpetual wars i mean this is now the tenth year of this war and if you count the the previous afghan war the first afghan war we fought in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine this is our twentieth year of warfare in afghanistan. the the the these the war the fighting falls on a teeny part a teeny crew of americans most americans are detached from it yes they give

a kind of lip service to it but the main thing is americans do and americans are at this point seemingly uninterested in taking any responsibility for even why this war is going on and why increasing number of americans are dying there i mean i think on the whole it is extremely shallow in that the support is distant and deeply in the normal sense in the sense you're talking about it is a kind of lip service and of course if the american people are really interested then i guess the media responds and in fact to that and stops printing these pages on their front page or you know stops making this headline news or breaking news and somebody dies and it's all really become this sort of this vicious circle on the people that we do see in the media are the generals that go out and they give interviews and all talk about their afghan war strategy but you know conveniently of course they would never want to put the figures of casualties from troops or from civilians rather they want to talk about how many insurgents they may have killed today but it's definitely upsetting tom thank you so much for joining us

it's a pleasure. coming up after the break do you want to play a role story in the wall street journal or the new year new york times poll looks like although it may take is some wining and dining at least that's what one health care insider turned whistleblower going to sleep with an a for sparing of the young turks to get her take on the scandal. this is a cable from the u.s. embassy in colombo to talk about here an apparent june seventh incident of extrajudicial executions the military according to the press that on that day filled nine gorillas and found that the best situation by instructs young could you know that and they're going to do strongly suggest however that the nine were executed by the army and then dressed in military fatigues.

explain how you know this kind of phenomenon where bodies are dressed up as guerrillas and presented as killed in action and this and this idea that you need to produce bodies actually encouraged paramilitary collaboration this is a cia document central intelligence agency they knew about these activities they knew they were happening they knew about links to paramilitary groups and yet. usaid continued to.

the subtle. the web site youth radio dot org stumbled upon quite a jam when they were investigating human trafficking in the us you see while the organization was researching how traffickers make massive amounts of money they stumbled upon one individual pimps business plan and apparently it all comes down to marketing please allow us to share experts of this business plan simply titled keep it pimpin now for starters this pimp wants to quote take care of his and i'm censoring this word be these more better and that's his grammar not mine however it's always a good idea to have benefits for employees you know health care for one k.

stuff like that he also hopes to find new ways to work his hosts and he uses examples of the internet other forms of mass media to advertise his services you know this pam i must admit is with the times mass media is always a great we way to promote your business idea and this point also seems to have his finances pretty well organized he explains that he keeps his money in a safety deposit box and he always always buys cars using cash i mean who would want a credit card trail killing their business right clearly also has plans to expand his business he hopes to take his lady's international probably a good move on his part growing your business is absolutely key and bringing in the big bucks and lastly this pimp has come up with a slogan that would put gordon gekko to shame he wants to take his game to the next level quote from the concrete streets to the executive suites is on the sky he knows the key to making money is having

a good solid business and i've got to be honest about why it is just too good come on it's going to end up in a jay z. rap song or something that although this plan just looks like chicken scratch on a piece of note paper well we've got to give it some credit on developing a very thorough business plan now let me be clear i am in no way a proponent of pimping or human trafficking but can we pull this pinball vickery gig maybe having trained other people who want to start their own business clearly has those goals down pat. now we know this country's lawmakers are wined and dined and offered enticed the rewards by a lobbyist but this the same thing happened with the media wendell potter a former health insurance insider turned whistleblower revealed to raw story in an exclusive interview that he routinely why didn't die and reporters including some from major news outlets like the wall street journal and the new york times on return for favorable coverage he didn't give any names or cite any specific articles so as not to single anyone out from barry smit but did say that these

meetings with reporters were a process that developed over time the resulted in many articles over the years and he also reveals in his new book deadly spin that his chief function as a senior p.r. officer at two of the largest for profit health insurance companies in the us humana and cigna was all to perpetuate myths that had no other purpose but to sustain those companies extraordinarily high profit billet so what does that say about our media environment were reporters will by those myths offer a free lunch or earlier i caught up from our studio in los angeles what an experience from the young turks and i asked her just that. i think that it tells me that the media isn't doing its job especially the mainstream media and this is just one of the examples of why the public no longer believes in the media they no longer trust the media and it all really comes down to the question of access you

know a lot of times reporters will write favorable pieces and they'll be afraid to ask the hard questions because they want to continue to have access to these sources regardless of how corrupt the source may be. and i think we can see that i'm sure that happens not only with the health care industry with lobbyists but as well as you know even with we talk about the government and how the media is no longer the government watchdog because they're too afraid because they get so much of their information from the government directly and you know the outcry that we've seen against a weekly even from our mainstream media sources lately is crazy to me. yeah it is crazy i just don't understand why people decide to be journalists if they're not willing to investigate hard hitting news stories i don't understand why they're so afraid to ask the questions i mean of course it always comes down to the question of access they do want to have access to these sources but rather than interviewing lobbyists rather than interviewing politicians you know get down to the nitty gritty find other sources that are more reliable and ask the hard questions if

somebody denies you that access then it's not worth interviewing them anyway you need to really find reliable sources and you need to make sure that you don't get influenced by stupid things like dinner and wine like our politicians so often do our media has the resume art of our politicians and tell me if you notice this too you know last week news came out that that fox news that they had sent out a memo telling their anchors their reporters they could only refer to health care as the government option rather than the public option right when this entire debate was going on and the media was all over i mean it was on every t. these screed it was printed on every single web site and now this story that essentially says that journalists from the new york times from the wall street journal were wined and dined and then wrote favorable stories it's not really getting all that much play. you know it's not getting that much play i know that ross story did a really great interview with wendell potter who's the whistleblower but you know i

was doing some research on it today and there are hardly any websites talking about it and it's crazy that there needs to be accountability and people really need to hold the mainstream media accountable for their downfalls and this is a huge downfall and you know when it comes to fox people are always on fox because fox goes around boasting about how they're fair and balanced and how they're you know they're really a news organization they're not a news organization their propaganda organization and it's really easy to put that out there but i think with mainstream sources like the new york times or wall street journal you don't often hear about that. you know taking favors and writing favorable news stories about you know the source that they're talking about it's very rare to hear about this and now that it's starting to come out a little more i think it's important for news organizations like r.t. or the young turks to really bring it to light because this is a huge issue and the reason why this is so problematic is because you know several political scholars have done studies on how the mainstream media influences

political action by people in the united states so if they're getting misinformation they're going to use that misinformation when they go to the polls and when they vote and i think that's crazy that really undermines the whole purpose of our democracy now upon potter did here in his interview with raw story is he didn't actually disclose any names of specific reporters didn't mention any specific articles and because of that the new york times essentially is vehemently denying that this ever happened they say you don't even have any specific examples and potter said that he chose not to do that because he didn't want to embarrass anyone do you think that was the right choice or should he have really outed these reporters. i don't think that was the right choice to be honest with you i would've i would think that he would gain a lot more credibility if he named names and pointed to specific articles and things like that however whether or not what he's saying is true i think it's just

a very very small element in this huge problem i'll give you an example health care companies wanted to basically target michael moore's movie sicko so they started granting interviews to members of the mainstream media they did everything that they could to smore michael moore's movie his documentary so what ended up happening is just one example in june of two thousand and seven usa today published an op ed by someone who works for the insurance companies and they failed to really look into that op ed and really criticize it before publishing it in usa today and of course the op ed was full of pro private health insurance propaganda i mean that's just one example is these the media needs to be more critical of their sources and they need to be more critical of the type of articles and op eds they publish in their publications where i think i don't even think it's only about being critical it's also just about being educated about what you're

writing about right because it was so easy for him to take advantage of these reporters because half the time he felt like they had absolutely no idea what they were talking about when it comes to the health insurance industry because it's. so massive and so complex right so what do you think that's a result i mean are reporters too young is it because there's just not enough of them these days because you know the journalism industry is completely fading away and the money isn't there anymore. i don't think it has to do with money i don't think it has to do with whether or not the journalists are too young or too old or too motivated or not motivated enough i just i think that it has to do with being able to get away with publishing. articles that really don't delve into the importance of whatever issue they're talking about they're able to get away with these things without people holding them accountable and i think that you know interviews like this are so important because we're putting them on blast and i

think that the american people need to do the same thing we need to put the mainstream media blast and if they're not going to change if we're going to hear about things like this constantly about how they're not being credible about how they're easily being influenced by people that are taking them out to dinner then you know what we need to boycott the mainstream media and we need to go online and we need to find credible news sources people like to really look down on bloggers people like to look down on you know media on the internet but sometimes if you do your own investigation you find very in-depth information on whatever topic that you're looking to be educated on and i think that if you boycott the mainstream media and you stop watching you know news on television or if you stop reading the new york times or the wall street journal based on things like this then i think that they're going to wake up and realize hey we're getting caught we need to really get our act together or i think that they're already getting very scared and i thank you so much for joining us. thank you. now before we go it's time for our

tweet of the day we told you that today a federal district judge in virginia role that the cornerstone provision of the obama health care plan the federal mandate is unconstitutional so we are wondering what would george w. bush who appointed judge henry hudson and famously stacked the bench with judicial activists wait and we got it say my work is finally paying up that's it for tonight's show thanks for tuning in make sure that you come back tomorrow with a tough economy people are going to all lengths to get a job so we're going to speak to one person who says that starting your own business is actually less risky than working for someone else these days in the meantime don't forget to become a fan of the alona show on facebook and follow us on twitter and if you missed any of tonight's or any other nights you can always catch it all you tube dot com slash the i want to show where we post the interviews as well as the show in its entirety and don't forget to answer our question of the day from today coming up next as the news with the latest headlines from the u.s.

and around the world. in india oh jeez i'm a to be in the mood going to join the tones on the view that's the way the grand imperial truly talks west coast coromandel you can it was hotel closely to see don't it to go clear rather said the colonel was hotel as used to retreat. mine was sure to be soon which brighton if you knew me by someone from france to pressure and so. he starts on t.v. don't come.

white house is confident the nuclear cuts treaty with russia will be ratified in the end even if the senate has to prolong it so. that we can expound to the innocent is back in court to london supporters fear is extradited to sweden great allegations to be handed straight to the u.s. . and russia showcases its first hybrid car which offers eco friendly driving it promises to break stereotypes of the country's outdated motor industry. you're watching a lot from moscow on kerry johnston the u.s. congress went to germany for christmas until the new quick cuts treaty known as

start is ratified according to a white house spokesman president obama has been pushing hard to pass the key to deal with russia before the new year when the new congress convenes in january republicans will have a greater presence in the senate making approval a tougher job but with a vote expected often major tax debates it seems that some trying to stall the deal auntie's got a chance you can reports. in terms of substance there is nothing that can stop the new start from being ratified key questions concerns whatever senators had during the course of the past eight months of hearings were asked i do think that we have as i mentioned done our homework with regard to the new start treaty and that it is . in a good situation to ratify it in the slam duck session it has the unanimous support of the country's military many top officials former and present have testified in favor of the treaty now.