can be alone a show and get the real headlines with none of the mersey our family live out of washington d.c. now is the battle in libya continues we'll bring you the latest from the ground and will discuss the president's speech to the nation last night did obama answer any of the questions that americans have about the airstrikes that are ambitious goals for this country on the hash it all out with lawrence wilkerson then did you know that u.s. companies could be partly responsible for a lack in global internet freedom because they're the ones that create the web

blocking technology it's kind of ironic considering that hillary clinton has been a big supporter of a free and open internet so we'll look into the complicated approach of bridging business interests with government interests and freedom on the web now many are calling it the biggest case of this session details on the wal-mart class action suit that was heard today by the supreme court and will determine how ruling on this might change the country and it's only tuesday but we're all deserving of a good cocktail so producer jenny churchill and j. crew are founder of realist idealist labs will join me to discuss a few of the stories that are making a buzz this week and we'll have details on all of that and much more in tonight's show but first our top story. last night president obama addressed the nation explaining why the u.s. is playing a role in libya's conflict but let's take a moment to look at what's happening on the ground and to the libyan rebels who are sacrificing everything to defend their cars are going off as the latest from.

the entire city of the rebel stronghold and turn east or libya or monitoring the situation out there on the front and of course especially around some of these hometown but even though that said the rebels have not been able to gain control over the city still the spirits are pretty high in fact the opposition does say that you understand it's not going to be easy to fight and defeat got these eamonn they see that they're ready. to do whatever it takes in order to achieve that goal were able to retake control of most of the towns that the people lost to go to these forces just a week ago and what he believes in. fact every time there's some positive ease or even some positive speculation on fifteen counts there won't be clear gun shots being fired into the air as a sign of applause and the support of the revolution the old time

a goal is to get rid off. to establish a new order in the country and the opposition says that this is going to be a democratic country in fact they're stressing that they do not want any third side tell them what sort of a system will be here they want the and they're saying that it's up to the only being people can decide what to do with his family and what kind of regime they want to hear in the country they do say that they are ready to listen to some advice coming from the west from germany france and great britain so far it seems like here in the east part of the. opposition isn't full control and in fact the rebels are have organized an interim authority body here and they're now dividing responsibilities among one another when it comes to various years away from the economy industry and police and oil and etc so they are establishing more control

here in this part and once again they're saying that it's only up to the libyan people to decide what to do with the entire country after going to be done. last night president obama finally addressed the american people on the new war that their country's involved in in libya and he made clear why he thinks he had no choice but to intervene it was a speech that tried to justify war by touching upon moral tones talking about brutal dictators innocent civilians and international cooperation it was a speech that backtracked from centering or took place nine days after military action had begun but it was also a speech that lacked any real mention of the future or what the end game is how we're going to achieve it and what will to do if things don't go as planned if of course there even is a plan at all so are we as confused as ever to what a war in libya really means joining me to discuss it is lawrence wilkerson retired u.s. army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell or it's thanks so much for being here and i think you've been out of jail of all to us and what do you know

since the last time we were on the program we started another war can you believe it's amazing. every single time how quickly things change make it easy for the president to use the military of him and he will use it i want to talk about obama's speech last night and we're going to break down some of things he said some the things he doesn't didn't say but overall do you think that obama has a doctor in this is the question that so many people are asking now is does about me even have a doctor i think that you know the doctor that's the right word for it it's deliberation he thinks before he acts and while my knowledge always agree with the outcome i do agree with the fact that one should think particularly about a fateful decision is in young men and women to die for state purposes or to kill others. like that about i think the president are serve not the. law and nobody can complain about the fact that we finally have a president that thinks but does he also not make his goals clear enough you know

you could say that he did perhaps in egypt or for a sister whether support to support the revolution there or not now what we're seeing in bahrain and and yemen. syria he is not really addressing while we're addressing libya so is it more of a non-doctor and we've got two policies open an operation here sixty five year old policy that if you are started with him and saud of saudi arabia which says we'll support any power for oil the other policy is shining city on the hill freedom and democracy and these new policies are clashing right now i do not blame him for deliberating and being cautious about he how he responds to these different movements revolutions whatever you want to call them each one is different there's no cookie cutter approach to this and each one requires delicate diplomacy exquisite diplomacy it requires economic and financial help here and there it requires enormous for ness and i don't blame him for applying this kind of finesse

i think that's what they've done so far i agree with you i'm still asking myself the question to what purpose are we doing this in libya i don't think they know yet . i know what their expectations are maybe you know we'd like to see a representative government we'd like to see someone other than khadafy but what is it we're going to get what is it that we're likely to get and we're extending money to get it where it's actually expanding mining to get it in fact i'm gonna say that it's already been at least six hundred billion dollars that we are million dollars excuse me that we've spent in just nine days of this conflict is almost irrelevant all wrong so i would say. oh it's just trying to change reich i'm sure the way it is pentagon's plans and he leaves days i want to now quickly play a clip and this is somewhere where i think that obama made it very clear what his stance was in saying that could die off e e is is the bad guy coffee is all evil one i think most people in the us and many people in the international community would agree with that so you but i'm

wondering if you are underestimating the amount of support that khadafi has within the country itself let's first play this. i made it clear they get off he had lost the confidence of his people and the legitimacy to lead and i said that he needed to step down from power. has he lost the confidence of all his people are we are we picking and choosing a little too much do we know what it's really like on the inside well obviously not there are some people still supporting him however i think if we bomb them enough they'll stop supporting him or at least the majority of them will and that must be one of our expectations that they will overthrow him ask him to leave put a bullet into it or whatever i think the situation in libya is unique in the sense that there were rising expectations in libya to a certain extent those rising expectations were the results of cut off these latest reform actions so we're getting this one as we often do in history from us set of rising expectations not from order or pressure and repression and so forth so in

a sense obama could offer you know there's a for us with an offer he and his ministers many of whom were really involved in these reforms significantly involve so we felt involvement brought this all in and so to say he doesn't have any support is is to say wrongly i think but i do believe the majority of libyans and others in the world would prefer to see him gone now obama also drew a few comparisons to iraq and said that the reason they were not just going in there and asking for the ouster of gadhafi is because we're not going to get out we already did that in iraq either way we're having we're having a protest in iraq now two against maliki we are indeed and they've been going on for weeks as well and you know as we've seen the unrest everywhere else but do we really know i mean what happens if gadhafi does stay in power then do we have to reengage the military or should the obama administration somehow step down i don't think that's a possibility really from what i'm seeing and what i'm hearing from the intelligence

community and from others people a lot more expert than i in libya in particular i think that off he's doing i think he's probably gone which way he goes is maybe still questionable but i think he's gone and then the question becomes your question. to what purpose who do we get to replace what do we get to replace it and do we have any influence the french the germans friends in the area they have any influence does egypt have influence and these are have influence over who comes into power because what good is it to expend all this money and time and effort and energy and perhaps law it was certainly lives on the receiving end of those bombs and to get just another cut off or just another system that delivers about why could i get this is a very rich country very few people six and a half million seventy percent of them under thirty this is a country with a lot of potential and the resources to develop a potential it could happen but absolutely no guarantee you will but what if it happens are you know also this the pottery barn as you could say from call

themselves who what if it all falls apart and then goes broke again. i like to asserting soon arms i'm a strange person to say this because i believe in the powell doctrine you use decisive force but in this case given the objectives that are apparent and given what the coalition is trying to do perhaps this is the right amount of force just enough to get off the out and give more democratic elements more representative elements a chance to take those rising expectations and fulfill them so you think that could be the right amount of force because i think we also have to bring into question you know the extent to which airstrikes soli can really work here if the mission is only to protect civilians are telling us that it won't just airstrikes there are people on the ground there are also weapons they're using now these low flying some of the low flying technology these a c one thirty s. a tense of does that mean that we're clearly we're taking sides here we want to say that it's just to keep civilians say but obviously some of the technology we're

using is helping the rebels clearly on hold clearly this is more than just your standard iraq more south no fly zone this is more designed to influence the fighting on the ground which after all is always going to be your decisive fighting on the and ground. to give those on the ground in the opposition a better chance and in order to do that you've got to go a little bit beyond a no fly zone which they've done there's some criticism they're exploiting you and i think u.n. security council resolution like hundred seventy three in a way that wasn't intended but as long as the u.n. security council doesn't rise up on a tiny legs and say or the u.n. secretary general you're violating what we tried to do i don't blame them for trying to do as much as they can under the umbrella of chapter seven that they got now i want to play another clip from something obama said last night and i'm going to skip producers one of them i want to talk about something that a lot of people compared to george w. bush's mission accomplished moment with iraq let's listen to that where. i am

convinced that a failure to act in libya would have carried a far greater price for america. that's not the clip i was talking about but are you convinced that failure to act in libya would have carried a greater i can rarely be convinced that killing people first state purposes under whatever humanitarian guys you want to disguise it. is usually a bad decision in this case i reserve judgment until i see what it produces now you can say they took on all the chance because the odds on what it producing being better than what it thought follows i mean conceded that are pretty slim in my view but if it does then i have to say good decision if it doesn't or it's just neutral or it's a return to roughly the same thing disguised as something better then why would

people why spend this money for something that accomplishes relatively nothing and those are all the questions of course and that's why people want a clear answer right now as to why strategy is water and go away as if you're already spending money do you think that by the way now defense cuts are completely off the table i don't think so gauge ourselves and i don't think i've seen that that commentary from the republicans of them to give my party and others i think this is inevitable because this country is in financial and economic trouble real detroit and i think the american people are going to go to bed on monday and say everything's ok and on tuesday morning they're going to wake up and are going to say why are we spending one point three trillion dollars every year on the national security state when we have no public education we have no health care we have no job we have no security and our grandchildren and children have no future or have a much worse future than we had when that moment hits the american people when it comes to their realization defense the budget is going to get cut period if

you think that also exactly might be the reason why you know we like to think that obama really is being cautious here that he's trying to be measured these thinking through his options. it's a packer country just too broke to have a peace doctrine any more right any doctrine is a massive investment it's expensive i think the country needs to have a doctrine like we had for example before in this city sixty eight was written about the cold war that doctrine was simple we believe in freedom we believe in democracy we believe in liberty we believe in open markets and free trade but we're not going to force them on anybody with bombs and bullets and bayonets i think that's a pretty good return to help people off for now lastly one of the things that obama said last night is that as president he would stand around and you know watch for the wait for the bodies to pile up before he acts but is not also preemptive war fare but bodies are piling up in other places too most notably places like yemen

and somalia. and yet we're not using a no fly zone technique or the military to do anything there that at least that's not planned this time i just don't think we can go around policing the world this way it's it's just not affordable and it's not wat a democratic federal republic professing to believe the things we believe should be doing anyway. taking action where we have to take action that's in our bible interest ok i'll even peripheral interest if they seem serious enough but i'm not going to buy this business of being the world's hedge among the world's policeman and having to pay the price for that because we will bankrupt ourselves we will bankrupt ourselves spiritually and physically and that's what dwight eisenhower said not me. thank you so much for joining us tonight of course one of the questions is is libya even in our vital interest perhaps our bahrain syria gammons these other countries more important thank you the region secretary gates. but now

coming up next has joseph mccarthy come to wisconsin to argue that republicans attempts to use a freedom of information act to read the e-mails in one professor who spoken out against governor walker and how many more are being targeted by conservative think tank and is the united states providing the tools for internet censorship abroad all pledging billions of dollars to fight it's all going to break it all down right . you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you saw. i'm trying hard look at the big picture. let's not forget that we had an apartheid regime right here in the.

i think. one well. we never got the it says never keep him safe get ready for freedom. hey guys welcome michel ancel on the alone a show we've heard about our guests not to say on the topic now i want to hear our audience is going to use you to video responses or to twitter for part of the question that we've posted on you tube every monday and on thursday when the show is your responses. your voice. so.

it was constant union battle is taking a very personal and a very scary turn in recent weeks or scott walker and several other state republicans have gone after the emails of people who have been outspoken against the anti-union legislation long professor in particular was put in the spotlight university of wisconsin as william cronin wrote an op ed piece in the new york times he learned that a public records request had been filed by the state republican party for all of his personal e-mails to be released to the public under the freedom of information act as it is technically a public worker now if that isn't disturbing enough the battles now been expanded

a right leaning think tank in michigan is using their freedom of information act abilities to acquire a broad range of emails from public labor departments of three michigan state universities according to talking points memo the think tank macin accenture for public policy is looking for any e-mails from all members of the labor studies faculty containing information on madison protests rachel maddow and wisconsin governor scott walker apparently back in august looking for any clues as to how these departments are discussing the probe protests looking at what they have to say about that to see if perhaps some know they were involved now before we get into those e-mails let's take a quick look at this think tank mother jones recently reported that the maccan act center is part of a group of state based projects which have links to the heritage foundation they also have a history of using the freedom of information act to get information from state workers and teachers to obtain details on other scandals brewing within the michigan schools meanwhile back next web page they declare themselves

a nonpartisan research an educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life for all vision citizens i think we all know that that's not true but let's move on the freedom of information act requests for individual incidents those are common but the reason the this request is getting so much attention is because no girl rod topic request has ever been made like the one for these three. universities nowadays say that everything a think tank is doing is technically illegal it's clearly an attempt to bully professors who have been outspoken or who might speak out against the anti-union legislation as paul krugman says it's reflexive leave indictive not any legitimate attempt to gather information now the extremely broad request of all sorts of personal emails from professors who have mentioned those protests gives them away what do they really think this nationally recognized movement would go without any commentary from professors which in this data which is happening and who cares of

any professor mentions in an e-mail now you would have access to those emails scott walker and the republicans in a state have gone far over the line in this one so really gets me is the fact that the republicans aren't even doing their own dirty work anymore walkers started the charge against quoting but now we just pass it all off to a conservative think tank because they'll get all the information they need so this is a new low as far as i'm concerned it's bullying it's intimidation and as we said it reeks of our old friend joseph mccarthy. and internet freedom that's a concept that companies and governments around the world are trying to hold up as an ideal. we stand for a single internet we're all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas and we recognize that the world's information infrastructure will become what we and others make of it. the u.s. in particular is now spent at least twenty million dollars to fund software and technologies to help those in the middle east circumvent internet censorship and

the recent revolutions and ongoing uprisings in the middle east have shown the power of the internet as a tool for grassroots organization but also as a tool that can be shut down as we saw in egypt tunisia bahrain and yemen just to name a few but in comes the next problem as the wall street journal reported this week much of the technology that's used to block websites by foreign governments is developed and sold right here in the usa dilemma for bridging the goals of the us government with free market principles in the rights of corporations to conduct business as they please so whose responsibility is it to keep the internet open and free government business or do both hold enough power to make her so realize that perhaps there is no such thing as a free open and at all do anything is gustavus julian york a researcher at harvard university's berkman center for internet and society julian thank you so much for joining us tonight now you know there's a lot to delve into here let's start by looking at some of these tech companies they now find themselves well you know there are technologies are being used

worldwide both by average citizens and by governments for political purposes so can they no longer be neutral do these tech companies now have to take a side and become political zz while. well i think it looking that's typical about this is that the u.s. state department in particular has initiated this net freedom agenda which you know among other things as you mentioned provide circumvention tools to people around the world and so the problem there is course that you're circumventing these very tools that are being built in the u.s. and so i do think that it's imperative that these companies and i would hope on their own come to take a side on this but i think if we look at perhaps some interests industries within the united states let's say perhaps the oil industry or the banking industry we know that these companies are so good at policing themselves or being a responsible corporation but then on the other hand what do you do should the government regulate something like this you know that nobody wants to step on business toes in america either. sure well i mean there have been suggestions to

regulate this in a sense them at least in the way that weapons distributors distributors are required so to report their sales you know there are other options as well. that could be sanctioned terms of export but you know it is my hope personally that instead of going that route that companies would look toward a more human rights oriented framework and yellow policies that would prevent them from aiding and abetting governments that are sort of hell bent on repression i think is a nice hope let's remember also this web securities industry has now become a one point eight billion dollar web securities industry so i'm sure even if some companies decide to step out unfortunately there are always probably be someone else to get right into that spot and sell this software to a foreign government that might want to use it for the wrong reasons but you know we talk about a free and open internet certain things that should be blocked you think that there are some cultural differences that come into play to just the way that we don't

want children looking at pornography online here in the u.s. which is why these blocking technologies are created you know other countries that perhaps are more conservative or more religious might have a completely different standard of what's considered decent well so there are some standards that you know i i'm personally have freedom of expression advocate and i think that even when it comes to things such as child abuse images i would advocate them should be taken down lawfully rather than be locked in the public eye since that doesn't actually solve the problem a root however you know i do think that there are some limits but there are drawn in other places that i'm pornography is a really good example of that and there are also things like illegal content and things for national security but a lot of the times what we're seeing these tools are actually brought being used to block not only that kind of content but also sometimes political content social media sites sexual health all sorts of things that i would deem of importance anywhere. now we look at our government we have to wonder if it's a little hypocritical right that they want to play for an open and free internet

and other countries but then we look at the massive pushes that they've made in this country to to wiretap the internet to force email providers to hold on to the content for a longer period of time so they can then you know get their hands on it so does it become a little odd. and i think it's difficult and you know wake of wiki leaks there was a lot of criticism specifically. in terms of internet freedom and i think that there is there's definitely a line that needs to be sort of followed on that i think you know one of the things that we saw with wiki leaks for example was that their. content from amazon servers and it's not was an issue of you know sort of an intermediary deciding to keep their own content at the behest of government pressure in a neck case it was that specific senator joseph lieberman who would be pressured amazon yeah i mean i do you think you need to be looking homeward before we look at child or entry now one of the stories that's also come out recently is that the

u.s. is developing this panic button technology for pro-democracy activists in other countries which essentially i guess of the author organs are coming your way you could push a button on your phone and all of your contacts will be erased and it sends out this panic signal to your other friend activists but you know i really can't imagine the florida keys here in the u.s. taking too kindly to that if somebody had a panic button on their phone definitely and i think that there are cases here where even lawful even without warrant out where things like mobile phones are subject to search and so we have access to that kind of but here you can be using and i do think generally speaking the panic button is a great idea but i think also a lot of back in the middle east and north africa u.s. government funded it's going to be risky for them if it's seen on their own that could be more risky more contacts that they have in the first place. yeah i think you're definitely right there on one hand it looks like it's something that's being pushed by the u.s. government so automatically associates that them with the u.s.

and at the same time i think it carries other risks because you know in a perfect world i guess i'm sure the only pro-democracy activists would be the ones that are using this right but could it go into the hands of cartels or terrorists or you know someone else oh absolutely i mean i would assume that anything like this would be in a sense going i don't know open source or what have you been to sort of this would probably be something that would be widely accessible to writing of people and so just with just like with other tools and other technologies you know it's meant it's intended for one audience that could certainly be available to other audiences as well and i can see how. you know cartels is a great example. so there of course lies the dilemma i do we like a free and open internet or does the government then want to have to control it if it gets into the wrong hands and what to do about the corporations it's really become quite them as jillian thank you so much for joining us thank you for having me. and we're taking a short break and when we return.