life on the good. video and to my. mind rules. are a sense for you now with the palm of your. comb . well i'm sorry but in washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture forty three years ago today a man with a dream of breaking down racial walls and fighting for equality for all mankind sadly take it from this world for the remember the legacy of dr martin luther king bus stop uprising breaks out in afghanistan after a florida pastor burns the holy qur'an so is this performed act freedom of speech

and couldn't tea party movement of today be a copycat movement of the eighteen sixty s n l f a k she is once again taking form across the political spectrum. you need to know this violent anti-american demonstrations flared up all around afghanistan over the weekend and three days afghans are taking to the streets ostensibly in response to florida pastor terry jones decision to set the koran ablaze back in march twentieth last year i confronted pastor jones about his plans for nine eleven to burn a qur'an on my radio show here's what he and i both had to say. i want to know why you're so committed dr terry jones why you. or so committed to doing the work of

osama bin laden who said before nine eleven and then and it's here it's like nine eleven was in his mind designed to create a war between christianity and islam why sir are you on osama bin laden side and why are you doing his work we feel that the koran eventually leads to a radical hate against really at least two three zero zero zero zero we are a similar very clear message. that all we have the best things i guarantee you is that you are a coward who is doing osama bin laden's work and exactly what he predicted and exactly where you are if you look if you sometimes the radio get a little upset at the television has since use that desecration to rally afghans against the karzai government and american military forces who are already reviled after last tuesday's revelation in rolling stone of british newspapers complete with photos a u.s. soldiers had been killing innocent afghan afghans intentionally and even cutting

off fingers as souvenirs on friday seven u.n. employees were killed and in total over the weekend there have been twenty reported deaths and more than eighty people injured yesterday a crowd of people gathered about one hundred people gathered in jalalabad to burn effigies of president obama whether the real reason for this ferocious anti-american sentiment in afghanistan is the qur'an burning a story coming out about our troops atrocities or just a decade of us soldiers and blackwater occupying their country or all of the above the situation in that country is. in the aftermath of this fog there are a lot of questions we have to ask ourselves today about pastor jones decision to burn a qur'an a few weeks ago there's there's a variety of issues here. and and let me just go through some of them i mean first of all alexander the great was one of the few people actually conquer afghanistan he was out there very long and the comment that he made was that afghanistan was

easy to march into and difficult to march out of we've been in that country for ten years and you imagine if you're in the first year of the bush administration mexico the president of mexico and it was five incentive bars at the time and said george w. bush he wasn't really allowed to the supreme court put him in it's illegitimate we're going to liberate the american people in mexico and come in and baited america bob the hell out of washington d.c. got george w. bush out and set up their own government set up a government acceptable to mexico and we were all occupied for ten years and then we discovered that the mexican soldiers for fun had been killing us i mean you know some among us this is in some ways how many of the afghans are viewing what's going on in the united states are going on in their country the horrible headline that was in the in the mail this is the british newspaper the mail and of course it's it's a play off of the stuff from the rolling stone article death squad full horror emerges

how us brigade murdered and mutilated innocent afghan civilians and kept their body parts as drove that's the headline and then these bullet points are just you know before the text of this story rolling stone reveals that soldiers cut off fifty fifteen year old boys finger and kept it as a trophy video captures u.s. cherubs troops cheery and as an airstrike killed two afghan civilians new pictures show dead afghan man's dead. soldier stab the body of a dead afghan civilian military tries to pull circular pictures out of circulation and the army's says you know these photos are in striking value well i was tuesday a week ago tuesday. terry jones is burning the qur'an about a week before that but this isn't the kind of stuff generally that at friday night prayers gets discussed it's everybody else is talking about it everybody knows about it you know perhaps solder would go out on it although he's in iran right now

but somebody burning the qur'an that is something that gets discussed and so friday night going out going out of prayers going out of services going out of you know the mosques you call them of leaving church friday night people said ok that's it you know that this video that terry jones had made. i'm reluctant to even call him pastor frankly this video terry jones had made of himself or his buddy burning the qur'an. got virtually no notice in the united states either the media the corporate media mainstream media the united states even even even my show i did interview to me year ago i didn't want to talk about it nobody wanted to we all just figured he was a crazy but he got the video out there he added out largely through a christian group in the middle east that was trying to evangelize and whatnot and and trashes on and it went viral and the

consequence of this is that people are furious i mean you know this is so the question is you know one question is you know what's our future in afghanistan and how this is affecting or discuss that in just a minute other questions or what could be done about terri jo. the supreme court in two thousand and three in a case called virginia vs brown virginia had a law that made it illegal to burn crosses two guys. k.k.k. guys were having a party out at a farm in the woods and two guys burn a cross they got arrested for another guy burned across the black man's front yard both cases went to the supreme court and supreme court combined them into one and ruled that if you do something like burning a cross with the intention of creating harm or threat it is it is a crime that law is legitimate and back in one thousand nine hundred five the florida supreme court had decided the same thing about a florida law so the us supreme court basically just substantiated that only they

did it with genuine you know it's it's illegal you know the famous cliche that's true also from the supreme court ruling that it's illegal of yell fire in a crowded theater is only half right it's only illegal if you're fired a crowded theater if there's no fire but this is pretty much what was going on so we'll what is this guy guilty of is he guilty has he violated virginia versus brown equal to the cross burning or has he committed treason is he playing right into the taliban's hands and in them a recruiting tool or his he simply stupid made not only himself but our soldiers the target whatever it is frankly i think it's time to stop ignoring terry jones and do something about it or at least have a conversation with your other. the

race a recent spate of violence in afghanistan corresponds with a particularly bad year of the war in that nation since the president's troop surge at the end of two thousand and nine five hundred ninety two american soldiers have been killed in afghanistan it's about one per day actually it's more than one person and the deaths to afghan fighters and civilians are also dramatically higher so with this new wave of revolt igniting that country now thanks to terry jones and the american killed school. how bad can this get for us military involvement the region including iraq and libya here to answer some of these questions robert perry investigative journalist and founder of consortium news robert welcome thanks for having me thank you thank you it's nice to see you yes when i watch it has been i think since the project censored yes well as an aside years ago you've been on our

radio show a few times anyhow the. couple of questions here i'd like to get into it's just broke about an hour ago that saif one of the sons of khadafi says his dad is leaving and he's taking over curious what your thoughts are on. well it might be a way out of this mess i mean the has been thoughts about how you maneuver moammar gadhafi out of the picture. there's been a lot of talk about his killing them or. harming the libyan rebels to the point they could overthrow him but that would be obviously have its own set of problems so i think there's a way to negotiate is with his his departure and and have some better system for libya it's like a promising way to go obamacare come out of this looking pretty good actually it would be sort of like reagan in grenada was he going to go well when it was different i mean a year later look at back that most americans just look back and say yeah we want to know what's a good president but i think basically the whole point with libya was would would

it be end up becoming a long problem and if it becomes a shorter problem and if and if americans and the world gets a result that makes sense and i think it probably works out well for obama too well this is something that you were writing about in consortium news on friday i think it was you wrote this fascinating piece about the lessons that robert gates learned when he was in the reagan white house when they were basically fun you know solve and. tell us about that and how this might relate to libya right now well one of the things the cia was trying to do back in the one nine hundred eighty s. was to use. and christianity as a way to get out the soviet union which was an atheist society or at least the government had an. perspective and so to use religion would be the qur'an or the bible as a way of spreading the center creating dissent against that was considered a smart strategic play and the united states of course went into afghanistan covertly at that point through the pakistanis using the i.s.i. to to arm the mujahideen who were sensually islamic fundamentalists and they were

upset about some of the communist changes they were happy that it happened in kabul the women being liberated quite so much and so you had this you had this phenomenon of the of this situation where the united states was backing people that it thought might cause bloody the soviet union but also ended up becoming a force for islamic fundamentalism and a kind of reaction not only that we are given korans that we did for there was never to use religion in a way that was sort of political. now that may have been a short term victory for the united states but it became a long term problem because it was there and he saw gates was the deputy director of cia during most of this and applied in eighty nine when the soviets withdraw gorbachev who was president and wanted to negotiate some kind of resolution of the problem some kind of coalition government were not to belittle the communist leader and sort of be part of the government part and the cia at the time and the and then

the first bush administration objected saying no we basically want the whole thing we want of a complete victory and they thought they could do that quickly it turned out that the mujahedeen were not as effective as the government in kabul held this round for a couple several years and actually outlasted the soviet union which collapsed in one in ninety one and i think knowledgeable as fate has to be what's you know that he was castrated made to his general or stuff in his mouth and he was hung from the right or. has to be on team. mr karzai. that is can get pretty ugly and has actually. we just have a minute a half or so i'm curious your take. first of all is it possible that in libya right now we're arming the next to some of it by taking sides in this thing and and well let me just as that person well the concern is who who make up the rebel forces

there have been there been intelligence reports and captured documents from iraq showing that that al qaeda had a very big success rate in recruiting people from eastern libya they became the capital the largest number of suicide bombers used against american forces in iraq so the question becomes is that element part of the rebel army opposing could offer you and so the united states is a little concerned that it may repeat what happened in afghanistan by by supporting people we don't know and they turn out to be you know we're just very quickly your thoughts on terry jones the kill squads the you know with the stuff that's going on in afghanistan right now or is this a symptom of ten years of occupation time for us to i think in a way it is i think the fact is there for ten years there's a lot of anger on the part of the afghan people understandably and the idea of using more violence to somehow bring that under control is a problem in iraq what we saw was that once the american departure was assured the violence really dropped quite dramatically so in many cases the united states being

there can be a destabilizing force and apparently as robert perry thanks to an honor to see thanks so much for joining us. well maybe it was focusing so much attention on the partisan bickering over republicans defunding n.p.r. and planned parenthood a few weeks back afghanistan a war the longest war in american history continue to churn at forty thousand times the cost of n.p.r. per day and with the rising death toll this war must. it's time for our daily poll your chance to tell us what you think here's today's question seven u.s. un workers were killed in afghanistan after a florida pastor burning the koran is what he did free speech your choices are yes the pastors a lot of burn a koran inflame the entire middle east or no this is aiding and abetting the enemy

so far about sixty percent of you voted yes log on target dot com about us know what you think the poll be open till tomorrow morning. going up of a state doesn't like a federal law can they just write it down better yet can they just leave the union history tells us that's a bad idea so why are republicans trying to do just that today. five. ft. five. you know sometimes you see

a story and it seems so. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here sees some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't i'm sorry this is the picture. is the rhetoric coming from republican governors across the nation similar to what we heard of the run up to the civil war one hundred fifty years ago that may sound extreme but more and more mainstream republicans today have come forward advocating something called nullification of the ability of states to nullify or ignore federal laws that they just don't agree with and no if a patient hasn't been in the political mainstream since the eighteen under it's at the one serious attempt at it by south carolina eighteen thirty two was resolved by

negotiation although president enter jackson as well as former president and father of the constitution james madison both weighed in that know if occasion was illegal . but today mostly in response to president obama's health reform law republican governors senators and representatives have an call calling for the water be struck down on the state level they argue that they have grounds to do this based on the tenth amendment which reads the powers not delegated to the united states by the constitution nor prohibited by it to the states are reserved to the states respectively or to the people in other words since providing health care isn't explicitly in the constitution republican governors feel they can ignore the law that was the same thinking that led to the south seceding from the nation when it didn't like what was the federal government was passing with her to slavery and sure enough republican representatives zach wamp of tennessee recently hinted that secession may be the best option for those opposed to obamacare and governor of

texas rick perry said this back in two thousand and nine sex is easy. it could be a tea party. if you. go to great. that's the reason. they didn't want to continue. your project. so just how nutty is this idea of know if occasion or secession or even how dangerous are here to offer their takes on the issues alex jones filmmaker author and host of the rather far right alex jones radio show and alan and ian will hisor reporter attorneys specializes in constitutional law and blogger at think progress towards alex welcome. thanks for having me great to see with you sure on this time. and in very very good very nice

to have you here good to be back and i thank you in the studio alex what's your what's the position of the hard right in the republican party and frankly among your listeners on both nullification is this. well first off tom back when i was going after bush for the patriot act and illegal wars and lies about w m d's i was called a hard core leftist and now that i don't like what obama is doing continuing what bush did with the same wall street backers i am called a hard right person and i guess i am pro second amendment and i am for state sovereignty and national sovereignty so that's right wing. i decided to leave my lame i labeled my label should be set aside and remove it but whatever is there any let me give you my take on any problem but i'm really constitutionalist i like thomas jefferson ok so i'm a classical liberal but my position is this look you've got the federal government bought and paid for by international fortune five hundred special interest and so

you know the issue has the federal government itself has strayed away from the constitution a bill of rights not just on government run health care with a thousand plus obama waivers given to mcdonald's and his other buddies which is a form of economic discrimination but across the board and so i am for states' rights and it's in the declaration of independence that it's not our right it's our duty and when the government becomes destructive of those aims that we can set up a new government now i don't think you know has the race analogous come on you know the declaration of independence is not a legal document it is a founding document but it's and it's not part of our law well it was a legal document to the king george the third right thing and it's on we're eleanor after this country is there and it is there but there is the bill the people and the people electing their state legislatures for the states to band together and if they want to have a concomitant totally rewrite of what the federal government is and so they're not that's that's

a technique that's provided for in the constitution i don't it's true this works out for all and i'm glad that the states are talking about nullifying unconstitutional unfunded federal mandates i'm not calling for secession i want the federal government we had back. not this corporate run new world order system in is there any a legal or constitutional basis for this assertion or an elevation only if you take a bigger race or the constitution the constitution says something called the supremacy clause that all laws of all federal laws are the supreme law of the land there is a process by which a law can be struck down that process is not a state unilaterally declaring it unconstitutional process is the court system and until that is happened federal laws are the supreme wall of the landlords and what about the tenth amendment the tenth amendment does not the tenth amendment is not eliminate the supremacy clause federal laws are the supreme law of the land the tenth amendment says if the government then exceeds its power there is

a process in place to strike it down but the health care law is clearly constitutional the federal government has the power not just to regulate commerce among the several states meaning that it can regulate economic matters that serve more than one state but there is even as a safety valve in the constitution the necessary improper clause which just as well we know liberal he has said indicates that when current congress has the power to regulate every interstate commerce they have every power necessary to do so now unless you want to say that either health care is not economic or that there's a blanket ban on health care being regulated which means new medicare new medicaid new as chip for children none of that there's simply no way to write this all down under this constitution alex question the red states the ones that are the few that are calling for such an all of creation all red states the red states without exception are recipients of more federal money than they send the blue states by

and large are senators and not recipients if the red states really secede. they're going to be losing a whole lot of cash would they do that well on average the federal government takes a dollar and then sits back about thirty three cents with strings attached so the stranger in a strange all this you gets when you don't get a voice the red states are getting a buck and a half you get some are getting about sixty get some going to get a book twenty. well i mean there's a reason states like texas are thriving compared to others it's because we don't have a state income tax and you know at the same time until nineteen thirteen the states legislatures voted on u.s. senators which was another major state check on power that's why states to get the apportionment of their population get rid of all they all got together and voted to change that well the point is is that here has this separation of powers this this

this balancing of power the federal government has its powers the states have its powers and i understand after whatever him lincoln did that the fed said hey ship sherman just burn down half the country we've got the guns and you're going to do what we say i understand that decision was decided then but this is the twenty first century there was a major debate going on when the country was founded there's been an ongoing debate as you mention right through andrew jackson and there were unfair letters kind of dissolved in one thousand eight hundred thirty two and i was resolved by by by simply compromising on those terror attacks and threatened to march on the south and he was a southern south carolina it's killing but listen listen look here's the issue ok we are bankrupt and we're all talking about cutting indians money or cutting welfare i'm not for any of it that's all we arrange in deck chairs on the titanic if we don't say no to the one point five quid trillion that is owed in fake derivatives that we signed on to bipartisan bush. your time as

a banking system alex in the end you're absolutely right i agree with you ok you know but i also i have a minute a half here and i want to get a couple of other issues in here alex again rather when the former soviet states left the soviet union there were a bunch of nukes floating around if texas for as an example since they have i believe they have a nuclear base down there they certainly have no military bases what do we do but it's a good point you know we were lucky when the. because what happened was the lesser soviet republics decided that they would agree to move their nukes to russia would you trust rick perry to give up his nukes and if he doesn't give up his nukes do you trust him to have his finger hovering over the botton because that's what's at stake when you start talking about things like secession when you start to about things like not with acacia which are basically taught as baby secession you're saying that it's have the power to wave their hand and make any wall they want to

go away go away and then we cease to be a unit if states to have had that power to wave their hand and say they only have to follow the law when they feel like it then it means not only sash last word to you we're pretty much out of time here does rick perry get to get to keep the nukes . obviously those are federal reservation just like the feds have you know part of cuba under their control m n n n none of that is going to that extreme the federal government is out of control under bush under obama under clinton under reagan we are a big empire invading all these countries it's out of control special interest are bankrupting us because they get to run off with the money offshore we need to cut the size of government obama didn't deliver his ball hollow free houses and cars the next republican isn't going to deliver that rick perry is a mainline karl rove run neo con he's not going to cede he's just putting that grassroots populist rhetoric out because two years ago he was being booed by the

ron paul tea party the republicans got scared my guy came in and i go over i got it . alex alex jones in mill hisor i suspect we'll hear more of this in the public and primary that will fall sick of that at least we have faith thank you both both for joining us thank you alex. nation doesn't have to relearn the mistakes that led to the civil war under fifty years ago. it's just. it's time for the good the bad and the insanely ugly the good economist joseph stiglitz in a vanity fair article entitled of the one percent by the one percent and for the one percent stiglitz book the truth about wealth inequality in america and its corrosive influence in government by writing virtually all u.s.

senators and most of the representatives in the house are members of the top one percent when they arrive are kept in office by money from the top one percent and know that if they serve the top one percent they will be rewarded by the top one percent when they leave office. he's right we all know the truth about wealth inequality in america and now it's time to do something about the bad trans ocean a company that owned the oil rig that exploded last year in the gulf killing eleven mia man and spewing crude oil into the gulf for months leading to the world's worst ecological disaster in our nation's history it is paint up bonuses to their executives is twenty ten was as the company says the best year in safety performance in our country but it is history and if that were the case i'd hate to see what trans ocean was doing in two thousand and nine guys delusion and the very very ugly donald trump if this guy could make one back feel income.