market trying to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with a much stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines. there's a report on our. plane as we enter it we are in leaner meaner and we're leaner we are a winner gate sometimes these things happen you heard it from every mainstream news network in america we know gate is taking over but with an economic crisis and rewards underway that's what the junk making headlines. meanwhile in the financial crisis what congressman wiener wants us to be talking about anyway so as democrats and republicans battle it out the winner of that debate remains unclear annals of the parties themselves play out. a verdict is handed

down in the case of seven nato soldiers charged with war crimes it is once again a case where those behind what some are calling a massacre to let off the hook so long is this becoming the norm so many others after. well it looks like we've reached that time of year again summertime where the news is simply slow it's not like the u.s. is suffering from an economic downturn seen since the great depression or even embroiled in the last three wars i can't be the case because if you turn on the mainstream media networks all you see is this an unimpressive crotch shot of a congressman is apparently the most important news in the world right now. it is so stressful thank god i found this dress wiener because this is one point making me crazy but no matter what but now i push on my remote control up channel or the

downtown new york congressman anthony weiner has invaded my life you would know if this is your underpants no matter where you turn he and his. joke are the top story and as we enter it we are the winner wieners winner in winner winner wiener winner gate certainly doesn't look familiar to me many reporters and host calling for reinforcements calling for someone to be held responsible why is he not reported to law enforcement but if he was half that serious so the f.b.i. should be involved the network sent in their big guns to get to the bottom of it is there a picture out there of you in your. world or words that you're worried about it's a question from fox news took credit for originating this ground breaking story what may surprise you most about the scandal is that it may have all originated right here on hannity according to m.s.n. d.c.s.

lawrence o'donnell there's a perfectly good reason congressman weiner is keeping things they no longer i look at it the more i go on of than i did it might be a picture of me jealousy aside this is a hard hitting investigation no one is giving up on you realize that now everybody thinks the photo is you and this is a close range i'm certain you can't tell me to findlay that is a photo of you or it is not a photo of you have you ever taken a picture like this of yourself is this or is this not representative winner's chief of staff when you're named wiener it kind of goes with the territory all right so we here at r.t. we're curious about this how do americans really feel as this story deserved the hype that's been getting our producer lindsay garfield hit the streets of washington d.c. i any answers. the past few days the news networks have been covering what's going on with this wiener gate

scandal it did the mainstream networks care more about this than the people do you find out i honestly don't really care much about it it seems like more of a distraction than anything. i think it's important to last. well it's been a president you know cable networks for about four days now. so i'm just wondering is it important to get to the bottom of it. somewhere. and. you know whatever to make a difference is a refusal to deny that it's a picture of i think it's probably what keeps the story alive. is it important to you to know whether or not he was. not really i think there are far more pressing things in this world that could get a little bit more coverage like what tornadoes. continued crisis in the middle east our country's fiscal situation i think it's pretty straightforward like

twitter hackings all the time i just think it's not really a big deal i think it's in the news. it's personal business so. i don't i'm not interested in it really do you think if there are any other stories in the news that people should be focused on or do you think this is a big important story i think the bigger thing in the world in general. crotch on twitter. so perhaps congressman weiner is thanking his lucky stars today secretly so happy that mitt romney decided to announce he's officially running for president took up some time at least some space in the endless cycle of cable news but still all day long stories of winners you know were bold and headlines earlier i spoke to christopher chambers journalism professor at georgetown university here's what he had to say. we do have an economic crisis here in europe we have food an energy crisis is success or

a wars that's not important i mean that we have our eye is that kind of well because that that's that's tough stuff that's tough to explain you even see meltdowns within the democrats or republicans you know domestically over the economy and things aren't fitting into neat little boxes anymore so we strive to look at stuff like this first was arnold now this that's and before that charlie sheen rarely seen i mean what do you tell your students about the students who don't know it may one day be making decisions as executive producer right and like to put on the news well i mean what's ironic is that the suppose the target of this crotch shot has come forward and issued a statement sheet of journalism student as a matter of fact in washington not washington d.c. thank god washington state let's let them share some of that ignore me some time dennis said look i never even saw this and that and now my name is being bandied about as the harlot of twitter and you know his is his is his mistress and you know

maybe we have a love child so that shows you how it's it's how it's exploded and what's happened is that here's here's where it becomes interesting it is a distraction from some serious things that are going on that we should be covering but the interesting thing is when you look at the carnival itself how it's playing out because really on one side you have arguably somebody who was arrogant at best an idiot at most two who may have taken a picture of his of his his pecker as we said my grandfather used to say and now at the same time you have a political narrative that's being generated through through fox through right wing news sites and blogs you know that has a vested interest in distracting in a direct sense from the real news out there i mean there was a news that came out today with john mccain's one of his campaign chairman said that the republican field in two thousand and twelve is a moses. nonsense so how do you distract from that and from the the the problems up

on the hill the republicans are having with their own members with the debt with a juicy story and it was at the root of it andrew breitbart and what is a small scandal or a non traverse he becomes a big one and you see wieters using that i can think of another term a congressman's response as they can i mean yes in this day and age not responding is basically admission of guilt is that right is that fair no but it you know if you were to come forward and say yes maybe i did take that picture but i don't know i mean that's the narrative now i don't know how it got on twitter and with the support of the post victim and here i'm using words that somebody else can read tweet that i said it on r.t.i. you know the word victim which she comes from she's come forward and said i never saw this and you all are crazy and i don't think this came from the congressman that you know those play off each other and it became it becomes a bigger mystery it's more you know fascinating the casey anthony trial in florida

you know i mean another thing that the one thing is certainly all over when it really doesn't related to anyone's life and it's a little bit disgusting if you it is look at it i mean what about this issue that you were saying these other stories they're just not so simple these complex story like war and what's going on right now in yemen and syria and you know where's gadhafi been lately you know what about staying on top of these stories which arguably do have kind of a bigger impact on everyone's right well if it's first of all i mean for certain news outlets that have a political narrative that they want to get forward and i'm talking everything from from blogs and news sites to say fox news they have a vested interest in the keeping the story like this alive because it does distract from things that maybe they don't feel is our very helpful to their narrative on the other hand you have some outlets who are basically playing off of that it don't seem. unfair they also you know they want to present something that fills a twenty four hour cycle that will get ratings that will get you know eyes on their

new sites you know when they're go crew crisscrossing platforms from their from their news sites to their t.v. stations i mean they want the ratings and we like that people like that despite what you hear on the street because there is a bloc of people whether it's for political reasons because they hate him because he's a liberal down democrat a loud mouth or they just like a good scandal who will keep on that but yemen or greece you know about it the fuck up you know that stuff is too complicated it does it's going to affect their lives directly but they don't that but this stuff is more of a of of junk food but this stuff that you know i mean it's kind of yes that's right no yeah yeah it has a lot of ways that the going to set them personally that stuff is going to affect them personally even yemen grease the dollar you know chinese trade deficit this stuff doesn't affect them at all but they have to fixate on it because it's simple

it's lascivious it's engage and now is chris chambers journalism professor at georgetown university we're going on now to a topic of discussion congressman weiner if you want to talk about all along the debate over the debt ceiling it's one that could change course after a certain warning out today i'm ready for release saying that if there is no progress on increasing the statutory debt limit in coming weeks it expects to place the u.s. government's rating under review for possible downgrade due to the very small but rising risk of a short lived default this is a deal or at least a could be and for more on the subject i spoke to erica payne she's the founder of the agenda project here's what she had to say about the state of the u.s. debt debate. i don't know change you know the republicans have stepped forward and said i think very irresponsibly that they are absolutely refusing to put any sort of revenue solution on the table and we're reaching an impasse but it seems to me

you know it's hard to negotiate with a crazy person and i think we're seeing a lot of that sort of tea party craziness that we saw during the election and they're really pushing them hard on the republican leaders are i think it's very doubtful that you know the grownups in the republican party are going to step forward and say enough already what do you mean the tea party craziness just clarify a little bit if you mean the fact well you know these people in the tea party are saying absolutely not in terms of raising the debt ceiling. right you know i think that they actually fundamentally don't understand this and it's a little bit of of a messaging problem because when you hear you know people don't want to raise the debt ceiling you think will that make sense you know we have a lot of debt we don't need any more debt but that's not really the issue the issue in front of us is whether or not we're going to pay the debts that we've already incurred so the real question is when you raise the debt ceiling what you're saying is i am going to meet those obligations that i have and i think that the problem

with this debate right now is that the american people are hearing this raise the debt ceiling and they're concerned and so it's party's political aspirations so they are thinking well we'll do that irresponsible thing and you know that interesting and i know something that you at the agenda project talk about all the time is kind of bringing normal americans back into the center of these big breaks in this country i'm wondering where should normal americans stand and what should they know among the debt ceiling debate. well here's what they should understand they should understand that they just look at it like your credit card ok so if you have a twenty five thousand hour limit on your credit card and a tree falls on your house and you know you probably want to get the tree off your house and if you're actually limit your credit card say it's twenty five thousand if the credit card company says you know we can raise your debt limit a little bit let's raise it to are three thousand hours so we can pay for the tree company to come get the tree out of our house vote what is the exact same things

just to play devils out so that debt ceiling for the united states government raising the debt ceiling is the equivalent of saying it's ok to take on a little bit more debt so we can pay the outlook ations that we've already incurred and so that we can fix some of the problems that we have in front of us and i obviously we've got a long term debt problem just to play devil's advocate to broaden this discussion a little bit what if and we use this example that you're using with the tree what if the people increasing their credit card amount that they're allowed to spend they continue to buy new trees that will then continually fall on their houses. ok we might be taking a treat out a little bit too far i think the question is are you going to pay to get the tree off your house i mean that's the question of us we had the biggest down economic downturn since the great depression two years ago it's going to take a little bit of work to get out of that and so that's that's the tree that fell on

the house and right now we've got you know some guys up there trying to get the tree down the question is are we spending money on things that we don't need to spend money on and that and the answer to that is not really you know there are some things that can be cut but at the moment we would hurt our ability to get the tree off today if we don't continue to spend money all right let's leave the truth behind and again certainly this moody's warning are very very interesting but i want to look at sort of globally now the u.s. certainly not the only country with of course you know we've but we've seen countries like portugal and greece and italy all the pieces over debt and when you have a country like singapore or someone standing strong other countries doing the same i guess i just want to get your take what you're hearing in terms of which direction the u.s. will go. which direction will go in terms of who we ultimately solve this problem is that you're absolutely will we solve this problem or will we let it make us

crumble. you know i think that that is a question that is really up to the american people and right now as busy as people are a lot of people either looking for work or working two jobs to make ends meet we've got to take a second out of our busy lives and focus on washington because these leaders in washington who incidentally are the people who got us into this problem ten years ago when they put through the bush tax cut and then declared two wars that they didn't pay for you know we've got to turn to them and say you work for us and you need to take care of this problem and you need to do it by doing the responsible thing at the moment raising the debt ceiling and then addressing the long term issue in a sensible way that's not going to hurt our recovery and i have to get american people weigh in on this debate will fix it and if they don't we probably won't erica you were sort of right on the money when you said that in many ways this is a debate that's becoming very political i know today we heard former massachusetts governor mitt romney announce his candidacy for president and also really attack

president obama and his obama for the way he's handled the economy i want to get from you how is president obama failed when it comes to the economy. i think that washington has largely failed i think that president obama has done about as well as he could do given the political dynamics in the country what's really happening here is that we still have a lot of ideas entrenched in our government about how to actually structure an economy said that it works for the american people and those ideas are really hard to overcome and the power of lobbying in washington is very hard to overcome i think obama could have done better then he's done that but i think he did so much better than any republican or conservative would have done in the same situation because put it this way they are more paid off by the banks and the oil companies than are the democrats so i think obama did as good

a job as he probably thought he could i think he could have done a little better but the alternative of having you know it's the party candidate or a staunch republican in there who have proven their inability to deal with economic matters that would have been a total disaster and finally just one final question i want to get your take on you know this sort of the deadline for this is sort of obvious first the day before august second which is the day that everything's supposed to. go to hell if we don't fix this problem but it seems like at least from what we're hearing here in washington that this might get solved you know by the end of this month is this just you know these congressmen who want to go on vacation and get this done why do you think there might be this rush to get this done. well i mean i think that what you could potentially start to see with moody's if you remember during the election of obama a lot of wash street came forward get climbed on the bandwagon and really got behind this guy is he started to criticize last three they started leaving on mass

and going to the republicans and a lot of people i never saw straight down a huge amounts of money to the republicans as soon as president obama said you know you guys need to cool it a little bit and so now those wall street people perhaps with this moody's rating the wall street people who are now so gung ho for the conservatives because they don't want to answer regulation they'll realize we've given you know the crazy people keys to the asylum and so with wall street starts to pull back their money if washed treat who is now funding the republican party starts to say we're not going to let you do irresponsible thing that you are considering doing as soon as that money starts to call back you'll see republicans start to act a little bit more rationally and deciding what to do here and so that moody's rating may help move that along and which case there would be a pastor fix than we anticipated before and that was erica payne she's the founder of your gender project. switching gears now to a day that was supposed to be

a joyous one a wedding celebration instead it was a day marked by blood by horror and by or at least six people back in august of two thousand and seven perhaps because it happened in afghanistan or perhaps because those responsible for the deaths were nato troops but a judge a military court has found there was simply not enough evidence to convict archy's daniel bushell story. the civilians killed and the two soldiers go free the same in afghanistan routes and removed to be different all you soldiers who kill the truth including a pregnant woman. and a child. on the sixteenth of august two thousand and seven. polish troops and afghan villages. as a result six people were killed three were severely wounded but the soldiers were cleared of all charges one of the accused told r.t.

it's all been a big mistake we didn't see. we were accidents besides again it was because it. was. something like. it was a problem with. a grin a malfunction and taliban target by five hundred metres claims the shits but prosecutors alleged it was revenge for the roadside bomb which killed another polish soldier earlier in the day experts say it's unlikely anything could go so catastrophic leigh wrong this is not logical. nor could not make such a serious error such a large distance the question is did they just say to themselves or did they receive this command from above but there is no doubt they were shooting at the village nearby. to defend their commanders at the attack and three should be

the one standing trial runs exactly for those people should be accused maybe maybe. but activists while the conflict continues civilian deaths from nato bombing or inevitable will only rise the longer the war goes goes on their war situation is the answer is i think quite simple to withdraw troops from afghanistan is beginning and the process of stop ization of this country because the troops western troops doesn't bring stability to afghanistan just the opposite as the toll goes up on both sides support for nato its mission plummets. a majority in europe see opinion polls now think the conflicts going in the wrong direction. this was already unpopular in the e.u. there's one hundred billion euro because service is a big part of whole point of our boys coming back in coffins is even worse leaving

the civilians on punished for the week of the case to stay in afghanistan even the afghan president's attorney against nato after the latest fourteen civilians were killed because lloyd delivered his strongest words yet giving of point of warning and threatening war if it happens again then you go shorty it's a story most people have heard very little about but one that writer and researcher dave mark owen has been covering for years now they've joined us from vancouver canada. and then this happened back in two thousand and seven the seven polish soldiers involved. you know they faced twelve to twenty five years behind bars now it looks like they won't have to serve that time their defense team says simply this was a tragic accident not a deliberate crime talked about as i mean this is war after all and as we know accidents happen right. and there that's true. i think the facts of the case are

still quite murky there's been conflicting reports since the very beginning the original report that stated that the soldiers had attacked the villagers in revenge actually came from a report that was first produced three days after the incident and it was done by the polish counterintelligence service their assessment suggested that this was done in revenge revenge we should mention for the first i think polish soldier that was killed was killed either earlier that day or a couple days before that that we're talking about that's right there's also an american soldier that was killed that these particular soldiers knew quite well. and it suggested that in fact it was a revenge for the dead american soldier either way. i believe it's still quite murky the case is still open to appeal a diner stand in poland. and it was dismissed or if they were acquitted on grounds that as the court said that they didn't have enough information they didn't the

court didn't even have precise information as far as the physical setting of the answered and where the village was where the compound was where the civilians actually were which is slightly to say i think four hundred meters from now i'm going to tell the village in question. these things were up in the air as far as the court with concerned and that contributed to their their finding of the acquittal. i think probably putting it in context i think the defendants have a point when they say that it should be their commanders that were investigated that was also an initial. decision made by the investigator to not pursue the higher ups it's a nato procedure and if. there should have been a proper nato procedure to mount a nato investigation. which i don't believe ever was done what how can i how can this investigation not have been done i mean this is

a case that's been going on for nearly four years now how could a nato investigation not have happened that's not the only worth keeping and vault there there is supposedly audio recordings made by americans american troops who claim she was overheard taliban soldiers. in the midst of this battle when the soldiers claim to and actually shooting at how a band supposedly the americans have a report with recordings where the taliban are receiving this incoming fire but this apparently was never produced during a court case so it's a mystery as to whether or not this report actually exists or whether it was made up and even if i was going to say some of the some of the incident reports i know have been released on wiki leaks i mean what you keep you keep you said time and time again in this interview the facts are murky the facts are marquee which facts were allowed as evidence in the case and which facts were simply not even used to

consider this i'm not able to follow terribly closely from canada what actually went on in the trial so i don't know but we know from very early on in the case that there was secret testimony given by some of the soldiers calmly. as well as americans who were involved the americans have. commanded this unit in the past. and it seems like. since it's a military court that made this decision it seems that a lot of their evidence won't be made public and hasn't been made of it i want to connect the dots for a second i know the u.s. and nato forces are in afghanistan they say to bring freedom and democracy but recently we've heard from honey karzai the first democratically elected president of afghanistan who is asking the u.s. to stop conducting bombings on homes and yet it's a little clear that he doesn't really have power when he makes this request and how does this work for freedom and democracy a president that's

a lot to sort of through democracy and yet the u.s. sort of takes away the power. right this is the nature i think of an occupation really karzai has been making demands like this for a number of years now and on top of that it seems that there's a growing sentiment among afghans that they would just like the occupation to stop but beyond that also there's a growing consensus some observers western observers and everybody all the conflicts that it's going nowhere that it's only going to get worse and what needs to happen is that a settlement a regional settlement involving pakistan involving russia and china involving central in central asian states. and some peace process that can be can be put in place to stop just cycle killing that's now been going on for some thirty years

day yes or no do you think this was a fair trial. i want to speak from this distance i cannot tell i don't speak polish so i'm reliant only on translation into english or french so i really don't have an opinion on that certainly as you mentioned this this may be appealed but as for now these soldiers are appear to be let off the hook they've markland writer activist and editor of stop war blog dot com thanks so much for joining us thank you for having me and that's going to do it for now for more on the stories we cover and go to our teen dot com slash usa or check out our you tube page you tube dot com slash r t america and christine preserve our i'm so sorry but we won't have an interview with congressman anthony weiner.