greece cries to a halt as a forty eight hour general strike takes hold while things appear rights in violence where protesters voiced their anger at proposed cuts to secure e.u. bailout package the strike was time to coincide with a crucial vote in the greek parliament on whether to accept brussels terms for financial aid this comes as china's prime minister offers a financial lifeline to the union during a visit to europe. french finance minister christine legarde becomes the first female head of the international monetary fund winning overwhelming support from europe russia china and the us her chief rival for the postman was mexican banker augustine carstens who lobbied as a non european candidate better suited to understanding developing economies and the organization's former director dominique strauss kahn resigned in may because of a sex scandal. r t is on the ground in the libyan oil port of break this is tripoli rejects the international criminal court's demands for colonel gadhafi is arrested

and accuses it of doing nato's dirty work critics say the ruling makes a peaceful settlement less likely and only deepens the country's deadlock. up next to me alone to show we continue our top story with a look at whether a potential greek default is just the tip of the iceberg before other national economies follow it's coming your way next. for the feast we've got. the biggest issues get voice ceased to face with the news makers. welcome to the lone a show where look at the real headlines with none of them or say i can live in washington d.c. now today i will look over agree the violence has broken out as protesters and riot police clash the day ahead of a vote austerity measures to keep the country from defaulting but is greece just

the tip of the iceberg what does that mean for the u.s. look at the future of the war in afghanistan who's going to be in command of the war effort and what does an attack by the taliban in kabul today really mean then why ask if obama has finally turned in to dick cheney and his legal battle against reporter james rise and we're going to have all that and more for a denial but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has missed. you know we've done quite a bit of trash talking on the show about the mainstream media's coverage of the casey anthony trial it's been incessant it's been over the top it's been quite ridiculous to say the least but today's coverage i think takes the cake every single cable news network for at least two or three hours this morning we filmed it here in our office had nothing on it screens but the casey anthony trial they discussed every piece of evidence every little minuscule piece of paper every question and answer i mean it was non stop it was kind of like the rest of the

world stopped and casey anthony was the only thing going on. you can believe this but what's happening now george anthony is on the stand and he's being questioned about his relationship and did he have some kind of inappropriate relationship with one of the searchers and the first time that they searched your home they left a search warrant but your home. on december eleventh yes no sir they didn't did they believe in them but the story she telling you what they have confiscated no sir they. sure you remember approachable you have so far from the age of the room there. was. no sir. you don't boggles my mind most is why c.n.n. m s n b c and fox suppose that hard hitting news networks are covering this h l n tru t.v. those things exist for a reason for the people who want to watch mindless melodramas unfold but guess what news should also exist for

a reason maybe they should have run of the view hearings on capitol hill today and dissected every word of those where obama's legal advisers are being grilled about their unexplainable explanation for why the war in libya doesn't count as hostilities or the hearing where the new commander of troops in afghanistan and the new head of special operations are testifying or maybe maybe they should remember the seven year anniversary of a story that used to make the news. much of the world was caught off guard today by the handover of political power by the u.s. to the new iraqi government it was scheduled for wednesday even some members of the iraqi cabinet didn't know that iraq was about to become a largely sovereign nation again in a room that had been somebodies office only a few minutes earlier the iraqi leaders said this was an historic day and the u.s. had not shed blood in vain. for the first place. that's right seven years ago iraq was handed over its sovereignty by of course the

occupying force of foreign militaries and was supposed to become an independent post saddam country that represented democracy in the region i don't think anyone really believes any of that crap but they sure reported it like they did it and guess what seven years later we're still in iraq we saw about fifty thousand troops there and yet from the reporting by the mainstream media last september seems like they really believe that when obama said the cop combat operations had all come to an end they were all out they said every reporter they had ought to be on the ground for this big moment there are four hundred and forty american troops in this convoy traveling in sixty. today's big. i think you get the point right so what happened to all of that it's kind of embarrassing now when you realize that if defense secretary robert gates gets his way our troops are staying there maybe not all fifty thousand but believe me our permanent presence at this point is just the reality so much for handing over that sovereignty so much for ending combat operations but even worse is of course that this is the war that

everyone forgets or even fighting anymore try to tell that to the families of the troops that are continuing to lose their lives this month alone eleven u.s. soldiers have died in iraq including today and that makes of the deadliest month there since two thousand and nine but those deaths no longer get reporters on the ground the whole war doesn't just to print a headline or a quick video here and there it's what the mainstream media chooses to miss. greece once again erupted in violence today as protesters throwing rocks clashed with about three thousand riot police for me to hear gas now it's the first of a two day strike as the greek parliament is set to vote tomorrow on a new five year austerity package of spending cuts and tax increases and the bill is expected to pass but if not greece is going to run out of money within weeks and

the tensions across europe are mixed all british prime minister david cameron pleaded with his country for people not to protest french president nicolas sarkozy said that an agreement on greek austerity had been reached and that caused u.s. and euro stocks to rise with optimism but what does austerity really going to look like for greece compared to a default i will placing a band-aid on this wound only highlight those elsewhere like portugal and spain it's been reported that in a stress test to come out soon one in six european banks is set to fail while the us congress is entrenched in its own debate over budgets and deep faults when we look to europe as an example or discuss this with me as anthony rand director of economic research for the reason foundation and we thank so much for being here tonight well for starters everyone is just waiting on pins and needles to see what actually happens is they're saying that the vote is expected do you have any insight there as to what's good we've got i think of the seven am eastern time you know fortunately i don't know really in the greek parliament to get a good sense of what's going to happen but i do think it's going to pass i think

the general sense of reporting coming out of greece is that it passed because it has to pass there really is no alternative if they don't i mean in theory they could run the vote the next day but they were as you just mentioned they've got a couple weeks of base of the just at the end of the summer until they have no more money and then they're going to wind up having to do all this stuff anyway because they're going to have any money to run the services in the first place that they really are they have no other choice do you think that at the end of the day no matter what it's still better to enact these austerity measures perhaps to raise taxes than it is to just allow them to de fall and start a new because that's some of the language that we're starting to hear here at home here in the u.s. when it comes to the debate over raising the debt. i think from the american perspective we actually shouldn't have anything to do with this i think we should in the in the united states should not be involved in trying to save greece from an american policy perspective if leaving them alone just means letting them default and let it sort of cellphones that that that's what i think we should do leave anybody alone in today's economy it just doesn't work that way we're not also isolated will be the people who should be if they need to build them out build

a mile are the european union the eurozone which they are largely driving this effort the i.m.f. is involved which means the united states is involved but this is truly being driven by france and germany because they're afraid of how this is going to impact their banks if greece does to fall what that means practically speaking is one going to be able to borrow money for another ten years a good example that is argentina which defaulted in two thousand and one and still very difficult for it to borrow money but it means that to greek banks banks european banks particularly in germany and france are going to have their credit worthiness downgraded and that's going to cause a lot of problems in europe but it also means that the other countries portugal and ireland and italy and spain they could look to this and say i will this is kind of what happened greece is already default of this is already destabilized the euro we're just going to go that same route and that creates even more problems for those banks this is the euro problem it's not a united states problem but at the end of the day i mean let's face it right if greece were to default on its debt this would trickle down to the united states

somehow this would affect our economy certainly would impact our economy in some respect we have got american companies that are over there we you know the european economy is hurt that means that there's less people buying our products that's definitely a case but that doesn't necessarily mean the united states needs to be the lender of last resort for everybody in the world well you know you bring up the i.m.f. and so of course today there is some news from the i.m.f. that christine legarde has been chosen france is a former finance minister to take over here but of course there was a lot of a lot of discussion after strauss kahn left as to whether it's time for some new leadership maybe doesn't have to be europe anymore and we actually have an interesting sound bite here this is. porters from moscow did an interview with jim rogers who thinks that maybe china needs to have a bit of a greater role to take a lesson that. if they become the savior if they become the large creditor for europe then they're going to have a very major seat at the table that's going to improve their position in the i.m.f. it's going to produce improved our position with the world bank it's going to

improve their position at the u.n. because you know the europeans are going to have to be more and more friendly to china because china saving america not cannot save them. what i think is they have a point but everyone's going to have to start being real friendly to china because next time you need a bailout that's going to help it's possible we don't know really that much i think honestly about the future of china a lot of people there's a lot of speculation a lot of people have lots of opinions but the information that comes out of china is often very sketchy in terms of how real we real economic data is how much is really being gamed so it could be that over the next ten twenty years china actually is going to rise to that place as a lot of people think that they are where they are going to be that next level below us or could be that the china miracle is somewhat of a myth and actually they can't sustain eight percent g.d.p. growth over the next five and then ten and then fifteen years and that they're going to become like any other emerging market nation which is slowly rising to being like many other developed countries i do think though that china having more

of a role of how the i.m.f. works is important because it is the international monetary fund and at this point there is sort of a gentlemen's rule that european runs that and i think that having another person step into that role other than christine lagarde would have been important whether is somebody from china or even somebody from turkey i think that just handing it off to somebody else from france doesn't necessarily signal towards the future that europe wants to play ball with the rest of the g twenty and some of these other nations that are rising to the forefront of the global economics you know there are definitely some people out there that are not happy about the way back to the u.s. to the budget negotiations now the president is leading because eric cantor and john boehner just had a bell they don't want anything to do with it i mean it's really becoming this absolute mess and so you know what do you think is going to happen when it comes down to august second do you think that they should allow the u.s. to default or one on august second even if we don't raise the debt ceiling that doesn't mean that we automatically default means that we have to start choosing between whether or not the united states defaults or if we're going to cut back

spending in other services what do you think if they were going well i i really honestly think that we are going to slow down payment of security. or medicare funds or something else or whether even defense money before we let the united states government default so that means that basically in order to keep the us government afloat in order to try to tell people that hey we still are reliable you should still buy or treasuries that we're just going to make everyone else the older people as though those that need the welfare we're going to let them suffer it's not it's not a good situation for the other thing we can do is we can actually put in place some serious long term spending reforms and then that could mean increasing taxes that could mean you know cutting to truly unfortunately six trillion dollars let's see here the current rate is no it is no it's not i want to listen to i don't think it would be helpful but there are the things that we can do and i think that the administration would prefer to put in place a plan that allows for say two trillion dollars in cuts over the over a short term period of time and then figure out how long term budget looks like

before we default i definitely think they were there they would have preferred that but then where is it that we're hearing these voices that are. i don't necessarily think the republican leadership wants the us to default on a debt they definitely want that to happen they don't want business to get hurt they don't want wall street the banks to get hurt but then we are hearing this from some of these tea party politicians do they actually know what that would look like how many people would suffer i mean i feel like they're not honest with america and i don't think that no one really no one really knows what it looks like so there is a challenge when we talk about this apocalypse if we if we default and what that actually looks like and the fact the matter is we're not really quite sure it could be that we say to certain bondholders actually we're going to we're going to hold off on the money that we give you and no one freaks out and no everybody just recognizes ok well united states isn't paying right now but we're pretty sure they're good for it six months down the road or it could be that everybody stops barring the united states. the united states government just completely stops how

that your goes down to the actual real economy to main street is going to take a little bit of time we don't really know what it looks like so if you're in the tea party you know that you've got your principles that you. i believe in it so that's what you're going to stand firm on because you think that's the best way of that it's going to work out and i don't think that we should be spending any more money than we should be but i also think that the the most practical way to get out of this is to raise the debt ceiling for a short term period of time up until the end of this budget year because we have to figure out fiscal year two thousand and twelve budget after this that's going to parties out of as soon as we figure out this debts and then we have this other thing called our budget next year we didn't pass a budget last year it would be an precedent if we didn't do it two years in a row so we start to figure that out put in place is something practical like ending for any man freddie mac. in exchange for raising the debt ceiling just of the september and then we can have the two thousand and twelve budget discussion which we need to be having now we're wasting time when we can have that discussion and that's going to put in place ten years spending in terms of projections and we can figure out the debt ceiling as

part of that how anthony i mean that all sounds a really nice but i feel like you haven't taken a look around to washington lately of the of the notion of a practical a logical discussion or debate here is just mind boggling especially with the fact that we have another presidential election coming up i don't think that it's going to go anywhere but you know it's interesting because we've seen some polls that show that a lot of americans actually wouldn't mind that the u.s. defaulting on its debt but i feel like that's because no one's being honest with them that this could indeed be a catastrophe thanks so much for joining us. still to come tonight should we be able to track you with c.d.'s that warrant a supreme court is about to answer that question and the war in afghanistan is going to the general elections in command on the ground actually make any difference in america on the one that. the official. told time from the top story.

on the. video. mission street now with the palm of you want. to be soon which right if you move. from plans to. start don't come. well supreme court has agreed to take up a case to decide whether or not it's illegal for police to attach g.p.s.

devices onto a person's car without first obtaining a warrant at the government's urging as a free in court finally gave the ok on monday to hear this case after a federal court throughout the country have all given several conflicting rulings now a case that's going to take center stage at the highest court involves a drug dealer who was tracked without his knowledge before being arrested and when the u.s. court of appeals overturned the drug dealers conviction due to not having a warrant for that g.p.s. device it further fueled the debate about the government's ability to use this technology without first getting permission from a judge we see it's all part of a larger issue that we brought up several times in the past where individuals who are necessarily what you would call suspicious characters find themselves being tracked by the feds and on this program we interviewed yasser afifi he found a g.p.s. device on his car during an oil change and he said that he thinks he was just being targeted because of his muslim heritage makes me feel like they're treating me like a terrorist or criminal and there are giving me my my rights as an american citizen

and i was born and raised here so i feel different and star a nice feeling. now we also told you about activists who have found these devices. under their cars without ever interacting face to face with any federal agent and despite the fact the feds say that they can go into your driveway to actually attach these devices to your vehicle are also completely overlooking an individual's ability to consider any area immediately surrounding their home to guard their privacy the legal term called cartilage now critics like the a.c.l.u. have been attempting to tackle this method of tracking head on they say that it's a complete violation of your fourth amendment rights which states that you're protected from unreasonable search and seizure and require that law enforcement must obtain a warrant from a judge with probable cause completely bypassing that need for a warrant opens the door for law enforcement to track and keep tabs on anybody that they deem suspicious even if there is no justifiable reason so even though there is plenty of president that g.p.s. tracking without

a warrant violates or for the memory the obama administration is moving full speed ahead to make sure that it isn't a problem in fact the government said that there needs to be a prompt solution of this conflict because it's a critical element for law enforcement efforts throughout the country where you know what the government is so in favor of this unconstitutional use of technology why isn't there a bigger outcry from americans it team obama gets its way that means all americans are subject to being under the magnifying glass without any discussion from a judge so given police across the country a blanket all for you to spy on people with g.p.s. is something that i think we should be wary of after all we've told you about several instances where police abuse their powers make mistakes or just maliciously choose to follow people who really should never be suspects and surely there are just as many instances like these that have been reported so not only is obama once again let his voters down by being pro warrantless wire to excuse me g.p.s. tracking but he's opening up another level for police to invade your privacy and singlehandedly stomping on the fourth amendment crucial piece of the bill of rights

so it looks like the supreme court is now going to have the power to say goodbye to that privacy and hello to more government surveillance or to stand up to the obama . ministration on this important issue. now the president obama has announced a withdrawal of the troop surge in afghanistan by summer of two thousand and twelve and now the general david petraeus has been approved by the senate intelligence committee to take over the cia what's the next year and even more actually going to look like in afghanistan who's taking over what strategies are they going to employ well today marine corps lieutenant general john allen and vice admiral william mcraven both testified in front of the senate armed services committee to answer those questions and if confirmed most likely the answer is yes allen will be the commander of u.s. and nato forces in afghanistan but it seems like the man with the real power from here on out will be the one who isn't losing any numbers mcraven is going to be leaving his post of the head of j. stock fresh off a successful raid to kill osama bin laden to lead all u.s.

special operations command so we expect more night raids drone strikes and killing rather than be friending and does that mean that counterinsurgency as a strategy is dead or to discuss this with me is lawrence korb senior fellow at the center for american progress lawrence thanks so much for being here i should be here before we get into some of these personalities who's going to be taken over let's talk about something that happened in kabul today there was a terrorist attack at the moment the numbers are very sketchy we don't know if there were two people or six militants that entered and started shooting we know there was a blast that went off at the intercontinental hotel now this is a place where mostly foreigners visit or preside this is a place where reportedly there may have been a meeting between afghan and western officials today so what does that tell you i mean is that really bad news that they got into kabul they went specifically to the internet continental. who was. the insurgents the taliban whatever you want to call them have switched their talk to because it's very hard.

to undo the gains that the nato forces have made over the last year particularly. those so they're resorting. these suicide attacks which get a lot of attention and the other is that the insurgency if you will of people not happy with the government on have not been eliminated will ever be so they are able to use these people who theoretically have been cleared or war supposedly good people to go in to. secure facilities and this is happening all over the country do you think of this is trying to send more of a message specifically to foreign troops especially if they go into intercontinental name and foreign troops but foreign diplomats anyone who is there well i think when you go to hotels like into combat a little serener which are heavily guarded and basically are the places where visitors distinguish visitors not common ordinary people they're trying to send

a signal because most of those people have troops in afghanistan that has security is not getting any better because this gets more and more attention than say a taliban attack in you know one of the solving problems as well especially if this gets a lot more attention than let's say if there was an attack where civilians for entailed or even unfortunately i think if if a number of u.s. troops were killed i mean how would that change things how do you think people would receive it if some high ranking member was to get injured well don't forget this is a battle if you will. the perceptions and what the taliban the insurgents are trying to show is look even though you're claiming you got all these gains and you've taken over those territories you people are not anymore safe but you were and will show you will go after your people you know your people who are charge of that so it's psychological very similar to what the viet cong did in vietnam in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight the tet offensive you know where they got close to the american embassy and people said wait

a second i thought we were winning this war actually it was a military defeat for them but it was a psychological victory well one of the things that general petraeus. at least tried to be good at or i think they did have congress convinced maybe not myself was being able to really spin the war and to give a good perception when he came home and tried to tell people what these supposed gains look like now with general petraeus is heading over to the cia so let's talk about these two characters we have william mcraven and we have lieutenant general john allen who do you think is really going to have more power here the commander of the troops or the one that's it in charge of special operations well basically the commander of the troops over the area he. will have all to command obviously if there's an operation involving special operations forces there you're going to have the head of the special in don't you think that we're going to start seeing a lot more operations with special i was. told response for

example that yemen and obviously pakistan along the pakistan afghanistan border counterinsurgency is not something we do well it's not something that the american people have a great deal of patience for it doesn't play toward technological strides so yes you're going to see as we call it counterterrorism where you use the special operations people forget in iraq you have an awful lot of special operations going on while we're talking about counterinsurgency and even when we have this counterinsurgency strategy how do the awful lot of counterterrorism operations already go on or you'll hear from some of the biggest advocates for counterinsurgency that it just didn't get enough time that you know that we spent two years perhaps in afghanistan that we shift our focus to iraq and then we had an eight year hiatus or a counterinsurgency was implemented properly and they're trying to sell it this strategy like it still works but do you think that it's dead do you think that here on capitol hill all eyes have already turned again well i think it can't work unless you have a reliable partner in the question because even if you quote unquote win the hearts

and minds of the people when you leave will they support the karzai government we see in iraq now ok they have to expend a tremendous amount to be. the treasure we call the violence that held the iraqis was supposed to make the political compromises they did make up so you have trouble that when you see war problems in iraq kosovo bench really it's got to be a government that the people support they're not going to support a former government now in this hearing so far both raven and general allen didn't have any harsh words to say for the obama administration's plan for drawing down the troops actually they they're putting on a face like they support it but do you think they really mean that that's right you know i think it's interesting because mcraven basically said that he's not being a fact that none of our special ops guys one of the most elite units are leaving it's general allen's going to leave and losing thirty three thousand surge well you're going to be losing but again it just troops you're talking about are you talking about dilatory police or you're talking about you know infantry or special

forces are you talking about people who do military construction you're talking about fighting people i think that was general allen's point look even after these thirty three thousand troops are withdrawn which is going to be at least a year before they are all out you could still have twice as many troops as you had when obama came into office so the idea that somehow you're cutting and running a leaving just troops and on the other hand you are general allen pointed out you're sending a signal to the afghan government you just can't lay back you're going to have to start getting your own security forces or your own act together as general allen kind of getting the short end of the stick a little bit general petraeus gets to leave another of war well i think it's going to be difficult for general like it was difficult but you have over there only have to general petraeus left iraq to really do the hard work of seeing this through it's very easy to commit if you get a lot more troops to make temporary gains the real question do you make durable goods.