a bailout battle field in greece as new austerity measures move and am protesters take to the streets what will that is thank you for the global economy and what should the u.s. be learning r t is on the ground in athens. and another day of powerful testimony in the casey anthony murder trial same stick different day so let's get to the real news and. government double. whammy or for political gain. then this is of god again showing

a twenty five year sentence for members of the new burb four convicted of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction but is this justice or just the way the u.s. goes about the war on terror. and tuning up the brains behind the brawn the white house unveils a new counterterrorism strategy but what's different and will it work. and big bucks for a big house if you think lobbying is just about politics think again unless you're talking about the politics of private prisons well take a look at the big money behind the bars. good evening it's wednesday june twenty ninth i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. and you're watching our team now austerity maybe it's a word you've heard because it seems to be the word of the summer california just passed around a bit in response to its budget crisis they're cutting or postponing billions of dollars to schools health care programs for the poor they're also increasing fees

to close another more. the nine billion dollars a nation why we see congress struggling to try to stop piling on to the fourteen trillion plus dollars of debt facing the u.s. and trying to agree to raise the debt ceiling nein while in greece they have passed austerity measures against this backdrop violent protests resistance on the streets has been raging the measures were demanded by international lenders such as the e.u. and the i.m.f. to stave off a greek default now earlier i spoke with me three covina a financial journalist on the ground there covering the protests in greece he gave us the very latest what is the worst that i've seen yet and i've been to a lot of these protests and a lot of these rallies usually these things lol down after they get very violent or at least when we head into the nighttime there's a there's a brief period where things calm down before they get violent again but we really haven't had that here it's calmer now than it was before but it's still extremely violent even right behind me right now there are clashes with police going on. an

interesting thing is some some bikers who actually rode down yesterday from northern greece and more and more people got on the on the bandwagon as they came down the road by again in front of parliament once again people get very excited when they come through it's very hopeful so it's i think there's a mix there's a mixture of excited and hope because of the the response but also there's a there's a concern a fear because there's a lot of violence and and that's a concern not only for the protesters of those who have been injured but also for the government because with these with this type of violence it becomes a much more difficult for them to pass a sturdy measures and privatization schemes that are widely unpopular in this country right but yet they have passed his austerity measures under the pressure of the e.u. and i am against the will of the people that you've been covering on the streets there so do you think that the will of the people will be heard at any point or there will be actual repercussions for the government. yeah well i mean first of all the first memorandum according to scholars here in greece were constitutional scholars and former members of the government they claim that the measure completely unconstitutional the first place because you need one hundred eighty

members of parliament to pass this sort of legislation first of all second of all they can pass whatever they like but if the people don't agree to it and the people are not willing to sit down and take it it doesn't really matter what they pass and that's what we're seeing here right now and and they can just keep trying i mean even if they pass this along and everything goes smoothly in there and they're able to continue to move this government along they still have a huge vote coming in april and september i'm sorry so this is not going to end in the greek people are not stupid and i said this before they understand what's going on they've seen this before in latin america they seen in africa they see in the caribbean and they're not about to be the first european country to be taken over. in a kind of corporate liquidation and i think that's i think that's the real message of the people on the ground i want to ask you because i know that you're based in new york as well you're a financial journalist you cover the united states as well obviously we've seen the u.s. weigh in and say grace needs to pass these measures get together are there threatening the global financial stability this is at the very same time the united states is

concerning overall that's going to default on its debts by passing all these debt lot deadlines to raise the debt ceiling do you see any hypocrisy in that any comparisons between the two countries. well i mean obviously hypocrisy there first of all the united states doesn't have to tonight a certain measure because it just prints its way out of its problems but eventually that's going to that's going to be its undoing and many people have commented that on the on the united states i don't think i even need to get into that here but is there a threat to the financial system absolutely i saw greece's fault it's the fault of an over leveraged system that has no capital there's no capital the system it's just massive amounts of credit and there's a legitimate concern because everything is. there's a huge counter party risk in the system do you still have all these credit default swaps out there on greek that on irish that i'm portuguese that on spanish that you would have heard defaults why. on u.s. debt so there's a lot of counterparty risk there's a lot of risk in the system and it's not even a matter of specifically how much can the system absorb specifically of greek losses but there's also the concern that was what we saw during the financial

crisis in the u.s. in two thousand and eight it wasn't just you know what affected lehman's actual balance sheets but what affected people the banks fear about the balance sheets of other banks and where their exposure was how did that affect liquidity and that's the real concern the real concern is is this going to freeze up capital markets and and i think is a very good chance that would happen i think that the markets have not priced in a greek default and if a greek default were to occur that would be certainly catastrophic for the banking system that's a bad scenario either way and i applaud you for getting up as analysis while there is. firing going on in the background what's happening right behind you right here i know. what's going on behind you right now. that's a good idea i would have to say pretty much what's been going on regularly which is you'll kind of look at the square and you'll see maybe one pocket here one pocket there where cops are engaging protesters or a protester throwing rocks at police because you have a lot of people here with sledgehammers breaking concrete off the ground taking the marble and throwing it at the police and sometimes the police or the mob mob aback

but it's just it's back and forth and you just see a lot of this one side and gauging the other back and forth and that's what you're seeing that's what you're hearing before we had a giant fireball go off in the square on the right side of parliament and there was smoke billowing out everywhere you had the hellenic postbank lit on fire so it's chaotic i mean you can really hear during the day after this aftermath i'm first i just want to break in cause we're all go out of time but i just want to ask if you think that the united states needs to be paying attention to this as it looks at cutting its own budget and having. sample on the possible talking bot. look i mean in title myths there's an issue with entitlements regardless whether you're for the way these things are implemented or not many greeks here understand that we need to cut the public sector we need to to shore up this this economy we need to create a market that's that they can deal with they can absorb capital and promote private investment. i think is the real issue tonight states and they should look to greece

for that is that what happened what's going to happen in the u.s. if you had similar protests in new york what if you had people you know going up and down central park breaking things i mean is that is that possible i don't know it could happen at some point but the u.s. has not really felt this because of the nature of the economy the way that it's subsidized by foreign exports and the way that the dollar has has functioned as a reserve currency for all these years i think that hard times are ahead for the united states we're going to the u.s. from financial journalist nutri cope and also from greece now from news that matters to what question really matters very little to the actual lives of the masses but nonetheless a case that has captivated the nation propelled ratings cause near brawls to get into the courtroom commanded constant mainstream media coverage it is the news for one has reportedly shelled out two hundred fifteen thousand dollars for scoops on this story but does it matter and why is it taking away from me that such. casey anthony the woman accused of killing her two year old little girl the latest on

what happened in court today it's the story that demands breaking live coverage on not one but two three cable news networks and another day of powerful testimony in the casey anthony murder trial mainstream media reporting and analyzing every gory detail there were a lot of people have said in court today and that's because we were hearing testimony about caylee's limbs and then he described how animals carnivores dragged pieces of her body throughout the woods her legs being chewed on by animals in her trunk or torso being dragged and. the american public literally clamoring to hear it all. we're going to tell you what sparked a near brawl outside just ahead ask anyone on the street and they can tell you why there is something about this case that is mesmerizing and i do think it's because it's a young girl could speculate that she's a fairly attractive young mother it's like

a lauderdale soap opera and one part of the formula this journalism professor says cannot be ignored if for minorities it would have to be a football player o.j. simpson or an entertainer were politicians something along those lines she's white if it were a black woman was a single mother and the baby was dead and needed people would say all that happens all the time who cares about that and it doesn't happen all the time and nearly everyone you ask knows who p.c. anthony is she's the mother accused of killing her toddler but does this criminal trial affect the lives of americans. probably you know i think is too much emphasis on it nonetheless america cannot seem to get enough according to pew research last week casey anthony was one of the top five news makers and all of mainstream news behind people like you know the u.s. president and jon huntsman who announced he's running for president and the you are seem to want it to be headline news which has been delivering

a wall to wall coverage has seen a huge surge in ratings as a result propelling primetime programs to the one or two thought and many occasions but meanwhile. i mean as michael was. i was arrested twenty four for an arm robbery every day there are injustices in america there will never get a fraction of the attention that most people will never have heard of michael was sentenced to life in prison for a crime he did not commit. from corporate exonerated after a difficult battle despite plenty of evidence of innocence. one of many cases americans may never hear about as they tune into the serving testimony in the casey anthony murder trial whether it matters to a greater society or not but who cares because it's the show lauren mr r. t. washington d.c. . and while that saga continues another trial wrapped up today one that you may not

hear about almost no mainstream media outlets bother to cover it three men were sentenced to twenty five years in prison for trying to blow up synagogues in new york they're known as the newburgh four and were covered as the face of homegrown terrorism the problem is there weren't any bombs the men were given fake explosives by the f.b.i. and asked to plant them promised cash and cars it begs the question if f.b.i. agent provocateurs had not been inciting it would there have been a crime at all some attorneys and activists have condemned this as entrapment and it was certainly an emotional day for all parties involved a court relatives were seen leaving the courtroom crying even the judge basically said she felt her hands were tied and having to sentence these men despite what she cited as outrageous government misconduct in the case now earlier i spoke with alicia mcwilliams mccollum she is the aunt of david williams one of the newburgh four who was sentenced today here is her reaction to the sentence i thought this is

a miscarriage of justice that was settled down by all government. you do. a very sad day now what i want to know how you feel our reporter that was there today paraphrasing the judge that essentially the judge felt forced to sentence these men and that believe there was a gross government misconduct exercise and she got the defendants had any idea what a stinger missile even was how do you feel about this injustice that you just said now that you have this information. if the judge agrees and i've been fry in this i've been fighting this case for two years this is what we've been saying for two years you can go on and promise community we know that they didn't know what a stink missile was or would see four words we know that the government use x. offenders to lead a factual plot so for the judge to say they're not doing anything that's what i have a problem with i'm like who was the government accountable for they are just thieves you can keep saying wrong with these cases but then if you don't do anything and

you plant flat said it today and you said in march twenty fourth we know it was governor misconduct so do you think anything's going to change do you have any sense that anything could write what you see as this wrong we have to just keep speaking around we have to stand up when speaking out and stand you know that the community need to come out like egypt was so proud when egypt of their stand against a community where we see today no one comes out no council member speak out everybody was simply so salan all these cases why no not even our government even our president why do you think that is the stance again or not if we had a fair fact when you used the word terrorism you good deal creating that fear among our community you're going back to our community for one you're going at the jewish community and then your jews and muslims and jews and news and muslims and religion . so when you see fear in the word terrorism a lot of people will not come out and stand up and fight but as

a family member you're going to stand up and fight for your loved ones you know everything i've been fighting for this whole two years has been done more love from the hot this is definitely is a muscle that keeps all of pomp and keeps all fighting i'm not going to be feared by our government i am an american citizen so i'm going to my government come fear into my heart when i know that this crime is manufactured by our own government and you use only david but you pulled this whole family in a political game called war you own american people there's a justice in that get there we heard the prosecutors today according to our reporter there say that these men were ticking time bombs and needed to be taken off the streets for good are they ticking time bombs and when they have taken all without the involvement of the government says post nine eleven. post nine eleven our government has the time bomb so they take their phrase and the phrase into the self. these cases would not be happening out of a government that's only took

a time bomb that i see because of that waste play and that informant in a community and wasted all that money in resource to create a crime to justify your war and give money you didn't from homeland security some of us know what are you doing now i want to know out of government this point is that it can sound on and i want to ask you just quickly i want to keep this discussion going for one more minute we just saw story where the casey anthony case has really captivated the nation one girl one criminal case near wall to wall coverage on cable news if you work for not getting the same attention why do you think that is and what you think is wrong with those priorities. this government right now is dysfunctional right now i see our government is so groping in lost his morals and integrity of course you don't want to truth come out nobody wants to truth and this is a show you with their priorities are out of bounds is right outside the courthouse who was out there today just as that was being handed down by the who work for we

just watch our government make an informant above the law right here on american soil who climbs over seas or for men's we want to know what your t. shirt says when you have a good t. shirt are you wearing my to so says f b i am a proud believer in jesus and i wanted them to see their. is different from me is so my faith has been keeping me going for the past two years and that he's going to keep me going in the next few years fighting this case to make sure that this case doesn't happen to know other people in our community you can sit in form is in unpublished ways and set people up and you want to get on my thing you want to justify your crimes your war crimes and it's like this is the silence and not say anything this is a miscarriage of justice your fight continues after the sentencing of these men and we're happy to see where it goes but we certainly thank you for coming and and

sharing. your point of view that was a lesion. david williams member and you've heard for a sentence to. now speaking of terror osama bin laden is dead and the u.s. has announced plans to begin pulling out some troops from afghanistan so now the president naturally has revealed a new national strategy for counter terrorism the principal focus remains al qaeda and its affiliates wherever they may be so what changes what does this mean well here with us is patricia de janeiro she is senior fellow at the world policy institute she also spent a lot of time in afghanistan she's here to talk about it thanks so much for being with us now first i just want to ask you know there's a lot of what my last cast called platitudes and this new plan and you know the same targets we've heard over the years so what changes what what's different post osama bin ladin and post obama's announcements about afghanistan well it doesn't seem like much is different at all i think the question we should be asking is why

are we not learning more about what's going on in these countries and why are we not understanding what the basis of the foundations are for some of the problems that we're seeing that are leading to terrorism i mean the bottom line was a lot of them have a lot of grievances and are not i don't think the behavior from those grievances we can condone in any way shape or form but you know we're not asking those tough questions about why are people continuing to behave this way in the world and what can we do on a more relationship or a political diplomatic base level and sort of just resorting to military solutions all of the time when we have heard i mean recently when secretary of state clinton was testifying before the senate foreign relations committee she was really urging the importance of the political involvement and the civilian involvement do you not see this as being adequate or kind of are they just is this

just rhetoric. it is not adequate i don't think it's rhetoric coming from secretary clinton i think she's legitimately feels the you know i mean the disconnect is the congress as well as the american people don't really see a lot of value in our diplomacy and that just is is really irresponsible i think in the way we engage in the world we don't have enough people that understand their cultures other areas are there real lives in other languages and i mean secretary clinton is asking for support in order to help reorganize our diplomatic it and aid or development initiatives throughout the world and what we need is some really hard core support from congress to say look this is hugely valuable to our country it's not all about our military where's it's really about how are in gauging with other people they've cut again under this budget the diplomatic and development

money and so again we're going to be behind all you know although they're trying to get a diplomatic corps more established in afghanistan for one place they're still not trained properly nor are they recruiting the best people for the job what i want to ask speaking of the military presence their military involvement i mean yesterday we just saw you know week after obama's speech saying we're beginning to pull out of afghanistan we're coming from a position of strength when we start this drawdown to paraphrase what he said then we see yesterday an attack on a luxury hotel in kabul kabul is supposed to be secure this attack looks a lot like ones we've seen over the years you've been in afghanistan a lot is the u.s. in a position of strength when it begins this drawdown. you know it's really relative i think the occasional he us of a position of strength that it's particularly at a position of strength i think in helmand and kandahar right now because of the influx of the surge and the containment in those areas but what we're seeing now is

the insurgency moving north and i think that's happening for two reasons one because they're being kicked out of the south and the marines are holding that area and the other part of that is that i think the taliban understands that the u.s. is now really talking seriously about moving and they're going to make a statement and try to find their place back in the political process and again claim what they felt they have lost in that village of the legitimacy of their government they feel they're still the legitimate government and they're looking to reclaim that and i think that's what part of what we saw on this attack on the hotel they weren't invited to the congress and the to the conference for those two days or these few days and they were going to make that clear statement that they were not very happy about being left out so what do you think the united states is really getting wrong here and regards to afghanistan that you've seen from your experience there. well the two issues that we've discussed in this dialogue are

basically related and i mean the first issue is that they were fighting in a war and the second issue is that the international community is trying to build a civilian structure or a nation we're calling nation building and you know the disconnect is that how do you fight a war while you're trying to train civilians to come in and get the afghans on their feet and i mean the double complexity in afghanistan is that it's not just america managing itself which is hard enough to begin with with billions of dollars and a lot of you know thousands of aid workers going in there but it's a managing you know thirty some odd countries plus international and you know organizations that n.g.o.s and then the military transition effort so this complexity is huge and until people can kind of put their egos aside and say you know what we need to roll up our sleeves and get this done and i think we're going to see the conflict between the transition and the conflict between the afghans and

how they want to see or handle the transition and then that's hala been fighting and saying you know we're we're still here and we're not going anywhere a lot more conflict no matter what rhetoric we're coming out of it i want to thank you for your insight they used in on the ground there that was patricia de janeiro senior fellow at the world policy institute now a report has been released chronicling the political strategies of prize and private prison companies right here in the u.s. working to make money through harsh policies and longer sentences now government spending on corrections has soared since one thousand nine hundred seventy by seventy two percent that is up seventy four billion dollars and the private prison industry has a rate ten tremendous profits joining me now for more from our l.a. studios and it has bearing of the young turks to talk about what's behind all of this thanks so much for being with there it's nice it's nice to see you now in this report you the author's note that while the toll. a number of people in prison has increased less than sixteen percent the number number of people held in private

federal and state facilities has increased by one hundred twenty and thirty three percent respectively so what exactly is behind those numbers. well what these private prisons are doing for instance there's the geo group or corrections corporation of america what they're doing is they're lobbying the congress to ask congress to push stricter regulations or stricter laws like for instance the whole immigration law that was passed in arizona that was something that the private prisons in the united states were really pushing for because they knew that if more immigrants are targeted they can arrest those immigrants put them in private prisons and then these private prisons can make huge profits another thing that's happening is they're asking politicians to be very very hard on drugs ok make sure that we don't end this war on drugs even though there was a global commission that showed that this war on drugs has been an absolute failure

why are politicians ignoring that they're ignoring that because they know that private prisons are fattening up their pockets and private prisons are making huge profits and just to give you an idea of those profits both corrections corporation of america and g.e. zero group made a total of two point nine billion dollars last year alone so you know they're spending a considerable amount on lobbying the spend about eight hundred thirty five thousand dollars federal candidates and six million dollars on state candidates and you know what that they definitely got some bang for their buck that is a lot of money that is a lot of lobbying we hear this with a lot of different industries that have that kind of lobbying power to spend here that with wall street we hear that with you know the pharmaceutical industry i'm curious you know this is prisoners these are people's lives these are the policies that affect you know. justice so what do you see as being some of the

consequences of this. oh there are huge consequences and i'll give you a perfect example about a couple months ago a story broke about a pennsylvania judge by the name of mark and i highly encourage everyone to look him up what this judge did is he got rid of all county. all county detention centers for juveniles ok and then what he did is he made sure that only private detention centers for juveniles remained now he people didn't know this but at the time private detention centers were funding mark you know under the table and what he would do is he would send high school students to these juvenile detention centers for profit private juvenile detention centers for tiny petty little offenses i'll give you an example one high school student got caught stealing nutmeg and she spent three months in prison or not in prison three months in the juvenile detention center for that ok so that's a huge consequence we're not playing here these are minors that are spending time

in these for profit centers because these judges are getting paid off so he got caught thankfully he got prosecuted and he is no longer a judge he face the consequences but you've got to keep in mind whenever a prison system is privatized what are they going to want to do the number one thing they're going to want to do is profit so they're going to lobby politicians so they passed laws and rules that will make it very easy for us to get locked up for tiny little offenses we're hearing about stories throughout the country where states want to basically sentence people to prison for life if they get caught with hatch what is that about so i think that there are major consequences for this is about being tough on drugs and i'm just joking with you know it sounds i mean i was just in ireland and back in a fifteen hundreds in a prison they threw kids in their first killing flowers i mean it doesn't sound very different from your not make story which we hear in modern day u.s. my question though for you you know you mention the money the private prisons are

spending these are privatized. benny's obviously there's a lot of leeway for corporate power to spend money like this so what do you see as the solution is the problem that they're privatized is the problem but our regulations of campaign donations and lobbying i mean what you really see is the solution that's especially now that it's getting some more attention and there's more examples the root of every single problem in the united states right now is the fact that corporations are able to fund politicians as much as they want citizens united was a huge problem ok the fact that our supreme court citizens united was disastrous for this country ok there needs to be regulation we need to have campaign finance reform there needs to be a political revolution and you know and i'm not saying a violent political revolution i'm saying that we need to make sure that there are limits to the amount of money that people can donate to campaigns and when it comes to corporations it's never ending big get what they want because they have the money private.