all. for the full story we've gone to. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers.

thousands of demonstrators remain outside the greek parliament has the government gives its final approval to hard hitting spending cuts and tax hikes the ratification secures and you bailout little stave off athens defaulting on its loans it's been met with weeks of protests and writing that have left over three hundred people injured and many others detained. anger at budget cuts has also flared in the u.k. as a one day public sector strike closes twelve thousand schools in england and wales workers walked out over pay and pensions getting job centers and passport office as well as border controls the pension cuts are part of a wider package of austerity measures started by the coalition government in london when it took power in may. and even handed and diplomatic approach russia calls on the un to carefully consider its handling of syria foreign minister sergey lavrov pointed out the un's hard line on damascus while it allowed a civil war to rage in yemen this comes as

a lot of strongly criticized france for reportedly dropping onto libyan rebels saying if the claims are true they represent a clear breach of the u.n. resolution. and i'll be back in thirty minutes with a look at your headlines but up next to the alley on the show takes a look at the career and the legacy of outgoing u.s. secretary of defense robert gates stay with us for that right here on our. hungry for the feast we've got. the biggest issues get the cuban voice face to face with the news makers. welcome to the lone show where you get the real headlines with none of them or see him alive in washington d.c. now it's and i will talk about robert gates the legacy as secretary of defense and

another shadow wars drones are now being sent into somalia and hundreds of thousands are protesting in the u.k. today against all stary cuts in the streets of d.c. are pretty quiet so we're going to pair that both countries and we'll look at another state where the economy is being hit thanks to strict immigration laws that are making hispanic populations flee but first let's take a look what the mainstream media has missed. all finally it looks like the casey anthony trial is winding down but that doesn't mean that the coverage is to the mainstream media is just savoring the last bits of a case that has allowed them to slack on the job and just let all the cameras roll inside of a courtroom the defense is working its way through its final witnesses casey's mother father and brother among those called back to the witness stand today other testimony today included how they buried family pets we are in day thirty two and

the potboiler drama continues to bubble over in court as the personal life of her father george once again comes under scrutiny george anthony's alleged mistress krystal holloway on the stand right now prosecutors cross-examining her the defense has not produced one thing that they stated they were going to give the jury in opening statements and i think they were for we get into this any further can i just make. one quick statement who the hell decided that marc firmat the last analyst that you saw in that clip was a good person to go on t.v. and talk about the trial i don't forget this is the guy who was accused of planting evidence and basically bungling the o.j. simpson police case like he. really screwed up and that's who fox news brought on to talk about casey anthony and you guys must be getting really desperate maybe everybody else is so sick about talking about this that they refuse to come on or maybe maybe you're just getting even more stupid as the last brain cells of cable news teams fade away after devoting their lives to gossip and non news anyway i

don't even think that i can begin to explain to you the joy that i feel at the thought of this trial going away not flashing on every t.v. screen anymore disappearing forever but again it's not like you can replace it with anything more worthwhile i'm sure that there's another pail and story ready and waiting to be aired let me give you some bad news while you're busy reading d.m.z. for your hard hitting news stories every morning there is a war going on oh no wait actually there's not just one but there are six iraq afghanistan libya that the stand yemen and now we have somalia that's right it's being reported the u.s. has already launched drone strikes in somalia see another sign of those creeping shadow wars and you know what that means sorry to break it to you but war ultimately leads to destruction and to death so instead of incessantly covering a case where one little girl died as horrible as that is maybe you could find it in you to just think of all the soldiers that have died or gotten wounded in our wars already how about the civilians maybe you could think of what increasing shadow

wars even if the teams are smaller the supposed risk to soldiers is much smaller what that could mean maybe you could ask why the hell we still have so many troops in iraq and afghanistan if your own warfare has become the pentagon's go to well today three u.s. service members were killed in iraq that means that fourteen troops have now died this month and out war bars that's supposedly over and that makes this month the deadliest for troops in iraq since two thousand. nate and you want to know some totals on the lives lost at this point or report yesterday broke down the sad news that in iraq thirty two thousand one hundred and two troops have been wounded four hundred forty four thousand and four hundred thirty have died in afghanistan twelve thousand and two troops have been wounded and one thousand five hundred thirty five died and that doesn't factor in coalition forces or military contractors and that definitely doesn't even begin to cover the hundreds of thousands of civilians that have suffered and died goes numbers will probably never be know but our mainstream media apparently those deaths those lives they don't matter casey anthony is the

crime of the century but endless occupation and war is not and that's what they missed. the series of attacks on a luxury hotel in kabul shows how relevant the taliban still is ten years after u.s. troops first invaded afghanistan well keeping that in mind president obama has just announced the start of a troop drawdown that's expected to take place through twenty fourteen was secretary of defense robert gates stepping down what is that future in afghanistan going to look like artie's lauren lyster finds out. the aftermath of a taliban attack in kabul. this week a luxury hotel frequented by foreigners earlier this year taliban gunmen wearing suicide vest told a guest house used by u.n. staffers. last year another attack on hotels this is your grammar your.

examples are strewn through the near decade war familiar aftermath we have any pain down here in the south only now americans heard this declaration before news of the blast we're starting this drawdown from a position of strength about u.s. plans to begin pulling troops out of afghanistan next month but there declan. ations on the ground from afghan activists of military might that's looked a different mark democracy never come by a coalition democracy never come by military invasion democracy never by cluster bomb by white phosphorus by muscle car by bumping our wedding parties and didn't washington talk of winding down war in one country does not wind down talk of tackling the global terrorist threat as the focus seems to shift to neighbors should be refocusing resources on pakistan yemen somalia parts of northern africa and other locations i've always believed pakistan is more central to what happens

in afghanistan a change in the guard at the department of defense with robert gates retiring and former cia chief leon panetta getting sworn in signals this change of course to critics i see no difference between between him and robert gates and for afghanistan we now hear a presidential pledge to pull thirty three thousand troops out by september two thousand and twelve fully we're covering the surge i had announced at west point well it certainly sounds like what the american people would like to hear for the first time ever a majority want us troops out about ghana's down as soon as possible fifty six percent while thirty nine percent want troops there until the situation is stabilized you can see the trend is really flip flopped but what is the reality of obama's plans for troop withdrawal well that thirty three thousand he's calling for is a minority of the one hundred thousand american troops that are there that's not including another forty two thousand some nato troops and ninety thousand department of defense contractors meanwhile the u.s.

has reiterated a long term commitment to the country there certainly has been an agreement that following two thousand and fourteen there will be some kind of continuing presence . of presence and financial burdens some see as permanent observers believe u.s. bases are in the forever future and drive along and for at least a mile and a half there will be a wall and there is. some kind of big american construction of ammunition depots and housing. meanwhile violence remains on the rise a un report says it's up fifty one percent in just the last three months. to the wire with a sharp rise in suicide attacks. meaning this for mil your aftermath may be here to stay lauren mr. washington d.c. . well violence isn't only on the rise in afghanistan and fact it looks like america's shadow wars have now increased i want drone strikes have long been

reported in pakistan in yemen but now there's news that a week ago u.s. drone aircraft fired on two leaders of the somali organization al shabaab who according to military officials are now expanding their mission outside of somalia and working more closely with al qaeda was new leadership in place and a new counterterrorism strategy we have to ask if today somalia tomorrow where else joining me to discuss this is jack rice former cia officer and criminal defense attorney jack thanks so much for joining us tonight for starters ok so now we find out that as early or i guess as late as a week ago could have even come earlier there were drone strikes in somalia carried out by the u.s. i know it's not really shocking news but what would you call it. well again shocking is absolutely not the word in fact this was really expected we've seen mr expansion been going on now for some time this is not the first set of strikes we've seen from special ops units using predator drones i think part of the problem

what really makes this difficult is that it's so easy at least it appears to be easy you know to me you can all of a sudden simply fly over country running down death from the sky and there's no real political problem because you pull back out but with the real problem with it is that while it may seem like it's a good idea the short term what you're also doing the tension we are you leaning not just tens. thousands hundreds of thousands even millions of people who absolutely want on your side so we're talking afghanistan pakistan iraq yemen libya somalia and you're right the list will go on and on and on because that easy concept is something that a lot of politicians really like what do you think there are other countries on that list where perhaps we already have special ops teams or maybe the drones are you know hearing towards next that we don't even know about who would come to mind . of course there are now we can think about what we've seen in the past there was

a war between the ethiopia and eritrea we have ox units running in that part of the of the country right now so we've seen these wars already build up there's always a potential going on right now between what was sudan others or there sudan will share one side salva kiir in the south on the other and there's a potential war right there with the chinese involved in a lot of these countries you never know how hard the americans are willing to push when it comes to big so could you end up there just like we have been in that region in sudan in the past of course everything is on the table. not like this administration really think that it needs a legal justification for anything but i'm just curious does this fall under that authorization of the use of military force that they passed after nine eleven. was sadly you're absolutely right that's exactly what it does and part of this is the ability to use these drones to go where it is we believe we might be threatened

we've extends to the point where we're actually going after american citizens in fact what i've talked about this in the past was so much more a lark if this is an american citizen or the americans u.s. government has unilaterally decided if you're going to go we have tried to kill an american citizen without actually having any due process whatsoever they have already tried to do this you know what's with this american citizen now if you contemplate how frightening that potentially is if they're what we do do with american imagine what they're willing to do at a lower standard just about anybody else that's where we are right now and that's the obama administration don't think it's because it's the left that somehow it's better in fact it's a lot of the same but in some cases even more than anything we have ever seen from the bush team and i think a lot of people are starting to realize that as more information comes out about the obama administration's actions as more time goes by as well now i'm just curious because yesterday the white house unveiled their new counterterrorism strategy and john brennan actually said that for the first time u.s.

officials are now able to envision the demise of al qaeda do you think that's really possible are they getting cocky there. or is there getting cocky they have no idea we know it's the worst or here is what we're seeing is this expansion in various ways it's easy to start even if we find that mr gates himself again my former boss when i was at cia who has come out saying if any department defense secretary ever said we're going to go back in danger go back into the middle east he needs to have his head examined i believe that's the quote of the problems it's easy to get in it's. very very very difficult to get out and sometimes it's very hard to surmise just how will you are doing yes we are killing people here and there but you get out of the problem that we have is we never know if we're actually creating more enemies than we're actually destroying and we just don't know that and i guess maybe the only time will find out is when we pull out and watch things all part of our week and i mean in a very bad sense not

a good sense well yeah so now they're telling us that the apparently we're doing a really good job of making the vision the demise of al qaeda that now we're going to see more of these targeted operations all over the world if all of that is the case of this is the new counterterrorism strategy then why do we still have so many troops that need to stay in afghanistan do you think the a thousand they can be left over when the certainly. you know that's that's maybe the hundred thousand or maybe in this case we should say about a three to four billion or trillion dollar question because that's exactly about somebody that we've been talking about you know over this i think has to do with money or this has to do with interest groups would actually want this to go look i'm not a conspiracy that never has been but what i'm saying is there are a lot of people who are interested in operations continuing to run it's not just the numbers of u.s. troops that are in afghanistan is the number of contractors and sometimes the old line follow the money i think is is apropos in this case take a look at iraq take a look at afghanistan and realize just how much has been spent were dropping five

times their g.d.p. just in the country itself does that make any sense know what somebody is doing very well financially here it's not all of the answer but it is certainly a portion of it well if we do follow the money let's talk about your former boss for a second robert gates who resigned as defense secretary today a lot of people have been talking about his legacy and on one hand he came out of first trying to act like the reformer the man who was going to bring budget cuts and then suddenly we just saw this quick flip flop in him the last month or two as he's been making his farewell rounds and sudden. he wants troops to stay in iraq he thinks that drawing down troops in afghanistan is a bad idea he thinks that cutting too much military spending is a bad idea so what do you think happened and did he lose a battle to this military industrial complex of this massive money machine. oh i think partially that's true i mean part of the problem is this inconsistency that we have seen again and again i mean you watch it yourself and everybody can when

you watch everybody talking about the virtues of the arab spring and all what's going on in libya right now and what happened in egypt and all of these places and and how important that is while at the same time we turn around and want to ignore our willingness to support the likes of mubarak in the first place our willingness to support the likes of the saudis are willing to stoop to turn a blind eye to what was going to pakistan and elsewhere and so when we say certain things if our actions actually reflected it then that would be one thing but the problem is what we're seeing from bob gates is exactly what we've typically seen dare i say from the americans you say great things we hold up these brave vergers and talk about how incredibly important it is and then we turn around and do just the opposite so i guess i have to say i'm not particularly shocked by that or do you think that robert gates was a special case or can nobody. i guess i don't know there would have been do i want to believe that somebody can do the right thing but i guess we

all have to i mean in the end you have to at least have some optimism that somebody will look at this and nobody's been talking about it with high levels of ockham's i'm simply saying somebody can look at this and say pragmatically there are certain things we should be doing and certain things that we shouldn't be doing simply because they are or are not effective that's what i'm talking about here by even talking about some of the things we should do or be tearing perspective of talking about things that you and things that you were. happy that there's at least a little shred of optimism left there because i think it's missing from a lot of the you know they are going to be a little bit of that jack thank you so much for joining us tonight. thank you. well still to come the u.k. sees massive protests over planned budget and pension cuts compare the situation in the u.k. to that here in the us. will

. bring you the latest in science and technology from the realms. we've got the future covered. from welcome to the wanted this week called. on the day what you are trying to negotiate with. a deal under fire and fighting for his life. his son speaks to see. all the protests over major austerity cuts spread to other parts of europe today the u.k. teachers and public sector workers and students left their classrooms and offices and headed for picket lines and unions across britain estimate the up to seven hundred fifty thousand people took part in a one day strike to protest those planned pension cuts artie's laura abbott has more from london. down. with industrial action and also my

discontent starts here as the u.k. braces for a wave of strikes not seen for decades this time it's three quarters of a million public sector workers walking out on happy but the prime drift of their pensions which they say will see them paying a lot more and getting a lot less we don't think the ship it lights the boats what functions we think in deserves to have security what's on them it's people talk about withdrawing from the pension scheme because they can't afford to pay the mortgage at the same time as playing for the country and people are really angry the time when bankers are making record bonuses you have a guy. we're being asked to take a punch in our patients to pay more for our pensions the reality is we've got to fire who else we're just using these people do a huge variety of key work from teachers and lecturers to air traffic controllers and coast guards unisons the u.k.'s biggest public sector trade union deputy chief bob avidly says his one point three million members already

a prolonged industrial action where almost a war footing we've got thirty million pain set aside and we've got a strategy work but i must strangers that's not what we want to do we want to talk to the government and negotiate a sensible package nor the ridiculous package they're proposing at the moment that package involves raising the retirement age from sixty to sixty six raising pension contributions by workers and having payouts based on average career earnings rather than final salary the unions admit public support is fundamental to having a successful strike action the government is very unlikely to change its mind about reforms if the public at large doesn't back the unions but that's by no means assured public sector workers do already get very generous pensions and the cost of those pensions is very much under the carpet and the burden falls on to the next

generation the great is absolutely essential that public sector pensions are reformed and even after they are reformed public sector workers will get far better pensions and less private sector workers the unions want to apply enough pressure to force the government to change its mind and it's no stranger to you turns it was hell bent on reforming the health service too until it decided to take longer to think about it causing friction in the coalition the government is doing this to reduce the current fifty billion dollar pension bill but it may be cutting off its nose to spite its face at the white here. according to the u.k. pension fund to pay for the mean public that the well paid no don't think that pensions what while they still ship you think that that was the right withdrawal would allow that that would mean you'd pay p.l.o. the very short of investment just what it means that more than ever begins we'll be

addressing that but if the government lists make your average. sticking with this story it's time to make a few comparisons so there's are the images of what's going on in the u.k. today and the other age is what's going on in washington now there obviously differences in the situation we haven't seen public sector workers affected here on the federal level that battles been taking place in the states but then again our federal government has been really done anything yet when it comes to drastic austerity measures so how do we compare and does austerity even work let's break it down with our guest tonight harrison founder of the blog credit write downs are edward thank you so much for joining us tonight l. ike i said these are different situations but i think that we can find some similarities and some points to work off of and let's just start with total debt both countries are in debt but i think the u.s. is in much worse shape u.k. total debt one point four trillion dollars us oh we're just at fourteen point four

trillion dollars so when you break that down that means that debt per person is about twenty three thousand seven hundred ninety one for a british person and we're almost fifty thousand dollars per person in the u.s. so obviously our debt problem is much worse than britain's debt problem why are they the ones that are acting like this is an emergency and they have to do something about it right away and our politicians are just becoming on capitol hill well i'm not sure what the stats in terms of how they break it down but in general if you were to take the aggregate debt that's not held by the government you know in the u.s. for instance. a lot of it's actually held by so security and so therefore you know that number would drop significantly i think they're very comparable in terms of the numbers but really it goes to the philosophy of the government here this conservative government the u.k. versus a more progressive government in the us and the conservative government believes that you really need to address the deficit immediately first as i think that the

obama administration the u.s. is much more concerned about the negative effects of that you know coming off of the housing bubble and all of the jobs that could be lost as a result of that sort of cut do you think they're really concerned because it feels like the congress is just at a standstill you know in the obama administration likes to say that that's what they're worried about is job creation but we haven't really seen any action in that sense and finally you know he got a little chiding yesterday to congress and say can you guys not act like children have my children can do their homework why can't you but i just don't really know if i even see the effort they're talking about you know i don't see the effort in terms of the jobs as well when you look at the stimulus package if you if you really want to think about stimulus which is really what they're talking about first it has to be jobs ok there hasn't been the focus on jobs. so at the end of the day you know the one thing to add stimulus to have cash for clunkers you

know to help bail out the financial sector because you don't want a complete collapse but you know we still have nine point one percent unemployment in the united states so you're right the obama administration hasn't addressed the jobs problem that front so i think that's why people are resistant to the concept of stimulus and they see that they need to instead. i think you know if it comes to republicans obviously what they think they need to focus on is austerity but if we use britain as an example they really have been putting their budget to the chopping block for i guess. it's a the last two years they've taken on defense now they're taking on these public sector pensions are they really a good example though has austerity actually worked in the u.k. . here's here's the. board if you're going to consolidate its expansion basically what they're doing is

a demand out of the economy and the hope is that over the longer term it's going to have. expansionary effect but the reality is it's not expected that you know you're going to see a potential double d. as a result of these kinds of things and you know we see the sort of right in front of us so do you think that us politicians are being honest with americans when they talk about the need to cut the need for austerity do americans realize that if we actually do that there's going to be even worse situation in the short term if not even continued in the long term as well or then again can we not just keep spending our way forever where we can we have to focus on jobs if for instance we were at full employment in the united states but say we had five percent unemployment the united states the budget deficit would be in the order of three percent and the economy would be growing and then you could deal with a lot of the issues there i would even say that three percent is

a manageable number i mean that's where we were when right before we had the huge crisis so ultimately it's all about jobs you've got to get the jobs for move to full employment and then you can deal with the longer term issues which are much further out than we have now obviously we see these pictures here of every marching in line and we have not seen that here in the us we've seen it on the state level we've seen a test for us continental heigho in new jersey and new york where it's states it's governors that have been taking on the public sector unions but if we were to try to compare this to the u.s. . yes if they actually started taking the chopping block to federal pensions to social security to programs like medicare do you think we'd ever see the same amount of anger on the streets oh i think we definitely would you know it soon as you start cutting social security and things like that people would just start rioting in the streets because you know they feel like we've been paying into the system we don't care about how much we pay.