the moviegoer the joint chiefs owns a movie that's a great way to go to the grand imperial to the socialist coromandel you can a little socialist good to see don't need to go. read this in the kernel was her turn to retreat. to ten feet. missing our congress member well we may have found them eighty one lawmakers days passed their bags for an all expense paid trip to israel the white house and the mainstream press made this a part of their itinerary. start a war on terror kill osama bin ladin check led billions of dollars from the us economy check so why is the us still in afghanistan.

good evening it's thursday august eleventh four pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy craft and of and watching our t.v. . well it's been an august like no other i summon a summer like no other fact that the american economy may be in crisis our suburbs are falling into poverty schools are struggling cities are on the edge of bankruptcy and jobs are few and far between but congress congress is out on its annual summer break now i do want to give our elected leaders some credit they have of course been working very very hard on numerous critical issues for example working hard to avert the first ever downgrade of our prized aaa credit rating we're making sure that the fourteen point one million americans who are currently out of work that some sort of hope for the future now if you get all of your information from cable news like i do that you'll know the crisis has in fact been

averted we can finally move on to the stories that actually genuinely matter take a look. we're being told that the three people in custody are in fact the three siblings of the daugherty gang the f.b.i. is now part of the investigation looking for robyn gardner she's a thirty five year old woman who was on vacation with a man she had met online before she vanished who are about to see shallows new face for the very first time that's right with nothing else going on in the world i think it's absolutely fair to say that congress deserves a break i mean why exhaust yourself dealing with the american people i mean just the men and women who elected them into office in the first place and you can spend an entire week relapsing right here. twenty four to eight feet. deep. inside. their bats right now according to news reports eighty one at u.s.

lawmakers and their spouses mind you have chosen to spend a week relaxing and glorious beautiful israel and i know from firsthand it's a beautiful beautiful place now these are troops that are being paid for by a foundation set up by a pack a pro israel lobby and of course israel does happen to be the single largest recipient of foreign aid in u.s. aid so there can't possibly be any sort of conflict of interest there right and if you understand what you may be thinking you might be saying eighty one members of the law that's twenty percent of the u.s. congress and it may seem like a lot but you know at the end of the day that's how many people it's going to take to repair ties broken ties between these two countries between the u.s. and israel. these good friends and i'm going to still be friends i can tell you that i can hardly remember i was in uniform for the kids i can hardly remember get to see you both full time we can support him because he's a corporation and similar strategic understand we go for events around us if you

don't work we have right now. you are the man so the reason that eighty one lawmakers have to take the strip so they can come back and tell the other three hundred fifty four members of congress to stop hating on israel after all no one wants a repeat of the disastrous reception that israeli prime minister got last time you visit our capitol hill take a look. now like i said it's an august like no other well joining me now for more on this is activist adam shapiro adam thank you so much for joining us sarcasm aside i know that you work on palestinian rights issues but before we get to the political differences i want to ask you as an american citizen do you think this is an appropriate time for this many of the lawmakers to be going to a foreign country which we have good diplomatic relations it's an excellent

question you see and it's really shocking that this is happening at this time i mean we look around the world we see uprisings in countries east africa and now you can in europe in london in trees in europe where people are rising up in the streets questioning their lawmakers questioning it politicians about the policies here about him specifically related to economic issues and here we have you know now what you're going crazy normally poverty as you mentioned is expanding into the suburbs. and falling apart and i will lawmakers until you can get in the one country in the world hold with you new reason for american policymakers to be going to u.s. relations is. the smithsonian's visiting wholeness are probably at an all time high albeit. issues in the region it also means you're not home no. real

reason please permission to be going is the only question is why don't the other eighty percent or so on the street. that is an excellent question but of course a pac has has has a long history of supporting and donating finances to two u.s. lawmakers but what about this political situation the current climate that we're in do you think accounts for why this unprecedented size trip now i mean they've been going over to israel for years but this is a twenty percent of the u.s. congress i mean that's a huge huge chunk i think it actually only underscores what has been going on for two years now which is really only going to show some civil society around the world including in the ninety's where people's movements are starting to recognize and understand that the status quo. in the general in the middle east is untenable and in particular u.s. support financial support and little support for israel is untenable moving forward

we've seen over the last few months in the arab countries in the region democratic uprising by people demanding human rights demanding respect and ending their own citizenship back and part of their demands also been about the policies in the region specifically related to any. in the west civil society we have underway which are. great and i think. israel feels. that it is only. its. people and we are supposed to mean fight is finally making a difference now adam and your connections will shake your hearts i hope we don't lose you but let's talk about some of the numbers and the economy really is story number one right now what is the cost of it and your estimates for the u.s. taxpayers in terms of america's support for israel what are the numbers that we're looking at right now we're looking at over three billion dollars the military and

the news and additional three billion dollars a year in nonmilitary aid and this is to a country that has a credit rating not much. and a country that is going to invest the country israel has a very difficult. very discreet only weapon it doesn't need united. it all it does is provide is what we need. to continue to harass its neighbors and in fact it is not in our making any often the getting on a made me show you know if i let knoller's do let me know as all others do go to palestine to help for example rebuilding infrastructure and other humanitarian projects do you ever get a sense that maybe the money is sort of going to competing causes. i wouldn't say it's going to cause the amount that the united states gives to indians is well under it's only a few hundred million dollars which is a lot these days but the point is that often as you mentioned money goes to

reconstruction of things that israel destroys so united states is. it's a million dollars to build a road or a school or a hospital or clinic or something like that american made weaponry goes and destroys it and then the united states or europe that's that will pay do rebuild it again so it's an onion cycle on the palestinian side and on these really side is an unending cycle of continue to give without any questions about where the money is why it's being used and what policy this is achieving but you know these lawmakers do have to answer to their constituents and we are entering an election year what do you think they'll be able to say to their constituents and terms of what the american people are getting back to their taxpayer dollars. well i'm afraid i'm sorry that it seems to me that. in public with the rise of the tea party with the rise of. the rise of right wing as in your dishonest well increasingly taking

a line that doesn't ask such questions is only interested in sort of faux news type headlines and they will be asking this question only be asking about how are you going to welcome them all how are you going to stop them from getting health care to everybody who's a question i don't need to ask. questions or need to ask you the thing is that i can understand why those kinds of questions make sense on a regular here but it really does seem to me like we're facing an unprecedented time here when london is burning the world markets are a complete disaster i don't really feel like we've seen this kind of period under wraps in recent memory and so it's just a curiosity to me that the global political events wouldn't dictate some sort of shift of focus for shift or policy when it comes to us i was thinking that as your intro pointed out a disservice. you need your media. to switch over to be

considered before getting the air of mystery in the real world to you know maybe than they did. in the case of casey anthony. saga easy to find a story that seems to be dominating american attention when the right world. economically environmentally and americans just seem to be sitting eating candy in the family eating candy and watching as as you rightly point out a somewhat bland news coverage doesn't seem to mention a single word about this foreign foreign funded trip to a foreign country at a time where the american people could probably use some help from their own lawmakers right here adam shapiro thank you so much. all right well now in this very day back in two thousand and three nato forces took command of peacekeeping in afghanistan it was the organization first out of area deployment as of today at least one thousand six hundred and eighteen american soldiers have perished in that war that is according to new numbers from the associated press

today so ten years into a war that has cost the taxpayers at least two billion dollars a week not to mention the other conflicts the united states is still in broiled and we have libya iraq yemen somalia the list goes on and i think now that we're dealing with this unprecedented financial economic crisis all across the globe it is time to take a look at where these concepts of left us and the underlying motives beyond continuing the process joining us now for more on this issue is asia times correspondent typical for that day it is great to have you back i've been a while since we've have you on the program. let's start off by by taking a little pulse jeff on how the efforts in afghanistan have been going we just saw of course the shooting down of the chinook helicopter pretty devastating but that's in some ways an anomaly what would you say the overall measure of success has been when it comes to afghanistan. ok let's start with the obama administration's surge

it basically didn't work so we have a surge set is going to last roughly a year and a half just like the surge in iraq it was sold to obama basically by pentagon generals and general david petraeus. as a as the star general in selling. even work just like it didn't work in iraq because in iraq the conditions are completely different in iraq the search was not to me reason that the violence decrease there were a can compare nation of of reasons including the mahdi army decided not to stop the effect initiated had the ready more or less conquered by that and of course the sit cases full of money that was transferred from the americans to sunni leaders tribal leaders plus the fact that al qaeda in iraq they revealed themselves and had a little bit of power called politically great. in afghanistan is different because in afghanistan it's a nationalist resistance movement it's not only the taliban in afghanistan it's

warlords it's losing mathworks it's triable well the warlords as well there are more or less united to expel the foreign invader which is this story of afghanistan as a collection of warring tribes that when they're not fighting themselves they're fighting a foreign invader but the point is either sudden finding out billions of dollars on foreign aid or humanitarian projects and that's been working out no no because that most of the money doesn't go to you many terror projects because. at before the big get to the community supposed to help they are blown dirt by ministers and functionaries in kabul serve these ministers are more or less ruled by gangs in kabul in fact so the little bit of money that trickles down to broach acts like you know building schools or some highways it's not enough

and when you when you. make a comparison between the american help for these projects and actually chinese or indian involvement direct involvement with some communities it's an enormous difference for instance india built a real indian initiative in western afghanistan has nothing to do with american or international aid the chinese want to make their own pro-tax independently for this international aid structure which they know that once it reaches campbell you lose track of the funds so that the population in different provinces in afghanistan could be pushed to especially pashtuns most of it that when a person's good has aristotle jackson and morris in the specs they never see. the actual fruits of the international involvement so it's no wonder that in the end the lesser evil the fact is that because they promise law and order just like when

they were in power from ninety six to two thousand and one educated europe and i don't want to run out of time here at the same time yes and it has of course been the longest war that the united states has been involved in but as we continue our efforts in afghanistan there are other conflicts other tribal areas that are propping up obviously we've talked i've interviewed you about libya at length somalia is another when there is a great story they can i just this week on top of jeremy scahill reporting that show that this the i.a.e.a. is now currently playing paying contractors mercenary forces essential to do their work on the ground there and we have this issue of syria we're now hearing the obama administration is on the verge of saying that assad must go finally whatever that means if you were the president of the united states if you were the president and states you were dealing with economic crisis you had all of these conflicts in front of you how would you allocate your resources what's the point of calling for

assad to go if you can't afford to pay for that i'm going on for three still and often effect this is the question that from china should be posing to president obama directly and in fact the chinese are posing the question in the rectory all the time like last week there was a harsh condemnation of the pepsi feeling of bands look at it took place in washington and almost destroyed the american economy because of of all of that bickering in washington which is typical but the chinese and indians expect they want a solution to afghanistan that involves all the players in this meet the other americans themselves the russians the africans of pakistanis sitting down and discuss america's still. doesn't buy it in so mile it's even worse because in some idea because like we see american anchors we think about the famine in somalia nobody puts this into context defending was caused among many other reasons by the fact

that the united states via its european interfere with so neither has been interfered sister thousand and six and this government that is the motivation is the puppets it's your piano lied in american aligned government so i'll shut up and yet it's not this. people are structured there is going to let that united states out of mogadishu or from southern somalia this is completely ridiculous bunch of five hundred fighters at most and of course the when they see out foreign intervention the a very leery of international aid mechanisms they're trying to go to some i don't know to alleviate defend it because they don't trust these people just like they don't trust any sort of intervention and they will because the americans have been intervening for over twenty years in fact and some of those weeping anchors that you've mentioned are anderson cooper of c.n.n. of course who was wearing a bulletproof vest as a poor innocent starving children were in the shopping heinonen partially we're out

of time but as far as thank you so much free time is all right thank you thank you kyra. well the guess is that osama bin laden does not seem to have brought us any closer to ending the global war on terror but it does seem to have given hollywood plenty of fodder for yet another rah rah a military hollywood film and the same team that's behind the hurt locker movies scheduled to release another flick on the radio than on a raid of the bin laden raid the famous seal team six bin laden raid right before the presidential election and surprise surprise republican congressman is up in arms now the head of the house homeland security committee peter king is here eous because he heard somewhere that the white house may be shipping zero x. copies of all of its national security secrets to hollywood or something like that now according to king of propaganda that is worthy of an official congressional investigation and of course as expected the conflict is playing out all over the mainstream press now pardon the pun but something definitely seems to be home with this picture seemingly countless war seemingly countless casualties and this is the

issue that's pressing breathlessly reported by the press there's a bigger issue at hand here that has very little to do with politics democrats and republicans and everything to do with the failure of the press and that is according to radio host david sirota he's the author of bachelor future how the one nine hundred eighty s. explain the world we live in now and he spoke to me earlier today take a look. what peter king's criticism really brings up is and granted he doesn't come at this from a principled position as you said he comes at a partisan position but what this brings up is the larger collusion between hollywood and the pentagon that gets almost no coverage almost no scrutiny and so what we have here is perhaps inadvertently because of a serendipitous alignment of partisan interests we have perhaps the opportunity to look more deeply at that who's in between the pentagon and hollywood and how that collusion really works and it's worked this way for decades over the one on steroids in the one nine hundred eighty s. is that the pentagon and the larger u.s.

national security apparatus grants and denies access to military hardware military both military planes military information he grants and denies that access to that that information based on whether a filmmaker is prepared to make a pro-war pro pentagon a pro-government movie war and if you were or highly critical piece of filmmaking so literally right literally the pentagon it's very open about the pentagon will light it screenwriters scripts that what they're about the military if those screenwriters and the studios want to have access to be able to let's say photograph planes were tanks or aircraft carriers the best example of this of course is the movie top gun the top gun was granted a huge amount of access to the military planes at taxpayer subsidized rates because the filmmakers of the movie submitted their scripts to pentagon editors for the pentagon to write it to make sure it was perfectly mimicking what the pentagon one

of the movie to say that it is a tax but ok i'm just sorry to interrupt you but i have to play devil's advocate here i mean that you know the pentagon is an institution that is tasked with protecting the united states it is in its best interest to do whatever is necessary in order to do that and that includes getting people to be interested in signing up right because remember we have an all volunteer military force so. what's wrong with that i mean it's in the pentagon's interest to to show its wars to show itself in a positive light why should the military be expected to grant access to some anti military filmmaker well i have the problem with the pentagon promoting its message affirmatively that is a pentagon advertisement page for pentagon press releases that's promoting it so affirmatively and the pentagon is going to do that it has to do that and i have no problem that what i have a problem with is the cheerio and hardware that is inherently public property the

pentagon does not own that the pentagon does not exclusively on that plane we as taxpayers all own that the pentagon thereby denying or selectively denying access to that based on what a journalist or a filmmaker wants to do with that information based on the content based on the ideology based on the politics of the journalist wants to cover the pentagon that is a use of government power that frankly tramples the first amendment that says that this public property can only be seen or only be used by people who want to mimic the pentagon's precise line that's a different story than the pentagon simply promoting itself and then you know as you say of course the pentagon isn't expected to necessarily put itself in any sort of negative light but that's why we have to press the press a supposed to uncover all of this to show wars as they really are you know even if the young kids are watching hollywood films and the wars and some non-dangerous exciting fun adventure they can turn on the evening news and see that war is

actually a bloody dangerous write it well that's that's absolutely true except we live in a world where young people are getting their views of politics and the world around them both from the entertainment world and from the news i mean they sort of crisscross and we don't know that that's where kids and that's where the country really gets its views about military. in the war and here's how this crucial between hollywood and the pentagon has really changed the marketplace of the way we get information because the pentagon's granting of access to filmmakers comes with it an implicit tax subsidy i think mine was the number was it cost top dollar or two billion dollars to use all of those scenes of plane that's an inherent taxpayer subsidy wasn't ultimately happened is that hollywood studios and set have said screenwriters quite publicly if your screenplay cannot get the acceptance of the pentagon then we financially are not in a place to be able to make your movie so this is why for every one if you war or

pentagon critical movie that is ultimately made you have dozens of blockbusters that glorify we're don't ask questions about american military because this subsidy has changed the very financial dynamics of the entertainment marketplace there's a there's an ad i want to play for you that i know you've talked about before that i think illustrates your point probably a little bit better than a as talking about it well let's see if we have that clip. here it is ordinary people who discover they can do extraordinary things. with unique talents and strains they stand together as an elite club it's more than you know it's a chance to be part of something bigger the. tradeoff at least the consolation toward the sea exclusive content for its first class. for their strong and then there's army strong now i can't watching this how do you think that

affects young american child who sees that who might love the x.-men. first of all it's obviously designed to sell kids on the military sell military experience is something that's not all that dangerous that's very exciting to sell the idea of being a soldier as safe as being a superhero so there's a there's a propaganda i think probably in that it's not honest now you can expect the pentagon to air ads actively promoting itself say that war is hell for instance wars but can we expect journalists to perhaps highlight this kind of you know i was going quite a bit of research before we get this interview and one thing that struck me is that there really aren't a lot of stories about this new york times ran something over the summer when this came out but why do you think there isn't a lot of coverage about this collusion as you call it in the press because it serves the party actual interests of two of the most powerful financial actors in the american economy obviously the pentagon and in the larger entertainment

industry the pentagon using and effectively subsidizing the entertainment industry creates a vested interest for the entertainment industry which of course in many cases owns news organizations he creates a vested interest for those news organizations not to call this into question now one very focused question on the press i want to ask about as we all remember of course the bush administration banning any journalist from taking photographs. the flag draped coffins president obama was at the ceremony just yesterday of not celebrating but commemorating i guess the death of the returns of their remains a thirty or so soldiers who were killed in a recent afghanistan air raid this photo and i think we have that act started quite a bit of controversy now david i know you can't see it from where you are but it's just black outlines of the president saluting you don't see any or means nothing at all completely sensitized photo this photo has been a cause for complete controversy yet the underlying reasons but beyond the war the

underlying issues surrounding the war the actual war coverage has not been a source of controversy what is wrong with the media picture here but the issue is that this is a controversy and it's absurd that it's a controversy but it's a controversy in a country that wants to hide everything about you know world consequences that we're showing you pictures of the silhouette of the president saluting the idea that that's controversial he's only a reflection on a larger culture that hasn't been willing to look at the real consequence of war it's even more controversial still flag draped coffins even though we don't know exactly identity it was in those pockets and it's even more controversial just to show what actually happens on the battlefield there's a big controversy of a couple years ago when the associated press published one single photo of a soldier who had been injured on the battlefield this was cause for outrage when in fact it should because we're not for celebration certainly it was a horrifying ordeal but cause for us to rethink what we are actually doing in the

source and that's what was attempted to be hidden in all of this is that we don't want to look at the blood and guts consequences of war well david thank you so much for your time and i hear your child presumably crying in the background there i hope that work like yours and others who have been exposing this issue will perhaps a guarantee that in the future there will be a little bit more of a separation between our armed forces and how we entertain ourselves i really appreciate you taking the time to speak with us. so make sure to stay tuned in to our t.v. in the next hour we're going to bring you an agent depth report showing just how some of these covert recruitment tactics actually playing out in america to meanwhile you can find more details on the stories that we brought you today as well as a lot more by going to our web site r.t. dot com fresh or essay as always you can watch these stories and many of the other ones we've done in the past on our you tube web page you tube dot com slash r t america and as always if you want to reach out and comment on.