hey erin. a lot of show for real headlines with none of the mercy or can we live in washington d.c. now tonight we'll speak to chris hedges about libya the imperial presidency as he calls it and are already bought supposedly bipartisan super committee was about to unleash drastic cuts on the american people but an a.p. investigation has revealed that the cia has been blurring the lines on their ban on domestic spying by working with the n.y.p.d. and conspiring well hashed out when i with us and the state of florida passed legislation to drug test welfare recipients all in order to make it fair to the taxpayer but it turns out it's already costing the taxpayer even more money than

it's saving or have all of that free to night including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so their body knows by now yesterday the east coast experienced an earthquake there was no serious damage nobody was injured really above all this just kind of unexpected d.c. doesn't usually get earthquakes but that was yesterday so today did the mainstream media move on to other more pressing stories well take a look for yourself. i used to getting all shook up in california but not on the east coast so as you might imagine people on the west coast are still blocking people in the northeast you know because california washingtonians they might be use of this kind of thing but it really scared a lot of people there's also another reason why nerves are a little frayed here as we near the ten year point i says nine eleven the first

thought and many minds was a terror attack. ok but there was no terror attack like i said no injuries no damage and even people like myself californians. we were mocking the east coasters for being babies about the earthquake were over by now let's move on believe it or not there are other things that are going on in this world and so today for the second day the mainstream media continued to ignore one of the worst examples of corruption by the obama administration and i mentioned it to you yesterday and the obama administration has reportedly been pressuring new york attorney general eric schneiderman because he was opposed to that massive settlement that they've been trying to get through to get this whole investigation of the banks done and over with this of course despite the fact that after helping to create a housing bubble the banks then just hired a bunch of robo siders who are millions of americans lives but it was also ray of hope that at least there was somebody out there like that who had the guts to stand up to the obama administration he was standing his ground and he realized that this

would let the banks get away without justice being due. that's what we thought yesterday and then came this piece of news has been kicked off of the executive committee it was made up of thirteen attorneys general who were involved in the direct negotiations with the banks but you guys hear that the one man who was opposed to this bogus deal has now just been booted from the committee that's what you get for having a mind of your own these days for daring to stand up to corruption the powers that be just kick you off and remove you from the entire process that is a big deal i have got something of the mainstream media is content to miss. now as the search for moammar gadhafi continues as well as the fighting between rebel and broke off the forces in tripoli we got another reminder today about how quickly things to change and a massive jump of fifty five thousand more state department cables by wiki leaks we saw the first hand written account of senators john mccain and lindsey graham's

visit to libya back in two thousand and nine that was when coffee was suddenly in the good graces of the u.s. again and even discussions of weapons sales that taken place so here's an excerpt of that account says libya has acted as a critical ally in u.s. counterterrorism efforts and libya is considered one of our primary partners in combating the flow of our foreign fighters our strategic partnership in this field has been highly productive and beneficial to both nations we have begun some successful training programs to assist libya and improving its security capabilities under the rubric of anti-terrorism assistance and border security and libya has stated its number one priority in return for relinquishing weapons of mass destruction is a secure security guaranteed by the us against foreign aggression and libya has expressed an interest in purchasing lethal weapons from u.s. firms so here we are two years later and but exactly happened to the whole guarantee against foreign aggression or earlier i caught up with chris hedges

senior fellow at the nation institute and author of his latest book. the world as it is on the nature of human progress and i first asked that seeing as how libya is still in the get off he still has yet to be about the weapons have yet to be claimed i asked him if we think that notable that the u.s. is going to have a long term presence there for some time and from. what we already have a significant presence. you know these are a block operations that are called but we know that there are a significant cia a personnel and trainers who have been assisting in directing training equipping the libyan rebel movement so we're already there and having covered libya i was in the middle east bureau chief for the new york times for seven years in and out of libya frequently including interviews with gadhafi we have unleashed tribal tensions which could create has the potential to create

a very chaotic and potentially violent situation even beyond gadhafi is removed. that clearly every country is different but would you draw any parallels with iraq here. well i think libya is perhaps a little messier than iraq iraq tends to be divided along sectarian lines kurdish and sunni libya is divided along tribal lines and these tribes especially between the east in the west have a long and going isms and what i really worry about is a kind of vendetta against the tribal alliances around gadhafi that it's held power for forty two years so i don't think the mess in libya is over. i think that most people would agree there now let's go back to that wiki leaks cable the account from the state department cable that i just read to i mean we look back on it and

our politicians at one point in two thousand and nine john mccain was tough. about how libya was our partner in fighting terrorism obviously there were talks of selling weapons to libya and now you have that same senator john mccain we have senator lindsey graham basically chiding president obama for not being forceful enough now using our enough power there you know usually or obviously we always see this somehow being brought back to domestic politics is that just become too again we recognize too well. well it's the same kind of dance that we carried out with saddam hussein we were instrumental in helping to organize his ground and air defenses during the war with iran. we provided him all sorts of support and. gave very nebulous messages to him after he invaded kuwait so i think for those of us who come out of the middle east

this isn't much of a surprise. the. inability on the a part of the american foreign policy establishment to draw very clear lines and often to work was some very you know dubious personalities including of course gadhafi and saddam hussein if they deem it a national security interest and this is something that's been a long history there's been a long history of that in the middle east now chris one of the things that has really been bothering me with this entire thing is of course that now that some people want to look at this as a win or lose because they think that coffee is soon going to be out everyone's forgotten already the way in which the president got us involved in this conflict in libya which was the fact that it was illegal he didn't ask congress and they're letting it slide but you think that sets a really dangerous precedent the future who knows who's going to be president next and how they're going to try to use that exact same president. well i think that is a legitimate argument the rightness and wrongness of intervention in libya aside

and. i was one of those who when you have that armored column outside of benghazi felt that it had to be stopped some way i don't support intervention in a six month civil war but it was clear that if those columns had gone into benghazi a city of one million people knowing gadhafi is history the bloodletting would be very similar of course to what we're seeing in syria probably worse but stopping an imminent massacre and engaging in a civil war especially on the side of rebel forces that we know nothing about and then as you point out doing it without proper authorization is you know a chipping away of the kind of constitutional restraints. and and further strengthening the hand of the imperial presidency did you expect this from iraq obama you know i think there are a lot of people out there that of course were so swept up in the ideas of hope and change and they're the ones that are usually pointing out saying well he didn't get

anything done at least nothing what he promised aside from of course passing health care you could say but it seems to me like when this president wants to be he is very strong willed and has you know really rules with a slight of hand if you want to talk about not holding accountable the bush administration or the wall street bankers or getting us involved with libya without any kind of congressional authorization seems to me like he's been very forceful in some ways. i wouldn't say forceful i'd say he's been a tool of the corporate forces and the military industrial complex in the same way that george w. bush was if you look closely at the obamacare the health care bill that was passed it is really at its core the equivalent of the bank bailout bill for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries four hundred billion dollars in subsidies the two thousand pages of the bill were written by corporate lobbyists and i think if you look as i did closely barack obama's two year voting right. in

the senate it was one corporate giveaway after another so i didn't support him i supported nader i for that reason i didn't expect the rhetoric was brilliant the campaign was brilliant which is why after the election after obama won advertising age gave barack obama its top annual award marketer of the year beating nike apple zappos because the professionals knew precisely what he had gotten many functions as a brand for the corporate state and the personal narratives of political candidates at this point are irrelevant they mean nothing the engines of the corporate state go forward have since the reagan administration there is nothing to impede them and there is a rapid reconfiguration of american society into a kind of very frightening neo feudalism and obama has aided that as assiduously as

did george w. bush in the essence what the obama administration has done which i think perhaps is even more pernicious is that they've codified the destruction of international and domestic law that were put in place by the bush administration whether that is the sanctioning of preemptive war or the refusal to restore habeas corpus or go after wall street or in any way ameliorate the suffering of tens of millions of americans who are really beginning to feel tremendous pain and we're about to see with these budget cuts coming up on october. vital social services including the extension of unemployment benefits be curtailed. thrusting people into really tremendously difficult financial circumstances where you mention of course the budget cuts that are going to be coming out and i guess we can talk about the super committee right i suppose decide on a minimum of one point two trillion dollars in cuts and it's supposed to be a bipartisan super committee but if you look at the record of campaign donations on

both sides for. the republicans and for the democrats the top donors for all of these senators and all these congress members were usually the banks are usually wall street so why do they even bother calling it bipartisan anymore. well what's really sort of dirty about this committee is that it allows the democrats to sort of wash their hands of the whole affair and say we didn't want to destroy social security we didn't want to destroy medicare medicaid but there was nothing we could do under the terms of the agreement it's a way for them to take a moral pass but that is really the function of the committee everyone in washington knows what's coming next and it is the final assault and has long been a part of the agenda of the corporate state to absolutely go out and destroy these programs and now they have a mechanism through bipartisan or through a bipartisan committee as you correctly point out to do it and they will. now you

said before when you get on the show and you've written of course before that maybe the i think we have left is civil disobedience for people to act out but then i want to highlight something that's been going on for a couple of days this week we've seen hundreds of people protesting in front of the white house also being arrested because they're trying to protest as tar sands pipeline that would run from canada all the way through the u.s. into the gulf do you think that they're going to have any chance of actually changing the obama administration's mind of not letting this deal go through. well . look you know the fact is if we don't radically curtail. our dependence on fossil fuel very very quickly we're sort of finished and bill mckibben who's been leading this protest in washington and was arrested two days ago in front of the white house with those protesters has been one of the very courageous voices. for probably two decades since right. the end of nature on

this issue and yet human behavior has not adapted and the power really has if anything made things worse with the shredding of kyoto so. i think there's a moral imperative upon those of us who care about the planet and those of us who care about the country to carry out these acts of civil disobedience on the other hand i don't think we can be naive and if you ask me to put down money i'd say you're probably right probably won't work but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't get out and try because as things on ravel we enter a situation where to quote. the best blackhole conviction in the worst are full of passionate intensity we have some very frightening proto fascist movements around the tea party the lunatic fringe of the republican party. is becoming empowered because of this rage legitimate rage that i think those liberal elements

within the establishment are not addressing and recognizing as legitimate so that when you have figures like bill mckibben go in front of the white house or wendell berry another great sort of moral voice occupying the governor's office in kentucky over mountaintop removal and bill and wendell are friends of mine and i've spoken to them about this it there is a feeling that that's all we have left that the mechanism of piecemeal incremental reform that is the hallmarks of a democracy is broken it doesn't work and it doesn't work precisely because of the issue we mentioned before that there is a pipe bipartisan control. by the corporate state that this point there is no way in america to vote against the interests of goldman sachs or exxon mobil arkwright's i want to thank you very much for joining us tonight and i'm correct i think i'll be here on october eighth protesting in

washington d.c. october sixth sever saying. ok thanks so hopefully we'll see it and thanks so much . thank you. now so come a glimmer of hope tonight when it comes to getting cell phone records without a warrant and news this evening that the cia helped new york police style muslims after the nine eleven attacks and its very end host of young turks university will weigh in on the issue in just a month. into that only military mechanisms if you don't work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government should do if you want to know why i think taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic version of american exceptionalism. get

some pleasure see the story and it seems so sleep you think you understand it and then a glimpse something else here see some other part of it and realize that everything you saw you don't. charge is a big issue. let's not forget that we had an apartheid. i think. one well. we never got the shows there for him to safely get ready because of the freedom.

is. the light will come down. so must you choirs will be singing. well tonight we have a glimmer of hope and it comes from a federal judge in brooklyn district judge nicholas their office ruled that the pedal government must establish probable cause before collecting

a person cellphone information for the ruling came after the u.s. attorney's office attempted to collect one hundred and thirteen days of sell your location data for a man who was charged in a criminal case i mean attorney's office argue that they have the right to get the data from horizon under the storage communications act which gives law enforcement the right to gather that data without a warrant if the records are quote relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation so in other words the government thinks that cell phone users don't actually have a right to privacy because when they sign up for that service they're letting a third party receive that user information but judge iraq has ruled against the u.s. attorneys and bucking the fourth amendment in his decision the judge wrote all the government's monitoring of our thoughts maybe the archetypical archetype or willian intrusion of government surveillance of our movements of a considerable time period for new technologies such as the collection of cells site location records without the protections of the fourth amendment puts our country far closer to oceania than our constitution permits and you know what i could've said that better myself finally somebody within our countries or just the

system seems to. agree with what i've been arguing all along the core of the men that was put in place for a reason and the government has been trampling all over it ever since its amped up its national surveillance state so i say judge your office's ruling which actually of held an individual's right to privacy is a true glimmer of hope. now it's illegal for the cia to spy within the united states but a new investigation from the associated press shines a light on how the intelligence agency is getting around all those pesky rules since nine eleven the cia's partnered with the n.y.p.d. as intelligence unit transforming it into a spy shop that dispatched undercover officers known as breakers into ethnic communities to monitor t.v. life in bookstores who bars cafes nightclubs you name it and also used informants known as mosque crawlers to monitor servants and thing is this is all done in secret without the city council which pays the police department or the federal government knowing exactly what was going on and the trick is that while the cia

can't fly domestically and the f.b.i. can't conduct those types of operations without evidence of wrongdoing he doesn't need evidence to spy first so it's all information that could be breaking a number of rules including protections for civil liberties while those on the left are rightly angered by this news the right wing which in the past has discredited reports in the department of homeland security for going after innocent americans based on profiling they've been silent so what gives joining me from our studio in los angeles is an experiment host of the young turks and i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and for starters i just want to get your thoughts you know how do you feel about the cia teaching the n.y.p.d. how to better. well you're absolutely right about the fact that the cia wants to escape oversight the f.b.i. the cia isn't able to do gymnastics spying and the f.b.i. isn't able to do it without having profit probable cause and without having

evidence of wrongdoing so it's very easy for the n.y.p.d. to get involved and become the boss crawlers and become the people that infiltrate the muslim community in search for terrorists so essentially they're spying on innocent people for absolutely no reason they're just suspecting that these people are terrorists just because they are muslims. which in my opinion is racial profiling and you're not only one to say so too we've seen a number of organizations that are already saying that this could be illegal there's profiling going on and they want to further investigation but here's the interesting part so the n y p d for starters is they're denying these claims that they have any of these rakers or these people to go to the mosques and the cia had a really interesting attitude about it i want to read you a quote here from a cia spokeswoman jennifer young but she said it should not be a surprise to anyone that after nine eleven the central intelligence agency stepped up its cooperation with law enforcement on counterterrorism issues or that some of that increased cooperation was in new york the site of ground zero now i just find

out a little funny because you know their defense here is you know it shouldn't be surprising that any of this is happening after nine eleven but that doesn't change the fact that it's not exactly legal now does it. it doesn't change the fact that it's not legal this is even legal you can't spy on people unless you have evidence of wrongdoing and the n.y.p.d. should not be responsible for doing the spying ok the f.b.i. is supposed to have the responsibility of focusing on domestic terrorists and they have to have probable cause they do not have that in this case now the n.y.p.d. is claiming that oh you know we have leads and because of those leads we decided to investigate these individuals except i'm not buying that at all there needs to be evidence it sounds like they were focusing on the muslim community i'm very curious to see why we're not focusing on a right wing extremist in this country which is a growing issue and we're still focusing on muslims in new york city we don't have

our priorities straight we're focusing on racial profiling and we need to cut it out i mean this is a civil liberties issue and i hope p.c.l. you gets involved i hope the department of justice investigates it at this point the department of justice has not released a comment on this situation but i think that it is their responsibility to investigate this and make sure that civil rights are not being violated now you mentioned right wing extremism but you know how exactly would you like to see that happen do you think of the operation be focusing on right wing extremism rather than extremism within the muslim community you know i mean is it ok i feel like i sometimes hear a little bit of a double standard because we often hear the left obviously upset about stories like this where we find out that there's racial profiling going on or religious profiling and that there are surveillance of muslim communities but then when it comes to surveillance on perhaps you know right wing extremist militia members whatever you want to call them i feel like those voices kind of die down depending on what the cause is. we should do investigations on anyone regardless of their

ethnicity regardless of their religion regardless of their nationality we should do spy work on individuals that have where we have evidence that those individuals have done wrong doing or if they are an actual threat right now what we're doing in the country is we are completely ignoring right wing extremism and i'll give you an example of that back in april of two thousand and nine the department of homeland security published a report and the report found that there is a huge increase of right wing extremism in the country now shock jocks like rush limbaugh sean hannity michelle malkin they did not like that report so they twisted it and they said would you look at that the department of homeland security and the obama administration are calling all conservatives you know right wing extremists that was not what the report stated at all but what did the department of homeland security do they got scared ok they got scared and they completely disowned that report they completely ignored the fact that there is an issue of right wing

extremism in the country and right now the people who published our report it was headed by someone by the name of darryl johnson they got ousted from the department of homeland security which is a huge problem now the report found evidence that there is right wing extremism in the country for instance back in two thousand and eight there were only one hundred forty nine patriot groups in this country now patriot groups are people that are worried about white people becoming the minority who in the country they're upset at the fact that we have elected the first black of black president you know there are people who are an actual threat now as i mentioned in two thousand and eight there were one hundred forty nine of these groups now in twenty ten there were eight hundred twenty four of these groups so we're seeing a significant rise right but why are we ignoring this problem and why are we having the n.y.p.d. focus on innocent muslims in new york it doesn't make any sense just because nobody . does or has a member of the right and might hold certain beliefs does that mean that they're

going to act on it i'm curious to there where do you draw the line yes they be under surveillance without any type of probable cause or there is something to show for the need for an investigation. let me make one thing clear there has to be probable cause and there has to be evidence if there is not evidence i do not believe that any government agency should be. spying on these people or using surveillance or any of that however if there is probable cause then absolutely it doesn't matter if they're from patriot groups it doesn't matter if they're muslims if there's probable cause then you investigate that's what you are supposed to do that is your responsibility but that's not what's happening in this country and you know you asked whether or not these patriot groups and these there is also sovereign citizens whether or not they're actually causing any harm in the country and they are there have been several cases where sovereign citizens have shot and killed police officers there was a case of george tiller the abortion clinic where he was shot by one of these people that belonged to a patriot group there was another case where a security officer a security guard was shot and killed at the u.s.

holocaust memorial these are all cases that our mainstream media should be making a huge deal about but they're not making a big deal about it because they're not muslims are and i want to thank you so much for joining us there and you definitely a point i'm absolutely not denying there are definitely cases out there there's clear evidence that right wing extremism exists just in the same way that we see extremism around the world and all the three paid attention to that should never be an excuse to spy on innocent americans and so we should see the hypocrisy or people thinking it's ok but it's going to prove that you know might work out for their political virtues it always needs to be done where there is room for an investigation where there is evidence for that investigation thanks so much for joining us absolutely thank you. now still to come tonight we have army to get in a view said it i read it and several months ago the state of florida began testing welfare recipients for drugs so they find a whole bunch of drug addicts living off the government the surprising results will give you an.