welcome to the show get the real headlines with none of the mercy or can live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to look at the eye newly released report on iran's nuclear aspirations they agency expressed concerns and the calls for a preemptive attack are heating up so what can be done to stop the world from engaging in another war that a study released yesterday shows the wealth gap between a young and old americans has increased drastically but some say the results here are misleading and that could result in an intergenerational class war joshua

holland is going to tell us his concerns and then the supreme court takes on a huge privacy case today do the feds have the right to track your vehicle with a g.p.s. device without a warrant we're going to talk about how this ruling fits into our world of ever increasing reliance on technology and farther reaching surveillance we're to have all that include a good dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. well it's another day of our big news in the world from the i reports increasing talk of bombing iran to italy's prime minister silvio berlusconi agreeing to resign to the u.n. reporting that the death toll in syria has reached thirty five hundred people a lot by wall street movement still gaining momentum across the u.s. and the supreme court tackling some of the biggest privacy issues of today but for the mainstream media it's just another day obsessing over the herman cain sexual allegations saga today herman is holding

a press conference she is the fourth woman to accuse terming cain of sexual harassment a fourth woman has now accused him of inappropriate behavior and his campaign has already gone on the attack against a fourth woman herman cain says he is going to set the record straight about allegations of sexual harassment at a news conference in arizona herman cain is going to try to get control of the controversy and will address the allegations which he strongly deny. now let me clear a few things. up here i've been on the mainstream media for a while now for going over the top with mccain's story but i'll tell you why originally it was just that there were some legal documents that we knew no details of them and you have a so found a way to talk about it twenty four hours a day seven days a week now we've actually seen one of the women speak out she has a face she has a name and if what she said is true but herman cain slipped his hand up her head into his crotch and said i have a job for you but herman cain sounds like a sleaze and needs to be held accountable but the words coming out of herman cain's

mouth regarding all of this have been the same all along he denies it he stumbles around it you know he says the same old thing and digs themselves deeper into a hole so why is it that the supposedly most trusted name in news before were leading fair and balanced networks need to spend hours upon hours warning people that at some point today herman cain would be holding a press conference where undoubtedly he would say the same damn thing it's beyond to be ellison asking for you to focus on some other stories that sort of defense of her maintain a sort of our overly politically correct media personalities would like to claim it's in fact is asking you to do your job and inform and educate the public and if you look at the polls the public doesn't feel like the herman cain drama is the most important thing going on in this country the public is concerned over unemployment over millions of homes being underwater over the debt the college students or they're concerned about the fact that congress is still sitting on its hands playing a game of tit for tat and set up trying to move the country forward and creating policies that help us do so they are concerned over the back of the wealth in this

country is concentrated in the hands of very few and it's getting worse every day and about the fact that wall street and washington are just too close to the money and wall street hold such a tight grip over washington that our government can't even stand up to the bankers that brought the economy down and hold them accountable now these concerns all happen to be a part of what occupy wall street is concerned with so this is why people are going out on the streets spending the nights in parks because they feel like there is no other way to get their voices heard and a new poll from the. in the last wall street journal shows more americans are beginning to agree with a ninety nine percent message in fact sixty percent of americans strongly agree with the basic sentiments sentiments and here's how the poll described that the current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a very small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country america needs to reduce the power of major banks and corporations and demand greater accountability and transparency the government should not provide financial aid to corporations

and should provide and should provide tax breaks to the rich and not now these sentiments according to that poll are now more popular than the tea party movement they're more popular than congress they're more popular than the president and they're definitely more popular than herman cain but once again that didn't get an ounce of attention from the mainstream media they'd rather bring on the cream of the pundit crop to discuss herman cain's press conference and miss what sixty percent of americans are now very strongly concerned about. the long awaited i.e. a report has finally been released to media outlets the results are pretty much what's been expected and leaked over the last few days he went atomic agency said it has serious concerns about iran's nuclear activities and credible information that iran may have worked on developing nuclear weapons including testing of components components and building computer models of

a nuclear warhead the report also says that iran appears to have carried out a nuclear weapons related activities as part of a structured program prior to two thousand and three and that iran might still be engaged and relevant research now prior to the report's release the rhetoric has already been heating up in washington and in israel even israeli president shimon peres said on sunday then attack on iran was becoming more likely russia and china meanwhile are calling for a pause warning that intact would be catastrophic so how saw going to play out joining me to discuss that is dr thomas pm barnett chief analyst for wiki strat and contributing editor for esquire magazine. thomas thank you so much for coming back on the show tonight now you said in the past that nobody can stop iran from its attempt to acquire nuclear weapons so in that sense are you not surprised by the results of this report. no i'm not surprised that the i basically came out and said that by their best estimates now and contrary to the estimate of the u.s. national intelligence community back in two thousand and seven that iraq has

basically been working to weaponize a nuclear capacity all along and that they've been pursuing it basically since two thousand and three which is the united states went into iraq from the position of iran having seen united states going to afghanistan and iraq as part of its global war it's not particularly surprising or rational that iran reaches for a nuclear weapon it does create however the dynamics that a lot of us are more deeply concerned with and that is. in an effort to counter what iran perceives to be the israel's ongoing. and allowed capacity to have nuclear weapons in the region once iran does achieve that weapon sation will likely see saudi arabia activate a promise long made by pakistan can get a nuclear weapon capacity as quickly as possible and we could see turkey moving down a similar path and once that happens then we're really looking at kind of

a fast rerun in the middle east some of the same dynamics we saw in europe during the early part of the cold war between the soviets and the united states and that's a scary proposition but ultimately i think it'll be much like it was in europe in between united states and the soviet union a stabilizing proposition once we go through that scary initial period so i tend to be more sanguine about this capability coming on line eventually i get i don't think there's much we can do to stop it israel may attack in the short term but i don't think it's going to have a lot of impact and i think we're looking at a new killer ice persian gulf which the world is going on in terms of its great powers have to step in somewhat and manage in the years ahead what do you say the world's going to have to try to manage it in the years ahead how do you mean are they going to have to. accept it and start playing ball. i think we're going to have to choose to create some sort of dialogue between israel and iran on the

strategic nuclear question once iran basically has that capacity and i think saudi arabia will be so frightened by it then it'll reach for its own bomb parts to make sure that it's at the table and that's why i think turkey will very possibly do similar things i think at that point all the world's great powers are going to be highly incentivized to basically come into the situation and argue we need to have some sort of understanding here we can't let the situation. evolve into brinkmanship like we saw in europe in the late ninety's early one nine hundred sixty s. and i think once you get to that point it's actually to the west benefit to see iran recognizes and you can empower because once iran starts having a dialogue with israel and the last starts gaining that acceptance for being a nuclear power it's going to remove from its illogical calculus and the way it presents itself to its own rather than prison population i would argue it removes the bugaboo the west as the reason for iran maintaining such

a confrontational stance with the outside world in having such strict regime control over the population internally think back to what happened to the soviet union after nixon signs the piece of paper that basically recognizes and that's a nuclear power within a generation and the place collapses from its internal contradictions i think a similar path could happen program at a much faster pace now i would ask you where you think of course there are the reports coming out today that apparently when president obama. speaking they realize that their microphones are on they had a little you know a little talking session where the us are cozies said that netanyahu was a liar and obama said well you know you think that that i have to deal with them all the time everything of the world really caring about i mean how important are personal relationships when it comes to you international relations between two

different countries. i don't think it's actually that important that kind of backbiting happens all the time whether microphones or honor as we saw through the wiki leaks release of diplomatic cables that kind of back channel nasty talk it is fairly common i don't really think israel is the key player in this whole dynamic as much as a ron likes to make their pursuit of a nuclear device and a western anti israel in its focus i frankly think this is all about its long term rivalry with saudi arabia and that iran remains simply an exceptional scapegoat for this activity whipping boy if you will and i think we're seeing similar dynamics from the turks in terms of their reorientation he said you know last i believe in in just a fading when iran gets the bomb and turkey has to step forward with some sort of response of its own to maintain its own momentum in its long term reach for kind of a regional leadership so i mean when i look at it from

a western perspective you have the turks making a bid for regional leadership they may end up reaching for nukes as part of this process linking be included in this dialogue but i alternately things are going to unfold once around gets the bomb but i think the turks represent the west's best option when you think about iran versus saudi arabia and those tensions are rising and iran mean now either you can jack in on saudi arabia's behalf which i think would be a mistake for israel to pursue we're being caught up in the crossfire of what i fear would be a nuclear brinkmanship between a nuclear i study arabia and a nuclear ice rot so in the sorts i'm in the short term you're saying that you don't see any chances of israel actually acting on some of the heat of that rhetoric when it comes. to launching some kind of an air strike or some plan that's a private it's not on iran's nuclear facilities and you have to wonder is this something israel would deal on its own without the approval of america our of some of its european allies i think it's a lot less likely if the saudis aren't going to cooperate. give israel sense that

it's strategic plans are going to be somewhat covered i think the united states would desperately prefer to avoid this outcome as were china and russia. i think at the end of the day israel makes that choice for itself but it is a huge enabling factor if saudi arabia feel so threatened by iran's continued activities that it's exporting terrorism it's a chance to detail the lies the kenyan the saudi arabian in from one revolution on the persian and insula to the extent that saudi arabia gets more and more nervous and would prefer israel to act on its behalf that's what i think is the key enabler region i don't think the west were particularly united states opinion on this is going to matter all that much to israel as long as really quickly. that i release as these poor reports rather frequently are all the time and a lot of time to go by without any real fanfare at sephora for i guess the crowd that studies this constantly so why is it getting so much attention now you know we

we have other powers you have china you have russia all stepping in and please urging you know that a bit of leniency from both sides. and you know i can't speak to the so that the agencies tightening the terms of the report and i think these things are just tend out on a regular basis it will activate a lot of the empire any an oxe in the united states and certainly in israel it will raise a lot of concern in saudi arabia for for all the usual reasons but from a strategic perspective and this is a simulation that we plan on running a rocky stretch the next few weeks we think this would be a huge diversion i personally think he's huge diversion you know and we want to explore what kind of future version it would represent for israel to make this kind of move at this point in the arab spring especially want to such regime that's under so much stress assad in syria in such a key proxy and an enabler of a rainy an influence and violence there against israel through hamas and hezbollah

it's a very different situation the assad regime falls i think much more strategically comforting for israel and it would put turkey probably in an even more interesting leadership position because today it's really been turkey that's been winning in terms of the regional rivalries these are the iran and saudi arabia and the iranians not feeling very comfortable or happy with the way the arab spring is gone i'm very nervous about assad's fall so i think the iranians would actually welcome israel striking them at this point and changing the dialogue from the arab spring to an anti western focus and that's another reason why i think it would be a mistake or israel strike in the near term right on and i thank you so much for joining us tonight and i certainly hope you're right and that we won't say any kind of. church. so it comes and i felt that by wall street's on the move of play that few minutes and some say the staggering numbers on the wealth gap

between young and old are misleading so they die than that they can just move. was the police corruption it was like what a protest nobody seems to know. but never appropriate to face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so poorly is if you understand it and then something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you thought you don't. charge

is a big. blow

to the counseling mr. bank of america is being asked to pay yet another settlement being held as a landmark payout deals with over thirteen million customers who carry the of a debit cards are charged billions in excess of overdraft fees from two thousand and one twenty eleven. the lawsuit claimed that bank of america processed its debit card transactions any order of highest to lowest dollar amount so it could maximize the overdraft fees customers had to pay the bank rake in about four point five billion dollars from overdraft fees alone and despite the settlement bank of america insists that there was nothing improper about the process sequence. that's pretty ball the statement bank of america thought they were doing nothing wrong

when they manipulated the processing of purchases made on their customers debit cards by charging thirty five dollars for each overdraft fee calculations show that over the course of ten years the bank brought in four point five billion dollars so bank of america made a killing off of ripping off its customers and i think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with that now thankfully a federal court disagreed and often the bank was out of line in this practice yesterday judge james king ordered b. of a to pay four hundred ten million dollars for a settlement and it's being labeled as a win for banking customers and undoubtedly it's one of the largest settlements of its kind but when you really break it down it starts to look less and less like a victory so let's look at some of those numbers bank of america has been ordered to pay out four hundred ten million dollars to more than thirteen million of its customers but if b. of a actually brought in a four point five billion dollars in fees that reason the settlement in a class action suit is only paying out ten percent of what it brought in not even coming close to the amount of money they made off of their shady practices now barry himmelstein

a lawyer one of the customers is estimated the average customer in the lawsuit face three hundred dollars in overdraft fees and so if they're only getting ten percent of it back they're going pretty surprised when a whopping twenty seven dollars shows up in their accounts we got it twenty seven dollars the overdraft fee itself is the thirty five doesn't take a mathematician to see if the customer is not screwed over here again despite taking their anger to a federal court so it's not a reminder of why the occupy movement is growing in this country by the day and they give america is not the only banks pouring their customers with overdraft fees of. similar lawsuits have been filed against thirty other banks now the settlement amounts to only ten percent of what the bank made think make of america has to be feeling pretty good about this but now that you all have the stats i'll let you decide if this lawsuit was really a win for the people because all the numbers tell me is that the banks are still winning despite the landmark ruling. yesterday a pew research study showed the wealth gap between young and old here in america is growing found the typical u.s.

household headed by a person age sixty five or older has a net worth forty seven times greater than a household headed by someone under thirty five big jump since one thousand nine hundred four when older families only had wealth ten times greater than those under thirty five now it says to stick with many of pointed to in the fight to restructure social security and raise the retirement age is their ideal but older doing so much better than the gun kind of misleading our guests and i argue that it could fuel an intergenerational class war paying americans of different ages against each other and it's a time when the occupy movement is trying to bring the ninety nine percent together joining me to discuss it is joshua holland editor and senior writer at alternate dot org joshua thanks so much for being on tonight and i guess let's start with give us some figures some explanation as to what it is that you see as misleading within this study that came out. sure well this is one of those situations where you have a headline the one that you mentioned where the wealth gap between households headed by people over sixty five the ratio to younger households has grown to forty

seven to one whereas in one thousand and four it's just ten to one. underlying numbers there is that back in one thousand nine hundred four the typical households headed by somebody under thirty five had eleven thousand dollars in achieving wealth and now they have three thousand dollars. the problem with that is that young people generally don't have a lot of accumulated wealth in the first place and also nine hundred eighty four was a year that we saw a robust growth declining unemployment rate it was two years after the one nine hundred eighty one eighty two recession so you would expect that people had managed to rebuild their savings compared to two thousand and nine which is of course was a tail end of a terrible crash a year that overall we had negative growth and still high unemployment at nine point three percent virtually unchanged from should a i but can you also say that while young people may never really have

a whole lot of money to clean lighted wealth when they're young and they weren't graduating college with an average of about twenty four thousand twenty five thousand dollars worth of student loan debt right we now we have this trillion dollars worth of student loan debt that is really weighing down the younger population. well that's an absolutely correct point i think that the financial and economic situation for young adults right now is extremely bleak the point about this study that i find problematic is that it is kids older americans older households against younger households and what she didn't mention is that if you look at the age group just beneath the retiree's or the people who are retirement age of sixty five and over they also did quite well you know younger americans are doing very poorly but fundamental problem of course is that we've seen so much accumulation of wealth at the top so back in one nine hundred eighty four for

example the top one percent of all households was taking about ten percent of the nation's pretax income the year before the crash in two thousand and seven they were taking twenty three point five percent of the nation's pretax income so the remaining ninety nine percent of households old young and in the middle have seen their share of the pie decreased significantly since one thousand and four yeah and that's a god by wall street movement is trying to tell everybody that it's nice represent versus one percent but if you break it down do you really think i mean at the end of the day the occupy movement although it does happen people of all ages for the most part are young people young people that are frustrated because they did everything they were supposed to do went to school and now they're graduating with that now there aren't any jobs bill for them and i think that they're a little better that they don't live in a society that's considered as fair as it once was for an older generations if you think that there are the natural divisions here where is an older population i think well you guys are all spoiled brats that expect too much. well i mean that's

at the heart of the politics of resentment which i think is dangerous and these into the hands of those who would seek to dismantle the social safety net programs like social security and medicare the reality is that we need significant structural economic reforms the idea that you have to choose and this is one of the things that i think is really problematic the way the study is being interpreted not necessarily the way that the authors presented it by the way it's being received by many is that we don't need to choose between keeping the elderly out of thirty and giving younger people a shot at the american dream social security is both solvent and keeps. the poverty rate for people over sixty five down to around fifteen percent whereas without social security it would be at forty five percent so we would have almost

half of our elderly in poverty without that program as i see you out. a few weeks ago i believe that if there's one thing that i movement has achieved at this point it's to bring this passion back to the problems of today back to the economy back to jobs and away from all of the deficit talk that really just took over the entire summer as i wondering if you think. even further so many laws unfortunately in this country are are legislated based on issues of morality and so if you make this issue of inequality one about the ethics and the morals of this country again then do you think that there's a stronger chance of success. well i do and i certainly think that they david has as you mentioned i wrote about this recently they have already done a great deal to shift the just course you're talking about these issues and i think these are issues that really resonate with the american people even if they don't have you know a concrete grasp of statistics that i throw around in my piece is i think people

have certainly an intuitive sense that they've lost something in terms of economic security that their parents once had or that the generation before once had i think that it is a moral issue and then lastly i asked this if i guess last night but i'm curious as to what you think do you think that president obama dividing factor for this movement that if it was a republican that was in charge right now be much easier to rally all the troops are right now he's splitting the left. that's interesting i mean there are certainly divisions among progressives about how to view the obama presidency when you look at the polling though it seems to me that those divisions are amplified online in terms of you know progressive bloggers are certainly having a huge running battle over how to interpret this administration's moves but you know his support among self identified liberals has remained remarkably constant

around eighty percent so i think he's got all that we we highlight in the media tend to be a little bit overplayed compared to how the ordinary days of the democratic party were so identified progress and i thank you so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me. now earlier today announced it will be taking the show on the road small group of protesters plan to leave the body park in manhattan tomorrow for occupy the highway and their final destination as washington d.c. if you hundred forty mile march is going to make its way through new jersey pennsylvania delaware and maryland before arriving in the nation's capital and the marshals marchers will arrive in washington on the eve of november twenty third a significant date because that's when the super committee in congress must release its plans on how to cut one point two trillion dollars from the deficit so the protesters want the supercommittee to do away with the bush tax cuts for the wealthy and the off by the highway protesters hope other people are going to join

them along the route and all right in d.c. november twenty second camp with occupy d.c. protesters in macpherson square and the next day they plan to march to capitol hill and the white house to make sure to keep you updated on the marchers progress. now coming up next we have our tuesday titian of show and tell and police tracking citizens with g.p.s. your supreme court is hearing a case that could set a precedent for fourth amendment rights to not. include only military mechanisms google would bring justice or. i have a right to know what my government truly want to know why i keep taxes. what i would characterize obama as the charismatic. of american exceptionalism.