well means for whistleblowers in america and north korea's leader kim jong il has died according to state news agencies and everybody is in a flurry to try and figure out what that means for the future but the problem is nobody really knows robert farley is going to help us hash oil out of all that and more feet and i couldn't get us that happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media has decided to move. all right so there's some big news coming out about how voters in iowa are feeling ahead of the january third primary a new poll from public policy polling and a survey taken from december sixteenth to the eighteenth shows the voters are once again changing their minds and there's a new candidate in the number one spot but it seems like the mainstream media doesn't really want to talk about who that number one is all that much count down the aisle only two with a half weeks away folks the iowa caucuses right around the corner the latest public policy polling showing the former speaker slipping into third place in the

republican presidential field that's an eight point drop in just one week ron paul now leads the pack with twenty three percent support when we take a look at assess the candidates here's what we see newt gingrich the front runner in the polls who surged seemingly out of nowhere after a long string of other candidates who tried to be the alternative to mitt romney now finds himself with a very steep climb organizationally but just fifteen days to go until the caucus you know he's seeing a little bit of slipping in some recent iowa polls newt gingrich despite his surge in the polls has an organizational problem that iowa ron paul could win and i would because of his organization there so does a ron paul win in iowa then leave the door open for romney to win new hampshire and make this and easy run through the primaries by contrast mitt romney has a massive and sprawling organization and then there's ron paul who is right there in the top tier in many polls that are statistically tied for a three way conversation with randy and gingrich. all right so that's right ron paul is now in the number one spot on i with twenty three percent of likely

republican caucus voters behind him in the latest poll i know that we talk about this all the time how the media barely gives this man any coverage but here it just becomes so much more blatantly obvious he's number one in the poll and they either really just quickly kind of glaze over that and then move on to the other candidates and what this means for their campaigns or they just don't even mention paul and instead only talk about newt gingrich and mitt romney i mean it's just absurd especially if you think about the way the mainstream media had a collective heart attack and obsessed over every single other candidate that at one point they've called the flavor of the month we saw it with michele bachmann we saw with rick perry and we saw it with herman cain and you know damn well that they went overboard and had the exact same thing with newt gingrich when he began surging in the polls on december sixth. but it seems like just yesterday that newt gingrich's campaign was in serious trouble this morning he's on top in the latest i will poll gives he says gingrich is for real the latest i will poll show him pulling ahead thirty three percent of third of the likely caucus goers say he's

their choice for the nomination why and mitt romney the former massachusetts governor and ron paul the congressman from texas i think he has really a very much an opportunity here and a very serious shot at winning the nomination right now gingrich leads the pack by a healthy margin newt gingrich is according to those voters the candidate they trust most on the economy. so here we are again looking at the mainstream media's distaste for any candidate that isn't a member of the establishment somebody they consider fringe who the washington d.c. establishment also considers fridge and so this vicious circle of living in a tiny little bubble but only encapsulates washington d.c. and new york continues and the mainstream media lives in it only and chooses not to recognize that there are other kinds of thought out there this really isn't about agreeing with someone's viewpoint or policies or thinking that ron paul is more extreme than other candidates out there i mean hello they give so much coverage and

airtime to people like herman cain that i've absolutely no idea where libya is or which one it is somebody who does not by any means have the foreign policy chops to be the commander in chief and he was never considered fringy who gingrich thinks that capitol police should be able to apprehend judges the rule in a way that members of congress don't like so forget about the whole three branches of government thing if you don't like them go get a rick santorum and actually every other candidate thinks that we need to amend the constitution to bar gay people from being allowed equal rights to marriage they all want war with iran they think racial profiling is ok they have no problem with the national defense authorization act that was just passed in congress that allows for military detention of american citizens and all of that is totally cool and not for inge at all but ron paul is the one the really takes it too far. no i'm not saying any of this because i agree with ron paul or adores him as a candidate there's a lot that i disagree with when it comes to his economic policies there's a lot that i agree with what comes to his foreign policy as you all know but at the end of the day this is really just about the mainstream media picking and choosing

who to cover who to treat like a serious contender and a lot of his actually less them taking probably more them sucking up to their establishment masters the wouldn't dare allow for a fall for paul to be seen in a more serious light and you know all along the way the voters and i were feeling is for the most part being ignored and i want to make or break the election we've seen candidates win there and lose the general election before but if you can be so hard core about obsessing over i where for months before the primary even happens they don't be surprised when it becomes very transparent that suddenly one day you're acting like it's not that they give a deal so at this point it's just annoying but it's also embarrassing that this is the media in this country that they so blatantly choose to miss. all right so let's continue our discussion about ron paul he's now number one of the most recent i will poll he leads the pack when it comes to support from young

voters and the establishment and that includes the establishment media are content to dismiss him take for example bill o'reilly where the following to say about paul's foreign policy his foreign policy disqualifies him in my eyes as an american not as a journalist but you know i don't think we need another neville chamberlain with iran you know so he wants to be friends with brown it's well. it's a bill o'reilly might not like it but is paul's foreign policy exactly what makes him popular with young voters a generation that doesn't think that constant and never ending war is the way for america to move forward joining me to discuss this is david sirota talk radio host and author of back to our future david thanks so much for joining us tonight let me first go back to that whole little rant that i just made back there in terms of the media's coverage i guess you could say lack of coverage when it's ron paul the number one spot versus newt gingrich or bachmann or herman cain do you see that tail. absolutely and i think it's not just the fact that his foreign policies are

out of step with washington's foreign policies and the trends partisan establishment foreign policies i think it's that ron paul's i was talking about civil liberties ron paul is talking about ending the drug war these are so rails of american politics when it comes to what the establishment says it's acceptable and what the establishment says is not acceptable basically we have not had a major presidential candidate in either party talking about the downsides of permanent war the downside of travelling our civil liberties how that makes us less safe and the downsize of the both resources and in terms of the unfairness of the drug war you're not really haven't really been allowed to talk about that and what i think ron paul's candidate seat is showing and again i'm not indorsing is kinda sad it's a lot of problems with his candidacy on economic issues but what i think is showing is that in the era where people are getting their information not only from

establishment news sources we may be entering an era where it's more possible for people who actually represent mainstream positions in america as opposed to mainstream positions only in washington d.c. to actually have a chance to compete in major elections and so when somebody like bill o'reilly says that he thinks ron paul's foreign policy disqualifies him as an american he said that from. being the president and he's not the only one that says things like that do you think that there's an element of fear they're worried that this entire military industrial complex and nato empirical routine might somehow start to fall apart people might actually notice that it's not exactly what we need i think it's a mix of a lot of different things i think it's a mix of bad i think obviously the i guess the political establishment in washington is very connected to the military industrial complex the profits that it generates the campaign contributions that it generates at the media level i think it's it's a little bit more vague i think it's that the can stevie center the except the

whole verse is not accept not acceptable continuum has been so defined as being a warmongering neo conservative for so long that anybody who's outside or saying something different than that is almost reflexively below as unpalatable and unacceptable no matter what the polls actually say about where americans are on that issue so i think when you hear bill o'reilly saying that i don't necessarily think go riley's thinking about the military industrial complex and enriching them i think he's basically saying look for ever since i've been in the media i've been rewarded for protecting militarist presidential candidates and and politicians as acceptable and good and people who indict war and question militarism as bad and so i think it's just that sort of reflexive this that anybody who questions the orthodoxy is seen as apostasy. and so we talk about young voters specifically

because we know the ron paul does have a dedicated lead in the young voters that follow him that are college age do you think that it is pacifically his foreign policy that they might be attracted to have been you know is that something that we're just seeing right now in this age because we've grown up or my generation has grown up with ten years already of a global war on terror or is it just a natural thing for young people i guess you can say to be more anti-war i think of that my guess is it makes a lot of it's my guess is that a lot of young people like what he's saying certainly about the drug war i think a lot of young people like a genuinely honest candidate a candidate who who i think has presented himself and accurately so as somebody who's willing to stand on principle of the young people are looking for some authenticity and i think ron paul brings and i obviously think that when you actually look at the polls of young people on foreign policy issues young people who say they believe permanent wars make us less safe who say they don't want another president who represents permanent war young people this is well documented

in the polls i think when they hear ron paul talking about that saying that they say not only is this guy authentic not only is he somebody who is willing to tell it like it is but he's saying things that we want it. and you know i guess one of the unfortunate things in this entire situation is a it's not only things that young people like but this should be really what democrats are saying and yet we've seen from the way that our congress only gets together and a bipartisan effort to pass a new defense authorization bill or the way that our democratic president has conducted himself it's not the way the things are going it so i'm dying to get your opinion here because you and i haven't had a chance to talk about this and the a and the indefinite or the excuse me of the indefinite military detention that's included in it and i went on a rant on the show on friday because i keep hearing people say that obama really caved on this one they are really disappointed in obama i think that if you look at obama's record while he's been in office you can easily predict that that's because to me this is not

a president that cares at all about civil liberties but i really want to hear your take i agree i think that on many issues when it comes to civil liberties president obama has been far more extreme even than george w. bush and this is different from of course senator obama senator obama has taken positions that were criticizing the bush administration for going too far look the bush administration for instance asserted the right to detain american citizens and only it was considered a radical notion of the time the obama administration has asserted the right to execute assassinate american citizens without charge and now asserting their rights to codified into law the notion that indefinite detention by the military in the side of the united states is acceptable and on the books statutorily so this is a president who when you look at whether he caved or not that particular issue you have to look at it in the context of his entire record on civil liberties the

context of his entire record on civil liberties would suggest that this is the opposite of caving that this is precisely where this white house wanted to end up because it's precisely the direction on civil liberties the white house has been going since president obama became president. i was so happy i'm not the only one out there that feels that way or realizes it but i wish that you know more people could just come to terms with that i guess you could say so that we can really give them a hard time about it david i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and you know we'll see what happens with ron paul and i when i do wonder if maybe even foreign policy might drive some democrats away from the president and to a third party or to someone like ron paul this time around as well thanks so much like you. all right still ahead tonight we're going to continue our coverage of the granite bradley manning article thirty two hearing after the break we're going to bring you new revelations i will post a panel about what's next for the army private. on

the lead the rest on. what a protest nobody seems to know. but never a pepper sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything you thought you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

mr. on friday the article thirty two pretrial hearing for bradley manning began it for me and it still goes on today is in fact day four of this hearing as you mentioned before media access has been limited and strictly monitored and today some of it was blacked out as discussion of the materials in the leaks went forward material of the government continues to label is classified despite it being out in the open on the internet written about by most media outlets for all to see now here are a few tidbits from the last few days so far to witness has been invoked their rights not to testify in court incriminate themselves special agent within the military is criminal investigation division testified that manning was arrested based on unconfirmed chat logs and those chat logs between manning and adrian lamo have been found on manning's computers as well as ten thousand cables but the real kicker from today was that a government digital forensic examiner said he retrieved communications between bradley manning and an online chat user named julian

a songe so let's get more of those details here to discuss this with me is daniel ellsberg former u.s. military analyst who famously leaked the pentagon papers in one nine hundred seventy one and kevin does still a civil liberties blogger for firedoglake gentlemen thank you both for joining us tonight and kevin i want to start with you because i know that you've been covering this pretrial hearing from the moment that it began and specifically about this news today that they think they found a chat between manning and another user named julian assigned to us more details but i would say this is the closest that we have gotten to seeing the prosecution actually prove there is some sort of link between julian of songe and bradley manning and i would say that. it is very evident now that manning was actively seeking out information about wiki leaks and the prosecution has raised numerous times that he was interested in iceland which was a base of operations so in that sense i mean can we say this is kind of damning news for bradley manning or perhaps even for julian assan she was always claimed

that he didn't know or he does not know who his sources are what do you think daniel. i would hardly call it damning i like to think for president obama is giving credit to bradley manning by accusing him of putting out this information and certainly it's made him our hero when out of a lot of other people so called it damning but what do you think in terms of the case of they're trying to build the grand jury that's going on in virginia being built against wiki leaks and you know what bradley manning's own fate might be so the fear here is that because. paul moms who is the investigative officer presiding because he has a backstory with the department of justice the fear that the defense has is that they're going to try to flip bradley manning and use him to go after julian assange to go get the rest of these characters that we mostly do not know who have affiliations with wiki leaks and i guess the more that they've backed the defense into the corner the more i would guess

a plea bargain deal or some kind of court martial hearing would seem to be you know would be appealing do you think the defense is being backed into a corner here though from the revelations that have been coming out from what from what i observed to that they found ten thousand cables they said oh man it's computers but it wasn't actually any of the information that has been famously leaked right yeah and that's confusing there's a lot of confusing evidence and i can say that being in the room with the media we weren't really sure how to read what was what was said so i don't want to say too much but what but what i will say is that all this information that has been brought out so far the defense has not taken the stand yet so they have not mounted their case and that's important for people to keep in mind because we are reading all these headlines from the prosecution about in their case so we would expect that they would have evidence all right so we still don't know exactly we haven't heard from bradley manning himself i want to hear about the way that they've been treating the media treating people like yourself in this hearing because like we

said i know there are a lot of restrictions here you have to write on a notepad you can't tweet from inside of the. i believe you got kicked out of the courtroom is that correct that's true. because i was because it was a trial i was very cold and tired when i get arrested but in this case i wasn't i wasn't arrested i was just expelled from the courtroom because when the judge and the prosecutors and lawyers were out of the room and bradley was sitting there by himself and i've never met him and he's my hero it was a chance to say hello so i went over to him and said hi bradley daniels where he was looking straight ahead as he always does didn't look back and i was immediately grabbed and pulled out. no no way they said against the rules and they have no written rules they have no rules but they make them up as they go along what struck me was actually did i couldn't think of any reason for that i've been in a lot of courtrooms and it really is possible to talk with the defendant generally military proceeding if there be any reason for that i've been in

a lot of military proceedings actually when i was in the marines i was in over forty special court martials as a defense counsel or sitting as a judge on the court martial i didn't hear anything like that so to me kevin maybe you've been following this much closer it's one more continuation of trying to isolate him as much as possible for everybody not letting anybody talk keep a bubble around him with isolation with people not really realizing that the isolation he was in for ten and a half months was torture people don't think of it that way because you know people in prison are kept in isolation even for prolonged period but they're being tortured we don't we don't face up to that it's what is torture for it's really a way of getting false confessions that's what it does that's what it's for and in this case i think they want not only in association with this size as with some journalist or whoever they want this very special in on journalistic kind of thing

they want to show a kind of conspiracy that wasn't your usual thing and they they want to break them down to me what i'm waiting to hear in this particular proceeding which has to do with whether he should be court martialed or not. i don't think it's not at all surprising or even not criticism that they would. start a court martial proceeding against him but the idea that it's continuing after the last eighteen months including ten and a half months of total isolation in this thing which amounts to prolong torture protested by amnesty protested by human rights commissions everywhere it's outrageous that this court martial continue with my trial was ended because the judge dismissed all charges on the grounds that there had been a pattern of criminal misconduct he didn't say criminal he said gross governmental misconduct against me that offends the sense of justice and you just missed the charges and you aren't you have the same thing is going on here it's perfectly evident i'm curious to you know what does bradley manning look like right now the

outside world has not seen and as we said he was in solitary confinement for more than eighteen months what does it look like now to the first time just like you said you're saying over five hundred days and he was in confinement and we're getting the first photos and they are being taken and you can see him on a.p. and he's actually doesn't look that bad for being in confinement for five hundred days to be quite honest and he sits there and he scribbles and appears to be taking notes and looks like he's engaged with the defense team and and so yeah and it's been very moving i think for some of the supporters to see bradley manning in person i think that's been one of the the big rewards of coming to tend the hearing well i know that it left because of the car do you mind my saying cover i said i hope you don't mind but he actually looks surprisingly like you're quite a bit and i think that means we're in here already we've got a rally we're heading to a looks he looks a lot better than his photograph you know were. they i'm dying to know because just

because before the interview started you and i were talking about what really sparked the arab spring what could have started it which is there's an anniversary now with that street vendor in tunisia and if it were you if you were in bradley manning's position and it looks like from everything that we've discussed it's hard to imagine that he would get. really a fair trial you know it does look like the government is doing everything they can to go after him for whistleblowers looking at what's happened after wiki leaks leaks how the world has changed in the last year is it still worth it i mean do you think of this is deterring somebody or would you be willing to spend the rest of your life in jail the people i know who went to prison for nonviolent draft resistance during the vietnam war. i don't know a single one who granted the several years they had to stand out that they wanted it or that they enjoyed it but i don't know of anybody who looked like a much better example would be my friend mordechai vanunu in israel who spent eighteen and a half years in prison eleven and

a half years in solitary confinement again amnesty in the others that's worse than ten and a half months the same principle of torture he's always said to me of course it's worthwhile of course i would do it again of course it was the right thing to do and if bradley manning is is were to be convicted of the charges that he's credited with as i say i really think that this is a man he has not broken in the course of that isolation so far he has not collaborated with the government i don't think there's going to be any false confession against. him and he has in this case he hoped that there would be a real change in the world as a result of the information that was being put out in the chat log that's what he said here's a man who released when i was running and out of time zone and so on first i have to wrap it up but really quickly what else can we expect how many more days of this hearing are there more protesters that are coming out more actions coming i know of no more protest actions that are planned but i know that they are going to wrap on

friday december twenty third if they don't finish i guess they return on monday and they continue to finish this thing quickly there's been a lot of stopping and starting we spend a lot of time in recess so i don't know how much business has actually been accomplished so far and when you say. sure i was saying look it's time magazine's person of the year i think officially name could be put on that obviously but it was easy one year ago burned himself but also bradley manning who if he was the source of the wiki leaks which weeks before the burning revealed the corruption in tunisia which sparked the protests there and led to the egypt protests and to the occupy wall street protests i can tell you that i don't think you're the only one that feels that way i want to thank you both for joining me i have to wrap it up unfortunately thank you gentlemen you.

are guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to my brilliant and engaging viewer comments from facebook twitter and you tube because you've got some to say i listen first i want to respond to a viewer the watch my fireside friday on obama's decision not to veto the end which includes a provision allowing for the indefinite detention of american citizens straight punk edge ninety three said this one this one effing hit me i was considering voting for him if he veto this bill but i now know i'm not for this guy he has disappointed me too many times you know i think it is a sentiment that many people who voted for obama have right now they really want to vote for the guy again they believe or they want to believe that he cares about their civil liberties but time and time again they've been disappointed so yeah i'm disappointed i'm disappointed that millions of americans were duped into believing that they were voting for somebody else and i'm more than anything disappointed and how significantly americans rights have been eroded under this presidency but i've said i stand by my statement on friday to this point we should stop being disappointed we should realize that this is who this president is this is where he

stands and call him out on it and next i want to show some artwork that some of our viewers decided to share with us me on rain boy rain boy tweeted these pictures to us now the first one here is an homage to the hacktivist group anonymous and of course the occupy wall street movement and we've got a picture looking obama and finally a response to the failure of the. ministration to veto the n.b.a. so thank you for that our feel free to send us anything on your mind we're always happy to know what our viewers are feel are thinking and creating and finally would respond to a viewer that tweet about us sharon a baby tweeted forbes names at the alone a show is one of thirty under thirty media rising stars to watch check it out the rocket brought good behavior so big you so much i was very excited to find out this morning that i was in fact maybe the forbes list of thirty media personalities to watch under thirty some present list and i'm quite excited about being included we have the link posted on our facebook and twitter so check it out and let me know he's think and please ignore the picture it's not my personal favorite so that's it for my rantings today and i will be back with more as usual later in the week we're

taking a break but coming up next we'll talk about north korea and the death of john. internally are military mechanisms to do the work to bring justice or accountability. i have every right to know what my government's true if you want to know why i pay taxes. i would characterize obama as a charismatic. of american exceptionalism. sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here see some other part of it and realized everything you. are.