taken out of war is there anything a super soldier wouldn't do. everybody knows that france is no longer aaa everybody knows that italy is no longer as highly rated as it used to be the market knows all of this was just a bit of the world was a school room in europe they certainly wouldn't be the head of the class in spite of the downgrade by standard and poor's credit rating agency the european markets are think verily author investor jim rogers will put credit ratings to the test. it is monday january sixteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our team. fall let's talk today about the state of journalism in america things are changing of course with the addition of facebook and twitter vehicles that make it so that news is reported as it happens

and it's not just people out there putting up with they're seeing their photos and videos attached so you can see it too from revolution in the streets of egypt to colonel moon moammar gadhafi is that brutal beating and death on camera for the world to see to cell phone videos capturing every gaffe of every presidential candidate had every campaign stop now it's hard to argue we're not much more well informed now especially when it comes to knowing what's happening not just in our own neighborhoods but around the country and around the world i think this is important but also important to note some other changes taking place in terms of the way you get the news it turns out getting it first and getting it right is no longer even enough for the associated press after one hundred sixty five years the a.p. has decided to change its format no longer will they just be laying out the facts they'll now be connecting the dots for you the reader viewer with more analysis now here's a snippet from an internal memo circulating at the a.p.

it said quote we're going to be pushing hard on journalism with a voice that with context with more interpretation it doesn't mean we're sacrificing any of our deep commitment to unbiased a fair journalism it does not mean we're venturing into opinion either it does mean that we need to be looking for ways to be more distinctive and stand out in the field all right so not just who what where but why and what does it mean or at least what do they say it means such as the a.p. piers morgan show on c.n.n. well change as well he told t.v. news or that in his shows second year changes to him his program piers morgan tonight will include including making it a bit more mysterious with more humor more opinionated piers morgan says he's no comedian like jon stewart and he'll never be as partisan as bill o'reilly but he will nonetheless. humor and opinion there are more changes than examples to discuss and i'll be talking about a few of them today and i spoke just a little bit ago with seton smith comedian and filmmaker in new york i started out

by asking him this why are news outlets which once prided themselves on being objective and only reporting the facts feeling the need to change here's his take i mean clearly it's all about ratings which is i guess that ratings for some reason is always the big i mean it's not said it's also it's good i'm actually wondering i want to be in that meeting with a.p. i want to know there had to be one person was like hey well maybe we should just you know do our news based on standards and ethics and then they just got laughed out of the room and mediately fired and here we're going to sell us over some ratings you know like that star appeal for their client their peers cannot talk about their source so i can say which one is that i was going to say probably one of the reading the reason that internal memo is no longer internal is because there were some people who had a serious problem with it go ahead and say your piece about here's what we're going to say. but this is actually set up here because i don't know if you read the exact quote he said he wants to make his show more mysterious it was worth civitas which

is we just got to say because these kind of blatantly doesn't know what day in america it is and it was placed like like bill o'reilly is you know crazy. jon stewart is you know crazy in his own way hannity is threatening to kill the president and we've got this one guy going to be more was to be as you know going to call people in to miss t.v.'s he should really figure his zero point out i don't know if going to last very long with that mentality it is interesting to see all of these shows and sort of the direction. you know if your mom is anything like mine she probably told you all the time at least growing up to mind your manners and you know for much of my life we're watching the news that's what people did at least for the most part journalists and their interview subjects were respectful even with those they disagreed with that is not exactly the case anymore either people are just more comfortable letting loose or as some sort of memo is also circulating that yelling and screaming and name calling it makes for good t.v.

we put together a couple examples so i want to play this and then we'll talk about it. but you just said that there were genuine. criminal prosecutor let's take it that's right guys a prime security problem. that's why what i meant is that i realize that james and i want to shame senator mary landrieu sometimes your positions are right but i anti-american i don't think you're anti american but certainly the far left let me get anti american snobbish name calling let's not give anybody any real what the for the people on the network as get here was noted how it was an editorial i don't you grasp worse and i'm get a little mad at you grasp this little counter on it you got it i hear you say no it's free so we were sitting here arguing about whether we should do the four trillion dollar plan that kicks the can down the road for the president for twenty seventeen or burn the place to the ground both of which are reckless irresponsible and stupid and seen what your tag line is boiling temper is and the name calling on

air. i love it i don't know why we got to not this having watched news in the fifty's lately it was incredibly boring you know what we need to make more all our new stuff make it like more povich that's what i want i want more povich that i want i want real issues you know i want the baby to be there's nuclear weapons you have nuclear weapons that's great no i completely support this i want to see more of that i mean yes yes nothing is getting accomplished but you know was things really getting accomplished back and walter cronkite was doing things while i'm getting better that would be stupid. and i'm not i mean is certainly am jerry springer and its heyday had you know amazing ratings and i was it was a bunch of yelling fighting who knows that's going to be next maybe the next thing we see is bill o'reilly is going to throw a punch at one of his guests luckily that hasn't happened yet to my knowledge at least i say this yes i this video i have noticed though that the people on if you ever watch political pundits and they you know and then you watch sports pundits and they you know it's like the same yelling except different comic one person

yelling about le bron and as one person is yelling about libya and it's the same thing they're interesting they're third people they argue about random things i know i think that's a really good point i mean there i think is the term out there that's one of my guests used the other day with me call that the e.s.p.n. ization of the news i mean it's a it's a popular model it's a model that works the sports the people that are yelling and i think it's interesting that you do see more and more of that and there's also see in the book go ahead. you all you know there's nothing i want to kind of question about. that's a lot of talent like a lot of people don't really into size how hard it is to you know about a debt ceiling crisis or something you just wake up out of the morning go to the depths. you got to look you got to practice and then get on camera right i'm going to yell about you about some new shit like you like president obama appointing these recess appointments of people yelling about this is that like i had to take a minute but. it's that challenge so we can applaud him on that at the very least

right i think some good point you're making there's also see even it seems to me you know kind of a blurred line now between the news giver and the news maker and i have another example of a you know it's not exactly hidden at all but i think it bears showing some of the latest tweets by none other than rupert murdoch's over murdoch has been going after the white house criticizing president obama for backing down from the stop online piracy act or sopa here's a tweet from a couple days ago he said so obama has thrown in his lot with silicon valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy plain thievery so it was a time to change the architecture of the net for the sake of entertainment. certainly it is very interesting when you when you see what he's going after this is his industry used to project also murdoch treated piracy leader is google who streams movies free sells advertising around them no wonder pouring millions into lobbying so you see here this is this is the media mogul rupert murdoch who owns

the fair and balanced fox news channel and also the wall street journal today matthew swimming more than kneedeep in a policy debate your thoughts. anyway we can destroy in our own way but in this sounds very punk on my part but rupert murdoch scares me. because you literally he's a media mogul who controls most of the world and he also has a ninja assassin as a wife but he literally is like a. character you know like you. just can't really think. it was one of piers morgan's or pers bronson's one and it was a very good but still he was there so i have nothing to go what about this i mean what about this idea that the owner of the you know the most successful cable news network a very successful newspaper you know is engaging in a policy debate certainly that doesn't suggest that he's telling the writers what to say or telling the anchors what to say on air about do you think you don't think

it's crossing the line at all. i know because i feel like of the other things he's been accused of breaking into people's phones fox news in general tim weeding is the least of his offenses up he has a ninja assassin as a wife just like he just telling is the least thing he's tweeting us a big deal that's not to do it's like a it's like saddam hussein tweeting all right thank you we all right why would you give him her kill less people did you just compare rupert murdoch to saddam hussein i'm sure you didn't. do what i just did but it's better than complete comparing him to hitler i think i'm a saddam hussein at least current guy there you go would love to talk to you more certainly lots of interesting stuff unfurling we're out of time comedian and filmmaker since math and new york city. also had its the eternal sunshine of the military mind as the pentagon approves a study for the pell designed to make soldiers forget the horrors of war we asked the question is ignorance really bliss. r t is the state

run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like al-jazeera. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. just lindsey lowe and. the preaching about these women that people are suggesting she's. you know she says she's a stock. let's

talk now about a reality of our time that's most likely been a reality for decades if not centuries but it's one that's starting finally to not be ignored talking about post-traumatic stress disorder and robs it was simply because it couldn't be ignored any longer i'll give you some numbers twenty percent of the soldiers who have been deployed in the past six years have p.t.s.d. that is more than three hundred thousand people in two thousand and the number of diagnosed cases in the military jumped fifty percent as just diagnosed cases and

the lifetime prevalence of p.t.s.d. in combat veterans is ten to thirty percent so now the pentagon has announced an eleven million dollar grant to study the effectiveness of a new drug called d.s.i. cluster right or d.c.'s believed to help get rid of fearful memories so here's how the study works a total of three hundred patients all of them veterans from iraq and afghanistan will take part in seven individual weekly sessions involving exposure therapy actually revisiting those traumatic experiences and taking a pill half of them will get d.c.s. and half of them will get a placebo and the experts at emory university the university of southern california and new york presbyterian cornell medical center will study the effects but we want to talk about some other effects that could happen also namely what will the results be if this drug actually works it's a question i posed to blogger and truthout contributor dr jeff k. here's what he had to say. well they wish they could have

a memory or recent film but there really will be ministers. this drug which is called be thankful therrien will be as it is tuberculosis drug and is one of the get the latest in a series of different drugs that the military but also medical researchers have been looking for to try and find an effective treatment proposed dramatic stress disorder which is an awful awful disorder to have and it's no surprise that the american military in its quest to you know i mean all over the world are seeing hundreds of thousands of cases interactive game of sand elsewhere and if they really you know the military would like to have soldiers who couldn't. react to the horrors of war but unfortunately that's not exactly depending how you look at it that's not going to happen it seems to me a that this is just another example of you know what some people call the

pharmaceutical industrial complex you know trying to put forth a pill and first having this eleven million dollars to study at the put forth a pill that can solve everything. wrote well this bill what they want to do is use it as an adjunct to. exposure and response treatment for p.t.s.d. round the studies that were done just last year well in two thousand. with this name drive show that it was market studies done in montreal in boston that were in yet the military is going to put out eleven million dollars to study that you know it's kind of an industry are of course p.t.s.d. can happen for reasons other than combat it happens of people and it will be no accident people grades people who are victims of violent crimes the truth is it would be a grave boot to humanity if some medication were around it could be caught or people who suffer p.t.s.d.

but it's a stream with us thank you know through this a go with your article condition the brain does not respond simply to these you know the c.e.o.'s and the sad those article truth is they had to rebuild in snap and the human beings they are truly affected by it if the military thinks that it can develop a drug into a drug which will take the terror war then they're really insane. i mean i know and just for just for the sake of discussion i know i'm sure you've seen that this video that's been circulating around of soldiers or marines actually urinating on the dead bodies in afghanistan just when you think about yourself dr kay you know having to separate yourself from your own emotions in dehumanizing your enemy just in order to make it through the day. it's no wonder there's no red flag for some of these military personnel because they have they really have to do this and so i'm wondering. you know do you think that this will just make things

worse in terms of more things like this happening we're showing the video right now of this that and if these soldiers in the future and marines are able to you know forget about it how do we know this just want to happen more more and. right well that's the question what if you've created a super warrior who had. you know what type of. terrible things would could you do with them in warfare and what those soldiers showed with the euro nations in the desecration of corpses this is something has happened in warfare going back thousands of years in fact the first the iliad which is the beginning of western literature the primary event that occurs in the claimant's of that great epic poem the desecration of the birds affected by achilles in the order that it brings in everyone who watches him go through this madness because in fact war isn't it isn't it reduces madness in the people who

engages. it's. you know rather than be looking for ways to. ways to serve accomplish without work there instead we have a militarist the government who is injecting american military troops around the world and they have a serious problem because they're getting injured they're getting very seriously injured just in their bodies were losing limbs with their very souls have been through their psyches and there are they keep looking for ways to solve the problem but there is no solution there or. what we need to do is to find a way to to stop promoting his policies of the united states and brotherhood groups as well. and because that's how you're going to actually bring down the not through you know some magic drove that's going to accomplish that i mean and you know you

said yourself and i read that this drug whether it works or not will be used alongside as an adjunct to exposure therapy the process of trying to go back and revisit some of these horrific traumatic experiences but what in your opinion is the military really missing in terms of how to deal because as we showed the numbers earlier i mean they cannot ignore this this is an epidemic that's widespread this affecting hundreds of thousands of people. and it's affecting their ability to stay with their families to keep down a job so what do you think the military needs to do better and more of that they're not doing it all. well i'm a clinician was like moses may work with patients and seen hundreds of patients over the years and many of them with p.t.s.d. the truth is the way the military has to put the resources out each person responds differently to different kinds of treatment there is no one treatment we're all in it six months is not years to treat the you know it's not just the exposure therapy

even the government's own indications of eight to ten percent of people are helped through both through therapy those coming with a behavioral therapy interpersonal there are three other drugs the f.d.a. right now really approves two drugs for p.t.s.d. that if he went to the press and drugs paxil and zoloft. other drugs are used people it's a grab bag we military need to take seriously it wasn't so president obama. some of the rules about allowing people to be. with your counselor that i jump at this three percent a lot of it is because they were being diagnosed need to die they were being told they were a personality disorder the v.a. and so they they need to take it seriously they need to put more resources into the preplanned individual least of the each and every one of those hundreds of thousands of soldiers all right yeah i mean certainly an interesting discussion to

have especially as eleven million dollar study gets underway blogger and straight out contributor dr jeff k. an american soldiers aren't the only ones dealing with the horrors of conflict after nearly ten months of violent and often deadly protests it seems a syrian president bashar al assad has met at least one demand made by the international community the syrian president has granted amnesty to prisoners of the quote uprising crimes and to army deserters however it still remains unclear whether this move is too little too late to stem the violence arteta sara for us has more. the prisoners. can see that.

this is. actually why they were detained in the. prison. i was accused of weakening national security i didn't protest they brought me here by mistake. is a good step i'm just hoping to do everyone. i had some weapons i had inherited from my grandfather and was accused of bearing illegal weapons i've been here three months when people heard about the amnesty they were ecstatic they never thought this could happen. here in the. military intervention in. the.

arab world. situation. the amnesty shows that syria is trying to find a political solution rather than a security side and that the country is succeeding in implementing the plan agreed by the arab league. when all political prisoners are number one arrested since the beginning of the crisis have been released then the honesty will have a. fact is that the answer is c. does not answer to this. but if you know if your family just is welcome or hundred tapes will be free over the coming days but outside the prison rules people in the country remain trapped in the situation of the late. let's say father seems to be listening to stay sober. enough this. turning out of the crisis in the

eurozone and the follow up over the downgrade by ratings agency standard and poor's for france and eight other eurozone countries it seems as of now at least the fall out is minimal the french president nicolas sarkozy downplaying it and saying it would change nothing and it seems at least for now many investors may agree that's no major earthquakes in the markets have been experienced by this downgrade author and investor jim rogers gave his take on all things euro to our own and he said now way take a listen you shouldn't but bother to pay any attention to the rating agencies everything they've done in the past fifteen or twenty years has been wrong i stopped bothering him long ago everybody knows that france is no longer aaa everybody knows that italy is no longer as highly rated as it used to be the market knows all of this this is not news i know you have to report something but this is not news to people in the market nevertheless some time markets do react to these

are rating slashes by us and p. and other agencies specifically saying this time around that europe saw thirty of budget policies which you argue we already obviously know are not enough to get out of the debt crisis what's your view specifically on the crisis and how to get out of it. but the best way to get out of it is to go ahead and let people go bankrupt that the people who made mistakes take their losses the banks who made the bad loans the people who invested in in the bad and the bad banks they should take their losses and start over it looks as though the e.u. is about to make some of them take some losses and that will be good that way we can start over and go forward the problem ms no way is they're not doing enough they're not taking enough losses they're hoping that they can get through the next election or two and then everything will be ok this is not going to solve the problem it may delay the problem a bit longer it does not solve the problem germany's foreign minister is proposing

europe have its own credit agencies right now all the giants are u.s. based and aren't thought to have a fair grasp on the e.u. how do you view germany's proposal of europe having its own agencies well whether it's european or not is irrelevant the fact is you do need somebody competent and somebody who can examine and decide who is who is solvent and who has not sought you know its own until a few months ago that they had the united states is a aaa credit united states is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world it's absurd that it's true as was aaa now you just need somebody competent who can go in there it doesn't matter whether it's russian or australian american or european just so you have somebody competent and these guys s. and p. and moody's have had a a semi monopoly for decades they have gotten corroded and lazy and sloppy and they're no longer competent let's talk about greece the country struggling to get agreement with its private investors needs of for the next battle outruns how

likely is athens to return to the drachma after march as deadline it's been a warning of course you've been here for wants of different analysts that that's possible some of them think that that's what's needed. well it's certainly possible it's not going to be good for greece if they do it if they did that who's going to lend money to greece any time for decades i mean if they go ahead and withdraw from the from the euro then they go back to the drug may everybody knows they're going to print drug miss day after day after day just as they did before and you're going to have recurring periods of bankruptcy and crisis and you and your they can do that they were a basket case before they will be a basket case again if they do it it would not be the best thing for greece but it does not mean they won't do it politicians do pull these things all the time that's a germany and france have repeatedly pledged their commitment to the euro with chancellor merkel saying she wants all states within the single currency to stay how far do you think the powerhouses are prepared to go to prevent

a great default what greece it has to is going to default it's no way there's no question that greece cannot pay its debts they can do it in an organized manner where they can say ok we're going to put this together we're going to take fifty percent losses or whatever but they can just walk out the door and cause a crisis you're going to have some kind of default there's no one hundred percent chance of them whether it's down in an organized manner by disorganized man with your with greece leaving the euro going back to the drug war causing chaos i don't think that what happened not this year anyway it might happen some day but not this year and that was investor and author jim rogers. and i will do it for now but the ilana show is coming up right here on our t.v. in just a half hour what's the deal with the media blackout of the stop online piracy act better known as sopa tonight alone i definitely call and see that news on the show to talk about the big news from over the weekend but for more on the stories we

covered go to our to dot com slash usa check out our you tube page it's youtube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter at christine presence on. culture is that so much china commercial comes on to compliment a recasting american lobel military strategy or just more of the same problem obama's new vision for the pentagon is aimed at saving. me leave. to be. elite.