all of that so what happens when emotions are taken out of war. everybody knows that france is no longer aaa everybody knows that italy is no longer as highly rated as it used to be and market knows all of this quick someone call aaa looks like the european market is in desperate need for some roadside assistance author and investor jim rogers explains why this might be the little market that could. good evening it's monday january sixteenth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching r t some thoughts this evening on the state of journalism in america things are changing of course with the addition of facebook and twitter social media vehicles that make it so that news is reported as it happens and it's not just people typing up what they're seeing there are photos and

videos attached so you can see it too from revolution in the streets of egypt to moammar gadhafi is a brutal beating and death on camera for the world to see to cell phone videos capturing every gaffe of every presidential candidate at every campaign stop it's hard to argue that 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 your 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 will now be connecting the dots for you the reader viewer with more analysis here is a snippet from an internal memo circulated at the a.p. . it said quote we're going to be pushing hard on journalism with voice contact

with more interpretation this does not mean we're sacrificing our deep commitment to unbiased 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 so not just to what where but why and what does it mean or at least what do they say it means as much as the a.p. that's changing piers morgan show and c.n.n. will change as well he recently told t.v. news or that in his show's second year changes to him his program piers morgan tonight will include making it quite a bit more mysterious with more humor more opinionated piers morgan says he's no comedian like jon stewart will never be as partisan as bill o'reilly but he will nonetheless add humor and opinion there are more changes and examples to discuss and we'll be talking about a few of them today i spoke just a little bit ago with seton smith comedian and filmmaker from new york i started 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 if this is good i'm actually wondering i want to be in that meeting with a.p. i want to know what 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 in the media we 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 this or so i can say which was no no 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 so i was we're civitas which is which is got to say because these kind of blatantly doesn't know what date

in america it is and it was placed like like bill o'reilly is you know crazy. jon stewart is you know crazy his own way hannity is threatening to kill the president and we've got this one guy going to be more has to be assumed to call people in the midst t.v.'s he should really figure his zero point out i don't know over the 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 were you 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 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. criminals you disagree but let's take it that's right gas prices security problem. that's why why not end it so i realize that james why 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 look like an anti american it's not its name calling let's not give anybody any real waiting 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 tempers and the name calling on air. i love it i don't know why we got to knock this out if you watch the 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 and 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 that 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 walk the congress was doing things while getting better that would be stupid. and that's i mean is certainly i'm jerry springer and its heyday when i had 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 gaffes luckily that hasn't happened yet to my knowledge at least i say this yes it is you know 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 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. right now i've got you all you know there's another one of a kind of question about. it 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 not something you just wake up out of the morning go jets out of. you've got to look you've got to practice a little camera right now i'm going to yell about you about some new shit like you like president obama appointing these recess appointments of people yelling about the system like i had to take a minute but. it's that challenge so we can applaud him on that at the very least all right i think this is some good point you're making there's also seen 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 island 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 as attempt 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 he's part trying to protect also murdoch tweeted 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. of any way we can destroy it 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. really can't really say maybe bob on it was one of piers morgan's or purse bronson's one and it was a very good but still it was there so nothing there you know what about this i mean what about this idea that only that the owner of that 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 era but do you think you don't think it's crossing the line at all. you know because i feel like of the other things he's been accused of breaking into people's phones fox news in general jim tweeting

is the least of his offenses up he has a ninja assassin is what it was like he just. has the least thing he's tweeting us a big that's not to do it's like oh it's like saddam hussein tweeting all right thank you we all right it was we did you just compare kill less people did you just compare rupert murdoch to saddam hussein i'm sure he didn't know who i just did but it's better the complete comparing him to hitler i think i'm a saddam hussein at least current ok there you go with what is actually more certainly lots of interesting stuff unfortunately we're out of time comedian and filmmaker as seen smashed and new york city. so had on our take the blue pill and forget everything that ever happened forget the horror of war and the reality american soldiers face every day take the red pill and hear the truth that story coming up next.

you don't believe the rough. but what do you want to ask nobody seems to know. that never ever sprayed the face but part of the argument that they're being overly dramatic. welcome to the capital account mr.

harcourt. i think. we have a. safe. freedom. 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 no longer be ignored i'm talking about post-traumatic stress disorder and perhaps it was simply because it couldn't be ignored any longer i'll show you some numbers

twenty percent of soldiers who've been deployed in the past six years have p.t.s.d. that's more than three hundred thousand people now in two thousand times the number of diagnosed cases in the u.s. military jumped fifty percent and that's just diagnosed cases and a lifetime prevalence of p.t.s.d. in combat veterans is ten to thirty percent some startling startling numbers there so now the pentagon has announced an eleven million dollar grant to study the effectiveness of a new drug. d.c.i. class writer d.c.'s believed to help get rid of fearful memories so here's how the study will work 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 also taking a pill half forget d.c.s. and half will get a placebo and experts at some different universities emory university of southern california and also new york presbyterian cornell medical center will study the

effects but we'd like to talk about on the other effects of this prospect even as well namely what will the results be if this drug actually works is 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 reason but there really will be minutes that. this drug which is called the staple center renal b.c.'s. is a commercial was destroyed and is the one you get the latest in a series of different drugs that the military but also medical researchers have been looking for to try. breed ineffective treatment proposed marriage stress disorder which is awful awful disorder to have you know it's no surprise that the military in its quest to intervene all over the world is seeing hundreds of thousands of cases in a room in this field most where even 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 work that we do need to look at that's not going to happen if things are really 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 it but put forth a pill that can solve everything. wrote well this pill 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 the same drive show that it was market studies done in montreal in boston that were in yet the military is going to put out a living 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 who have a real accident grades people who are victims of violent crimes the truth is it would be a group boot to humanity if some medication were around it could improve recall for people who suffer p.t.s.d. but it's a stream we let's thank you know through physical physiology book 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 this map of the human beings and they are truly affected by it if the military thinks that it can develop a drug find 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 the feeling you know what type of. terrible things would could you do with them in warfare and what those soldiers showed with the euro nations and 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 produces madness in the people who engages. it's. you know rather than 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 we're losing limbs but they're very strong as are we into 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 stop the motorist both sides of the united states and other countries as well. 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 clue from as they call it just move work with patients and hundreds of patients

over the years and many of them with p.t.s.d. the truth is that where the military has to put the resources out each person was once differently to different kinds of treatment there is no one treatment we're all in it takes months or years to treat us the you know it's not just exposure therapy even the government's own indications. eight to ten percent of people are helped through exposure therapy to kind of behavioral therapy interpersonal therapy other groves the f.d.a. right now really approves two drugs. so if he were to be present drugs paxil and so on and other drugs are used people it's a grab bag we military needs to take seriously it wasn't so president obama and some of the rules about allowing people to be had which are cancel out that a jump of fifty percent a lot of that is because they were being diagnosed they need to die they were being

told they were a personality disorder. and so they need to take it seriously they need to put more resources into. individually scott that each and every one of those hundreds of thousands of soldiers are yeah i mean certainly an interesting discussion to have especially as the levin million dollar study gets underway wider and tricked out contributor dr jeff k. . well it is now the winter following the arab spring in the middle east in north africa and tunisia the country where it all began and now looking ahead after elections were held there as we saw in egypt with the success of the muslim brotherhood and the salah phase is warmest have also been the big winners in tunisia as well the result of the tearing down of the longstanding previous regime so what does that mean for the people there and had a neighboring countries feel about it are to correspond to really go to school textbook. it may have looked like a successful revolution getting rid of authoritarian regime while retaining its

westernized facade. but in parliamentary elections that followed tunisians voted for nada and islamist party which now firmly holds the majority of seats in the new parliament don't have political culture. for the first experience. making the choice between. political programs it was hard. pushed people to choose either with muslims and muslims. if you notice them. but western tourists need to have nothing to fear the party's leaders say here in bikinis a regular staples of. hot spots are here to stay yet recent events at the university one of the largest in the country show the tunisian ways are indeed changing their protests erupted right here on the we're going to verse three several female

students came in wearing which is the traditional islamic headdress which covers most of the face leaving does the eyes open begin to verse of the authorities have prohibited such head dress. so the students went on strike saying their freedom was being oppressed almost. the majority of students were against the strike but they were threatened by those in the minority we held out on principle we are against girls wearing head dress and during the exams it's a question of security and of trust and professor bleby acknowledge the students right to wear whatever they please after all she says this is the essence of freedom but in the case with niqab she felt a different from the simple issue of dress code since usually head dress serves to protect the woman from possible unwanted advances and activists for women's rights in the country believe the underlying political tendencies are thinly veiled by the strikes at university. whether one wears any cop and whatever else this thing

an important i'm not afraid of women's does. to wear head dress i'm afraid that this issue may be used to provoke other problems the parliamentary opposition meanwhile fears this may mean bad news for the new born tunisian democracy you know because. you're worried that we may slim down to a new hedge amounting to rule by one of the representative parties and not to receive forty percent of the seats in the assembly the post of prime minister is also there's every tunisian is afraid to confrontations and riots may. be not a leaders have made numerous assurances that they're not going to turn to me into a strict sharia law state but many of the country are already saying that the worrying signs are here. r t tunisia turning out of the crisis in the eurozone and the fall out 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 with french president nicolas sarkozy downplaying it saying

nothing will change and it seems at least for now many investors agree as no major earthquakes in the markets there have been experienced author and investor jim rogers gave his take on all things euro to artes and he said now we take a lesson we 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 rating slashes bias in pay and other agencies specifically saying this time around that europe's austerity 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 sovereign and who has not sought you know its own until a few months ago that they had the united states as 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 an ascending 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 drive-by everybody knows they're going to print drug mistake after day after day just is that good before you're going to have recurring periods of bankruptcy and crisis and you and greece sure 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 to pull these things all the time i would that's a germany and france have repeatedly pledged their commitment to the euro with tesla merkel saying she wants all states within the single currency to say how far do you think the powerhouses are prepared to go to prevent a great default what greece it has that is going to default and it's now right 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 where this downturn organized manner or disorganized matter with your greece leaving the euro going back to the drug mccall's and chaos i don't think that what happened not this year anyway it might happen someday but not this year. that's going to do it for now i want to thank you so much for watching i'm christine will be back here in thirty minutes. when can uncomfortable question leads to agree that the world who is more is you know fog. the president who isn't supposed to hide anything. worth someone asking why do you make a secret out of when the powers to be.