home ever again. bloomberg started the group mayors against illegal guns which is lobbying for stricter gun enforcement laws and the group even ran an ad during last night's super bowl festivities an age when federal and state lawmakers are trying to find new and creative ways to arm the nation and get in bed with the n.r.a. it's nice to see mayor bloomberg trying to stop the needless and totally preventable violence that plagues our country the ballot box so-called news on fox and friends this morning host eric bolling steve doocy and gretchen carlson actually suggested that the bureau of labor statistics was cooking the books when it came to the new unemployment figures here's what the talking heads had to say. are they playing around the numbers look it's the bureau of labor statistics it's supposed to be nonpartisan but that's the department of labor hilda solis heads the partner of labor hilda solis works directly for obama you know our whole series are kind of what i'm saying there's there's room for error there's room there's a but when you talk about four million people how do you know how do you how do you

know how to make it and i don't think anything anyone should be surprised e-mailing as you know your articles french openly suggesting that the obama administration is engaging in a propaganda like campaign it just doesn't seem very fair and balanced and the very very ugly u.s. senate candidate pete hoekstra books throws running against incumbent debbie debbie stabenow in michigan or as his campaign calls her spend it now and during last night's super bowl his campaign aired this ad continuing the mispronunciation of her name they will. thank you michigan senator debbie stand it now debbie stand so much and managing many more and more for much of your economy get very weak eyes get very get you take your job thank you debbie spend it now i think this race for u.s. senate is between debbie spend it now and keep spending i'm pete spend it not bookstore and i approve this message the ad has garnered

a great deal of negative press since last night with many calling it racially insensitive and this is. the national g.o.p. consultant even called the ad really really dumb here will just call it very very. well press is reporting that there was an incident at the occupy d.c. movement. brick thrown at a cop. parenting court they said it was just a plastic bottle but you combine that with the recent activity and alyssum in oakland and you wonder what's going on you know is this with this occupy an incident is there a flaw in this model of general assemblies frankly i think not but what we're seeing here is a core battle and the battle lines that are being drawn with the in the occupy

movement as it grows as it moves along is between whether it's going to be a liberal in the classic sense movement or whether it's going to be a conservative movement rush limbaugh versus me on the radio here talking classic sense or is it going to be a revolutionary movement or is going to be a reactionary movement that's the question this is a primary question that is literally thousands of years old i mean the socrates three thousand years ago was support of the revolution of the four hundred than the revolution the forty people got so upset when they said no thanks mr socrates drink your hemlock commit suicide the romans you know democracy sounds like a good idea but only if you live in rome can you vote in only if you're roman citizen and so is the empire spread all over europe as furry small number of people who are actually voting the catholic church was asked this question can people govern themselves so this is the essential question of the of the assemblies can people govern themselves and their answer was catholic churches answer was no only

god can govern us and since he's not shown up too often the the pope will speak through him and then of course you've got kingdoms which actually were always started by warlords and those warlords you know were ruling by power again they were saying no show guns and emperors you know in japan and in china for example the mayans the aztecs the you had kingdoms all of this stuff all through history everybody said no people can't people can't govern themselves that was the core belief which is the core conservative belief. then in these seventeen seventies american democracy is great experiment as alexis de tocqueville called it was started and it has an interesting genesis the whole the whole american experiment the small d. to marcus e and it started out with thomas hobbes back in sixteen fifty one he wrote a book called leviathan and leviathan contains the seeds of both today's modern

conservative and modern liberal movements you can trace both of the roots to this book and there are two central arguments the conservative argument is that people can't govern themselves because they're essentially evil and dysfunctional and therefore they need strong leaders and the liberal argument that hobbes also made was that people can govern themselves it's a very interesting debate that happened back at that time know why can't people govern themselves one of the reasons that's been proposed for a long long time is that even ate that damn apple she screwed up everybody born as is born with the original sin. and so the question is what is the natural state of humankind you know whether you take the the religious story or not havs thought that the natural state of humankind was the same thing that he thought he saw nature animals ate each other he said if we did not have the iron fist of church or state controlling us then in such condition there is no nature and no knowledge of

the face of the earth no account of time no arts no letters no society and which is worst of all continual fear and danger of violent death and the life of man is solitary bru poor nasty brutish and short and this is the core conservative worldview people are evil and therefore you need these constraining forces and this is why you know chris matthews old joke republicans are looking for a leader democrats are looking for a for a meeting is true because you know this is the conservative view then john locke came along and in sixteen eighty nine john locke suggested that the state of nature might not be what hobbes described it might be different than other animals why because we have reason the ability to reason is what separates us from kwan fang now actually modern sure so is that of the whole kwan fang thing and all that true that that there is democracy in nature but nonetheless this is the evolution of democracy and what and what john locke wrote in his state of nature was man

living according to reason without a common superior off on earth to judge between them and that is properly the uniquely human state of nature right now there is reason that idea of locks was taken by reese so voltaire and and turned into the enlightenment a truly revolutionary period of time the end and this was when we saw the real clear definition of liberal and conservative the british were the conservatives the kingdom the liberals were the revolutionaries here in the united states and oddly enough you had a. americans who fundamentally were conservatives alexander hamilton john adams and you had americans who were fundamentally liberals john james madison and thomas jefferson the most well known and what the difference between the two was that these guys thought the people were basically evil and therefore you had to have the appearance of democracy but not too much and that therefore the compromise for

example when they wrote the constitution that the senate would not be directly elected or you know on the other hand you had jefferson and madison say no all the power has to be with the people and they were so emphatic about that that the constitution read article three section two it says even the supreme court shall function under such regulations as the congress shall make in other words everything is supported to congress why is that because congress stands every two years for election it's the closest to the people it's the way that you make sure that the people's will is is followed which brings us to today's occupy movement the question that they're facing is are they going to be a liberal representative democracy functionally are they going to you know operate on the assumption that everybody can participate or are they going to turn into a more authoritarian top down organization i remember the weather underground i was in s.d.s. when the weather underground came up it was an authoritarian top down organization

by and large. we saw the same thing in oakland in oakland is really interesting you had in fact we had a guest on the show who said you know we were the oakland occupy movement we marched in this building we had no idea where we were going because the leaders in secret decided where we go that's conservative not liberal that's reactionary not revolutionary so in a way we live right now in revolutionary times and we're seeing the same battle it was played out between jeff jefferson and adams right now in the occupy movement my hope personally is that they don't go the direction of the north authoritarian movement that they that you don't see leaders emerging but instead it's if there is anything it will be representatives that individuals will say ok you're you're there you know collectively they you know if anybody's going to be a spokesperson they'll be elected anybody's going to be a leader they will be elected because as they say in the occupied the whole world

is watching. that's it for the big picture tonight for more information to see any segment of the show check out our website at tom hartman dot com and don't forget democracy begins with you get out there and get active tag you're it.

he is easy to be. easy to be easy to. see. it.

welcome to the ilona show where you get the real headlines with none of the mercy working live in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at what countries could be planning next in regards to syria as u.s. lawmakers say that they're working on other options after u.n. security council resolution was vetoed by china and russia over the weekend scott horton is going to join us but a new report from the bureau of investigative journalism shows damning evidence that u.s. drone strikes in pakistan target those who go to help after an initial strike and even target civilians at funerals so how much longer will the u.s.

government allow the cia to keep their data secret we're going to speak to marcy wheeler about the reactions to this report and you know to some very politically tinge as during the super bowl this year we're going to talk about the insane amounts of money that are pouring in from all sides to fuel political debate in this country. and we have all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. well this monday there is no shortage of big news going on around the world americans to be tried in egypt the u.s. closing its embassy in damascus and continuing rhetoric heating up over iran now for once it's been one of those days where the mainstream media is actually chosen to give ample airtime to real news rather than just the typical partisan tit for tat i don't mean the campaign stories were completely absent but just for once they weren't the only thing that the mainstream media shone a light on. the u.s.

closes its embassy in syria and is recommending that all u.s. citizens leave the country immediately they are all americans not to even consider travel to syria because they say they simply cannot guarantee anybody security in that country hundreds killed in the streets of syria as the government tries to crush a revolution there this latest deadly bombardment comes on the heels of the weekend strike which killed about two hundred people at the syrian government we're told the state department saying has refused to address its security concerns and one of those major concerns was the possibility of some type of al qaida action egypt plans to send forty four people including some americans to trial meanwhile egypt's military led government plans to put one thousand americans on trial for allegedly using foreign funds to create unrest in the country or iranian regime is

never going to come to the negotiating table in good faith and they're not going to stop their nuclear weapons program i think the only answer is some kind of regime change. now in light of these stories and the international ramifications of the actions of state and non-state actors in the case of the americans arrested in egypt there's another really big story today the mainstream media unfortunately has chosen to ignore the in talking about international relationships and perceptions and talking about the deaths of innocent civilians what we see the mainstream media doing today picking and choosing when those civilian deaths matter where to lay down their moral judgments and see this weekend a report was released by the bureau of investigative journalism or british organization that we've spoken about before on this show and they've been trying to work with human rights activists journalists civilians in pakistan to get more information on how many civilian deaths u.s. drone strikes of really caused let's not forget the cia's drone program is secret therefore they don't release any figures or statistics and it wasn't until last

week of the president even acknowledged it existed public. and when he finally did what he was asked a question about it at the google plus hangout there we heard the president say that the u.s. drone campaign in pakistan is a targeted focused effort he also downplayed civilian casualties and told those listening to the drone program has not caused a huge number of them if we can check the figures how are we to know how can we counter his words and so let's get back to this damning report report by the bureau of investigative journalism they have some numbers to offer they found that since obama took office three years ago between two hundred eighty two and five hundred thirty five civilians have been credibly reported as killed including more than sixty children but it gets even worse than that to where you have to question if civilians were killed by accident or on purpose so what they found is that the cia's drone campaign in pakistan has killed at least fifty civilians who had gone to help rescue victims as an after an initial drone strike those that run to help were hit and a follow up attack investigation also found more than twenty civilians have been

killed in deliberate strikes on funerals and mourners and one example after a high ranking militant had been killed in a strike his funeral was considered bait to get another done fortunately that funeral was attended by almost five thousand people so in order to get one target the cia chose to put the lives of innocent civilians at risk which resulted in many deaths so this kind of information should make anybody out there sick to their stomach this kind of information should make every journalist in america call for more accountability over the secrecy of the cia's drone program to stop if it's being done in our name the we need a lot more transparency if we choose to cover government crackdowns in other countries show honest concern for the deaths of civilians we need to also care about the blood that's on our government's hands so while the mainstream media spent the day covering some real news in syria and in egypt we have to ask why they allow the secrecy of our drone program to continue to refuse to ask questions about it especially when an investigation like this comes out but for some reason when it

comes to the damage caused by our own government's drone program that's where they chose to miss. all right so let's talk more about this report from the bureau of investigative journalism could it finally put more pressure on the obama administration to force the cia to disclose more details or is the media doing a really good job of making sure that this goes by without much fear i mentioned at the top of the show that this report wasn't even touched by the mainstream cable channels now there was a report in the new york times this morning but the spin put out by an anonymous u.s. official in that article may show us just what the administration's strategy is going to be the quote reads as follows one must wonder why an effort that is so carefully gone after terrorists who plot to kill civilians has been subjected to so much misinformation let's be under no illusions there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign these efforts and

help al qaeda succeed so now if you question the drone program that make you a terrorist sympathizer joining me to discuss this is marcy wheeler a blogger and he will dot net marcy thanks so much for joining us tonight before we get into the new york times and you know what the officials are saying here let's just go back to the report and this investigation of the details that revealed you know how damning and damaging do you think that something like that is. but i think one of the things that's most damning about it is that they actually went in and they named the civilians that they say have been killed by american strikes so what they've done is really increase the quality of information that's out there about these strikes as compared to what the cia gives us which is nothing or obama's quote the other day which was you know slough or the cia claiming nobody has died or maybe just a few people have died i mean what they've got is really very specific information and and one of the things that i found really important about the report was when they went to see whether people were being killed if they went to rescue people

they said we started with fifteen attacks ten we found credible five we found not to be credible so it's not like they're going in rubber stamping stories of u.s. retaliation against civilians trying to help people who've been hit by a drone i mean they're going in and checking and trying to find evidence for it and as compared to what we get from the government it's much prichard data now when you say credible reports that's one of the interesting things here too is that there have been little tidbits out there right in i guess you can say the new york times or any other newspapers and by other media organizations before they just never put them all together like this. yes actually one of the things that they quote in the report is joe b. warrick who in his book on the triple agent this was the bombing in khost talked in specific about the the funeral drone targeting that you just mentioned and he had incredible sources for that book so to then say that you know this funeral

targeting practice is made up by by the bureau of investigative journalism is nonsense because nobody is at the same time questioning where it's reporting so you know it is credible work has done some of this before we had david wrote it in the new york times who was held captive by the taliban talking about drone strikes but you're right nobody's putting it together in a database with actual dates and numbers and names attached to each attack and i think that's where we really need to get to force the government to give us that same kind of data also in that sense that we do you think of this is finally something that might turn the tide you know or change the tide a little bit that we we hear obama finally acknowledging this publicly which i think you could say was a big move but now if you have more reports if you have more investigations done by the bureau of this ticket of journalism or by others can it finally force them to be more transparent and to disclose more details about it. well you know the administration is sort of kind of saying they're going to release more information about the anwar locky drone strike which was in yemen. so they are beginning to

recognize that they're beginning to suffer religion i'm a see issue here i think one of the other things that's going on is david petraeus has actually been less gung ho about targeting then leon panetta ahead of him before him with the cia and so one of the you're beginning to see interesting leaks coming out of the cia as well because david petraeus isn't giving the counterterrorism center kind of carte blanche to go bomb whoever they want to bomb so we're getting leaks anyway and this report i think is an important part of it but i have read the quote that you raised you know were al qaeda sympathizers if we asked pakistani journalists and locals to help put names to the people who've been hit me strikes. you know that they're obviously trying to push back and ensure there won't be any independent checking of their records in you know possibly in anticipation of them becoming slightly more transparent with it so it's really

important to have that independent reporting out there i had to read that just seems ludicrous and i was assuming that you probably agree i hope that you agree that now you have anonymous of course officials because they can't come out on the record because the program is supposed to be secret coming out and making this argument the now if you actually want to get the details of what the us government is doing that makes you an al qaeda sympathizer when when when will people stop trying to apply this logic or stop trying to use this logic because we saw much of the same thing you know in the build up to the war with iraq to write that if you by any means question the idea as to whether or not we should go to war there then you were unpatriotic or you might be sympathizing with you know we saw a lot of reports about the possibility of al qaeda being there or with saddam hussein. well the other thing about it is the perfect metaphor for the drone campaign right so you've got this very powerful government officials going anonymously to attack independent journal. and it's you know it's it's very

parallel to the kind of dissociation and distance that we bring to the drone strikes and also kind of the the. designed ignorance about what happens on the ground i mean so i think they're very parallel and you know leon panetta has also been on the record recently about about drone strikes so it's not like officials aren't being allowed to go make on the record comment so you really have to wonder why the new york times let that go in as an anonymous thought do you think that they should or that they should not have but i don't think that you know in glenn greenwald pointed out today that it doesn't it's the new york times policy on anonymous sourcing which goes back of course there depakote leading up to iraq or basically says you can't make you cannot quote officials making attacks on people. under the veil of anonymity you either paraphrase them if it's so important you need to get it in but you don't allow them to actually quote something at the same

time as you're giving them anonymity so court in the new york times rules they should have done it but it's also i mean it's so it's if this is all about information asymmetry right the government knows what they've been doing with from they've got videos of what they've been doing with drones a couple of journalists go in and fact check it and independently research it and all of a sudden you've got the government you know trying to hide behind this felicity christie again and you know we at the press should not be encouraging that kind of behavior because it just encourages more secrecy. you know i couldn't agree with you more there too and you know as i started the show open here was that for once i actually see the cable media out there doing some real news it's not all just fluff today and there is a lot of news going on in the world but you know if we're going to be covering syria or if we wanted to cover libya and bahrain anywhere i think we also have to take into account what's happening to innocent civilians by our own government. and

i mean to be fair it is really hard to cover this stuff in the pakistani tribal lands and i think that's what the administration is counting on it's you know it's easier it's still very dangerous to being egypt and even more dangerous to be in syria right now but there's almost nobody in the pakistani tribal lands who's been able to cover this a number of pakistani journalists have been killed for doing so and so there are i think really relying on how difficult it is to access these places to ensure that the story doesn't get out our marcell thanks so much for joining us tonight and you know it's a report that definitely i think needs a lot more people to pay attention to but it's good that somebody finally compiled all that thanks. are there still much more to come tonight occupy d.c. was addicted from the wear this weekend so explain how it happened and what the future holds for the also talked about syria they have us announce that of suspending its embassy operations in the country but horton connects.

the same. people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the same math you can hear behind me loud explosions. i mean.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else hears you some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry is a big. move

back are the words echoed by d.c. park police on saturday as they finally advanced on the occupy d.c. encampment had been almost a week since word was let out of the occupy branches in d.c. macpherson square and freedom plaza were going to be evicted and our early saturday morning cops got the word that february fourth would be the day of starting as early as five am the police came through the camp explaining that the tent of dreams that had been erected over the statue of macpherson square had to be taken down i was there for part of the morning and early afternoon on saturday and saw it began as a pretty peaceful calm environment where police slowly began to overtake one part of the park after another but then they started to remove the tents in an effort to enforce a new policy of no enclosed tents on the parks premises and many of the occupiers fled to one.