it's that there will be an attack do you think there will be some kind of actual armed conflict or airstrikes with iran and does it matter who's president or is this going to happen regardless i think it's likely to happen regardless the thing is the main thing is to make sure that iran does not get the nuclear weapons that's the starting place for all the analysis so how do you stop them or the first way we try was diplomacy which has failed in the bush administration bombing ministration tried very hard on the sea but it didn't work because the iranians were not bargain in good faith the second thing which we're seeing play out is psychological operations cyber warfare sabotage assassination that's been going on for years been fairly effective at disrupting things but hasn't really stopped the iranians in their tracks the third way is regime change we talked a little bit about that before the break in the soul of the u.s. is going for it gone forward and absolutely and no one worries that india has nuclear weapons because it's a democracy and it's moderate so it's as much about the regime as it is about the weapons if you get regime change but that probably won't happen there completely with this so the fourth which is war so nobody wants it nobody wants to see it

happen but it does seem likely because the rains are not backing away from this nuclear program then the question is timing if you wait till two thousand and thirteen it's too late the rains will test the device in all likelihood before that and can see on the eve of the presidential elections it looks a little hokey you're not going to see it before march because we want to see how the elections play out there's a lot of intelligence content in the election results so that leaves a window of kind of made august and i don't know what the secret war plans are but that's when i would look for it sometime in the june july time when we're going to have war with iran and quantitative easing that well they've made a move that i'm sure they may not be on your way to. go to three hundred you're going to need some quantitative easing and that's my question ok we've had a lot of predictions of what happens if there is any kind of conflict with iraq two hundred fifty dollars barrel oil is what i've heard from one analyst roubini says we have a global recession what would be the impact of any on any global recovery or on a global recession if there was any kind of concert with iran one of his very famous general in the german general world war one. they said no battle plan

survives the first shot you may think you know what's going to happen and you do the best you can to model it but the truth is you're just playing wild cards at that point so of course we would expect the price of oil to go up significantly but people take a naive view of what would happen in the straits of hormuz that the iranians close and they'll say well the u.s. will clean it up in a day might not be a day it might be a month i mean that's the kind of thing where we could lose a vessel sadly i mean a lot of things could play out unexpected ways there are a lot of a lot of hezbollah in lebanon well guess what there's a lot of hezbollah in south america they could find their way to the united states you might see general clapper was warning the other day about domestic uranium backed terrorism in the united states so there could be sharks and disruption that are not on anybody's radar screen i don't think all this is fully priced in the market like people understand it we're talking about and others talking about it but markets are sometimes slow to react so this is not fully priced interesting and what about what we were talking about with financial warfare you actually think that i think that there could be a blowback in the form of cancer just moving away from the u.s. dollar but it's starting already part of that because of bernanke his policies you

know when you can't have a strong national security without a strong dollar we've been printing so many dollars in trying to cheapen our currency the countries that already started to think about getting out of the dollar system now we're giving them another reason which is we're using it as a weapon i'm not saying we shouldn't do that because we need to confront the iranian regime but the iranians are some reports of the they're talking to the indians about doing a gold for oil swap there's a lot of gold in india so that actually is feasible it's interesting that the saudi arabians have stepped up to supply the shore oil shortfall to china so if china can have a rainy an oil they'll get it from the saudi arabians but what about the indians they need oil to they're kind of like the cold so they're talking to the indians or so they're the indians talking to the rainiest china may get in the act i could see a russian chinese indian iranian central asian clearinghouse that would be non dollar denominated could be commodity back could be local currency back so the mess . they could just be completely outside the dollar system very interesting and we

just have thirty seconds but does all of this mean that gold comes out the winner it sounds like there's no there's no question about it or you know the exact goal is constant everything else is the loser but yes short answer is the dollar price of gold will go up significantly gold will perform well relative to all currencies because you know as you showed in your graphic all the major central banks are printing like crazy so you know there may be leads and lags and noise in the crossover gold is going to go way up well i have to thank you so much for being on the show and you're always so nice to have your insight is just amazing and if anybody hasn't they should read the book that's out there and senior managing director of tangent capital partners.

all right before we go we just want to break down a few stories give us your our three cents on them we have dimitri kovtun us in studio and shannon donahoe in the control room to talk about this we didn't get a chance yesterday to break down consumer credit but there was consumer credit came out way higher than expected ok it was like nineteen billion dollars for december expectations were seven billion dollars turns out what is driving this largely student debt how much of a disaster is that i just had to talk about it on the show because i think that that's just a terrible sign well i mean it's part of the problem like you you know what prices keep getting larger and larger more debts to give people the ability to afford what they can afford when you told that they have to pay it back when they can't which is the whole problem when we talk about all time with and i just want to remind people because we were we were talking a little bit about the jobs numbers b.l.s.

forecasts and they forecast that the top jobs looking forward to two thousand and twenty are all the top five none of them require even a i don't think a bachelor's degree it's like you know home health aides retail associates office clerks i mean i don't know if people should be loading up on the student debt based on the kind of jobs that are actually available or projected to be available. that serve them well yeah shannon you want to. i mean obviously the economy is down so people are going to go to school but i mean you make a good point that the jobs that are out there the jobs that are available are ones that are going to be filled by these people who now have their masters in higher education and they're not going to get the pay raise that they would expect and that's the rationale exactly what you said the economy's bad not a lot of jobs people are going back to school but all i'm saying i'm not discouraging education at all i advocate great education i definitely am

appreciative of mine all i'm saying is take a look at where the economy is going and where jobs are going to be maybe you can get one here because this is what's in the pipeline trump made it to pennsylvania avenue if we could go to the next story here in d.c. after all maybe not the white house but take a look at this. whether turkey or terrific i think he'd be the best person because he's he's done so many other things i've watched to show donald trump plans to turn the old headquarters of the post office at the turn of the twentieth century it to a trump hotel. so the government announced tuesday that trump's real estate company has been selected to turn the old washington post office the billion into a luxury hotel so i think this is great this is a you know great use of a public building you know we always talk about the inefficiency of washington the more you know private business we can get him to run it efficiently i really do really want donald trump as the neighbor to the president i mean he's not going

anywhere he's just going to have a business venture i mean he could be i mean like with too close for comfort you don't want someone like donald trump looked on purpose so bitter like he can't become president so what is the he buys a hotel. it's a leveraged buyout to him if he doesn't have that much money he just you know borrow the money to buy cozy of most obama you just. don't go personal no ad hominem attacks here i basically i think that if he actually is there which you won't be i think that could bring a lot of more color and light into the washington. news cycle because he always has something interesting to say shannon i think she should actually fix the post office if it's the old post office building there and there is a post office in there that maybe you should donate some of that money to the post office as opposed to making a luxury hotel. bill because religion and the post office is broke and there's all sorts of ideas about what could happen out of that but let's talk about this because we've been dying to february is national tent time management month and

though it isn't an officially standing holiday with government it was created maybe by super organized people like shannon to bring attention to productivity maybe it's not a national holiday because productivity is actually really high in this country because workers have to work harder because there's fewer jobs but we wanted to give you a sneak peek at our productivity. thank you that's what's what's going to tell us what shannon hold on a second is on sale. yeah that's how the magic happens the thing is that is so true you are true all i barely ever look at you is the most junior hands are great as you and i'm busy producing i'll show for our wonderful viewers ok we work very hard i'm going to cut out any comments from the peanut gallery i don't more because that was obviously

a joke ok. thank you so much for you to go into our show feel free to follow me on twitter at lauren lyster to get you direct mail tomorrow and give us feedback at youtube dot com slash capital account we will also back by popular demand i promise to bring you more words of the day all over of yours have been asking for it will get back on the ball stopping so i'm sure dr then produce those but for now from everyone here at capital account thank you so much for watching and have a great. top

stories this hour in r.t. the un is considering a joint mission with the arab league to end the bloodshed in syria with ever conflicting reports of the number of casualties it's proving hard to get a true picture of events. that the greek government plans more sturdy cuts to secure one hundred thirty billion euro bailouts amid public anger at the technocrats in brussels say they think that these measures will be enough to win the rescue plan. that europe plans its oil embargo on iran there are concerns the move could get countries most dependent on to rein in crude like spain. will have more on those stories in full in about an hour from now and also an update on

our main stories in half an hour in the meantime why america approves the use of drone attacks even when they're against the country's own citizens and the owner now delves into some contentious capitol hill policies in the. world with. its technology innovations all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered. welcome to the show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey who live in washington d.c. now it's not going to take a look at a new poll that shows that americans overwhelmingly approve of the obama administration's use of drones in targeted killings even in cases where it's an

american citizen so what does that say about our society then the state department is reportedly going to have to slash its personnel in iraq to do what some described as a rocky obstructionism but whoever thought it was a good idea to keep sixteen thousand employees there anyway and we knew it was coming a bill that would require the f.a.a. to open up airspace for the domestic use of surveillance drones is now headed to the president's desk to sign so what are the pros and cons including the effects on your civil liberties and your privacy we'll have all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. the years since nine eleven we've seen drastic changes in this country many of them justified by lawmakers pundits defense and intelligence officials and analysts all peddling constant fear and one specific area that we've been warned about incessantly over the last few years is a threat of homegrown terrorism and it's not just

a line that was repeated by officials or put into reports you know we saw the government act on it we've now seen extensive documentation of local police departments specifically the n.y.p.d. spying on muslim communities we've seen one sting operation after another and how could we forget there are those hearings on muslim radicalization held right here on capitol hill and you know the mainstream media well they've played along with this hysteria all along compared to other heinous crimes every time that there's been an arrest and what could have been a terrorist plot especially with a muslim perpetrator staged by the f.b.i. or not that mug shot was splashed across the screen for hours days even weeks on end. now who is this teenager authorities say wanted to cause so much mayhem in portland the new chairman of the house homeland security committee is going to hold congressional hearings on the radicalization of muslim americans later this week new york congressman peter king says the hearings are to help him learn how certain

u.s. citizens are recruited or drawn into terrorism according to court records mohammed said he had been interested in just since he was an early teen even writing for just this web site under an assumed name all of them were actually the intended targets of a would be terrorist here to wage war right in his own backyard. according to the undercover f.b.i. agents who spent time with him nineteen year old will home with us manuel hubbard was a teen anxious to go quote operational and to learn about explosives are you targeting muslims. absolutely not what i'm talking of that is violent terrorism extremism. so considering our media's obsession with the threat of homegrown radicalization or five you can call it concern if you want although i don't buy it you would think that a certain report released today what caught their eye and triangle center on terrorism and homeland security has just released a report that shows that the feared wave of homegrown terrorists terrorism by radicalized muslim americans all that shows that it has not materialized the

report's author actually called it a minuscule threat to public safety and the report also includes these details plots an arrest have dropped sharply over the last two years since the peak in two thousand and nine of about fourteen thousand murders in the united states in the last year not a single one resulted from islamic extremism so there you go folks this incredible threat hasn't materialized and yet one of the sacrifices that we've all been forced to make in order to be ready to counter it one of the grave offenses that have been committed against our civil liberties the power grabs that lawmakers have been able to make while selling us fear of a homegrown threat as usual glenn greenwald. did another great job today of recounting it for us at his blog on salon dot com that includes miranda rights being curtailed for domestic terror suspects we now have an indefinite military detention provision codified into law through the n.d.a. that was signed by the president on december thirty first of last year there's a bill that's been pushed by members of congress to strip americans of their

citizenship if they're accused of being associated with terrorism and as i already mentioned we've seen our local law enforcement spy on muslim communities spy on and infiltrate communities based on their religion even work with the cia in order to do it i guess though that's technically against the law right and you know all along where has our mainstream media been when it comes to reporting on these changes the truth is that for the most part they have been part of the crowd that's actually been peddling the fear they've allowed the fear mongers to grace the television screens often unchecked by any facts or statistics they spent countless hours holding up the threat and the fear by flashing mug shots of scary looking muslim men and yet one report comes out showing that this threat has been inflated the facts do not back up the claims now they just completely ignore it and it's a good thing was hard to find either people was written about in the new york times but it's something of the fear pushing accomplices in the mainstream cable network media have completely chosen to miss.

well here's a poll that should make us all ask questions of ourselves and of what kind of a country become to the other day joint washington post a.b.c. survey was released showing improving numbers for president obama on everything from the economy or against other candidates the g.o.p. candidates specifically and on matters of national security and if you look even closer at these results though you'll find the following the pertains to specific issues that this president campaigned on things like closing guantanamo bay and respecting the rule of law the results from those surveys show that seventy first. cent of respondents approve of obama's decision to keep him open that includes fifty three percent of self identified liberal democrats and sixty seven percent of moderate conservatives and when it comes to the administration's use of unmanned drone aircraft against terrorist suspects overseas eighty three percent of americans said that they approve and here's where it gets scary of those who

approve of drone use seventy nine percent think of the use of targeted killing against american citizens abroad who are suspected of terrorism is justified so is this tragic or should we have seen it coming join me to discuss this have gusto list civil liberties blogger for firedoglake kevin thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess my first question to you is what your immediate reaction was when you saw these specific poll results because i was i was pretty shocked but you know maybe i'm just being naive i think the revolting whole numbers but i don't think that they're entirely surprising given the fact that back in july of two thousand and ten we had the a.c.l.u. warning that the obama administration was in danger of establishing a new normal and i would say that the way that americans view national security policies or counterterrorism policies certainly indicates that. this is so we have established in your normal country i want to get into some of the specifics to for

example this question about keeping guantanamo bay open and asks if you approve of the president's decision to keep guantanamo bay open which is kind of interesting right because he'll claim that this is something he's been trying to do the opposite of close it all along and yet his hands of been tied by congress. it's interesting because it's almost as if this could become a political question in the twenty twelve election which anyone who has been following the election closely knows that neither mitt romney nor barack obama nor rick santorum or anybody else save for maybe ron paul is going to make an issue out of guantanamo bay prison and so that's one aspect that i've thought of when i saw this result but also you know it's awful fifty three percent of liberals would be ok with letting the prison remain open and you really have to put it like that because and well i think they might be thinking that because they believe that

obama's hands are tied it's really awful because i would expect liberals who are passionate about supporting obama to lead the way and have the courage of their conviction to say if they think it's wrong then they would be urging obama to close it on that sense to have to talk about a good point that brought up on his blog today when he talked about the hypocrisy of so many liberals or progressives or whatever you want to call them that were incredibly critical of the bush administration because of guantanamo bay because of the erosion of our civil liberties and yet i mean you and i spoke about this many times before if you look at the obama administration's policies not only is he kept open by you know he is far and away really exceeded what bush has done in other respects so why do you think that for this progressive crowd you know by the way let me just mention one more statistic here on killing the u.s. citizens with drone strikes democrats approved by fifty eight to thirty three and liberals approved by fifty five to thirty five so when we talk about this specific group why is it ok now. i think it has to do with priorities largely things that

most liberals are thinking about economic issues when they go into the voting booths and i i think that it's really a question here of what kind of country are liberals willing to live in. where are they willing to put civil liberties on their list of priorities that need to be defended in this country i have to stop and think sometimes is it possible that some of these people would be willing to live in a country where we have all of these violations of civil liberties where it's possible or someone to be tortured where it's possible for somebody to be indefinitely detained where there's rampant surveillance where there's all these things that you and i might consider to be undermining civil liberties but at the same time if they can have a country where they have free health care where they had full workers rights where everybody was allowed to unionize where people had no rights to abortion where people had equality and anybody who ever they were there was cultural equality if

they had all this were they would be ok because i think that it does seem like they did this doesn't factor at all into their decisions when they're supporting politicians do you think that civil liberties and being on the bottom of the list in terms of a lot of other democratic policies. i think so and that may be largely a result of the political class itself in this country i mean quite frankly we you and i understand that barack obama and mitt romney they aren't going to go out to any podium and start talking about torture and they're not going to go out there and start talking about surveillance in this country because those are mechanisms that are needed to prosecute the war on terrorism and so it would be undermining the the whole american project to use that term if they were to preach to us about how civil liberties were being undermined but at the same time i mean civil

liberties right these freedoms that we also often take for granted that's what america is supposed to be about you think of these are the things that we hold most dear and so you know i'm just wondering for example with this issue when it comes to approving the administration using targeted drone strikes to take out american citizens suspected of terrorism abroad if it hit closer to home do you think there would be any difference i mean we did see a little bit of an outcry and we saw the crowd booing at some of the g.o.p. debates when the n.d.a. was signed by the president when this whole concept of indefinite military detention of american citizens came into play. i think it does depend on who the target is unfortunately most liberals and or you know we're talking about americans in general probably would be willing to violate a lot of these civil liberties and how they've been trained to think since nine eleven and so they're willing to undermine civil liberties so that they can be safe

so that they can supposedly the government can prevent terror attacks from happening but you know i just think that people here in this country. they they're very trusting of the government to they're willing to go along and and say to themselves that it could never really be as bad as as you were at you or i might think that it is that even though people are being targeted without due process overseas and they are being killed without having any chance to defend themselves and and and argue whether they are in fact terrorists or are not well this really isn't something that is being abused and so they are just there's a whole lot of wishful thinking and i just don't think that it matters a whole lot to them because at the end of the day the big critical issues today have to do you know with the liberals that i follow it seems to be about economic

issues and i think maybe in some ways that we have to talk about these different rights like you quality and workers' rights as if like well these mechanisms that are undermining civil liberties could be used to affect you as a worker and maybe you as the person who wants to have equality as a as a woman as a gay and lesbian bisexual transgender person or something like that what do you think kevin that that the media bears any responsibility in this regard to them and i harp on them all the time for not really covering the drone program for when a report came out by the bureau that's a good journalism that says that we target funerals right and we target civilians that run to help it they don't see it anywhere on your t.v. screen. yeah i mean this isn't something that's going to be making any news casts and most most for the most part. they'd be hesitant to question because quite

frankly they're going to go and they're going to ask somebody who's with the pentagon or they're going to ask somebody who's with the f.b.i. if this is in fact happening if they read about some kind of an atrocity and then they are going to deny that that atrocity has happened and then they're going to say oh well so and so said this isn't exactly what's going on and they're going to go about their business and maybe they'll facilitate some kind of a discussion on their newscast but for the most part that is going to establish for them a boundary for how they cover the issues now and you get a whistleblower if you get somebody who becomes someone out there in the spotlight who there are allowing to go on t.v. to talk about this say well example somebody like donald vance today is getting a rehearing and he was tortured in a prison in iraq and rumsfeld was possibly responsible and yeah when i get anything that that's one of those those rare occurrences kevin i got to wrap it up and forth

about thanks for joining us tonight i mean i think that it's pretty disturbing bring up some good points that made people just care more about the economy right now but it does seem like land everybody's given and when both sides just accept this that you know we're going down a dangerous path thanks so much. our guys are taking a quick break but when we come back the new york times says the u.s. embassy in baghdad is facing a crisis no splenda and a less than full salad bar what seem like small inconveniences could have larger implications for our future in the office we'll delve into the topic with michael o'brien since we come back.