partnership between the two countries might also be going up in flames. the winners are the perversions and the government people with power and money and the losers are the supporters and a new bill in congress has all of the bells and none of the whistles truth seeker's want from the days of the pentagon papers to wiki leaks and bradley manning the rules of the game seem to be changing so far informers losing their voice in the u.s. . but a month multi-billion euro bailout in greece may be made happy by some of the markets for the moment but it's also sent shock waves through the country and now it seems as though greece may default after all on democracy so is the cash strapped country to become the euro zone's first colony next door in just a bit. and

it's wednesday february twenty second five pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching r.t. now we begin today with afghanistan where at least seven people have died and dozens were wounded in clashes with the qur'an burnings at a nato military base that incident has sparked days two days of anti western protests across the country with thousands taking to the streets both the nato general and the white house apologize for the burning here's the white house spokesman jay carney yesterday we apologize yeah people in this group such conduct in the strongest possible terms this would be equally unfortunate incident that does not reflect the great respect for military has for the religious practices of the iraqi people. now as america's longest war drags on it's hard to blame the afghan people for struggling to see that great respect that carney spoke of the koran burning was likely a grave mistake the photos showing marines urinating on corpses were disgusting actions of a few individuals and while these kinds of instance incidents are outrageous enough

to spark anger in their own right anti-american sentiment in afghanistan is inherently tight u.s. policy where we have night raids secret jails support for corrupt officials warlords and malicious and how do you win the hearts and minds of a population that is in the midst of essentially an ongoing occupation by foreign troops but for a broader look at some of the blow back effect from u.s. policies and get a stand i'm just joined by journalist shade who's been covering the region and we'll welcome. incident comes at a time when negotiations between the u.s. and the karzai government of essentially stalled over two key issues the u.s. night raids which you've covered widely and the sort of network of of jails and detention of suspects by the u.s. let's let's let's break this down start with the night raids why is this a big issue in afghanistan. well as the it's been an issue since the beginning of the war and frankly. afghan civilians afghans throughout the country do not

appreciate the idea that foreign forces particularly western forces can drop into their homes and villages and cities and any time and really invade the very sacred privacy that afghans hold in those places so we've we've seen a struggle go on since the beginning of the war with western forces trying to capture suspects and in some cases killed them it at night and without any advance warning and often this can lead to civilian casualties as well where it's people who are not involved in combat action at all they're sort of the casualties accidental casualties so there's been a lot of anger brewing for the last several years over this and yet despite i think there's been several studies out there is then human rights groups a lot of people have raised warning about this in terms of civilian casualties as are coming about as a result of these arrays and yet the u.s. continues to call them one of the most effective and perseid counterinsurgency

tools why is that i mean if there's such a blowback effect in terms of turning the population ripening change the topic. well that's it's it's an interesting point and it's a weird kind of mathematics that the nato forces are using with this as you mentioned some experts who study this the use of night raids have seen that as they increase the support among afghan civilians for the nato mission decreases so the more you need use night raids the less this billion elation is on your senate but when i was last there in afghanistan a few months ago u.s. officials were telling me that despite this night raids were still considered the most effective and one of the safest methods for targeting specific insurgents and they cited their own statistics to say that they more often captured a person they were looking for then killed or injured any civilians accidentally so

even though it plays out in the media the way we're seeing it today and now. the u.s. military and nato still think it's a good idea so they have not gotten to the point where they're willing to really really examine it yet and possibly with detrimental effects now unfortunately this isn't the only policy that has some questionable consequences i want to sort of bring up be reliance of the west in an effort to sort of counter a growing insurgency in afghanistan that's especially in northern afghanistan the u.s. has been relying on militias essentially in a condensed province that it i'll pose the taliban there where they go pretty good job i guess keeping the taliban back in the battlefield but have also going to his of committing agree just human rights abuses and really turning the local population against them. top a little bit about that i mean you know i thought we learned our lesson with the whole blowback effect when we supported them which i think that's a something that's. yeah this is it this is one of the later efforts at the nato forces particularly american forces to train not. local police units police

structures so that somebody will be and can control when nato starts to withdraw in two thousand and fourteen and in some cases earlier so it's sort of the latest and some see it as the most promising ever to. turn local civilians into their own police forces but a lot of times the available body of people to drop into these police forces is of questionable questionable background questionable education and things like this that we've seen a lot of problems in not just confused but all over afghanistan where these new local militias have gone haywire in some instances and what you're talking about is one of the more egregious examples but in other places they even though they're drawing salaries from the government they continue to on the side collect so-called taxes from the civilian population which means that they'll often go and sequester

part of the local cotton crop so that's what we're seeing a lot of different problems with these these groups nobody seems to be able to control them entirely and it seems that the afghan people are suffering and. there's also this this instance it seems not only supporting this sort of militia groups of questionable origin but some of our biggest allies in afghanistan for example. kandahar have been accused of again egregious taking the rights violations torture and there's been i guess it's a difficult question because on one hand you know nato forces certainly are are not going to be still seen kindly on the ground in afghanistan on the other hand the how does the population respond to the u.s. backing of these kinds of thinkers. well it's really mixed it and it's often depends on where these particular afghan commanders for come from in the south particularly. whereas it is based as you just mentioned. often those military

commanders and police commanders are trying from other parts of the country so they come down from the north say and they will drop into a passion area where they don't have any relationship with the people and generally that might be seen as good because they don't have any sort of bribery network they're not involved in local politics but on the other and they get down there they have no allies and they start to feel the set on all sides so they behave in ways that nato can't control so if nato for better or worse and usually for worse is lumped in with people it sides with and in many cases those are commanders military or police commanders who do things that ultimately reflect badly on the nato effort and that happens all over the place they don't hasn't been a good way to deal with that yeah so with this drawdown our reduction n.n.n. forces and place i mean do you get the sense from your experiences on the ground in afghanistan that the structure that's being left in place attention only bad deadly

what essentially are a very dangerous one for stability in our country absolutely i think that it's going to be problematic but i don't see and i don't see another way of dealing with it really nato is expressed its desire to leave afghanistan in more or less by two thousand and fourteen so it needs to put something in place and that's what we're seeing happen now and in a lot of cases we end up where nato ends up taking figures were not entirely clean and in some cases very shaky but there aren't too many other other ways to go about it there just aren't many people to choose from in that region all right well thank you so much for your time and i guess the discussions like this help people sort of understand some of the their reasons behind be outraged in incidents like the qur'an burning and thank you so much for the start on us and a writer. after nearly two years in custody the soldier charged with the biggest

leak of classified information in u.s. history will be formally arraigned tomorrow private first class bradley manning faces a possible life sentence for his alleged leak to the web site wiki leaks but critics say that the u.s. is actually trying to make an example of that young soldier in order to dissuade others from leaking any sensitive information in the future and some say there's a war against whistleblowers and bradley manning is just one of its many casualties or correspondent christiane put out reports. nearly two years in waiting much of it in solitary confinement and private first class bradley manning stride is finally set to begin. among the twenty two charges filed against him aiding the enemy violating the espionage act and illegally transferring classified data to an unauthorized source wiki leaks. part of that was this video showing u.s.

army pilots killing unarmed civilians including to avoid hers and a video that had been classified by the u.s. military the government accountability project just in raid access it never should have been you can't also cannot go around classifying criminal activity that is not proper classification and i haven't heard a single person claim that what the collateral murder video showed was not work on a sentiment manning seems to agree with in an online chat conversation he said he hoped his putting the information out there would prompt worldwide discussion that he wants people to see the truth a short time later bradley manning was arrested in the process becoming one of the clearest symbols to date of a new set of standards a system that now works against those who are port wrongdoing and protects those doing the wrong quite often in the name of national security the pendulum right now

is still very much a post nine eleven time and national hysteria and limited civil rights and liberties and she would no doubt was the justice department whistleblower in the case of the so-called american taliban john walker lindh i had advised not to interrogate him without an attorney and not to torture him and when i blew the whistle i ended up being put under criminal investigation referred to the state morrison which i'm licensed as a lawyer and put on the no fly list but it wasn't. he's this way in two thousand to the time magazine person of the year was the whistleblowers and although the government tried to have him put away for life daniel ellsberg was hailed as a hero by the public for leaking information that became known as the pentagon papers classified documents he helped author that revealed what was actually happening in vietnam both were. what he revealed to the public what the public should have known from the government itself. important knowledge and important

knowledge now often stifled both on and off the battlefield and the military and is sexually assaulted or abused or even great she's supposed to go through the chain of command which will actually harm her instead of helping her outside of the military policies are also being drawn up to protect corporations the so-called whistleblower improvement act if passed would actually harm whistleblowers requiring them to report misconduct to their employer first before going to any regulatory agencies it would also remove any incentives to do so our government. the businesses are still intricately reigning it's hard to tell them apart both now working harder than ever to keep their secrets out of the public eye in washington christine for zero r.t. i will for more on this issue i want to bring in a chase my dark he is the author of the passion of bradley manning and he joins me

now from our new york studio case welcome back to the program hear sirens behind the cops are after you. you know we've got you on the program before we've talked about sort of this evolution of whistleblowers and and bradley manning pardon me daniel ellsberg wasn't greeted as a hero from day one there's you know sort of a process where these leaks take place first the government retaliates but then these people sort of become. an important force in your society so given that do you agree with this search and that there is an actual war against a whistle blowers or is this just how it always plays out. there is always a war against whistle blower it's true that the obama administration has has stepped it up considerably with twice as many espionage prosecutions as previous administrations combined but from the outset i just want to make it clear that the real threat to our national security is not leaks or whistleblowers it's

the extreme level of secrecy that we have in washington washington currently classified some seventy seven million documents a year which just on its face is very troubling and this just isn't a matter of ideals we have paid a very heavy cost for this level of extreme overclassification in the past ten years the rush to war in iraq was due in large part to government secrecy distortion and some downright lies and that is a war that has cost us dearly in blood and treasure as well as the people of iraq those are the costs of secrecy and we always have to keep that in mind when looking at whatever supposedly risks whistleblowers and leaks incur are and that's a good point but at the same time the reality is that we are in the midst of these wars and not just the hot wars but you know the war on terror the thought that

cyber war threat so i think the u.s. government also have a responsibility to simply protect state secrets in the name of national security. well secrets that are truly necessary to national security say nuclear launch codes or troop movements sure classify those i doubt that even julian assange for whiskies in him would disagree with that statement but but classifying seventy seven million documents a year it's hard to see the rationale for that is just great was a lower herself was saying why was the helicopter gun site video classified to begin with isn't that something we ought to see something that americans ought to know about since that is our war you know the idea that government should just be a little bit transparent this isn't something that was cooked up by leaks last week after all it was james madison who said that

a popular government without popular information is but a prologue to a tragedy or a farce this is a very old idea it's a very good idea. james madison to viewers just tuning in he was not known chomsky's teaching assistant in the summer of love he was the fourth president of the united states in the primary author of our constitution i don't think there's a broader crackdown and dissent here i mean we heard earlier this month there was an anonymous top u.s. official who told the new york times anyone who criticizes the drone program is helping al qaeda think. do you sort of see this perhaps a blurring of the line between activists and terrorists there in the media or in the government. oh the government is frequently try to blur that why anyone who opposes a government policy is the enemy behind the very cowardly guise of anonymity will

say something to some reporter i think we can brush that aside. we depend on leaks and knowledge which most leaks are not punished just last month somebody leaked to major newspapers or look at the national intelligence estimate for afghanistan and iraq which painted a very ugly picture of how their war was going stalemate no progress it's a good thing that this was leaked this is critical for us to know if we as a nation are going to make an informed decision about this and whoever leaked it is not a traitor work criminal or helping terrorists that person is a good patriot good citizen just like bradley manning just when rader and daniel ellsberg are and yet traitor terrorists etc those are the kinds of terms we often see at least on for example the mainstream t.v. networks in regards to these folks who leak this information julian assange controversial figure love him or hate him we as

a network in fact have even been criticized for getting the guy a platform in the first place accused of a sort of terrorist conspiracy just by getting us die a voice do you see maybe an abdication on the part of at least the television news media in the us in terms of treating these kinds of leakers seriously. i do i think we have a deeply embedded mainstream news media not just in television but also in print media and instead of doing their job. and uncovering what their government is really doing and asking hard questions they are happy to act as stenographers most the time unfortunately i don't think our government or media has learned very much in the past ten years and you see that both government and media are of poing much of the same script that got us into the iraq war this time changing the weather cue

to a letter. anyone who has seen the clip of erin burnett of c.n.n. talking with representative peter king head of the home and security committee of congress. will see this very clearly all right well it's an unfortunate scenario and at the end of it the american citizens will soccer because we're the ones that depend on the media to get our news to get our information and to hold our government accountable and actually were out of time to thank you so much that was chasing mccarthy off there at the crash and the passion of bradley manning. thank you all right well still ahead here on our t.v. greece might have dodged a bullet of the latest eurozone bailout of the country might be getting. you in fact it just might be getting shoved into submission that story after next.

spring drives right right i mean it's like a derivative of paper it's a product essential a. much stronger than anything if you buy a lot. of times stronger than any one of the. rebel fresh protest broke out all across greece today over harsh spending kind of

cuts that were a condition for its second bailout the one hundred thirty billion euro package a chaotic default next month but has very little to calm fears about the country's a long term economic and social future and remember the greece is the birthplace of democracy at the heart of harsh austerity conditions have some critics asking whether the country has in fact turn into a colony of the eurozone the u.s. has very little direct exposure to greek debt so the bailout does mean the u.s. economy is safe for now but the financial crisis still looms large and we may not be as isolated from our great counterparts as we think of some like journalist j a meyerson argue that greece is simply a more extreme example of what's been going on for years around the world take a look. it's not only a more extreme example of what's been going on here but it's a more first world example of what's been going on all over the world you know the i.m.f. and the sort of major international engines of neo liberal capitalism have been

treating the developing world the global south this way for decades you know haiti in liberia and all these places that they they presume to bail out when they reach horrible fiscal conditions but what that entails is huge cuts to. social spending privatization of the commons obliteration of labor a huge very sharp decrease in labor in living standards and in wages and this kind of thing has been going on all over the world for you know in africa and in latin america and in southeast asia and greece is the first place that we really see. hugo a big first world economy ostensibly a democracy a robust middle class white people being treated exactly the same way as as you know the guy m.f. and the world bank and everybody else have been treating the third world for some time so i think that that has sort of brought it home in the united states but we

see in wisconsin and in indiana and in ohio a tax on labor rights we see the privatization of the commons here we see a shifting of responsibility for the financial crisis from the people who actually caused it to the people who suffer most from it in the united states and in greece because they can't pick back their debts it's just turned into a much more extreme thing there which is how come you see the buildings torched in athens and i'm glad you brought that up because that's exactly what i want to get into for those of us who aren't economic experts and don't sort of focus on the ins and outs of this the word austerity sounds like some foreign term but you know whether or not you think it's bad policy it's essentially taking away service says that and spending less on things that people are you still. results in ordinary he . well paying the price for an economic situation that wasn't necessarily their doing and that's something that we've seen echoed right here at home in the occupy wall street movement if you can just sort of bring the greece closer to our viewers

for american viewers to understand why there are similarities between what occupy wall street wants and what greeks want. sure well i have some numbers here that i've written down so this latest deal is one hundred seventy two billion dollars going not to the greek people but to the holders of greek debt which is you know goldman sachs and deutsche bank and all of the big villains of the world plus one hundred forty one billion dollars in debt write down going to the same people and the conditions for this and this vote is going up early next week is a five hundred thirty million dollars cut in pensions so you know like grandma's going to be living on dog food two hundred twenty five million dollars in health education cuts six hundred sixty one million dollars in cuts to the health care system these are numbers that i can't even really comprehend because i myself am not an economics expert seven hundred fifty four million dollars in cuts toward medicine it's it's difficult thing on the people right the country the government

has the sovereign debt to big financial interests all over the world and rather than defaulting on those they've decided to default on their people and that is a condition that cannot be upheld by a democracy means people it's people power and to that end greece where as you know democracy started has given up its democracy has turned the government over to this guy puppet the most who you know is mystically referred to as a technocrat in the press but what that really means is a banker he's formerly a vice president e.c.b. the european central bank which is the thing that controls financial or fiscal policy monetary policy all over europe so greece does not have sovereignty of fiscal policy which is the way that most people deal with. situations and get and they are going to have an elected government i'm sorry there are a lot of time to very briefly greece is in a dire situation and the u.s. might do certain things that seem similar you know we're talking about cutting certain services we have bailed out large corporations but it's not exactly at the

level of greece how long could it take for us to get to that situation could we get so that's a chill issue where. occupy wall street is going to be rioting and protesting against actual dire cuts and not just especially these cuts the united states has a much bigger economy than greece greece is a peripheral country and in europe so there's very very little danger the united states would have to default on its loans but that doesn't mean the people in power won't use the situation the united states towards the shock doctrine right creating greater ease of accumulation of wealth for the already very wealthy at the expense of living conditions for the already very poor all right i think i think that's all the time we have for that now but i actually let's do one more question. i guess what's the biggest takeaway lesson here in terms of people who cause these financial crises not necessarily paying a price. but the biggest takeaway is that what the world faces now and this is not

just true in the developing world but also in the in the extremely wealthy world that what we need to do right now is exert all of our pressure on our ostensibly democratically elected governments to extricate themselves from the grip of the wealthiest financial interests whose sole. motivation is the infinite accumulation of wealth but that that situation is incompatible with democracy and we have to reclaim not reclaim we have to claim our country for democracy all right well thank you so much jesse myers an independent journalist and contributor to truth out. well that's going to do it for news this hour the change the channel the alona show is coming up in just about thirty minutes a lot on the agenda tonight including for the latest to solve against civil liberties of muslim americans in new york and bring you the details of how the n.y.p.d. has been spying on american muslims in the fullest sense of the world and business is booming for bodyguards and that's that is based on the first u.s.

contractors with the drug cartels fighting the next unliterary as well as each other and terrorizing local populations anyone traveling to the country these days knows that they need protection while the bodyguards are there to make big bucks i'm going to give you all those details just. and unfortunately that does it for now for more on the stories we've covered is what r.t.e. dot com slash usa and don't forget to check out our you tube pages you tube dot com slash r.t. america and as always you can reach out to me by following me on twitter that's at u.c. cafe know i want to hear what you want us to talk about stay tuned. it'll. be a good solid.