it was. welcome to the lower cell with the real headlines with none of the mercy from a lot of washington d.c. now and i'm going to take a look at the spending what's on the chopping block and what's getting to fear mongering on iran then representative john garamendi is going to joining us to talk about the n.b.a. as members of congress are actually trying to get the language that includes american citizens removed and occupy is back in action across the country today with occupy shut down the corporations and we're going to talk about their plans as well as the d h s report on the movement that's been released and the latest from

the week's stop so have all of our market i want to those of happy hour but first take a look with the mainstream media has this front and. all right so shocker after yesterday's primaries in michigan and arizona and mainstream media is just going. night for mitt romney who pulled off a double victories in both michigan and arizona running one by a mere three percentage points is that enough romney racks up two more wins but the rest of the candidates are not giving up but romney survived his latest political near death experience by the top of the search for a new candidate romney narrowly carried michigan with forty one percent of the vote it was ugly he won by three points in his own state of michigan we should get it and i saw some bloggers had referred to it right santorum seems completely incapable of being disciplined enough to deliver

a stump speech gingrich in single digits by the way at seven percent and gingrich stage this comeback he's the comeback kid so super tuesday could be here is the comeback kid here in atlanta in tennessee he has to do very well if he does not do very well there will be a lot. pressure on you gingrich to finally leave the race. now i know that they do this political horse race coverage every day and i usually criticize them for the inane details they choose to spend hours discussing it off it through little mix of campaign coverage and then everyone's other favorite fear mongering on iran which augment with conspicuously absent today defiant iran taunting the west iran is calling it a major achievement its nuclear program scientists have loaded nuclear fuel rods into the core of a research reactor tehran is fueling its centrifuges with nuclear fuel and that is stoking fears that the rogue state is indeed one step closer to an atomic bomb is

this another step potentially underground road to potentially making nuclear weapons and is certainly a step down the road towards a nuclear weapon escalating nuclear tensions with iran this morning president mahmoud ahmadinejad is shown supposedly loading nuclear fuel rods into the tehran research reactor it is a huge source of pride for iran but should it be a source of worry for the west ran as ballistic missiles with a range of about one thousand miles obviously putting israel well within reach this is iran doubling down on moving down the path towards a nuclear weapon. arts that's what we normally see that was kind of absent today i don't get me wrong there is other iran who talk about today and we're going to get into that our first interview but i took a moment to zero in on some of the differences that we see between cable television news and print journalism we know the mainstream cable networks have for the most part even up on best to report it right with the exception of perhaps sixty minutes

is just so much easier and cheaper to fill t.v. airtime with flashy graphics pundits and sit around and stroke each other's egos we do still however see some good work done from print organizations are always there when you see me point out the really blatant government keep that. mortgages asians like the new york times and the associated press but lately we've highlighted some areas where they did shine a piece of us a geisha the n.y.p.d. surveillance program on muslim communities in the northeast for example or as you brought up yesterday they piece investigation into drone strikes and the resulting civilian casualties in pakistan let's erma go back to new york times series from two thousand and nine which david garceau won a pulitzer prize here are so detailed the revolving door the lack of transparency the deceitful nature of television networks hiring retired generals as commentators making them paid contributors or just bringing them on as analysts now many of these retired generals or other pentagon employees they aren't just getting checks and networks many of them are also getting checks from defense contractors

something which they don't disclose when they appear on cable networks as the is objective analyst which they are they're not since they're pushing for certain policies that line their wallets not to mention these are people who have risen up through the pentagon which has given them their careers so they clearly benefit from an expanding military state i know when they go on those cable networks they're not really treated as just the military viewpoints in a debate so much is the all knowing all seeing wise officials who were whose words are the truth plain and simple and as i knew in this practice and as i said this original new york times piece from two thousand and nine the point is that it didn't change anything this still goes on. and here's where another interesting bit of information comes in slumdog congo to hold the power point presentation for a long general barry mccaffrey who's an n.b.c. analyst and he was one of the worst offenders in this two thousand and nine year times piece and going greenwald wrote about it today detailing how mccaffrey presented a seminar to roughly twenty n.b.c.

executives and producers on january tell twelfth where he spoke about the creep towards war with iran making it sound like it was only ninety days away he war that were most likely be iran will be the aggressor in the situation and not the u.s. and he said that iran will not under any circumstances be deterred from going nuclear so here you have somebody who obviously has certain financial interests briefing n.b.c. executives so they can figure out how to cover the iran situation and you wonder why the coverage coming from a mess of d.c. and i've received teams with such fear marjorie and ignores i reports ignores warnings from the administration people like the secretary of defense the director of national intelligence who say there is no proof that iran has decided to pursue nuclear weapons anyway i want to get too carried away here what i really suggest you all do is go to salon dot com. piece including his or bottles and the seas for buttle to his piece to the earth but he brought his practice back up to remind everybody of where it really goes on a cable networks but to me is really the ongoing problem with all of this is the

continued lack of transparency or accountability on their parts to disclose the connections of their so-called objective analysts to other moneyed interests but events industry and he sees offense or response to glad was a general mccaffrey is but one of many voices that they hear from and whose opinions they value and that's fine but just because you claim to hear from many different people and your editorial meetings doesn't mean that your audience actually gets you on air when you give one individual so much time and they don't disclose their conflicts of interest anyway this is just a good reminder of what the mainstream media does to keep you in the dark so they can continue to choose to miss. i've got a number of foreign policy issues to discuss tonight take another look at civilian casualties of drone strikes in pakistan yesterday we brought up the not only of a geisha where they found new evidence of unreported civilian deaths but reprieve

has also filed a case with the u.n. human rights council so might we actually see that goes on there and secretary of defense leon panetta was testifying on capitol hill again today while the areas that are getting come from defense spending are being publicly discussed are there other areas that are quietly being beefed up let's just say that iran might have something to do with it so here to discuss this with me is innocent foreign policy analyst at the cato institute lou thanks so much for coming on the show tonight absolutely let's start we're going to get into the drone strikes just really quickly i want to start with the budget because we heard a lot from secretary defense leon panetta over the summer right right after this debt deal was struck and we heard about the trigger mechanism any call that a doomsday you don't get is. another kind of seem to calm down and now they're dealing with the cuts that are coming in stride not the trigger effect yet and then we heard general martin dempsey who for the most part is somebody that i've actually respected lately in his statements because i feel like he's been calling for some calm this eventually with the situation with iran and then he said that if

we were to suffer another round of defense cuts of this size we would stop to be a leading world power i think a little overkill wouldn't you think these are the problems with bureaucracies that you have in general general there was a lot more money more resources more time especially when it comes to something like the deal would be easier when it comes to something like war or you're going to always have military and civilian officials who are asking for more time and more resources this is what we saw in iraq were we always turned a corner there was never a corner that was not turned and is always a justification for more resources so even though we're spending even more now than we did even according to real dollars during the cold war and now you sort of see many officials in the pentagon and also in the white house sort of this. backtracking they're trying to sort of save as many programs as they can because it's a huge cash cow for many congressional districts as we know with the military industrial complex and this is something that should always be brought up i mean it's one thing i get it right if you want to save certain projects but to make these statements that we're no longer going to be a leading world power we still spend more than the rest of the world combined on

our military is just ludicrous and one of the things that i did find interesting is that finally you have senators because of the desperate i guess dire situation in their view when it comes to budget cuts actually bringing up the idea of trying to get rid of a few inflations abroad and we don't even really you know exactly how many bases that there are abroad and u.s. military officials they don't know either and you know do you think that that is at least a development or does this mean that they're basically just being shifted around like we also have a new naval installation in the dominican republic that people are complaining about there exactly i don't think anything really gets cut gets shifted around and i'm happy that you lead with iran story i mean this is part of the broader misinformation campaign that's been sold to many americans in the sense that you know we must be everywhere around the world we must have this present sort of primacy in foreign countries especially in regions where we haven't seen war for we're sixty years and i think when we look at those budget priorities or talk about the priorities of the american people many americans want to begin focusing on sort

of the home front in terms of our economic issues in terms of bringing those on wall street who are very funny actually connected and politically connected to those in the white house and in capitol hill sort of bringing those sorts of can ability issues to account and i think that's really the focus it's not about you know possibly a war with iran unfortunately this is what we're now seeing in terms of bringing more justifications for bigger defense budgets if there's another conflict in the gulf than certainly there's going to be no peace on capitol hill for cutting funds budget i think that's also a greater worry. would you think the entire situation to the way that it's being built do you think. we've had conversations on this show. people have argued that maybe it's the media with even more responsible than you know administration officials are because they're trying to be a little bit more bellow and i think have a little more caution about it right now and then maybe it's the media that's doing it even more than lawmakers and this seemed like the media is really just chomping at the bit for another conflict it's incredibly sad especially when you look at the

toll on human life of the cost exorbitant costs that have been imposed on americans i think really what you see is again a deliberate misinformation campaign when you read a lot of the news reports as if u.s. iranian history began in one hundred seventy nine it doesn't even talk about our overthrow of most american fifty three doesn't talk about our backing of the shah for thirty years and so it's definitely sort of cherry picked information that's being sold to the american people and that's why you see so many americans are not only do they say that they're sort of willing to dislodge the nuclear program from iran but if necessary do it militarily i think it's directly related to the misinformation that they're getting from these analysts all right so then we see so much focus on that at the same time let's get into you know at least this investigation that the a.p. did what do you think we don't see more focus on from strikes on the civilian deaths i mean i understand that the secrecy is an element here and it's really hard to do it's really dangerous to try to go to was nearest and and try to collect statistics on this but they did it why can't others were far away from the conflict

were very detached from the human cost and i think it's really unfortunate especially when you consider that number one they could handle teaser of course tragic but were actually inflaming a great deal of anti-american sentiment that spawns greater militarism and militancy and that's sort of the the issue that whenever drones come up and it comes up on this show the water the other sort of mainstream cable networks you really don't hear about the human cause you don't really hear about how this is inflaming agree deal of anti-american sentiment and so it's largely just swept under the rug and of course you know we learned in economics one hundred one that when you decrease costs you increase demand and so even though drones are cheaper and you know. there were technically and he just but they take a great deal of sort of greater human life we're going to probably see greater intervention as we've seen in yemen and somalia because of those costs. do you think those other organizations sharing decision reprieve is actually trying to take a case to the u.n. human rights council they've also done a lot of research into seeing the costs on the ground trying to talk to those that

live there in pakistan and they have photo evidence right they have other evidence taking something beyond human rights council unfortunately that can result in anything i said i don't think so i mean it's the golden rule whoever has the gold makes the rules and unfortunately you know there is a huge industry and there's a huge many capitol hill who are going to direction of greater drone operations we've seen the increased sales of drones in of course you know this sort of gets to the issue even though we're increasing the number of drones that we will be deploying and even possibly on the us mexico border in terms of the clarity of the resolution in terms of the accuracy of what we're getting it's deeply in question in fact the wheeler defense expert he just wrote about this recently on peer reviewed journal articles that talk about the fact that we don't have great accuracy with these things with these drones and in fact just last april two u.s. marines were killed in afghanistan because they were misidentified as the enemy so i think there are a great deal of problems with these drones and unfortunately we're going to see their increased usage so how do you feel about domestic drone surveillance now the

president has signed is that a bill recently away all that's going to be used by law enforcement there you are selling it as a way to help find people that are lost in the grid or i guess media organizations can use that to you but i think that there are some serious civil liberties issues here absolutely it's deeply troubling i mean number one the fact that will we be able to have sort of this be without warrants or will this be done without any sort of due process who's to say that someone can you know sort of spy on you when you're at home through your window i mean the limitations on what exactly they can surveil is very much in question and i think that more americans should demand to have more information just like for the run up with the iraq war you know many americans just. why only one along with what officials argue i think the same is almost happening now with drones in the sense that all will be used to for search and rescue missions will be good used for good purposes but they can always be used for nefarious purposes to go back to the one thing that you said earlier to you when you know you mentioned that we have not only of course in pakistan but yemen

you talk about somalia and this is a means of intervention if you look and if you look at pakistan too there's there's a lot more involved than just drone strikes right where we're funding these counterterrorism forces there we're giving a lot of money in aid do you think they'll ever get to the point where they think that just throwing you this is going to be. doesn't count in that sense that they can come separately from all kinds of money well that's certainly a pretty good thing i mean i'm happy you brought this up because a lot of the arguments used for drones is that it's much cheaper than manned aircraft but as you suggest i mean if you begin using drones that that becomes a just occasion for even deeper intervention so therefore we must have military advisors therefore we must have snatch and grab operations and sort of you saw this expansion in pakistan and you know sort of drones as the entryway for you know eventually raymond davis the whole room in the atmosphere i could imagine that we're going to see many more of those instances in other countries such as yemen and somalia and who knows where else could point. to thank you so much for joining us it's always a pleasure thank you. our guys aside for

a quick break but we're far off by size across the country are protesting the influence of corporations in our political system so bring it all the details on today's mass action for with the. same. people calling what you said for free and fair elections. and we're still reporting from the land where you can hear behind me loud explosions. and. gave. a.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else here's some other part of it and realized everything you saw. i'm sorry is a big. our

guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to my brilliant engaging viewer comments on facebook twitter and you do because you've got something to say i listen now first i want to respond to your that watched our discussion on whether or not college was first snobs and indoctrination indoctrination liberal indoctrination of course as what rick santorum sets so can you read my deadpan comment on you tube i'm a business major i never have had a liberal professor boycott would probably i believe that now the political science and bill major u.c. santa cruz i definitely had my fair share of liberal professors but my friends in

economics apartment were all different story. and it's just not true that all professors are liberal universities like the university of chicago bastions for conservative economic thought so once again rick santorum is just flat wrong now next i want to respond to a comment or that launched our interview on the wiki leaks e-mails a.t.m. juste comments on you tube while we eat is a great idea to make information public they haven't really said anything that should not have already been know the only thing that i've seen is them putting a spin on documents that shows they aren't on it's now because one thing of this comment sounds like it's familiar even reading or listening to any of the media commentary on the latest with release you're going hear two things we can fix is bad and the information that they released is worthless the same thing was said about the wiki leaks state department cable release everybody rushed to say the cables were useless there was nothing new and then proceeded to write story after story all of them for months and continue to refer to information gleaned from those cables today so regardless of how you feel about leaky leaks their sources

their tactics i would urge everyone to listen to the media national security expert narrative regarding them with caution how about we just wait until all the emails are actually released to say there's no new information in that it's just an idea and next i want to respond to a diligent viewer who grabbed a screen shot of the show last night joshua are suborning it posted on our facebook page hey alone i'm a big fan of the show couldn't help but share a good screen shot with a random arm popping out on last night's show so i'm going to take this opportunity to introduce you guys to our wonderful floor director frank frey come on out. this is this is the mystery arm. break who makes everything work out here every single day so thanks frank an audience that you're familiar and finally it's time to respond to a proposal there you just can comment is going to be on our facebook page alone and when you marry me i'll be a half decent husband not all you want but better than nothing while the offer

sounds very interesting and if it was yeah stick i'm going to have to respectfully say no and for next time i think we'll bigger go home kind of flowers and fireworks type of girl that's it my rantings and i always back with more as usual next week. hold another day of action for the occupy movement today with feb twenty ninth going under the banner of shut down the corp and the corporations coordinated by occupy portland now according to the web site protests are planned in over ninety five cities to specifically target alec the american legislative exchange council nonprofit policy group which had a strong hand and drafting legislation targeting undocumented under the command of immigrants and public sector unions and the actions also some on the heels of elites v.h.s. report put out as part of the new wiki leaks document dump from e-mails obtained by stratfor the reports show the homeland security was tracking at the occupy movement from the early stages and all the reports and we track the movement by using public media sources has raised a lot of questions as to what and who exactly d.h.

has should be keeping an eye on well what other undisclosed methods anything out there we'll find out more and obviously as continued efforts and reactions joining me from a studio in new york is john nestle contributor for salon dot com and co-host of radio dispatch john thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess if you could just start by giving us a breakdown of what you know in terms of today's actions of this shutdown the corporations really a success. absolutely great to be here today's actions meant to highlight as you said was alec and today in new york their actions outside a bank of america that resulted in a temporary shutdown as well as an action outside pfizer that resulted certainly in a disruption of business as usual and and i think that more than anything else it highlighted this sort of shadow we missed arius organization called alec and

that of course stands for the american legislative exchange council which meets in arizona. comprised of state legislators and corporate executives who get together and quite literally rate bills behind closed doors that the state legislators then take back to their home state present as their own and then the legislatures vote on that and this is known as model bills yeah i don't foresee i think i think that we see a lot in particular do you know the occupiers of the people that are participating today take. you know have a problem with that type of legislation that alec has been pushing. absolutely what you see from alec is a very far right wing pro corporate agenda. and in many ways it exemplifies the kind of backdoor dealing that i think

a lot of activists really want to highlight is as an example the like has proposed a lot of privatizing of public schools they are also there one point put forward a state build that would allow for the use of lethal force if somebody entered your home that bill was associated with the n.r.a. who is a one time supporter and i think that probably a lot of viewers might not be familiar with alec even though they've been around it from one nine hundred seventy three that's when they were founded and that's because there is an almost complete media blackout on this organization i did a little bit of looking into this and over the year over two thousand and eleven alec only showed up in the new york times a total of seven times just for to sort of you know gauge that against something else i did a search for charlie sheen because it seemed like the biggest story story of two

thousand and eleven you show up in the new york times over five hundred times so that just gives you an idea of how. significant. the blackout is now and as far as corporate news goes the networks a.b.c. c.b.s. and n.b.c. you have to go back to two thousand and one that was the last time alec showed up. at the unfortunate world that we live in where charlie sheen is the one that makes it into the new york times all the time i really period. here you know your thoughts on the lead the h.s. report that we got from the stratfor e-mails were put out there when i first glance and you look at it and you see that it's just all put together through open source . tiriel right it's just a link to articles from the new york times from the guardian from bloomberg it's really painfully i guess you could say simple doesn't really seem to have a whole lot of depth to it but aside from that you find it troubling i mean should

we have expected that the h.s. was going to be monitoring the occupy movement or at the end of day is it still wrong that they were doing it. well i think that this just confirms what a lot of activists already suspected there have been various settings of v.h.s. bans and suspected agents really from the beginning and it shouldn't come as any surprise considering the national surveillance state that we live in that d.h.s.s. is monitoring. activist activities as far as whether or not we should be worried about i think we have solution b. i think that there is clearly a coordinated effort among mayors as we saw in the dislodging of the encampments and the fact that the n.y.p.d. is getting federal money to to execute its muslim spying on muslim businesses i think that it's also certainly possible that the local police departments are getting federal funds as far as dealing with occupy goes and i

think that even more broadly speaking this report fits into the social media subpoenaing that we've seen from the manhattan d.a. and the boston d.a. and the oregon bill the state of oregon bill that tried to essentially criminalize twitter now in oregon that bill would've made it tweeting about it event that where a misdemeanor happened into a felony if three or more people showed up it's essentially a way of making social media organizing a sort of conspiracy or a conspiracy to incite a riot basically so you could be in the bizarre situation of tweeting about an event that results in a misdemeanor and be charged with a felony for that and so the. subpoenaing twitter it's to it's to find out where people are signing in where they're using twitter it's possibly to

find private messages that are sent over twitter more than anything else it's meant to lead actor. organizers know that the authorities are watching it and that they will use every tool at their disposal to bring it down and i think that this report is just really the tip of the iceberg as far as what the federal oversight as far as i can play goes yeah well no it definitely seems like they're using every tool because it's not forget you have local law enforcement they can deal with peaceful protest movements you have the f.b.i. you don't necessarily you bring the department of homeland security which is meant to protect against outside carers threats you know into into this kind of mix if you're going to have some measure of law enforcement out there are monitoring peaceful movements then you have other departments should be doing it but i guess that will be doing it not necessarily i agree but john thanks so much for joining us tonight here absolutely my pleasure. kyra.