in the. top stories this are all teen french officers are reportedly the train in the heart of the uprising in syria as government forces retake the rebel stronghold in the city of homs. massive protests and rallies across the e.u. about the cups affecting millions putting a question mark about brussels for sold them on to a star city. israel faces international criticism over its policy of detaining suspected palestinian militants indefinitely and without the chance of a trial. with another summary of all of those main news stories in about a half an hour from now in the meantime the only on the show is next here on.

welcome to the lower show the real headlines with none of the mercy we're going to live in washington d.c. now it's not going to take a look at spending what's on the chopping block and what's getting you to fear mongering on iran then representative john garamendi is going to be joining us to talk about the n.b.a. as members of congress are actually trying to get a 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 wiki leaks top so have all the market right putting a dose of happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media has. all right so shocker after yesterday's primaries in michigan and arizona the mainstream

media is just going for a. night for mitt romney who pulled up double victories in both michigan and arizona running one by mere three percentage points is that enough romney racks up two more wins but the rest of the candidates are not giving up romney survive this latest political news death experience why the talk of a search for a new candidate romney narrowly carried michigan with forty one percent of the vote it was ugly he won by three points at his home state of michigan we should get it and i saw some bloggers had referred to it rick santorum. wheatley incapable of being disciplined enough to deliver a stump speech in single days and by the way at seven percent gingrich stage this comeback he's the comeback kid so super tuesday could be here he is the comeback kid here in atlanta in tennessee he has to be very well if you does not do very well he will be a lot. the pressure on newt gingrich too funny to 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 profit through little mix of campaign coverage and then everyone's other favorite fear mongering on iran it's all met 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 it 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 on the roads 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 for posable a 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 branch as bluestreak missiles with a range of about one thousand miles obviously putting israel well within reach this is a ron doubling down on moving down the path towards a nuclear weapon. all right so that's what we normally see and that was kind of absent today i don't get me wrong there is other iran hoopla there to talk about today we're going to get it back 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 don't mainstream cable networks or for the most part even up on investigative reporting 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 stroking each other's egos we do still have some good work on print organizations are always there when you see me point out the really blatant government teat that. mortgages asians like the

new york times and the associated press but lately we've highlighted some of the areas where they did shine a piece of us a geisha the n.y.p.d. surveillance program a muslim communities in the northeast for example or as they grow to be yesterday they piece investigation into drone strikes and the resulting civilian casualties in pakistan let's go back to new york times series from two thousand and nine which david barstow won a pulitzer prize here bars the detail 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 in the networks many of them also getting checks from defense contractors something which they don't disclose when they appear on cable networks as these objective analysts which clearly are 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 expanding

military state and when they go on most cable networks they're not really treated as just the military viewpoint in the debates so much is the all knowing all seeing wise officials who were whose words are the truth plain and simple i was nothing new 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 london kong got a hold of a power point presentation from one general barry mccaffrey who's an n.b.c. analyst and he was one of the worst offenders in this two thousand and nine york times piece i'm 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 will 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

reaping 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 and b. c n n b c these kids with such fear marjorie and ignores the 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 glenn greenwald's piece including his rebuttal to n.b.c.'s rebuttal to his piece to the earth but in practice back up to remind everybody of we're 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 that offends industry and he sees offense or response to glenn was a general mccaffrey is 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 the a.p. that's a geisha or they found new evidence of unreported civilian deaths but reprieves also file the case with the u.n. human rights council so might we actually see that go somewhere and secretary of defense leon panetta was testifying on capitol hill again today and all the areas that are getting comfort and 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 that's got this with me is innocent foreign policy analyst at the cato institute who thanks so much for coming on the show tonight absolut thank you let's start we're going to get into 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 we heard about the trigger mechanism he called it a doomsday it is. another kind of seemed 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 cong 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 well i think these are the problems with bureaucracies that you have in general in general they always want more money more researchers and more time especially when it comes to something like the d.o.d.

or when it comes to something like war 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 there's 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 seen many officials in the pentagon and now also the white house sort of this. backtracking they're trying to sort of save is 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 so 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 you in filet sions abroad and we don't even really you know exactly how

many bases that there are abroad to the us 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 things get shifted around and i'm happy that you led with the iran story i mean this is sort 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 new president 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 we talk about the priorities of the american people many americans want to be in focus in sort of the home front in terms of our economic issues in terms of bringing those on wall street who are very well financially connected and politically connected to those in the white house and in capitol hill so 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 what we're now seeing in terms of bringing more justification is for bigger defense budgets if there's another conflict in the gulf been certainly there's going to be no peace on capitol hill for a cut in defense budget i mean that's also a greater worry. would be what do you think the entire situation to the way that it's being built up do you think. we've had conversations on this show. people have argued that maybe it's the media that's 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 it's doing it even more than lawmakers in this ng that the media is really just chomping at the bit for another conflict and it's incredibly sad especially when you look at the toll one 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 nine 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 a sort of cherry pick information that's been 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 just a lot of the nuclear program from iran but if necessary do it militarily i don't 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 the net 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 drone strikes on the civilian deaths i mean i understand that secrecy is an element here and that it's really hard to get it's really dangerous to try to go to was there a stand and try to collect statistics on this but the a.p. 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 that has real teaser of course tragic but we're actually inflaming a great deal of anti-american sentiment that spawns greater militarism and militancy that's sort of the the issue that whenever drones come up and it comes up

on this show a lot of 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 a great deal of anti-american sentiment and so it's largely just slipped into the rug and of course you know we learned in economics want to one that when you decrease crop costs increase demand and so even though drones are cheaper and you know. there are more tactically and take this 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 that 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 because some think around trying to talk to those that live there in pakistan and they have photo evidence right they have other evidence taking some of the u.n. human rights council unfortunately fact in a result anything i sadly i don't think so i mean it's the golden rule whoever has the gold makes the rules and unfortunately you know there's

a huge industry and there's a huge many lawyers and capitol hill who are going in the direction of greater drone operations we've seen the increased sales of drones in of course you know that's going to 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 and 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 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 how do you feel about domestic drone surveillance now if the president just signed is that a bill recently and they are they're going to be used by law enforcement they're selling it as a way to help find people that are lost in the grid right or i guess media organizations can use that too but i think 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 will this be without warrants or will this go without any sort of you 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 and you know many americans just. that of blindly would along with what officials argue i think the same is almost how you know drones in the sense that oh it will be used to so for search and rescue missions will be used for good purposes but they can always be used for nefarious purposes i want to go back to one thing that you said earlier if you when you know you mentioned that we have not only of course in pakistan we talked about getting talked about somalia and this is a means of intervention if you look at yemen if you look at pakistan too there's there's a lot more involved than just drone strikes right we're funding these counterterrorism forces there we're giving a lot of money in aid do you think it will ever get to the point where they think

that just drone use is going to be. the doesn't count and that sense that they can come separately from all kinds of money well that's what the funny thing i mean i'm happy you brought this up because a lot of the arguments used for dros is that it's much cheaper than manned aircraft but as you suggest i mean if you begin using drones that there becomes a justification for even deeper intervention so therefore we must have military advisers therefore we must have snatch and grab operations and sort of saw this expansion in pakistan you know sort of drones as the entryway for you know eventually raymond davis this affair 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 you know. i remember thank you so much for joining us it's always a pleasure thank you. are you guys it's time for a quick break but when we return occupy sites across the country are protesting the influence of corporations operate across systems over here all the details on today's mass action from.

technology innovation all the developments around. the. getting. into. our guys it's time for you said it i read it right take time to respond to my brilliant engaging viewer comments from facebook twitter and you tube because if 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 is what rick santorum says so can you read my deadpan comments on you tube i'm a business major i never have had a liberal professor and boy can i tell you i believe that i was a political science and film major at u.c. santa cruz i definitely had my fair share of liberal professors but my friends in economics support it and have a whole 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 on respond to a commenter that watched our interview stratfor emails a.t.m. dusty comments on youtube 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 here's one thing it was

comment sounds like it's familiar even reading or listening to any of the media commentary on the latest wiki leaks release you're going to hear two things we can leaks 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 break story after story off 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 in for me. in that just an idea how next i want to respond to a diligent viewer who grabbed a screenshot of the show last night joshua are so boring it posted on our facebook page hey alone on 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 for

a break come on now this is this is the mystery arm. break who makes everything work out here on set every single day so thanks frank audience now you're familiar and finally it's time to respond to a proposal very jocks can comment it's easy on their facebook page alone and when you marry me i'll be a half decent husband not all you want but better than nothing fall off or so it's very enticing at these yeah stick i'm going to have to respectfully say no and for next time i think we'll big or go home some kind of flowers and fireworks type of girl that's it my rantings and i always back with more as usual next week. well it's another day of action for the occupy movement today with february twenty ninth going under the banner of shut down the corporate corporations coordinated by occupy portland now according to web site protests are planned in over ninety five cities to specifically target alec the american legislative exchange council nonprofit policy group that's had

a strong hand and drafting legislation targeting undocumented undocumented immigrants and public sector unions and their actions also come on the heels of elite d h s report put out as part of the new weekly leaks document from e-mails obtained by stratfor reports showed the homeland security was tracking at the occupy movement from the early stages and all the reports that we tracked the movement by using public media sources has raised a lot of questions as to what's and who exactly has should be keeping an eye on as well as what other undisclosed methods may be out there so let's find out more in occupied continued efforts and reactions joining me from our studio in new york is john national 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 it today's actions of this shutdown of corporations really a success. absolutely great to be here with 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 it's comprised of state legislators and corporate executives who get together and quite literally write 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 partially i think that's something that we see

a lot and particularly do you know occupiers of the people that are participating today take. you know have a problem with exactly the 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 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're also there one point put forward a state bill 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 alex 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 two to sort of 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 should have been the new york times over five hundred times so that just gives you an idea of how. significant the blackout is now in 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 network knows the unfortunate world that we live in where charlie sheen is the one that makes it into the american times all the time i really curious john to hear

you know your thoughts on this leave the h.s. report that we got. e-mails were put out there i mean at first glance you look at it and you see that it's all put together through open source. material 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 v.h.s. was going to be monitoring the occupy movement or that the end of days it's 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 p.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 the d.h.s.s. is monitoring. activist activities as far as whether or not we should be worried

about i think we have solution i think that there is clearly a coordinated effort among mayors as we saw in the lighting 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 a 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 an 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 da is 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 and more than anything else it's meant to let acted. it's organizers know that the authorities are watching and that they will use every tool at their disposal to bring the hammer 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 occupy goes i want no it definitely seems like they're using every tool because of not forget you have local law enforcement they can deal with peaceful protest movements you have the f.b.i.

you don't necessarily need bring the department of homeland security which is meant to protect against outside charisse threats you know in into this kind of mix if you're going to have some measure of law enforcement out there 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. are we taking a break when we come back members of the hacktivist group anonymous has been arrested for going after government websites and is the right to bear arms and more precious right to vote that question after the break.