top stories this hour on r.t. activists in bahrain face a continued crackdown as government forces keep up the pressure on peaceful protesters appealing for democracy but opponents goes largely unreported worldwide while the bahraini regime claims its carrying out reforms of european atlantic security is a myth but must become reality the start words of russian president dmitri medvedev speaking in moscow also warned that nato should not live in the past. an american soldier accused of the shooting massacre of afghan civilians is to face seventeen counts of murder in the u.s. but the repayments saying it has no faith in american justice. will have to pay

for it half an hour from now in the meantime it's the only show with all the latest from our washington studios. welcome to the show where we get the real headlines with none of the worst are going to live in washington d.c. now it's all we can speak of matthew hoh about the loan and you players are pushing for the war in afghanistan to go on the question we have to ask is why then do you have a twenty five billion dollars settlement with the government reach for the big banks or turns out that about twenty billion of that is really going to come out of the pockets of investors talk about a bad deal and truth that has received hundreds of pages through a freedom of information act request to show how the farm implements security was monitoring the occupy movement so jason leopold is going to join us and give us all of those details of all that and more theater night couldn't get us

a happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to do this. right so you're the mainstream media today then you're still obsessing over the elections and because this is just the latest gift given by the gaffe machine that is the romney campaign you're still talking about that whole etch a sketch comment. he got the endorsement everyone want to jump bush but then a top aide seem to suggest that the conservative positions that are leading romney to the nomination changes quickly as a nine hundred fifty s. era toy your candidates jumping on the chance to take jabs at your sketch comments whoever thought it ed just sketch would give so much attention in a political campaign mitt romney's political enemies by lunchtime such a sketch was viral rick santorum is shaking up the all that's a sketch there romney wishes he clearly he raised it to sketch comedy. now

would be nice if the rest of the mainstream media could take a comment like that and actually create a good story out of it you know like the way that rachel maddow did she actually went through expose how this candidate mitt romney is not only a poor plucker but a law your and their lies that repeats constantly that need to be called out but you know unfortunately she's one of the few who do it and the rest just continue to sensationalize and talk about it as if it's all some gave and not actually some are trying to become the president of the united states and so in a sly i'd like to take out some time tonight to call out will blitzer from c.n.n. i constantly hear me criticize the mainstream media for just regurgitating the comments made by officials question and spreading fear and i think this one actually takes the cake for one of the most ridiculous things i've ever seen check out for yourself. a terrifying new reason for all of us to be centrally very worried about us tensions with iran the chairman of the household where security

committee and other u.s. officials are now warning that iran has a large terrorist train florists right here in the united states right now they say there are maybe hundreds maybe even thousands of hizbollah agents on american soil who could be ready and willing to attack has been following this hearing up on capitol hill is watching what's going on pretty shocking information if true for you. are you terrified yet so the deal here is the representative peter king the one responsible for the muslim radicalization hearings on capitol hill will you still the business of trying to scare the crap out of everybody and if you'll remember before those hearings began the media also made a huge fuss over it and then once they started well it was obvious that a lot of the so-called experts that king called were anything but and bunts became clear that this massive threat of homegrown radicalization had actually materialized and if anything should be looked at across the board if you want to

call lone wolf a threat and not just within the muslim community well yeah after all that the mainstream media for the most part has chilled out ignored and totally forgot about the matter and so you know i have to admit it's getting a little bit curious lately about the mainstream media's sudden chill out when it came to the issue of iran over the last few months we've seen the war beating machine in full effect and you know because we've documented it here for you we've pointed out the media's obsession with military options or lack of respect for certain details like oh you know i i eat a reports the show there's no proof yet they're running decided to build a nuclear weapon and they all sat around with their eyes wide open looking completely disgusted when the president said that there's too much loose talk of war and that a collective yeah like they couldn't believe all those irresponsible people out there that would do that. but in the last few weeks suddenly the iran thing is kind of disappeared they've been other stories stories dominating the news cycle staff sergeant robert bales her big massacre of sixteen afghan civilians in afghanistan

the murder of trayvon martin and of course the never ending stream of campaign stories that changed just ever so slightly by the day but certainly war with iran was an imminent list one of the biggest threat the entire world anymore oh yeah that didn't last long because you can obviously see here wolf blitzer is back in the game and now it's not this careful notion that there are hundreds if not thousands of hezbollah fighters living within the united states and they might kill us any minute can you be more sensational but my bad of course out of the mainstream media is good at i just wonder if it would kill them to show an alice of skepticism every now and then instead of repeating what officials like peter king say verbatim but so i'll let you come to your own conclusions here about what exactly was the made the mainstream media suddenly forget about the war with the wrong that they've been pushing for two weeks and the meantime just know that they're back because a chance to fearmonger on something of a very rarely choose to miss.

of the last month or so has been filled with bad signs for america's war effort in afghanistan the protests the violence we saw in the country after the inadvertent burning of korans our one person to the massacre of sixteen civilians allegedly by one staff sergeant robert bales unfortunate as it is tragic event seems like it might of turn the tide amongst many lawmakers g.o.p. candidates public opinion polls even in the media suddenly discussion was about ending the war and getting out the even the white house leaked to the press that an accelerated drawdown drawdown was up for discussion but there are those stubborn few that still don't want things to change general john allen now in charge of the wars said that he believes there should be no american troop drawdowns in two thousand and thirteen leaving the sixty eight thousand that will be left after rituals this year and he's got the trio of john mccain joe lieberman and lindsey

graham backing him up so perhaps the question that most people be asked is why you're discussing with me and matthew hoh former state department official in afghanistan and senior fellow at the center for international policy thanks so much for joining us tonight mr mir ok so when i say he's got this trio of mccain lieberman and graham back you know let me just read you the opening this is basically the first paragraph in this op ed that they wrote in the washington post where they're talking about despite the serious tragic events that i just mention it's heart wrenching as these events have been they do not change the vital u.s. national security interests at stake in afghanistan nor do they mean the war is lost it is not there is still a realistic path to success if the right decisions are made in the coming months. can you tell me what this magic path to success is what they're talking about i don't dispute that. there can be something beneficial in next three years if we make the right decisions but it right there certainly is so. being with this

current madness we have now continuing to steal me continue to participate in the afghan civil war that began in the seventy's that's not the right steps also too in terms of further into that article to get into the reference of temporal love and twice you know this is just a scene married if it keeps coming back i. have a piece there in two thousand and one it was one of many locations they used to play and support the nine eleven attacks but you know my line a lot of other guys lines are walked the most important c.p. been through nine eleven attackers were the american more shorts academies and the american flight schools who participated in since nine eleven to has become an even flatter organization and more horizontal resolution more decentralized in their operations all around the world it's also there are very few very few in number so this notion that somehow we have to be only an afghan afghanistan participating in an afghan civil war that predates our arrival in order to keep ourselves safe it's

very very specious and so every day and you know i mean they also say that what happens in afghanistan directly affects our safety here at home they say that if we create afghanistan again because they go back to. the consequences will be disastrous for both our peoples they really play this up and so just seems like i mean why do they do this stuff they just want to play it up everywhere they can because these are the same guys the mccains the lieberman to the lindsey graham to the world are the same ones that will tell us that al qaeda is a threat all around the world and this is why we have to have a war that knows no boundaries it's tried and tested this is this is fear mongering this is what you do to. get your narrative. momentum going to carry it with people to make people choose your path and fear i'm sure we're going to respond that have you think because we even saw you know lindsey graham get through this shooting maybe start to waver you would think that john mccain but it's not you have a popular position politically not. within the republican party i think for graham

and lieberman and others it's simply romney it's simply because war is good politics being tough it's good politics you know wearing the bloody shirt as i said after the subpar american civil war is good politics for others for senator mccain i believe for a bastard crocker for general allen i think these gentlemen they really do believe that they are involved in some kind of historic battle that this is some kind of battle of good versus evil if you see how crocker if you see how if you see how mccain others talk about this war they reference it in terms of you know good person evil but this is some type of his still work or epic struggle that we're involved in his very words i mean that's not that people should remember me we don't like to think of personalities matter and decisions like this but they certainly do and so i think it's a mix of just pure politics for some and others who believe that this is the course of history that they are on the right side of history so to speak and of course

we've seen it with other leaders in the past if you want to jump subjects we can go over talk about iran netanyahu certainly views himself in that way so it's something that we have to really really. understand and be careful of because there are men who are involved in this as well some women too who believe that this is still work and that this is a battle of morals or a battle of good versus evil as much as anything else at the same time right if you want to talk about this as tragic massacre that we saw a lot of people would say that this is said that it was something that was a historic event insurance that it might actually shift the direction of your seems like public opinion is certainly turned against it now everyone is willing to get out quickly and so you know i mean you can good versus evil there become suddenly on our complicated and a lot more muddled and what i think a lot of people haven't caught up with yet it's really surprising because we've had mounted communications for years now for decades now they haven't caught up with the fact that when you when you combine the eternal nature of warfare which is

chaotic. barbaric it's not controllable with modern communications where not just you know the day after something happens but literally minutes after something happens you and i are talking about it. what you get is you get a warfare that is unlike anything else in the poor look almost a hundred years ago woodrow wilson understood when he was going for reelection for a second term freeze at the time the motto was vote for wilson he kept us out of war wilson said at one point to a colleague he said it's important he said look that's it that's it that's a crock he said look any german lieutenant can push the united states since we're at any time by his own actions on the western front. just the one actions of an individual could cause united states into war and will simply do nothing about it and that's what happened some german submarine captain sink the lusitania the united states entered world war one now it's even worse when we know one hundred years ago wilson understood it we have now unfortunate we have leaders in this country as well as military officers as well as these civilian pundits who don't

yet grasp that we still think they patrol or even have a lot of people that they are prepared to take advantage of that so i want to ask you about the way you think they're handling this entire situation with just our viewers because it was i gaze until they even gave us a name you know and now we find out that right after this happened they went and they tried to scrub the internet of his name of everything that was ever written about him beforehand i mean is that a little weird to you you know their explanation that he did it to protect the family and i believe this price him to say that but also i released other names in the path right and maybe some people want to claim that this is different but the fort hood shooter we found out really who he was exactly so there are there is that i also to believe that what happens when something like this occurs and bails kills sixteen people in southern afghanistan. the public affairs officer the pentagon goes into crisis mode and they set a task force and they told us oh he off the wall for atrocities or. i believe

they're going to call this and they go through a checklist this is probably something they developed it on the internet and scrub it of all reference make it harder to talk about this i guarantee they fail because you know once the something is audience out there you can't really go to the government is constantly having a really hard time learning but just lastly to you know what do you what do you think about the fact that afghans the local population the parliament they still don't believe it was just one guy yeah i think that's you know i think that that's a mistake we keep making by not being up front with more information we try and you know the adage when i was a lieutenant a marine corps was was bad news is not get better with age and i think that's what happens when you don't get all the information out there that you know right away it allows for rumors of things to persist that israel is you the defense attorney saying if there's no forensic evidence there i mean is this could he actually get away with but i think that would be you know. you don't want to presuppose guilt on this guy but say he did it you i mean this guy if he bales did do this he should be

tried and i think that this is a capital crime and i think it should be openly executed i mean if this is it. for the sake of the well being of the united states military that's what has to occur for no other reason that let alone for a concert reasons that it's the right thing to you've got a future consequence that it doesn't happen with afghanistan the fact that this goes back again to the larger issues of the afghan campaign if one staff sergeant by pulling the trigger sixteen times can ruin your campaign can bring about the downfall of your policy can cause senators and congressmen to change their mind this is probably not a good campaign or a good policy to begin with but you think that it's still fair to then say this one guy deserves to be executed. not others that have committed. certainly you know i trust me there's a lot of dirty things that happened over the last ten years and i don't like people i think would question about you know making him an example and then at the same

time i would say this is what has to happen but i'd rather thanks for your thoughts and i think if. i had time for a quick break the only thing that really that twenty five billion dollars mortgage settlement at the white house attorney general's across the country were all hailing as a win for homeowners guess what the banks aren't the ones that are actually paying for the campaign and as about the details of the very. wealthy british soil. sometimes. things go to.

market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger or a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to congress report on our. art so you guys know that on our show we spend a lot of time talking about internet laws regulations are going to affect you and today net choice a coalition that includes big internet companies from facebook even a released a list of the ten worst proposed internet regulations as they see it across the country so we thought you should probably know about some of them now this list contains laws pertaining to everything from online dating to advertising revenues and in the state of the union address obama emphasized innovation and small businesses. innovation is what america has always been about. most new jobs are

created in startups and small businesses so let's kind of some agenda that helps them succeed. thing is some of these internet laws regulations could actually stifle or stamp out small business and innovators and that song video killed the radio star looks like states are trying to kill the internet start currently in maryland connecticut and utah are all looking to enact taxes on digital goods so basically anything that you download states aren't happy the musicians and comedians are bypassing the traditional retail outlets releasing their songs their comedy special there's books or books on line directly to the consumer so states don't want to miss out on the tax revenues they can get from those products so they're looking for any way possible to get a piece of that digital property now if states have their way outside the artist become the tax collector for the new wave direct to buyer success experienced recently like by comedians like louis c.k. as he's on sorry looks like that might be a thing of the past now it's not just digital property that states are trying to

tax through their multiple bills in the u.s. house and senate right now that would force online companies to collect sales tax on their products for states that they don't operate out of so small business in delaware that sells online they'd be forced to collect sales tax for the state at the person who purchases the item is from even if the business is based in a state with no sales tax so so much for empowering the small businesses right and i don't think i forgot about innovation because the next set of laws look to stifle just that the struggling economy more people using the internet to spend more wisely there's been a boom in online services focused on making the consumer's life easier cheaper or both i guess what brick and mortar businesses have a really big problem with that and so they're fighting tooth and nail to take down the latest internet innovations when those innovations happened to be car. on demand town car service where you have an app you push a button and you feel like you're living in the future basically and within five minutes the car arrives and you can see the car coming she won the phone. so every

car is the more expensive than a cab but users claim that it's faster it's easier it's mark said. simple than a traditional cab service so more efficient transportation service that's making more money well obviously local cab drivers have an issue with that here in d.c. they're trying to make sure that it is classified as a cab service instead of a car service making the company play by the same rules getting lower fares so the lower fares would mean lower quality cars business model useless and then there's ever been the. you can see i don't really the place of other people can see the home. these people are out of town for the weekend so the whole place to myself. when i'm out of town i find my place and. helps me pay for all my ventures. sounds like an innovative way for one person to make a little extra cash the other person to score a cheap place to stay right well states like i went to york they want to put a stop to the pad sharing trend i want air being be regulated like

a travel service while new york post actual homeowners renting their rooms out to face the same regulations as hotels so while they were initially put in place to protect consumers are actually being used against not only the innovative internet companies but also the consumers themselves and the old lost can't be used legislators are being pressured by the traditional businesses to draft a new one so once again we have people who don't really understand of the things on the internet trying to regulate it in any way possible and unlike sopa pipa and act these regulations are very specific and targeted we do have to remember that all around us lawmakers are trying to control the internet in one way or another and more often than not it's the consumer that ends up with the short end of the stick . now every night of this year that he o.j. other federal agencies forty nine state attorneys general announced that the largest federal state settlement agreement in history we covered it here twenty five billion dollars settlement it took on the five banks or foreclosure across brought but as we said then it wasn't exactly

a good deal for american homeowners out of the twenty five billion only five billion of that would be cash payments some would go to the a.g.'s salvation already said that their states are going to use those funds to balance budgets as well as about seven hundred fifty thousand people actually lost their homes and they only get checks to equal about eight hundred thousand dollars for each year that you consider that about five million people vos their home since two thousand and six as a rate of fourteen million more underwater you realize i've hardly even a band-aid on a gaping wound but there's more new details about the settlement which are only really last week tell us where the banks could be getting the other twenty billion dollars and let's just say that doesn't look good for investors here discussing with me as anthony ran down as the director of economic research for the reason foundation i think that through ok so first of all can we say we have we saw this coming i feel like you were not exactly in conversation about it oh well the deal was announced but we didn't have details until last week because it took over a month to actually filed a settlement which is suspect that of itself so now we have the details this is

what we're concerned about it turns out it's true that investors could wind up getting stuck for between seventeen and twenty billion of this whole irish why are the banks going to be able to do that so the the way that this is structured is that instead of cash payments going to people who are older foreclosed. is going to be modifications of refinancing and short sales of borrowers in the future this is a penalty that doesn't fit the crime whatsoever and the reason for that is because hud in the stages they want to win political points in this thing this deal is not about robo signing at the end of the day this is about winning some kind of political battle in the fight to see the governments do. something about the housing market when really they're not well it's not a kind of nice right when you say a twenty five billion dollars settlement i think it was i mean yeah history sure yeah you know when you start breaking down the details here it just seems completely ludicrous but then we don't advise it so i don't understand why the banks that's right because those people i mean who are retiring now we say

investors so we sort of are fair game as a investors or some of them are hedge funds and salute big guys the pin code the ones that you may not really care that much about they get hurt but others are for one k.'s those are the pension funds that might be you could you know if you're firefighter if you're a teacher it could be your pension fund that invested in mortgage backed securities what's going to happen is the banks to modify people's loans they're going to have to go into these these mortgages which are a lot of them buy by investors and say well you used to own one hundred fifty thousand dollars now you're going to only owe one hundred twenty five thousand dollars where is that twenty five thousand dollars go which is never going to get paid back to the investor in the first place so they take between seventeen and twenty five billion not all that's going to be modifications some of that's going to be refinance and some of it's going to be losses related to short sales but those losses are going to be concentrated primarily on investors because banks they don't want to do that to their own loans they're going to do it with some of their own loans to save face but a lot of that why not just go to an investor low where you can not have to take the losses and you get the same political value when there is some kind of

a promise floating around out there that they were saying that there would be a fifteen percent cap right that only fifteen percent. of the time they don't it's not maybe it was promised that donovan apparently told a group of investors that it's going to be a fifty percent cap but we don't actually have that promise in writing it where and it's not in the settlement agreement whatsoever it could be that there is some kind of gentleman's agreement where the banks are going to wind up doing that here's the thing even if it was just fifteen percent that's not the bank's money it's the own not right all right this is really amounts to theft why do the banks who falsely prepared foreclosure dock. humans pay that fine by going to a mortgage investor whether or not it's an evil banker but going to somebody else and saying i'm going to write off the principal on the mortgage that you invested so you're not going to get that money and that's what i'm going to use to pay you to spawn even if it's just fifteen percent that's wrong that's deft and it is

setting a terrible precedent for the way that the justice system is supposed to work well if it's so wrong and if it's that then can they can they sue i mean i you know you have said you have a couple things first the judge doesn't have to approve the settlement they probably will but this settlement has been filed in u.s. district court of d.c. that judge could look at this could look at the evidence could look at complaint filed by the bondholders in this particular case and so you know this is wrong you can't do it this way what's probably almost certainly going to happen is if that gets approved by a court but if the banks actually try to go ahead and do this that the bondholders will then wind up suing for breach of contract because it's a do this the banks are going to interpret the way that the contracts are set up between themselves and the investors for how they service these mortgages so this is by no means is this a done story the do question is where is the lawsuit going to come and whether well the judge even approved this this measure but it is there also a chance you know i was reading through some of the various options that are out there that it's going to be a fifth amendment violation where like we're saying this is the government seizing

private property or how it actually giving you you know that you pay for it or is that when a lot less like i mean what's better to go i want to have with the big banks here or back to the government now that this is this whole thing is getting really murky because it's being separated from what from the real problems at hand so what are the real problems or have a problem was that the banks got so backed up in foreclosure war over foreclosure is and people not being able to pay their mortgages they didn't put the resources for in place to actually deal with that and they screwed up all the paperwork so then we wanted to punish the banks for the broader housing problem for more than just the row before closing and so we and so the the in. agee's thought that will ok so we're going to punish them with this big this big penalty with this twenty five billion dollars it's going to go beyond this but that's not the way the justice system is supposed to work that's not actually going out to the banks for the real problems that they cause there are many things that these banks have done you legally every day but as you see it other regulators could be going after them

on this is basically the government trying to get around this issue not to mention you know the current justice to that basically just said that we can't. we can't launch any criminal investigation becoming a little too hard for us that everything is going to have to be civil in this case but it's horrible and this isn't really being talked about and blown up the way that i think it should be because on the day of the settlement was reached it was all over the news now that you actually have the details about it and you find out who's going to get short changed everyone's will you will you see now people are starting to talk about their best investors but even even that was just a week long story not enough for anthony thanks so much for joining us tonight. all right time for our next break the evening when we come back show intel and then just how much was the department of homeland security monitoring the occupy movement we're going to speak out. speak with truth out of state and leopold who received hundreds of pages from the v.h.s. the point.