for the. top stories this. hour of the austerity and italian museum director starts to work in protest of the state of the country thanks to europe's debt crisis. in syria rules are agreed for an international cease fire monitor mission but with violence occurring on regardless naughtie crew finds itself under fire in the city of daraa . russia will give an extra helping the afghan war more supplies through its territory as you know troops caught up in a wave of violence and scandal in the woods. and on some if we know thirty minutes from now the mean time the only show looks at the results of stop spying week which encouraged angry web users to fight for their rights on the web that from washington next here a nazi. can

be alone a show where we get the real headlines with none of the mersey can live in washington d.c. now it's not really speaking robert farley about yet another p.r. disaster for the war in afghanistan new pictures have been printed by the l.a. times showing soldiers posing with the corpse of afghan insurgents then the e.p.a. has just released the first ever federal fracking rules but they let the industry off the hook to comply until twenty fifteen so we're even talking about the double game of pleasing activists and the big industry and then jane cougar host of the young turks join first talk wall street taxes and the media's complicity in it all or not all that and more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss.

all right so there have been congressional hearings going on over this g.s.a. scandal lawmakers are getting really into playing bad cop during the questioning and so of course the mainstream media is absolutely loving it because it makes for some really good political theater and therefore t.v. . the senate is holding a hearing today to look into the extravagant g.s.a. conference that was held in las vegas right now the senate is trying to get to the bottom of the spending scandal rocking the general services administration the third day in hearings for over the g.s.a. the police one of your taxpayer money this is just the tip of the iceberg and none of that information was in there so the question is if it wasn't in there why are you hiding it from us to chairman if you don't have it do you not have that information after blowing almost a million of your taxpayer dollars on a lavish las vegas conference lavish extensive las vegas and an excuse more than

one lawmaker has asked if criminal charges should be filed not a memo not corrective measure and out of control and over the top spending continued by going to the south pacific by going to africa by bringing his wife along taxpayer that of paying for his wife he turned over every stone and every time we turned over a stone we found fifty more this is not a republican or a democrat issue this is about an american issue of knowing what your government is doing. now the thing that i buy interesting is that box news obviously have been going big on this story since the very second they're broke because it's an embarrassment for the obama administration and well they live and breathe through embarrass the obama administration but now i have. yet enjoining into going for courses that this is the trial of the century and i don't get me wrong this here's a scandal the biggest retrieve the guy spending taxpayer money to take his wife on his seventeen david cation that is waste it's fraud it's abuse it's corruption it's

all of it but there's something that i just can't help but notice when seeing all this outbreak and this one goes not just to the mainstream media but to the politicians to the amount of cash in that is being poured into this scandal the red face the anger the tough line of questioning that we're seeing at these hearings it is really something else and it's really laughable that it's only when it comes to this damn dollar on. when this comes around that we suddenly see this passion emerge from our lawmakers personally i would love to see that thing kind of fashion on t.v. on capitol hill when it comes to wall street right sure the banking executives made their way to washington for a few hearings but i could hardly have stated they were lambasted in the same fashion and where the hell is the criminal investigation for the guys who brought down the entire economy there was a whole lot more than a million dollars worth of taxpayer money at stake there but that is just one example of course and maybe that's the easier but you see there's another area where we see this kind of waste fraud abuse corruption on a daily basis it's been happening for years for decades we've seen reports

commissions come to the same conclusions all the time and yet those are also just brushed off just as quick as another news story a little blip on the paper the doesn't deserve the same anger and you know that i'm talking about defense we give you examples almost every single day individual projects weapon systems things like the joint strike fighter program the seven forty seven airborne laser but if you want to go for a big number then let's take a look at the commission on wartime contracting in iraq and afghanistan from august of two thousand and eleven on that commission found at least thirty one billion possibly as much as sixty billion dollars have been lost to phrase lost to contract waste and fraud in america's contingency operations in both iraq and afghanistan one little example there was thirty million dollars on a dining facility at a base in iraq that was based on faulty planning but they couldn't stop because it was too far along so thirty sixty billion dollars people can say for eight hundred

thousand dollars of the g.s.a. scandal absolutely pale in comparison i had the g.s.a. scandal it's resulted in me incredibly passionate questioning on capitol hill and the passion is questioning on the cable networks like i said not the g.s.a. scandals and bad of a comparatively it is really easy to see where the priorities lie and what the mainstream media chooses to miss. well it's happened yet again yet another p.r. nightmare for the u.s. war in afghanistan and this time photos were given to the l.a. times by a soldier with the fourth combat brigade eighty second airborne division the times and not published all that some of these photos were given by a soldier was shown members of his unit posing with the corpse of an alkie an insurgent as they describe it a soldier wanted to highlight a breakdown in leadership and discipline and the times published those photos despite requests by the pentagon not to do it but if you look back at this year

there's been a scandal every single month from video of marines urinating on taliban corpses to the burning of korans at parwan to the massacre of seventeen civilians mostly women and children and now this oh thing is these photos were taken more than two years ago so how does that change thanks for joining me to discuss it is robert farley sr professor at the university of kentucky and blogger at lawyers and money robert thanks so much for joining us tonight and i guess for starters you know here we go again what are your comments on on these photos well i think you're absolutely right to say that it seems like this has been one thing after another first we had the very good initial video and then we got to koran burning and then we had the massacre. just right after that and so it seems as if every month where there has been another serious incident with regards to the behavior of u.s. forces in afghanistan now also this did help at a couple years ago but the timing has made it seem to sort of a rat

a tat tat alarming thing to continue and you know it's presence of blood we're going to continue nato presence in afghanistan and i think we're all worried about what's going to happen in the next few days. well you know that's interesting you bring that up because of course the pentagon was asking the times not to print this and they used their their typical plea in that case is that they think this is going to injure the lives of u.s. forces abroad the l a times decided to go for it and they put out a statement and they said after careful consideration we decided that publishing is small but representative selection of the photos will fulfill our obligation to readers to report vigorously and impartially on all aspects of the american mission in afghanistan i don't know personally i think that we need i think we need more of this i think we need more papers that are willing to publish photos that are willing to show both sides but what sorts of. are you my take is pretty much the same as that i think that there are certainly things one military operations which

the pressure be very reluctant to cover and this would be things that directly to the operational details are of some sort of action to ensure that people want a specific intelligence that you know me but this is more about the conduct of u.s. troops in afghanistan and this is something that the american public should be aware of but it should go into how we think about what our presence in afghanistan should be i mean this is part of the cost of war that we are paying and so i think the los angeles times was actually correct in publishing photos. and you know i think it'll probably affect the way we look back on in history too if you want to talk about the way that it's remembered you know by perhaps those that live in in afghanistan now one of the other things that i pointed out to you that i want to get vaccines that ok so this happened two years ago happened in two thousand and ten but in that sense that's why it's so different from you know this massacre that we just saw a few months ago and the sense of these guys could be home right they could just be living their normal lives and i wonder you know how that affects things as people

start coming that hasn't really sunk seal with thrall of the troop surge in afghanistan of all the troops in fact how many more times do you think we're going to see things like this emerge i mean because it's been ten years of war we know these aren't the only pictures like this that have been out there right now i think that there's probably a trove of photographs out there. that would be considered alarming by the pentagon and would be considered warming by any sort of reply standard and the reason for that is that it really goes from here in brazil to just digital cameras around there are no soldiers who don't listen to their commanding officers when i say don't take any embarrassing photographs because they may end up on the internet or you know that's true of seventeen year olds and it's truly eighteen year old soldiers pictures of the warming things of those photographs and the internet and so you know i think we are going to be getting more and more evidence of what war is like in afghanistan than we did we had

a pass rush just go to the technology but you know i think there's there's a lot still out there oh i think you know it's not only just embarrassing to in terms of publishing photos like this how important is that to get the rest of us to try to understand what the mindset is like what life is like for these people who have actually gone over there and been fighting abroad it's a small portion of the population right but there still are probably almost a million people that have been affected over the last ten years. right it's really hard to say what the broader public impact will be you know as you. aeration ago the number of soldiers deployed in vietnam was much much larger and so there was a much broader public understanding of the real rigors of war and right here we're sort of having a media presentation of the rigors of war and i think it's hard to say what kind of long term effect that's going to have on how the united states thinks about war but i think it's going to be good but it's not going to indicate i'm i mean it may be good in the sense that it demonstrates the real cost of the real dangers of

engaging in the military conflict. i want to switch topics real quick at the end here because you were sitting right about hillary clinton giving a speech and you know we've been talking a lot united spoken about it this shift in our strategy if you want to talk about the geopolitical areas we're going to be focusing now perhaps moving away from the middle east looking more towards asia carrying a lot more about concentrating on the air and on the sea in the future and so you said that hillary was pivoting towards the navy can tell us more. but she recently was a page that was part of the forest a lecture series of the naval academy and in this age she laid out a vision of american grand strategy in asia that echoed in a lot of ways to navies of american grand strategy and it was very you know obviously she was telling her to be something they would want to hear in a place where the navy was but nevertheless the grand strategy she put forward was

almost identical to how the navy thinks about politics and how the navy thinks about its approach to the station and it was very interesting that it came from the secretary of state and it seemed to me to indicate. that the navy really is sort of the premier strategic service of united states right now you know there are probably people in the air force who would disagree maybe the army but the same to indicate to me that that's what secretary clinton gave it was really central to how she thought about grand strategy especially in the asia pacific if that's the case what do you think the chances are and why it's danger and reported on this there was a market survey at the navy released and it showed that they were asking defense contractors for their candidates for strike fighter aircraft in the years to come at the same time they're still waiting on this failure of a joint strike fighter program that's caused more than a trillion dollars to actually come to fruition and be completed and they're already asking for another one of the future. beneath me is pretty nervous about it's a version of thirty five partially because the british just or are about to cancel

their version which is the same point and the navy has really never really liked it whereas one engine and one hundred planes were made were many folks would oversee they're going to crash into the water and so people would wonder and for a while one day he was going to try to get a different kind of plane and this may be sort of the first shot over the bow as it were in terms of the navy's search for a different fighter aircraft i guess they would have you know that asking for something new before so much money had been spent but if you're right in terms of hillary clinton everyone else pivoting for his navy you might get lucky in that sense robert thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me. time for a quick break but when we come back you said it i read it and we'll have all the latest on stop the cyber spying week that the e.p.a. released their first rules today on i think if they don't actually think that it's still going to. take to.

the. world with. technology innovation all the it's developments around. the future. ok it's time for you said it i read it right a time to respond to my brilliance and engage in viewer comments from facebook twitter and you too because and you've got some say i listen now first i want to

respond to a viewer that watched monday night's true time award which we gave to congresswoman fox after she said that she had quote no tolerance for people with student loan debt nate age twenty one twenty one comment on you tube how how does someone like this become the chairwoman for the u.s. house education subcommittee on higher education and workforce training when she doesn't have the slightest clue about any of it who thinks nothing of even changed in the past forty years says a lot about how we do things here and yeah it does a lot of this woman who is chair of the committees has been dealing with higher education clearly doesn't understand how the united states works today and it's not just her it's the media it's people across all sorts of calls in making platforms and they're still living in the world and they grew up in a world which is now changed they still think that hard work part time gig can get you through college and probably even get you an easy job there's a little edge in their voice when they talk about today's youth and they just don't get it right that they're just not hardworking or taking on debt because that

irresponsible but the truth is the times have changed and they're the ones that need to accept it especially if they can be in charge of legislation and the next i want to respond to some feedback from our embedded two thousand and twelve campaign that we launched last night sorry myself and the illustrious jenny churchill stated boycott it on you too they're trying to stop us spreading information are they well they can go and selves i will share this with all my peeves you're doing a great job alone and team piece who imagine comments on you tube i shall embed this video in protest and then we knew that this one marson qubit tweeted that it's at the lower show shouldn't any church will be naked when slapping the. concreted that skit and bed two thousand and twelve not to be a not available for in bed yet well the video is now available for and did so and better way and spread the word and let's make it famous now finally i want to respond to a viewer that watched my interview last night with the republic reports that leaf on ernest welker said on facebook i never heard of this secretive organization

evidently one of many now goes writing legislation for corporations who fly under the radar thanks again alone for exposing more worthy news of the cowardly and that's and won't we spoke about i like last night on the show there are other people out there that have been on this story from the very beginning one of them being artie's tom hartman so if you want to learn more about alec i recommend you check out some of that coverage as well i said my ranting tonight live back with more next week. now continuing our coverage of cyber spying week if one of the white house has stepped in sort of thing we spoke about the bill on the show this is the one that would allow the government's not a fair share hold on to any communications discovered by private companies and i understand a bully privacy advocates have been up in arms so many times to shush the outcry the house intelligence committee revised their bill to try and clear a few things up on the revisions included a new definition of what a cyber threat really is and a requirement for homeland security to have access to all of the data to share with

the government but a lot of the opposition has already pointed out that even the slight change in definition for a cyber threat they made is still far too broad and assist aversion to will also give people or companies the ability to sue the government if it mishandles the information but it still leaves one major question out there unanswered how are we going to know if or when the government makes a mistake if all the surveillance is being done behind closed doors and as for tim pointed out to us yesterday he's revisions are enough to stop the privacy threat. bill unclear about what could or what could beat and then the problem is even if the information originally is some believed to some sort of cyber security threat was the government gets the information they can then use it for other purposes and that hasn't changed yet you there they narrowed it a little bit back a few weeks ago but so when the government gets the information out just when the country ends it over just so screwed purposes now the government can use it for national security purposes as well. so lawmakers efforts to rework the bill so far

have been a flop and says we can't trust them to fix that the maybe we can rely on the white house to step it do its thing try to stand up for the people come out against this so we can try to stop it altogether but that in quite happen out there you see the white house did get its hands on the bill they did criticize the lack of privacy measures but they didn't threaten to veto the bill in fact they didn't even mention it by name. and its statement the national security council spokesperson said the nation's critical infrastructure cyber vulnerabilities will not be addressed by information sharing alone legislation without new offer already used to address our nation's critical infrastructure vulnerabilities or legislation that would sacrifice the privacy of our citizens in the name of security will not meet our nation's urgent needs so like i said they spoke up in the name of privacy but they didn't really do anything to actually stand up for it it was just disapproving frown as far severity goes here and even though they're not down with this but

they're back the another set of proposals been introduced by senators joe lieberman and susan collins of the approach to s. twenty one zero five out in force cyber protection for critical systems and grant the government a whole the set of powers but it would carry more privacy protection for americans like requiring companies to remove any personal information included in the data before handing it over to the government so why house might be positioning themselves to look like they are all about protecting your privacy but at the end of the day they still support the idea of a cybersecurity bill which is going to expand the government's power and it's just a matter of which one they want to support so it's up to us to raise awareness right not only about this but also about the dangers of all of the competing bills out there right now because if it's not a good bill which none of them are at this point you shouldn't pass it as if it's an emergency and there's no time to get it right. well the president got the official endorsement today of green groups including the sierra club the league of conservation voters clean water action and environments america beyond

a conference call this morning with reporters to make sure that this move was known meanwhile the e.p.a. released the first ever federal rules on fracking emissions after delaying those rules four times before now despite a fight with the natural gas industry the e.p.a. is going to require that drillers captured gases when they first have a well this is a move that they estimate is going to save companies anywhere from eleven to nineteen million dollars annually of all that gas will no longer be escaping however they are actually letting the industry off the hook until january of twenty fifteen votes there's another move by the government by this administration to try to strike that delicate balance between pleasing environmentalists and the natural gas industry so that's far we have to ask who is getting more for their money when joining me from our studio in new york is sara last contributing editor at good sarah thanks for joining us tonight first of all just tell me a little bit more about these new rules i know that they were trying to get some

exemptions for a couple well so they didn't even have to follow the rules at all but the e.p.a. said no dice but i mean how difficult is it to actually go through the process get the right equipment so they can capture this gas before it escapes. great the rules apply across the oil and gas industry but the. environmental groups are particularly excited about the provisions that apply to frac wells now the e.p.a. estimates estimates that frakt wells newly frac wells that can use this new technology are already using it so it's not that big of a deal to use it the industry has said that they don't have enough of these trucks basically that they used to capture the gas as it leaks out and they want more time it to build the trucks put them to put them together before these rules apply across the board are also nonsense do you think that you know punting into january twenty third teen was a fair move by the e.p.a.

it makes sense because they actually need the time to build these trucks or did they kind of gave. well it certainly was a provision of begats industry was asking or you had industry groups like the american petroleum institute pressing specific this point specifically about there weren't enough but quit meant there wasn't enough equipment to go around so in that sense the e.p.a. really was responding to industry concerns now what they say is there also are intra choir natural gas companies to flare off the gas if they don't do this process which is called green completion and according to their figures ends up being the same for methane's and these valves while organic compounds that are the same it's a little worse for this oxide another pollutant. but in general you can say that it's an improvement on the status quo but. it would be better if it were happening faster obviously i know one of the things too that you know given the big push

behind natural gas industry aside from the fact that we happen to have a lot of natural gas to try to try to get to try to drill excuse me here in the united states is the fact that they say that it's at least better than coal right it doesn't releases as many greenhouse emissions but then there's been some debate over that lately too has there. yeah a couple of years ago researcher at cornell. a study that said natural gas when you look at it across its life cycle is basically as bad as coal now another study came out recently that said well natural gas isn't quite as bad as coal if you use it for electricity if you use it in trucks and cars like some people were pushing for a few years ago and you know that's not worth doing so you know there is this issue with the leaking methane out of the wells methane is natural gas it's the same

thing that they're selling but it's also a greenhouse gas that leaks into the atmosphere and it's twenty times as potent as carbon dioxide so anytime you have something like that you want to minimize it as much as possible the new e.p.a. rules do that to a certain extent so you know again that's positive it's better than nothing and it's good there's some regulation of this. it's still an open question like how much better natural gas is going to be than coal in the long run and if you talk to environmental groups you know they want natural gas to phase out eventually obviously the industry wants to go on as long as possible drilling and making money and so there's this tension there that's not resolved yet we're going to be facing for years to come well i think it's quite a question too though if if one of the main factors that they use to really push for natural gas is that it's supposed to be better for the environment and it turns out there's some dispute over that you know i think there needs to be a lot more discussion about it but overall right we've seen a lot of natural gas

a lot of fracking particular in the united states and we know the natural gas prices have dropped to the lowest they've been in about a decade but then how does that trickle down to you know the average person you and i do we actually get to see that or does the electric company just get to take advantage of it you know i mean are people's bills going down yet. i don't know actually i haven't done that much reporting on that i know that in general natural gas prices are dropping as you said and what that's really a problem for is clean energy you know at the most the more we get these clean sources on line like solar wind now they're going to have to be competing with those lower natural gas prices and so you know to the extent that consumers want green energy and in the long term you know our bills are only going to go up if we don't switch over to the sources of clean energy lower gas prices are a problem for industries who are trying to compete. on those counts and then just

lastly what about these indorsements from the big green groups that the president bought today. it just means ok we're happy with what your doing. i don't think they're necessarily happy with the president is doing but i think you know president obama is a better bet for environmental groups than mitt romney or any of the people who the republicans have put forward so far for their candidate see i mean when you look at this natural gas issue see how the environmental groups are sort of trying to play both sides you know on a local level they have a lot of members saying like and natural gas now in washington it's not popular to say natural gas instead we want to you know be supporting it in these ways making it possible for the industry to you know after a little bit better but still go about it a regulator instead of banning i guess yeah we got to go because we're going to catch a break excuse me but thanks for joining us tonight thank you. are we taking

a quick breather but coming up next the entertainment industry is looking to shut down yet another entertainment startup is in the same arguments as they did in one thousand nine hundred four and it will speak to the young turks thank you for about the return of the shareholder.