the story here on our t.v. u.n. monitoring mission in syria is getting major reinforcements as the security council unanimously votes to send three hundred observers to the conflict torn country as amid reports of troops violations by both the rebels and government troops. as a media blackout in france ahead of sunday's presidential poll ten candidates including the incumbent you'll see causey trying to fight it out for the top job in a country hit by social divisions and record unemployment. and energy hungry china where the secure a slice of the arctic riches chinese premier on a tour of the nordic states wants to support from beijing to tap into the mineral resources beyond the else except. the summary for half an hour from now to mean time the show with all the latest from washington studios don't go away this is artie.

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 an ira to speak with lauren lyster host of the capital account here are to you for our weekly financial check up the i.m.f. and world bank spring meetings are underway here in washington so we're going to highlight what you need to know then suicides attempted suicides allegations of abuse of pennsylvania prisons we're going to see how a justice department investigation might pave the way for a change in our prisons and our policies of solitary confinement and affairs have

taken down a server used by hundreds of people activist included all because of one possible threats we're going to take a look at what they're calling the sledgehammer approach of the government of all of that and more free tonight including those happy hour but first let's take a look at what the mainstream media has decided to miss. this morning we were trying to watch the news there was one story and one story only it was being talked about by the mainstream media and actually there wasn't even all that much talking going on as for almost an hour all the cable networks rolled live on george zimmerman's hearing in florida. george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman george zimmerman this morning apologizing in court for the first time to the parents of trayvon martin zimmerman that neighborhood watch volunteer who killed trayvon martin florida courtroom where george zimmerman's bond hearing is about to take place as the

question is whether george zimmerman will be granted bond hearing george zimmerman expected in court the judge has to decide if he's a threat to others or others or a threat to him he claims that he acted that night in self defense under florida's stand your ground law dressed in a suit in a time with his arm shackled you see him there so far zimmerman's wife and father have testified but via telephone the judge says bail for george zimmerman the man in the center of your screen there one hundred fifty thousand dollars will be freed from jail the judge granting zimmerman one hundred fifty thousand dollars and the judge in a case to set bond for zimmerman at one hundred fifty thousand dollars you will not be walking out of jail today because they have to work out some specifics about the ankle monitor exam and also expected to asked to leave the area entirely due to concerns about his safety. now you guys know my feelings about this i think of the trayvon martin case is an important one and if it's working people up to problems

within our justice system to the fact that we are not opposed to racial the fact we have laws on the books that allow you to kill somebody and not be arrested for it i'm not so good right these are things that need to be discussed but i'm not really sure how much that's out and as we've spoken about on this show it's unfortunate that a story like this is turned from something that could open up a national discussion really are going to one of the media obsesses over to the extent where honestly i think it has the opposite effect for a long story is a tragic one but as our one of our guests like michelle alexander has pointed out we see so many deaths happen on a mass scale where it's not a neighbor or a neighborhood watchman the does the killing but it's the police and rare. really is a question as there never is it blown up to a story of this magnitude but again the point is not those cases are more important to trayvon it's that i think we should be talking about all of it and when you turn it into a charade when you just play the video you show the pictures over and over again for twenty four hours a day people can't defend the times the same way they do with the wars that we're

fighting abroad more bad news every day eventually makes people tune out and then the media goes to the opposite extreme and turns to ignoring it almost completely it's a delicate balance right anyway what i'd really like to bring up today the mainstream media hasn't touched upon is another story entirely one that doesn't fit into their going track mindset it can only cover one or two stories at a time and one has implications for all journalists and in many ways helps to describe why or mainstream media is the way that it is see usa today publish a story talking about a propaganda a smear campaign against two of their journalists who reported on a pentagon propaganda campaign the vicious circle now has to do with one reporter tom bandon broke and editor ray locker so they were together to do critical reporting on a pentagon campaign or the pentagon was paying contractors to run information operations to try and improve the image of the u.s. military's adventures of rot specifically those in iraq and afghanistan and what

usa today is now contending is that at the same time they were contacting the contacting the pentagon and the contractors for comments on this story some strange things started happening websites are set out which commentaries names that would have pedia pages were altered with misleading information to discredit their reporting and even fake twitter accounts of here and the web sites using their names to register through false addresses and then routed through proxy servers to conceal the origins and that's something that's cheap to do and it's easy to do for somebody who knows how to do it like i don't know maybe a contractor that works on information operations well nobody knows who's behind it exactly in the pentagon is of. are saying that they were unaware that anything like this was going on they call this activity unacceptable but the point is that somebody out there tried to launch a smear campaign against this reporter and that's either going to happen right at the time it was becoming obvious if they were working on a piece that was going to be critical of this pentagon program that's something

that you would think the media just might care about intimidation a smear campaign against members of the press but of course not for talking mainstream cable networks right these guys are the establishment serving press and the last thing that they can serve themselves with are whistle blower cases moves by the government that threaten press freedom because they're not planning on doing anything that might piss the establishment off anyway most of the time it's celebrity gossip it's partisan tit for tat every now and then when legal cases they'll go big on and pretend that they really care about social justice and i know it you know it the mainstream media is a constant mess. are well time for our weekly financial check up now this week i.m.f. and world bank are having their spring meeting here in washington d.c. so we're going to tell you why you should care then as obama starts a campaign to keep student loan interest rates from rising students riot in

montreal over their tuition increases and the timeline for the volcker rule has been set for two years from now so let's get the full checkup shall we. all right here the guys with me is laura lister host of the capital account here on our t.v. lauren a lot of these friday check ups always a pleasure so the world bank i.m.f. meetings here in washington d.c. i kind of get the feeling that probably a lot of people don't even know that this is where their base of this is where these meetings occur but what can you tell us about why we should be paying attention. it's on the agenda yeah you're probably right i would argue most average americans if you ask them with i.m.f. was there one thing that they do i doubt they could really mention that but i'll tell you in the countries that have been impacted by i.m.f. policies and the conditions of their lending they all know what the i.m.f. is the average population now why people should care about this particular meeting

i can't really sell it because hey i don't really think a lot goes on at these meetings that people need to care about but the big headline is that the i.m.f. is you know whatever they say about what's on the official agenda it's all been about madame lagarde raising money to boost i.m.f. firepower to stem any kind of financial contagion or prices that arise obviously the big one there is europe that's financial global financial risk number one and regardless of what anybody is trying to play this as a fund for everybody come on it's all about the worries coming out of your guard as you like to call her she's looking for alarms of money out there right but she's saying that it's quote doing fine right now we're trying to collect four hundred billion dollars and we're doing fine so we already know that the u.s. isn't really all that keen on upping the amount that they want to get to that i have to her is pretty clear on that so who exactly is giving all the money well actually quite a few countries have pledged and one thing that's interesting in the release i just saw from christine legarde office in the i.m.f. is that china russia brazil india and some of these developing nations which were

there was a question about if they would contribute they are contribute they're not specific contributions yet but but not all of artist thanking them that they have that they are going to and will be among the contributors now the big thing there is that developing countries want a greater say in the i.m.f. and the i.m.f. is due to adjust its quotas the irony is that that's set to happen in october and you know what's in november u.s. presidential election so now there's reports that europeans are worried that the fact that u.s. elections are coming up could mean that there could be some roadblocks in the way of changing those quotas so somehow the u.s. even though it's not giving money a look at always finds a way of possibly getting in the way of some. these changes are given so the concern here is how are they going to get money in the pot whether there's going to be money in a pot how much money is going to be in the pot but then what exactly are they going to do with all that money is part of the greater conversation that needs to happen here whether or not throwing money at a problem like europe is really what's going to help it and that is a great point so this is i.m.f.

fire power to presumably bail out or provide assistance in a case where there's a crisis or contagion which is again about europe but exactly it doesn't get to the problem that the issues in these economies have not been addressed and the bailouts impose such harsh terms that are crippling these economies where everything is going to get repayment and not you rebuilding the economy so what happens is the debt becomes even heavier because the economy gets worse the population suffers the country suffers the creditors and the banks do pretty well comparatively everything is on focus on getting them their money back which is the big you know take away that people need to be focused on in my view are let's shift focus a little bit. to the i.m.f. the world bank our domestic since it's happening here right now in washington d.c. but you know what i mean when it comes to u.s. policy or how about our neighbors so this is really just a couple hours ago i think we had some video of protests in montreal students are

protesting because of what you wish and height and at the end of the day it's three hundred twenty five dollars a year over five years of the increase and there we have you have the video playing right now. i hate to say it too though but that kind of increase doesn't even sound like that much compared to how much money people are paying for their education here in the u.s. you know the president is about to launch this campaign basically just a pressure campaign to try to convince congress not to let student loan interest rates shoot up from three point four to six point eight percent in july of this year but what do you think we can say about these situations comparing them well here's the thing i don't know what canada doesn't are as subsidizing student loans but the core issue with the interest rate you're talking with that obama is talking about in the u.s. these are federally subsidized stafford loans so there's an argument to be made that it's an economist do it when you subsidize an interest and industry when you subsidize tuition with college loans and by the government then you're in essence

contributing to an increase in prices which is what we've seen and without that we may not have seen this increase in prices which leaves tuitions in the united states so high there is a case to be made that said the five big these are going to double and it is a situation that they are badly subsidized i think when you look at that and the fact that wall street is subsidized by the zero percent interest rates of the federal reserve they're speculation is subsidized when you look at those rates are going to have to zero percent for three years possibly more at least so far as what we can tell from what the fed is saying and they're doubling these rates for college students that just seems like an inequity that really just how does your as anybody probably should be subsidizing should get a little help from the government i think personally that it's students that are trying to get an education which everyone has told you that you have to have you have to have a degree thing go out there and get a job but their rates are going to go up and it's already right student loans reached over a trillion dollars this is here and now these these interest rates are about to double again the last thing i want to bring up with you is the volcker rule ok

right so this was part of the financial reform it was to have been and now basically by only after a lot of negotiations they're putting more of a time stamp on it but they're taking it down. on the road again two more years right so banks thought that they may have to comply with the volcker rule by this july which was originally the date regulators have come out this week and said no no no you have two more years july of two thousand and fourteen is when you'll have to comply which to me watching on the sidelines as we've been seeing banks the lobbying the regulations lobbying this rule that could have been thirty pages in is turned into hundreds of pages of what critics say are loopholes that allow banks to get around it what this two years says to me is this is two more years for banks to either lobby regulations so they look more like the way they want them to get around or to restructure their businesses so that they can still engage in this proprietary trading in a different department with a different name structure differently is so delicious looking like you are sound like proprietary gadabout about letting them have this two more years question i

think it's having to do with compliance and the concerns surrounding compliance i mean i really don't know i mean there's some speculation to be had about what kind of role the financial industry has had in successfully lobbying to convince regulators that they can do this in time but you know that's a question for the regulator so how do i go next are you always are always a reason that these things are difficult and they take time lauren lyster host of the found the account in our she thinks. we're taking a quick break but coming up today is the two here anniversary of the oil spills we're going to track in and then could an investigation to the prisoner abuse in pennsylvania lead to a huge and policy on a solitary confinement and speak with a journalist has been following this story after the break. the news today. these are the images the world has been seeing

from the streets of canada. during corporations rule the day. led mission in the cretaceous three. charges three the arrangement three. three zero three legs the old sleeve long live mediocre for your media project a free media. led. say marks the two year anniversary of the start of the worst environmental disaster in u.s. history on april twentieth of two thousand and ten b.p.'s deepwater horizon oil rig exploded killing eleven workers and injuring seventeen others over the next three

months approximately two hundred million gallons of crude oil gushing into the gulf of mexico wreaking havoc on the environment and the fishing and tourism industries of louisiana alabama mississippi and florida and that's just where b.p. has troubles began the last month the company agreed to settle two class action lawsuits with over one hundred thousand plaintiffs paying out seven point eight billion dollars to companies and individuals and attorneys are presented to a federal judge this week and if approved this deal would be will be one of the largest class action lawsuits in history now there's no cap of the damage payments either and as the full extent of g.m. it is revealed over the next few decades the value of this settlement could rise so b.p. has agreed to monitor the health of claimants every three years for the next twenty one years as well and the settlement doesn't include money already paid out to other individuals and businesses b.p. says it has paid eight billion in claims on top of this but considering the unprecedented damage is to individuals and the environment resulting from the spill

some seven point eight billion dollars some people think is really just. a drop in the bucket now we spoke with louisiana lawyer danny blackmails participating in another suit against b.p. he blasted the so-called plaintive settlement committee for accepting this keel and he pointed out to b.p. have set aside twenty billion in anticipating in anticipation of civil suits yet the even with the money already paid out on top of that settlement the company's deepwater litigation trust will have a few billion left over now back now also knows that there is little doubt over b.p.'s liability here and the victims didn't get fully compensated by not going to trial but that's not all the plaintiffs settlement committee just. dismissed claims against a company called now co and that's the manufacturer of a dispersant used by b.p. in the cleanup and defendants in that case so the dispersant question is called corexit and b.p. used one point eight million gallons of this stuff to try to clean up because now

does their investigation show this leak is growing concern that it's adding to the long term damage that b.p. has done to gulf coast residents i use in the gulf for an entire year and witnessed the decline in human health respiratory problems central nervous system problems headaches dizziness nausea exact a hallmark characteristics of a wheel spill exposure people have measured loyal dispersant in their swimming pools on their door stoops people work school. now studies are also showing that wildlife is suffering as well the situation is only getting worse last october the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration said the couric sit along with oil may have caused dolphins off the louisiana coast to die and mass and marine wildlife is still turning up mutated two years after the explosion so to speak show that fish are being caught in the gulf in normal numbers but a lot of them contain abnormalities that include eyelets shrimp crawl is crabs and

claw is crabs and fish without fully formed hearts just to name a few examples so without suspicion or with suspicion the courts it is pretty bad for anything with gills or lungs you have to wonder why was it malco included in the plaintiff's settlement committee suit and why did his lawyers back the settlement when they could have won more for their clients by going to court well there's suspicion that it could be the same reason that disaster happened in the first place which is good old fashion greed as part of this deal lawyers working for the plate of settlement committee are set to collect a whopping six hundred million dollars in lawyers fees so just put that in perspective last year the drug company merck agreed to a settlement worth just under five billion dollars in that deal lawyers agreed to take three hundred and fifty million and that was only after thousands of lawsuits in dozens of jurisdictions it took years to litigate so in this case the plaintiffs settlement committee lawyers didn't even have to go to court and they still took

over half a billion in fees something here feels a little fishy right with a whiff of crude oil and dispersant and just plain sad that two years after such a tragic calamity the victims don't appear to be getting the justice that they deserve even as the gulf region continues to suffer. a last december the department of justice launched an investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse at pennsylvania's state correctional institutions cresson and pittsburgh there have been suicides attempted suicides in the prisons leading many to question the true. of prisoners i think facility i question specifically the stories of all the inmates who've been placed into solitary confinement in solitary isn't just the norm in pennsylvania it's used all across the country some estimate that about twenty five thousand prisoners are living in solitary confinement or going to people to solitary watch dot com they point out that nationwide total is actually closer to eighty thousand when you include not only supermax but also the state run

prisons like those in pennsylvania so what exactly have these prisoners been subjected to and could this that's a gauge and pave the way for a change in our policies when we discuss it is not strout the last journalist writing pre-publication including the nation the atlantic and reuters i want to thank you for joining us tonight and first if you can just give us a little background in terms of why this investigation was launched by the department of justice i know there's two separate prisons here but you know how many cases are we talking about of suicide of attempted suicide alone or thanks for having me. the story i wrote is a sci crescent and there are two parts of that particular investigation what involves the suicide of a guy named john mcclelland the other unfolds mistreatment of developmentally disabled prisoner who treats he contributed. as far as i know the department of justice investigation came about because allegations about trees he paid tribute of crazy contributed as an i.q. of seventy he also has an anti-social personality disorder schizoaffective disorder

. and there were some pretty severe allegations made about how corrections officers and administrators of that prison be treated so that i believe that is what brought about the department of justice investigation and it was followed up after the suicide of john mcclellan who also exhibited signs that he was mentally ill that was placed into solitary confinement i mean let's talk about some of these really gruesome allegations that you wrote about in the way that these prisoners mistreated. he would be details please if you don't mind for our audience or. the case with with tracy attribute it was particularly unsettling to get that he has an i.q. of seventy and what happened with him there's something called a secure special needs unit within this prison it's that unit is specifically designed for people who have mental disabilities but the most restrictive part of that unit is called phase five and apparently from allegations that i've received

from people who work at the prison who formerly worked at the prison as well as. prisoners who were there and who are there now and it will formally there they are saying that he was placed into a cell alone twenty four hours a day his clothing was taken away from him his property was taken away from him and he was just left there to languish all day. for months and months on end away a lot of this time was during the winter there was a broken window in the cell and supposedly the temperatures went down to below freezing during some of these days when you can find these months when he was confined in these circumstances to the grosser allegation that i've heard about involves. well it would take away his clothing they would turn off the water in his cell they would refuse to give him toilet paper and then he would use the bathroom and then shortly thereafter they would feed him who feed him his food and be forced

to use it as the hand that he just wiped himself with to feed himself. and so that's that's the type of allegation we're getting here and that's supposedly why current and or former staff members at present went forward to the department of justice to make these allegations and to bring about this investigation but you know it's definitely horrible and here and you know in this case they obviously went very far it seems that all these allegations are true but it brings up a number of patients that you know and it's not about the. back that solitary confinement is actually something that's used in prisons all across the us and if you listen hugh a lot of psychologists out there a lot of the rights activists they'll tell you that even putting somebody in solitary confinement is tantamount to torture here it seems like this particular president pennsylvania went far and beyond with that and so you know when we talk about this a department of justice investigation might pay be able to what could they actually do to address not only this case you know might have other broad sweeping of facts

on the prison system across the united states it could have other effects the fact that the department of justice is interested in this case and has said that it's going to question the treatment of mentally ill prisoners but in the fact that not only all prisoners have supposedly been placed in solitary confinement that's that's meaningful but it there are precedents that have been set that it's that prisoners have no special access to the general population of a prison so in other words it's it's legal to place an inmate into solitary confinement the other the other part of this that is going to be tricky to get around is that yes the department of justice is a federal entity and this federal entity is looking at the possibility that mentally ill prisoners are being mistreated and being placed in a solitary confinement but what we need to consider is that federal prisons also use so it's very confinement and from reports we're hearing people who are mentally

ill are also being placed in solitary confinement in federal prisons so if the findings of this department of justice investigation seem to point toward a ban on solitary confinement for the mentally ill there the federal government is going to have it had to answer some serious questions about the way it treats its own prisoners and the bureau of prisons. which you know yeah it would be definitely a big deal if they actually had to answer those questions and so you know i mean here let's talk about the other things in this investigation to do in these prisons which is that not only were these people placed in solitary confinement or maybe suffered abuse of the hands of the prison guards and whatnot but they may have been mentally ill and so how is it with things like this. how do they slide is it just because of whoever the chief psychologist is at one particular prison or is there an entire attitude towards people like this the way that they choose to punish. allegations have been made that the chief psychologist the c.i. cresson was acting sadistically toward this kind of prison there are allegations

that tracy petter be able to get out of the most restrictive phase of the secure special needs unit at sci preston you need to go through something called the program review committee meeting. and what we've heard is that there were certain program review committee meetings where tracy wasn't allowed to go through those meetings unless he sang i'm a little teacup and didn't dance for a while he was in there and so that's that's indicative of something the other the other and he's in the sci press an investigation is that of john mcclellan jr john mcloughlin jr committed suicide last may and from solitary confinement and. his cases is different because he displayed. it seemed like he was mentally ill he he she showed signs of mental illness but he hadn't been diagnosed mentally ill so he was placed in solitary confinement and nobody really gave it a second thought and in fact he was in solitary confinement in several state

prisons in the state of pennsylvania. and it crests and he started to tell people that he was considering suicide and from what we're hearing from other prisoners who were in solitary confinement at the same time that he was there people who were in prison cells adjacent to that is they're saying that he was telling everybody he was getting ready to commit suicide he was thinking about committing suicide and that there were administrators that person who just said if he was going to do it he's going to do it and so be it so take from that what you will those are the allegations that were raw not that it's in the rye where hopefully we will see some action happen from this and that think they've been napping so much for joining us tonight thanks for having me. are halfway through but when we give back certain budget obsessed congressmen gets our tool time award for once again calling somebody a liar and i will speak to one of the victims of the f.b.i. as the latest heavy handed server seizure of.