welcome to the alone a show where you get the real headlines with none of the marcy come alive in washington d.c. now tonight we're going to take a look at the president's speech last night in afghanistan and the strategic agreement that was cite and the really ending the wars obama says or just a halfway effort to appease critics on all sides then actions taking place across the country yesterday as part of may day occupy protests were for the most part peaceful but media coverage focused on vandalism and anarchist elements so do these tactics hurt the movement that was yesterday tell us about the efforts of the ninety nine percent we're going to debate on that topic we'll have all of that and

more for you tonight including a dose of happy hour but first let's take a look at the mainstream media decided to miss. yesterday as you know if you were watching our coverage was made not only were there marches around the world celebrating the international workers day but the occupy movement also called for a national general strike a day of action and conveniently on the same day we saw the mainstream media going crazy over the arrest of five suspects planning a terror plot. a terror plot here in home the feds say this group here of so-called anarchists are in custody accused of wanting to blow up a bridge in ohio five men arrested by the f.b.i.'s joint terrorism task force agents say they plotted to blow up one of the city's bridges federal agents have busted up an anarchist plot in cleveland five people are under arrest accused of

trying to blow up a bridge five men accused of plotting to blow up a bridge the suspects are facing conspiracy charges and attempted use of explosive materials we're told the plan included c four explosives and these improvised explosive devices the agency describes the group as a self-proclaimed bunch of anarchistic determined and determined to use violence to express their ideological views the suspects were closely monitored and there would be explosives were does controlled by an undercover f.b.i. employee the f.b.i. has had these by the under surveillance since last fall when they first came to the attention of a confidential f.b.i. source they've been tracked ever since they never did have any actual explosives. now what's interesting in the way the mainstream media covered this story is the way that they approach it right notice specifically the word it they say that the explosives were duds and that they were controlled by the f.b.i. and that kind of roundabout rhetoric doesn't tell you the fake explosives were

given to these five suspects by the f.b.i. not only were these men being tracked but an undercover f.b.i. agents were working with them to help shape the plot to offer advice on where on how to use these explosives so once again it raises the question we've asked so many times on this show as to whether the feds are really helping to thwart plots or only create more of them and then of course get the credit for supposedly keeping us safe either been numerous cases throughout the years that have mary much looked like entrapment from newark for the christmas tree bomber to the man who thought that he was going to blow up the capitol now those are just a few and now you can add today's case to the list while most of the case have been attributed by the feds to islamic extremism it does not stop there we've seen it happen with environmental activists and now these anarchists which today the media conveniently was able to tie to the occupy movement in cleveland every to get into what effect violent actions vandalism and artist elements actually have on the occupy movement in a debate later on in the show but this is different this is

a planned for a crime that was provoked by law enforcement itself and of course that's not how the u.s. attorney described it responding to allegations that this was politically motivated he said quote the defendant stands charged based not upon any words or beliefs they might espouse but based upon their own actions and plans i don't know are they their actions and plans are they the f.b.i. or the f.b.i. actually admitted that the defendants had said repeatedly that they had no intentions of harming anyone they stated that they didn't want anyone didn't want people to think that they were terrorists now personally that doesn't convince me then that they weren't demonized for an artist views which are considered radical by the government but the poor. here is that we need to ask these questions right which is why we have continuously done so here on this show now finally some other media elements are catching on the new york times devoted some time to entrapment this past weekend but the cable networks not

a chance they're happy to repeat the lines of law enforcement verbatim hype up the threat and ignore the fact that the feds need to prove their own importance justify their funding but therefore we need to be skeptical when one plot after another has been conceived funded and armed by them but no that's something that the mainstream media chooses to miss. last night after arriving by surprise and under heavy security in afghanistan president obama met with the troops scientists for teaching partnership agreement with hamid karzai and then gave a speech directed towards american voters after reminding everybody why we initially went into the war glazing over some of the reasons that it's now ten years later and we're still there the president trying to make his case for what's changed since he took office over the last three years the tide has turned we broke

the taliban's momentum we've built strong afghan security forces we devastated his leadership taking out over twenty of their top thirty leaders and one year ago from base here in afghanistan our troops launched the operation that killed osama bin laden. the goal that i set to defeat al qaeda and deny it a chance to rebuild is now within our reach. the president also said the war began and will end in afghanistan but as the plan b. laid out really an end or just some kind of a middle ground joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior national security advisor with the task force on national and homeland security and author of the book operation dark heart tony thanks much for joining us tonight i mean first of all what are your thoughts on this surprise visit that the president made let's not forget he's it's only the third time that he's been since he took office the first actual speech major speech that he's given on afghanistan since the raid that killed osama bin laden you know last year to me

it just seemed like a campaign speech well let's be totally honest here the quote unquote within our reach to get out you can't reach to yemen or libya from afghanistan plus the real issue remains pakistan is our what hearing that name should be familiar to anyone attracts al qaeda because he's still at large so we're about to eradicate their leadership still exists the so-called twenty or thirty years of killed wasn't afghanistan and it was so more else so again he's mixing apples and oranges when he says the war began and will end in afghanistan we have to talk about pakistan and yemen and we do mali and everywhere i go and i take exception at one of the most n.b.c. folks last night said this was like the killing of bin laden was like the. best this is like d.-day or you actually killed bin laden maybe like the invasion of europe where you had a beginning of the inside was not there secondly and much more important this

agreement this whole feet this political theater put forth was just that there was nothing he said last night that was new fact he completely avoided talking about the pakistanis in the form except saying maybe you ought to join us in the go she asked which is kind of insane and the second factor is this this list of things he says. up to the signing of this a group let's talk about that right because i browse through but there really aren't that many details there are no figures in terms of how much funding we're committing ourselves to for the next ten years there are no figures in terms of what kind of us troop presence for are going to have during that time in terms of training and assisting some people are guessing fifteen or twenty thousand but i mean so then what is it you know how big of a deal is this strategic agreement or do we just have to wait until nato until the meeting in chicago till you know they hammer out more of those details just congress have to get it well i think the details that were left out which are already in there are the most vexing i talk to my sources who have seen this document there are some things in there that we have not been told about for example they could not run the a bought

a bottle operation the very thing he was there to brag about we could not do under this agreement because we cannot launch oftens of operations against any other country from afghanistan so what's the point so i could lay we're strict our military regarding night raids so that's something we've already signed and that was a tactic that i do believe that it was overdone and frankly the other thing it talks about here is you know i have a hard time not laughing every time i read this after i committed to strengthening government accountability and transparency and oversight are you kidding me i mean what in the heck do you think you might as well made agreements with penguins in antarctica they would have been more able to live up to this and how many cars that's how insane this is all right i want to get into a few a few other details we got you and i spoke about this nitrate agreement which does leave a lot of loopholes for u.s. troops and you as you yourself are skeptical what is there going to follow these new rules and really going back anyway but i want to play a clip of something that the president said last night regarding bases in afghanistan. we will not build permanent bases in this country nor will we be

patrolling in cities in mountains that would be the job of the afghan people. that's not exactly what we've been hearing and so i don't know has there been some drastic shift in policy and the plans for the future is this just not entirely the whole truth coming from the president you don't know at this point because i i don't know if they know the debates going on right now internally or pretty. spirited from what i understand this is the deal what are we invest all these billions of dollars for building those infrastructure we're going to maintain it frankly i don't think we can anyway but with that said the national intelligence estimate the end i.e. goes against directly what the president saying about the al qaeda moment of being being broken is perfect did you not notice do we not notice that bombs went off right after the president left by the taliban so we've got to figure out what's best for our regional policy we don't have a grand strategy policy that the thing that president obama laid out did not get us any closer to defining what our relationship is with the pakistanis with the

iranians with the indians all of which have direct responsibility roles within this region but what do you think about you know i was going to bring that up to you we did see an attack seven people killed the taliban claimed responsibility for it how much should we read into that in terms of the president's visit also was the anniversary of osama bin laden's death. i mean because it is the timing really important there or is it just simply the fact that it's still incredibly dangerous for the president to actually travel here after ten years of war general jack keane said in sworn testimony in june of last year i was there i heard that quote unquote we have broken the back of the taliban and they were no longer able to conduct military operations in urban centers left only to hit soft targets now i don't know how you can be any clearer testimony to be so wrong and things didn't change that much in your obvious because president we have broken the momentum we have not broken the momentum the issue is this for a moment we step away from any game we've made it is not sustainable ryan crocker said this in a classified cable classified cable back to the president so the question becomes

what are we going to actually do for the next two years since we're on a downward slope. you bring up a really interesting point in terms of testimony that's been made in front of congress that we've heard a lot of testimony from various generals generals that have led the war throughout the years that you know our friends had a colonel danny davis wrote a whole report about how that doesn't exactly add up with the facts if you think about it and so i thought it was really interesting obviously the president last night mentioned the troops their dedication you know the lives that have been lost but he never once mentioned any of the generals by name any of the leadership that's been conducting this war well it's been a rogue's gallery if you will i mean general barno started off there's a scene in my book confronting him about the fact that the pakistanis can't fully be trusted they have their own interests they are in our interests and then you've had matured and who over use military force killed too many civilians mcchrystal which i think frankly was on the right path to get you know kind of pulled out and

obviously dropped a truce had a preconceived notion of what he wanted to do frankly i think he was left he left early because it wasn't going to accomplish but it wasn't worth it well i mean it wasn't worth it to mention any of these people because because no one's been successful i guess you could say we have not had a general patton or an eisenhower in this war regarding afghanistan and the reason is this and i think mcchrystal so the best we still have a superficial understanding of the culture of which we're dealing with within afghanistan arguably i think most policies we make. we want to bring you prosperity halas that possible we can't bring someone prosperity that there has to be as in iraq a sunni uprising has to be afghan pashtoon uprising saying we want this if they don't want to we can't give it to him and frankly that's what we're faced with right now we're trying to give them something they may not want in the process for at least two more years will be conducting combat operations for our kids will lose their legs and be killed in the process and yet that according to the president is ending the war responsibly and yet we still have this increment that goes on for ten years

so i don't know if you really call that and you're not tony thanks so much for joining us today here. our it's time for our first break that evening but when we come back we're going to have the latest on companies that are changing their position on sr and i will have dennis traynor jr and soren dayton on the show for debate on occupy wall street made a actions across the country so tight. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you know here's some other part of it and realize everything. you don't know i'm sorry is a big. blow

to the capital account i'm lauren lyster. mary would write a. book and they alone are so they'll get the real headline with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back in t.v. . r t is the state run english speaking russian channel it's kind of like al-jazeera

. russia today has an extremely confrontational stance when it comes to us. yesterday we updated you on the tech companies that are slowly changing their stance on the cyber security bill that gives the government very broad authority to spy on you and obtain your personal data online from private companies now despite the fact that this would actually be good for tech companies bottom line sense would protect them from privacy related lawsuits from users we saw both microsoft and facebook shipped towards a gray area which means softening their support for the bill now in this gray area

are the companies that say that they're all about cyber security but they're also worried about their users rights to privacy online although it's disappointing that they didn't completely come out against this but we were at least hopeful that it could get the ball rolling that we hear other companies actually take a stand against this legislation and today we have a sign of hope we have now learned the search engine has come out fully against sis but now until now we haven't heard anything about muscles stance but in a statement the company said the following said what we hold wholeheartedly support a more secure internet system has a broad and alarming reach to goes far beyond internet security the bill infringes on our privacy includes vague definitions of cybersecurity and grants immunity to companies and government that are too broad and for around information misuse now keep in mind the muzzle is one of those outspoken critics of sopa and pipa and i took part in the blackout last january which helped raise the awareness ultimately stopping that legislation from becoming law and the now that we know where mozilla

stands we're hoping that this will continue the trend of tech companies actually calling for a new less invasive cyber security bill so it does look like pressure works so keep it on. now yesterday we saw the occupy movement use mayday as a catalyst for another nationwide dave action the turnout wasn't as large as the demonstrations we saw last fall but it was sizable and relatively peaceful in comparison overall there were about sixty six people arrested nationwide yesterday but as often happens most of the media coverage that was given these actions focused on the negatives clashes with police and in some cases vandalism. yesterday may day we saw protests that turned violent in seattle after anti wall street protesters smashed the windows of banks and stores in san francisco about two hundred people took over the building owned by the catholic archdiocese there yesterday during may day protests two of the protesters on adjacent rooftops lobbed in bricks of a line of police officers. so what did yesterday tell us about where the

occupy movement is heading and once again we have to ask if attacked the tactics of anarchists elements hurt public perception and because they join me to discuss this is soaring dayton republican strategist and senior communications strategist at new media strategies and dennis rader jr host of akram t.v. and director of american out of a documentary on the occupy movement that's going to launch in just a few weeks gentlemen i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and so dennis i want to start with you because i just want your take on what you thought about yesterday about the protests the actions that we saw across the country the turnout failure or success somewhere in between. the trial york city where i was yesterday i think was a success we had about thirty thousand people converging in union square some estimates as high as forty thousand marching down broadway past wall street again barkley peaceful as the senate but most of the mainstream media wants to talk about the violence and the narrative is really wrong it's really been botched here. and

equating africa's and violence is a false paradigm it's like saying that you know all republicans believe in creationism because the majority of people who believe in creationism or republicans or even you know that the democrats are our goal democrats all democrats are pro-war because democrats are loath to criticize obama's post bush foreign policy in the same way so there are a lot of the anarchists elements within the occupy movement form the intellectual framework that gate that got us this far there are certain people who are violent the movement that i want to just state it is is actually not violent scenes and images of a few individual idiots don't help us in any way throwing things at police attacking police that's not what this movement is about i says sorry what do you think do you think that the occupy unfair leave sometimes gets. described i guess you could say in the press first here there was just

a bunch of hippies people who didn't want to work and that of course you have also certain people that you do choose to be violent vandalism or. somehow engage violently with the police but that's not the whole movement everybody is and like you know it's not the whole movement but there has been when you look at. whole series of protests over the last decade or more i mean recall the one nine hundred ninety nine seattle tested in an incredible amount of violence and there were elements that were part of those protests that are part of occupy now i'm not saying that's the whole thing there there are a number of other people people that genuinely agree in our sort of activist that have come from from sort of nowhere as it were they have been silent up till now their union the unions have been extremely active but i don't think you can you can say that these are sort of legitimate occupy people i mean there's been over seven thousand arrests around occupy protests and i think there were ten around tea party protests so there's

a different constituency different participants. seven thousand a restaurant occupy protest a lot of those protests also included journalists i think there is a lot of protest there that you could say weren't necessarily legitimate and there have been a lot of calls saying that the n.y.p.d. used excessive force that's just one example of a police department out there. just to show force when you're at least parliament has been unbelievably excessive the large majority of arrests are unjustified and court cases now that are coming to court to bury the south to be tossed aside from now old law so when i've been arrested twice during this movement and in both instances i it was preplanned act of civil disobedience which as you are well aware as a long tradition of affecting social change in this country so while it was there there is a faction within the movement that are violent and you can call it what you did it was not much of it occupiers this is a largely nonviolent movement ask any ten occupiers and we look at if i'm one who openly say that violence works as

a tactic that's just not something that's can consensus or even a statistically significant portion of the ideas being bounced around the occupy it is be getting in on the realistic or unbalanced view of the mainstream media well so let's talk about then what it is that actually brings all of these people together and what it is that the movement stands for and what they're trying to achieve and start what do you think in the last what is it six months now i think the time we would have been around have they achieved anything according to you well i think they would say. not totally incorrectly that they have impacted the debate on issues like inequality and that they've risen and that those issues have risen in the public discourse. i think there's there's some issues with the way they frame it when they talk about occupy wall street some people that were involved in the tea party say where where were you guys in zero nine when we were protesting against the bank bailouts and things like that so there's you know

there's a little bit of sort of tension between. you know what they say they're there about when they're protesting and things like that but there are a lot of issues there are a lot of legitimate issues to be to be concerned about in america and i think we've seen over the last couple of years people from all sides of all political sides and all parts of the all parts of america come together to protest on those issues have come together and to for i mean it's interesting you mention the timing here is that yeah the tea party did come first now you have the occupy movement and it's a good question as to why didn't you know why is it taking already so long to actually wake up to this but the tea party what they did in many ways the tea party wasn't grassroots the way that the occupy movement was right there i mean there was a lot of planning there was a lot of big financial backing behind the tea party so can you can you really compare the two what do you think dennis. i think someone is going to see some of the tea party people who are way ahead of the game in criticizing the senate so there are well documented it's not about koch bros funded efforts to get obama or

better democrats elected the occupy movement i'm part of seeks to do away with it you already do up we cease to create a new system of more direct democracy and so are you saying that we we've achieved something and in saying that we are now talking about a debate about equality i don't think this debate there's any quality in this country in this world the bottom line is that the occupy movement is working towards creating a culture where it is human need is put both corporate greed you know and so corporate greed every time it clashes with human need in the united states of america at an escalating rate the past twenty thirty forty years. every time that's wrong worley it's not the world that we want to live in we actually have i have a chart for example to show you if you want to talk about inequality right some of the rising differences here in the u.s. and this one from talking points i've actually put it out but it shows the growing wage gap over the last forty years and just how much worker productivity has increased and yet how hourly compensation has pretty much just been absolutely

stagnant and so what do you think of the right way sarin is to present thing like that can it be fixed and addressed within the two party system within the democratic party or the republican party that both take their donations from wall street well i think there's there's a couple issues one with that particular chart which the data comes from the economic policy institute which is a union funded think tank in two thousand and eight the national bureau of economic research a government funded think tank produced a paper by a guy by name of marty feldstein who's a professor at harvard that said that when you actually use the same inflation numbers for the productivity side that you for the wage side well wage plus total compensation because health care you know i think every all everybody in america understands that we're getting squeezed on health care costs that actually those numbers are. much closer but i think in and this is going to my friend from occupy i think it does hide some of the some of the issues i think we all understand intuitively that a lot of workers are getting squeezed and

a lot of people are doing really well people are winning from globalization people that are that can compete in the global workforce are doing great people that can are really getting squeezed badly so i think the chart has a methodological error but it does high. underneath that is really what are out there right yeah there are definitely a lot of figures a lot of facts you can point to out there but you know dennis i'm curious to what do you think are these the new the leaders of the future that we're seeing take part in the occupy movement right now i think people are just frustrated at the moment because the economy sucks because they graduated from college and they can't get jobs or are these you know future senators who knows. i don't i have no idea the movement is so you know if you look at any past book because you know that we're stuck we're in such an early stage but i have to go back to just something that sort of said i think to say that workers and regular people getting squeezed is a bit of an understatement i came of age in the eighty's you know ronald reagan was busting unions i'm not an economist

a regular guy approached broke up in another movie that was popular in the eighty's was was wall street and people forget that gordon gekko this was a satire was written threaded by comedy loving all over stardom the whole greed is good ego's has taken over and run and run roughshod on our world greed is a homicidal force the way capitalism functions in our world today is literally without hyperbole homicide of course we live in a country in a world that can put all the information that we want to thumbnail put it in the hard drive and you know five million children each year globally don't reach their fifth birthday because they starve to death people in this country don't have health care and they die from lack of access to health care insurance because we have a floor profit model the only industrialized country the world that used to do so so sick people are getting squeezed is is is an unbelievable understatement that i can't let pass or. do you have any quick response and we've got to wrap it up well i i think people both in africa and china would would say that that capitalism is

the thing that's getting them out of poverty now there are winners there are losers there are a lot of problems that we have to figure out how as a society and as a world frankly how to handle this global competition but saying that capitalism is the problem is sort of you know we haven't seen any any other solution that's worked yet and it's the one thing that's pulling people out of poverty in a lot of the world i believe the word was greed but these days right capitalism and greed associated so much on thank you both for joining me and i thank you. our it's time for another break but afterwards we'll have another edition of you said i read it will also bring you information on tasers which sadly for fun lovers isn't all that shocking found out if you think the obama campaign's two thousand and twelve slogan is bad you should see what didn't make the cut all that after the first.