top stories this hour r.t. the crucial battle for syria's commercial capital pits rebels against the regime as fears of a new massacre saw the rising death toll gaining control of aleppo is seen as the key to turning the tables in the eighteen month long. flame is to be lit at its final destination in the british capital within hours but many londoners are feeling left out of this spectacle and instead overwhelmed by traffic and restrictions big corporations sponsoring the event of squeezed out small business seem to be the only party profiting from the games. and the us is top security official goes to the world's largest hacking conference in las vegas the signal some experts say points to washington's new push to befriend those it's been prosecuting for years. and i see it from our new center here in moscow but with another summer in half an hour from now in the meantime from the u.s. a stance on the syrian conflict to its nuclear arsenal and more it's the only show

from washington. welcome to the a lot of show where you get the real headlines with none of the mercy or can live in washington d.c. now it's an irishman speak with lawrence wilkerson on a number of foreign policy issues from syria to our nuclear arsenal to anti league measures put forward by the senate intelligence committee then added his ferrying of the young turks joins us in studio today to talk about the student loan debt crisis a new report tells us the not only is student loan debt slowing economic recovery but it also might be more tied to the subprime mortgage market than you think and

of course it's thursday which means the artes andrew blake is going to be here to talk tech to me a leaked report just might vindicate mega upload and the chief of d.c. police has been reminding officers that they actually have to respect the constitution isn't that nice we're going to all of that and more future night including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media decide to miss. well the mainstream media has been a completely in shock the last few days over the fact that the senate actually did something yesterday that's right it was just a symbolic vote but considering that it's an election year there was just besides themselves. let's talk about bush tax ok well actually there are obama tax cuts because if you do them two years ago something amazing happened the senate passed

a piece of legislation that's good for the showdown over your tax dollars the democratic version the senate has passed barely fifty one to forty eight to not raise taxes on those who make up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars in a mostly symbolic vote yesterday the senate approved a democratic proposal that would extend tax cuts to the middle class but would deny those were dog to individuals making over two hundred thousand dollars it would extend the bush tax cuts only for those making up to two hundred fifty thousand dollars republicans fear that doesn't go far enough arguing to actually should not go up on anybody so long as the economy is in the state that it is they would expire for the richest americans the bill closely resembles the tax cutting vision that president obama has outlined. now this tax battle is going to play out for a long time all the way up until and even after the election and there really is a split amongst party lines there because republicans just refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy but meanwhile let's not forget that in order to pay for those continued

tax breaks for the highest earners their plan is to eliminate certain tax breaks for the lower income americans now we'll get into more detail on that tomorrow because aside from the partisan bickering really are some things you need to know about where the priorities of your politicians lie the thing is that there was another thing that actually got down on capitol hill yesterday and for some reason the mainstream media chose to ignore it yesterday as we told you congressman ron paul's build a subject the federal reserve to audits by the nonpartisan government accountability office what actually passed the house and the thing is that it passed overwhelmingly so that's why we actually saw a bipartisan coalition get this bill through and it doesn't mean that it's going to be getting too far see it basically as expected to die in the senate we have to ask why that is why so many of our politicians have to distaste for transparency why they do. protect the elites and the not the rest of us don't forget that the last time that we got an audit the fed was in two thousand and ten and we found out that

the central bank loaned out a whopping sixteen trillion dollars to u.s. and foreign banks sixteen trillion dollars at the time senator bernie sanders called it a clear case of socialism for the rich i mean i think that we all deserve to know about that don't you some people would say that they're concerned that the audits are going to affect the independence of that that it's supposed to be a political right well there's anything that we've learned over the last few years is that that is one of the biggest jokes out there what ben bernanke you do just last week when he testified on the hill he warned congress about the fiscal cliff he said that they have to act he was taking a political position how about bending rules when they see fit to help out the biggest banks you don't see that as a political position the truth is that the fed is very much a political body in america today and we should be able to know where that money's going especially when we're talking about amounts like sixteen trillion dollars but then this is where we need to call out the democrats both glenn greenwald and matt

stoller pointed out to harry reid for example he used to support an art of the fed but now suddenly change his mind but it's not just harry reid it's the entire democratic leadership in the house like nancy pelosi if any who are they all voted against this bill in the house yesterday and yet they failed to get their party line which is also very interesting now i'll be speaking with congressman dennis kucinich about this on tomorrow's show he by the way fully supports and voted for the fed audit but wait there's even more even if this bill did make it through the senate many think that the white house might veto it that that veto would be very very likely not that shocking any more i guess considering that this administration has turned the word transparency flat on its face but it is oh so very telling so the point is there are other things going on in congress things that everybody should be paying attention to now the time. scott battle is a good pulse on the partisan divide but it's just that the art of the fed battle shows corrupt partisanship where there should be none in my opinion

a fed audit should be a no brainer but the thing is the first some reason the mainstream media decided that this foe wasn't quite up to snuff for their obsessive coverage just another thing that they chose to miss. are we've got a number of foreign policy stories fiske us tonight with our guest perhaps most notably five new weapons deals with the pentagon is telling congress they would like to make let's just say they might give us a clue about our policy toward syria towards iran towards the asia pacific sun in that case how much does the election that are meanwhile retired generals are warning congress once again that our view clear arsenal is too big too expensive and out of date and the senate intelligence committee adopted a dozen anti leak measures yesterday but to be honest they're not as bad as we expected so here to discuss this with me is lawrence wilkerson retired united

states army colonel and former chief of staff to colin powell lawrence thanks so much for coming on the show tonight it's been a while since we've had you on so we have a lot to cover and it's going to be the last time that we have you on the program and so you know just for starters i got to get your take how much do you think that this election coming up in november and you and i speak about president obama's foreign policy all the time we've learned a bit of nothing i guess you could say about mitt romney's foreign policy in the last couple of days how much is november actually affect america's foreign policy probably not at all. you want as i know you want to see dancer when mitt romney gets into the wall oval office if he does. he will be captured by the same bureaucracy the same power structure that captured president obama and he will find that his discretionary authority is extremely limited particularly in national security policy and that he is totally dependent on his d.n.i. his secretary of defense and all the structure of the flows and resources that flow

out underneath them so we won't see much change in foreign policy at the same time i guess you could say that he has not to say that part of the new executive has a lot of executive powers that have been expanded by this president to take if they could give him more power and the revision to the resigning of the limits act which no one is they've been paying attention to right now is one of those things in question it means that the n.s.a. can listen to you and your dad and every other american pretty much as it wishes what we actually spoke about that a little bit yesterday on our show and i what do you think that says about our culture where you have somebody like senator ron wyden that has to fight in order to be able to be an american just say that we think that we can be sure that more than once there at least once you are violate your constitutional rights were violated with the fai's amendments act you actually have to fight in order to say that in the question in my mind that it should be in every american small is why

we're here eleven or twelve years into this business why more americans down the highway in a single year than a million killed and every terrorist attack that's ever occurred against this country why are we doing this why are we spending billions of dollars interfering with perhaps even disassembling the constitution doing all these things for our security when our securities in pretty good shape except for domestic terrorists want to shoot us in movie theaters. well yeah i guess you could say that our domestic security is in pretty good shape in that sense but they're still expanding that essay right there both in this massive have in utah and believe we can find out about the surveillance powers that are expanding all the time but how come congress doesn't know more or doesn't ask for more you know why is that the it's such a rarity to see people like senator ron wyden that actually want this kind of information on the n.s.a. to have to tell us how many times they spidering americans e-mail it it's the herd

mentality for one and that is for obama not only will herd mentality just dominates for example with regard to israel but you can't get anybody to break away from that onto the herd mentality now dominates therefore with regard to iran you can't get anyone to break away from that entourage except a few democrats who occasionally will people up and say we don't need to have a war. so it's a herd mentality and it's also i think we are blessed with probably the most mediocre group of legislators that we've had in a long time and i'd have to search your history all the way back to the beginning to find another group that is as mediocre as this group some of these people do not even know how to put a grammatical sentence together this is not a group of talented people this is a group of extremely mediocre people and that's why you have a legislative branch right now which is so. subservient to the other two branches

of government we voted these people in right so are we getting what we deserve do we get a choice do we really get a choice when we go to the polls in this country anymore are we really going to have a choice in november. i think that's a fabulous question you know to ask and exactly that is that what i want to know if you thought the anything will actually change when it comes to our foreign policy i want to talk to you about what's been going on in syria to you know i've never had a chance to really hash it out yet and so what's you know what's your take do you think that that the international community needs to get involved it needs to be more the local actors and america needs to get involved everyone should just step back and say it's a civil war and it's none of our business it is a civil war now unquestionably and the casualty rate is not nearly as high as some of the people are saying on both sides of the or all sides of the argument the saudis and the tories are really involved in it money arms and so forth this is a mess it truly is a mess i think there are people who now are not publicly saying it but they're

rethinking assad must go and assad will go because assad has pretty much stood all for most of his opponents right now including the saudi and qatari backed revolutionaries who are in his country so it's a very difficult situation to sort out i got a live stream from damascus today from several people who are looking at the situation have been there for some time and their to their take on it was four or four people four different takes four different perspectives because they've been in different places aleppo they've been in damascus they've been in some of the villages that have been really ransacked by assad's military who knows what's going on and who knows what's going to happen this is not a place. that the united states or anybody else really even the turks for that matter have any options in the best we can do is let the syrian people settle it and let the syrian people do what they need to do to settle it and hope that we don't get an outcome that looks more like the solid fist than it does the

revolutionaries the freedom fighters that supposedly are at the heart of this but do you think that in that sense that maybe our politicians need to be a little more direct with with the people you know because on one hand you have kind of this liberal humanitarian humanitarianism approach much like we saw in libya and even have right the president secretary of state everyone comes out and says that the bloodshed must and nobody wants to see civilians killed nobody wants to see a civil war but do you need to make it more clear to people that it's not just that the countries are sitting back and doing nothing that it's a very complicated situation imagine if you were having a civil war here in the united states you want the international community to come in and take action on how the civil war in the you know nobody right now to cover to mess with this particular the brits the south maybe. the the two parties that we could be dealing with right now. let me say three parties that we could be dealing with right now where we could make some headway or clear their ear on

their russia. and there turkey now there are others but those three are absolutely essential to some sort of stability of the and stopping of the killing in syria and look at what we're doing we've got our thumb up in iran and we pick words every day to blast russia i mean this is insanity those two countries plus turkey are essential to a final settlement a reasonable step down from the violence and so forth and political solution a solution in syria and who are we dealing with we're dealing with a country that sent us nineteen hijackers saudi arabia and others who have a dog defied or a bone to pick with bashar assad. this is crazy it's it's lunacy as anything up to say so like i said there is this five billion dollars of new arms sales that the pentagon basically presented to congress yesterday the big part of

those three problem in the middle east let me say i was there sixty patriot advance capability missiles to carraige by a fine radars excuse me to iran you know why we don't want to be a threat copters to lebanon now we know you know why we want to run to be a threat the firearms a threat we've got to sell all these weapons to these people including about sixty billion dollars worth of lockheed martin medium and low altitude and if it. so we're going to be making a lot of money but what about the cuts do you think of the sequestration is actually going to go. will not do enough but is it going to do that and tell me explain this mentality me to me that i just can't understand of congress actually passing a bill my party passing passing a law already we're going to do this and then finding a way to just leave all your way out of all the commitments that you are specially weasel your way out with regard to defense and defense has to be a bill payer we are in trouble physically and defense has to be a bill payer center for american progress and i.p.s. jus i worked on a report with them is coming out in september we show where you can reduce the

budget by a trillion dollars over the next ten years the national security budget that's intelligence homeland security veterans deal the nuclear that's the whole national security budget but the pentagon's the biggest part of it you can take nuclear weapons down we just had a fantastic study down at maxwell air force base you can take nuclear weapons down to three hundred eleven that's all we need good study well documented and you can save ten billion dollars in the process the defense department needs to be national security needs to be a bill payer to the reduction of the deficit. but one of the things that i want to get your take to you on this the leak scandal that we've seen because one of the things that the defense department does is they leak to the press to they talk to the press because they constantly need to justify more of this money and more of the threat that's out there and how much they're doing and so you know is this really are president an era of leaks the way that dianne feinstein likes to feinstein likes to say the senate intelligence committee passed a dozen new measures yesterday and some of these are that there's

a prohibition on cleared personnel for up to a year after employment serving as paid consultants or commentators to a media organization regarding intelligence matters that's the one that i find to be the most unrealistic i guess you could say because you have rent a general on every cable network what do good what did i just tell you about the congress of the united states this is a two sided problem you have genuine state secrets that need protecting by and large thirty one years in the business they are protected you have political leaks that let some of those state secrets out more than you have spa is that allowed some of those state secrets out and that happens all the time and it happens for political purposes we do not really have a significant security problem in that regard but we have as a transparency problem what we have is a problem is the government doesn't tell the american people a mill off it doesn't give them the truth it doesn't give them what it thinks is the accurate picture enough so that all this. brouhaha over security leaks

makes me well why have the problem is not leaks the problem is we hide things from the american people. couldn't agree with you more on that one lawrence thanks so much for joining us tonight thanks for having good luck still ahead on the show we'll talk about education debt and why the student loan market is in some ways even more unfair than the mortgage market and it's fair and leave us to discuss after this. issue is the same i understand that i mean there's no you mustn't let me look like this in the morning. but explain a little. there's gun ownership we would say. oh.

well last night president obama gave a speech to the national urban league and he touted various policies of this administration things like health care policies that were specifically targeted towards african-americans he even brought up the topic of gun violence in the wake of the shooting in aurora colorado and then he said this about education. and the case of the janet first century get up the election. it is a vital necessity that employees should be able to. be a good. thing. just to get out if you got. it. right. now the problem is what do you do with all those people that are already saddled with student loan debt and why isn't the administration making it easier to do things like refinance

like they're doing for mortgages especially in the wake of a new report in the consumer financial protection bureau just this week the like in student loan practice is to subprime mortgage lending and they warned about student loans keeping the economic the economy down so let's talk about recent reforms how private loans fall into the mix and what still needs to be done joining me is atika co-host of the counter and i so have you here in studio know it's great you know the viewers there are going to really excited. you know how do we how do we start to break this down i think that this report coming from the consumer financial protection bureau is a really interesting way of looking at it because you want to talk about subprime mortgages you want to talk about the housing bubble that burst and it's a national crisis right student loans yeah sure they've reached the trillion dollar mark whatever it's like it's kind of just how it is but do you think that this kind of changes the perspective when we tied in with housing absolutely it does change of perspective because even though it seems like the kind of debt that students are

forced to pay back because they can't get rid of it when they file for bankruptcy it's a disaster for our economic recovery because if you are saddled with student loan debt you're not able to purchase things for instance a home if you have a tremendous amount of debt because of the student loans but you're making let's say one hundred thousand dollars a year as a lawyer or something you're still not be going to be able to get a loan for a home and you're not going to be able to contribute to the economy because hey you have this debt that you need to pay off first so it's a bit of a disaster but that's the bad. case scenario a lot of these students take out these student loans then they go out into this job market realize hey there are no jobs out there for me i don't know what to do and you know depending on what kind of loan they take out the could get harassed by creditors i know the federal government is now hiring private creditors to harass students to pay back their federally subsidized loans it's a complete nightmare and there needs to be a different option for these students who just simply can't pay back these loans so

the do you think that not that any of the administration's policies thus far towards refinancing mortgages have really been a success only we have documented a very well in this show every time they help just a minuscule amount of the people that actually need it out there but should they at least be working on refinancing you know student loans federal student loans i think refinancing is a good idea i think first of all the root of the problem is the fact that education is no longer assess accessible and affordable for the average joe so to give you an example when i went to college i had two options for journalism school i could go to my state school cal state northridge or i could go to u.s.c. us he was too expensive so i had options there i could say you know what i don't need to go to the private school i can go out of pocket for my education get my undergrad degree and not take out any student loans that option is no longer available and that's a really big problem tuitions increasing because of the fact that we are defunding education and we need to stop doing that so obama talking about oh how these loans

are such a big problem in these students these poor students and their debt i don't want to hear it let's talk about making education affordable for students when it comes to what he has done for loans i don't think he's done such a horrible job i have to be honest because federally subsidized loans have a lot of upsides for instance they have fixed rates and the rate is very low three point four percent especially when you compare that to. which by the way a lot of times have variable rates so one month you might be paying one thing next month all of a sudden your payment goes up by a couple hundred i mean not to mention two. i think that you know i want to get into private loans because what's the number now i think it's one hundred fifty billion dollars that americans are in private loans and here there's no limit on the amount of that they can charge you you know the default rates are completely and you know there is actually an effort maybe in congress right now because since what the seventy's we've had a band of being able to file for bankruptcy and betty being able to include your student loan there but some people are kind of talking about maybe if you have a private student loan you should be able to you know to file for bankruptcy

especially when you look at the way these banks target students first of all they didn't want to go through financial aid offices they wanted to market these loans directly to eighteen year olds that are barely getting it's a calling i have absolutely no right doing exactly so these students think hey i'm going to major in women's studies or chicano studies which by the way how much money are you going to make with that kind of degree i'm going to take out a hundred thousand dollar loan for my undergrad degree in women's studies or whatever there are no jobs when they graduate and do the banks care about that no the banks want to give out as many loans as possible make sure that they do so with high interest rates because they think they're going to make a ton of money and by the way just to protect their interests what they do is they bundle those loans and they sell it off to investors very similar to what happened with the subprime mortgages of course but so then how do you realistically bring the price of education down how do you how do you go around to all of the top private universities in the country and tell them that you know you're going to start paying your professors

a little less you're going have to cut down on some of the speaking engagements that you have and the people who you invite and pay to actually be there everywhere else where else does the money go well we have cut a significant amount of funding for public schools and the reason for that is because we entered this economic crisis and as soon as you enter an economic crisis the first thing that gets cut is education so we need to put more money back into our state schools that way they can keep tuition low and students don't have to take out these massive loans i mean that wasn't too long ago when i went to college in two thousand and four and it was very affordable i could pay for it out. pocket if i needed to take out a loan it would be a couple hundred dollars as opposed to fifty to one hundred thousand dollars so i think that's the first thing you need to do and also you know refinancing these loans i don't think is unrealistic that it would help tremendously a lot of these students can't afford their monthly payment so making it easier for them is a good idea at least to start there but i want to play a clip for you. yesterday and this was in terms of higher education necessary lower

education but we had kind of a laugh and then a debate over it to take a listen. you know they're not. good. they're not really. good. now part of me think this is all part of shielding the republican attacks that when you tell people they're entitled to things and you have to earn your success and the president asked for mind people of the i would think of that statement there that basically saying our kids play too many video games and watch your housewives and that's why they're failing and maybe that the schools or other parts of our system are failing them you know alone i

feel like you and i live in a bit of a bubble because we are young and we were ambitious and we know what it's like to really struggle to find success are there are people that are young in this country that are lazy and don't want to do anything with their lives sure and everywhere but the reality is right now the majority of young people want a better economic future and they want to work hard for and they want to make something of themselves so i feel like especially when you want to get reelected that's not a really good statement to make especially to the people that got you elected in the first place young people young people that are straddled you know have the student loan debt that have no options when it comes to work so i'm not too happy with that statement but there is some legitimacy to it all right so i guess that you have every voting block you have to be concerned with right and so you don't want to say anything to piss off you know like the religious right if you're mitt romney doesn't want to say things to piss off maybe latino voters and now you know just don't knock the video games if you. are and are going to have

a we'll see you back perhaps here i think all right thank you. i'd sign for another break but when we come back andrew blake will talk tech to me for our weekly technology news update find out of the news industry music industry the latest antivirus the strategy is and then what you twitter tell us about trends terms of illness hashtags don't go anywhere.