welcome the ilona show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey i can live out of washington d.c. and we've got a great last show for you tonight glenn greenwald and jane hamsher will be joining us to talk about wiki leaks bradley manning and the assault on protesters across the country from occupy to anaheim they're facing a militarized police force then michael hastings will join us to talk about the investigation into a military hospital in afghanistan not only was there a cover up by a u.s. general but photographs of now emerged of the horrible conditions so how big could this scandal get rid of all of that i am working tonight including

a dose of happy hour but first take a look with mainstream media decided to miss. all right so it was another one of those days where the mainstream media was all over the place from mitt romney to the olympics to the shooting in aurora. the g.o.p. presidential candidate spent the last thirty six hours in israel making a special stop at the wailing wall where he offered a prayer and romney also met with top officials including his old friend prime minister benjamin netanyahu a little history for the united states you know vollmer setting a new world record in the one hundred meter butterfly perhaps we could be as a nation in store for some more gun control bill clinton complaining bitterly for a year that obama would even call and now look what's happening it looks like he understands he needs bill clinton at this convention ten walmart's into midwestern states targeted by multiple bomb threats this weekend president obama like sixty

seven percent mitt romney like forty seven percent of all eyes on the courtroom in colorado where the suspected killer in the movie massacre james holmes faces a judge later this morning there's a very strict gag order in place here no law enforcement people or so to speak speaking to the media james holmes back in court this morning but you won't see him now cameras no cell phones no recording devices why is he being allowed to see what's going on inside the courtroom. i just want to pick up on that last bit there that c.n.n. was reporting on a gag order inside the courtroom in the case against james holmes now for starters and i we see they're pretty much out of the news loop because they're just showing all lympics box news well surprisingly they didn't seem all that bothered about the a thought on transparency but feared and they went on and on about this for at least ten minutes of just one of the morning shows that i checked out and it coming thinking and i love that they're actually that they've actually filed paperwork to ask for more openness in the court proceedings i love that they're actually

outraged that they along with the public are going to be kept in the dark here but why. now we have spoken many times before about the attempts by the center for constitutional rights along with journalists like jeremy scahill glenn greenwald kevin got stolen to push for more transparency in the court proceedings of bradley manning so far they've had no luck but if we're going to try a young army private with aiding the enemy a charge that's punishable by death even though the government prosecutors say they will not be seeking the death penalty here either way we should get to know and see more of what's happening in that courtroom especially because this is a man who was held in pretrial confinement for months at quantico where he's put in solitary confinement forced to strip naked and be held in conditions that many have said is tantamount to torture so where was c.n.n. or fox or m s n b c on now one why was there no collective outrage among surprise for the lack of transparency there or what about proceedings regarding get most detainees these are people some of whom have been tortured and have been detained for years some of even been deemed triable by the government and as we told you

last week the obama administration has now employed a new policy effectively killing corpus not allowing defense attorneys to even meet with their clients anymore it's not the way that our justice system is supposed to work and yet again complete silence in the mainstream media there is the picking and choosing the makes it oh so obvious that they're scared of maybe disinterested and pushing for transparency asking questions when the trial or the topic are politically unpopular and they're partly to blame for the public ignorance on these matters and i also think that a large part of it as sheer laziness is so much easier to play soundbites over and over again to bring on pundits tissue partisan talking points that do this to try to rise above things not about the story of the day but the story of the week the year the decade the stories that actually reflect where we're heading as a country the growing divide between the elites the one percent and the rest of us the immunity that they enjoy for the worst white collar crimes for war crimes all we have the largest incarceration system in the world and our prisons are filled

with nonviolent offenders we've got a lot to work on but the only way to actually start doing that is by actually informing people about the problems that we face and as you pointed out time and time again here on the show it's something of the mainstream media does and will continue to miss. i will got a great panel here for you tonight i'll be speaking about bradley manning's trial and what's coming up what discussed the fake big bill keller op ed that wiki leaks has taken responsibility for but more than that i want to highlight something that we see happening across the country now these are images that we saw play out all too often in new york last year between occupy wall street and the police.

now as we told you last week a collaborative effort between four universities they conducted an eight month study which they determined that the n.y.p.d. abused and violated the rights of occupy protesters on numerous occasions also over the last nine days we've seen protests continue in anaheim in response to a police shooting death that killed manual d.s. and the scene in anaheim over the weekend look like this. police firing rubber bullets confront the class of two or five children. resident across. the street. which attacks the mother and child. then we go to burlington vermont where over this past weekend hundreds of activists demonstrated against the keystone keystone oil pipeline and again the police response looked like this. thank you.

so let's face of the freedom of speech the freedom of assembly there under under assault but what happens next for political dissent in america joining me to discuss this is jane hamsher founder of firedoglake dot com and joining us from oakley is glenn greenwald salon columnist and author of the book would literally liberty and justice for some how the law is used to destroy equality and protect the powerful now i want to thank both of you for joining me tonight and jane i'm just going to start with you too since you're right here in the studio i want to talk about some of these events individually we will in a moment but overall just when you look at the police response you look at the way the protestors have been treated increasingly in this country do you think that is it is it becoming more of a dangerous time or a violent time for political dissent or is it just more visual now we see it because because everybody has a cell phone camera can catch what the police are doing right there i think it's a combination of things number one we saw a tremendous amount of money flowed into the homeland security apparatus after nine

eleven and a lot of that money as we've learned was given to states to cities to buy military equipment el rads tanks drones things like that and when you get them you want to use them so i think that's one thing but also the wealth income inequality that we're seeing the increasing it's not that leads to social dissent and the corporations that control our government and really sort of give them their marching orders don't want that threatened and so we're seeing what we're seeing when people are protesting this corporate had a mini plan you know how about you do you think that a specific moment in history that we're going through right now or or kind of just the way it is. why i thing you know to pick up on what jane said if you look at what is happening in lots of other places in the world including in europe and certainly american policymakers are looking there what you see is that the kind of extreme income inequality and economic insecurity that's plaguing the united states is giving rise to very serious social unrest you see that in spain and portugal you

see that obviously in greece you saw with riots in london and i think that there's as there is every time power factions are threatened a real concerted plan on the part of the people and. united states for most rest of them the status quo to try. and intimidate. the protestors through the use of force and reduced by sensually use force against protesters and in order to keep this kind of social unrest from threatening the prevailing order and i think you've seen a lot of planning that's going on over the last decade and paramilitaries of our police forces and you see now the for wishing of these plans are going to vary in stages because this is the income inequality is only going to get worse let me let me you know we're talking of a period militarization of our police force to think that we have a picture here and this is something that someone had from anaheim this weekend glenn i don't think that you can see a but there you have it's a police kind of swat style van and you have the police in

a century looks like military gear now jane to each other we think about this because i know it means i have a gun advocate but when i see pictures like that i kind of start understanding the argument from people that say that they feel that they need to arm themselves against the government you know in case it really gets to that point today funny enough you know the second amendment started to make sense to me to somebody in the air yet you see these kinds of things and and the scary part is that not only do you have a situation where cities have these big you know tanks these big things they think they need to use but there was no money appropriated to train people with them so when they're using things like el rad they're damaging people's hearings it's microwaves going through your body they aren't trained in the use of them so you've got cops out there with all this stuff and what is happening is predictable people are getting injured but do you think that it's different to you know a lot of our speaking about is a lot of economic turmoil and unrest right because of growing inequality but then glenn when you look at something like what's happening in anaheim where you actually just have

a situation where this is i mean that some of the figures are differing some say six police related incidents this year some figures say eight related police related shootings this year but that's kind of you know do you think if that's on a different level. i think it's our culture that you're seeing the fruits of and i think that culture is that you know the government likes to offer rights of free speech and for your somebody and to petition the government in theory on paper they don't mind if you have to size those rights in very sort of a timid and ineffectual way is but as soon as those rights are exercises in the way that they were meant to be exercised when they were protected by the bill of rights and we citizens gathered together to demand a real change and to express their serious disapproval and their unwillingness to tolerate that things will continue i think that's when you start to see that the authorities actually don't believe in the exercise of these rights in any way beyond the realm of the theoretical and they believe that there's something actually wrong with citizens you do that something threatening and illegal about it

and so they act the way that people in power and authorities always act when faced with threats which is to use the weapons and instruments that they have in order to defeat them and i think that sure what's going on and certainly worse than we have seen lots of other place to but i think it's an. inch in this same mentality the that citizens really are here to believe whatever they're going to acquiesce to whatever is being done to them the minute they start to show any sign of resistance then crushing them is the appropriate reaction and the thing is you know you can blame this for perhaps on individual cities police forces in certain cities you can point you know directly point out the n.y.p.d. as being perhaps some of the most violent or most brutal thus far of protesters but the obama administration hasn't said anything about this right there is this study that came out just recently but then before that the u.n. also asked u.s. officials to give some kind of explanation as to what were you know why it was that

this was happening to protesters that were just trying to take advantage of their rights and so in that sense you know when it becomes a federal problem or at least when the federal government the president of united states takes no responsibility for it what does that tell you jim well i. think of the report that you were talking about that came out earlier this week also you know the the freedom of information act requests that are put through by michael moore and others have determined that the white house actually was being kept informed that there was a cordon to get a nation about pressing the. occupy movement and so the white house was very much involved and certainly no they're just not saying anything about they are right finding to the requests have been made by the turret regards that's been there for months now regarding the treatment the coordinated treatment occupiers and the suppression of first amendment rights so they're not saying anything but they certainly have said things behind the scenes and we're certainly kept aware and were involved in coordinating statements that were made about what was happening so their silence is sort of we just don't take responsibility for it but we you know you can't say that they aren't really only responsible. person i'd like

to hear a little bit more from this administration in that regard now you know i want to i want to change topics to move on to bradley manning something that both of you obviously write about pay attention to law and so one of the things that we're seeing now is that the defense is going to try to get all of the charges dismissed in the next step over bradley manning's treatment and the conditions that he was held in while he was quantico maybe just maybe there's a chance to the will actually get to see him testify but do you think that you know that would change anything do you think that we might actually get to see bradley manning sit there and tell everyone what actually happened to him it should i mean as somebody who was arrested for protesting the keystone pipeline and threatened with arrest at quantico trying to bring in someone to see bradley when he was being held in solitary confinement i think that you know if this was during the daniel ellsberg era when ellsberg charges were dropped simply because he was bugged

bradley's treatment at the hands of the government is so far worse. the charges should be dismissed against him but i don't think we'll see that in fact we can't even as you mentioned get the transcripts from the court proceedings or know what the judge's decisions were. i was wondering about that and i want your take to you know again is this something specific about the time now because as you mentioned to ellsberg it was dropped. because of the way that the government handled the situation but because it's a military you know that's it's actually doing it now and is in charge of the bradley manning case does that mean that all those rules just fly out the window you know to get to be swept under the rug. i think it's a lot of that but i actually think that it's pretty reflective just in general of the change in our political and media culture i mean if you go back and look at contemporaneous debates about the daniel ellsberg case you'll find that it received norma's amounts of attention from the media from citizens from the political class i mean not just the pentagon papers themselves but the treatment of the prosecution

of ellsberg was a very widely and hotly debated issue by contrast if you look at what is being said and done about bradley manning the establishment media itself is almost completely ignored these proceedings i mean you have to basically go to the guardian or to places outside of the american establishment media such as this show or our blogs to find anything about it and i think that it's just very indicative of this of this general attitude that when the military of the u.s. government asserts a claim that something is necessary and justifiable in the name of national security that are leading this stablish in institutions not including but especially our established media simply acquiesce to it silently i don't care i mean the u.s. government succeeded in preventing guantanamo detainees from ever publicly talking about their abuse while in detention and then even by barring them from going into court and this is an extension of that you expect the government to want to suppress these sorts of things but what's amazing is the almost complete lack of

interest on the part of media institutions and that's what the and the military and the government get away with these things to the extreme extent that they are personally and i you know i don't think i think of that even applies to you with the way that they cover some of the protests and like i was you know i went over this last week on the show is the every headline says protesters get violent police arrest this many people but they never get into all the details of. all of the pepper spray or the pepper balls or excuse me the rubber bullets that are used by the police and whether or not they actually help to agitate the situation right it's always just that they're the ones bringing order well. we had people send i think a total of almost fifteen thousand e-mails to publications across the country in their local area their local newspaper saying cover bradley manning we sent so many phone calls and e-mails and that we got called by major media outlets all over the place saying ok we get it forget about it we'll you know we hear you are ready and

yet kevin gospel our reporter is one of the only reporters consistently going to every hearing that they have for bradley manning and covering the case they hear it they understand that the public wants to see it and yet they're not going so that's a conundrum it's not like it's not like oh they don't know about it they do know about it they do hear about it they're just make an affirmative choice not to cover it even though people are demanding that we i think if there are you know not enough people that know about it why is all the all the more important they actually do cover it we have to wrap it up in a second here but glenn i just want to get your take really quickly because you wrote about this today too so there was an op ed that we thought came from bill keller. former editor of the new york times the turns out that it was a fake but essentially he was talking about we can leaks and how we should look at it and the dangers the way that they're being treated really pose for all journalists and turns out that was a fake but you know what's your take on that situation because some people say that that's. you know it's not good that we actually put out a fraud you know something that was fake and did that kind of a prank that it damages their credibility what do you think. i mean i don't think

that it damages their credibility and mean for one thing they have a perfect one hundred percent stellar record of publishing documents that are authentic and authenticated for another they're not only a media outlet they're also activist and this is part of satirising the new york times in its government subservience and sort of highlighting an important fact about the new york times that they've ignored the war on wiki leaks of the way in which their funding has been cut off at the same time i do think that this is going to be used to undermine the credibility of future wiki leaks publications and justifiably but still effective way by by calling into question whether or not they're pub what they're publishing is actually authentic and how can we possibly know given house killed they've proven themselves to be at forgery and so i sort of see both sides i but i do at the end of the day think that this is going to end up being used as i said unjustly but still in reality to call into question whether or

not what they're publishing is real and i think that. i think we've already seen that you know and that's why i asked the question is because that's very much the way that i've already seen a lot of people approach it i have to wrap it up because we're out of time i want to thank you both so much for joining us tonight. thank you. are you guys going to take a quick break but coming up next we'll speak about the notorious hospital in afghanistan at the center of a military cover up thing described as having auschwitz like conditions see the photos and you decide for michael hastings to be on it tell us more after that. if they shoot something inappropriate for the public they can easily be. against his will. i wish it would never happen but it has. you know for a t.v. camera becomes unnecessary but this is their own. safety all foreign nationals

including journalists and inspectors should leave iran. and the spear what happens with such witnesses i've got him on my side camera one from everywhere the many muslims are so. sure merciless shooting on our t.v. . news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are the day.

it. last week we finally saw testimony on capitol hill surrounding the investigation

into abuse of the tie with military hospital in afghanistan and some military officials called the conditions there it's like not only has the investigation thus far that we tenet general william caldwell tried to block the probe and then cover it up but they're also now visuals to show just how horrible the situation was buzby got their hands on these never ever before published photos showing patients with untreated wounds maggots crawling out of their sores in filthy conditions many looking like they were on the brink of starvation and they're not easy to see but we have to ask is how this was allowed to happen so joining me to discuss is michael hastings rolling stone contributing editor buzz feed reporter and author of the book the operators michael thanks for joining us tonight i guess if you could just start giving us some details about this hospital how long it's been open who the patients are how involved the u.s. is in. the daily way that it's run. well first thing is for having me i think this is a fitting story for your live show a very very happy and upbeat news so the details this was

a this is called the dod national afghan military hospital it was started in two thousand and five in kabul it's funded in a large part by the u.s. military over the last seven years we've had literally hundreds of u.s. military advisors in the hospital you know that are supposed to be sort of providing training and oversight to the missions and to sort of these the medical personnel in afghanistan and clearly a lot of it went horribly wrong somewhere along the way where you had a situation where afghan soldiers because the hospital three afghan soldiers were coming in and essentially they would have to pay bribes to get any treatment at all and even if they could afford the private off the treatment wasn't very good you had simple infections that would end up with patients dying patients were eating they were starving to death so it really a list of cars. it sounds like

a horrible thing to them please tell me that when you know there was finally hearing about this talking about the investigation on capitol hill were members of congress outraged about this they asked how it's possible that hundreds of military officials went through there and didn't say anything before you even the other three whistleblowers that decided that it's time to investigate. well that's that's a great question and in fact so these abuses first came to the attention of the u.s. sort of chain of command into temper two thousand and ten and after that you had three with the blowers three u.s. colonels military colonels who said hey look. there's this horrible stuff going on here your documentation of it we should have the defense department best again because again you know we're giving. we don't know the exact number that went to this specific hospital but it's tens of millions of dollars perhaps up to much of the hundred twenty three million dollars and it's part of

a larger eleven billion dollar your program so that was a blower collected the data brought it up to the general who was in charge a guy named general william caldwell and general caldwell told them he didn't think they should investigate it and then the reason they gave was because they didn't want the bad news coming out of the command especially before an election in two thousand and ten election and tried to prevent them from actually investigating now thankfully due to the persistence of these whistleblowers they went around caldwell brought in the specter general themselves and that's how this investigation got sort of but that was two years ago and only now are we are we finally getting even the full story but so in that sense. you know how big do you think that a scandal like this would you say that this is i mean this is supposed to be our allies right afghanistan of refining of war there and yet we're training we're funding we're assisting these afghan security forces and they're the ones that are being treated like that and this hospital would think that there would be

a lot more outrage i don't know if you would want to compare it to you know to aba ghraib scandal or others in the past and yet i don't really see that there are horrible images and we decided to show them but i don't see them on every t.v. screen i don't see this becoming a big of a story as we've seen in the past. well i don't know i mean look it's been it's been building up now for over a year the wall street journal originally broke the story about a year ago now we have the pictures we know there's a lot more video and there's probably seventy more photos that have not been released you have an american general who's involved in covering it up and is this is a bill that is in afghanistan it is afghanistan the abu ghraib i think one could make that argument in that you have people who are nominally supposed to be under american supervision who are literally dying and regular prisoners these are patients these are these are afghan soldiers who we have said look come pick up the fight for your government and we will have your back and instead you have images of them literally literally with medical appliances still stuck in an open wound and

undergoing on under our watch and with our money and and our taxpayer dollars if it were just a moral question too and as you brought up you know and it was brought up in the testimony last week how many top ranking official went through that hospital and did the same thing you know how long has this sort of abuse gone on in total silence and to make matters worse no one has actually been punished for any of it well that's i wonder how you think this will play out are we going to see general caldwell actually take the fall or is it going to be the whistleblowers that actually face africa. well i had these rules of lords that are you know i think to have already retired that they're very well respected while you know one is a lawyer and others dr so i think they're quite well protected in this case because i don't think they planned on having much longer careers in the military whether or not general caldwell will be forced to testify and i do from what i'm hearing that

sounds like a possibility it might have been. in september but we don't know that for sure should be i think so i think you know even if you want to if you want to clear his name he's going to have to come forward and explain his side of the story though from what we can tell it's not a very convincing. our michael thanks for joining us tonight and you know it's i hopefully i think that you know they get to the bottom of this and some people are held accountable because one of those things that you especially don't want to see when it is you know the u.s. military supposed to be supervising this hospital these are patients there thanks so much will keep it up and i hope you'll be talking about it on your new hall over at top post live all right thanks. guys it's time for another break that states and our senators are saying the defense cuts will cause of the sky to fall down and say it's number one planet when tonight's total time of war and so find out.