so let's pack our toys because what really gives people a good time was parker toys with toxic substance and it sure. didn't seem like the the life of these beads is that you know you take petroleum from the middle east it goes to china it gets all packed in with these horrible toxic chemicals and shipped off along with other a cheap plastic things to throw out and as new orleans is also trying to make mardi gras more family friendly and they're like there's kids programs like don't they literally have on there don't let your kids touch them wipe them off with baby b. if people who handle them a lot are encouraged. very hard lee to wear gloves when they're handling me they goto the tab is there any alternative that is still our store see people go to the orleans have a great time to grow a legend on their own let down on the ground yeah everybody one of the alternatives that are out there are from the left party favors the charlie we've all been using right at least put them in the proper guard garbage disposals and don't dump them

out so that they clog up these very old drains because we do know that you know hurricanes make that even worse there are some groups and new orleans some of the groups that have these out these crews like crew the floors that make it a point to only throw things that are biodegradable that are you know we're sorry or hand made of recycled materials and this year what they're going to be showing is this which is the be made from flower seeds so that we handing out these will michael says this began it and you could take it home with you and plant and flowers from mardi gras will grow what was a much better the. yeah that's way better than i don't think not as we go to break don't forget to let us know what you think of a topic over facebook and twitter see our poll shows r t v dot com coming up we welcome retired brigadier general told me for the hawk's nest to discuss reports of u.s. of afghan soldiers violating human rights in afghanistan i will talk about his new

book state to watch for the whole. team years ago i traveled across the united states exploring america's deadly love affair with the gun bad guy trying to get to one of my family members he would have better a lot better and i think if they are inheriting one of my my baby says my book was published in the year two thousand more than half a million americans have been killed by the u.s. . team yes we did this is a middle school we go through. serials and we cut ourselves some real scenarios it was interesting to see who actually got hit by the mob gun fire just saw i did to return to the subject to track down each gun on a who i'd met and photograph those years of god i don't know that but we are not for a. fight

for many clubs over the years so i know the game inside guides. football isn't only about what happens on the pitch for the final school it's about the passion from the fans it's the age of the super money killian erroneous and spending two hundred twenty million and one player. it's an experience like nothing else on a because i want to share what i think what i know about the beautiful game played great so well more transfer. and thinks it's going to.

thanks. thanks. thanks. thanks. more and more we seem to dip into an orwellian world where up is down left is right defeat is victory and nothing quite make sense in the news we digest every day take for example the proxy war washington's go to tactic when faced with authority conflict in a part of the world it may be imprudent or unpopular for us to dive into directly whether it be our financing and training of the moderate rebels in syria who with alarming frequency ended up mysteriously disappearing with their us approved weapon the u.s. provided weapons into the hands of isis and other terrorist groups or the never ending debate over whether to hand over afghanistan to a private mercenary army or allow a barely functioning government to face the odds in a three way match against the taliban and isis proxy wars come with no shortage of risks not the least of them that the american government's money arms and seal of approval are often bestowed on groups of misfits and renegades who only it was only

qualification is often just being in the enemy of my enemy the friend zone in that vein troubling news has emerged from afghanistan where u.s. taxpayer money has apparently been flowing freely to local forces credibly accused of sexual assault against children for more on how these entanglements and makeshift alliances affect our military strategy abroad we turn to retired brigadier general tony. thank you for joining us today i go i want to ask you first started off is this special report by the inspector general's you know focuses on how the pentagon the state department essentially circumvent the wall requiring military funds to be cut off in instances where you know human rights violations and war crimes may be taking place over giving money to people that we suddenly realize these are good people we don't want to be devoting your support to these people in your experience are we generally is this something is this common are we generally too lax with how we verify. partners abroad i don't think this is

reprehensible it's just disgusting behavior for these seven incidents or six incidents that have been reported and i would say a few things are hundred seventy four thousand afghan national army soldiers that have been trained by the united states army and allies all the multinational forces there so i think if we have six cases that's six too many of course but given the percentage when you're when you look at an army comes is just a cover cloth from the society from which it comes some of the some of these types of problems unfortunately are going to come with that so what what the military does is they they've got a system for reporting and they've got a system for finding this and so general nicholson over there in afghanistan four star used to work for me when i was a deputy commanding general of all the troops there he's a great guy and he's four star general and i'm sure that he's going to get to the bottom of this now that's been brought to his attention and sometimes you know it's

just a very bifurcated area fighting from valley to valley mountain to mountain and reporting structures and so forth it's unacceptable behavior and it's unacceptable that we continue to support these six or seven units or where these folks came from both of them one of the concerns that comes up whether you're very supportive of war anti-war is endangering of our troops on the ground and one of these things that kind of comes up is that there's certainly an objective human rights component here though there's also sort of more self interest a cause for concern senator patrick leahy the architect of the legislation in question said to n.p.r. about the people sort of sweeping these abuses on the rug what he said was quote i don't think that they realize the united states ultimately gets blamed for this it becomes a talking point for our enemies so my question to you is do you think. sort of ignoring them or sweeping them under the rug as often you know obviously these aren't but if it does sort of get swept under the rug does that ultimately. you

know do you think ignoring those kind of things committed by allies may ultimately endanger troops on the ground but i can be right and i don't believe that were ignoring them i think the leaders in charge are going to do the right thing here and i think we have very open and inspector general hotlines we have ways if there are you know just take a look at the mirror that we're holding up to the united states with the meat to movement and all of that and talk about sweeping under the rug with hollywood and so forth so i think the military at least has in place of reporting system and and that reporting system has been strengthened over the years with the integration of several different minority groups and so forth and i it's not perfect but but it certainly is something that good commanders like general mick nicholson will take to heart and take corrective action immediately and follow the legislation and do what the right thing is but your question is does it reflect poorly on the united

as a the metric for all of. the ammunition of course in the taliban al qaeda isis they're all experts at taking just a little slivers of information and then using that to radicalize others in as propaganda so we want to try to eliminate as much of that as possible because any information we give the enemy they will expand him up and make it into something like i said one hundred seventy four thousand trained six on acceptable incidents six too many but when you do the math on that you know it is a cut of the fabric of that society i think some would even argue and say look you know maybe we need to back away from kind of using forces to kind of in this kind of proxy war set up where it's like ok we can't really fully commit ourselves whether it be unpopular at home or whatever the reason would be so we're going to kind of you know flood money or weapons or support into groups like syria you look

at a lot of other places around the world throughout history that ultimately kind of prove out. b. these are unsavory characters do we need to kind of rein in that idea that kind of go to plan i think what you really see here is we got a new national security strategy and it talks about protecting it and prosperity and one of the areas within protection is to pursue enemies to their source and that's really getting out the transnational threat of isis and al qaida the taliban and those types of borderless threats that we face and so the idea is it's better to fight them on their five yard line to use a football analogy than there are five yard line and so if we're if we're going to continue to support our national security strategy we have to have some way of getting at the enemy at their source and whether that's use and u.s. special forces whether that's use in other countries special forces or proxy units or military contractors the end result is we want to eradicate the threat at the

source and deny sanctuary if we if we cut through all the noise of the last seventeen years the primary mission has been to kill capture al qaeda and deny sanctuary because they planned these missions against on during nine eleven. and sanctuary in afghanistan that was the very beginning and we sort of took our eye off that ball and i would agree. that we've really diverted especially with you know kind of the continuous selling of ok now we need to be over here now we need right now we need to be over here and that's really been diluted over the years from what the original thing that we were told was what we need to go to iraq. and i think that that's part of the re that's where you get into trouble like this i think you make too many. enemies of my enemies who might not be the great people. i before we run out of time i want to get a slightly older now if it is that since retiring you've been writing that and your

latest book direct fire. tell me a little bit about it in the land of how your real world experience goes under i don't know everybody asked me that and you know i've always been i get asked how does a general become a fiction writer and then i answer how did a fiction writer become a general goes you know really as a kid i used to read my mom saying right now evils and all of that and i loved i became very interested in the writing process and i just started writing and realized that you know people started liking it and when i got my first book deal back about ten years ago and i've had eight novels number nine comes out in may ten in october so i'm kind of starting the right of every four to five months and it's a lot of fun to create and direct fire is a story about our hero a national best selling hero jake megan who is former delta force six foot tall native american from the outer banks of north carolina and this story has to go find the former the current joint special operations command commander who's been

kidnapped and is being held in a mine band in mind in near asheville north carolina. erstwhile hackers and nefarious actors of syrian refugees that are now terrorists want to attacked and there's no connection there's you're ok. most of it you know as i. said you know kind of a writer became a general military when you were growing up was that where you want to go was like i'm going to go military or lean more towards kind of english things like that and then said no i'm going to go that way both my parents were school teachers counselors and i was a pretty good athlete as a kid playing baseball wrestled and i was recruited by west point to russell and i had this great affection for history growing up in virginia and going to all of the battlefields whether it's revolutionary war civil war and all of that and and so when west point called me about perhaps wrestling on the team there. you know what

i was very very interested in i already had a brother at the naval academy and so it made sense to do it and my parents of course were yes naval academy that's why it is. but you know writing the direct fire the fourth book in the series and and it's just something that i love to do and a great and overviews publisher's weekly and you think you have gone cold if you didn't end up as a military man would you have gone writing i think i probably would have been like my dad i would've been a high school teenager and he coached football i probably would have baseball coach and i still would have written that would have been the one constant but you know i was super privileged to serve and lead america's finest in combat in eighty second airborne hundred first airborne tenth mountain division and i think you know what having this discussion i know a lot of times like our viewers agree i want to push this person harder go after

this and you know i would like to say that look you can disagree with the war it doesn't mean you have to necessarily disagree with the people fighting it just try to have a good conversation together and try to find a good mutual understanding of where both sides are calling press why you have such a good membership. very much a parallel with a quest to have. what haven't been c.n.n. one hundred fifty years and is finally making a return appearance this wednesday january thirty first thankfully not not for odd but the once in a lifetime convergence of a blue moon a blood moon and a lunar eclipse all at the same time our faith david miller has more. wednesday night it doesn't matter what you're doing you owe it to yourself to gaze at the darkened sky in the early morning hours of the western hemisphere and the evening and you will be treated to both a visible super moon what experts call a full moon at its closest point to the earth and a total lunar eclipse the celestial coincidence hasn't happened in more than one

hundred fifty years i mean there are people who have lived and died on this earth without even having a chance to see this phenomena which one appear again for in another decade and according to nasa visible superman's appear fourteen percent bigger and thirty percent brighter than full moons that occur at the farthest point in the moon's orbit and during the eclipse with totality visibility from eastern asia across the pacific to the western north america the moon will slowly lose its brightness and take on a reddish hue because of the way the atmosphere binns the light and to answer a question do i need special glasses to watch the super moon and lunar eclipse like the solar eclipse the super moon and the lunar eclipse are safe to view with the naked eye there's nothing to worry about if you find yourself in thrall and staring up into the sky for a very long time except maybe your neck and the best time to enjoy the super moon is right after the moon rise and before sunrise when the moon is setting on the

horizon reporting from washington d.c. david miller our team. and that ladies drama is our show for you today remember everyone in this world we are told the absolutely wall i love you i rolled into it and then top of the people watching those talks of a great day in. kentucky . overboard this move boys says if you go to st fanny's. a co money since he was almost no coal mines left. the jobs are gone all the coal miners are said. that it was a laugh to see these people the survivors of disappearing before their eyes.

i remember thinking when i was younger that if anything ever happened to the coal mines here that it would become a ghost town but i never thought in a million years i would see that and it's happening it's happened. we've seen that market failure many times we thought two thousand and eight we thought in one theme ninety seven we thought in one nine hundred eighty seven and we're going to see it again probably in the very near future because the underlying design of this capital of the stuff has not been modified to account for changes in technology over the past fifty sixty seventy year and we keep having these catastrophic failures. across europe municipalities are taking their water supply back from private companies move to meet the people of the cells with simple song alone even some company against else with oh they can find private companies to take over the

utilities many bought a telescope of a lab solicitously got to buy them the going to go. buy been this is us to quote them out of political office of more use than bill bill if bill brought up locals are ready to stand up for the basic human rights of access to water it's about water but it's also over much more than war it's about the hurt and the redistribution of our west. date downwards be won or lost. thanks. thanks thanks. thanks thanks to.

you know the unprecedented move the pentagon has banned the us watch dog which oversees the situation in afghanistan from publishing information on who controls want on the ground as amid a string of deadly terror attacks in the country. that's the message u.s. officials were given by an angry palestinian protesters who'd storms than meeting those tensions over trans jerusalem recognition is showing no signs of calming. and so u.s. releases a sweeping list of russian politicians and business figures on

a so-called kremlin list it matches exactly the kremlin's list of officials on its website and mirrors forbes rich list of russian. a very warm welcome you're watching r.t. international with me and he arun good to have you with us this hour now and then on president did move the pentagon has apparently instructed the inspector general for afghanistan a watchdog which oversees the situation in the country to keep quiet over how much afghan territory is controlled by the government and how much by the taliban and other insurgent groups according to the watchdogs latest report. this development is troubling for a number of reasons most least of which is that this is the first time since has been specifically instructed not to release information marked unclassified to the american taxpayer. we cannot close to the us than to sit to speak to auntie's caleb

maupin kainat why so much secrecy and what exactly is being withheld here well the special inspector general for afghan reconstruction is getting his directions from the pentagon from the u.s. department of defense and they've instructed him not to give out certain pertinent information especially about casualties among afghan forces but one of the key things that they've told him to leave out of his reports is the balance of power on the ground he's essentially not being permitted to reveal what territory is controlled by the taliban and what territory is controlled by the afghan government what territory is controlled by the i still forces but if you want to understand how the war is going and who is winning and what the balance of forces is you need to know that kind of information but that has not been revealed and he's being instructed not to share that information and now at this point the usa has been in

afghanistan for almost two decades it's had its forces on the ground there have been air strikes and such and we actually have kind of an admission from secretary of defense james mattis that not a lot has been achieved during that time this is what he said. understand the urgency to understand it's my responsibility we're not winning in afghanistan right now and we will correct this. now at this point there has been a little bit of a change in strategy in afghanistan the usa is escalating its airstrikes and bombing of afghanistan at this point of four thousand three hundred bombs were actually dropped in the year of twenty seventeen that's more bombs that were dropped in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen combined however it hasn't really had the effect of changing things on the ground in fact according to the information that has been revealed the i still forces and the taliban forces have actually

increased the number of attacks that they've carried out let's take a look. now at this point the usa is sending mixed messages about the possibility of negotiations with the taliban we heard in october rex tillerson the u.s. secretary of state say that the usa was not willing to negotiate with the taliban

entirely but that it was willing to negotiate with what he called the moderate voices among the taliban now we've heard from donald trump that there will be no negotiations with the taliban no talking to the taliban whatsoever this is donald trump. this no talking to the taliban we don't want to talk to the taliban we're going to finish what we have to finish what nobody else has been able to finish we're going to be able to do it. now we've heard a response from the taliban essentially mocking the united states and saying that if the usa wants to find them it knows where their office is located in the city of doha at this point we are not hearing moves from either side the taliban or the united states about resuming negotiations so at the moment it appears that the violence and chaos in afghanistan is going to continue. ok thank you for those details. more pain what has this got this bad now let's cross live to our guest expert on middle eastern affairs alley risk going to risk thank you for joining us

on the program so what do you make of this latest decision by the pensacola not to disclose information on how much afghan territory is held by the taliban is this test and admission of failure we're seeing here. well the american war on afghanistan hasn't been going well at all you know what we've seen is that the polish have expanded their a presence have strengthened recently we've also seen i suspended traffic into up when i started so when the u.s. says it's waging a war on terror in afghanistan the indicators show that this war isn't going well in any way whatsoever and i think that you have to emphasize here that even more when you look at the trunk and straighten the trump i'm a straight shooter came into office saying that he wants to wage a war on what he called radical islamic terror that was the slogan which trump has always used ever since so you know he began with his election campaign what we see

is a war on islamic terror between brackets as they called it in a kind of started as i said there hasn't been making any success as your correspondent pointed out we've seen some horrific attacks launched by the pilot taliban and by isis which have now begun to talk accountable the afghani capital previously we saw that the you know there were attacks by these extremist groups but they weren't focused so much on kabul campbell was considered to be relatively secure what we've seen now is that even the capital is no longer secure so in light of these failures in this who are u.s. war i think that the pentagon basically or the american ministration as a whole had no choice but to take this step to try and hide the reality which is going on on the ground because i think that if the american people are exposed to the real situation there will be a huge immense popular pressure for the u.s.

to going to cut and withdraw from that country we had just now presidential i'm saying that washington quote doesn't want to talk with the taliban now is he i'm trying that the u.s. previously was prepared to kind of the negotiating table with the terrorists so if so it was changed. we have seen their words have been the case is that the u.s. might be prepared to talk to the taliban a bit with the obama administration or be that as well with the trumpet mr asian there were some indicators in that regard now we've seeing the you know the trump illustration or trump himself as you mentioned made these comments saying that he won't talk to them i'm not sure how seriously we can take these comments because we've become accustomed to trump making contradictory statements but. you know it's always possible that there might be some communication it's possible that

there might not be you know we have a lot of islam of what we call people who are the negotiated figure in this trying to ministration but you know the bottom line again to emphasize is the fact that the u.s. so i think has proven itself to be very unsuccessful in waging wars on terror not you speaking about afghanistan and the taliban are speaking also about the you know the war was on isis the war on the part of the approach the u.s. has taken ever since nine eleven and so today i think has turned out to be an abysmal or a huge huge failure. i'm not sure that the americans have any clear strategy it would have to improve this record of failure which has accumulated a risk expert on middle eastern affairs thank you for your time. the u.s. treasury has released a declassified list of russian individuals as part of

a sanctions law signed by donald trump in august now the list includes the names of some two hundred top officials and business leaders although they're not actually being targeted with new restrictions on any of the loop or trying to reports for now the russian government won't do anything about what was called the u.s. kremlin list that's how the russian president for now. made up his mind and dodge the u.s. treasury the document it had to be published before the monday night deadline under the so called countering america's adverse stories through sanctions act and so it was ten minutes before the deadline america's saying that being put on that list which includes one hundred fourteen top russian government officials as well as nearly one hundred richest businessmen doesn't mean receiving some kind of punishment so you may well ask what's the point some.