with potentially vast reserves of oil and gas at stake moscow is hosting an international forum on the future of the arctic scientists are also there warning of a colossal damage and be responsible for protecting the financial ecosystem. president orders a ban on the supply of russian advanced defense systems to iran. the s. three hundred missile deal because of the latest u.n. sanctions on tehran. and more cooperation is visible at the u.n. summit in new york nato and russia say they've made real progress towards greater unity the two sides agreed to work together for better security in europe. that brings you up to date next on the show we find out that the american christian right has a lot more in common with the taliban than they would like to admit. welcome

to the ilona show really get the real headlines with none of the mercy are coming live out of washington d.c. now today we're going to interview the author of the american taliban was just strong title we just had to get insight from markos moulitsas himself as to how he says the far right wingers in america with islamic extremists on the other side of the world then there's buzz around another new book except this one hasn't hit the shelves yet obama's wars by bob woodward completely exposes the obama administration's approach to the war in afghanistan in a not so positive light so we'll speak with blogger robert farley about woodward unleashing some very dark secrets from within the white house next new yorkers are experiencing serious headaches as diplomats were around the world are headed to the

united nations but the headaches aren't just from traffic congestion they're also from a role questioning what the u.n. really does in today's society our correspondent lauren lyster will have that story and tea partiers in america not only want their country back they also want to back out of international organizations like the u.n. correspondent dina kosofsky will join me to explain why the growing political group claims that the u.s. needs to remain sovereign from global political bodies then we're going to take a look at a different aspect to the growing poverty levels in the u.s. the white underclass it's always been considered a taboo topic until one author decided to take it on and write an entire book so we'll speak to author joe badgett of the book rainbow pie a memoir of a redneck in america at the end of the show but now let's move on to our top story . when i say the american taliban what comes to mind you probably assume that maybe this is a new wave recruits from within the us that have been lured in by the hottest

websites to fight naff ghana's debt but what if i told you that these people are just your average right wing christian americans the politicians in the radio a news host that you see and that you hear every day well that's what markos moulitsas the founder of the daily kos argues in his new book the american taliban how war sex sin and power by in the radical right he points to militaristic zeal brute faith and masculinity a distain for women's rights an outright hatred of gays and aversion to science and modernity as well as a staunch anti intellectual ism to show what the american rights and muslim extremists have in common but what i want to know is no matter what label you place on them what do you do with those whose sole aim is to control or earlier from our l.a. studio i caught up with markos moulitsas and i first asked him if the qualities that he attributes to the right wing like the desire for control militarization

resorting to violence to make sure that your goals are met why it is that he picked the taliban and nazi hitler to show them perhaps does he think the taliban will get more of a reaction these days. the reason i chose the taliban is because as a progressive i've spent the last nine years since nine eleven hearing from conservatives that i want the terrorists to win every time we try to do anything from from try to end the wars to try to stop the explosion of the surveillance state to push back on erosions of hebrews corpus these conservatives say well you want islamic fundamentalists to win you want the jihad is to and that has always been pretty pretty ludicrous for the reasons that i detail in this book american taliban things like their militarism their fetishisation of guns their hostility towards women equality i hated of gay. yes and their sort of distrust of science and education in their bizarre hangups about sex so all of these things

sort of to me may come from a value standpoint indistinguishable so they're accusing me of wanting the terrorist to win i'm saying i don't know what the terrorist to win for the same reasons i do not want you to win but are you asking saying that perhaps you know. one hand it's their values but are you also saying that they're the same as the taliban in terms of their violence i mean you know the taliban goes around and kills people and plants. you know wants to control all of afghanistan and they'll kill whoever they need to to get that. well there's clearly a difference in degree and a lot of that is based on the society and the norms because you know when the extremists in this country haven't had those legal checks and balances they have gone much further we don't have to go back to foreigner history to see the lynchings in the south as an example of what these. reactionary right wing fanatics will do in order to push their brand of hatred and ideological rigidity but of course you can also can't say that there isn't violence in the american right wing

because of course there is i mean there you look at the clinic bombings clinic bombings and abortion doctors killed and i detail in a book a series of shootings and destinations from right wing figures people who following glenn beck and get riled up because they think that america is going to become a communist kenyan socialist state thanks to obama and the democrats and you have right now and this is pretty scary stuff you have a nationwide shortage of ammunition as these people hoard guns and the horror bullets and are not hoarding guns and bullets because they want to have a civil debate discussion and follow the democratic means by by stating elections and of course you have a senate candidate in nevada sharon angle who's running against harry reid who has said that if the republicans don't take control of the senate they should consider the second amendment remedies as. solution that of course is a reference to guns and violence and so we can say well you know they haven't gone

to the extent of the islamic fundamentalists and the taliban in the middle east because right now it's a maybe it's a question of not if but when and so we need to keep an eye on these people we need to realize that the extremists the traffic in hate and fear and harm to the teeth so we can't let our guard down so when violence does happen we can't sit around and say well nobody could have predicted because right now i'm saying this is a real threat well i don't think anyone's going to point to sharron angle and call her a have bastion of sanity but you know it's interesting that you talk about the glenn becks of the world the people who are preaching every day that obama perhaps you know america's going to become a socialist country under him and yet you've gotten a lot of critiques from people who also call themselves liberals that are saying that you know in essence you're not doing anything that they aren't doing your finger pointing you're naming names and you know perhaps that that's just as dangerous what do you say to that. yeah there's a lot of progressive critics and to me these are people who want to hope that

america can't sort of regress into the sort of world of violence that we see in the middle east but the fact of the matter is if you look issue by issue these american taliban share the same values they want the same it in the qualities they want the same tyranny of a majority of the white male dominant majority and we can't pretend that they do not exist because it is inconvenient or unpleasant or uncomfortable to think that these people are behind as you say sharon angle nobody's going to claim she's a bastion of sanity fact that she is now one of dozens of republican candidates who have taken essentially from the party move who have taken over their party in the primary process and are running people like them and now you have a situation where karl rove can't criticize these candidates lest he be branded a traitor to the conservative cause that karl rove is no longer conservative enough impure enough for these people so you see that you have essentially this is this was a fringe. this was a john birchers of old it was a french who's now taken over the republican party one of only two major parties in

this country and i think that is a cause for concern why do you think it's working why are people actually listening to this and for some reason this pulls on their heartstrings and resonates with i mean it's one thing if you look at afghanistan the taliban there is dealing with a population that's eighty percent literate this is america you would have a little more hope that people could weep through all of the you know. yeah you know you would you would hope i think what we have a situation right now with that kind of me is in the gutter people are scared change is happening there's fear i think a lot of his racial base there's fear that when they pay their taxes it's going to undeserving people and for them undeserving people are brown people in cities they don't they don't see that money helping them they think it's going to help other people who are not deserving so they're scared they're fearful for looking for scapegoats and of scapegoats may be immigrants or they could be muslims or they can be african-americans it doesn't matter they need scapegoats you have a group of people who are really adept at exploiting those fears and i don't think

that's any different from islamic fundamentalism where you have people who are hopeless because they don't have enough work and they feel their life has lacks meaning at the end these people prey on those fears and that's no different than what we saw in in bosnia and serbia and what we've seen in georgia and russia and what we've seen and you know in fascist states all across the world i mean this is not unique to american right wing or unique to each other for the battle is of fact the reason i call it the american taliban is because that's who i've been accused of helping them out but ultimately this is sort of the the spark of every right wing nationalist movement is preying on fear and economic and that with these inequalities and a lack of hope well i'm completely with you there and i definitely they you know they use fear as far as they can but do you offer are you offering any kind of a solution or an answer to this because it's one thing to say hey these guys are bad and they're you know they're fearmonger. what's the other option. well the first step is to acknowledge that they exist as you point out there are myriad

progressives who don't want to even acknowledge their existence so it's not enough to say what's a solution where people don't want to admit there's a problem but there is a problem and where you go beyond that for one you keep them out of power i mean these people are in in serious. position to not just win the house and the senate but also take out their leadership the republican leadership to replace them with these incredibly far you know you think the republican party is out there and these people will take it to a whole new level of crazy so step one is to engage in this election and make sure that these people don't take power because you know i wrote this in a book i have a chapter on sex it's actually i think pretty funny because they have some bizarre hangups about sexuality but it's hard to laugh at them when they're in power and it's hard to laugh at them when they have these in savely large i mean the cash. they have shown start to show their willingness to use that weaponry so we have to

keep them out of power but it will also be odd that we have to make sure we push for a government that actually works for people because if people have jobs and he think they have hope and he still believe in the american dream then they will not resort to these sort of crackpot right wing reactionary theories and but right now the problem is that we have those inequities and that is encouraging and fueling that people are the movement and the rise of this. sort of hateful and scapegoating right wing movement in this country there definitely is a rise of hate across this country right now and people are starting to feel that way as well so there needs to be some kind of a solution as to how to turn around marcus thanks so much for joining us. maybe so i thank you very much. so to come on tonight show how to tell if your neighbor might be a terrorist the department of homeland security has some ideas on how to spot someone who might be planning harm in your community we'll give you details later in the show and legendary journalist bob woodward's latest book obama's wars comes

out next week but the details have already started to leak out so we'll dive into the revelations of the commander in chief was not quite happy with his general's options for afghanistan and talk about the war that's raging in pakistan. every month we give you the future we'll do you understand how we'll get there and one more reason best in science and they're going to from across russia and around the world. join us. on our g.

legendary journalist bob woodward has just opened the doors all the windows you could even say ripped the roof off of the obama white house when it comes to their decision making for the war in afghanistan and a new book entitled obama's wars that won't be released until monday but which was excerpted xor of it in both the new york times and the washington post today woodward exposes a national security team that at times resembles a trash talking group of teenagers as well as a president who's felt boxed in from the start by the military leadership now according to woodward president obama urgently look for a way out of the war in afghanistan last year were. heatedly pressing his top military advisers for an exit plan that they never gave him thus the president created his own strategy as a compromise and a classified six page term sheet that would have thirty thousand troops in a short term escalation but also set a withdrawal plan to begin in july two thousand and eleven now the president also

told woodward himself the he didn't think about the afghanistan war in the classic terms of the us winning or losing he said i'm not doing ten years i'm not doing a long term nation building and i'm not spending a trillion dollars those are the words that he told hillary clinton and robert gates but looking at where we are now at the compromises that have been made and the lack of any end in sight we have to wonder if this book also shows the beginning of a presidency that ultimately will lose power to a different kind of insurgency that of military command joining me to discuss it from cincinnati is robert farley a blogger for lawyers guns and money robert thanks so much for joining me let me ask you this you could say in many ways that we kind of weird he knew that there was a little bickering within the white house and perhaps general mcchrystal and his piece you know in the rolling stone article that essentially got him fired really shone the light on that but you know here when you have the president saying repeatedly that he wants an exit strategy that he wants out and the generals don't even offer

him anything of the sort he has to make a compromise and it is not really solidified to you that he's not the one in charge here that it's the military that's controlling the civilian leadership. well i mean i think first that you know having the on. you know i'm not certainly it shows that the military leadership has a different incentive structure than the obama presidency suggests that they are looking at a different timeline than he is and that they have different goals than he does i think the president was quite right to think that ten years and a trillion dollars again isn't about winning and losing ten years in a trillion dollars in afghanistan is losing that's the definition of losing no matter what the outcome at the end is but for the military it's a little bit different because for the military the institutional consequences in terms of financing in terms of morale and everything else of any kind of defeat or even of a lack of success can be quite devastating and we still have

a generation of military officers who remembers what the united states or very looked like after vietnam and they don't want to repeat that. yeah i mean i think that when we think about who's really in charge i think that the next couple years we're going to find out i mean president obama i think is looking for still looking for a way out of afghanistan and if there is a significant reduction in troops after two thousand and eleven which is what he suggested before then that indicates that he's really still want to charge if not and. if the united states remains committed in afghanistan along the levels that it has been so far then we really have to ask whether the machinery has taken over well i mean it's funny to me that you mention that because when you read some of the you know the names that they were calling each other even have a general jim jones calling the people the campaigns that obama's political aides and to me that just shows the mindset which is these are the politicians they come and go but we're the military guys we're here to stay they're just the campaign set that's here right now but the other thing you know like i said is it sometimes

sounds like a bunch of teenage boys in high school that are just trash talking each other which ok sounds like a little bit of a gossip maggie could say it's funny but it's not funny these guys have so much money and so many lives at their disposal so do we just say that this is normal or should this worry us. well i mean the first thing is that jones occupies sort of a strange position because he is a political figure now because he is the national security adviser and so he's not exactly in the same place as mullen or general petraeus doesn't tell you get back in there he's still a general right. right i think it may be retired but. thinking about it i think there's a fine line to draw in east national security team in really in any policy team between allowing full and frank discussion in whatever terms that discussion may take and then maintaining a certain sort of decorum or certain standards of decorum a certain set of rules. and so i guess the walker room sort of stuff doesn't really

bother me as much as the matter of the material which they were talking about which still seemed i think as you suggested before a little bit constrained and really lack imagination and i think that the president himself seemed really frustrated and this is just from the example except we've seen so far we don't know what's in the rest of the book yet the president himself seemed really frustrated by the options that he was given and so the fact that people didn't really come up with any new ideas. more than even the sort of the words that they put those in the arguments that they had i think is maybe what's most frustrating about this entire conversation or what we know about this conversation so far well one thing that is interesting is that the president also felt that you know the war is no longer just situated in afghanistan because this dockyard these excerpts from the book also reveal that in fact you know there's a three thousand man paramilitary army of local afghans ones who constantly cross you know the porous afghan pakistan border to fight the taliban or to fight al

qaida which is odd because you know normally they try not to admit it is a big secret that we operate in pakistan and yet here they're not only talking about it spencer ackerman put it earlier today they're even bragging about it so what does that tell you. it tells me that they are and i think spencer is just the sue they're really proud of having come up with this this paramilitary afghan organization. and you can sort of on one hand see why they're proud of it it means that they get to go in pakistan that they get to kill taliban they get the chase al qaeda without any americans necessarily coming under threat and so you can see why this is just really attractive to them that they have these afghans that they can use to hunt down other afghans. of course one problem is that when you create these teams when you create these organizations and this is a huge organization three thousand is a very large militia for fighting this kind of war when you create these guys we're going to sions they don't just go away when you stop paying attention and

unfortunately in the future at some point we may find that the leaders in this particular organization. you know rise to two to leadership positions in pakistan or in afghanistan and that there will always remain sympathetic to the united states and then you know at that point we'll be looking back and saying well who put these people in positions where they could take advantage of the united states who was there and who gave these people weapons and funding and so forth and which what interest where we prosecuting at the time yeah and we've definitely gone through that experience before and had it you know worked against us so we will have to see and of course we will see when the whole book comes out on monday what other little details we can find there robert thanks so much for joining us thank you are just ahead on tonight's show new york is on lockdown because of the u.n. general assembly meeting we'll take a look at residents who are unhappy with the gridlock and the continuing debate on the relevance and the contradictions of the world's most important global

institution. from. more news today is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada from china corporations are all today. from. me. it's a little busier than usual in new york city right now the sixty fifth annual u.n.

general assembly is underway and diplomats and dignitaries from all over the world are currently in the big apple but as our t. correspondent lauren lister reports the locals are frustrated not only with the traffic and the congestion but with the united nations itself. police escorted motorcades right. at least i point i had to show my id to get into my own apartment entire blocks of streets closed to traffic blacktown cars double parked up and down the open ones in new york city this can only mean one thing. there is something big going on at the united nations and there are many important dignitaries coming in from all over the world but dignitaries are bringing gridlock and commotion to the city for this reason. to see if you can get out of them to. get mission. aside for a few cheerleaders we are here to welcome our british from cameroon and activists

rallying for their cause. for new yorkers living in the neighborhood near the u.n. headquarters it amounts to you know. it is some most annoying time of year for them and for nearly anyone trying to get around the east side of town it's a terrible inconvenience with delegates from one hundred ninety two countries here for the annual meeting it means manhattan hotels are barricaded by secret service. nearby restaurants like this one are flooded with reservations from countries never heard of before by their owners yesterday we did see morris. after a day of talking about how to end world hunger delegates indulge in the finest cuisine new york has to offer but this time of the year you have the fresh french fries truffles that would make up a bit of what a black truffle. truffles legal side this restaurateur says even the most war torn strapped for cash countries spare no expense while out on the streets it's the u.s.

police presence projecting power for all to see all of these u.s. police barricades eventually end up here at the united nations where inside some argue a different u.s. contingency tries to take over control when it comes to world diplomacy every country has it has an interest that it seeks to advance i guess the difference with the u.s. is that it views the whole world as waster matthew lead covers the u.n. he says though the obama administration has tried to cast the u.s. as now being a team player at the organization that hasn't been the case seek to to have a say in every single issue going on issues like sudan they're just basically like it's like they're taking the ball and running home with it and saying this is our issue well they say publicly that they want to work with everyone for their part new yorkers are perplexed about what the u.n. is doing at all i don't know if the u.n. does step. aside from the dominant mainstream press headlines i know that the president of iran is coming here and does anyone know what the u.n. g.a.

is working towards. does an average person really care so they should move it to switzerland or seattle with their tying up traffic. traffic filled with dignitaries the u.s. is at least trying to direct lauren lister r.t.e. new york. well lauren is joining me live from our studio in new york to give us even more details on this story now morning i was clear to see that new yorkers are frustrated because there's traffic the streets are all blocked off but was really fascinating is that they also seem to have absolutely no idea what was actually going on at the u.n. i mean how do you how do you figure how does that work. well really the mainstream media. headlines have not been dominated by anything substantial going on on the un agenda this week at all and not something that even new yorkers pointed out the

gentleman who could only say that the president of iran was coming to town said that that's what was because that was all the press was covering now aside from this afternoon there starting to be some headlines because president obama spoke i mean really there has not been any substantial coverage and it certainly isn't front page news and the millennium development goals conference has been going on for days really the mainstream media has been focused either on the fact that new yorkers need to worry about road closures or that a sensational headline like that the president of iran mahmoud ahmadinejad is coming to new york which is a trend that you always see where there is kind of one's insatiable headline that that the press concentrates on and doesn't really get delve into any of the substantial coverage of what's actually going on at the meetings at the summit at the general assembly session or does seem like the u.n. gets a lot more attention internationally and from other countries because often there are critiques of the u.s. of the fact that the u.s.

perhaps has a little too much say too much control of the u.n. but president obama has been promising this is going to be a new era of open in gauge meant have you seen anything change yet does it seem like he's following through with that word. critics that i speak to i would even call them critics investigative journalists that have been following the united nations for a long time and very closely say that they've seen no change so while earlier this week you hear the obama administration on a conference call previewing this trip talking about how the u.s. has really taken a different tide with the united nations and is now called whopper aiding in engaging in multilateralism and working together with everybody what people that follow the u.s. role in the united nations closely say is that this hasn't happened at all and that there are examples very much to the contrary you know one example that was given to me was for example the security council wanting to take a trip to the sudan and the united states pulling out or having an issue last

minute because they don't want the public perception of the u.n. u.s. ambassador to the u.n. photographed with the president of sudan who has been indicted on war crimes that issue aside the point was that the u.s. didn't engage with the security council it all on this issue and were holding up the trip holding the security council in essence hostage so that wasn't really exactly you know acting and cooperation it was you know prove the point that the u.s. is still acting as a country of one to hear a lot more critiques of the general assembly continues online thanks so much for fun and. well still to come on tonight's show our tool time winner goes to a candidate for governor and his brilliant plan to create jobs but it's really not that brilliant we'll give that he says when we come back and as the un general assembly continues in new york the tea party is going after them we'll tell you why some in the movement think that it's time for the united nations to go r t correspondent dina kosofsky has more on that when we come back.