and this is erect, we cannot go and tell the americans, you are friends with america, this is the real reason behind all of these displacement all these refugees. i tell you today, if they lift the caesar act against syria and the companies and the rebuilding process continues in syria, then those even the russians are still hesitant, the chinese are hesitant, we don't know if they will come and invest or not and other arab and world. companies will come to could come to syria and the hundreds of thousands of syrians that came to lebanon will return to their homelands and their return to their country will be very facilitated issue, easy issue, but there they are surrendering, but those who are talking about this issue are surrendering to the us will, and this human rights, the refugee association and in the

united nations refugee association, they are giving them even, even residents status in lebanon as well, they are giving all this, this this organization of the united states, of united nations is giving them that right, but look at the mafias as well, it's true that the lebanese army needs to look at the in border, but we even other mafias that are smuggling people in and out, they are being paid. to smuggle big numbers of syrian refugees into lebanon. this is one form of one issue in order to know in order to resolve this, i wanted to say that if there is a possibility to have a certain committee from the lebanese factions, perhaps from the parliamentary committees, maybe a ministerial committee, but it should have, it should include all the forces, all the factions in lebanon, despite all our enmity and our of shouting and the tensions and the...

political bickering, do you not say that this is an existential threat? then let us forget everything and put it aside, let us not link it to the presidential file or anything else. let us say that we as lebanese we are facing an existential threat, what do we do to resolve it? for example, we are hearing some political forces, some even journalists and speakers, and the presenters and social media. uh influencers, they're giving some ideas, we're not saying that this is something we accept or we endorse, but we saying we could study them, we can something we can talk about, they are saying, why do you refuse that the syrians are not allowed to go by the sea to europe, when you prohibit them, and they go in a smuggling method, they are going into these these boats, these boats that are not, these rubber boats and uh "we

always have misery, we always have people drowning, dear lebanese army, dear people, the dear government, allow them to go by the sea, no, don't let them go with these small boats, let them go with ships, allow them to travel, buy ships from the lebanese ports, those who have this idea, they're not just saying that to bring them together, collect them and gather them and take them, put them in the ships and send them away off, no." but those refugees, those syrian refugees who will or desire to go to europe, to immigrate to europe, allow them to go by ship from lebanon. this is an idea, those who endorse of this idea, that this would lead to definite result that the european countries will come and abide by lebanon's will, they will come to lebanon's ministerial palace, they will tell the lebanes. what do you want to stop,

to stop this displacement, all of this immigration to europe? this is what they did in turkey, this is what they did in other countries, but in any case this is an issue that we can discuss, this is negotiable, even for us as labanes, we can come and discuss it, do we um, do we accept this, do we take it as a law, do we accept this issue and allow it to go into practice, but for the government to come and put anything into practice, need to note something which is important, dear brothers and sisters, which is happening today in lebanon, we are two people, people of lebanon and people of syria, we are neighbors, we are living side by side, we will remain side by side because of geography, because of history, because of future also as well, if we have one million or million and a half syrians and they are from various different areas and regions in syria. we should not. transform the

atmosphere into an atmosphere of enmity with those people, with the men, the women, the children, no one should go beyond the law. to come and implement the law or implement something, no one should even go beyond ethics or anyone should, no one should even practice any injustice against the syrians, no one should act as if the syrians can be killed, or their blood could be shed, or that we can assult them, or that we can take their money or confiscate their money or their property, no, this is dignified people. their money is dignified and is their right, we should need to be respected, this is cannot be solved with accusations and curses and harm, this is very dangerous issue, religion does not accept this, jurisdiction does not accept, islam does not accept this, law does

not accept this, some people come out tomorrow and say that we are defending the syrian refugees, no, i am saying there should not be any injustice against the refugees, we have a law in lebanon that we can work on based in on the law and for all of us as lebanes, we have morals, we have values, we have religion, and we need to work based on these and practice these values. at the end the day we are calling on this, everyone to the some of them are telling us syria is your friends, you are allies, why don't you go to syria and resolve this issue? this is what some of these so-called wise men in labanon say, of course, this is something that needs to be a talk between the the government and government. main proof of this lie that there that this is a lie that the the so-called lie that hazballah controls the government in leban. if hezballah had control over the

government then the prime minister of lebanon would go himself personally to syria to negotiate with syria, but of course this is one of the proofs or... the the evidence that those who are lying about the by so-called supremacy of hazballah or authority of hazballah on the government, we cannot even tell or ental upon the government to send a committee, just the very committee, very small committee to to these to assyria, to damascus, this has not happened, we were not able to do that, therefore we has does not have support or control over the government, but resolution of this problem needs to begin somewhere else, not in syria, what is threatening the democratic existence and the end of lebanon, for those who believe that this is a threat of lebanon, it's not syria, it's not the government of syria or the leadership of syria or the people of syria,

or the syrian refugees themselves, what is threatening the demography in lebanon, and the existence of lebanon, are the us policies, the arrogant and repressive policies of the us, i do not want to come and give names, but i know that the u.s. ambassador here in beirout, when she knows that one security apparatus or military apparatus or ministry return some of the syrian refugees into syria for legal reason, she personally goes to them and she meets with them, and she even investigates, interrogates, she interrogates them just like security individual, who did this? "ho took this decision, who implemented this decision, how did this do, how did you do this, why did you do that? and the lebanes need to respond. they need to say, why? because we have sanctions against individuals, it's a sword that is being put at the neck of the lebanese people, the lebanese, what do they say, yes,

the the foreign ministry or the secretary of state, and in the us, he said that the lebanes are generous for their hospitality and so. and they brought, they're taking in all these syrian refugees, but what did we hear from the lebanese? nothing, this is the only way to resolve this issue, but to accuse others and to just only give curses and accusations, this would not liberate the land when we had military invasion, military occupation from israel, nothing would remove the threat of the takfiri terrorists. that send bomblading cars, any phenomenon that is a threat needs to be faced with work and more work, dear brothers and not with accusations and curses, dear brothers and sisters, on the day of the greatest and glorious birth of

prophet muhammad, which is a day of joy, a day of pride, a day of dignity, we renew our vaw and our pledge to prophet muhammad, please be upon him and his family, pledge to him, to his message, to his quran, to his path, to his teachings, that we remain the people of this light, we preserve this light, we defend this light, we will spread it to the rest of the world, we will be united, we will be together, until we achieve for our people, for our nation, for this region, for all the nation of the islamic world, everything that they aspire to for prosperity and joy, and security and stability and sovereignty. i congratulate you one more time on this event, peace be upon you all. we're live there in uh beirout, that's um the

lebanese resistance of secretary general said hasan nasaralah speaking, he said that uh, first of all he speaking on the birthday anniversary of the prophet of islam, muhammad, peace be upon him, nastrola said, we should celebrate peace, unity, honesty and dignity that the prophet brought us in his message uh from god, he also uh nas said: he condemned attack very terrorist attacks this week in pakistan, saying it's an abomination and disgrace what happened there. assan spoke of duties and obligations we have as muslims to celebrate prophet's message of love, unity and mercy, and he ask all muslim nations to strongly oppose normalization with the israeli regime and stand by the palestinian people. daw said hasan speaking live from beirout. depend on them and in their labor

and their back pain and their blood sweat and tears and the sacrifices that they make every day. if we listen to uaw president sean fayne, yeah he almost has a bernie sanders esk uh tone to him when he describes the billionaire class, the elon musks and the bill gates and how these individuals live when the vast majority of us, the workers who keep this country running. uh depend a monthly check to see if we can pay our mortgage and get enough groceries and settle our uh medical bills, so when sean fane quotes the bible saying that it's easier for camel to enter into through the eye of needle than rich person uh like these ceos to enter into the kingdom of god, i think that uh rhetoric there, that anti-capitalist rhetoric speaks for millions and millions of workers across. this country, in terms of wage increases, um, it's it's pretty incredible,

uh, william black, when you take a look at the uh difference when it comes to the 1% versus the bottom 90%, between 1979 and 2022, what i uh figured here through variety of resources, inflation adjusted annual wages of the top 1% rose by 145%, and then uh for the bottom uh rose by only 16%, why su disparity? okay, so uh, the disparity is actually massively greater than uh, even that number indicates, because it isn't so much the top 1%, it's literally the top 1,000th of 1%. there the the gains are in the thousand percent range, however, the united states and what biden of course is calling biden nomics, turning around and consult into a benefit, or as we as in economic ranks would call running

the economy hot um has actually reversed for a time uh these slightly some of these long-term trends, in other words, real wages uh, despite inflation uh have actually started growing and by we the united states had record low unemployment and record low unemployment of minorities uh in particular, and that's why you see biden actually uh meeting, so he's the first president of the united states ever to join a picket line in support uh of a union, and the political dynamics are such that trump therefore state to fake uh one where he pretended to meet with auto workers, unionized auto workers, in fact it was a scat. plant, working to uh try to break uh the strike uh, so there actually

have been some meaningful gains and uaw is trying to translate uh these gains into uh wages that are actually very strongly middle-class uh type wages uh, i can tell you, i i grew up in dearborn, worked for ford motor company, my... a stepdad worked for uh ford motor company, my grandfather worked for ford motor company uh, and and such, um, so yes, the the... d bottom 10% uh of the united states still in terrible shape um and again this gets political we took reduced child poverty in half now first if you're gonna have a policy why not in child poverty why cut it in half but hey uh the republicans insisted on getting rid of that uh and we see

in the new numbers that the the child poverty rate has gone up very substantially, so this is intensely uh political uh and uh contested and it's very unclear which way the elections are going to go in the united states on these issues exactly, you you touched a number of issues that are really important there uh first of all uh inflation is very important and uh you talked about child poverty and i'd like to uh discuss that a wider scale in terms of poverty in general but daniel shaw first let's talk about this inflation that the us uh pins the number at around 3%. from what i understand um workers pay uh to have increased 5%, but when you take a look at inflation, i mean you're in new york, daniel shaw, maybe you can tell us, when you take a look at some of the categories, for example, it's very shocking uh to hear that uh in 2022, price of eggs in terms of the inflation was uh had increased 19%, oil fats 9%, and

then you had things like um in 2022, food at school. 305% and the eggs were 59%. mean, what is the deal there? what are we looking at? mean, you can't just say inflation, three, what are they? what did i say they're saying? uh, 3%, i believe is what i said, but really it's not that, is it? mean, i'm sure when you go buy a pack of cigarettes or when you go buy butter or marger and it's not just a 3% increase, right? so i'm trying to, if you see where i'm going with this, what is the deal there in terms of that versus the wages that average americans are earning? yeah, uh, based on uh, your assessment of what's going on here in new york city, one would think that you lived here for the past uh, you know, four, five decades, because you describe all too accurately, uh, we hear all these fancy numbers in in in the mainstream media, but when we go to the grocery store, when we go to the pump, if we take our families out for dinner, we feel that pinch

more than ever, and we know that the united states specializes in what's called the... atrocity propaganda against their political enemies such as um russia or or venezuela or or nicaragua, but i wish that the professor there in the midwest could give tour of what cleveland and detroit and chicago in the midwest uh looks like after decades and decades of social uh abandonment this was uh the thriving industrial uh sector of our job and i think a foreign audience would find it unreal. see the images from gary, indiana or flint, michigan and to see the complete social neglect uh, than an entire generation of children or two generations now have suffered from. all right, uh, william black, i'm going to uh ask you the same question, because really curious as to what's going on when it comes to inflation versus pay, what is it like there um in bloomington, minnesota

where you're at, what does it look like, does it look like to you that is that it's around the 5% mark? yeah, i don't think you're going to like... my answer um actually uh inflation uh almost certainly is overstated uh and that's something that even conservative economists uh who and by the way the politics the united states is that it's the democrats who want emphasize inflation isn't that big a problem and it's republicans who want emphasize uh that it's a you know the biggest problem uh ever and economis of course are overwhelmingly in the... conservative uh camp um, but i can go through the technical reason, but it's probably boring, even conservative economists think that inflation is overstated by about one and a half to 2%, and the us has the lowest inflation rate of any major industrialized nation with you, sort of capitalistish type economy, so the

pressure in the united states politically is emphasize inflation and say therefore we shouldn't have social programs for the poor, so i i'm often pushing in the opposite direction of where you you may think i'm uh coming from uh and uh saying no, we need to be emphasizing poverty, and uh, you know, my counterpart is absolutely right, i was born in detroit, um, and i've taught for years in missouri, and st. louis uh and detroit are two of the the huge cities that but used to be among the five lart depending on the time. period among the five largest cities in the united states or the sixth largest cities in the united states, and now they are catastrophically in terrible uh condition.

for example, the uaw at peak had about 1.5 million members, it now has 400,000 active members, but is responsible still for negotiating. on behalf of retirees whose benefits the uaw still you know uh pushes for, number about 600,000, but you can see that decline from roughly 1.5 million to roughly 400,000, and that's actually uaw numbers, so that actually includes employment in canada, which is quite substantial in the auto industry, uh, and puerto rico, which is kind of the united states, it's a little technical, and uh... in mexico. all right, well - i'm glad you mention uh the points that you made about inflation because we're just trying to figure it out really. i mean, daniel shaw, our guest there says that it's

not as bad as as it uh, that's as bad as some may make it, but uh, so what, what about the workers that are striking? i mean, it's not just the autoworkers. i'm looking down a list of uh some of the industies and some of the companies, i mean, you had the screen riders, which appears that they reached some kind of agreement, you had starbucks. employees, amazon workers, you have frontline workers, um, whether it's nurses, hotel staff and pilots, you have the ups, which they reach an agreement if they hadn't, that would have been the biggest strike in us history, or should i say the largest strike in us history, so and and the news um reads that uh, you know, it's strike season, that the us strikes have made made a comeback, i mean, so why are they out uh a striking, is it not because of inflation obviously, but because their pay, that's usually what it's all about. how do you explain that? yeah, tomorrow will be the uh first day of strike tober, it seems october is gearing up to be a month of uh strikes. i think uh professor

black's macroeconomic analysis is um informative at the same time if we take a step back in terms of unemployment, you know, the new york times will report this, the presidency will report that in the department of labor, but when we go into our communities, the reality is even harsher on the ground because how many workers, how many families have actually given up, they're no longer counted um in the actual statistics, so unemployment is often so much higher when you go through a pressed community is the black community that often those numbers are um under reported uh in terms of um the the strikes, i think so many workers are again uh waking up to the reality of what these mass. uh the automobile starbucks, we saw the vast uh strike campaigns and in the fight for $15

over the course of the past uh uh decade or or so and and workers are demanding more because the economic reality is biting and they can't survive on what we survived on uh the decades past sure well i have to squeeze in uh this question because uh, if i don't, then my producer is going to get really mad at me, and it's about the, it's about the government shut down, um, we're trying to figure out what's going on there, and the last that we heard is uh, that well, what is the last you heard, william black, i'm sure you can give us better idea, i mean, are we looking at uh mccarthy doing his job, or is he going to be out of a job if that thing with ukraine doesn't go through? well, he's going to be out of a job, but in a broader sense he's been out of the job, in other words, he's never had the powers of a true speaker, uh, the speaker of the house. is the answer to uh a trick question in the united states, what's the most powerful, second most powerful elected official in america? it's not the vice president, it's the speaker of

the house, unless you're mccarty, in which case you're about the 20th most powerful uh person uh on your very best day and he doesn't have many good days, so this is very bad for the uh economy potentially, but worse it's very bad for precisely the folks that we have both been emphasizing. the folks who are you know not uh succeeding in america uh who are in very bad condition the government safety net is absolutely essential and uh again to get politics is important the republican party actively wants to increase unemployment and poverty of infants and youth it's just staggering. yeah, well, let's end it on this food assistance, i'm going to give you a minute there, daniel shaw. i have two pieces of stat to throw at you, one is the snap program where uh, i was shocked to to

read that it's 41.2 million. people, 12 and a half percent of the total total us population, i think that's skewed on the high uh side, but even if you go and let's say put it at 35 million, that's still a lot of people that need assistance for food, and the other stat i want to throw you is how much the us actually generates in terms of revenue, which is around 6.3 trillion, but it is said that almost half of that goes on what's called entitlement programs, now there's something really wrong if you have to spend that much on entitlement programs, not that i'm saying that's a bad thing for the ones that are getting it, and you have that many people who need food assistance, what's wrong with this picture? and that's why so many people are asking, every year we hear these rumors about government shutdowns and it uh freaks us all out, but you never hear about their military aid to zelensky in kiev, that that money is never questioned, they

just approved 21. billion dollars in additional funds for this proxy war in ukraine against russia and russia's geopolitical interests, which means that the total amount spended now is is foreign excess of $200 billion dollars and that's the argument that we're making that that $200 billion dollars needs to be invested in snap a different nutritional programs as well as uh education and other infrastructure programs in our communities. all right, we're going to end there, thank you so much. daniel shaw academic and commentator from new york, william black, thank you for your contribution, professor of economics and law university of missory, kansas city, bloomington minnesota, thank you, with that we come to an end for this edition of the spotlight from mecover taghway and the team, it's goodbye.

press tv headlines a mustapha prize is awarded. lebanons has achieve says normalization of ties with israel would be tanto amount to abandoning palestine. the mosta prize is awarded of five scientists and countries fifth edition of the ceremony came to an end in the iranian city of isfahan and staying with the us, former president donald trump appears in yet another court, this one over civil fraud charges.