more of the thirty five killed in monday's suicide bomb attack at domodedovo international airport states were flown at half staff as well wishers attended memorial services across the town. and he notes statement to the world's movers and shakers in davos switzerland president medvedev called for greater global cooperation in the fight against international terrorism. russia's new strategic arms reduction deal with the west set to become law after getting the unanimous backing of the upper house and. up next the along to show assesses president obama's second state of the union address stay with us.

welcome the ilona show will get the real headlines with none of the mercy or could live out of washington d.c. now last night president obama delivered his second state of the union address so today we're going to review the issues that he covered and more importantly the issues that were left out of his speech so we're going to speak with michael cohen about the obama administration's foreign policy next political business financial elites are all making their annual pilgrimage to davos for the world economic summit archies lore and it will bring us all the latest from the ski resort town and what's on the agenda for this year and should a thirteen year old be able to receive a sentence of life in prison without parole one pennsylvania judge thinks so despite the outcry from activist groups so we're going to talk about this case and

the justice system in the u.s. as a whole with jodi can't then review an issue that's been overlooked in recent months the housing crisis as two point nine million houses are currently in foreclosure we want to know exactly what the president plans to do about it business insiders joe weisenthal would join me to discuss foreclosures unemployment and why those two words will left out of the state of the union and there's a new solicitor general in d.c. obama's chosen former our i am a lawyer john olver really junior to fill that position what is his choice mean as far as copyright laws go in america will speak was seen as declan mccullagh the end of the show but now let's move on to our top story. last night people from all over the country tuned in to watch president obama address the nation now he focused on the economy jobs investments all right issues according to media analyst and pundits who hang on every single word but what about real americans how do they

feel about it artie's christine brazil has a story. you can find them at the crossroads in truck stops of most small cities in america just about everyone at some point has stopped in for breakfast served twenty four hours a day. at the waffle house this one in dumfries virginia draws in truck drivers and teachers and even high school students like fernando where time who had just eighteen years old criticizes the government for focusing so many of its resources outside of the country i don't think we should be too worried about other nations right now like i don't like i mean i know there's big catastrophes like haiti and stuff that do need help but i don't think that's shouldn't even be in the top twenty heartlessly concerns. the concerns of the country were highlighted in president obama's state of the union address tuesday night where he also highlighted progress two years after the worst recession most of us have ever know

the stock market has come will bring back. corporate profits are up the economy is growing again it's a claim julie warner doesn't totally agree with we need to watch our jobs back i mean we're economy has not been stimulated like that for the average person the suffering goes on to have several college degree family members with no jobs they've been laid off or. what have the house foreclosed we decided to travel a little further down the road to the grayson village mobile home park people we met here describe themselves as ordinary americans it's just about thirty miles outside of washington d.c. but in many. way remember we met robert allen who lives here with his wife barbara and father in law irving watkins he says many people at his own company lost their jobs their health insurance and their hope he says congress should stop propping up the banks and stop spending money on wars they ought to look at their

own people for the tax monies made in america that's been if not made in a lot of countries so it should be here first. before you take somebody . at the state of the union address in light of the deadly shootings in tucson arizona many republicans and democrats opted to sit together instead of in different sections what comes of this moment is up to us. what comes of this moment will be determined not by whether we can sit together tonight but whether we can work together tomorrow. so what's the likelihood of that happening anything when something happens everyone comes together and we're going to the moment we hang out together we love each other but the next week the fight over health care. is just like taking a kid. and put him in

a candy shop you'd be good give me some candy has what it looks like to me you put them together just put in the eye and the mahdi be kicking at each other again for americans like this the words are a start that our future is hopeful our journey goes forward but the action still seems a long way off reporting in dumfries virginia christine for sound r.t. may god bless. so americans want jobs they want the economy to improve they want the government to spend money here at home and laid out plans last night for innovation education ways to make america more competitive in the future he barely even touched upon was one of the biggest money suckers today but we spend hundreds of millions of dollars across the globe our war in afghanistan here is about thirty seconds of the entire one minute that the president spent on the topic last night.

thanks to our heroic troops and civilians if you were afghans are under the control of the insurgency there will be tough fighting ahead and the afghan government will need to deliver better governance but we are strengthening the capacity of the afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. this year we work with nearly fifty countries to begin a transition to an afghan leader and this july we will begin to bring our troops will. not only was our nearly ten year long war where we have a hundred thousand troops just a blip in last night's speech it also seems a little inaccurate full of empty platitudes which makes us question whether obama's lying about the war's progress or whether he just can't make up his mind about what that word progress really means or earlier i caught up with michael cohen contributor at democracy arts and i first asked him if he was at all shocked

with the one minute out of a speech that lasted more than an hour that was spent on the war. i mean i'm not surprised in the sense that the president has spoken very little about the war over the past summer months. but it is having said that it's somewhat embarrassing that a war in which hundred thousand troops here are fighting. only buried about two paragraphs in the t.v. address and i would say two rather platitudinous paragraphs yeah i mean you know the state of the you know supposed to be about what americans want to hear and a lot of people say that americans don't really want to hear about the war but that i think reflects on us as a society to the fact that we've been fighting this war for almost ten years now the way one hundred thousand troops there that you know we spent hundreds of billions of dollars and that's just not what really everyone has on their mind. it's not and you know it's it's it's it's a war charge pretty low when it comes to public opinion polling people don't don't are not that focused on it but that to me is not really an excuse president you

know has a responsibility to talk i think more honestly about it and look more candor about what's actually happened in afghanistan what you got yesterday was really just kind of a glossing over of the situation there we i don't know that you mentioned it what it is that he said he said that we we've trained afghan security forces he said that fewer afghans are under control of the insurgency he said that the afghan government will need to deliver better governance which are all things that are technically true it just seems like he didn't really elaborate that and go further into you know why these policies are failing also well i mean if they're true up to a point i mean i suppose you could say that more afghans live you know in secure more it you know live under the taliban rule but it's hard to say that they're more secure i've always seen over the past year is places that were once relatively secure now become insecure especially in the north and west of the country so you know i think that is a very just misleading statement and as to the training of the afghan security

forces kind of mind to me when when george bush has talked about how well the training of the iraqi security force is going which was again not a really honest sense of of how difficult the process which was going along so i became in a sense there was a lot of stuff in that speech that wasn't there and i do you expect that i mean you're going to get any time presents to talk about the war you can talk about it in optimistic terms but this was a little bit sort of optimistic to the point of obfuscation not to mention the whole troop withdrawal thing when he did say that we will start withdrawing troops by july two thousand and eleven but didn't really lay out any kind of a plan adding coincidentally enough general david petraeus earlier this week posted a letter to the troops online where he also just didn't even mention that whole troop withdrawal thing for all of twenty eleven do you see that as a sign that there may be. starting to walk back from that a little bit you know least in the public sphere i didn't know walking back from it since the fall of recent days are like the two thousand and fourteen as being the more important draw date i think you will see some troop withdrawals in june or

july but they'll be very minor and i think what you'll see is withdrawals from places in the country that are are more secure and not in places in the south me is where most u.s. troops are these days so i mean i was sort of you know i would have been good to see the present talk a little bit what the conditions on the ground would be that would lead to a troop withdrawal but i really think that the ministration has positioned themselves unfortunately quite well and if we push it push the ball forward on this one two thousand and fourteen and i think what you're going to see this symbolic withdrawal basically try to pacify you know the president's base yeah i guess if one person leaves that still counts as the beginning of withdrawal i just i suppose the overunder is well we are under a lot go in there and yeah i want to bring up a point that actually joshua foust brought up and you know he compared a speech that obama gave in two thousand and nine to the speech yesterday and so i want to play a clip let's say in two thousand and nine the goal was you know to disrupt

dismantle defeat al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan and then yesterday this is what the president had to say in afghanistan or troops have taken taliban strongholds and trained afghan security forces. our purpose is clear by preventing the taliban from reestablishing a stranglehold over the afghan people we will deny al qaeda the safe haven that served as a launching pad for nine eleven. and now do you see a strategy shift there the way the joshua file said he did you know that it used to be disrupt dismantle defeat al qaida and now it's just well don't allow them a safe haven but only in afghanistan not necessarily pakistan and you know forget about the rest of the world the yemenis the somali as and what not but i think that kind of a serious say there is a shift to sue there was nish only a coherent strategy i mean you could define the initial strategy laid out by the president last december in lots of different ways that i think the way that they've

defined it yesterday is probably you know not inconsistent with what they said the problem is no one really seems to know what that means to to do to you know to be should deny al qaeda safe haven doesn't mean dead you know there are. taliban cannot control the country but i mean taliban about has some political influence i don't get a little sense of what exactly did this racially end game is here and i think that actually speaks more to his function then sort of shift you can detect between what people have suggested he said last december or summer of two thousand and nine so you think he has today it was more obama showing us that they don't really have any idea you know as to how to describe this war rather than deliberately trying to align skirt around the facts i think it was kind of kicking the can down the road i mean what's happened the past couple of months is that you see you know the u.s. military definitely put a hurt on the taliban from a security perspective now you know i think there's some question about whether that's sustainable i think what we'll see a lot of this coming come the spring whether or not the you know right now we're in

the winter period where fighting tends to diminish a little bit so the question i think people wait for is in the spring will you see this continued taliban back on their heels or will they show some some new strength so i think in a sense what about. i was doing actually was he didn't want to be a stand what about the economy want to talk about you know the future and i think this is just kicking the can down the road and basically you know not really dealing with the issue a serious way which they hate to say it is kind of in the approach of the white house for quite a while now the president said very very little about war coakley. and unfortunately they get away with not having to talk about it if they all really feel like it michael thank you so much for joining us thanks so much. well there's still much more to come tonight it's that time of the year again when the world's only travel to davos for the world economic summit parties laura abbott is there actually give us a report on what's on this year's agenda and sort of the new role sentenced to life in prison without parole although one judge one of the child we tried as an adult

many activists are speaking out saying that this is a violation of international law speak of jodi kantor about the start of the case and which are. really you know the latest in science and technology from. the future covered hungry for the full story we've got. the biggest issues get human voice face to face with the news makers. yesterday the world economic forum kicked off in davos switzerland and every year the world's financial political and business elite gather at the ski resort town to supposedly solve the world's problems now although many say that it's more of an

excuse to fit all their business meetings into one trip but last year the problems were aplenty the world still reeling from a global financial crisis fears of a double dip in america a debt. yes breaking out in greece this year with twenty five hundred participants including four hundred top business leaders and thirty five heads of state is that any different more earlier i caught up with our two correspondent laura and from davos to phyllis and i first asked her to get to the bottom of what this conference really is about sure there are foreign leaders in attendance there are panels but is it mostly just a place to rub elbows make business deals with people from all over the world who happen to be in the same place for five days. it certainly is that but it is also a lot more than that of course that's great for global warming because people are already all flying to one place they don't have to fly all around the world as you say and this is definitely a talking shop it's also held in this beautiful location so if people like to come they might stay off with to do

a little bit of skiing you know that kind of thing but it is unique in that it is a gathering of world leaders and business leaders and they all get together there's a very collegial atmosphere everyone is constantly introducing themselves to each other so it is a great a great networking place but a great place for people like that to come together and talk about the big idea is they do their own business deals of course there are but it's mostly about looking to the future and working out how the world's going to work together to solve the risks of the future and that's what this is forum is about it's difficult always to know what decisions exactly have come out of the davos forum and in that respect it is a little bit like the build of a group you may remember in may we talked when i was that in spain the build of a group with me saying also this big group of leaders all sorts of important people celebrities cultural people and they all talked about that so in that respect it is a little bit like bill to vote but of course it's a lot less secretive there are journalists all over the place we're talking to all

sorts of people they're all closed sessions but in the main this is held very much in the apron and the world doesn't know what goes on here in davos and from what i hear it's also. very expensive a conference i was looking at some of the figures and they say that it's seventy one thousand dollars per person for a ticket and that's just for the general admission if you want to get in to get past the velvet ropes up one hundred fifty six thousand dollars all just to get inside it's a costs a lot of money to get there but what's the general mood like this year you know of course last year there was threats of a double dip recession in america there was a debt crisis in europe in greece specifically are people feeling a little bit better now about you know the chances of a recovery. plus the mood is one of cautious optimism and in fact we're not really talking about vase financial crisis and the well how we're going to get out of this what i mean what we're talking about the next one here in davos the. norms

for a new reality we're looking at the world's economic meltdown how the world is increasingly complex and interconnects but also that is a risk of. the common values that sprung up in the direct weight of the economic crisis there's a worry amongst the world leaders in the business leaders that have there was a comrade zarif. because everyone knew that they were in the same base and they all had to work together to get out of this meltdown but that has been and we're looking at a situation of more every country for itself. this year is to bring everyone together again and again on to komen umbrella's a common goal to look at the risks that we could see in the future we're talking about the economic crisis possibly talking about the risk of food shortages at some point in the future and of course also talking about the global terror threats now laura last year a supposedly because there is still so much blame being put on the big bankers for

causing the crisis around the world they were kind of playing it down a little bit they didn't necessarily want to be in the spotlight but this here is the global elites of the banking krupa. back in full force. some of them are back and i think that that's probably a renewed sense of sheepishness because of course we've just seen bankers' bonuses paid and we've seen a great a wave of protests in europe against the fact that european bank has a still receiving these enormous bonuses having said that the chief executive of j.p. morgan who was in his last year is back this year the head of u.b.s. is also here the swiss bank chiefs of goldman sachs and morgan stanley are not here but they have sent high level executives in their place and. has to be see as well so we are seeing a gradual return of the banking sector and not so much talk of how the bankers ought to play now in terms of you know new players i know that barack obama the

american president isn't there but meeting with aides of the russian president did despite the recent bombings at the airport in moscow decide to come even though he's shortened his trip so how is russia being received you know how it is china other emerging economies. well i've spoken to some people about the perception of russia's investment climate hair out before and particularly in the wake of last. on monday and of course any terrorist act does cause some degree of instability but they remain fairly positive it seems many of the delegates about russia and its investment climate and of course china and india are very highly represented here every year we see more more numbers in the chinese and indian delegations of course that's a that's a symbol of the of the economic powerhouse in the world shifting over to the bric economies but as far as the way that russia has been received really very

optimistic we spoke to a couple of people off to president medvedev speech and they said that they felt he'd been quite honest about working to leave a corruption in russia to to russia. it looked like a sensible card of investment for some of these people so i mean it very much depends on the reaction how the reaction of the government to monday's terror attack is perceived whether this is going to be an ongoing thing or whether it's just a heinous one off student are loyal thank you very much for filling us in and try to stay warm out there and of us. the first guantanamo bay detainee to have a trial in civilian court has finally been sentenced he's been sentenced to life in prison without parole let's remember how we first got to this point a lot he was originally one of the defendants in the nine eleven trials he was held at a cia black sites for years before being transferred to guantanamo bay and there was a lot of uproar after attorney general eric holder had these travel trial moved to

the u.s. when he insisted on a trial in federal court rather than a military tribunal people were protesting coming up with all sorts of excuses as to why this would be absolutely unacceptable however by the time his trial actually started the new york city there were no protesters held nobody even knew that it was going on and now the trials now the golani has received his sentence can everybody just relax look there were no problems or there were no protests his trial was done according to traditional court methods sentencing is all so what was all that about the ruckus again hopefully this will serve as a reminder to give mo detainees can successfully be tried in civilian courts. now do you think that it's right to sentence a thirteen year old to life in prison without parole that's a scenario that's playing out right now in pennsylvania in the case of jordan brown we've spoken about it before on this program in two thousand and nine when brown

was eleven years old he allegedly shot and killed his father's twenty six year old pregnant say now the judge in the case earlier decided to have brown tried as an adult despite his age and to charge him with two counts of homicide. the victim was pregnant with nearly a full term child lawyers are now arguing for an appeal but if they don't get it jordan brown will be the youngest person in the world ever sentenced to life in prison without parole he would rights groups are arguing that this also could be in violation of international law so what does this say about our justice system will join me to discuss that as jodi kent director and national coordinator for the campaign for the fair sentencing of jodi thanks so much for joining me here and thanks for having me now i find this story i thought it truly disturbing that we might actually put somebody who's thirteen years old who clearly is still a child into prison for life without any chance for parole how do we get your house as possible in america sure well i agree with you i think it is inhumane and

immoral united states practice we are the only country in the world that sentences people under the age of eighteen to life in prison without any hope of ever being released and frankly you know the fact that he was eleven years old at the time of the crime i think is particularly horrific the alleged crime i should say because in pennsylvania they don't have a minimum age for four life sentences that can be imposed now with significant is that pennsylvania leads our country in this practice they have four hundred fifty people serving life in prison without the possibility of parole for crimes committed under the age of eighteen and this isn't because pennsylvania or americans rose up and said we want children to be sentenced to die in prison in fact it's happened over the course of decades and particularly in the ninety's when

tough on crime policies were passed in state legislatures as a result of your tactics and frankly in correct theories that juveniles were going to be criminals. there was going to be a massive juvenile crime wave called the super predator theory is what it was called back in the ninety's and we've seen incredibly harsh punishments imposed on youth since then. but you know the issue at stake here in jordan brown's case is whether he should be tried in juvenile court or transferred to adult court and you know the juvenile justice system in the united states was founded on and what we know kids are different than adults science tells us this common sense tells us this so the fact that we are now looking to transfer people you view that as young as jordan brown to be adult criminal justice system which is focused on warehousing adult criminals is really problematic and just speaks to our.

you know the fact that we are willing to give up on children in the united states now you know a lot of human rights groups out there including amnesty international also saying that this move by the us if indeed he is sentenced as an adult to life without parole then violates international laws and we say it violates international laws do we mean the un convention on the rights of a child which the u.s. has only you know one out of two countries in the world who hasn't actually signed it somalia apparently is our is our neighbor there are you know what other laws are there. yes well the convention or actually the child explicitly prohibits this practice but there have been there are. other un councils that have looked into this issue and other nations around the world who are specifically criticize the united states for this practice in fact just recently in november of two thousand and ten when. the u.n. human rights council did their universal periodic review i think seven different

countries specific lee criticized the united states for assent being the only country in the world that sentences kids to life in prison without the possibility of parole and i do want to mention in jordan brown's case in the case of pennsylvania. this is a mandatory sentence so the judge will not have the ability to take into consideration you know any mitigating factors including the age of jordan brown at the time of his offense once if he is convicted in adult court and that's one reason why pennsylvania has so many people serving this sentence and pennsylvania is an outlier in the within the united states it's one of five states that holds two thirds of the people serving the sentence so just next door in new york for example they have nobody serving juvenile life without parole and yet they have one of the lowest juvenile crime rates in the country so it makes you question why we have these sentences on the books have they really been thought through and frankly it's now time for us to really take

a second look at the supreme court has said that we need to take consideration take into consideration the age of young people and we know it and we know that as i said science and common sense tells us kids are different and if there are laws in the books that don't allow allow us to consider that we need to take a second look at yeah definitely and hopefully you know maybe there's something at the supreme court can do in this case but you're right definitely lot of questions for jodi thank you so much for joining us you're welcome thanks for having me i can avoid taking a break but coming up is our tool time moment was just too easy to make for michele bachmann tonight and her tea party response that's up next.