cheesemonger. missions for. the u.s. economy is on quite the roller coaster down been another steep drop for a country already stuck in a financial think so will this ride ever and believes it will but from being america the same time you do that you have to do to make sure that your comfort was well you know watching children waking up at night when you were barely heard things like the right isn't going to end anytime soon at least for those living in california also you just how much the golden state living in. and the verdict is in a russian pilot arrested in liberia is found guilty of drug trafficking by

a court here in the united states but why exactly is the u.s. involved to begin with. and first it was libya and now syria finds itself in the middle of deadly violence so what's the criteria for a u.s. intervention we'll take a look at cherry picking in the arab spring. for a top story today some disturbing numbers out about the economy when it comes to jobs recovery it has been a bumpy ride i know one of those fun rides it's been a slow and unpredictable one last week applications for unemployment benefits jumped to four hundred twenty nine thousand that's an increase of twenty five thousand making it the highest total since late january while there still is some positive growth it seems to be just going a little too slow to get anyone really too excited. take

a look you can see here the seventh straight quarter of positive g.d.p. growth of just one point eight percent is from january to march so what's it all mean for the average american joshua holland is an editor and senior writer at alter net he's also the author of the fifteen biggest lies about the economy and everything else the right doesn't want you to know about taxes jobs and corporate america he joins me now from napa california. all right josh you on one hand at least the numbers are moving in the right direction but give me your take on the bigger picture here what do these numbers say to the average american. well i think it's important in their stand that we've lost seven million jobs since the beginning of the crash and when you look at it one point eight percent g.d.p. growth that's anemic compared to what we need we don't need normal growth to make up for the loss of employment we super above average growth we need to capture because we've fallen so far but you know when and when you think about you know the

average person that's going to take a look at places where you can actually get you know a truth life of the american pie and i think you know wal-mart is certainly one of those places if not the place but even there the observation is a little grim one our c.e.o. my do this week said quote a wal-mart course shoppers are running out of money much faster than a year ago due to rising gasoline prices and the retail giant is worries that you know we're seeing consumers under a lot of pressure what story does this statement tell. well it tells the story of this recession we know that it's a complex story the mortgage crisis caused the financial panic but it's a fairly simple story how that spread to the rest of the economy how it started to affect main street and what we're looking at is a country where we lost fourteen trillion dollars in wealth. without stock wealth our retirement plans etc etc and economists tell us that when we lose wealth we

stop spending then you look at the unemployment rate up ring around ten percent underemployment is also includes people who give up trying to fight a job people who are working part time on a full time job is around sixteen percent the foreclosure crisis continues we're going to hit a new high and foreclosures this year you add all of that together what you see is a huge hit in consumer demand and the united states. economy about seventy percent of our economic activity is made up by consumers but consumers buying cars or going out to dinner or going to movies whatever and so that drop. translates to a lack of customers because this is never people they don't have customer demand for goods services at the same time we had a stimulus. you know classic no one says that people in the. government. try to. get.

out. in order to be surprised but these are the figures one would have had to gotten into recession fundamental issues in the session i think it's really interesting guys you said something that economists say that seems kind of simple is that when we lose wealth we stop spending but i do want to give this a little perspective there are some places where spending has not stopped in the midst of all of this this country is still involved in three wars and right now the u.s. and particularly the pentagon you know they're still trying to stay on top of the development of new weapons and technology so here's something interesting pentagon has just released this figure and may cost as much as one trillion dollars to operate the military's fleet of lockheed martin f. thirty five aircraft for the next few decades why not a trillion dollars a little as they are us so interesting to think about this in light of the economy . yes you know we have such a deficit fever group in washington d.c.

these days and i think it's important to point out that according to some estimates about ninety percent of our public debt it's based on military experience so we talk about you know social security or medicare and we're not really talking a lot about what i would argue as an unsustainable so i'm committed problem and that's part and parcel of the deficit and major part and parcel of the deficit and it will continue to be going forward. i was actually holland editor and senior writer at alter net profit org. well certainly when we talk about the economy about economic recovery in particular it's important not to just focus on the big cities like san francisco new york here in washington d.c. you know where signs of economic woes are much less obvious so we want to take a look at some of the less populated and i guess you could say less copula regions in the country where the light at the end of the tunnel is still too far off to see

our kids were among the lindo takes us to one california community where the situation's gotten so bad people are actually packing up and moving out. thank you all and construction in a series of three development projects give the appearance of an economic upswing in riverside california but below the surface a darker reality is playing out in the area east of los angeles. panhandling in homeless encampments are scattered around the landscape of the riverside area like most cities in america the housing collapse cause great financial suffering here the problem is that on the occasions show the situation is actually getting worse it is getting tougher and tougher in my own family i had to send an officer out of work despite her own family struggles linda whitlock shows up here homeless encampment and sack lunches every week she's been doing this for seven years providing a lifeline. to go back to dump her live and get food from behind bars. but it's

not just the homeless asking for a handout some of the people standing in line do have a home but were embarrassed to be shown on camera california ranks sixteenth in the nation when it comes to food hardship and riverside rank number two among all us metro areas. at the riverside county food bank requests for food have risen twenty five percent in the past three years while we are able to help maybe as much as three hundred to three hundred fifty thousand people per month there's almost seven hundred fifty thousand people who are living at or below the poverty crisis line and the two can be region so we still have a long ways to go in the bedroom communities east of los angeles hunger isn't the only issue there are tons of foreclosed homes just like this one which have been boarded up and are now sitting empty. according to realty trac an online foreclosure market place there is

a foreclosure filing for every forty nine homes where the highest rates in america that's part of the reason that riverside has are in the dubious distinction of being on top of forbes list of cities where the economy is still getting worse. they call it capitalism but they probably call life like the way. over the decades economics professor mason gaffney has seen riverside go through some difficult by natural cycles but the type of market speculation they contributed to the two thousand and eight financial crash along with a decrease in tax revenue have created an environment with grim prospects. we've been through bad bad before and we have bounced back. but i. think you're. a sentiment shared by doing nichols oh like to know where the congress came back to see me email you know i would like to know because i don't see it happening here nichols has been unemployed for two years and is applying for

food stamps the divorced father of two daughters job as a floor installer would be secure now he takes whatever odd jockey can get it has swallowed his pride to apply for government assistance it's really difficult but when i'm at the same time you do that you have to do to make sure that if i was provided for you know washington waking up and i i mean their bellies hurt. last year riverside had an unemployment rate of fifteen percent only detroit was worse today the employment rate is holding steady at about fourteen percent while nickels praise for a call back from one of his interviews he's already considering leaving riverside park to gather he's not alone economists predict that some four thousand people will be the area this year here by car or by bike. prosperity. becomes more looses it's really just possible

these people are human beings and they need help in there they need to go in they should not forget that we should help more of the people that are here in our own country in our own state it's much as much as we have everyone else around the world in riverside county california. archie so forbes magazine actually ranked the top cities where the economies are not only not getting better or getting worse and we wanted to bring you the top five here it is and the top riverside san bernardino that was where that report was just centered on number two is starting california three is detroit michigan four at the los angeles long beach senate inner areas in california and number five bakersfield california so really not a good showing for the golden state on this list george i mean here is the founder of survive and thrive t.v. he is in our l.a. studio jury i think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that some of the consequences of birth

i know you point to the video on your website of police actually arresting someone a homeless man for asking for money paint the picture of what else you're seeing out there in california. well first of all after i solved my city on the top of the list i feel like we won riverside by only one something that we're out of time as you want to win now if you aren't. man it's you almost have to laugh because you feel like crying. homelessness is so pervasive and i was talking about this on my you tube channel it's like ninety percent of the time i go out shopping the handlers. you know asking you for money sometimes they're costing you for money so there's a lot of friction happening in my city between people that need money in or out panhandling and the people who do have jobs and are just trying to go about their daily lives so we are now a resting homeless people if you are too poor that you have to dig you're going to

be arrested and put into a police car and sent off to jail so that's that i terribly that bet that is a common practice in other parts of the country but that's the first time i've actually physically seen that so they're really going to take a very i just thought there was also a you know that report was just not among of course really grim picture is just driving along the road and seeing ten past or ten say you know this is people's homes now really interesting to you george i was really surprised that four of the five regions in the country with really bad prospects were in california i mean people often think of california as a glamorous place why do you think this is happening there. well we just we overdid it we had you know an orange county tech i mean it was sub prime mortgage the center of the universe and it was all about real estate over inflated housing prices and that just reverberated through the economy and everyone was drunk with taking second and third mortgages on their homes buying s.u.v.s going to the desert

going to the beach just enjoying this overinflated bubble atmosphere in california and now we're hitting the streets and you know riverside is only an hour from los angeles an hour from orange county an hour from san diego so we may be getting hit hard but it is going to some of the major cities in california as well and speaking of hitting the streets are really interesting this migration that we're seeing ramon pointed out about four thousand people are expected to leave the riverside area i mean where are they going to go and what's to happen well i'm one i've been here over thirty years and i am leaving next week i have a job interview with a company called royal metals group in iowa and they're doing over five hundred thousand dollars in in gold transactions in the midwest and that's apparently where you have to go for a job these days i talked with a gentleman in vancouver that does hotel hiring and he said california is dead

he goes but the midwest is doing halfway decent so for those of us that can afford it or have the opportunity i guess we're going to farm country so now i know where the center of the universe i guess a lot of politicians are already seem to know that also you know just looking back to the story that we saw with the economics professor he says you know they call a capital of them but it's more lands back elation when you think you know either. well i mean i don't want to thought capitalism because i believe in the free markets and i believe in the ability of people to you know produce for themselves but what happens what we have here in california. we have a real leftist political. bent to us and we have a political strategy that's killing businesses killing new job growth and it's

a tale of two californians you have you know illegal immigrants and illegal under the table jobs and then you have the above board jobs and those are just decreasing actually let me rephrase that we are getting jobs you don't mcdonald's is hiring burger king is hiring big lots is hiring in there but you can make eight to nine to ten dollars an hour those jobs are coming back so the economy is coming back but it is a good jobs it's part time minimum wage and you got to get food stamps to supplement your income and then forget about having medical care if you get sick maybe you can go to one of those you know immigrant hospitals and pay all cash but you know if you have a major disease just die and i was wondering to you i know mcdonald's of that campaign last week they were hiring fifty thousand new people but that makes you ask the question does that mean there's all these new mcdonald's opening up i mean how how good is that for our country you know if it starts coming here thank you so know john joke jobs are coming back but there are minimum wage jobs there minimum

wage jobs are not meeting more fast food restaurants are opening two things then i started going to founder of survive and thrive t.v. so i think here is now a jury in new york federal court has found a russian cargo pilot constantine jarosz anchor guilty on charges of smuggling cocaine prosecutors in the case they are saying who was involved in a criminal scheme to transport an estimated two hundred kilograms of cocaine the a diplomatic mail from ghana to new york i got airlines where are they not only are the charges wrong but that the case should be dismissed he's honest churkin has the details. words not deeds landing foreigners behind bars in the us russian pilot constantine your shango has been found guilty by a manhattan federal court jury of conspiring to smuggle drugs across borders a man was scooped up by u.s. officials in liberia last year and promptly taken to america along with three other

suspects from africa what your shimko faced in the u.s. was a ten month wait for a trial a month long hearing and now a guilty verdict the pilot and his family maintain his innocence and lives here hard all the facts are fabricated all the tapes are distorted by the prosecution u.s. officials played a leading role in the arrest of the russian citizen posing as drug dealers american secret agents conducted meetings with the four resulting in hours of recordings the prosecution then put forward as proof of your cousin tends to conspire to smuggle tons of cocaine to south america and later into the u.s. believe the work in liberia he was surrounded by five agents the second he stepped off the plane he was accompanied by guards they spent day and night in his room only during the trial did he find out that all he had around him were agents they introduced him to some man who transported drugs that's it nothing else happened they wanted to jail him and they did your shame cause the defense team echoes this

the defendant did nothing. other than wishing through the information. he guessed you would he was going to be managed meanwhile your show has never even set foot on american soil that is until he was handcuffed and brought here by force in may of last year russian officials were not duly notified of his arrest the man was effectively missing for a month and moscow cited a breach of international law we have. apologized to russia the state department's excuse we pressed the wrong button on the facts and. to be brutally for notifying romania instead of russia to observers this seems a joke on the day of the guilty verdict the most important question why this trial is being held on u.s. territory remains unanswered. doing is the issue that was decided before trial. that related to the concept of manufactured jurisdiction which the judge

decided pretrial against. that i'd be still available issues. can be the basis for an appellate court an appeal cannot be filed until after the sentencing but hopes or do u.s. appeals courts are generally reluctant to reverse decisions made by jury court the sentencing of concern to your son for six presidents three months on july twenty eighth he will find out his destiny on u.s. soil the jews russian pilot faces from twenty five years to a life sentence behind bars in a country where people need to know why is this a trick in our hearts here. so once again the most interesting aspects of this case are shankar was arrested in liberia tried in america and yet he's a russian citizen and as a good journalist wayne madsen joining her earlier to discuss the ins and outs of this verdict. first of all we know that the ara shango apparently was offered

a deal by federal prosecutors to if he would testify against her boot they're actually in the same prison in new york so this is another case that we've been following another case charged with trying to sell arms to the colombian fark area shank is accused of smuggling cocaine that originated from the colombian fark through africa which then would find its way into europe but we have this colombian fark similarity between the two cases and we also have so we have two countries that are basically. de facto colonies of the united states involved colombia under then very discredited president i'll borrow or read a who whose intelligence service has now been accused of all kinds of heinous crimes and liberia which is basically a colony of the united states the president ellen sirleaf johnson. was propelled

into office with a lot of money from mr soros i might add you know and the wife of even told r.t. that she believed that the u.s. government actually targeted or set up her husband why you know what would the u.s. have to gain from it looks like the americans may have two things in mind yera shane cohen big group who both were involved in weapons. some would say smuggling other would would say transport sometimes are under contract to the united nations during the one nine hundred ninety s. angolan liberia two countries that were mentioned now we know that this trafficking was done with the full knowledge of the cia for example so is this an attempt to roll people up who may know too much or on the other hand is it an attempt to get rid of these russian arms dealers so american arms dealers america by the way is the largest export of small arms in the world is that it is that an attempt to get

rid of the competition i mean whether or not you know all of these theories are right on i mean just the bigger picture here about you know being arrested in one country being tried in another country and being from a third country what's kind of the broader picture i mean is this how common is that yeah the problem here is the extraterritorial imposition of u.s. law. on people who have really no in both a victor bouquet selling even if you believe he was selling weapons to the colombian fark what does that have to do with the united states now that the federal government says well the those weapons would be used to target american citizens that's that's kind of that's a giant leap. that was investigative journalist and r.t. contributor wayne manson. turning down to the middle east where the u.s. has said it is pushing for democracy some call it instead a clear sign of hypocrisy france and italy are now urging the u.n. to put pressure on syria to end its violent crackdown on anti-government protesters

there washington is also considering imposing sanctions sound familiar well for some this is beginning to sound too much like the lead up to libya still so far it's more outrage than action for more i'm joined by independent journalist james corbett who is in a soccer japan. hey there james i want to start off with what we're seeing here in washington three senators just today senators john mccain joe lieberman and lindsey graham issued a joint statement they said what's happening in syria has reached a decisive point they said by following the path of gadhafi and deploying military forces to crush peaceful demonstrations all assad and those loyal to him have lost the legitimacy to remain in power in syria but senators said we urge the president to state unequivocally as he did in the case of gadhafi and hosni mubarak that it is time for syrian president bashir al assad to go so i'm wondering what you think about this i mean do you think there's any way that syria would be the next libya.

i think that's very much what it appears to be and we can see that actually from john mccain who is on the board of the international republican institute and the new york times just calmly admitted in mid april that the international republican institute is one of the organizations that has been funding these so-called spontaneous grassroots uprisings in the arab spring so he obviously has a vested interest in what he's talking about there and i think we've seen the president in libya with the way that the sanctions speaking in a no fly zone became bombing but not to get rid of gadhafi and then and then that was changed when obama and sarkozy and cameron can be joined in the international herald tribune and yes they will not stop until gadhafi is gone and now you have people like william hague calmly floating the idea that could have you must be assassinated and so we see the exact same type of buildup that that's going on in libya starting now with the idea of sanctions and other types of un led. sanctions

and other such activities against syria james you mentioned that john mccain was on the board of the republican institute you know explain to those who are not familiar with sort of what goes on here in washington with you know interest and lobbyist what interests some of these senators would have other than actually believing that syria is a real threat to its people that the government there is a threat explain to people kind of this inside baseball staff in terms of special interests. well it's very important for people to keep in mind that these types of international republican institute and the national democratic institute and freedom house and others have been funding and training activists from around the world in order to carry out just these types of uprisings that we're seeing now and the long term plan is to start and start to carry out that destabilization of regimes that are not friendly to american interests or at least to the interests of the american political elite so you see john mccain and james wolfensohn in

madeline albright on the boards of these types of institutes and these are the same cheerleaders for every war mongering attempt if american military intervention that we've seen for the last few decades and interestingly enough in the syrian case we now get these reports that there are these snipers that are killing people in funeral president recessions and it's being said that these are assad's forces but i would really recommend your viewers to go to if you lend a story report we're twenty cardle and she an investigative reporter has been looking into the organizations that are that are funding those those activists including one called gen next which had a couple of years ago they met with some u.s. navy seals and we're going to go through some training and you can look at the pictures on their own web site of them getting training on sniper rifle use so you see there is a rainy and news reports that are suggesting that the sniper that we're seeing in in syria right now are in fact not syrian forces at all but are actually sent in from the outside it is certainly interesting when we go into countries that we know

so little about i mean syria there are very few journalists even allowed inside this country as opposed to libya but it is hard to find figure out who the enemy is and sort of what they stand for and you know a big question you know should we have a method here in the u.s. in which you know we lay out some guidelines or we lay out some standards for u.s. foreign policy when it comes to you know this pro-democracy movement sweeping across the world really president obama remember he said in his speech he said you know we can't help everyone but what are the defining factor is and what we do when we don't help. well it's important to keep in mind that the real driving ethos of foreign policy for the for america for the first hundred fifty years of its existence was on interventionism and that's something that the founding fathers were quite strong about they didn't want they wanted to lie and says but not knowing entangling alliances just economic trade with all but no no entangling alliances and unfortunately we now see the american empire is really spreading

across the world and attempting to exert its power all over the world and i think that's a very much profound difference in the american psyche and that's been really instituted over the past fifty years with things like the international republican institute the national democratic institute and the way real briefly james around the thought of time who wins and who loses if u.s. and other allies to get involved in syria. it's clearly syria will be the loser that's obviously but i think iran is also going to be the next on the chopping block because that's a very strategic partner with syria what about winners. winners i guess those in the military industrial complex complex who are always benefit from military intervention gosh it seems they get everything they want these days and about a journalist james carville joining us from japan thank you so much thank you christine and that's going to do it for now but for more of the stories we covered go to our team dot com slash usa also talk of our you tube page at youtube dot com fly.