welcome ilona show that the real headlines with none of the interstate and a lot of washington d.c. now comments pay attention because the g.d.p. numbers are out and it's not looking so good we'll have details on u.s. growth and we'll find out the government is trying to downplay this dismal forecasts and reform protests are turning violent in syria the u.s. has made it clear that they're not getting involved we want to know how the government picks and chooses which countries do deserve military involvement and

its official general david petraeus has been nominated to be the director of the cia all the term and what changes will be coming to the intelligence agency it's a military official is put in charge and let's talk about copyright infringement and censorship should be up to private companies to take certain pirate sites out of their surfers also or for the government force them to host a debate on the issue and we'll call on one of our favorite guests to discuss the big a story in the media but i can't really figure out who cares about the royal wedding ceremony because will join me to basically make fun of it or going to save that gossip and that for the end of our show up first our top story. the syrian government has been violently clamping down on pro-reform protesters with human rights organizations as to meeting but at least four hundred people have been killed and yesterday more than two hundred bath party members announced there was resignation in response to the government's brutality and the international

community is once again expressing its condemnation like we saw in libya although bihari and yemen not so much now the e.u. is said to be meeting this friday to discuss sanctions on syria and the u.s. is reportedly pursuing its own sanction plan as well but nowhere have we heard that assad must go or that limited humanitarian intervention is on the table quite the opposite white house press secretary jay carney only announced that every country is different and different indeed but is that in action toward syria once again prove that there is no such thing as an overarching ideology for human rights and democracy and a duty to protect but only when political conditions favor it joining me to discuss it is robert farley assistant professor at the university of kentucky patterson school and blogger at lawyers guns and money robert thanks so much for joining us tonight now clearly every situation is different nobody can deny that but if you

look at syria where upwards of four hundred protesters have been killed now according to human rights organizations where the violent or the government is clamping down violently and where the protesters are holes where they have no arms how can you look at that situation and then look at libya and the way the international community has acted and justify the two. i mean i think that you can't on any reference to high principle and i think that you make a very good point when you mention that the syrian protesters are not armed themselves in the same way as the libyan rebels and so we're not talking about a civil war likely we're really at libya and we're talking about a government clamping down and shooting good citizens in the street apparently without any sort of sort of sense of conscience or anything along those lines i think the difference here is that syria is a much more dangerous country it's much more powerful country than libya and the implications of calling for regime change in syria seem very dangerous to almost everybody isn't ever. oh it's one thing i guess to call for the regime change but

if you look at the obama administration they at least try to have better warmer relations with syria recent years they even went so far as beginning to call side a reformer clearly all of that rhetoric is now off the table and it's no longer being used what still do you think that the obama administration should be allowed or in their condemnation you know what is it that's in their interest to so far justify staying on assad's side. i think you have been restructured as well my my my guess is this that they are extremely concerned about boxing us are you know i think in the end that you saw it was overthrown by the. same way as mubarak that how we're going to be ok what about research and that would probably be your case would be and so forth but the problem that is so hard to do a number of very dangerous things if you understand the west to be looking forward

and this is where the us is really didn't regime change. and so to the extent that he feels boxed in to the extent. that the west is out to get him you can do dangerous things you can do dangerous things to israel you can do much more dangerous things to the people of syria and so i can understand a caution about his vision approaching this with and i suspect that the europeans are going to approach it with the same way this is a very dangerous situation one in which there is every reason to hope that the syrian people will overthrow assad and some sort of a new regime but at the same time this could be very very very it could be a very bad situation in a way that he would go forward also talk about what options so far are on the table according to obama the obama administration according to europe they are both the european union and the u.s. now looking towards sanctions towards syria do you think that those really have you know a chance of affecting the situation there. i think so there was

a moral condemnation they'll deliver an attitude that the west doesn't approve of serious the syrian government syrian military. and that may to some extent be an indicator to some of the people within the regime that there is an outside chance which would see that wouldn't mind seeing change in syria if it actually might also send messages to people within the regime or within syria within the protest movement there's somebody out there supporting them at the same time it's hard to see the sort of an economic sanctions that you're going to see from the west and from the united states calling about spheres and so forth it's hard for me to see that this will determine about what's going to happen you know i don't see the kind of thing that less is going to do and actual to the syrian. situation there continues right now the death toll is perhaps at four hundred people let's say that it gets worse and it gets more violent and you know in the weeks to come

then what the international community supposed to do. the international community is going to increase and leave the country. but i it's just it's so difficult for me to see anyone in france or the united kingdom or the united states coming up with some sort of military option i mean after sanctions are done after the ambassador has been recalled and after all of the condemnations have been given if assad is still there that assad is still there there is almost nothing else that the international system can do we're not going to have another security council resolution giving a no fly zone over syria the arab league is not going to be supportive of another intervention in an arab country a matter of twenty syria maybe and the countries that are involved simply don't have enough military for the public at all for over for us here if it wanted to but britain and france certainly can't at this point the only thing that i can see changing the equation would be turkey became interested but they they have expressed no interest in stabilizing assad's regime so i don't think there's

anything can be done and i want to switch now that they to libya because i guess that's the the other office that example that you can say where there's a huge tough position in terms of the way that everyone is reacting and here libya has seemed to have reached a stalemate and yet we still have of course the people like john mccain in our world are saying that we should arm the libyan rebels we should do it just like we did in afghanistan but i don't understand because i think that at the end of the day that didn't really work out so well that you know it is really seems like a terrible idea and it has become clearer and clearer that the fears of the people who were the targets critical of the intervention. are really being demonstrated to be right here there was no plan there was no set of objectives here that anybody had any idea for an end state where you know gadhafi would be caught or we would have some sort of partition or something along those lines and so what we have is this stalemate and we have it right john mccain saying things like that let's arm the rebels which may not even be the most important thing training the rebels is much more important than arming them and we are going to have

a situation where would that we may have this little state that used to be libya cut it in different parts with the date of the united nations in guarantors. and well supposedly advisers now on the ground there as well or at least going there from italy and from the u.k. i just also want to ask a quick question obviously there was a lot of chaos because obama went into libya without asking for congress's approval there's a sixty day period at some point after the sixty days he's going to have to ask for some money for some proof approval is a need do you think that that they're going to say yes well a little of it not the first person the first person to ask on the constitutional issues my understanding. is callers interested in pursuing his responsibilities with regards to the war powers act which are in the sixty's and so then we might have some sort of issue but there is no edition right now that congress has the biggest interest in challenging the president individual congressmen and senators rand paul for example. and you seem to have some skepticism about this but congress

as a body seems to want to look at the president and either insult or simply make this go away they don't seem to be interested in challenging the president while it's definitely not going to go away if you sit there and don't do anything about a business robert i want to thank you very much for joining us tonight but you now as the chaos in the middle east and north africa unfolds the u.s. is trying to walk a dangerous diplomatic site rope and washington is trying to make new friends in the arab world but at what cost to that come out of the u.s. meddling in several countries actually end up causing problems for one of their closest allies in the region israel artie's policy reports. these gunmen mean business and they're upping the stakes just that little bit higher. the egyptian regime like the zionist enemy trying to stop us fighters and girls are and we always build the weapons we needed to fight the zionist enemy. and now they've used more than they could ever hope for before me diction president

hosni mubarak's men gone the borders couldn't be easier to get through the big wins in the. world's all smuggled arms who. have much more freedom to do whatever they like. and they're doing it smuggling weapons into gaza the result two attacks in three months on a natural gas pipeline that supplies a quarter of israel's electricity which is why is the u.s. claims it's bringing a new tomorrow to egypt most israelis would rather remember yesteryear the eagerness of the united states to topple the former egyptian president hosni mubarak and bring about regime change i don't want to meet most harmed at the closest ally in the region is well the u.s. says it wants to establish democracy in the region but instead of democracy there's a very real possibility that radical islamic could come to power the u.s. strongly supported the opposition in libya despite al qaeda connections among its friends now it's apparently governance and support against syrian president bashar

assad with the wiki leaks website claiming that washington has been funding some anti government factions what is afraid that if he goes away. the muslim brotherhood can take civil so instead of incident in syria we're going to work islamist. swapping one dictator for what could be worse if and when radicals hunted power they're not here to direct the arms at israel it will be very conscious of the fact that syria is not libya and the fact that if you do decide to intervene in syria you will have knock on effects across the region in iraq in lebanon to israel palestine whatever new threats israel my face from an even more hostile arab world emerging from the present instability some experts believe the security of the jewish state is not under any great threat israel has never been a long safe place one of the greatest lies the mother and father of all lies as it relates to the israeli palestinian conflict is that israel has been in danger of

annihilation by detail in the three volumes of my book it is a complete lie israel's existence is never ever been danger from any combination of arab military force and that is unlikely to change in any foreseeable future but the fighters on the ground aren't giving up hope and they are minnes warning is that is worse to come. and one more time of defeat and retreat is over now it's time for the israeli people and the israeli enemy to pay. israel is keeping quiet when it becomes chaos in the middle east and north africa to combine closed doors not be plenty of disquiet about how much america's desire to make new friends in the arab world is fueling serious instability policy r t tell of of. i had tonight during the cia and saw another arm of the u.s. military or the pentagon and cia the first ever and as for the arrival of the trius

at the house. let's not forget that we sat in a parked car right. i think. on the well. we never got the book says they're going to keep him safe get ready because of the freedom. they charge in here broadcasting live from washington d.c.

coming up today on the big picture. new web site with twenty four seven live streaming news times like to do about it ongoing financial heart unlimited free high quality videos for download. and stories you may never see on mainstream news. media so. the political. parties are such. hey guys welcome michel ancel on the alone a show we've heard with our guests not to say on the topic now we want to hear our

audience is going to use you give video response or to twitter for part of the questions that we host on you tube every monday and on thursday in the show your responses during the week later global economy. the commerce department released numbers today for u.s. growth in the first quarter and the results are rather dim compared to the three point one percent rate of growth in the final quarter of last year the g.d.p. only rose a one point eight percent in the first quarter of two thousand and eleven and if you consider that the economy has to grow at a rate of two point five percent just to create enough jobs to accommodate a growing population and more efficient workers and that's not good news for unemployment a lot of economists including the chief ben bernanke who gave his first ever press conference yesterday are hedging their bets on this being temporary transitory the cold winter weather is over government spending especially defense is set to pick

right back up and rising gas and food prices he says not to worry too much about that either so are they right are they playing down what could be a much larger economic downturn joining me to discuss it is peter schiff president and chief global strategist of euro pacific capital peter thanks so much for joining us tonight what do you say here rising gas and food prices inflation is this all transitory is that going to fly wait a month or two or do we have a much larger much more long term problem on our hands absolutely not in fact the way you know it's not transitory is ben bernanke you think says transitory and binge since he's always wrong you can pretty much take it to the bank your place is going to get worse you know you you mentioned earlier about the u.s. economy the data came out today that showed the economy grew by about one point eight percent but i don't think we grew our big contract i think there were understating inflation if you measure us g.d.p. . any other currency has written

a swiss franc measure of the ozzie dollar measured in the euro our economy has been tracking measured in gold measured in silver it is on the edge of a cliff and you measure g.d.p. and silver so i think that we're really going to get activity is contracting inflation makes it look as if the economy is growing and that's not happening in. really all we're doing is spending more borrowed money we're digging ourselves into a deeper hole i'm afraid we may never get out of it well and that's if we look at rising gold prices rising seller prices like you said there are a lot of murmurs out there that we could be seeing a collapse of the dollar coming out soon you are the king of predictions here what do you say i think the dollar will collapse and i think it could happen maybe as soon as this fall but if it doesn't collapse in the fall it will close ups and soon i mean i think if you look at the charts the dollar is weakening and look at look at ben bernanke used press conference yesterday where he you know advocates any responsibility for inflation for rising prices he thinks it will prices or other

commodity prices are rising it has nothing to do with all the money that he's printing and so that means he's just going to keep on pretty more and you know the economy is actually going to we can look you know we got to be cheap you don't receive a we got a big jump between our unemployment claims so be employment landscape is getting worse what's going to happen when real estate prices make new lows which is coming soon we get a new downturn more people got employed and. energy prices keep rising food prices keep rising what was a failure to do i mean the fed is putting itself in a box we're at intially inflation is going to be so bad if they're going to have to raise interest rates so substantially to tackle it that they're going to completely destroy the economy but if that choice is to do better for the fed if instead they just let inflation run out of control because they don't want to raise rates then it's worse do you think the ben bernanke said that he's always wrong up if you

think that he really believes what he's saying or are they really thinks he's telling people the truth needed open himself up here right to be the first ever to hold a press conference but is he lying on purpose to try to calm people down to try to calm the markets allow wall street is he doing what it's doing. well he did a very good job of not answering any questions and if you actually saw the press conference he skated around everything but never really gave a direct answer so he just basically gave a speech interrupted by questions and i think the reason he did that is because he's he's trying to get some credibility but you know i saw in a report i read a report on bloomberg that actually described the press conference as a success because he didn't make any major gaffes i mean it wasn't a success at all during a press conference every time he opened his mouth the dollar lost more value every day every time you spoke a syllable goal when he did new record i mean it wasn't

a success to me unless you think the titanic had a successful crossing because if you were passengers happy to make it the new york i mean this was a disaster of a press conference and you know i think you if you see a big rally in gold there's a good chance that ben bernanke you speaking somewhere. did i like that you know one of the other things that was attributed to either what the government is calling slow growth or way you're actually calling a retraction in the economy is that the fact that there was a less government spending suppose somehow i guess there is less defense spending going on although i don't really know how that's possible but let's say the congress right now does actually start making drastic budget cuts and they increase over the next couple of months then should we just get used to these horrible numbers they used them unemployment being as it is. well if the government really made a big spending cuts that would be good for the economy because the more the government spends the more the private sector can't invest and that's what we need to grow the

economy we need more savings more investment more production but we can't afford any of that because the government is spending all of our wealth so if we really had big cuts in government spending the economy would improve the problem is that's not going to happen and when you're talking about lower government spending you need g.d.p. numbers it's not actually lower spending it's lower spending that maybe they had more cast but the government is spending more mean the government has never spent this much money as is spending right now that's the problem and the bigger problem is the way they're financing it they're not taxing us to pay for all this government they're printing money to pay for all the government so they're paying for government with inflation which means everybody that owns dollars pays for it with higher prices in a diminished manner of living and because so many other countries around the world are trying to pay their currency to the dollar when we create inflation over here we have sport all around the world and the whole world is suffering because of all this government spending. i i always make me feel so good about the direction that

our country in the entire world is heading but i guess that's the truth right there is and i thank you so much for joining us at least to make you laugh. thank you have a good night. now it's a president obama officially announced that he will be nominating general david petraeus to take over the post of cia director it's not an unheard of move to have a general head the civilian agency but it's one that's been criticized harshly and the past especially when it was the bush administration putting general mike in hate michael hayden out for the role but this time around we're not hearing any objections from congress so all things considered let's just assume that he gets the job what will the cia under petraeus look like because it put into jeopardy any chances of objective analysis of our wars abroad and if a perfect example of how the pentagon and the cia have fused together both becoming a bloated militarized organizations but only helped fuel more war here to discuss

that with me israeli government former cia officer and co-founder of the foreign intelligence professionals for sanity thank you so much for being here tonight for starters are you with me here i mean is the he's going to get the job right he's going to get through. what i mean where the critics we heard a lot of critics on two thousand and six when bush wanted michael hayden who was a general we heard a lot of democratic voices saying that i don't think having a military man especially general head the civilian agency would be a good idea here we are twenty eleven obama's doing the same thing i don't hear any voices. heard come out and as they were he super right to. be eavesdropping on us citizens for war we knew would he stood for and so he was discredited not because he was a military figure but because of his association with the illegal eavesdropping but the truce has very good credentials the only problem is the way harry truman in this year was to have one. ace where the president could go and he could say look

mr director or mr rector please tell me what you really think what you in those two universities worth of specialists you have out there in the woods of virginia what you really think about that i don't care what the military says i don't care what the state department says they will always defend their policy i want to have an independent look at this tell me what you really think now he has betrayed us so dead a fight with two wars. you know if these analysts say these are a fool's errand that you'll never prevail in afghanistan because for that you need the pakistanis to cooperate and there's no chance of god's creation with the cooperate well what kind. of reaction is patrice going to have to his analysts who are trying to give it to him straight and will he will he have the integrity to go to the person and say you know i thought these surges in this world was. a

specialist told me that you know it's we've got to get out now because it was a little specialists are really going to convince general david petraeus mean this man is a mastermind especially when it comes to playing the media when it comes to selling his wars that he's very personally involved in so do you think that he's going to you know quite the opposite maybe confront these analysts see is going to tell them otherwise he's going to change their minds in a war their way of looking at this where you see he comes out of military tradition and who is not used to kind of independent analysis to he's going to face now to their credit you know to their credit the analysts have come up with very good estimates to call the national intelligence estimate an excellent one in november two thousand and seven on iran big news the conclusion. in two thousand and three stopped working on a nuclear weapon hollow somebody would say oh hell hillary clinton the new york times but that's the judgment unanimous of sixteen intelligence agencies the same

intelligence agencies that will tell you if you look at our war in afghanistan quite contrary to what general petraeus will really you it's not going well but i wonder because petraeus is also you can say the darling of capitol hill he's very close to many of these war hawks and those are the same people that john mccain's of the world are the bomb iran crowd and so now is he going to have new answers for them and says no the cia tells me iran isn't working on a nuclear weapon it's going to be a test of his. of his integrity and it's going to be very interesting because for male i i don't want to prejudge it but it's i think it's it betrays a lack of understanding on the part of president barack obama. as to what an incredible tool he can have if he has an independent view on these things now he's stacked the corps spy putting four star general in charge of the cia and i want to think patrice maybe up to being able to listen and to tell the president look you

know what i thought was really great. i always said that the military will never be able to do this by themselves who turns out to be that's right karzai is a hopeless case and you know i've always said we need the pakistanis to cooperate but you know what my specialists say there's not a snowball's chance in hardly think that seems very hopeful and quite the contrary what if instead we have general petraeus take charge of the cia a man that he. wrote the book on counterinsurgency now doing counterterrorism who wants to fly more drones you know have more drone strikes and now essentially he'll be in charge of libya and of again in and of pakistan is he just going to be the general in charge of even more wars this way there are basically two ca's ok the one that runs the drones and the ones that was the torture of more kinds of pets that was never in this huge but president truman ok that's the one that gets all the attention when the president should the paradigm is the one that tells him

what's really going on in the world what what are the chances for hope with respect to afghanistan the pop star so it's going to be a very interesting thing to see how how pretorius navigates this and you know one thing he has to worry about the other directors i've had to worry about and that is if for example he decides well i think i think iran really is working on a nuclear weapon and that's when i tell the president he has to worry about something called we. he has to worry about how easy it is for principle analysts to say you know this is would be trivial for a country we know we know what we think he's distorting the there are ways to route but we've already seen how our our country and our government respond to weaken leaks as well we want to thank you very much it was rolling over and i thank you now coming up ahead he's gone after he gave an islamic floor but now republican lawmaker in oklahoma has harsh words for working americans.