there are there that are with. it was just sixteen. art it's time to come up with some cheesy protest chance because the rise in employees and are picking up their picket signs to demand better pay and more benefits some forty five thousand of them with all those voices demanding change they want to know can you hear me now good. he's just not true that you could run. the russians were killed or through the system. and that may be true but. you are sure and pack your bags because we're going to take you on a trip through cyberspace and deep into the ethics behind us meddling in

revolutions with some stealth technology. plus there's a sandstorm swirling in the great white north this overall oil and who wants it more china or the u.s. but every choice has its consequences like choosing between a country's principles and its economic needs. and all president obama hits the road to talk about recovery germany and france are trying to get the wheels turning on theirs by saving the euro zone so who's got it right and who is about to hit a dead end. good evening it's wednesday august seventeenth eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm lauren lyster and you're watching r.t. ok so we've been hearing a lot about shared sacrifice lately but let me share with you one of the biggest corporations in america is idea of shared sacrifice they enjoy more than ten billion dollars in profits they get one point three billion dollars in

a tax rebate their workers get an average salary of about forty eight grand a year and that's if they're full time employed and they're being asked to give up or chip in a billion dollars worth of their benefits as. union workers this is what sent thousands of people onto the streets of new york and protest today and this is the latest in the saga of corporations posting record profits while workers across america see their livelihoods take a beating michael has been covering this since the beginning his most recent article isn't in these times i believe that i just read you can tell us if that's wrong he's here to give us the scoop and of course to come get them talking about is verizon wireless which i didn't mention but that's the company that these protesters are protesting against my thanks for being here so this is about. from what i've read the company wanted to come benefits but also a lot of other demands and i know that you've been covering a lot of labor issues so what is really the company trying to achieve here

according to you well according to a lot of the workers and i've talked with a lot of the union leaders so the company is really trying to bust that you're right that they're trying to make the union so weak if they can no longer bargain collectively so right now out of about two hundred thousand rising workers only forty five thousand are union employees about ten years ago that was seventy five thousand so one of the big demands is they're trying to find out new ways to bring in nonunion workers. but also make the unix like things that really weakens its programming position for example the rise in which is enjoyed healthy profit for rising workers have never had to pay for their premiums they just pay co-pays and deductibles so the people at seven percent of the health care costs you know fries and stone was doubled or. so why why i mean so horizons of logic and this is what they say is that everybody else has to pay for their health care if we can find tons of workers that are willing to pay for their health care so you should too which is the attitude of many corporations now which is that were crucial desperate

that workers to have good benefits should be willing to take less because we can find somebody else ok i misspoke this is varieties and that was probably a free and slipped his rise in wireless is which in my cell phone service for that is very serious these are the landline workers and from what i understand and the landline business for obvious reasons that you and i don't need to explain then training it's not been doing well and they also service some of the wireless ok homes as well k. but the issue here i'm guessing is that the land line workers are you know that's probably a separate part of the company's business sales or sagging so in order to you know make cuts they make cuts to employee benefits that sort of thing to deliver the kind of bottom line that they need from that vertical is that right basically basically so then my question is is the bigger conversation here because that's kind of any businessman would say that's business you know it doesn't matter the whole corporation is posting you know ten billion dollars in sales growth if this part of it this vertical is losing business is losing sales we have to get that out

of that vertical you know you don't take over here to fill about it so is the bigger conversation here not necessarily about unions but about how corporations are run how we think about business models in the us in the system in this country i think the really incredible thing of the union hasn't quite to conventions tradition as previously rising was part of nine or which was you know this is in the eighty's in the eighty's with rising workers came on so the issue is that we're being asked to paid more for their health care so that's the same thing by meeting the issues that corporations still providing health care so should someone's basic human right health care be cut because a business is losing money in my opinion if you have cancer the answer's no. but then they can send you a question of is it a company's responsibility to provide its employees with health care which is more a philosophical question i have. whatever opinion on but do you think that we need to rethink the way that business is look at a business model because as we see businesses try to do you try to meet their

bottom line for shareholders or whatever we see workers get squeezed and it's pretty par for the course as a way that companies have been cutting costs is the bigger conversation we need to be having about the way that corporations. do business the way that they see their goals is not surprising profits at any cost yeah i think we need to have a big conversation like this and this strike you really shows the first holes in obamacare right there's no employer mandate some players aren't mandated to have it at any level but also in the literature going out to workers and in the press they're saying look we have to cut your health care because of the excise tax the tax on the so-called cadillac plans which union workers want to chevy plans that everybody should have the grubs that we have to cut your health care because of this tax rate so we've seen health care reform which really so far isn't addressing the issues but actually being used as an excuse by corporations to cut health care

what i want to give this conversation going for just a minute because there's a couple things i want to touch on you have said obama president obama should join the picket line why would the president get involved because he promised to do that during his campaign but want to be done well december two thousand and eight when he was president elect he voiced support for workers at republic windows and doors in chicago who are occupying a factory so he has gotten involved and actually he supported workers in gauged in an illegal factory occupation two thousand and eight as president so as president hasn't done anything like that he's made some statements towards you know workers in wisconsin saying that he thought this was an attack on unions but he hasn't done well but he did promise that during his campaign if workers' right to close we bargain was ever threatened and you get involved the president in the past i'm going to go off and strikes in order to settle down at the very least since obamacare is being cited as one of the reasons to cut health care obama should come out and say this is not true this is not the intention and it's an interesting point i want to just bring up you know we do cover protests but we rarely see this

number of people this is a lot of people in new york today and the number that are produced is give us were they got thousands so my question is as we've seen we were port every day about a. corporations have posted record profits despite the downturn the recession what some people say oh we're entering a depression while workers have really struggled it's no secret to anybody that unemployment is very high one percent and wages have stagnated or gone down we've seen at harvard a number of issues where unions have been broken up are targeted so do you see this is an example that workers are starting to really fight back because i know there's this and there's also a strike in pennsylvania going on yeah there's a straight today there's a sit in strike by some guest workers and said another who struck with factories are getting paid one to two dollars an hour the exclusion the guest worker was in this country. when i go out in the country and i talk to workers there is a sense of confidence after wisconsin that we've seen for. going on and now we're

seeing that we're seeing the fruits of that you saw for example one and russian state a few weeks ago workers and beat a port to stop them from using leverage there was a wildcat strike at the world trade center site two weeks ago there's all these things bubbling up you know we might see a southern california grocery worker straight and i see the chicago teachers go on strike that all of a sudden people are trying to wake up in this country like they are around the world i mean around the world was in good protest in london i mean rights protests were seen big riots and protests in greece we're seeing protests and even israel against what's going on there with the economic policies so do you see this is an equivalent as a broad trend sweeping all of these countries where they're facing inequality yet as the governments feel to react to the growing inequality the growing economic crisis people are trying to react and it's getting deeper as time goes on how long have you been covering labor and i've been in organized labor my whole little life so i mean as far as you know my dad was

a union writer so i've been around it my whole life so during your lifetime how does this compare as far as the level of kind of protest that we're seeing to the span of how long you've been there and. i don't think we've quite seen anything quite like this but we're not at a tipping point yet i feel we're still fighting defensive battles we haven't gotten offensive i mean look at what's happening right as we're fighting over a corporation paying a certain share of health care we're not changing the way health care is done we're not changing we cooperations are running and this is what we were able to do in the 1930's was we were able to fundamentally change the economic paradigm in organized labor is not doing the work for you defense of right now it's kind of window dressing but not addressing the root cause fine and having this conversation earlier but countries dealing with their fiscal problems on a much bigger scale but thank you for messing around like here's an idea how about they give their tax refund the one point they really. dollars to fill in their worker costs there's a creative solution. ok real quickly to show it because you're a new book out chomsky michael moore

a lot of regular people contributed this book your wisconsin people's history of what happened in wisconsin with starting to happen across the country and people can go on the web wisconsin the book dot com and buy it and it's no chomsky michaele good name here with it for you all right as labor journalist mike out now for economic failure to or labor failure lots of failures to internet failure after the arab spring shook up the middle east and north africa with dictators switching off the internet to control crowds the u.s. moved in with a reported plan to switch it back on here's the problem the u.s. government's quote liberation technologies also pose some tough questions about who is watching who and for what purpose also about the hypocrisy of touting internet freedom abroad or threatening to shut it down when protests break out at home in the u.s. or when riots walk the streets of say the u.k. artie's kalen for the really digs deep and goes inside to show us america's new shadow. the scene when

a wave of revolution crashes through the middle east just brings. up. the old man he said which ended in the streets began with one hundred forty characters or less and social media like twitter and facebook. to harness the power of online communication the u.s. state department is providing two million dollars in grants for a quote internet in a suitcase program it's part of what secretary clinton calls a venture capitalist approach to addressing the wide range of challenges that democracy and human rights activists face in internet repressive environments around the world centralized beverage like this one can easily be cut by government but the internet in a suitcase is designed to give dissident a mobile web with miss technology that runs the cell phone but other devices making it harder to cut the founder of its own clearinghouse of confidential documents

john young worries that american suitcase servers will serve another perfect suitcase is meant to give the illusion that you could run the whole economy collapses without going through the national systems and that may be true but they will not be outside the us young says the suitcase is just part of so-called liberation technology that has its advantages for the u.s. to prosecute for being compelled to you know she has to watch what you're doing and probably influence what you're doing and it isn't just government according to the hackers collective anonymous which really seventy thousand classified e-mail from defense contractor h.p. carry federal about the romance coin program rosko in space surveillance you have apple because you have this thing both groups single you know national intelligence agencies friends as well as plain it's partly designed to manipulate social media one of the really more bizarre and dangerous oldies that would come to light because. it's almost all the you.

and there were other people who were not this software would allow the u.s. military to push their agenda by flooding social media forums already influenced by so-called witness bloggers international outrage of the kidnapping of a self declared lesbian blogger in syria had a real policy implications until i mean it turned out to be this american man but i feel really guilty about. the other say there's a contradiction between support for internet freedom abroad and subpoenas i will let you rikki leaks collaborators at home including private bradley manning. the suitcase is just part of a larger internet freedom agenda don't shoot the instant messenger. instead address the underlying grievances but these platforms appear less welcome when activists take to the streets at home and to release a surveillance video that in fair francisco police cut cell phone services on the metro during protests and those who you can see. try to

obviously. look. to and following riots in london there is talk of shutting down social media we are working with the police the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence it's order and criminality. the u.s. will spend seventy million dollars and internet circumvention technology in two thousand and eleven abroad even as tough questions remain at home. or to our t. washington d.c. . speaking about how president obama is at home he's in illinois today where he was a senator there he is riding around the midwest on a reported one point one million dollars bus paid for by taxpayers unveiling a plan to convince them he's focused on creating jobs oh yeah and it is not a reelection campaign tour when quink will have more on that. later but while obama

is trying to save face with americans his second in command is trying to save face with beijing so biden is on a five day visit in china trying to reaffirm the u.s. its status as a world economic power this is of course fresh off the debt ceiling crisis and the downgrade of u.s. credit but is the u.s. already losing out to china economically and looking at this what's more important of a model a country's principles or economic interests and making their decisions let's take a look at what's going on with oil in canada as an example so the u.s. imports about half of its oil and canada is the largest foreign supplier of oil to the u.s. it's followed by a saudi arabia mexico and venezuela now canada's only major oil export market is the u.s. now enter the bastard serve of oil in oil sands in alberta the u.s. views this as the pillar of its future energy needs a lever is building a pipeline to deliver it which has been stopped because if you can environmental

concerns and regulations also this oil sands oil is known as dirty oil and environmentalist are not fans so meanwhile guess who's eager to step in china they are willing to spend big bucks for a big piece of these oil reserves and check out how the leaders in canada have changed their tune just in general towards china now that it's looking to the asian country as a customer for its exports to pick up slack from the economically challenged us let me give you an example in two thousand and six prime minister stephen harper was harping on china's human rights record and he said then i don't think canadians want us to sell out important canadian values our belief in democracy freedom human rights they don't want to sell that out to the almighty dollar back then his foreign minister also accused china of industrial espionage while fast forward now the harper government calls china a friend and an important ally things like this it's clear that the strategic partnership between canada and china has never. vend more promising as the

structure of the world economy changes more and more we're in a position to cooperate for our mutual benefit human rights now that's a growing part of these days how things change so what's right what's wrong earlier i spoke to the host of freedom named radios to con molineux and i asked him which is more important taking canada as an example first operating on principles like human rights as they seems to want to in two thousand and six or solely on economic interests as they seem to be doing now here's his response. i think it's a great question i think there's a bit of a false dichotomy i think it's really important to remember that human rights are the issue or the business of the chinese government whereas people who want to trade and do business together these are economical property rights or free trade rights so i don't think that we want to punish people who want to trade in canada and want to trade with china for the actions of their government i think that would be quite on just so i think that there's a fair amount of value in allowing this kind of open trade between the two

countries so you think eventually that at the right thing for for stephen harper and his government to be putting economic interests before value that they seem to really care about as the foremost priority before i think it is reasonable i think the way i would phrase it is to say that it is good for the government to not interfere with the free choice of trade between individuals ok now let's bring in the us so the former foreign minister of canada said this about the us china dynamic he said there's a real sense in canada now that the americans take us for granted and that canada has to strengthen relations with china in order to get more respect in the u.s. do you agree and do you see this oil sand issue as an example of that. i think it is important i think that there's a certain amount of delusion around energy requirements and it does and if you production particularly in america so for instance almost eighty percent of the oil around the world if you are owned or controlled by governments and the vast majority of those governments are not very friendly either to their own people to

human rights or to the environment as a whole and so if you want to do business around all you're dealing with twenty one percent of private companies fifty eight percent of those are in canada so if you want to do free trade around oil you have to go to canada candidates out good and the majority are ninety seven percent of candidates oil reserves are in these tar sands projects so i do think that china wants to do business in canada they are canada second largest trading partner they are the main source of canadian immigration there are very strong ties between the two countries they need energy candidate sitting on massive resources of energy american special interest groups particularly hyper environmentalist seem to be i think inordinately concerned about the environment which you know we all want to have a clean environment but let's look at the reality is that if america does not get its oil from canada it's going to have to go to the middle east or someplace in africa or some other place where there's some godforsaken government oppressing its own people so it's not like there's some magical solution where you can get clean on oil perfectly with no human rights abuses so i'd like to think. that the top of

the human rights compliance regimen relative to almost all the other countries that produce oil at least of this quantity i will get let's get a little bit more into that because you brought us into this conversation with the environmental concerns so you have the u.s. saying we don't know about these oil sands because of the environmental issues this oil is dirty the pipeline can pollute drinking water and china just jump and says sure we'll take it we don't care about those things and they seem to have a model that they use more broadly that's driven purely by business interest which lead with less concern over the environment or that kind of thing which is working better in a country's interest because you mentioned that you know if the united states really wants loyal should they really be this concerned about the environmental concerns of bringing it from canada. well i don't think so i think the environmental concerns are pretty questionable there's a lot of flak back and forth about whether it's better or worse to have this kind of oil through the u.s.

is it is it better for the environment as a whole to have it produced in saudi arabia where there is almost no concern for the environment whatsoever and then shifts in dangerous supertankers across oceans with storms and lightning i don't know that that's necessarily a big improvement the question is he's kind of decisions is always compared to what so we can get the american to get some oil from canada compared to what compared to shipping it from africa and doing what china is doing in africa which is less laying down lavish bribes to dictators speed access to these resources we have to make intelligent decisions about how these resources are going to be gotten i think that dealing with canada which has one of the strictest environmental controls in the on the planet dealing with canada with private companies who have profit motives that are controlled by shareholders guns and consumers that are the best and cleanest way to get to energy going over to the middle east which is significantly anti-american and it's going through significant utils at the moment i think is not going to be a winning strategy for america in the long run and philosophically you mentioned ok you gave the example of china and you said they lay down lavish bribes to african dictators to get oil that sort of thing so it's

a choice and where china puts business interests in your example i have any concerns about human rights or what a country's leader is doing to their people that sort of thing is is that making them more successful then a u.s. model that puts concerns about what a country's leader is doing or what the u.s. considers the right human rights record or environmental concerns ahead of big business interests who's winning china or the u.s. . well i think from a purely economic standpoint is it's clear that china has experienced the most extraordinary growth since the early parts of the industrial revolution in western europe so china's growth has been seven eight nine ten percent for almost twenty years so there's no doubt that getting out of the way of people who want to do who want to trade freely is the best way to grow your economy there is also a very strong argument to say that the best way to get environmental protection is to grow your economy to have excess wealth that is necessary to have luxuries like scrubbers on your smokestacks and think of all the people who drove to work using

gas to invent email of the fax machine but if i asked you reduce the amount of gas that is required to ship documents around the world so i think the what you want to do is get as much wealth as possible that gives you the excess welcomed you need for environmental controls denying a forty five billion dollars of economic growth from these tar sand projects is simply going to impoverish america and that means that bizz going to be fewer excess amounts of probability for environmental protection money and power according to host of freedom and radio stefan molyneux you know now earlier i mentioned obama is riding around on a bus trying to pledge to americans that he is saving the country so that's what obama is doing meanwhile france and germany are trying to save the euro zone in a different way feeling the weight of crippling debt for some of its members they are calling for a collective economic government and they are pushing euro zone countries to adopt this new rule nicolas sarkozy said we want seventeen members of the eurozone to

adopt a golden rule that the angle of financial laws must be said to a return of the balance in budget and as a rule of common sense which must lead to the reduction of deficits and the rejection of debt. who has a novel approach to reducing debt while in the us try to help me with that i spoke with radio host an economics blogger covering delta dot com dimitri cofan us as part of our conversation i asked him if the euro zone and us both impose austerity measures and balance their budgets does that solve the problems facing the global economy there's a take now because he could be the biggest problem we have you for national monetary system now and that's just democracy what is next the problem persistent salary after. you have chronic current account deficits and states and you have countries running giant current account surplus like german like china like germany and in the case of china you see what happened in china and brazil occasion of

capital there will be asking for demand and those collapsing in the united states in the case of germany the export a lot of that happened outside of the agreed bottles and then you have structural imbalances there the root of the problem is the monetary system that's the problem still trying to repress piece you know we've different things and keeping the system in place is not going to solve the problem it's only a few good sickness lukey one of feudal model is not a good thing if you want. individual freedom into democracy then you have to ask for a system the last group competitive pricing everything including the price of money so then when the eurozone one country there we're going to have more of a collective fiscal authority is that a good or a bad thing. it's a bad thing because it would be a game goes back to the contrary a more powerful central authority and that power would be used in theory everything is good in theory socialism would be great in theory having a system i guess if i stop and if you're still going to have booms and busts you're still going to have a bank run you're still going to have banks line so i'm going to lose money even in

a sure gold standard for marty based competing currencies but the reality is that if you try to fix some of those problems by creating even in a melt well meaning great circle and power you're going to eventually have a corruption of the power and if you give a central authority the ability to issue money in credit hours going for the never review if you're seeing that right history and we're saying you know i'm going to see any part of i'm against it in trying to work the ability to create credits and then air the control goods and services in the economy if they're going to use those partners and their own benefit and are going to create a misallocation of resources through mixed market signals and they need to like let me ask you that's what we're almost out of time but if you're saying that not a bigger than nor the united states is willing to take on what is really the problem in their economies and what would really be the solution what do you think is going to go over the cliff and the ocean first the european economy or the

united states. no one really you know market's going to have to are the collapse and have to be ready in the summer on markets and that's what you're trying to see and you see you're not my girls i'm such a big you know this downturn because people are looking for so you can stick your money and. google them so are you saying the big euro zone going to go going to go over the cliff first yeah i think the years are going to first because it just there's a concern about the structure of the monster you not because the european economies are. sastre but it's the monetary union that's in question you're absolutely be the first to go would be not the united states not not the japanese bond market i think it's the europe. that is the prediction from radio host an economics blogger dmitri co fetus. we have some aeronautical aspirations a little comparison for you so russia's fighter jet the t. fifty has just made its first public flight at the locks two thousand and eleven

air show so in the spirit of that we wanted to compare this to its competitor in the u.s. so the t. fifty is a jet which is said to be equipped with some of the most advanced avionics on the planet it is also part of a joint effort russia and india together on it they went in on it together to develop it and the project totaled about ten billion dollars an estimated price tag of the plane is just under one hundred million dollars now it is expected to rival the american f. twenty two the raptor now remember this is the plane that nobody's allowed to buy congress banned it for export and also congress recently shut it down in crown of the planes are said excuse me shut down the program now it's also one that cost the government nearly eighty billion dollars and as i mentioned it's been grounded indefinitely first it was due to system malfunctions and then they found out that antifreeze and propane were getting into the pilots' well what and all of this was about.