including it as of happy hour but first take a look what mainstream media decided to miss. so unsurprisingly the economy is still topic number one and as usual the mainstream media isn't giving you any real details about the economy they're not even making any connections between the love fest for jamie dimon on the hill yesterday and the lack of regulations on wall street or anything like that but no instead they are still going on and on about the back and forth between obama and mitt romney made through media land the battle of words is all that really matters disappointing new jobs numbers came out this morning as john boehner is asking democrats what is being done about it he's been talking about a jobs plan that he would like to see the congress is the president to be going back to that message today that he needs to remind people how this stimulus how the auto bailout how some other actions of his administration have indeed how did the

country out of the hole that was there when he took office president obama and governor romney getting ready to speak out on how to fix our struggling economy foreclosures in the united states went up nine percent last month that's more than two hundred thousand properties the economy is getting worse unemployment is eight point two percent president obama and mitt romney will offer dueling visions of how to fix the economy a lot of people are fed up with congress for not working together to get the country's fiscal house in order here is what he said the other day followed by carney on this i inherited a trillion dollar debt. we had a surplus they turned it into a deficit built in a structural deficit that extends for decades obama continues to connect romney the former president george w. bush. when i hear governor romney say his twenty five years in the private sector gives him a special understanding of how the economy works and my question is why are you running with the same bad ideas the brought our economy to the brink of disaster.

now we played that clip yesterday as well and as our guest david dayen pointed out his points are true a new c.p.o. analysis shows the exact same thing but i want to take this in a different direction today because you notice how the president still talks about the two wars that he inherited well true he did inherit iraq and afghanistan and despite the heavy contractor presence in iraq is technically over and afghanistan will be if all goes as planned winding down over the next few years but there's one thing he never really hear this president talk about and those are the shadow wars that he has expanded all over the world i mean that's something that he cannot blame on the last guy we constantly talk about pakistan and yemen where we've been waging a very aggressive drone war and one of these days i hope it won't be too far to go down the road but one of these days maybe you have ministration the american people will actually take note of the numerous accounts that are out there which show that the strategy is backfire making the anti-american terrorist problem even worse just

today there's a new op ed in the new york times why a twenty three year old yemeni saying that exact same thing the headline reads how drones help al qaeda and keeping all that in mind i find another story out there to be incredibly interesting so we've got a special operations forces some wild presence in africa for years we know that we've launched drone strikes in somalia and banks and jeremy scahill is reporting for the nation we know that there are proxy prisons that the cia has a hand in there as well and this week news a spreading that next year a grade of brigade of three thousand soldiers if not more is going to deploy to africa in a pilot program and what they tell us is that they'll be training foreign militaries and eighty locals taking the time to learn regional cultures the languages train for a specific threats and missions but they promise they won't be interfering in the conflicts that plague so many of these african nations just enable it according to major general david hogg he's the head of the u.s. army africa and that is the short and sweet version of the army times report that but then you get into the really great in-depth report that's out there by the wash

. to post that to anonymous officials we can leaks cables and contracting documents they piece together and there are quite a few gems in there for example did you know that about a dozen air bases have been established in africa since two thousand and seven we have hubs in burkean afonso mauritania uganda ethiopia djibouti kenya the seychelles and there are plans to open a base in south sudan as well now for now they're just using drones over east africa but they could expand the whole continent if they wanted to also according to these anonymous u.s. military officials our special ops forces well they're doing a lot of surveillance work out there but they also have teams dedicated to tracking and killing terrorism suspects and it's not just special ops contractors are out there too and so we've all heard plenty about al shabaab in somalia buying out of the post outlines other networks that we're monitoring al-qaeda in the islamic magreb boko haram in nigeria for example those are names that i'm pretty sure that most americans have never heard of but it's always going to be that way if we keep

expanding our military presence to every single corner of the globe inserting ourselves into what are often local conflicts not goals of world domination by most of these networks and how long until it backfires how little are americans going to know about the shadow wars that are being fought abroad in their names these are all questions that need to be brought up that need to be asked and yet despite picking over every single word the president says the mainstream media as usual passes over the substance they parse over the words but not the actions so no shocker ever expanding shadow wars and mainstream media chooses to miss. so let's continue on tonight with talking about this expanded african presence do we need three thousand troops an air bases and drones and special ops teams in africa or do we face

a pos. bill it is making things worse and i will also talk about syria while the fighting in shelling and civilian deaths continue with now turned into a war of words between the u.s. and russia with hillary even twisting the truth a little here and there to make a point joining me to discuss this is retired lieutenant colonel anthony shaffer senior national security advisor with the task force on national and homeland security and author of operation dark heart and dr stephen soonest professor of politics at the university of san francisco where he chairs the program in middle eastern studies john i want to thank you both for joining me tonight and i want to start with syria because i think they have a feeling that this is somewhere where you probably disagree and so stephen you know you've written about this and said that we do not need to intervene in syria and so i just want to hear you make make your point state your case for most of what i do support your position and i do believe it was. done by the syrian people themselves majority of dictators that. throne have been.

actually people who so own have foreign intervention mark and look you know it's very very messy and. i'm sure. that's what great powers are going to make it do great power when it really is a people's you're. we've lost tony for a minute so i'm just going to stick with you but i mean what do you say is that it's again to the point where the international community is just going to call it a civil war and you know once you get to that point that then this case for trying to intervene when it's a civil war becomes a lot more difficult doesn't it. and there's one problems with. me i don't want to make moral judgment against people who are christian people like me who have to take a form of social credit was huge it's a big mistake because the first six months when the switch was overwhelmed with nonviolent you know they do have support in the world there are groups who are

among the syrian people but when they aren't on the so-called free syrian army begin to. roll became were probably. more a legal political you. became more of an excuse for both for. russia to. support the syrian regime and for the united states and western i was at school of this work for the opposition so i'm curious to get your take on what's been going on lately because this week we saw hillary clinton. accuse russia of selling brand new helicopters over to syria which then it turns out wasn't really true and defense officials are saying that they're of the she just twisted the words a little bit then you have of course the russians coming back to hillary clinton back at the u.s. pointing out some of the hypocrisy and reminding us that we are also weapons dealers around the world here and then i got to show you this clip on fox news that

we saw earlier today where they they spliced together some some footage let's play for the audience and we'll continue russia was selling attack helicopters to the government of bashar assad choppers that were being used we were told to rain death on innocent women and children we got a horrifying reminder of the violence being unleashed by the assad government against the syrian people yesterday. we have our the promo video for the helicopter and dying syrian children immediately but you know i'm curious in terms of what you think about this and hillary clinton statements in the back and forth and is it becoming like a a shame game. well i don't know if there's any truth to your accusations or not on the one hand secretary of state clinton other u.s. officials have been known to twist the truth on the start of a cations other hand and now the russians have provided lethal weapon that's been used against innocent civilians and what strikes me more than anything is the fact that the united states has been supplying all copper gunships to murderous

governments around the world and this to your national yes to spoken out against eating syrian up they've also spoken out against the u.s. aiding israel meeting colombia eating turkey with these very high as it all cops are gunships had a great death on civilians and you couldn't and you go further back and look at all solid or how's the civilians killed by other car gunships i mean i mean that you know when clear when obama first came to office there was an explicit call from syrian national to cease the supply the helicopter gunships that israel you have only up hundreds of civilians were killed in the gaza strip and beat out and they must ration summarily rejected that so on the the how hard this is coming from the mistakes you know this is really outstanding i think god tony shaffer back after finally a little technical glitch there for a minute it's a tony you know jump in here in terms of i want to get your take i mean you've been saying that you feel like that we do need to do something that syria but i want to get your take on that on this back and forth between clinton and lavrov and the

helicopter deal well it's very clear that helicopters have been use are going to continue to be used by the assad government russia will continue supply but the question becomes do we want to do something or not. i am one who says look. i don't love the press or the people need to throw off the yoke of the dictatorship however i don't think they can do it on their own i think assad's got about forty percent of the population behind him right now they are well understood they're well organized and well i don't believe we should be involved in my state u.s. forces i don't support john mccain calling for air. reich's i think we should look at how we can do things to be helpful to the opposition we've done this with other countries where we help the opposition and i think this is where we would be on the right side of history unlike libya where i don't believe for a minute no market up was about the murders people in this case they are bigger in their people the other thing here is a factor relating to the iranians and this ball frankly i had sent one

a bit about this but you know his ball is less effective and and lebanon right now because syria doesn't have time support so this is actually being in some ways by a very up to use got mention helpful just to make sure other areas are focused on however if it goes on long enough you will see chaos and sue everywhere but the thing is the iranians and the iranians are clearly back on assad and we have an issue with the iranians right now so right now i think the best thing we can do is try to find and support the opposition as best we can through the arab league and try to put pressure on this soccer game and i don't believe sitting on the sidelines as a way to do that i have my issue with iranians too you know that in the sense that us also refuses to allow iran to be part of the negotiation process and so at this sort of peaceful dealing in diplomacy doesn't really seem like it's working at the moment but i want to switch to to what i started the show with which is this

expansion into africa yes we've had people there for here is but now we found out that since two thousand and seven we've been building a lot of air bases and we find out that we're sending three thousand troops there next year that our intelligence operations are increasing and so why why is this necessary tony just tell me why we need to cover every corner and every inch of the planet well the honest answer is we don't need to i ran an operating base which covered all sub-saharan africa and i did it with less than two dozen folks i think what we're seeing here is the defense industrial complex looking for a new mission to get people out there frankly if you build infrastructure you're. targets that could be targeted by the terrorist you're trying to prevent attacking so i don't think it's in our best interest to do so in the second thing here and i think we would all agree on this is time for air and sometimes we do have a clear understanding of strategy i talked to a four star general former commander of central command recently he said one of our biggest problems within the context of both defense budgets and what we're doing

with things like africa is we have no strategy we have no global strategy so basically what you're seeing here the reason we're doing it is because we can't because it's easy to do think that we may have lost tony there so stephen back to you. and talking about and talking about this expansion in africa to if we're doing it just because we can that's great but do you think if this is one of those things that might end up backfiring at the end of the day you know like i said that increasingly we keep hearing more accounts from people in yemen right there that are saying there are drone program there are drone strikes are only backfiring and working against us and so now if we start inserting ourselves into a lot of local regional conflicts within africa is the same thing going to happen. and no reaction starving in addition to that you know in the international complex . but the other the other guest mentioned the fact there's a better than a boil exploration and oil discovered and west africa is expanding dramatically and

you are saying soon as we have the middle east is going to do us a big piece of that another is that china's becoming a major player in africa or for a number of reasons mostly economic of interest in life in new york city is trying to challenge that but again this is going to get some trouble are you seeing something as of now some of those on the problems of for example in mali the coup there was a direct result of the us training officers now taking advantage of a situation that became militarized as a result of u.s. intervention and and the army i can see is an error somewhere a lot of america or all these assistance programs supposedly to start. you know the extremist or terrorists or whatever end up with another round of military coups is just one that the continent is slowly or calling itself into a more democratic oh direction leading that of advise people to end the domination of the military and so the more united states militarized as the region the more

united states works for the local militaries it is that they're basically taking the side of the theory of forces that hold the continent back for most of the decade since independence we're going against the people we want to have a future in their own hands and you know one of the biggest problems too if you ask me is the fact that so much as of this is happening secretly and under wraps because it's it's the special ops community it's the cia that's doing and sell you know they we don't even know if i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight stephen thanks tony as well though if it was only with us part of the time. just ahead of the show just how long until a few billionaires really do run the whole world for the discussion we're going to post after the break we'll have the discussion about how successful businessmen to be calling all of the shots the state.

which was that she was going to use it is. more violence in syria is now officially called a civil war this is probably cold comfort for the syrian people as western powers decide to speak. right with money at the center of our political process these days and politicians so easily being bought do you think we're ever going to get to the point where every law is just can resemble the desires of a few billionaires now we all joke about rich people ruling the world but seriously isn't it true two good examples come to mind today sheldon adelson the billionaire casino owner just made a spending total this election cycle bump up to thirty six million dollars by giving ten million more to romney super pac and he said that he's willing to spend

up to one hundred million to beat obama then carlos slim the mexican telecom mogul who's the richest man in the world he called for increasing the retirement age to seventy to reflect a longer life expectancy rates easy for a rich guy to say right but seriously in their world are the rest of us just out of luck here this gus is with me is richard ask out senior fellow with the campaign for america's future and host of the breakdown on we act radio in washington d.c. and j.p. freyr a senior communications strategist with new media strategies. gentlemen thank you for joining me tonight i know this seems kind of like a fun. funny topic but i couldn't help it when i was poring through some of the headlines this morning are not not fun but you know but the media thing that came to mind is rich people rule the world you know how low i mean look the other example we saw of that that you didn't mention is there are saving damage you know here we have you know you have carlos slim saying we should push

the retirement age back seventy and you would have jamie diamond pushing the simpson bowles plan that basically does the same thing up in front of a group of senators only two of whom haven't received campaign money from jamie diamond then how can you avoid thinking that these guys are really calling the shots and then neither party is really standing up to them well i mean it's interesting that you would bring this example up i think it's a great example and it works very well with the point that i want to make which is that when we're talking about citizens united and money and politics we're talking about people trying to convince other folks of their own perspective they're not funding candidates they're just trying to get their own message out now there's a different thing from when you're giving contributions to a particular congressman so i would say that it's a good thing when you enable people to not have to give money to a congressman to get your message out and that's one of the nice things about citizens united but what do you think i mean the man like sheldon adelson right that's what we've seen people spend a hundred million dollars of their own money to try to get themselves elected right if you think of bloomberg very think of the meg whitman's in the world but romney

but or romney but why is it in sheldon adelson interest what is the message that he wants to get out there if he is just just so desperately trying not to get obama re-elected hundred million dollars it's a lot of cash but i mean is he trying to curry favor or is he trying to mask you know what he well i think i think that he's trying to convince other people of his point of view which is that he doesn't think that i don't really know what its point of view would i want if it was saying that obama want to be like well he i mean there's a quote out there that children adults and accuses obama of running a socialist style economy so you there you get a sense of where he's coming from. trying to convince other people of that i think that him spending his money to convince the rest of the american people about that that's a positive thing for america well you know i think that's. like my friend over here i think that's an extraordinary point of view in a country that used to express the ideal of one person one vote to say that one person can inject hundreds of millions of dollars in a political campaign because we all know that changes the outcome of elections you

can use that money in very pronounced ways jamie diamond is another great example because jamie diamond in the group of people he represents particularly after citizens united are basically going to pick the next one at the next congress this is why the democrats haven't been stand is one of the reasons why the democrats haven't been standing up to them so you have a guy now whose bank has committed numerous crimes so many that it's had to get a billions of dollars in fines getting a cake walk through a senate hearing committee because he owns them and what's a bargain started laughing go j.p. when you did you think that they were tough on jamie dimon yesterday because i can't look at you with a straight over some of you out if they were left out of court of course they're pretty light headed they barely understand the issues but let's be clear that part of the reason tell us how to regulate would give us advice and this is in book this kind of capture this kind of regulatory capture happens all the time but let's be clear that if you want to prevent incumbents from remaining in office and beginning to you know we're not the largest of the over the wealthy if you want to prevent

these selections from happening in places other than sorry if you want to encourage people to have a voice in the election rather than smoke filled board rooms where just the party is responsible for picking people then you want to encourage as many people to get involved in the process as possible that includes very rich people who want to spend money and by the way let's be clear that in the new york times if you have an opinion writer that is extolling a particular perspective on an election he doesn't get regulated under. no no but i mean i his for it is this is a little. first of all what it is to do so using corporate means right i mean he has the distribution of the new york times to hide behind where it doesn't run a newspaper so you need to buy an ad to do that i think that that's part of showed little sense just folks you know i mean i think that we've got to look we saw in the b.p. oil spill we saw it in the lack of response to the wall street financial crisis we saw it in the lack of indictments despite an overwhelming preponderance of evidence

suggesting that major crimes were committed we saw it in the settlement to the foreclosure for which was massive you know technically perjury forgery that we have money ruling the system and i'm sorry the idea of the show and has a right of free speech that includes trying to hide from the public how much money he's giving you know this kind of notion of money is speech it's the only speech that anybody describes where you have the right not to be heard while you're speaking with that you know the money you know that secrecy and so on you know the same people who say money is speech fight the disclose act that would let us know who's giving money where so i mean i think this is just. it's. a show that adults need to as one of these people that you actually do know how much money is getting because he's being very public about it and he actually likes the attention but so the problem is maybe even less so people like sheldon adelson it's as if it really well although i still think it's a problem hundred million dollars a day and say just coming from one person but it's more those that do want their contributions and their spending to be not disclosed i want to move on to this

issue of seventy years old. retirement age this is not a brand new idea it's nothing novel we've definitely heard it for a long time because life expectancy rates are going up against her life expectancy rates are going up for wealthy individuals if you look at you know minority women and that are poor their life expectancy rates are actually going down and it hasn't really gone up as much as people imply you know people love to throw around statistics for example like say well when social security was created life expectancy was. sixty three and look at it now but life expectancy for someone who lived to age sixty five was only three or four years less than it is today so you know there are a lot of false issues being thrown around but again you have democrats embracing what used to be a republican position because carlos slim and other people his equivalent in this country are pouring money into make sure that that's the only point of view that's represented the unfortunately in the entire republican party and now in larger and

larger sectors of the democratic party as well what's your take i mean i think that it's fine to also want to overhaul social security and means test it so that we people who actually need it get those benefits i don't think that we should eliminate the security net that catches a lot of people but let's be absolutely clear that the way that it works is currently broken i mean if you're going to retire you're going to rely on your social security savings i mean you're you're crazy or out of your mind you're not going to be able to afford very much and we should be able to support people who need that kind of support and we should not get people who are who are purchasing cadillacs and driving around miami providing them with these benefits that they don't actually but i don't want anybody that i had first of all i'm old enough to remember welfare cadillacs although i was just a kid but i you know i've done social insurance financial planning for over twenty countries ok in a past life and the fact is if it weren't for the fact that so much more of our national income was being captured by the top notch of one percent two point zero

one percent social security would be in perfect shape for many years to come so the answer is to increase the payroll tax cap and do other things to bring it back that's just that's fair that's reasonable and if you really think that billionaires shouldn't get social security why not tax them well i mean if you saw jeepers ideas here i'm not accurate and we have an i.r.s. let's just do that well actually this gets into a nice little merge that we can do here which is to talk about what we mean by corporations and what we mean by billionaires and who these people are i mean when we're talking when we're kids so concerned about carlos slim and we're so. concerned about sheldon adelson giving a lot of money so that they can purchase ads we are then omitting the fact that people would like to incorporate create a nonprofit for profit whatever purchase a bunch of ads and start messaging on elections they should have the freedom to do so and try to influence the outcome of an election that's a perfectly american thing and to say that they need to be repealed in the course of doing so the most important example of anonymous speech influencing important

outcome for america was the federalist papers and it had hamilton and madison and john j. had been exposed at that time they might have been drawn in court so i think the little we all know how they were not that kind of society anymore right i don't think you need i don't have to wrap it up i'm ok ari i think you're right it's how we got ahead of break and thank you so much. have to take another break but coming up next a sign is one step closer to standing trial in the u.s. and the i.a.e.a. and be a isn't just about the pentagon finding other provisions that are flying under the radar. wealthy british style. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy is

a report. from the live from our studios in central moscow. britain supreme court denies julian assange requests to reopen his extradition appeal case because of the world's most famous whistleblower is one step closer to being sent to sweden to face sex crime allegations critics say the u.s. will use the swedish extradition to go. it's hands on song triumph over good because we see disclosure. egypt's supreme court orders the dissolution of the country's islam and dominated parliament after ruling its election was unconstitutional yet another court decision a law banning hosni mubarak's former premier from running for president is struck down days before the runoff vote. in the syrian capital is rocked by

a powerful blast that is left for the people where the suicide bomber detonated a car bomb near a security police office which officials believe was the intended target. of the use of a video in which al qaeda is second in command. to help rebel groups fight syrian forces. will get you news coming up in thirty minutes time right now back to you know you want to show. well today there are some new developments in the case of wiki leaks founder julian assange two weeks ago we told you that his appeal against extradition to sweden was turned down by the british supreme court and at the heart of his case is whether a prosecutor is a judicial off already capable of issuing a european arrest warrant and the british supreme court ruled that it is one but the body extraordinarily allowed a songes lawyers to appeal the decision on the grounds that was based on points.