don't. drop books a man. who turned to some reason. to produce documents he's been since the night is going through the best he's going to be speaking out for her son r t travels to ecuador to speak with julian a songes mother she talks about his asylum case and why he founded the website wiki leaks the exclusive interview coming up. what's commonly used for war and mass destruction could soon be a helpful tool in citizen journalism and breaking news events will tell you about the plans being made to make drones a friend of the people instead of a follow your own as you could control from your smartphone. how can you go from

one city to have so much money you know i mean in so many jobs available for people to almost nothing about the question many people here in the u.s. are asking how can the world's leading superpower be so divided our t. shows you two signs of america where the haves and have nots live in two entirely different worlds. it's thursday august second eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching our t.v. we begin this hour with an update on wiki leaks whistleblower julian assad assad remains holed up in the ecuadorian embassy in london awaiting ecuador's decision on his plea for political asylum his mother is now in the country to discuss her fates or her son's fate with president rafael correa artie's eva golinger caught up with us on his mother for an exclusive interview her first question to kristina songe

how does she feel about the work her son has done. thank you michelin stars which really tells me that she was doing something to show. people in a repressive regime to be able to whistle so i was to this image of god to be able to get the truth out about some of the abuse that was happening in the country and for you that's what happened and his life wasn't in any way in which he was it will work but then when these documents came to me when to fix dropbox on america things those changed some rains and it was all right to produce documents that other countries purchased in the united that was embarrassed his life became. so i had to react once another because i was she did a done and said nothing but as

a citizen having this heated wiki leaks has done to the intense fear into the world that the the town the corruption the kidnapping solution all seeing. the torture. and for what it involves big financial institutions of course completely do you think that your stand life is in danger. from the beginning. from the u.s. from politicians and from. news coming. with screaming at his news in the most brutal why is this going to be. built up at all and how they were feeling. calling out for crucial for this is no just inciting the case myself. and still in the last few weeks. has been his policies because sometimes i think its policies k.t.

mcfarland who was screaming at the killings execution. somebody who was on the front lawn and has done nothing wrong and you couldn't. do to be one is one very word for where you are here in ecuador i obviously advocating for your son are you here particularly to advocate for his political asylum request. to the foreign ministry invited me so that i could speak to him the bet with on you of the conditions in the strategy for example by the government intervention team can you talk a little bit about that yes well unfortunately for strange. we have. a prime minister who is really can only really be described this as. subsidy us prevail retching is twenty seven percent of people and not happy with the war and from the beginning the prime minister. condemned my son. in the media

speaking ahead of the cause which is unheard of in stride to speak about a cause and commits judgment upon a persistent approach to a trial should give a does his right to to to the presumption of innocence by saying that what he did was here. she actually pretty preceded the american government in the statement and. despite the fact that these tried in federal police. come to excite her. and decided that doing had broken no rules at all in a strike and the u.s. treasury had refused to blacklist wiki leaks because they could find a crime that is being committed these stunning prime minister julia gillard. continued to sign my son in the media do you think that the australian government would hand julian over to the united states if they had the possibility of doing so

and so we think this is a great concern given that the united states has been libeling its own citizens and is low level terrorists. with the americans being within the top five countries executing their own citizens in the world and that actually is colliding it's not a change. from one here to ninety here. what do you think would happen to julian if he were actually added to the united states well i had to assist ten years emotionally what bush was lucky to have an impact from what they're doing to one of their own soldiers bradley manning. which the un report on torture says is cruel and inhumane treatment and very. i was on a panel. cambric capital city d.c. and one of the other speakers we try to include david hicks who didn't think she's

going to. president obama come into office with a promise to close guantanamo bay but it happened because the decision to do it was with the four group dicks going to go as we speak. and to be. told we were. going to die and this is something that we could expect to lose. and that was christina saunders a mother of julian assad you can see artie's entire exclusive interview online you can find it on our youtube page youtube dot com slash r t america. we talk a lot here about drones and the scary implications of having the unmanned aircraft hover in our skies but could it be possible to use drones to enhance our freedom of speech well that's exactly what a company called rotary robotics wants to do here's what they have in mind they want to build many drones away and just one pound they're hoping reporters can fly these things over crowd to get a bird's eye view of what's happening on the ground this is

a rotary robotics website and says quote we are currently developing our first product a one hundred dollars surveillance aircraft designed to bring airborne imagery to the masses this aircraft function as a flying point and shoot camera allowing any operator to gather aerial photos or video with no prior training in aircraft or r.c. planes their craft is preprogrammed through a map based application on your computer or smartphone and it's up more about this i was joined earlier by james parul one of the co-founders of rotary robotics. well our goal is to bring aerial photography to the masses we really want to create a product that changes people's perspective on drugs and in fact we don't really consider to be a drone we really considered to be flying on to a camera ok and how did you come up with this idea where did you see the need for something like this actually one of the inspirations for the concept was the

russian protest of two thousand and one and two thousand well. really the phone cameras have become really common in all these kind of events you see people snapping photos of all kinds of world events all over the all over the world but those phone photos really only bring you the ground perspective on these events and one of the things that happened during that process is the obvious came out there with the nazi plane with a camera on it and he took a photo from the air and it really transformed the way people view that event and that photo was circulated all around the world and that's kind of one of the inspiration for really wanted to bring that everyone is obviously that the tool that he was using was really expensive and he was a hobbyist of experience with it not something that everyone could use and we want to take that same capability and give it to everyone i understand that this technology is pretty simple you can just get these parts at your local electronics store well you can but it takes a lot of skill to put it together that way we're really focused on creating an

integrated product right out of the box anybody can use to take photos and literally something that will be any harder to use than your average point your camera that you know your average store all right and i guess my next question is where do you draw the line i mean we're kind of touting the benefits of having like this in terms of reporting but when does it switch from being useful to being invasive. well you know the same kind of laws laws apply to drones as applied to camera jammers have been around for a long time and you know people come up with ways to deal with these problems you know on a drone is really a small zone like this is not any different from a legal perspective as a guy standing on a ladder with a telephoto lens or someone you know far away with a telephoto lens the same laws apply you can take a photo of someone that invade their privacy with a camera or with a drone ok the danger is there any any at all if they got into a hand of a

a stalker you know maybe if you want to spy on your acts or something like presumably something like this and make it much easier to do that. well maybe every technology has good and bad uses. i think that there's a lot more positive impact that the negative i mean we see the same things a owns or anything and i think this is something that really coming pretty quickly and it's going to be a part of our lives you know within the next decade small smaller will be all over the place all right you know drones and we hear the word drone we think you know being used for surveillance or for law enforcement or in the wars abroad so. are you now trying to change maybe the image of your own then saying hey we can use these for for for useful purposes we definitely are we actually we don't even

really like the word drone we will use it sparingly but people know we're talking about when we say we're really trying to create a camera i mean it's really we don't think that we want people to use just as a camera that just happened. you know people when people think of drugs they think of high expensive military technology and when you tell them that they might be able to have something smaller and convenient that they can buy one hundred dollars they usually come up with really great ideas for how they can use it in their everyday lives and they think that there's a high demand for a device like this we definitely do i think i think the applications really haven't even all been bought out we have a lot of patients that we were marketing it for i think farming is a big one farmers use it's a survey their crops are farmers already do this they're all farmers really important i think with our device to be able to but i think consumers will just latch onto it as a really neat for toggery technology and we spend a lot of time talking to people about the technology and telling them what we think

they can do that for a nearly every person we talked to comes up with some way they can use it in their lives which a lot of times we can think of you know people have a hobby or an outdoor activity they live and then they say well i had this you know i could take really cool for. those what i'm doing are you know enough to walk as far as i can see further when almost everyone thinks of new applications where they can use in everyday life and how far along are you guys and developing these drones well we've been. on and i have been working in the military and the space for a long time and we want to get out of there and really develop more people and more more applications so we've really been working on the technology for a while we're pretty familiar with how to bring together but at this stage in our product really just developing a prototype and we've been showing it to people we've been showing it to businesses and really showing it around and trying to get people feel for what they'll be able to do with it now we spec that it'll be for sale in around six months or so. and

just a hundred bucks that's all it's going to cost initially it's going to be more than our current goal is to really get it now it's one hundred dollars. you know like the barrier after a blue hundred dollars really is the price where anyone can buy it i think initially it'll probably filter around two hundred to three hundred dollars which is still pretty inexpensive but you know once we get the volumes of and the quantities up and people are really buying a lot of the one hundred dollars is definitely it's useful all right james and at last i want to ask of what is your vision for this for the little drones i mean are you hoping that you know every household in america can you know soon get ahold of a drone of their own that definitely. everyone has one i think average american and american probably most people in two to five cameras for household we'd love to have an aerial camera view one of those cameras they have their s.l.r. camera they have the point of their their two cameras and then they could have

a fine camera all right i guess pretty soon we can all have a drone of our own to share how i feel about that but it sounds like a good business idea james thank you that was james tyrol one of the founders of rotary robotics well congress today failed to pass the cybersecurity bill it was a last ditch effort to pass a bill before the election but the bill didn't get the sixty votes needed in order to pass what it did is increase either protections for the nation's electrical grid financial networks and other infrastructure it was the only cyber bill to have the backing of the white house and appeared to have bipartisan support that is until two top senators got this letter from the financial services industry groups like the american bankers association the clearing house association and more in the letter members of the finance industry voice their concern that the bill would restrict information sharing between the government and the private sectors the chamber of commerce also strongly opposes the bill the lobbyist group. say they

would support the legislation of certain changes were made to it and it appears just like that lawmakers listened it was mostly republican senators that backed down they say the object of the bill they object the bill excuse me because it would require too much from businesses. so is this another example of the finance industry having congress wrapped around their fingers well we can't know for sure but it seems like too much of a coincidence. also had an r. t. we take you on a trip to connecticut where an interstate highway is the dividing line between two vastly different lifestyles a spotlight on the inequality playing out here in the us that. a lot of american power continue. things are.

might actually be revolution. and it turns out that a starbucks has a surprising. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions breakthrough it's already been made who can you trust no one. with the global

machinery where are we heading. capitalism is called session when nobody dares to ask we do our tea question more. well it's no secret that the income inequality gap is widening in the us today and in some areas this reality is more glaring than others the state of connecticut is one such example interstate ninety five was once of the ribbon of hope for the promise of prosperity the highway once symbolized but it seems that has changed our to correspond to understand see a church going to take a look at the economic divide in the constitution state. calvin is the master barber at a hair salon dubbed the home of the six dollars. service is being cheap business is steady in this town america definitely definitely industries and jobs tough even

. there used to be about five hundred factories in bridgeport in the thirty's today it's largely a wasteland a buzz with a booming factories and its peak years bridgeport is now a town filled with sites like this one abandoned lots and buildings that were once the work place of a prospering middle class these days there is simply no work to find here the unemployment rate is ridiculous i've been looking for a job for about two years and i have many able to find anything. it's hard this twenty three year old mother jobless and burdened by college debt keeps afloat by selling scrap metal that others throw out it's hard to drive around all day and find stuff on the side of the road gets tiring today taking her son along on the hunt brought her luck. joey and made sixty seven dollars and a few cents. for each board stands off the i ninety five highway in connecticut. i rode the ribbon of hope in the fifty's when industry flourished here. our drive

from bridgeport. life is a ball in the picture perfect town of greenwich it's just a place that ever by design or settling really it really is getting new worries forgotten i think you know the crandall a crumb of the financial world flock to this paradise where a wall street bedroom primarily i mean obviously we have lawyers and doctors and retailers but a lot of wall street around here here restaurants overflow with clients with an extra buck to spend luxury cars are shiny and homes state of the art it's the most affluent town in in the united states it just it is it like not my fault. well greenwich and bridgeport are still tied together by the same strip of asphalt the i ninety five of today is a ribbon of inequality rather than a. reflection of the transition to make.

from opportunity to lifestyle to backdrop reality is increasingly contrast in the u.s. . oil production and manufacturing the sources of the american dream have all but vanished i don't know what happened you know everything every day go by. wall street continues to prosper increasingly hedge fund hubs like greenwich and industrial ghost towns like bridgeport will live side by side but worlds apart. this is her going to party connecticut but to talk more about this ribbon of inequality i was joined by robert johnson executive director of the institute for new economic thinking well i have to start with a confession i lived in greenwich connecticut for sixteen years and i'm all for it it's for the manager so i write friends get it all out of there i'm actually from

not too far away from their terrace so i don't hold it against you. well i would i say that with a past life for me i'm no longer live there but. there is clearly a sense of unfairness america and finding a series who are essentially repackaging companies and restructuring things making it a norm was mostly money in many cases dismantling rules companies and causing great harm to a great many people as there are a lot of say pushed out of one sector and forced to change their life or move to a different place is just is just. it's an american story it's a very painful story it is it doesn't feel like just as in the aftermath of the big . now the two thousand year i want to go over this is this the fact here it's kind of startling from one nine hundred seventy eight to two thousand and eleven c.e.o.

compensation increased more than seven hundred twenty five percent and that's substantially greater than stock market growth. and worker compensation comparatively to other to other jobs i mean how does that happen i mean this it's completely not proportionate i mean how does that happen. well first of all you have a broader array of stockholders then you have a board that's usually picked by the management the management pays themself or the board goes along and stockholders can stop there's a collective action problem within corporate governance that allows people to essentially. the organization we see an awful lot of stock buybacks to support stock options we're not investing in r. and d. and we're not investing in retraining workers so there seems to be an ethic know on corporate america. which allows the very top to take care of themselves to the detriment of everybody else now

a lot of people blame wall street for the economic downturn some people blame congress and i know that you worked on the senate banking committee do you think legislators have a a strum a strong grasp of the economic issues. yes unfortunately you think they have too strong a grasp of the role of money in politics and so their judgment regarding social policy is often compromised by their desire to do fundraising for their reelection and i think this pervades not only wall street reform but health care reform questions of military procurement and everything else we have a broken congress in washington that's really what you might call the parent or a grown examples in that it's it's quite discouraging for the american people and we saw today the effects of this we saw how devastating the economic downturn was for a lot of folks across the country now towns and cities are filing for bankruptcy the latest is in san bernardino california today i understand they filed officially for

bankruptcy can we draw any connections here well once again the old and famous book the logic of collective action by maker olson said the common interests is often defeated by the concentrated it appears so san bernardino california has many many people way underwater in their mortgages but they can't get a restructuring city but it can get a bailout wells fargo can get support goldman sachs can get support but a broader array of diffuse little class americans are not being assisted and they're essentially not being assisted so that banks don't have to record their losses they can overstate the rings overstate their earnings means they can overstate their bonus pool and pay those executives you mentioned earlier in the segment. you had met or that the banks are getting the bailouts but you know the people aren't and i know we did a story not too long ago about the city of oakland and set

a filing for bankruptcy they are now trying to fight back against goldman sachs and just refusing to pay them an interest rate that they think has been unfair i mean what are the alternatives can well what can what can people do. well one of the very big difficulties is how concentrated the financial sectors become two thousand and eight a lot of firms were on the clock a few bankruptcy or do go back roped in were purchased and absorbed with the help of federal reserve loans by the very strong so it's tended to make it with you michael you and i have few fewer choices now in the banking industry that we did a few years ago and they can extract a greater pound of flesh from each of us i think these banks are clearly too big to fail. too big in the realm of politics and until they can even which you might say back up against the wall a municipality like oakland i just wrote an op ed in the los angeles times on tuesday about municipal finance and its abuses and what we've often seen is

politicians want to avoid tough decisions before elections so they make a derivatives contract to hide from the public what they're doing and pay fat fees to wall street which leaves that municipal treasury down an awful lot of money for providing a disguise and now these new disparities are in dire straits and they need transparent financing and they need helpful financing not a predatory five minutes now rather we are seeing this wealth divide it in the u.s. and grow it's no question that it has grown and kind of my only expect that gap to widen. well i really think. the aftermath of occupy wall street is widening trends that have been going on for almost forty years in the united states or now which marks a commonly accepted knowledge i think the outrage is growing i think the politics of the united states is going to become potentially much more combustible meaning

the potential for rage revolt chris hedges new book days of destruction days of revolt is about places like camden new jersey being pressed all the way down really dismantled by financial engineering and wall street and how these people are starting to woodville and eyes i see more of that on the horizon i don't know what well at what point do you think that will happen i mean when what will it take for i mean you had mentioned that a lot of this is systematic you know that the government being cozy with wall street what will it take for real change to happen i mean we're seeing that at the these protests spark but i mean when do we reach that threshold where real change can occur what do you think. well my sense is that we are headed towards a session after the election what they call a lame duck session where the congressmen and senators either of the outgoing ones

or the new or the existing ones do not fear of the public for at least another two years and four years in the case of a president and they will thereby opinion put the screws to the population at that time and those cuts on the back would weakness on the back of unfairness on the back of rising health care costs will push a lot of people to a point of rage so i would say look next spring we'll have active those cuts as phil for rebellion by the better i guess we're going to have to wait and find out robert thank you so much for coming on the show that was robert johnson executive director for the institute for new economic thinking that's going to do it for now for more on the stars because varitek our you tube channel youtube dot com slash r t america check out our web site r t v dot com slash usa you can also follow me on twitter at liz wahl will be right back here at ten pm.