and it's ongoing role inside of and the conventions are over now it's a race to november to see who will be the next president we are going to do some

fact checking on the speeches from the d.n.c. in r. and c. and also get a dose of economic reality from our financial guru lauren lyster. it's friday september seventh five pm in washington d.c. meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. but we begin today with an update on a story we brought you earlier this week c.n.n. international has fired back at the guardian reporter glenn greenwald for his accusations that the station purposely chose not to run a critical documentary about bahrain for sponsorship reasons the documentary called revolution was commissioned by c.n.n. proper and was intended to take viewers from one country to the next as the arab spring unfolded and give them an inside look at both the revolution to both the revolution itself as well as the social media's impact on the revolution here's

a look at the buffer a portion of the documentary. called the protesters seem to have disappeared from capital thanks to the intense military crackdown. we ventured into another side of green beside the government didn't want the world to see to find out where they've gone we drove to the shia villages passing military checkpoints as we left the capitol. hill we're going around with these protesters for a little bit. this is what the protest looked like today the young boys who been people here yes. so what's the big deal with well c n n i has engaged in certain business for a range of events called an association with the government it offers countries the ability to pay for specific programs that spotlight their country they are designed

to portray a positive economic and social as well as political picture greenwald and others are asserting that the partnership with bahrain is is in regards to the sea and it has caused c.n.n. to self censor itself a claim that c.n.n. ardently disputes c.n.n. proper only ran the report once and c n n i chose not to run it at all which brings us to the next exchange between glenn greenwald and c n n i's p.r. team the broadcast giant's p.r. team a six point rebuttal to greenwald's guardian article saying that it has the extensively covered the unrest in bahrain greenwald in turn wrote a sponsor saying that c.n.n. defense was weak and avoided the real issues like the station's alleged partnership with bahrain then the battle went to twitter c.n.n. public relations wrote to. nowhere in your piece do you link the thirteen minute

segment amber slush bahrain which was broadcast around the world on c n n i to which he replied. back to the p.r. company i expressed i expressly said she was on air in april and linked to those videos not even a good try and then c.n.n. reported back they said in april twentieth eleven amber lyon appeared on c n n i's backstory discussing her trip to buffering and the link to the video so a little back and forth to hear between greenwald and the p.r. team even amber lyon herself got involved in the twitter of battle she tweeted these tweets by c.n.n. are not true video links to the video link is from april before the censorship the documentary wasn't finished until june of two thousand and eleven now r.t. has tried repeatedly to get in contact with both greenwald as well as amber lyon for her interview so when we hear from them you'll hear from us but until then this is always a good reminder to question the things that you see on t.v.

and more in question and more importantly question the things you don't see on t.v. . to afghanistan now where green on blue violence is causing unease between the u.s. and the people it eventually plans to hand power over to this year alone thirty forty five international service members have been killed as a result of these attacks twenty eight of them american something that is deeply concerning this is to the administration but didn't merit a mention in d.n.c. last and president obama's speech last night at the d.n.c. nonetheless here white house press secretary jay carney spoke about the incidents last month here's what he had to say. it's him porton to remember that. first of all that our relationship with our afghan partners is strong and that every day our forces fight alongside afghan forces there are now about three hundred fifty thousand afghan forces. and we partner with those afghan forces

on ninety percent of operations and while the. whenever there is a so-called green on blue incident it is concerning and the fact that there have been the number of incidents that you mentioned is deeply concerning now carney in that press briefing went on to say that we need to keep these incidents in perspective so joining me now to put all of these incidents in perspective as well as the afghanistan war is michael brooks the producer of the majority report hey there michael so a lot to talk about here let's start out with talking about this green on blue violence what's the problem here what are we seeing happen. well i think there's a couple of things going on one is there is inherently a kind of institutional and structural challenge of basically building a new type of army from the ground the wall you know we occupy a country so

a lot of personal conflicts local politics and a variety of different things kind of get absorbed into the and then not to mention the ongoing. you know ambivalence to say the least. by the afghans of our presence there. the things like civilian casualties and a variety of other variables just make it a really hard situation because when you just think of it institutionally that actually builds a new force in such a chaotic and difficult concepts that environment now one thing i do want to mention is that neither president obama nor mitt romney actually addressed the green on blue violence in their speech is that the they just didn't talk about it president obama did mention afghanistan specifically in a speech but but not this kind of insider violence so i mean how can they talk about this war is just it's so important to the u.s.

right now because the strain is so much from there are qana me they did focus a lot of our economy so how can they talk about the economy without talking about the war. yeah i mean that's a great question and that's the obvious question you know in some of president obama's budget projections moving forward he's sort of taking into account winding down these wars but fundamentally if you want to have a serious conversation about the economy about the deficit about growth about innovation the long run you have to talk about these wars and then there's also the moral consequences of not discussing what we're doing abroad or the effects on on soldiers who are there and soldiers who are returning home so it's really disturbing how forgotten it is in both in both conventions i have do you think that this war would be any different if it was president romney and ministration. well you know as with a lot of things romney's a pretty opaque character my main concern of mitt romney is i i do think that under

president obama it's not particularly idealistic obviously but you have a more. kind of realist focus in foreign policy and i think there definitely i think he's sincere about wanting to draw down out of us ghana's then that process is happening it's happened to iraq in iraq of the obviously there's still residual forces i think with romney he hasn't been very simplistic view he expresses of the world the sort of no apology stuff and if you look at his brain trust the most of his advisors it looks like a return to a kind of straight bush foreign policy and i think you know many of us are really concerned in the areas that obama's sort of continued off of bush in foreign policy and that's really problematic but i don't think we want to go to you know return to formalizing torture again as an example which romney's advocated or the type of bill live real belligerence he speaks about with regard to iran one of the

interesting points that i do want to bring up is that republicans have lot of that president obama just not is not tough on foreign policy but then again we have to look at mitt romney's record of. there is none so can you talk about that a little bit about the difference like why why are republicans focusing so much on this rhetoric against president obama when it may you know mitt romney's not going to be he doesn't have that experience either well you know i forget who tweeted this but somebody tweeted during clint eastwood's speech at the republican national convention that it was the perfect summary of the selection which was a crazy old white man yelling out an imaginary barack obama and foreign policy conveys that as good as anything else i mean president obama does what they say they want to do much better than they do in fact he's been. really ruthless and effective and i think from a progressive perspective and from

a more traditionalist kind of realist perspective really questioning how much we go overseas and what we're doing abroad there are serious concerns but you know from the perspective the republicans are going to want to attack him on he's done it and he does a much more effectively than certainly bush did and there's absolutely no evidence the only evidence of romney and obama at some great lines about this last night is not even being able to fly to the u.k. and have an error free visit which you know i've got to say and i think you or i could do it i think pretty much anybody watching this could do it it's really not that hard so that the u.k. is one of our closest allies are you there i think there's something to be said there but president obama in recent years has become to be known as the drone president and yet it wasn't really addressed throughout the d.n.c. he was silent on this issue pretty much and then you know he said that he wants to

protect civilians when he actually does use drones but then we look to yemen where twenty nine civilians died in the last week alone two hundred so far this year so i mean there's a large disparity right now between his words and his actions. right will that take that into parts i think the part of the reason you won't hear about it so much at the convention is there's definitely a split between what most of the base of the democratic party wants and they may be willing to put it aside and there's a kind of the doozy of the election year but you're talking about a group of people that are not particularly excited or enthusiastic about something like the drone program the drone program has caused a lot of civilian casualties in pakistan and in yemen and i think one of the most disturbing features that we've learned about it is the very definition of what a signature strike is which is basically anybody. within a certain area of the drone strike really being presumed to be guilty just via the

nature of being there and so i think though that you have to the real way to look at the drone policy is that it's a very it's a politically cost free way of doing something in terms of national security and al qaeda because sadly this is not on most people's radar and you're able to eliminate the kind of draw of u.s. forces dying in action and this kind of larger projection of forces overseas and it happens in this very quiet contained and secretive way and it's more politically benign at the moment for the administration to operate that way all right michael i guess we're going to have to see if it actually does come up in the general election discussion or debate but for now i guess it's up to you and me and then other people to discuss what's going on in afghanistan or the political fallout of the insider attacks michael brooks the producer of the majority party report thank you so much for joining us thank you. well we've had

a lot of information thrown at us over the past couple of weeks between the d. and c. the r. and c. and today the jobs report was out so today we wanted to educate part of our show to what we want to call the financial fact check friday but first a look at the numbers the august jobs report revealed that ninety six thousand jobs were added to the economy to put that in perspective we were actually expecting or exports were actually expecting about one hundred thirty thousand jobs meanwhile unemployment dropped to eight point one percent from eight point three percent but don't go singing our praises yet the most likely reason for that job is that people have simply stopped looking for jobs now the jobs that were added to the economy were in industries like contraction education health services and hospitality so small gains but not enough to really change anything other than political discourse of course and yet the start the stock markets are doing surprisingly well why well

our own financial guru laura lister might be able to shed some light on that lauren i am not a soothsayer but i will try all right so let's start with this this jobs report what are we seeing from it as a journalist it's very hard to cover one month up the next month it's down i mean what are we seeing from these numbers well i think that one thing that journalists could do a better job of is looking at the big picture instead of obsessing over one jobs report which is a small snapshot as part of a much much bigger landscape and this month is a great example of what so many mainstream publications i think where they really get it wrong because what is the headline number that appears in so many headlines unemployment rate falls to eight point one percent from eight point three percent the prior month of course but you point out meghan it's not because more people were getting jobs or fewer people were losing them it was because three hundred sixty eight thousand people were no longer in the labor force and that drops the labor force participation rate to sixty three. point five percent the lowest it's

been since september of nine hundred eighty one so it's simply that fewer people are looking for jobs because they're depressed discouraged retiring to be fair is another reason people drop out of the labor force but if you're not looking for work you're not counted as unemployed you're not counted in the labor force the labor force is unemployed people meaning you're looking for work or employed people so this is really what's behind the drop in the unemployment rate which is a far more sour reason then what you may be led to believe if you're just looking at the headline of usa today or the a.p. or a.b.c. was another one that i saw so i think that's important and what you really need to look at is the big picture if you want to look at the headline rate if that's what you want to use the eight point one percent well guess what unemployment has been above eight percent for a really long time the longest it's been since the great depression so it's stuck and people that are unemployed are long term unemployed that number is stuck and

it's a large number so these are people that are falling through the cracks they're left out of the economy their skills are no longer becoming a political it's a very tough situation there's a huge debate as to whether these are structural unemployment problems meaning that people don't have the right skills for the jobs available or if they're cyclical problems meaning the economy just needs to get better or get propped up if you believe that that can or should happen meaning that something like the fed could act which is something i would disagree with but it's an argument ben bernanke makes absolutely and i mean i guess it was all of the eye of the holder of the economy the jobs report really i mean i know we have republicans saying the horrible thing is that don't barak obama out of office and the democrats kind of going on through the realm of maybe not hope and change but hope and patience so let's talk about the quantitative easing that we're hearing rumors of i mean stock market prices are off right now which is surprising it's counterintuitive to. was

a number but it's not counterintuitive given everything that we know about q.e. i mean one of the things that quantitative easing has arguably been successful at is propping up the stock market so that's a longer term trend that we've seen over a few rounds of q.e. that we've had in the past and if you're someone that believes that news or rumors move markets we have rumors that the fed's going to possibly announce another round of stimulus next week that this jobs report that was weak could have given ben bernanke the ammunition to do that so that's what the stock market may be reacting to also the e.c. be announced a major bond buying program an unlimited bond buying program in europe so that could be what stock markets are reacting to so those are both factors that majorly come into play what you see it's doc markets are truly addicted to central bank action if you ask me meghan sounds like an interesting port and i'm going to have to trust you on that you are after all our financial guru but let's take a look at what mitt romney and paul ryan had to say really quickly regarding the economy and their are in the speeches last week to assure every entrepreneur and

every job creator that their investments in america will not vanish as have those in greece we will cut the deficit and put america on track to a balanced budget the stimulus was a case of political patronage corporate welfare and cronyism at their worst. thank you. you the american people of this country were cut out of the deal. what did taxpayers get out of the obama stimulus more debt. that money. wasn't just spent and wasted it was borrowed spent and wasted. so i mean that's the republican standpoint let's take a look really quickly at the democratic standpoint from last night and then i'll get your opinions on both. a future for where we export more

products and outsource fewer jobs after a decade that was defined by what we bought and borrowed we're getting back to basics and doing what america's always done best we are making things again the two men seeking to lead this country over the next four years as i said at the outset of fundamentally different visions and cunt completely different values. so i mean lawrence mead kind of seems like the selection is moving out of the realm of politics and into the realm of economic referendums what about you well to me it seems like a referendum on economic platitudes and whether or not americans will accept them i mean do you want me to go through some of the remarks that they're giving that i just think smell like b.s. absolute you know. so you hear mitt romney and paul ryan talking about debt ok paul ryan saying the stimulus was an example of cronyism paul ryan voted for tarp which ended up being a great referendum on cronyism with wall street and the big banks you have mitt

romney making the comparison to greece i hate when politicians just throw out this comparison to i don't know scare people we comparing the private sector investment the us going the way of greece in greece you have a government that defaulted on public obligations and order to pay creditors and government on their government debt there are huge levels that can never be repaid ok with the economy and a total plays into a private sector slowdown shutdown i mean just total disaster i'm pretty sure the last time i checked though the u.s. is a disaster the u.s. could still borrow at record low rate so that's a pretty disingenuous argument to make in my view and the romney and ryan can talk a big talk on debt and cutting the deficit how exactly are they going to do that are we just supposed to believe them that by raising defense spending and. restoring medicare cuts that they're going to magically be able to do this i just don't buy that and since we only have a minute i'm being told i should be fair and hammer the democratic side a little because obama's talking about exports who is the u.s.

going to export to china slowing down there's evidence it may slow down further europe the u.s. is i think largest trading partner is slow the e.c.b. just said they believe it could even get worse than they thought this year who's going to buy all these goods and how are these free trade agreements that obama advocates for and assigns going to help because it's one thing to believe in free trade but i. i think you have to be a little less disingenuous about free trade in a sense it may not be the best thing if you're talking about american manufacturing jobs which is you know something that they put pressure on and i don't think we got biden but he was talking about how i don't know he was doing it so i don't know the place yeah he was all over the place that elusive you know he said they everybody said that his speech was strong thank you for helping us sort through all those numbers are so many being thrown at us this day it can be very tricky artie's own laura lister thank you for helping us out any time they can. what's in your food

that depends on who you ask if you ask g.m.o. advocates they might list a number of ingredients you can or cannot pronounce or the more popular quick answer might be that's none of your business but the more important question might be what are the future consequences for our present actions for years the agriculture giant monsanto has been genetically modifying corn and soybeans to withstand and even produce herbicides and pesticides but as was what happened with drug resistant bugs in modern medicine and as einstein so eloquently put it for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction this time it's in the form of super weeds and even more dauntingly super worms the environmental protection agency has launched an investigation to inspect the resistance that is developing in parts of the corn belt and the unexpected colony of super worms that are bound to spread throughout the entire midwest to talk more about this i was joined earlier by kristin workman she's

a nutrition oh i am joined i'm so sorry about miniature is an educator a writer's thank you so much for joining us let's start off by talking about these super worms or how are they different than any other worm. well super worms and evolves to be resistant to pesticides and the science so the problem with that is that these worms can't be be killed in the way that other normal worms or past can be killed so we've created a super war and that can be highly detrimental to crop and i know that last i was just saying that these super weeds came around first monsanto created a special saves that were supposed to be a restraining all diseases but an even more ominous disease came along and it created a toxic herbicide so monsanto had to battle that and in order to battle that they use that toxic herbicide made money off of the thing that they created that had the problem are we going to see the same thing with the super worms it is all about profit i think very likely monsanto's main agenda is profitability they're

the largest company g.m. the company in the world they control of boards of eighty ninety percent of the profits like sugar babies corn soy all they care about is profit fortunately they don't care about the health of our planet our so our what are the rights of our farmers the rights of people to know within their food their they're primarily concerned with profit as you say. and to this profit a lot of this is going to as to oppose the proposition thirty seven that's the initiative in california that would require g.m.o. labeling now advocates say would support transparency the proposition thirty seven i should say would support transparency in the food industry opponents say it would hurt farmers have an adverse effect on the economy and hamper innovation we're in a very bad drought right now we could see a corn crisis and i just want to know from your opinion what's so wrong with

worrying about why are we worrying about i guess a g.m.o. foods when we're in a corn crisis. well it's a very good question that we can't just force climate change and issues like drought and other extreme forms of whether from industrial agriculture industrial agriculture is the number one polluter of american waterways loose soil air and if it were talking about climate change we can't we can't ignore the fact that industrial i felt your place as usual and that and chris and i know that a lot of. the critics of g m o's are saying that it is fat for your health but i want to know from you if you happen to know is there any evidence in particular to support that claim. well the science is not conclusive at this point in terms of human health however there are studies to show that it has increased and allergenic responses could possibly be linked to cancer and fertility and other issues

pertaining to gastrointestinal help so there are studies to show this and we have to keep in mind that there's a lot of power in the company months and no corporation and what studies are actually completed and what studies are actually shown to the public are going to be really is going to be heavily influenced by whether or not monsanto wants those studies that monsanto and then da have revolving door michael taylor who's the commissioner of foods for f.d.a. is a former vice president of public policy at monsanto so these are important things to keep in mind we talk about scientific studies kristen it sounds to me like what you're saying is that there's just not enough research on g m o's at this point and that people should be able to decide for themselves if they want to need to moes and that would mean labeling g m o's but i do want to talk about the fact that right now the government doesn't require labeling g.m.o. foods the only labeling that they do do is for nutritional information and safety

information where do g.m.o. foods fall in that in that list. well again i want i want to make it clear that we can't we can't separate the health of the environment from human health we are all intricately connected here we're talking about pollution we're talking about these things like super worms and super pests these are inevitably going to affect each of our have our health so we have to remember that. yeah i mean there's just so much to say here in terms of human health and environmental health and chris and as i was talking about with on the start earlier that of my natural checkup friday i do want to follow the money here i know that monsanto has spent four point two million dollars actually lobbying against proposition thirty seven. but i know other organizations that are pro. proposition thirty seven are actually putting money into it too so it kind of say like you're fighting fire with fire do you have any opinions about that but i think is

a huge difference there we're talking about consumer rights and you're talking to groups that are advocating for consumers what they want is consumers to know what's in the food and have labels on the food montana want to keep consumers in the dark so to me you're talking about two very different things there and when you talk about how are monsanto wheels incredible power compared to these consumer groups based biotech corporations spend over half a billion years in the past decade to keep labels off the animals. now christen according to a new a.b.c. lo poll ninety three percent of americans actually say that they want to know if g.m.o. food is what is on the shelves i mean so if so many people are demanding it why hasn't it happened again if the power of corporations like monsanto we have a revolving door between our government and the corporation so they're heavily money interests in keeping these labels offices because companies know that if there's a label on a suit a customer's name.