and flared up. these are the images go girl he's been seeing from the streets of canada. showing up for a show today. generations of americans including my own have grown up successful and safe because we chose to lead the world and tackling the greatest challenges and choosing to leave the world can be quite a challenge in itself but why is it that the u.s. is left to pick and choose what's important going to take a look at the mixed messages of american foreign policy. and what really drives those polls says a well here's a plan if form from three would also like letters that have very sticky repercussions. and facing revolution as middle class america rises up to fight for their right to

collectively bargain one woman who brings a face to the cause we're going to speak with student harriet roland from wisconsin . and bring seems to be coming to its senses but who's controlling its mind some say the u.s. military machine. good evening it's tuesday march first seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm doing a saucier watching our team our top story laying out the future of u.s. foreign policy that was the agenda today for u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton as she spoke before the house foreign affairs committee and it looks like advance each day are now changing the global landscape so it's becoming more and more clear that the power and influence of the u.s. government well that's something as well are to course on existing for south looks into the changing tides of u.s. foreign policy. both. afghanistan iran

egypt. libya. when it comes to u.s. foreign policy this country's hands are not just full there are often times that secretary of state hillary clinton. hard with the task of laying out a plan for the future generations of americans including my own have grown up successful and safe because we chose to lead the world in tackling the greatest challenges but now clear signs that the challenges and the times are changing a lot of the people in this country have come to the conclusion that our policy overhaul has been inconsistent that sometimes we support the bad guys and the bad guys become our enemy. when eleven has been a major year with major shifts in prominence and power in northern africa and the middle. and signs that us will influence maybe we need just days

before the regime of the egyptian president hosni mubarak fell both secretary clinton and cia director leon panetta called it stable. but. there are also an consistencies on the war in afghanistan in afghanistan integrated military and civilian surges have helped set the stage for our diplomatic surge to support afghan led reconciliation that could end the conflict and put al qaeda on the run but robert want kansas senior u.n. official just said quote it is fair to say that security in the country is at its lowest point since the departure of the taliban even secretary of defense robert gates said this just last week to a group of cadets at west point in my opinion any futures defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big american land army into asia or into the middle east or africa. should have

his head examined as general macarthur so delicately put it there is also the matter of money our own economy weak and losing leverage to other powers like china and brazil and other frustrations voiced i want makers' doesn't make any sense at all for us to be borrowing money from trying to. give it to other countries especially giving it back to china. now when it comes to iran there is a clear position given by the state department the denial of human dignity in iran is an outrage it is the condemnation of all who speak out for freedom and justice but in many other regions like bahrain albania and most prominently iraq where many many more people are killed at the hands of u.s. allied governments the silence is deafening. and as the landscape changes daily in libya cracks in the foundation here grow deeper we must maintain

firm ties with our allies and enemies must be clearly identified it is a constantly changing position on good versus evil and increasingly diminishing power to influence what's next in washington christine for is now r.t. for more senior fellow at the center for american progress lawrence korb is in our studios lawrence great to see you as always a lot to talk about so hillary clinton testifying in front of the u.s. congress today saying all options are on the table when it comes to libya is the united states going to intervene militarily well i think what you try to do is two things one say we have to pass a possibility so you better think about it you know colonel gadhafi before you continue killing killing your people and then the other is to show that we're concerned about exactly what's what's happening will we use military force will you i would be very surprised we would. say going on the ground i do think however if

nato were the you when authorizes missions to take refugees out by ship or to have a no fly zone the united states would participate in that but we will take the leadership but why it would be i mean why not get involved in tunisia and egypt and all these other countries and then all these better experience going on rather well i mean again you did not have the same situation in tunisia and egypt i mean in egypt when the government briefly turned its firepower around so this is we condemned it their men you know then president mubarak backed off and we use our influence with the egyptian military to tell them not to do it did it have anything to do with the fact that you know the united states did support mubarak for so long and you know up until i just a few days before the war before he decided to step down now you know we we heard our our lawmakers and our politicians our top politicians saying that everything stable well they said they certainly misjudged the situation but there's a big difference between describing it and supporting it if you go back and you

look at the speech that president obama gave in cairo he basically foretold and urged people to do what they're doing take their you know their own future into their own their own hands provide for economic and political freedom have other kinds that are strong and strategic american response will be essential so she's saying that that there will be some kind of response that mean a strategic response you said that america's not going to take a leadership role but they won't get involved somehow well i mean strategic response basically means that you'll do it in keeping with the old rule global security after all the last thing we want is could offer you to blame these problems on the united states because you're going that anyway well he's trying but he has no evidence that the united states did get more involved in their war american. forces on the ground i mean the wonderful thing is those planes that are killing people there are russian planes and american planes also mix i mean that would be horrible if. those were complaints that they were using but you know you

heard ron paul in christine's case saying that you hear it hillary clinton urging not to cut the budget when it comes to this but he's saying look a lot of these he paul who were our friends i mean we can look at saddam hussein soon after that become our enemies and then we have to go all of these resources to these countries that are very far away and take away resources from those folks here who will run the point that he's making you know ron paul ran for president didn't do very well he's had he said that if you want to he does have one point that the bush administration has all but already overextended itself i mean we should never have gone into iraq we should only have gone into afghanistan with nato which i've been told article five and so we did overreach and i think he has a good point and i think we're recognizing that we're getting out of out of iraq and hopefully we'll come to a negotiated solution in afghanistan well speaking of iraq and afghanistan a hillary clinton did address those two countries as well let's listen to clip of

something she said during the talks and i drifting. in iraq almost one hundred thousand troops have come home and civilians are poised to keep the peace in afghanistan integrated military and civilian surges have helped set the stage for our diplomatic surge to support afghan led reconciliation that can end the conflict and put al qaeda on the run we have imposed the toughest ever sanctions to rein in iran's nuclear ambitions. so kind of using that platform to you know perhaps maybe both about about well i think i was just trying to say that i think this is important that the united states is not going to solve these issues which are only going to have to be solved with to the plight of the sea and development and i think that's a good good thing where is the bush administration for what everything can be solved militarily she's talking about the fact that iraq you're going to turn really over the situation to our state department people by the end of this year

and in afghanistan hopefully as you said this is the u.s. can bring about reconciliation i think that's the way it should be because military power can people answer to everything right but a lot of folks are saying and this is this is where they take issue they say that this money that is sort of being god dess aid who isn't really going to and that's the problem that they had with egypt saying that you know what over a billion dollars a year from the united states they were like the third country on the left to receive so much aid and that was it really going to clearly it wasn't going to the egyptian people and it was going to to mubarak and i want to read something that hillary clinton said it back on january twenty fifth about the situation in egypt he said our assessment is that the egyptian government is stable and is looking for a way to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the egyptian people even on january twenty fifth and you said that this was sort of a misjudgment it was. you know it's one of these things where everybody says that eventually this will end you know you cannot i don't want to crack forever you know

to know exactly when and if you go back and look at nine hundred eighty nine a lot of people thought that the chinese regime would be like the soviet union and the warsaw pact countries but it didn't mean a military turned on its people that did not happen and told it didn't happen and in russia you may remember there was a coup in russia and the summer of one nine hundred ninety one with the military did not back the people who overthrew gorbachev so that was a kid that was a key thing and i think. a lot of people you know in twenty twenty hindsight say well gee we should have known i mean we always knew the cold war would end but we didn't know exactly when and i think a lot of people were surprised that it ended when it did when i worked for president reagan and he said to and then you know prime minister gorbachev tear down this wall we were surprised within a couple years of people towards you know for the reason that i did i mention that is because and what hillary clinton said in some of these misjudgments that you say sort of repeating through throughout history as dr defense robert gates spoke at

west point this past friday was patient with him when he said any that they want to get your reaction. and i must tell you when it comes to predicting the feature and location of our next military engagements since vietnam our record has been perfect we have never once gotten it right. from the maya whereas to grenada panama somalia the balkans haiti kuwait iraq and more we had no idea a year before any of these missions that we would be so engaged ok so i originally yeah exactly that's exactly the reaction i had because i read the transcript originally and didn't realize the business heard of his child sarcasm he's basically saying we have a perfect record of getting you're wrong again i think is overstating the case and saying that we didn't predict a lot of these things. but the fact of the matter is this is rather ironic use an

intelligence officer lose his job i can tell you i work with this way and you know he said he said gorbachev would be succeeded by a star witness the russians would never leave afghanistan so he got a lot of other people you know right is keeping the blame here will he you know i mean basically he's getting ready to leave i mean he in that same speech which you played the clip earlier he said you know you want to have your head examined didn't he poor guy you can't have it both ways and i was lawrence korb he's a senior fellow at the center for american progress and now when we talk about the protests in the middle east here's something else that we have to be very mindful of all that unrest has caused a surge in oil prices and higher oil and gas prices as well as the skyrocketing price of crude oil that is the last thing americans need right now and just today fed chief ben bernanke he testified in front of the u.s. congress he told lawmakers that a prolonged rise in oil prices what impact was a danger to the u.s. economy but he didn't think that increase with last too long according to him the situation will not get out of control over more investigative journalist greg

palast is talking to us from long island new york good to see is celebrating he seems to be sort of downplaying the current situation saying that these are just temporary increases the situation won't spin out of control do you do you agree with that assessment. that you know seventy. or a barrel oil as a low price it's like it's that old joke about you know someone keeps punching you in the face they say well we're now going to start slapping your face and say thank you very much you know i. yes i don't there's no question hundred dollar bill oil is is suspicious actually because we really haven't had much of a drop in production worldwide very little oil is sold on the stock market i don't see a justification for these rising gasoline prices but it is temporary but what's not temporary is the high price of oil which is being controlled by a basic good choke off of supplies by the opec cartel new oil companies which are

kind of. he backing on the cartel we have a monopolized we have a monopolized oil market and so while green and he is very pleased that it won't be you know he's saying everything's going to be hunky dory no. and of course some experts are predicting that as as high as two hundred twenty a barrel but i also want to mention that you know the u.s. investor with the part telling our met in the gulf of mexico thins massive oil spill and of course regulators have been under pressure from the well industry and also from some lawmakers to get these projects started again because of the spike that we're seeing the spike over the weekend i'll bring that into the conversation i remember getting what happened less than a year ago oh absolutely forgetting because see the game that's being played is it's just b.p. b.p. is the bad boy state b.p. it's d.p. management culture and that's not since the big drillers chevron they're all using

the saying her if it meant that it's none of them are prepared for major oil spill again they were supposed to be prepared they said they would be prepared they weren't it was not just b.p. all the companies were supposed to respond to a blowout they didn't they care and so we're not prepared i mean if it happens again it's it's tuesday and they really really don't know how to control deep sea. deep water drilling is not a perfect technology all its dangers i think it sort of becoming more and more political where you have these environmental groups there saying we need to force these oil companies to further investigate the harm of harmful effects of drilling whereas those oil companies and many republicans are once again shouting drill baby drill yet it's back to the true baby drill and it's not going to first of all you can drill baby drill ing at the price was one hundred bucks a barrel it's not because of the moratorium on deep water drilling that's not that

much oil actually but they're saying of course you know the glenn becks of the of the world of the country are saying we need more permits more promise than the price will finally be maybe seventy dollars. well i think what we need to do is get off the you know we have the oil companies choking off production worldwide that's what's got it that would reduce the price of oil but obviously we have to get off it this is incredibly expensive even if you consider the amount of investment you make an oil if you include the clean up of oil spills if you include the wars because we're what we're doing in libya let's not forget that b.p. had a big contract this side of the contract work coffee the tremendous cost of that the shadow cost of oil is the real danger and that ain't going away mr bernanke that a going away do you think that the u.s. well will intervene militarily because of oil and first and libya what do you think you know because the people that will be taking over will want to sell the oil

because they'll want the money they can drink the oil they're going to want to sell it and they're want going to want to open the gas lines back up to to truly believe me no one's worried about not getting at peak oil or the other thing that i want to mention because you know bernanke here he goes to hell an outright failure to explain the fads monetary policy many both have criticized this very policy thang this is going to just be another bubble of inflation that's going to burst republicans have been particularly critical what's your take on. well i mean the republicans want to choke off the money supply when we're short of money here that's like saying if you're thirsty well let's cut off the water. it's it's madness it's destructive if anything obama vernand he have been very very stingy about putting money into the economy when he gets pretty desperate we need capital he opened the the window for cheap borrowing for the banks but he's not forced

those banks to relearn the money now in britain the last prime minister of britain said if banks didn't rely on the money they were going to shut them down. burnett is not using his power to take to the banks we're giving you money you better get this into the economy so you should put in your money but not just give it to the banks but tell the banks you got get the money unless you give it to the people and of course now we see those people on the street saying hey you bailed out those banks but what about us investigative journalist greg palast thanks so much for your time today it was because of the current economic situation in the u.s. politicians are focusing on making cuts here at home and most people aren't too happy about it after two weeks of protests in wisconsin folks are still camping out in the state capital of course demonstrations well they're spreading throughout the entire nation now well for more i spoke with one of the students who has become a face one of the faces of the labor unrest an organizer of the union protest over in madison wisconsin her name is harry of blair rowan she joined me along with bill

fletcher wagner of this book right here solidarity divided the crisis in organized labor and a new path towards social justice i asked them both what the result of all these protests might be listen. it's it's an awakening it's a resistance actually and speired by the arab revolt and the unique power of no question about it how. in the arab world people under incredibly adverse conditions challenged very backward regimes and they had immense amount of courage and masses of people turned out i think that in some discussions that i've had with people that have been on the ground there in wisconsin they've said time and again that they were inspired by the our people to come forward and resistant to not simply take what was being thrown at them out of my experience here is that some

creeping in i guess then fourteen like so far as just being a community of people lack the time and energy to spend in the capital to make sure there are being hurt i myself am a student at u.w. madison and this girl will affect me and i'm not any of your text it will affect my t.a.'s and my professors and it will affect all kinds of public that i interact with on a daily basis it's just it's back on people it's so widespread across the board that there are people in the united behind opposing bill because everyone has a stake and i want to also mention that a new new york times c.b.s. poll actually said that most people oppose taking away collective bargaining rights bringing that into the conversation bill that that's part of what really touched a nerve with people on the one hand and another part of the world people are fighting for an expansion of democracy but here you have this governor and his

allies that are attempting to restricted and and people in the united states irrespective of what they do you know how they view the economic vision the budgets resist the idea of losing the basic rights and i think that. it's really part. of the european union and how do you charge to collect the burden seeing people inside the capital. virtually every every group of people that you could imagine there's teachers here there's just normal people there's there's juden there's workers and steel workers there's private sector workers and public sector workers firemen and policemen and i think that i mean at this point our our basic the thing that we are united around is that the will harm the people of wisconsin overall and that that is something that we can you know we can all rally around the people that

you're talking about the students the workers the teachers how much longer are they anticipating you know meeting at the capitol and being out on the streets how much longer is a thing going to go on. i can't i can't speak for everyone but i think that i myself needs out of an assurance that not only are we being heard but we're being taken into consideration there is a difference between governor scott walker knowing what we're saying and taking it seriously and i think he really needs to understand where people are coming from and understand. the emotion and the investment that people have in this that it really i mean it's not that often you can get people on such a consistent basis that so much time and energy and money doing something. doing anything and i think that he really needs to sit down and think seriously about lott all these people via one hundred people been sleeping in the

capital for fourteen. so really and you know when we think about that are we going to see any kind of compromise bill do you think when it comes to this issue because agree he's saying that we have to we have a budget that says that we have to we have to cut some. you know if if the budget was the problem then he wouldn't give engaged in giveaways to the corporations just in january so that's i mean that's why this is not about money this is about a change in a balance of power that's what this is and i think people on the ground get that this is what we would carbo guarding he is trying to force through very quickly legislation which is we're gresson that's what this is about and i think what happened is that he thought people were simply going to take you maybe there would be one day of protests he was never expecting this level of resistance nor is there the rest of the republicans expect that people are going fact they are in fact question the system and they're getting tired of being crushed for thirty years

we've been witnessing a decline in the living standard of the average working person in the united states people have been surviving through or trying to keep their living standard of it mainly through borrowing but that's gone i mean it's agree with this recession people are suffering and they look at the same time experience for the rich and yet they're being told they have to tighten their belts and this whole. nonsense about where the government hasn't tighten its belt is really ridiculous because what government is supposed to be providing protection for the average person the people that are not succeeding that's what the government is above the rule of the government so that's why what's happening now is amazing that people are just saying enough that was bill fletcher jr color founder of the center for labor renewal and that's organizer harriet. switching over to another world power in the united kingdom if you both great in our guts again about who they are and how they

live with the latest nationwide stance is just around the corner and now there's fear over who actually get to see all the sensitive information that's probably because a controversial u.s. defense corporation is actually in charge of collecting the data you correspondent lara and explaining it. it's census time in the u.k. when every household in the country is asked to provide detailed information about their lives to the government so they can keep track of what's going on and who will be in charge of this sensitive data. yes it's controversial u.s. arms manufacture a lot he'd martin and campaigners ranging from religious groups to peace activists to data protection lobbyists are really against it on ethical grounds to play on a number of oppressive regimes they are also. the us heavily in the wars they fought in iraq and afghanistan opposed by the majority of people in britain even if

supported by the british government firstly it's worrying the sense of spin given to such a company into their intelligence and surveillance wing which is not once has a barrel but secondly many people will object because if riding in an activity in which hopes the profits of a company engage in things which most people in a country don't approve hill to boycott the census despite the risk of prosecution he says he won't be alone look he makes large mines nuclear weapons and contracts out interrogation it wants a although it will be the u.k. arm that carries out the survey there's still a worry that the information could fall under the auspices of the us patriot act which compels personal data held by any company on systems in the us to be made available to government intelligence the office but national statistics which gauged lockheed martin maintains its taken measures to make sure u.s. authorities can't access the data. prosess it will be carried out in the u.k.

will leave will be held at any point outside the u.k. and the lockheed martin staff will have access to any personal census data all data is the property of the and only u.k.e. you owned companies will have any access to personal census data but it's that last point that's raise red flags for data protection lobbyists who say that all the private information collected during your senses will be available to practically any organization that requests it any use under any statute. but only use by the security or intelligence services for national security purposes any use for the pursuit of crime any use in pursuit of an e.u. community obligation so any e.u. rules that information can be passed over so it's essential any government use whatsoever of confidentiality is being abolished and u.k.

government agencies don't exactly have a great track record when it comes to safeguarding information three years ago a file containing secrets terror related documents was left on a train more recently the national health service lost their medical records of tens of thousands of people thanks to lockheed martin's involvement in the census it would be hard for the u.s. authorities to lay their hands on that information if they wanted data from the said says is used by the government grants to local councils and recognize new groups in society a sense is run by lockheed martin raises grave concerns and question about ethics and international security if a lot of people boycott this that says it will make it ineffective and a waste of money but the two hundred forty million dollar contracts amount will go into looking at martins pocket any way your estimates r.t. . and that does appear now up around the stories we covered go to our website.