that's the tom foreman and. tony own creation of the deal the food system the global food system is not created to feed the people of the world is created to maximize the profits. journal trading the actual physical grain your trading promises for the brain to be delivered a month or six months or twelve months or eighteen months in the future. for reasons model like light silver or gold that can be negotiated in order to somebody

and. place. water. possibly it's not traded now but it could be in the future. we'll. bring you the latest unsigned stimson which from the ground floor. we've done for the future coverage.

h m r been here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture. that's.

came. along and welcome across our computer lavelle a world clamoring for change around the globe people are protesting against governments and tyrants can a self defined democratic west learn from the people of the arab middle east and how to create more just society. can. discuss of more revolutions are likely elsewhere in the world i'm joined by brendan o'neil in london he is editor of spiked in paris we cross to john laughlin he is director of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation and in phoenix we go to rachel alexander she is coeditor of the intellectual conservative and another

member of our crosstalk team yellin one hundred all right folks this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want brandon if i could go to you in london first. we what we've been seeing in the arab middle east and say let's be very generous of the last two months do you think that the powers that be in the west that have had so much influence in these countries over the last few decades i would say negative have digested the gravity of the change that is occurred in that region and what democracy means to people in the region. i don't think they have i think they underestimate the extent of what's happening in the arab world and i think they underestimated the extent to which arab people want democracy because what we've seen in these uprisings is that people very clearly want more democratic control over their lives they want more choice they want more freedom and they've discovered that they're only going to get that by taking action themselves we can see from iraq and afghanistan and other disastrous nation building experiments

launched by america and britain that democracy cannot be delivered from outside by an army it can only be won by a people itself taking action this is what the arab uprisings really show us that shows that the arab people want more freedom and they show that they can only they themselves can win that freedom without the intervention of the west john larkin if i can go to you i mean if it were looking at from a european perspective because i know you have a lot to say about the european union and i know you have a lot of opinions about democracy in the european union why don't you reflect on what you hope to see going on in the arab middle east in libya in tunisia eccentrics cetera and what's going on in the european union. i very much agree with brendan about the inability and undesirability of the impossibility and undesirability of exporting democracy i'm not sure i agree so much with the his overall political interpretation of these events but i'm not an expert i tend to think that revolutions or mass movements of these kinds of multiple causes there

may indeed be elements of the crowds in north africa and the middle east who want political change but there's also an important economic elements in these events and in particular there have been very high rises in the cost of food driven incidentally largely by the quantity of easing and the mass production of dollars in america which has caused inflation around the world and particularly in these parts which are now undergoing such massive change so i think that in revolutions you off or at least in big movements of this kind you often have various different factors coming together political ones yes but also very basic economic ones and that's really the link i think to the events in wisconsin prevents after all i mainly driven by it is are for economic things not so much for political ones ok rachel i'm going to you in phoenix you've heard of range of opinion so far it's only a couple minutes into the program where do you stand on what's going on and focus on the north africa right now is it more driven for the desire of democracy

economic hardship such a different vision for a society or even anti colonialism where do you stand in all this well as the uprisings have continued and i've been following them you know the more and more i've been seeing it appears that they are more driven by i desire for stricter islamic regimes then for true democratic reforms now i do believe there is some element of you know wanting democratic reforms but what you see the protesters chanting for is they want more government benefits they're not necessarily on demand in a representative democracy be being put in place you know like we saw back in. nine hundred eighty nine revolutions that swept eastern europe we're seeing a lot of you know calls for. you know things that would turn the country into more of a socialist regime you know what have you and and i think you know this is reflective of a lot of middle eastern countries where they are and it's acceptable to have an autocratic

regime as long as the government is providing you with a lot of benefits so i am really concerned that. that the changes that are going to result are not necessarily going to be the kind of you know pro western democracies that you know were hoping for ok great if i could go to you why should we hope for progress or democracy should we just hope for democracy that's what we preach all the time. yeah democracies don't have to be pro western it's up to the people themselves that's the nature of a commodity they decide what their country should represent but i think rachel is indulging in a fantasy notion here because there is no evidence at all that people are out demanding islamic regimes or islamic theocracy in fact in egypt there were very few islamic people on the demonstrations the muslim brotherhood was completely sidelined and taken by surprise by the mass outpouring of desire for change in tunis here they've had demonstrations in favor of secularism they've had demonstrations saying we want the government to be more secular we don't want

islamism in this country so i just think lots of people in the west are looking at these uprisings they see strange looking around people demanding change very loudly and very roundly and they think they must want an islamic regime like they have been iran and elsewhere that's not the case there is no evidence for it people want change they want control over their lives and i think we should support them in that general maybe continue on their premier and i jump in go right ahead rachel this is crosstalk actually you're supposed to do go ahead i just want to jump in and say that's not true that there is not you know hard line clear x. that are instigating a lot of these demonstrations and friday it was the shiite religious leaders that organized the protest that day in it was in bahrain so it wasn't the primary opposition it was it was it actual hard line clerics ok did you know that to the extent to the extent the islamics are involved there on the back foot there riding on the coattails of these demonstrations they're not leading them they're desperately hoping to make some mileage out of them i hope they don't all i'm

saying is that this is being led by mass groups of people not particularly well organized with no clear idea of what they want at the end but they are leading it themselves islamicists might be following but i believe they will be left behind john laughlin are we going to have to change our definition the way mark is kind of going on what you are saying here rachel in if you don't agree with you to jump in but john. i mean the what rachel kind of really repeated kind of is something we've heard for a long long time to democracy is equated with the west i mean we do see a divergence in that right now because that may not be the case as we move forward and i think we would all agree even though we disagree on many points what's being played out is going to take a long long time i think it's one of the most certain signs of intellectual the intellectual bankruptcy of the west particularly of the united states that indeed the phrase pro western democracy is regarded as a player and hasn't it is regarded as self-evident that any democratic country will

be pro western ultimate to put a point in even more in an even worse light in the light which i think it deserves countries are judged to be democratic to the extent that they are pro-west in other words their foreign policy orientation is sufficient for them to qualify as democratic and that is obviously nonsense as brandon says people can choose whatever policy orientation they like so let's hope that indeed out of this in co it out of these encourage movements which will lead we don't know where there may indeed be a collapse in this conceit that the west is superior and that all other countries are inevitably rather as marxists used to believe about the dialectical materialism inevitably marching on a path to one for ordained goal rachael would you like to reply to that. well i'd like to point out you know and actually this is probably more in response to brennan boy you know a recent zogby poll of egypt found that sixty five percent of them want religious

clerics to have more of a role in political government so to say that you know the people don't really know what they want and you know that these demonstrations really are me out but you know your usual hardware maybe rachel that means that most americans want to have a more christian driven america i mean does that mean it's going to be run by priests and and pastors like that could be one interpretation of that poll. i cannot see a poor in america finding that sixty five percent of americans not free so how more of a role in the same i didn't say that what i'm saying is that when you could be close think you he's going had brilliant i mean we have a christian nation isn't being run by a priest ok but have values that's what i'm doing at branding i think what's important here is to understand why relatively speaking islamicists have a lot of influence in arab countries and one important reason why is because secularist democratic left wing movements were destroyed in those countries in

a long period of time and they were often destroyed with the backing and the approval of the west in particular washington by that for example in egypt who are least islamists to take on secularist movements because he considered them a threat to his rule no wonder in these countries the islamicists have a lot of influence is because they do so by default not because they have the passionate support of people but because the kind of movements that people could support have been have either withered away or been destroyed cynically by western intervention and by supporting dictators so let's get that into perspective having said that this is a relative issue islamised are not all powerful they are not going to take over in these countries and i think we have to get into perspective the fact that even a country like iran is no longer like iran was in one nine hundred seventy nine so the idea that egypt which is a very different place altogether will become like a rally is just a fantasy born of western nightmares rather than eastern reality john if we're

going to go to you before we go to break here again are we conflating we have to change our discourse because if you have a country where the predominant religion is islam then i guess to get means we can't be democratic i mean we have to break that one is well. well iran has been mentioned although there's no tunnel there right now as far as we know iran precisely is the most democratic muslim state not familiar with the political structures of indonesia but among the middle eastern states it is by far and away the most democratic and it of course is never classified as that because it has a foreign policy which is basically opposed to that of washington so indeed this is a dream that we have to this is a truth that we have to get rid of all right i'm going to go to a short break here and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on the pro-democratic mood around the globe stay with party. and you can see. the.

wealthy british. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with my next concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report on our t.v. .

it's. six six. six. can. start. to think you can. pull the magical stunt peter lavelle remind you we're talking about the revolutionary flu around the globe.

but first let's see what russians think is behind the arab revolutions. uprisings for other as protests week their world took playing regimes should other governments worry about the same fate some speculate their kid is concerned the democratic who happening in the middle east may soon visit its more there's others observe such more is overblown the russian public opinion research center asks citizens who is behind them as the most re shows across the arab world thirty three percent say it is the entire population of the country alone think the protests are bad by those fighting for their rights eight percent see the poor speaking out opposition powers garnered six percent and then you thought so could they then send

the arab middle east have far reaching implications peter. green and i could go to you again in london i mean where do we go from here because a lot of people in north america right now at least these protests in their various from country to country they're not overtly anti-american or anti western don't you can certainly see some elements of it maybe just as many islamic elements of my more minority opinions right now but if there is a western intervention to try to determine outcomes now because a lot of people on the ground would say western powers determine those outcomes for forty years we could see a growing anti western side coming to grow as they develop their democracy whatever it means to them. i think it would be a disaster if we had western intervention because what's happening in libya in particular but also in egypt intern is it before is that people have made themselves into historic subjects they've made themselves into the subjects of history if we have western intervention we will turn them into the objects of western pity will turn them into objects of washington's real politic and that

would be a real disaster it would steal the democratic initiative from the people who want to hold gadhafi and others to account and it's only them who can do that but i think more importantly than that these are the best thing about these uprisings is they have exposed the mind blowing hypocrisy of the west and of western leaders and western commentators because for ten years western leaders and many commentators told us that we had to deliver cannot proceed to the arab world we had to bring it to them because they were incapable of doing it themselves and now that they are demanding democracy we're all saying oh no you can't go too far please calm down go home or you'll turn into another iran so western intervention will take a long time to recover from this because it has exposed the extraordinary hypocrisy and double standards of the western intervention they claim to be for democracy but is in fact allergic to it when it arises when you think about bad regional i mean the because the western particularly the united states have to start from scratch and really kind of really learn what the word democracy means because if democracy

is the only way you can bring it to your countries through invasion maybe the west need to rethink well i mean c'mon look at you know how well we did in japan i mean you can't say that you can is now what i thrive in democracy. in iraq today and we have to date japan attacked the united states and then these historical references ok didn't attack the united states well he. ok but you know a lot of these countries are hotbeds for terrorists you know and they're helping contribute to producing these terrorists and i think that the u.s. does have a self interest in protecting ourselves we don't want to you know foment more. would you agree with iran is the common weal really rare for forty years the united states actually perpetuated terrorist groups developing in the greater middle east because of its policies don't you have it in reverse i do believe i do i blew do believe that the united states and its own self-interest which is entitle to

protect has tried to pick and choose the least worse of the volatile situations and sometimes in hindsight you look back and you say you know i didn't realize we didn't realize that you know these peoples would it would turn out the way they did and a lot of times it's a gamble but what are you going to do when you want to you know prevent another nine eleven with three thousand americans killed from happening again ok john you want to fuel down there because i guess i didn't make my point go ahead and use the united states well i'm going to be the ruler of interest go ahead. no i think that there are we've discussing the relation between these events and what's happening in america as if they were opposites but you asked us at the beginning heated to reflect on whether america has an a thing to learn from its movements and i think it does because i believe that these movements are at least in part a symptom of the collapse of the world financial system i mentioned the quantitative easing in other words the massive printing of dollars

a few moments ago and this has had an inflationary effect this is driven up food prices. that's one of the reasons why people are rioting in north africa by the same token in wisconsin we're seeing public sector workers being asked for actively take pay cuts or the removal of various privileges because the culture of debt on which the united states and like most western states has lived for so long now is coming to an end the chickens are coming home to roost the bills are having to be paid so we're seeing an unraveling of the really the entire post-war financial international system here and that's why i think these events are actually linked in a way which people probably haven't even thought about running if you want to feel that one that's an interesting way of looking at it here because it is it is time finance and your poll politics together it. well i don't go as far as john i think where i disagree with him i mean i think economic problems were definitely

a trigger for some people but they triggered more profound underlying unresolved political question was that which was a democratic one who controls these countries and in whose interests so people might have been pushed out into the street because they can no longer afford an amount of food a story in the past but they soon came face to face with a much more historic and profound issue which is the one i think they are now fighting over i agree with john that what we are witnessing is something really extraordinary which is the final unraveling of the last existing post-war order you know all the other post second world war orders fell apart the division of europe the division of africa among western supported strong men those things fell apart over the past twenty years the arab regimes were really in the last existing thing came into existence after the second world war so what we're witnessing here is something extremely historic and profound and it's been driven by ordinary people not by western governments which are you said in hindsight we can learn some things what do you think would be what were the mistakes of western powers made in north

africa and what should be avoided in the future. well i mean you know i was worried it was a story where you know as. well right i mean i mean i mean propping up the taliban in the one nine hundred eighty s. i mean we can all of back and say was that such a good idea i mean you know that that's a clear example of where you know we might have been wrong but i don't i just want to jump in and argue with john comparing the wisconsin union protests to the middle east uprisings i mean that's outrageous i mean come on the united states we're one of the richest wealthiest countries in the world we were very well off here and you know the unions are protesting because they want more socialist benefits they want to turn the united states into more of a socialist country and they're you know they're being very greedy with their demands because we can't afford it this isn't all tied into you know the reason the the middle eastern people are protesting that those people are those people really are suffering and so you know to try to compare the two the only similarities are

you know the people in wisconsin protesting and people the middle east they both want more government benefits but they're in vastly different situations and you know the united states we're not you know on the verge of collapse unless we. you know accede to their demands and continue to pay these over inflated government government benefits that we can't afford ok john you want to go there because it looks to me the united states is about bankruptcy i don't see where all the wealth is well i wasn't i'm not quite sure where the rotation is saying these protests in the middle east want more socialism or whether they want more freedom. you can compare in the thing you can compare apples and pears and decide the different point was that they are connected to these events whether they are the same comparable or very different is another is another issue i'm saying they're connected they are causally connected they're connected by the bankruptcy of the american backed international financial system with quantitative easing the united

states has its attempt to export its problem. by pumping the world full of dollars and one of the effects is rising food prices and one of the results of that is these protests brendan if i go back to you in london i really find very i was an academic historian before i went into this line of business i find it very interesting what you what you are saying about where the last part of the world that is being put into place into the post post post war era how do you think it's going to play out geopolitically i mean when we look at the influence of western powers that they have had and in these countries that could radically change what do you see next happening here what kind of realignment or some kind of you know a third way were they you know they're not going to side with anyone they're going to have their own trajectory. i think that's the thing that's up for question that's the thing that's unclear what will happen next once these regimes are no raffle and the more they are all good better in my view there's the question of what will happen to israel what will happen with iran my instinct is that iran will

try to assert some kind of control over the vacuums that might appear in this region and try to become a dominant player even more so than it is that will be an interesting dynamic i think there will be some kind of regional interaction between the new governments that rise to try and create a kind of arab block and i think the west's intervention in this part the world will be severely weakened by this it will be more difficult for the west to interfere and to direct things in its own interests that is a good thing but what i hope is that out of this. demonstrations there is more all unary people's control over their every day affairs i disagree that they are seeking more government benefits and more state intervention into their lives what i see when i look at these uprisings is that people who want to live in more economically comfortably but also who want more freedom and choice who want freedom from state intervention and state regulation and authoritarianism and want to be able to determine their own affairs that is a very very positive thing and i think it's really dangerous for us to look at it

as just the outpouring of the islamic hotheads that's not what it is at all ok rachel i'm going to give you the last word on this program here you know the democratic processes that are going on and you want to have a good use of a good thing for the world or a bad thing in the world. it could be a good thing if they really are about democratic reform and i just want to point out in yemen omen and jordan demonstrators there demanded more government benefits and all three leaders responded by giving them more expanded benefits so that's nat not accurate and i just wanted to say to peter you say that the u.s. is not wealthy come on we all we can we all get a go to college education we all have air conditioned houses we have brand new cars i mean for a great show the problem is there's a thing i can say this week the country can't keep paying the way it is been doing because it can't continue this process unfortunately we've run out of time and i would like you to have a wife many thanks to my guest today in paris london and in phoenix and thanks to my viewers for watching us here arche see you next time and remember us talking.

to you. soon. see. a timer here broadcasting live from washington d.c. coming up today on the big picture.