it. looks like we're in a world of hurt this as the british are now following in the footsteps of greece so if we're seeing different symptoms of the same disease is there a cure. my parting advice for leon. is to get his office just the way he likes and he may be here longer than he thinks and with those parting words from the retiring secretary of defense we bring up the man and his machine so does the military industrial complex reigns supreme regardless of who's in office. and turning into

a frickin full of angeles so as glen back to signs to come down from the mountaintop and reach elsewhere will his flock follow his back in call out of the foxhole well maybe but i don't constant. it's thursday june twenty third four pm in washington d.c. and christine for is out there watching our team. let's begin today with a look at the economy and start here in washington where the tug of war over raising the debt ceiling continues and its progress is slow the s. and p. now has announced that if the u.s. can't pay its debt it would lower its top level aaa ranking to a d. and here's some more bad news new jobless numbers are in and last week jobless claims were at about four hundred twenty eight thousand that means for the last

twelve weeks jobless claims have remained of ball of four hundred thousand turns out people are feeling the heat with a new poll showing thirty nine percent of people believe that the u.s. is in a permanent economic decline even goldman sachs announced it will lay off two hundred thirty employees let's switch over to greece now we're just yesterday the parliament passed a plan to implement new austerity measures but people are not happy and tension remains high on the streets over the last twenty four hours signs that frustration levels are growing demonstrators continue to take to the streets to voice their opposition to these austerity measures and to fight for some major changes to their government and against some of these policies that have drained the economy also today in the united kingdom we're going to half a million public sector workers are involved in protest against their government the government's plans to change their pensions and freeze pay i want to talk now to charlie veach who's in london he's the founder of the love police fairly i'm

hearing some similar complaints out of the u.k. that we're hearing from greece that we've been hearing for years now out of the u.s. that the cuts being made there are not being made toward the individuals responsible for the right for the financial crisis what can you tell me about this. yeah i think there are big parallels between what's happening in greece and what's happening in britain of course a protest of britain tends to be a very british uncivilized there so we had less than fifty arrests and in greece we had running battles in the streets and balls and here gas people getting injured but i think you know the public in europe are very confused particularly in britain how our countries not only have we invaded iraq and afghanistan are natural resources but then we think we should be getting richer but then as you say very correctly the people who are responsible for the giant austerity measures being imposed upon us or are getting richer and richer at the disparity between the

cooler and the rich is actually growing the statistics of middle easterners and billionaires are right that shows that there are more well increasing and yet public sector people are seeing their pensions got this ng their salaries cut we're seeing massive job losses just today lloyds t.s.b. banking group of the major banks announced another one thousand five hundred job cuts but one in ten of the work force people are very confused nothing is starting to wake up very angrily as to why their government did carry out these big measures because if they allow the banks are they different countries and improve the economy apparently we're going to be trying to work together here yet they don't see any benefit down at the bottom of the curve you know charlie that talk to me about some of these other things i mean obviously. as we just mentioned some of the pensions but from what i understand even the cost of education has risen immensely in london what are some of the other things you know across the united kingdom that are really really hitting to the home of the majority of the average people they're

sure yeah it's a difficult situation for a lot of people because the retail price index they tell us it's about four percent then reality many newspapers of the studies of prices for food and kind of energy such as gas now it's just you're increasing by about fifteen to twenty. cent per year i just yesterday scottish universities voted the up to charge up to nine thousand much like their english counterparts nine thousand pounds and britain is a country which has the enlightenment we were the biggest empire in the world we've built everything up on the notion of a libertarian free education for all we have the national health service which is about free healthcare for all are now starting to see that just like in george orwell's animal farm some humans are more equal than others and if you come from a rich family you can maintain your position by having your university paid for by average parents and if you're poor you have to get yourself into forty thousand pounds worth of debt which you'll find a way around your neck for the rest of your life paying off things like i think are

not that different here than they are there and just want to get your take i mean to what extent do you think this is a fact of what's happening in greece and the us talk about how interconnected you think these crises. well the one of the of the drawbacks to globalize a shim is that when there is a puncture in the tyro the world it kind of spins around in every one of the flights and that's what we've seen. is the european problem it's very soon here and it's funny seeing the world bank and the i.m.f. even more and the countries which have their problems on the one way they're trying to say for people to sit back is going to say oh you guys at the bottom you tighten your belt you stop us you stop burning so much you have less of a pension and then see the the ruling class the political class the big banking class drive around it rolls royces and fly around in private jets and brits and it's the same story but it gets even more complicated i mean just today people are

exposing the newspapers the trade union leaders themselves are earning about two hundred fifty thousand u.s. dollars each from pacs there's money to be trade union leaders so there's generalized confusion people are getting angrier and angrier and the for me the only way i see a way out. this is for people to start moving away from government and setting up their own volunteer organizations are starting to be optimistic themselves tell you that at the beginning of this interview that the protests that you've got today were very british very civilized and polite not a lot of harassed. what's next i mean people continue to take to the streets this is something that does not seem to me at least to be changing. so i know this is sort of a one day organized protest but will this continue. i'm i actually don't know the answer to that one you're absolutely right but it seems the big protests that we saw in greece yesterday didn't change but the big student protests that still push up parliament increasing c.

the the nine thousand who saw the big marches against the iraq war three thousand and three i think britain as i said is the center of it why doesn't this world are going to start to see that maybe civil disobedience i may do that nonpayment of taxes is the only way to actually maintain our standard of living in a way i'm very optimistic about all these austerity measures because it will start to make people think but perhaps they don't need me to get all these things from government perhaps we can do it for ourselves so i'm very optimistic about it all all right charlie beach founder of the lovely joining us from london talking about the situation there those protests today. well today was defense secretary robert gates the last day on the job the world he leaves behind him in his retirement looks much different than when he first came into his career are two guy in the kitchen kind of looks into his work and his legacy. whoever's in the white house in the pentagon it's business as usual robert gates was secretary of defense to two different presidents obama was elected on

a promise to end the wars of his predecessor george w. bush but america's worse continued and one more was even add it to the plate of inconclusive campaigns we've yet when administrative change or change between parties there really isn't a great deal of training in the pentagon under robert gates his watch america's annual defense spending approach the trillion dollars rising at the pace of about five percent a year but statements from his office were often contradictory fence bending that nearly doubled the base budget over the last decade the gusher has been turned off and will stay off the u.s. is supposed to leave iraq by the end of the year but it seems that that line is not final. he gives all kinds of contradictory statements for instance not long ago he said that anyone who would buy for us land army in the middle of

a major conflict from hell is headed there where the same time. he's done everything i can alone over several times to baghdad and leave nouri al maliki government. but please please put us soldiers day after the deadline at the end of this year the pentagon says big spec the wreckage government will ask them to stay beyond their scheduled december thirty first departure date but with the announced troop withdrawals from iraq and afghanistan the u.s. started actively waging a different kind of warfare what they call and intelligent war one that's waged with drones without sacrificing the lives of their soldiers in countries like pakistan yemen and libya and many say that's the major shift that happened in military operations under robert gates a shift that some say can only lead to more destruction of. the united states has

increased the intensity of the focus on pakistan in terms of drone strikes those remotely piloted vehicles while targeting terrorists the us has been criticized for killing mostly civilians it's also making us less secure from a policy standpoint we can't intervene all over the world it just fuels insurgencies and fuels anti-americanism analysts say the deaths of thousands of civilians in afghanistan are part of the reason why the u.s. has failed at curbing insurgency there now the u.s. is preparing to pull out a third of its troops by the end of next year many afghans fear that less troops doesn't mean less bombs dropped on their homes. as the u.s. steps up aerial strikes in the region the possibility of waging a war without having to justify the deaths of the american troops has become more

palatable for the pentagon the cia has been at the forefront of america's undeclared wars and with a new secretary of defense leon panetta who was the head of the cia the trend is only likely to change. our reporting from washington our team you know there's so much to talk about when it comes to the career and the legacy of robert gates you know it's interesting looking back to those first weeks and months on the job there's been several reports about what gates dealt with his frustration coming into the pentagon being shocked at the machine he was dealing with seeing that people were more interested in you know planning for war building new weapons rather than actually raging it he wanted better equipment for troops already in iraq and afghanistan and found a defense department who told him you know there weren't funds for things like those mine resistant ambush protected trucks so he went to congress and you did get the twenty plus billion dollars to to get to make that happen to get those delivered there but you know this is just one example of what gates dealt with how

this machine shaped the war effort and joining me now for more on this is stephen leatherman host of the progressive radio news hour and also michael prysner iraq war veteran and political activist thanks so much for being here guys let me just get your take first of all on what gates left behind and the hand that he had and where we are now mike let's start with you. sure well you know it's interesting because before becoming secretary of defense robert gates served on many board of trustees in corporate boards for oil drilling companies for weapons manufacturers for defense contractors so robert gates legacy is one of just another millionaire who came from the board rooms of big oil of the defense industry of wall street and who has sent now over two million young people husbands wives families to fight in wars that benefit only wall street and big oil robert gates legacy is one of thousands of dead u.s. soldiers tens of thousands of amputees an epidemic records suicides record military

spending and of course complete destruction for iraq and afghanistan and really the six total countries that are being bombed by the united states by the pentagon this second freiburg a chance to see for himself what his legacy is he should spend just one day with a grieving family in the united states in iraq or afghanistan or in pakistan who has lost a loved one in these wars for profit that you know i got to mention this i mean it's certainly wasn't hard to do he didn't have big shoes to fill he did replace donald rumsfeld of course. his view has evolved immensely as far as these wars and i want to play something he said just recently in a speech at west point and i will talk about it. still through clean patriotic messenger of enlightenment i'm sorry. sorry about that obviously was not defense secretary robert gates but i will be talking about it later in the show do we have the control room do we have the sound bite ok we

don't have it but it was even mentioned in report i'm sure you guys know about this this is when robert gates told west point at a speech that anyone who would send people into wars in the middle east at this time would have to have their head examined so stephen let me go to you do you think that there was a change for gates as he went through this job over the years. oh there it was going to change it off whatever it is they had the pentagon or they had of any other. important us. or laws or anything additional power in the u.s. government. they really mad a little because what matters completely is the system the power structure runs because of trade and when it comes to war and peace america has a permanent war agenda i wrote three major articles two titles america's criminal war agenda the second one was

a subtitle military came in as someone spiro it and i just wrote an article a few days ago titled the business of america is war that's what america's business is you know rumsfeld it was there before rumsfeld it was there on the gates here under pennetta and you notice these things the chess board piece is moving around we've got we've got and then moving from the white house to the cia to the pentagon we've had this moving from a rack clerk and a stand to the cia and those against george w. bush and the. sergeant and w o. w and. people just move around

a chessboard and the system stays the same and the was go on and on the light it is the biggest mansion in america currently is not meeting three wars in which the six wars we are bombing six countries right now so i name oh no. let's not let's go on because i want to really get a lot into that here as and i think it's important that you mention sort of the different. this is moving around the chess board and the fact that a lot of what we're seeing today is not really that new in fact there was a warning decades ago of what could happen if as you say sort of the business of war i want to play something from dwight d. eisenhower and his warning to the country which can be argued was not heeded. in the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of the unwanted influence whether sought alone sought by the military industrial complex the

potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power. and will persist we must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic process. all right so president obama recently mentioned we've got this troop pullout of ten thousand troops by the end of this year an additional twenty three thousand by the end of next year but the fact is there are cities small cities being built inside of afghanistan continuing to be built and i know stephen you've written about this about seven hundred bases in afghanistan nearly a hundred in iraq how much in the hundreds around the world so what do you think i mean are we are we there forever oh absolutely. the analogy i went to is a war two ended nine hundred forty four i was still in germany we watched the pentagon are still in germany still in japan still in south korea still looking italy and it's expanded all over the world we have no idea how many people i was

when i ran across an article that said we have seven hundred bases in afghanistan and i never dreamed it was that many. there are a permanent want to be five by us forces main operating bases. small cities if you if you walk up with one and didn't know where you were you but i think you were enough for your area. i mean literally that's the way that all the mcdonald's in kentucky fried chicken a regular as well to. understand if you don't rack we didn't we didn't believe baseness believe them well you smaller ones. who are really are set traps the ones we want to do are so in order us it's not working out too well and it's not working out too well that iraqis these people may have the order here it is their country not us and they want it and they want no part of us and they will keep writing as the conflict in a wreck is. going on we don't the american media reporting this the only

nor the afghanistan war but they certainly don't report about the details well i think i think it's good that you bring that up even i mean i think i just got word out about an hour ago that there were several more american deaths in iraq which we are supposed to be done with the war there real quick just on a lighter note as always a funny headline from the onion and i want to bring it in on. the onion headline just the other day for the pentagon to withhold the budget figures out of respect for american families officials at the pentagon announced that they would no longer make the budget of the defense department public explaining. information would be extremely disrespectful to american families michael i know you are a veteran what do you think that means are feeling you know seeing the departure of robert gates is there hope that anything will change i mean certainly he was he leaves washington he leaves his position very well respected by a lot of people certainly not just more so than his predecessor but i'm wondering

michael what you think that's been like yourself are thinking today. well veterans like myself people who have been sent to fight and die and lose limbs then have to commit crimes against people that are not our enemies those who are in the military today i don't think we're at all honoring robert gates the service because you know he's never done a foot patrol in helmand province you never gone on a convoy in iraq but he's ordered lots of us to do it with great bloodshed as a result the reality is the war in afghanistan is not about al qaeda the war in iraq it's not about national defense or freeing the iraqi people these are wars for empire but they're not our empire it's not our empire is the empire of big business the empire of wall street the empire of big oil yet they send us people who couldn't afford to go to college people who need health care for our families people who don't have jobs they sent us to do the fighting for them the reality is the majority of people in the united states are opposed to the wars in iraq and

afghanistan inside the military as well but this government is going to continue spending us to fight and die in these wars that are not in our interest and really it's up to us to stop it. all right real quick two sentences or less the last ask each of you what changes with gates out of office and panetta and stephen oh no you know everything what we want to see mostly it was who we don't have it or you were and were the ones that we created out of what we call our in the one. we created because they get angry so we go around. we do we you know we do so many it was we have only. you because i don't know what you need to go all right michael do you agree with that absolutely democrat or republican the interest of you got us government stay the same and that's serving the interests of the super rich and of wall street it's going to take a people united in moving together to change that like we're seeing in greece right

now like we saw. all right certainly a little bit of a different take than we're seeing today across the mainstream media in terms of gates his departure but you know important of course to get that perspective in there stephen lindemann host of the progressive radio news hour and iraq war veteran and political activist michael prysner. well it is a sad day for some happy day for others one that wraps up his last show on fox news so what does this mean for fox for that himself and for americans who have been tuning in over and over for the last several years one thing you can certainly say about glenn beck is that he certainly has no problem blatantly criticizing people and organizations for that matter here at r.t. we even have a chance to feel the wrath take a listen now why would anybody be interested in the new black panther movement over in russia listen to the way this interview starts. so why is fox

obsessed with a two year old story is this a case of civil rights gone wrong or could it all just be hype to bring down the panthers. and i bet her parents are proud that she's working for the profit of today. that was pretty sure their reporter here and on going back criticizing her so here's the question what will the media landscape look like without glenn back on regular cable network will people subscribe will his content change now that he's his own boss one hundred percent and doesn't have to rely on advertising will the fear mongering become more fearful of racism more prevalent we can only speculate and to help me do that i'm joined in studio by dr miller exhilaration was chairman of the new black panther party dr survive i got to ask you how much are you going to miss when back i'm not going to miss about oh i'm not going to miss the demagoguery i'm not going to miss the fear mongering i'm not going to miss. the races and i'm not going to miss him being

a false prophet and using religion in the fear mongering and scare tactics in the race baiting tactics are not going to miss his attacks on me. jones the new black panther party barack obama i'm not going to miss him at all all right and we just played a short sound bite about when he criticize our team he's actually going a few times you're also the victim of a glenn beck criticism i want to play that for our viewers really quick and i'll get your response. was one of the creepiest moments on t.v. you had one point close a zizou starts to pray and when i want to do commercial breaks the floor staff said oh my gosh that was creepy this is before we knew anything really about barack obama before we really started digging into his past watch what he said. but you have to understand it your ancestors had been in slavery and bondage for three hundred years that your ancestors had been denied the right to become policemen firemen attend schools good mortgages i mean it's not your for you i tell you if

you will be like way i will tell you that i would feel i would feel so unbelievably proud that that country has made so much progress that the richest woman in america is oprah winfrey and possibly the next president is also an african-american i feel pretty darn good that we've made an awful lot of progress to our exit that was you on going back just before president obama became president. he was he went rough on you what what's your response it's all that looking back he just reconfirms that he has no desire to stay in the black experience he seeks to misquote shreya and slander and defame our movement in the fact that we have been enslaved many colonized people and that we speak a certain language and adopt certain tactics to address what has happened to us and for us to would see our liberation and so he's part and parcel of what we call a white supremacy of society that continues to use stations like parks and moves

and you know he didn't take questions he stuck to even interviewing at a certain point and he just gave these real bizarre lectures. so he didn't have to be questioned and so you know i'm very happy to see him go i would say another enemy up another enemy for us and going back remember says he's not retiring he's just moving on to a different medium he's of course going to be on his web based channel g.v. t.v. that's going to start in the fall. one right and i one point one back had three million people who watched him and that number did go down to about two million what do you think it fatt as about this country that so many people tune in it's states that america still very hostile that america is far from. being a post racial society it says that fox news does have a strong view of shipwrecks strong following now you have to say you know when he called president obama you know said he was racist with

a deep seated hatred for white people i mean more than three hundred businesses pulled their advertising from going back show to the point where it became hard to sell commercials for that i mean you got to say that shows a little bit of spirit for americans in american business is right well you appreciate it and maybe that show some progress but i'm happy to see them going to retire with certainly is audience and his viewership will do and do and he will never be the force that he was but the demonization of fox new still lives on it will get stronger and stronger as we get into it and make selections are it's i got to ask you know glenn beck is certainly somebody that you've spoken out against he seems to be the one person that people on the left love to hate i'm wondering who's going to be next who will they criticize who will the daily show make fun of to the extent that they did glenn beck. you know i really don't know but i would like a one on one with glenn beck a public debate in

a public forum in any city in america i would like to sit right next to him with next to you all right glenn beck in a bear watching dr leaks dilution causes calling for a one on one debate you know i would love to have you both on on my show so when if you're watching. his blackboard and blackboard and we can get out the white shark and go to work on his theories and my theories and see which one wins out so that's what i'm looking forward to as he gets to retirement again he's not retiring he's going to have his own show he's going to have no bosses and he can say whatever he wants he's going to have two hours and he concerns that without anyone overseeing what he says or what he does that it's going to get on board and we want him to our say with him because he will have the influence there we knew the employer said he has now and so we want him to come out with all of his opinions we love the rush limbaugh and love this because we need to truth not addressed a doctrine league solution vases.