seems like we're in a world of hurt there's the british are following in the footsteps of greece so if we're seeing different symptoms of the same disease is there a cure. by morning 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 and this question does the military industrial complex reign supreme regardless of who's in office. and

turning into a fortune told enlist so as glenn beck designs to come down from the mountaintop and preach elsewhere will his flock follow his back getting out of the foxhole while maybe but it will cost them. it's thursday june twenty third and christine for sale in washington d.c. you are watching our team. well let's begin today with a look at the economy and start with what's happening in greece or just yesterday the parliament passed a plan to implement new austerity measures tensions there remain 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 their economy also today in the

united kingdom more than half a million public sector workers are involved in protest against their government plans to change their pensions and freeze their pay and of course here in washington the tug of war over raising the debt ceiling continues and progress is slow and there's more bad news new jobless numbers are in and last week jobless claims were about four hundred twenty eight thousand i mean for the last twelve weeks jobless claims have remained above four hundred thousand turns out people are feeling the heat and even a new poll showing thirty nine percent of people believe that the u.s. is in a permanent economic decline i want to talk now to gerald celente director of the trends research institute gerald another point to bring up that maybe shows signs of this economy goldman sachs your favorite company announced today it will layoff two hundred thirty employees just wondering are you feeling sorry for them. when the goldman sachs gang oh yeah big crocodile tears and it's not only them it's many

in the financial sector the economy continues to decline is no recovery in sight and it's hitting everyone and the goldman sachs are taking the hit as more of that bailout money dries up in reality bites i want to talk about greece and london the protests taking place there on what do you think about this it seems that there is sort of a domino effect that this is just happening across the country and we're hearing the same thing that these people are taking to the street because they're angry at the people who caused the economic problems are not the ones who are being punished for it it's what we said from the beginning go back to the trends journal over it you know eight months ago it was off with their heads two point zero we said that the global ponzi scheme was on their collapse and that's what we're seeing happening whether it's in tunisia whether it's in egypt whether it's in the u.k.

whether it's in greece watch out for spain here comes italy ireland is coming up with backstretch it's only going to get much worse there's no way out and the people are angry you know my saying christina when people lose everything and have nothing left to lose they lose it and that's what it is the people know the score you could you could sum up what's killed capitalism in floor simple words too big to fail and that's what's going on the banks are failing and they want the people to bail them out because they if they're all they don't like to take a hit these big guys so they call it austerity measures and privatization general want to make it clear the i.m.f. . is nothing more than the international mafia federation bid

a loan sharks of last resort and the people know it they call it privatization adults call it stealing valuable public assets and selling it to your friends really cheaply but you're what do you think about this i mean as you just said people are angry they're starting to realize that it's really hitting home they're taking to the streets they've been taken to the streets in greece for nearly a year now and yet you know the greek parliament was able to pass this new round of austerity measures these hits that you know are on a lot of average people who live there. to what extent do these protests is this anger actually fuel the end result. it's going to add some point you know the politicians enough they get these these are not democracies they call them representative democracies the politicians only represent the people that give the most amounts of money so the people know that so that it's going to continue to be

a saga war and the greek people know that if you don't stand up they're going to mow you down when you get really hungry you're going to see the riots continue to escalate because what are these so-called osteria the measures what do they really bring oh they bring a lot more poverty oh they bring a worse g d p o they bring more on employment so the politicians are doing nothing more than the bidding for those that pay them off you know gerald back here in the u.s. and even right here in washington we've been watching just down the street from here this battle over the debt ceiling and now we learned the s. and p. has announced that if the u.s. can't pay its debt the deadline of course on august second but if they can't get that the s. and p. would lower the top level aaa ranking to a deal now of course these meetings that have been taking place over the debt ceiling they've been closed door meetings the nature of which have of course changed ever since those republican lawmakers opted out refusing to raise taxes on

anyone but i'm wondering i mean we don't know much about what they talk about but do you think that president obama has a plan. no he has no plan listen to his press conference just that i reminded me of our high school kids reporters asking the principal questions and he's throwing out the same tired lines he's been throwing out for the last two and a half years he has no plan in place and here's what no one's talking about he talked about cutting the defense budget by four hundred billion dollars what over ten years forty billion dollars a year that's chump change in the defense budget that eating up when everything's included of a one point two trillion dollars so no they're not taking the big bites where they should and when he talks about you know taxing the rich he's calling people family you know two income family earning two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year the rich that's not reality is also

a oil subsidy you know subsidies for these oil companies and for these private jets and you know president obama does lest you know eight or ten things in addition to that scene if you add up what he listed it's not a lot and what he didn't list of the people like the boss that said they gave a ten million and the schwarzman is in these multibillionaires paying tax rates like they used to do under the eisenhower years so he left the big guys alone and it's very clear why he did because these are the cats that fuel the campaigns for both the democrats and the republicans and all the cuts that they're softening about are going to fall back again mostly on us little people well as warren buffett does make more than a two hundred fifty thousand dollars that's what i'm saying but he's not talking about taxing them at the eisenhower rate they're they don't they are left alone and he's bringing in the middle class as those that or the upper middle class as

those who should be taxed more so this is just rhetoric what he's really talking about and again the six hundred pound gorilla in the room is the pants are gone and hey you can't do it say anything about that because as i said before the business of the united states is war not business all right errol flynn say director of the transit research institute writing in from new york. all right from the united kingdom to greece one thing is clear we're only beginning to see the public outcry over this global economic downturn and the mood is only getting worse earlier i spoke to financial journalist journalist dimitri goofiness he is on the ground for us in athens greece. it's pretty amazing experience firing and that's what you're seeing here is the largest crowd i've seen at night it's peaceful where the people have gathered in constant square and i should make up an important point because right now actually the mat the special police forces are just exited the parliament that's right here and

a lot of times the people at the front of parliament are in the front street there's a kind of the muzzle those are kind of the people that are at the front line but the heart the brains of this resistance is mounting the political potential ford is not in right there in the center of the square that's where they have a might set up you have a specific democratic process where they allow people to vote on whether they can speak or not and the people stand up and they make speeches sometimes they're just talking about. things that they need to prepare for the next days protests other times the conversation is very political there's no political party but the ideology is is such that that's where a political movie can come from and i think that's really something i'm amazing that has really been covered here because you hear a lot of people talk one of the but the euro one thing with the financial implications but there's really a political birth happening right here and that's what the greek people are banking on is they're hoping on that's where their their prayers are because the atmosphere here is optimistic when except for the days where there's violence it's really amazing it's it's electric go ahead so i was going to say you know certainly when a lot of people look at what's going on in greece you know they compare it to

what's happening here in the u.s. and they compare it to the mainstream versus wall street battles and anger that have taken place here you know i know you've been out there talking to a lot of people there today what are their greatest frustrations and their concerns . their greatest frustrations are with their inability to effect change positive change and that's why when you come here and when the people are here there's a feeling of optimism because everyone else in the square is there because they want to change this country they want to move this country forward and that's what's so amazing and so exciting about being down the square is that positive like energy in the u.s. you have political movements that have some basis in the political system but here in greece. this is really a complete and utter rejection of the establishment a complete and utter rejection of the political system so any hope for a positive change that doesn't result in anarchy doesn't result in chaos is going to come from that square and that's what people should be watching us with should be looking for you know greece can really be looked at as an example of what's

going on on a global scale i'm wondering if people are understand that the rest of the world is looking at what happens there i mean talk about the global implications of crates. well there's one implication is that it stands as a beacon of hope it was the more you have this type of resistance i mean yesterday was the worst day we've seen we saw chemicals used that were not just tear gas we saw illegal chemical use like fixating agents and things of that nature you had massive amounts of police brutality and the films all over the internet stand as evidence for that you had people beaten well away from from the square where tourists were people screaming and people saw all that stuff today and they came back to the square and it's that resilience that defiance that inability to be shaken or to be pushed away that really defines this particular movement this particular revolution here in this country and i think that in that sense it sends a real beacon of hope because people should understand that things aren't hopeless and they don't have to sit at home and cry or put their hands in their hands that

there is an option they can come out and they can resist and something good can come out of that when you roll the dice something good can happen i want to pick your brain a little bit to make sure i know that you've spent some time living and working in new york and right now what's going on there people are actually camping outside of city hall protesting the budget cuts they're protesting against mayor bloomberg i wondering if you think that in new york in the u.s. that we could see the kind of protests and the kind of anger ignite and manifest itself in to what you're seeing in greece draw that comparison for me. i think it's certainly possible i mean look we had that in the in the i.q. sixty's it was one of the things that helped nixon come to power but you need to have a significant amount of economic hardship more than what we've seen obviously in the u.s. to cause that and that's we've had here in greece it's certainly possible and and it's really a matter of changing one's mind set the people here optimistic as i said the people that come here are optimistic whether they. whether they have a reason to be or not is not the point the point is that they manifest that and

when they manifest that and optimism manifest itself upon the political establishment and a solution a real solution can occur and i think that that's certainly possible in new york it's really possible in america it will just be much harder and it'll take a lot more hardship given what i've seen in the united states certainly here in the united states possible right i mean people complain here about this nine point nine percent unemployment rate i know there in greece it's about sixteen percent so that's got to be frustrating for a lot of people any sense to me terry on how much longer this continues i mean is there an end in sight to the protests i mean just yesterday of course great parliament passed this next round of austerity measures so something's changing but the people there behind you certainly sound like they don't seem to like it. no of course they don't like it like i said before they're not stupid they're smart there are many educated people this country you've got ph d.'s that are working you're kind of curious here right so you've got plenty. of built up pent up demand and a lot of i guess you could say it's just

a passerby in this economy and in this political system and then it has to capacity is waiting idle and it's waiting to be put to work and what you're seeing here is is the ramping up of that extra capacity now is financial journalist to me take a few notes on the ground there in athens greece. where the u.s. department of defense begins a new era today or does it this the secretary of defense robert gates retires and passes the torch to former cia director leon panetta and looking back at his career there's been several reports of gates' frustration when he first came into the pentagon being shocked you know the machine he was dealing with seeing people there were more interested in planning for a war act than actually waging it's getting the right equipment for the soldiers on the front lines that's just one example of what gates dealt with how this machine shaped the war effort for more earlier i was joined by stephen leatherman host of the progressive radio news hour and michael prysner iraq war veteran and political

analyst i asked him what legacy it is leaving behind and where the u.s. is now with all these wars there's a bad design. before becoming secretary of defense robert gates served on many board of trustees and 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 boardrooms of big oil of the defense industry of wall street and who has sent now over two million young people our husbands live 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 and epidemic record 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 robert gates wants 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 to 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 really was not a change at all. is there was a paragon of a head of the city employed with us. or was in the position of power in the u.s. government they really made a little because what matters completely is the system how are structured runs because really 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 with the subtitle military came to him on steroids and i just wrote about article a few days ago titles. of america is war that's what america is.

it was a rumsfeld. well around so he was the roommate. you hear on the net and noticed i think big names is a chess board with pieces moving around we've got. no moving from the white house to the cia to the pentagon we've got this moving from a rack to ghana stand to the cia and the guess is george w. bush is this. sorting and w. . w. and just the pieces just move around the chess board 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 dealt and i know stephen you've written about this about seven hundred bases in afghanistan nearly a hundred in iraq as 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 world war two and some other nine hundred forty five we still in germany we watching the pentagon are still in germany still in japan still in south korea still in italy and it's expanded all over the world we have no idea how many big i was done when i ran across an article that said we have seven hundred bases in afghanistan and i never dreamed there were that many. permanent want to be five by us forces main operating base was called small cities if you if you walk up with one and didn't know where you were you but i think you were in the peoria. i mean

literally that's the way they have all the mcdonald's and kentucky fried chicken around anyway as well to. have an event rack we didn't we didn't believe baseness believe them we'll use smaller ones to the. who are really our satraps then the ones we want to do are so in chorus it's not working out too well and it's not working out too well but iraqi people may have a lot of idea that it's their country not us and they want it and they want no part of us and they will keep writing us conflict interactive. to go into the door be a medium you do your reporting about this deal you know of the afghanistan war but they certainly don't report of the details 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 and the empire of big business the empire of law 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 family people who don't have jobs they send 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 and we this government is going to continue sending us to fight and die in these wars that are not in our interest and really it's up to us to stop them and that was stephen lemon host of the progressive radio news hour an iraq war veteran and political activist michael price. well it is a sad day for son and a happy day for others when back wraps up his last show on fox news so what does that mean for fox forgot himself and the americans who have been tuning in for the last few years. reports. still through cleaned petri messenger of enlightenment i'm sorry. i just love my country.

forward. a daily dose of cheers paranoia and up thirty gone too rotten to swallow when i see you know a nine eleven victim family you know on television or whatever i'm just like all shut up i'm so sick of them because they're always complaining after two and a half years on fox news and once one of the most top rated shows on cable has come as box news draws the curtain on that oh my gosh when bad writing amazing broadcaster i'm going to sit here and get as i said going to the propaganda i'm going to miss the insane ideology. we split from fox it's presented as mutual in reality readings once it over three million viewers have been plummeting turn the damn t.v. off right now if you have to and advertisers could put time thought the content

scaring them away and turn it into a fricken full of angelus religion largely abused but far from heartfelt you became a more yeah. i apologize but guys will understand this. my life is like that and she would have sex with me until we got married and she wouldn't marry me any less we had a religion groundless phobias stuck with a shock jock throughout the years as president i think has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture all this better built his only show a fundamentalist america centric culture but most of the outside world ridicule he did serve a big. bird america's right wing you know build it a megaphone of shameless rhetoric he claim to be on a mission to inspire americans to see themselves he's able to exploit the fears and paranoias of a nation with a real unemployment rate approaching twenty percent were people out of work for

years to time and they got. it doesn't seem to even much less try to do something about it when becks annual income has been estimated at thirty two million dollars your motive is just pure profit and my oh my channing it is unlikely that the cut off from the reported two million dollars box news pre-check will significantly affect banks empire but i have other things to do and not because it's good or bad for business he makes the vast vast vast majority of his money not from t.v. it's from his radio show is stand a good exist books but he is a multi media conglomerate and his fox gig was any piece of that beck's new plan is to take a gamble and build his fortune online but his own web network are about to get started it's called g.b. t.v. . the truth here the truth is accessible for more money

subscribers will have to pay to tune in almost five bucks a month it's difficult to to have people pay for something need to get it for free the whole time even with the space off the mainstream cost network screen that is set on continuing so the world not just on the right one but places like jerusalem where three reportedly france a photograph would come fall the step to expand its influence and this it's worth an hour or two. so i want to hone in on the impact back has had on the conversation and the culture over the last few years and to do that earlier i spoke with fan feeder he's the host of the majority report i asked him what impact he feels back is had on the political landscape of today here's his take. in many ways. really helped fuel the tea party and i don't mean necessarily from an ideological sampling although that may be the case but you know he literally was for about a year promoting it helping. you know get people to rallies

and then basically so much so that the americans for prosperity the the republican establishment group funs the tea party ended up buying a lot of ad space on his show i mean at one point he was actually promoting a rival republican group and when they have became an unfair advantage of money you promoted them and it was all for the benefit of the party i mean it was he helped create a massive amount of propaganda and as you know at least in part certainly the tea party had an impact on the election in two thousand and ten so all right back is going to be back in the fall but he's going to be on g.b. t.v. a web based network when back out television he owns looking back to his time on fox there are lots of reasons that people have given for his departure of course more than three hundred companies refused to advertise on his show after he called president obama a racist with quote deep seated hatred for white people it was also widely reported

he had problems with the higher ups there at fox but the fact is back lost a lot of viewers i want to get your take where do you think those viewers are going to what took their interest away well you know i don't know if he lost them really be honest with you a lot of viewers i mean he lost viewers based upon where his own numbers were his height but i don't think he lost viewers for the show that he replaced at that time i mean i think at the end of the day. that was not a team player i mean roger ailes is set up the political the propaganda wing of the republican party over there and back to often strayed from a. message he was hated by you know people like sean hannity hated him hate they have the ship went down i mean from i think three million at his heyday to two million not that thirty three percent decline it's still a whole lot to be really percent decline from his peak but i was an estimated

thirty three percent decline from where he was that i mean they could have negotiated probably a better contract but i think at the end of the day he was just hurting their brand and so and he was really more interested in it and the funny thing is that they had no control over him because he had such a big online empire taurine. but he does the the radio show so i think they had less control over him than make they they do say you know a guy like hannity and i think in the end that's really why they parted what about the exchange i mean when glenn beck first started he was pretty optimistic and a little more sunshiny and he did sort of change and move over to be you know very professorial but also somewhat dark and you know talking about the end of the world and you know that things are coming do you think you know nobody wants to see negative things on air do you think that had anything to do with that is sort of change of demeanor no i think well i mean i think look the problem that back at it

is that when you call for the apocalypse and you think the apocalypse is coming and you say that because of this muslim socialist. fascist that we have in the in the white house it's going to destroy everything and in the next three months we're going to see this happen and where the world going to fall apart and then three months come people here will tired i mean i think at the end of the day his problem was. you know like the arc of. a bad drama series if you start at the level of ten and say you know we're in the house gunfire it's going to burn down any minute and then you know a couple weeks go by and how. doesn't burn down where you go after that so i think people just got a little bit tired i think that's why he was off his feet. so you know i think his his his the drama of his show and so great failed to grip people for longer.