in broadcasting live direct from the heart of moscow this is r t i'm sean thomas stay right here top of its hundreds a rest in new york and chicago as protesters taking part in occupy wall street marchers need a fierce response from police. this comes as the occupy movement spreads across the world prompting tens of thousands to vent their anger at the banks they view as sapping the public purse while people have to endure severe austerity measures and unemployment. and in other top stories this week ukraine's former

prime minister yulia timoshenko is jailed for seven years after a queue of court finds her guilty of abuse of power but there's that knowing the inside as it moves charges are brought against her despite the e.u. and u.s. condemning the ruling. president assad of syria tries to appease protesters by promising multi-party elections and in the drafting of a new constitution on the u.n. puts the death toll after months of on rice to have more than three thousand earlier the united nations chief warned of a looming civil war with assad firmly supported in damascus and the sense of growing outside because the capital. about wraps it up for me but my colleague not present will be here in about thirty minutes with a complete look at your news but first heated debate and expert opinion coming up peter lavelle hosts cross talk next right here on are today.

and you can see. the full. hello and welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle the era of great discontent all across the globe people are protesting against the political economic and financial status quo is this because of globalization and the relative ease of social

networking or is there something else in play like the arrival of a new paradigm shift in every sense. to try to. start. to cross-talk this global fever i'm joined by richard sennett in new york he's a professor of sociology at the london school of economics in washington we have on bass or kerry miller he is the director of the center for international trade and economics the heritage foundation and in some follow we go to poppy escobar he is a journalist and author all right gentlemen this is crosstalk that means you can jump in anytime you want i very much encourage it but first tell us about this global rumble let's go back to the beginning for a few moments there it began with a little man's cry of despair over social injustice mohamed bouazizi itself in the late in front of a government building in tunisia on the seventeenth of december two thousand and two. and were the days hundreds and thousands of tunisians caught the fire of protest against the ruling regime then along came egypt believe be

a syria bahrain yemen and soon practically the entire arab world was in golf in a political conflagration we have witnessed an extraordinary change taking place in the middle east and north africa swear by square town by town. country by country but by that time the wind of discontent have long since reached europe where for their own reasons people were challenging the status quo general strikes and demonstrations sparked by austerity measures in response to its debt crisis began to sweep through greece in two thousand and ten the same the same happening in portugal but you thousand and eleven it was spain and pretty soon pockets of super resistance were percolating all throughout europe that would be in the nodal people to wake up otherwise we'll just become slaves to the system finally in september as new york city mayor michael bloomberg was wording of rights almost more jobs were created in america the occupy wall street movement was

already in the making it only two days before it was acknowledged as a powerful resistance movement with a purported goal of restoring democracy in the us. to leave our brothers and sisters all who were old arab spring in greece and spain and we can see that it did send a powerful message and this message a call for radical change and the governing system in place has traveled across the ocean traversing economic and political boundaries and wearing together a global narrative of dissent but will there be more countries partaking in this narrative or has it reached its peak just to begin tapering off so why do you think it are going to bounce some of these questions over against russia thank you very much that could be if i go to you first we have a lot of discontent in the arab world are we having wall street we have it in europe we had london riots and in china are there some rumblings here what connects them all together or is it just serendipity and they're all separate. that's broadly what connects them all what connects them all together if i may be as broad

as your question is the utter failure of meal liberalism this big harvey has been speaking about this for at least for the past fifteen years in manuel wallerstein as well from the point of view of this stablish meant more or less of nouriel roubini has being seen in direct li if you see what's going on in the us nowadays the cries the economic crisis in the us the atlanticist economy crisis which involves europe as well and the fact that capitalism is basically being saved by china at the moment it's the failure of a model casino capitalism suitable capitalism this implies the famous one percent i guess ninety nine percent and that's why occupy wall street is such an important movement because they challenge they want they absolutely nailed it in terms of what's the key concept or question the fact that we have a very good style system where one percent basically controls the best the of the

other ninety nine and this implies what. this that belies in the concept of liquid more bernese. one i'm not very big fan of darwin myself but last week in italy i was discussing this with with some of my italian colleagues and we came to the conclusion that liquid will definitely applies to maybe one percent or two percent it will population you see you are an investment banker if you are a journalist traveling around the world if you are high value professional information technology industry but it does not apply to most of the world's population and the elites are still solid they are not exactly liquid big deal in all of the categories of cause and effect that we inherited from the lightman and they still control the actual wealth that circulates around the world and so we have a real mouse all right you know this is just this huge rise our natural law richard what do you think about them if i can sum up what have you just said it's the

failure of the system that we've inherited it lisa the second world war and most probably since the end of the cold war failure of the system and it's affecting everyone in the world simultaneously now. well it depends what you mean by the system i'd like to say about the wall street. where i've been pretty regularly and where i've spoken. that it would do them a disservice and i think the young people there are doing themselves a disservice to compare this to the conditions. along the north african river the one thing that stands out to me about kids who are on wall street and some of the middle aged people as well is. that they were brought up with the expectation that they would have work and they don't have it.

i said you know that these are rather too late protests in the u.s. because a lot of these young people that i've talked to had a real faith that obama would deliver a change in the system. and that that would concretely mean that they would be able to do with expected to do which was good work have good jobs and so on. they've waited for three years i think without knowing they were. well i mean something maybe didn't rich or didn't get a very nice and recently but that's a very interesting decision feel let me just release a system failed them. yes but it's a different system the system that failed people in libya already carry what you vision system the system. failed people in. in greece so you know i think it's. make a cartoon of saying this kind of global uprising against capitalism it is there are

there are a lot of rumblings against capitalism and it should be ok but they're not saying ok terrifying go to you i mean and i think we should keep in mind this thing are not equal as the n.s.a. already terrifying go to you i mean all of these lately neeld liberal model fail is it failing at least in the west and we can talk about democracy in capitalism as it applies to north africa. no i have a little different perspective on this peter i think what we're seeing in north africa and elsewhere in the world is a continuation of a revolution against excessive government we saw it twenty years ago and the collapse of the soviet union were seen it now in north africa we've seen it throughout africa itself as the quest for individual liberty and freedom an opportunity for individuals continues i think the united states is an important example or of this we perhaps even started it with our own revolution two

hundred thirty years ago and what we're saying is that people want to be free i don't think you have a failure of the system here you definitely have a failure of governments around the world governments that have collected too much power that have monopolized power and have worked with cronies and elites and society to monopolize power our goal would be to split that power apart could be fuze the power throughout society to give birth quite literally power to the people which was the great rallying cry of the revolutions in the sixty's ok pepe what do you think about that as you see it system isn't working for the people it's a system itself is fine it's just it's application of it because this is what we've just heard. there's a series of great the nations all views lee you can article in fair square would need to. in libya but you can compare three is square with zuccotti park in new

york it's a more a less the same thing and they're fighting for the same freedoms as well this people got to be free which reminds me of those old seats the songs you know the young rascals that people has got to be free it's much more complicated than that because this blaming the government for all evils on the planet this is so so so old i'll give you two examples resume now or in. because of what the ruler did in these past eight years is starting to become more alas over the last unequal country because of government policies as well and no wonder that lula got eighty seven percent of approval by brazilians because they knew that these policies as imperfect as they were at least listed thirty million if not more brazilians out of extreme poverty in their no lower middle class and in china they called back to be doing the leadership in beijing and one point three b.n.

of this is very clear as not ok i'm not defending them see what the compact is all about if you don't involve yourselves in political participation or political dissent you're free to get reach to kingdom come this is what then show it being said in one thousand nine hundred fifty six it's being applied by the chinese leadership it works of course we're going to have a lot of these stories but basically the genie is lifting out of poverty four hundred to five hundred million people have plying their male capitalism male liberalism policies as well so the idea of asians about that even that in the revolutions in the so-called evolutions in north africa and the aborted arab spring by the house of saud in the persian gulf people want to get rid of the bigger ships it's a completely different scenario what's happening for instance in the arab spring that i was just going to answer is really crucial central is there

a brigade you really want to jump in there go ahead jerry go ahead. well i think there's a lot of similarity and what we're saying i mean no the problem is that you can be lucky if you live in a in a good country a well governed country you can be lucky in your leadership and have extraordinary leadership we enjoyed that in the person of george washington during our own revolution but more often history shows that we're not lucky in our leadership and the leaders around the world to whom we give extraordinary power quite frequently abuse that power sharing and enjoy many around with it we sure appreciate it when we turn the radio when we're going to rituals to our break we'll continue our discussion on global protests state r t.

new the latest in science and technology from around the world. we've done the future. welcome back across the computer lavelle to remind you we're discussing if the world is slipping into a global revolution. ok i think go to richard in new york here and we went out well been talking about the system and maybe i agree with you it's a bit more fair saying that word how we scouted alyson changing and how is democracy changing and i think we can look at these global trends because a lot of americans feel that democracy serve their their interests and certainly in north africa people want some of the freedoms that americans claim that they should

have so i mean how should the the mix of capitalism and and democracy a change to accommodate people as we see concentrations of wealth and secret only ism we and i think there is those are commonalities all over the world right now. i mean i think focusing on government is the wrong this is wrong. problem. and western capitalism is a concentration of power the financial system. we had a very weak government dealing with a crisis that began in two thousand and eight and the reason for that is that the real power lies outside of government. so when you talk about democracy what you want to talk about is economic democracy not just government and there i would say there is a huge democratic deficit. in. the western

capitalist system and how do we fix that more government less government i think that again is a wrong way to look we need to change for instance the way we structure organizations of work so that people have more say in what they do and more security that's economic change that's that's not getting lost in the issue about whether government is. oppressing people what's oppressing them the real power that's oppressive is economic it's corporations it's the financial system ok here you are you terry what do you think about this going to washington you think about that yeah you know i'm always puzzled by people who complain about the concentration of power and then for their solution they propose to increase the power of the most powerful entity in society which in fact is government i certainly agree that there is too much power concentrated in the financial system

right now but the reason that power is concentrated is because we have had very bad regulations on the part of governments that have allowed that concentration then and what happened when the market when the capitalist system wanted to would have disciplined these banks and financial institutions by making them fail the government in fact stepped in to bail them out so what you got of these two great powerful institutions the government and the financial system working together so you have an even greater concentration of power the answer for people and for the system and the way the market system works and the way the capitalists. i mean is designed to work is to disperse that power keep government and corporations separate let them be competing power bases and society can't happen but there's no in this there's no incentive on the part of these elites to give up any of their power they have bounced back so well after this financial crisis when millions of

people are and we were facing a double dip no matter how you i mean if you're if you're neighbors unemployed that's a recession if you're unemployed it's a depression and this is how a lot of people are looking at there is no hope out there for so many people and we see so much indecision in the eurozone and the united states will in this election cycle no one is good now is going to help obama even if he could do something. of course look at the world the problem in the us is the revolving door between washington and wall street so washington was basically ruled by wall street the congress and us doesn't rule is the solution the approval rating of congress the american population you know they are eighty seven percent in particular because they are not representing the interests of the american people they're representing the interests of the corporations who put them there in the first place and look at europe the year obeys equally works for norse in europe for the club med countless hours i just came back from italy it doesn't work for the club med

countries because they cannot even export themselves out of debt that's because of greece for instance and you see each allianz greeks spaniards and frenchmen nowadays we should go back to where old care is at least we have control of our monetary policy and it's not done in a friend ford you know so these are big for us but look at the places where it go we place this and where this revolving door between politics and economics at least it's you know the outcome is better standard of living for most of the population and i'll go once again brazil as an example turkey is an example however imperfect this system is with their soft brand of. china for large swathes of the population at least a half of one point three billion people and even for some russians as offer some brits and india go forget india as well the same process of lifting millions out of

poverty the key problem nowadays is how do you try to change the system from the inside and not even our best to your efficiency not even our nobel prize economists know how to change capitalism from the inside in fact a lot of other study has been saying for the past thirty five years or so is that capitalism as we know. it's going to implode but nobody knows what's going to be next so we go back to what i'm sure you know the old order is flowering what it knew what is about the war yet ok richard if i go to you that's a very interesting comment there you want to get you want to jump in on that one. it is an interesting comment. i certainly think that what's i think that's right and one way. i don't think it's going to explode it's going to implode which is quite a different thing which is that western european economies and north american economies are gradually going to become satellites to

a much more complicated economic and labor picture in the world let me give you an example of that we're beginning to see a kind of permanent constriction of employment opportunities united states in question of restoring jobs because there aren't jobs to be restored but there are lots of jobs available brazil turkey these are places that are growing a labor force. it's a kind of i wouldn't use the word explode. i think it's the you know the old cliche applies when you have a decline one place you have growth somewhere else will the system be different yes it will be much more government controlled government control has helped nurture. as and as in china. but it's it's not going to we're not going to have

a revolutionary situation i don't think that's really an interesting way to think about very chair finally chair here shift if we see if we see this major shift in capitalism in capitalism producing what people think it should produce like wealth and jobs and things like that what happens to democracy then because we always tied it to together in this post cold war environment but now there seems to be pulling apart going in different areas because if economics isn't working for people people rely upon the democratic system to change things but if they can't get change because of things that we've already talked about in this program then itself i'm sorry democracy will start being questioned because it doesn't produce the goods. yes peter but let's be clear the system is working for people around the world we're in a temporary downturn right now but over the last two decades this system has this capitalist system has lifted millions of people tens of millions of people hundreds of millions of people out of poverty around the world and it's the capitalist system and globalization has taken hold and spread economic power and economic

opportunity to people around the world we see poverty reductions in africa and asia in the united states in europe everywhere around the world in latin america and that is because of this capitalist system now you can throw out the baby with the bathwater if you want to but the idea i would say would be to improve the functioning of the system not to throw it away because one of the alternatives the socialist system we've seen that leads to stagnation a communist system that led to a complete economic collapse and for those who are why am i the person bringing up marx karl marx here about an essential part of his philosophy was the withering away of the state and yet the other two guests seem to see an increase in the power of the state the somehow the salvation of humankind i don't think that's right i think the problem was in my mind's eye all state and already it is government it's

too powerful that they jump and go ahead that this is this is this is rubbish i'm sorry look the sluggish cizik went to a wall street last sunday and he delivered the. version of what has been saying to his best ten books or so basically he said that the marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. what does that mean this means that china which is seizing capital world global capitalism at the moment is proposing that. completely different system of total economic freedom like nail liberalism on steroids with political repression can the rest of the world by the system of course not it's untenable and it's going to be untenable even inside china but in fact this is a third way they are proposing an alternative system lots of developing countries including many developing countries in africa are actually looking at this system

as a kind of salvation for them and even some countries in the middle east and north in africa are also looking at the chinese model as why not you know but of course this is not the answer the answer would be reform from the inside in terms of what color marks would say is we need more social justice so this is not going back to the realist real politic socialism as we had during the u.s.s.r. in the iron curtain because this was. a total perversion of the original humanist marx ideas we're not talking about that we're still talking about a force weight and it hasn't been conceptualized anywhere in the us in europe in south america or in asia all right fascinating discussion gentlemen we've run out of time many thanks to my guest today in new york washington and in some paolo and thanks our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember astafy.