these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. operations are. focusing live from central moscow you're watching r t international the top story police move in to move occupy protesters actions taken against the tent camps in seattle i mean criticism america's media is failing and spain was really driving people on the streets of. nato forces in kosovo extend the deadline for ethnic serbs to remove the barricades and important checkpoints all they say will do themselves. in a new wave of anger erupts in syria against not arab league decision not to suspend the country from the organization. cross-talk guest zone in next on who's in the

firing line stoking the tempers of the anti wall street protesters next. the only unwelcoming crosstalk on peter lavelle the era of great just content 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. crosstalk there's a 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 bassett or terry miller he is the director of the center for international trade

and economics the heritage foundation and in some power we go to turkey escobar he is a journalist and author all right gentlemen this is cross talk to me as 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 self-immolating in front of a government building in tunisia on the seventeenth of december two thousand and ten within days hundreds and then thousands of tunisians caught the fire of protest against the ruling regime then along came egypt and libya syria bahrain yemen and soon practically the entire arab world was in gold in a political confrontation we have witnessed an extraordinary change taking place in the middle east and north africa swear by square. country by country but by that time the wind of discontent have long since reached

europe where for their own reasons people are challenging the status quo general strikes and demonstrations sparked by austerity measures in response to this debt crisis began to sweep through greece in two thousand and ten the same will soon happening in portugal but you thousand and eleven it was speaking and pretty soon pockets of similar resistance were percolating all throughout europe so given the no doubt for people to wake up otherwise we'll just become slaves to the system finally in september as new york city mayor michael bloomberg was warning of riots almost more jobs were created in america the occupy wall street movement was already in the making it only two days before it was a college as a powerful resistance movement with a purported goal over store in democracy in the u.s. we can volunteer believe our brothers and sisters all over the world 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 the cent but will there be more countries partaking in this narrative or has it reached its peak just to begin tapering off what do you think it are going to ground some of these questions of our guests much of thank you very much but let me if i go to you first we have a lot of discontent in the arab world to be having wall street we have it in europe we had london riots and in china there are some rumblings here what connects them all together or is it just serendipity and they're all separate. that's brought what connects them old what connects them all together if i may be as broad as your question is the utter failure of neal liberalism this david harvey has been speaking about this at least for the past fifteen years even while wallerstein as well from the point of view of this stablish meant more or less the real rubini has been seen in the rectally if you see what's going on in the us nowadays the cries

of the economic crisis in the us the atlanticist economic 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 chalo they want the absolutely nailed it in terms of what's the key conceptual question it's the fact that we have a las vegas style system where one percent basically controls the destiny of the other ninety nine and this implies what. this step allies in the concept of liquid more dirty it seems by sequence bhawan i'm not very big fan of well 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 were there anything applies to maybe one percent or two percent of the global population if you are an investment banker or if you

are a journalist traveling around the world if you are high valued professional in the formation pick knology industry but it does not apply to most of the world's population and the elites are still solid they are not exactly liquid they deal in all of the categories of cause and effect. that wing heritage from being like me and they still control the actual wealth that circulates around the world ok all right as you and i know not the real mouse all right. thanks a lot richard what do you think about that if i can sum up what that he just said it's the failure of the system that we've inherited it lisa is 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 like to say about the wall street vents where i've been pretty regularly 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 but one thing that stands out to me about kids who are. all straight and some of the middle aged people as well is. they were brought up with the expectation that they would have work and they don't have it. i think you know that these are rather too late protests in the us 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. that would concretely mean they would be able to do with expected to do which was go to work have good jobs and so on. they waited for three years i think without knowing they were. well i mean

something but then richard didn't get a very nice introduction a but that's a very interesting decision feel the love you just basically says system failed them. yes but it's a different system and the system that failed people in libya. carry what you think and system the system. failed people in. in greece so you know i think it's. a cartoon of saying this kind of global uprising against capitalism it is there are there are lots of rumblings against capitalism and the should be ok but they're not saying ok kerry feingold are you i mean and i think we should keep in mind this is a very logical i say anything all right you can find go to you i mean. neal the liberal model fail is it failing at least in the west and we can talk about democracy in capitalism as it applies to the 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 that we saw it twenty years ago in the collapse of the soviet union we're seeing it now and north africa we've seen it throughout africa itself as the quest for individual liberty and freedom and 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 to diffuse 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 tapi what do you think about that as you said system isn't working for the people it's the system itself is fine it's just it's application of it is this is what we've just heard. there's a series of great these since all of this lead to an article in fair square would lead to. peter alyssum in libya but you can compare it to read a square with zuccotti park in new york it's a more a less the same saying that they're fighting for the same freedoms as well this is a people got to be free which reminds me of those old sixty's songs the all of the young rascals that people has got to be three it's not it's more complicated than that because this blaming the government for our 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 or less over the last inequal 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 lifted thirty million if not more brazilians out of extreme poverty in their no lower middle class and in china they call back the big doing the leadership in beijing and one point three billion chinese is very clear as the ok i'm not defending them i'm see what the contract 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 they show being said in one nine hundred seventy six it's being applied by the chinese leadership it works of course we're going to have

a lot of these stores but basically beijing is lifting out of poverty four hundred to five hundred million people but i have plying their mail capitalism mail liberalism policies as well so there are good asians about that even in the revolutions in the so-called revolutions in north of africa and the aborted arab spring by the house of solve. 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 sort of really crucial central is very very good 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 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 chair and enjoy any run we wish to pretend we turned the radio when the original euro break will continue our discussion on global protests state starting. to take a. stand. please. let's just say

least some other. guests.

subsists. slug the slowest slept the. welcome our stuff from peter lavelle to remind you we're discussing if the world is slipping into a global revolution the lemmings. ok if you go to richard in new york here we were in palo been talking about the system and maybe i agree with you it's a bit amorphous saying that word but how is capitalism changing and how is democracy changing and i think we can look at these global trends because a lot of americans feel that democracy is not serve their their interest in

a 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 we see cronyism and i think there is those are commonalities all over the world right now. i mean i think focusing on government is the wrong. is is wrong. problem in western capitalism is a concentration of power or financial system. we had very weak government dealing with the crisis of 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 that work so that people have more say in what they do and more security this 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 oppressed signum is economic it's corporations it's the financial system ok jerry what do you care what you think about this but i'm 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

a 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 discipline 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. them is designed to work is to disperse that power kid 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 of leads 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 if your neighbors an employer 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 well in this election cycle no one is good you know 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 but congress in the west doesn't rule in a solution the approval rating of progress the american population you know the 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 basie clee works for norse

in europe for the club med council is how i just came back from italy it doesn't work for the club bad countries because they cannot even export themselves out of bet that's the case of greece for instance and you see it's allan's greeks ten years and frenchmen nowadays we should go back to where all the care is is at least we have control of our monetary policy and it's not in a friend for you know so these are big problems but look at the places where google we released this band 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 cultural issues and i'll go once again because it was an example turkey is an example however imperfect the system is with their soft brand of islam. china floor 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 don't forget india as well the same process of lifting millions out of the key problem nowadays is how do you try to change the system from the inside and not even our best theoreticians not even our no gold price economists know how to change capitalism from the inside in fact a lot of wallerstein has been saying for the past twenty 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 gram she you know the old order is floundering but the new war is not being born yet ok richard if i go to you that's a very interesting comment there you want to go you want to jump in on that one. 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 we give an example of. we're beginning to see a kind of permanent constriction of employment opportunities united states and the 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 the labor force it's a kind of i wouldn't use the word explode. i think it's you know the old cliche applies that 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 is help nurture.

turkey brazil 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 finally charioteers 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 of the city economics this isn't working for people people rely upon the democratic system to change things but if they can't get change because of things we've already talked about in this program then itself i'm sorry democracy will start being questioned because it isn'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 as 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 in 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 and not to throw it away because what are the alternatives the socialist system we've seen that leads to stagnation in the 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 but 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 is i don't say they are also a ridiculous government that's too powerful to jump in go ahead that this is this is this is rubbish sorry look sluggish cizik went to a wall street last sunday and he delivered a condensed version of what his 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 seething capital world global capitalism at the moment scruples in the. completely different system of pulled away economic freedom like a male 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 or 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 a right 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. and 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 it for a suite any 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 this here darkie see you next time and remember astafy. if you. want.