welcome back this is our live from boston here's a recap of all of main stories the missing a leg the new one calls for an investigation of the death of colonel gadhafi after gruesome footage of the media failed supreme point exactly when or how the ouster of libyan leader lost his life the country's interim government claims he died from wounds sustained during his capture the city of sirte on thursday. and western leaders killed the colonel's devise plans emerge that they're secretly relieved gadhafi won't be spilling the beans about his previous dealings with the u.s. and its allies the late libyan leader brought us for many years a major customer of old western and what the next with its. labor unions call for more protests in greece as a parliament approves harsh cutbacks a big mass chaos and violence across the country and new measures are the government's latest attempt to stave off a debt default. and

a russian soyuz rocket successful inmate's its very first foray launched carrying europe's new satellite navigation system on its way to rivalling americas if he gets. let's all for me my colleague bill dog will be here in about thirty minutes time in the meantime we'll look at whether the activists of the occupy wall street movements have the potential to change world politics crosstown is up next in r.t. . play. live. live live. live take a. listen to the live hello and welcome to cross talk you talk about with roughly fifteen hundred occupy protests occurring in eighty two countries worldwide this is

a global protest movement was staying power there can be no doubt there is intense dissatisfaction with the political and economic status quo but the question remains can all of this be translated into something meaningful. to live in the summer to live. to cross-talk the are going global protests i'm joined by rachel martin in paris she's an international political and communications strategist and journalist in philadelphia we go to dave lindorff he is an in war winning investigative reporter and author of the blog this can't be happening and in sacramento we cross to joseph cohen mohi is an associate professor at california state university sacramento all right folks this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want to me very much encourage it but first marcia this global movement seems to have some traction in china does it all started as a mishmash a collection of interest groups highlighting inequality and the influence of big business over national decision making today the occupy wall street movement has

morphed into something far far bigger and far beyond the u.s. like because of the fumes all american people because of the other parts of the world. play out tremendously in. place it's all happening at the same they keep driving the movement worldwide is a sense that free market capitalism has shortcomings and that it is ordinary people who suffer the most from. and across the developed world they are and they're losing their jobs and they're finding their governments on able to allay their grievances at the same time the income gap has continued to widen and the bank bailouts from two thousand and eight have made the public liable for debts of the mega wealthy and as such the current global protest movement is demanding a new set of solutions to today seemingly insolvable day when we want to be part of a global movement of the youth movement not a revolution a little piece of. complete generation. left in

consciousness many in the developing countries have joined the occupy wall street protest against global financial institutions and transnational corporations and hope to trigger a examination and restructuring of political and economic policies and who knows what the g. twenty meeting coming up may be a look at finally begin to see some results you know maybe we will rachel fine go to you first in paris and just looking at with his report there we had some young people saying they didn't want to be put with a buttonholed with any kind of movement youth movement that movement they don't want to be that i described but in looking at all these movements around the world is it fair to say or is an exaggeration to say it is an anti-capitalist movement. no i think there's two points that make your the first is i think it's important not to fall into the cognitive trap of assuming that whatever type of protest movement we see in whatever country we are going to be in is exactly the type of protest and the reasons for the protests that we're seeing in other countries in

other words a civil rights movement in america in the sixty's is not exactly the same actually not not anything like. a protest movement in cairo that we saw during the arab spring and likewise that movement is nothing like the occupy wall street protests say secondly i think it's important to note that wall street has nothing to do with capitalism and that's i think the fault often of hollywood in the way that capitalism is portrayed as being equivalent to wall street but the reality is that wall street is if anything state socialism and and corporate welfare these are not the capitalist principles i think it's important to go back in to find capitalism and what it is capitalism is free market limited government wall street represents neither of those two things they've taken bailouts and government has its fingerprints all over wall street so it's not republicans it's not conservatives in the in the free market limited government sense that run wall

street these are these are corporate welfare recipients plain and simple it has more to do with socialism if anything they capitalism capitalism hasn't failed and i think capitalism is in fact the solution and if you explain that that's a whole other maybe a little bit later again if i can go to you i mean i've always found the term occupy wall street to be quite interesting and i actually quite agree with a lot with what rachel i did say why don't you occupy congress once you occupy parliament because it's these people that are in the pockets of bankers in the corporate world why don't we just get rid of these people ok if there is such a genuine groundswell for change that's how it can happen. i would have to take issue with what rachel said it's christabel. that there hasn't been free market capitalism in the united states for as long back and say you want to look in the industrial era i mean the same argument that he's making about the banks being socialist because they have so much government involvement in their

business activities could have been said about the railroads back in the nineteenth century they only got what they got because of government involvement in land grants and in financing everything else so really american capitalism has been a process of using corporations using governments to basically socialize their their. investment and also their losses so. what's different here that's happening that i find as someone who has been a journalist back to nine hundred seventy two and was involved in the antiwar movement dating back to one hundred sixty six when given my age away. this is really different because any united states we don't really talk about normally about words like capitalism and words like revolution. and this is now even making it into mainstream media and we're talking about capitalism

we're talking about whether capitalism works that's new and and the other thing is that. this movement is not part of some old left you know it's not. breakaway the communist sects and try to sects and and the kinds of groups that actually spearheaded be any word movement in the early days it's a grassroots movement of young people who are actually questioning the foundation principles of that you cannot mix and political system in the united states that's really new and they're doing it without you know being led by the nose by. areas. special interest party groups that are trying to push their own it well it hasn't been doing is it isn't happening the anyway the assembly meetings it hasn't happened yet and i got a job but i mean this is starting and i had had well this started out. on

wall street with one occupation it's grown like wildfire all over the country and there are all these different demands developing but we're hearing words like us empire we're here we're seeing connections between us militarism and the inability to fund public sector jobs all of these demands are coalescing and it's very early in this movement remember it's only been a what about a month ok joseph but i mean we just heard what i just think all right let me go to just a personal going to rachel but i mean and we just heard you know we've been focusing a lot on young people there's a lot of middle class people middle aged people involved in this as well as because of the financial crisis and i'd like to point out to you during most recessions income inequality narrows during this great recession a recession a great contraction we've seen inequality actually grow not something new for a recession at least since the second world war yeah well i'm you know reporting from a city that's the tenth most underwater as far as everybody's mortgages in this in

the whole nation and that's part of it to me what they did was i agree with the sentiments that have been spoken about the movement itself i find it interesting we don't have to reinvent the wheel and a lot of the labels about capitalism anti-capitalist i mean my my students all the young people you know the soviet union fell around ninety one right so it's really kind of out of their experience this whole dichotomy of all that it's true you're either a socialist a statist or account it's a false you know kind of frame that i've noticed people in the media who oppose occupy wall street are always trying to impose it and i think as a story you look at it. i think i look at this now like the bonus army marching one hundred thirty two down to washington they did occupy washington it was repressed but the movement continued also the sit down strikes in the mid thirty's in michigan that formed the u.a.w. i mean that was occupation they occupied the factory of martin luther king

a poor people's campaign in sixty eight the goal was to do exactly that to come to washington and they were going to stay put they want to bring three hundred thousand people watch that they're going to occupy washing so they had a major poverty build so we don't have to reinvent the wheel here and also what's interesting i think we have to reinvent the wheel with the antitrust clearly you know because there's a ranches and it's very really really rico statute yeah but i mean i mean the all talking workers are all very good at describing what's going on here rachel do you think what do we do now what do they do now. well i think if they were smart the protesters would just opt out of wall street and off out of anything to do with the government and go out and create something whatever happened to the idea i think now the problem that we have the reason why the youth around the world specifically in western democracies are at this point is because they're so used to getting things and getting a lot of things without actually putting in a lot of effort somehow we ended up we ended up doing away with the idea of really

having to work to get something now it's like they graduate from university i expect to have a job i expect to have benefits i expect to have a lot of money i expect to be able to buy everything that my parents can when they've been working thirty forty years longer than me this idea of starting with nothing of leaving the nest of starting with a tiny little studio with almost no furniture a mattress on the floor and a dream that the idea that that you know you can start there and end up a billionaire is something that you really can only do in north america you don't need the connections to government you don't need the connections to people with a lot of money you can come from a small town and you can make something of yourself because you have the freedom to do that and these people who are protesters have the freedom to get off wall street to forget about wall street to forget about the government and get out there and sell your talent whatever happened to that american idea of working hard selling your talent and making something of yourself and slowly building a life that maybe doesn't include your i phone right away doesn't include

a beautiful house with very little room what happened to starting small and earning things i don't know about you said unity who are our community just our community got creamed i mean they laid off teachers firefighters counselors child protective services workers they closed homeless shelters i mean they have just there's been a de mood of the public sector at the local level at least here in sacramento we got a twelve point five percent unemployment rate years and i just creamed all the low . calls services role i think by students parent therefore he has a law school to take this to show me how they're going to embrace it and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on global protests state parties. can see just some of. the.

wealthy british scientists i'm. not surprised the. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for no holds barred look at the global financial headline is going to cause a report on r.g.p. . loses least

six six. six six. six . ok. welcome back to crossfire guy peter lavelle to mind you were talking about protests around the world. can you say. ok dave in philadelphia i'd like to go to you i mean for we went to the break we were talking about there and it was well rachel that brought up the differences in generations that we have this entitlement in generation now which i tend to agree with you but at the same time is there a sense that there's the little there's

a lack of participation in democracy right now that there may be that young people particularly don't feel like they have any kind of impact on the quote unquote system and this is the this is another element here people talk about the financial element the the economic part of it but what about the democracy part about them participating in society. well let's back up for a second these students who are in the street one of the reasons they're there is because they they can't even afford their universities the cost of public education that's going up to eighteen twenty thousand dollars a year at public schools for in-state students my wife teaches at temple university a public institution in pennsylvania it's now eight hundred thousand dollars a year to go well the loans that are possible for these students are are these extortionate seven percent loans on guaranteed government government backed loans they should be one percent these kids are running

a hundred thousand. debts just going through four years of school and they're working hard for them i'm sorry they're not entitled these are working class kids that can't finish and then when they do pay and spend one hundred thousand or one hundred twenty thousand gun in interview these kids that on wall street some of them are working at forty thousand a year jobs after getting out of school and working for a couple years they can't even make payments on their loans on their living in new york so it isn't a matter of in title that if you get a job that pays you nothing and if you don't if you're not lucky you don't get a job plus you've got this huge debt that's why these kids are so angry and they're not entitled ok rachel just to. know that rachel for some really interesting point there and i think i think you touched on a really interesting point there and i think that's half the problem i think over the last few decades the idea of graduating with it fairly useless liberal arts degree and being out of work because you don't have a job that's and announce has been a problem so these kids go to school they pay

a time in my twenty ivy league they're just state schools or whatever they happen to be able to afford they end up with these huge debts they're not getting a job that's productive or useful to the economy so therefore it doesn't pay very well i think that's actually part of the solution as well i think you're touching on part of it was shining as north america in general you know that the future of north america in general. isn't high tech production military production things that can be made in china things that can be made in emerging markets because we've outsourced all that just like they've outsourced their consumer base to north america so i think if we start making high tech products but that requires engineers that requires people who are at specialized knowledge and guess what you or i don't understand we might here in a hired writer i need more of a focus i know how to use it in the gym if i can if i can take that question in the end and give one to you right now it's very interesting is that it seems to be culture doesn't really matter what you do it's what you consume and that's what people are so upset about because they can consume like they would like the

consumer what they expect to consume it's not what you do it's what you buy look like click here let's move away from the pop psychology about the movement let's talk about the concrete issues that any call you levels in this society right now are myriad about nine hundred twenty nine levels and that when you have this inequality it actually hurts the manners of the man crisis and so let me just get specific for a minute we don't have to reinvent the wheel you can bring it antitrust in there was a company like citi group they had a bipartisan in the ninety's deregulation of wall street citi group became a monster its a hedge fund attached to an insurance company attached to a brokerage house just a commercial bank they got really glass steagall ok they ran a rough shod over that was bipartisan obama gets in we expected him to do something about the banks he didn't do anything he just beholden to the same corporate interests it's very disillusioning to these young people to come out in mass for a president they think they might do something then to larry summers and tim geithner running the show still now there thing is

a rico statute the racketeer influence a corrupt organization it's still on the books they they prosecuted michael milken in the eighty's with rico they could prosecute these people who packaged these c.e.o.'s and and bet against them you know citigroup just paid two hundred seventy million dollars to settle with investors after they stole a bill. and from now recently out of court now that's just one example they were they were running rackets with the c.d.o. those and they collapse the entire housing wealth of the nation and cause all this unemployment i mean they wrecked the economy and we're sitting here i mean a pop psychology discussion on how the kids have useless liberal arts degrees are you kidding me it's not about training the only maybe it's really twelve ok joseph and then you go to any of them maybe it's a combination of both here dave you want to jump in there that's a complete that's a complete yeah it's completely wrong that kids are getting liberal arts degrees like a temple they're studying the people i talk to who are getting these forty thousand dollars jobs were but i have faith in engineering communications people those jobs

those jobs are being exported overseas to china and india and they're. saying you need to train people for high tech jobs isn't going to work either because they can do it better in china and it is a very easy it for half there are a quarter of what salaries sincerely the only thing we want is there are no jobs in the united states there's twenty three percent on of it if you use real number right here in united states today to tell people they should go out and work is ludicrous rachel jump in. well that can be equalized through through taxes and through taxes on imports of things they're made overseas and i think part of that is is and this is why we're facing a bit of a problem on this issue is because nobody is actually willing to lead on this and to make a value statement by saying look all of our jobs are being exploited because companies are outsourcing all of this this production to india to china to other countries

that don't necessarily share our values and pay the same way that we as americans are we as canadians or ways north americans feel we should be paid so instead of saying look until that equalizes until that that that has more quality and people are being paid better over there and better over here we're going to put a tax on the imports of those products coming back into the country that but nobody's willing to do that because that means they're going to help with china is buying up all of the u.s. debt bonds so the reason why people are able to get part of this huge lines of credit and sort of buy these really homes they can't afford is because china. and all right now joseph again i guess maybe i'm alone on this one here why don't they you know if there's such a groundswell here why don't just take on the politicians who get the broom out and say it's time for you guys to go all of you ok i mean the difference between republicans and democrats on these issues are so very go ahead the political story

is going to get there the political system is owned by money agreed to do that when the political system is completely. racial or people. just got i'll tell you what a better system is where you go for a lot of your intro agreements that's why the x. jobs are being exported i should go ahead they've already that's why those free trade agreements are a fait accompli they were put through bipartisan doesn't matter who's sitting there even obama right now is pushing the ones with an animal in colombia ok that's the other side you've got citizens united january tenth. they just completely it was a game changer the supreme court ruled that corporations can spend unlimited campaign dollars that mean those like throwing gasoline on a corrupt system you've got to get the money out of the system you've got to break up these big conglomerates reinstate some semblance of regulation and you've got to go after them with rico because if they're able to get away with this what is the deterrent for these too big to fail banks well that's going to stop them from doing

it again if they don't get it will face any kind of prosecution or remembering the other kids on wall street that are you know they were criticizing they know all of this they're connected all those dots the corrupt senator durbin from illinois not long ago said the banks only assent on the senate they own the senate that should have been a clarion call for campaign finance reform instead they've got a supreme court that is actually wants an oligarch he wants a corporate oligarchy to run our politics you've got a corporate media doesn't report on this stuff that's why our team is good that they're doing some are through to you know reporting on this stuff but there's no there's no reason why a company like citi group should even exist you want calculus or i'll give you calculus and i you break it down it's an insurance company i had spun investment bank a brokerage fund and a commercial bank and credit card company and you break all those up you make a complete may have ten c.e.o.'s instead of one i'll tell you that rachel is rachel

i kid you let me on that let's say with this movement here do you think do you think that these these these people are designated mostly young are they disillusioned with the process then i mean did disillusion the local elect are senator alecto representative i mean they're not they're way beyond that they're not in the thinking in terms of reforming the system they want to opt out of the system i mean this is that's i'm bringing up the r. word because i know you should go ahead i think i think they just want more stuff ok period i think they just want more stuff without having to feel it's not there no i don't really see it for example. and this is i mean we can take the same discussion and apply it to the ny kingdom today it was in the news in the u.k. that according to chamber of commerce report there are jobs the war available and people aren't showing up to the interview ok let me talk to the premise happening in the last year almost all the time i mean are you going are you going gave go ahead good day the kids are calling for a revolution these kids that are camping out in the cold in sleeping bags and

sometimes without even fans they're not looking for stuff they're calling for a revolution they're calling for a total change in the system in the united states and the first thing they want is complete money out of the system that would be a revolution in itself. you know as joseph said so there's little you really need to do this to you know what you need and i mean it's working for the people instead of for corporations all right deducible going to give you the last word we're going to give joseph the last word on this program here what would a revolution look like if it were to happen it would look like a frank capra movie as american as. antagonist is mr potter who owns everything but in the end he loses ok it has nothing to do with socialism it has to do with basic american values of fairness and have an even playing field and not have you know oligarchies in this country rachel do you agree with me you've got ten seconds . i think they should all just go home and figure out how they're going to make

a living period but i think they should not worry about wall street now there is a pop psychology you can make a life without understanding these are going to use the you mean like sound your ideal house is the arts degree would help you all right you know kind of very interesting how to thank you very much i want to thank my guest today in paris philadelphia and in sacramento and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time and remember crosstalk.