with r.t. live from moscow on rover's to shape breaking news for you this hour moscow warns it will pull out of the start treaty and stop nuclear disarmament if the u.s. continues to deploy its missile defense shield in europe the president also says russia could deploy a missile system on its own borders. thousands of vent their anger at egypt's military rulers with protesters staying put in the heart of cairo saying the army's concessions simply are not enough the military council says a presidential election will be held by next summer people want them to go right

now. and a murder mystery spiced with a pinch of global politics five years on the unsolved killing of four russian a former security agent alexander litvinenko continues to muddy relations between moscow and my. colleague goldwater's here in half an hour's time but for now. discuss what lies behind the whole occupy movement and who really are the so-called ninety nine percent crosstalk is now. q. hello and welcome across the uk i'm curious about what's next for the occupy movement across the u.s. after police use strong arm tactics to disperse protesters should the movement seek a way to join the political process and to insert itself into legislative

procedures or will it eventually fragment into protests for protests a. particular. cross-talk the ongoing protests in the us i'm joined by my guest in new york james livingston he's a professor of history at rutgers and author of against thrift why consumer culture is good for the economy the environment and your soul published yesterday patrick brennan he is a writer and the william f. buckley fellow at the national review institute and francis box pavan she is a distinguished professor of sociology and political science at city university of new york graduate center all right folks crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first is this movement actually going anywhere i think that's the main question right now is it over the chill months that the occupy wall street movement has existed it's turned into a juggernaut of civil disobedience that has plowed through cities across the world but just as the movement is growing in scale and scope it is also grappling with

more and more criticism crackdowns and facing growing questions about its tactics and strategy the movement's advocates still insist that occupy is an important voice for public frustration that has succeeded in raising awareness of staggering income and wealth inequality there is a movement brewing in america not just the occupy wall street but the two thousand encampments occupy around america and also the sense that suddenly the ninety nine percent of americans who have not been heard from are being heard from. and heard in the media which is not paid attention until now indeed the extent to which occupy has gathered steam and resonated across the us and the globe does say something about a collective sense of discontent and disillusionment with the economy or whether that sense can be applied to all the ninety nine percent of americans that the protests claim to represent is another story and this is shown in a recent survey conducted by public policy polling which found that not only does

occupy appeal to nearly a handful of the ninety nine percent but it's a poor ratings have sad over the last month is growing awareness of occupy probably stems from the real or perceived notion that the movement's outlook is redundantly utopian while its members are yet to put forth a clear and specific policy goals and here in lies the protestors cheat task proving they can convert their momentum into targeted action but even if occupy were to recede into the annals of social resistance it would most likely leave behind the idea that the movement came to represent namely that there is a y disconnect between the government and on the ground reality and that reality shows the western economic system experiencing a deep systemic crisis so perhaps the name purpose has already been served we'll see about that first francis i'd like to go to you in new york or you wrote i think we desperately need a popular uprising in the united states is this the uprising you were hoping for and where is this if it is we are so where is this uprising going. this this

uprising is raising the issue of the extreme inequality in the united states inequality of both wealth and income has increased steadily over the past thirty five years. and somehow it did not find real expression and in the american political process either didn't find strong expression in the american political process because the very fact that wealth has become more concentrated has meant that the wealthy can import. more money into our electoral system so even democrats did not forcefully express the fact. any quality and people were left without even a clear articulation of what the problem was what the problems are and occupy wall street. began not the small in new york city it

was first clear and. expression a big problem who center was financial capitalism ok patrick what do you think about that i mean it one of the things i find very interesting is that we are talking with marsh's report was i mean is it really about the ninety nine percent or is it about a certain type of person that is being disenfranchised in america's democratic system because i mean if it's ninety nine percent why don't you just all register to vote and kick the bombs out but that's not what's happening you know i think it's very clear that it really doesn't represent ninety nine percent of america i mean if you go down to zuccotti park it doesn't look like ninety nine percent of americans to me and i think the polls bear that out just yesterday there was you said a gallup poll that came out with support of just at least thirteen percent in support of something like thirty percent against the fact is that it was a great piece new york yesterday that brought out what are the origins of the movement and it's essentially not a rebel movement believes in this but it's essentially an archaic answer topless

movement and while many americans are unhappy with their economic situation i don't think that the blame that on the nature of capitalism i think that's a pretty pretty rare side to me in america today and so in that sense as well if you don't count against capitalism and so i'm not sure they're really i mean that's a fair enough to use if i can go to you i mean a lot of people would say capitalism isn't working for them. that's right i think that's exactly right i think there are two questions here one is the nature of politics register in vote and vote for what what happens in congress if you vote for whomever nothing to say that that this movement has to get political is to me just laughable because the political process is so broken it is so not just a bipartisan partisan but put ridiculously dysfunctional. so that's one thing the other thing is the nature of capitalism americans have always been ambivalent about capitalism the nature of it sure yet i think the ninety nine percent are deeply

deeply worried about what's happening under this system that we call capitalism like it or not i think the one percentage of people that are street from zuccotti park you can be and build more capitalism if you're so for a consumer society i mean how do the consumer society about capitalism. james you want to feel that well. sure i'm going to vote about capitalism because i think consumerism is a way of transcending or superceded capitalism i think it's a way of reducing corporate profits for example if we redistribute income away from you know i don't think original script raises the issue of thing happened although some there had francis jump in the movement. the movement did not raise the issue of capitalism every raise the issue of concentrated wealth and income. it doesn't rule out against capitalism and. it speaks about corporate financial wealth that has greatly concentrated and not only the

top one percent the top tenth of one percent in our society and it is certs actually pretty close to correctly that most of the rest of the society is that played as a result of the drift of wealth upwards in the united states it doesn't say capitalism most of the chances i think this is a serious thing here i mean it's very interesting here my three guests here we can't even decide really what this movement's all about and james i'd like to quote something that you wrote in something called occupy wall street isn't the same old political crowd it's much much more i'm going to read a sentence from here the response to occupy wall street tells us more about the limits of our political discourse then about the content of the protest or movement can you elaborate on that because it's very very interesting and you mentioned something else in the article about eastern europe and i studied the solidarity movement very very carefully when i was a graduate student you drawing parallels here so it's very interesting i had yet

when i say it's it has something to do with the limits of our discourse i mean what is the what is the limits or what is the nature of politics it seems to me a bottle of how it all got it right he said dissidents opposition is not all there is to politics in fact what he said was living within the true. ruth is a pre-political space that's what i think is happening in zuccotti park so so yes we might be able someday to translate this into political programs but for the time being that is not the point the great is simply to allow these words to make more sense to more people the ninety nine percent versus the one percent if those words if that vernacular if these if these these verbs and nouns get into the language we have a way of thinking about the future that right now we go ok patrick if i can go to you it seems to me this movement knows what it doesn't like it doesn't like an oligarchy it doesn't like concentration of wealth i go on and on what does it want

what is it like because it's all telling us what they don't like and that's why it's so it's such a dual use group. i think that i think the dreams with getting out what probably unifies them more than anything is the idea of sort of this kind of a political utopia piece or consensus consensus based mocker city and so that's that's the whole movement revolves around these general assemblies and they're sort of wonderful ideas and basically you know liberal commentators were going to that is beautiful you know and fortunately it isn't like tahrir square because sort of square was it was a functional political protest political aims but they said you know the six already this is beautiful and unfortunately it doesn't represent anything that's particularly politically practical and it's not it's not an example of american democracy that is what democracy looks like you know having. requiring consensus and you know painted all viewpoints isn't really want to market it looks like it isn't what's made functional democratic societies work. but that is i think what it

is all together is this is this is faith and consensus which ok fred francis of france what answers go jump in there because i know actual history. you know actually social movements that looks something like wall street have been very very important in american history the american revolution itself came out of the social movement in the united states it wouldn't have been it wouldn't have triumphed without that social movement the abolitionists set in motion the political currents which led to civil war and the emancipation of the slaves the labor movement. flared up in the 1930's these did not look like. electoral representative politics they have the distinctive dynamics of movements movements look we'll i'm talking to from my. campaign politics or elected politicians and when you when you're so dismissive of that movement because it

hasn't put out a series of legislative or programmatic goals. you're not comparing it to other movements this movement has an incredible symbolic power because it has helped through the fog of jibberish and propaganda that is the story where i meet the french i mean i just mean here we're going to go to a short break and out of any short break we'll continue our discussion on the occupy movement stay with our. came. to. that has become more and more is to keep the creation of the bill the food system

the global food system is not created to feed the people of the world it's created to maximize the profits. you're not trading the actual physical grain you're trading promises for graeme to be delivered a month or six months or twelve months or eighteen months in the future. for reasons madi likely silver or gold that can be negotiated in order to some degree. some place. yet or. possibly it's not traded now but it could be in the future of. morning news today violence has once again flared up. these are the images coke

world has been seeing from the streets of canada after. trying to cope ration through today. wealthy british style. markets. find out what's really happening to the global economy for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to cause a report. can still. welcome back to cross talk you know about remind you we're talking about the protests sweeping across the united states and beyond. q.

ok james i want to go to you because you were very few were very very complimentary to francis's last comment before we went to the break and i don't want to i want to i'm again i don't want to i want to see if i can put you guys on the spot here james and francis first i'll go to james here i mean if the system isn't the solution it in the you can't work within the system because the system is so dysfunctional how do you create a new system without being systematic and creating something because again this consensus i mean i like the rhetoric i'm very interested in that regard this reminds me of eastern europe fighting communism in the 1980's and it's all really nice to hear but you know even solidarity had a very had to build a strong organization to finally defeat the communist regime eventually you have to do that you have to have leaders you have chapters and you have runners and all these types of things here i mean how do you how do you square the circle i think i think it's

a great question and i think patrick was right as well the question is when do those social movements that francis cites when they become political in the sense that we would recognize that if you look at the american revolution for example in seven hundred seventy two would anybody. say there was a revolution going on no i mean the thing died in seven hundred seventy eight with the the boston massacre and it didn't get reconstituted no seven hundred seventy three the abolitionists actually make the revolution the second american revolution we call the civil war and reconstruction know there had to be a translation from evolutionism to political anti-slavery we're not at that stage yet we're still at a stage of it seems to me anyway intellectual inquiry into a logical education that's where we should be we don't know the future yet and we're going to have to work it out but i eventually yes we're going to have to do something political now because it's it seems to be completely pointless when france has a kind of big sequester then what do you do why where do you go i mean i said i'm very sympathetic to you but i mean i don't see how you get from point a to point b.

it let alone get from a to z. . well first you're trading movements as they occur at a single point in time and all the movements all the great movements in american history have occurred have unfolded over a fairly long period of time. labor movement unfolded over probably trump years the civil rights movement began in the nineteenth. hadn't subsided even by the early one nine hundred seventy s. the movement then creates. a kind of europe of communication it introduces new messages into the political system that regular politics suppresses and the movement also introduces new forces into the political system that interact with existing forces the movement doesn't create its own outcome the outcome is the result of the immortal fred francis dream the marriage

has to be fair to be fair to all go to patrick here on this one i mean again i mean if the movement isn't focused on what it wants to accomplish and how to accomplish it how does it get there because all the other social movements have been mentioned on this program here abolition the rev american revolution i mean these were very political ok these from this movement now that we see occupy wall street is extremely economic ok it's how the system functions and for whom the how the economy functions and for home users it's very different than the social movements that we've had in the past. well i think even if you call going to the american version but even to some percent economic movement because you are just looking for more support economic indicators surveillance but i think that the difference to your really looking at is that it was moving towards the american revolution or the abolition or even the labor movement those represented fundamentally american ideals and if there's something that that sort of person if i was that the. doctor

what's wrong with me it's generally the idea that a government in the state in some way will be able to transform our society reduce inequality in addition we can really be actively join in the political process to reduce inequality and i don't think that's true most americans believe mr forty percent of total rising as a result of this francisco head well this movement is distinct it's actually from the movements of the tranny of the century because it's very skeptical of government that's what it's emphasis on the general assembly on reaching consensus. total democracy reflects free flights it's disappointment that skepticism of the way government has functioned in the twentieth and twenty first century things that strike brilliant or israel is an instrument of capital as the james guy jumping can i can i sleep in here i mean to cite the evolution of. the american revolution that's fine but the abolitionists

were explicitly and very self consciously anti political they refused to enter the electoral arena because they thought it would corrupt there they were right it did corrupt but the anti-slavery movement that did get electoral between one hundred forty eight and eight hundred sixty one made a huge difference the point is the abolitionists were anti-political just like it seems to me occupy wall street only some of them some of them were in the center of the united states. ok i think in a charles sumner i might agree yeah ok patrick i mean i want to pick up on something you said earlier and i want to just get it clear for you is the occupy wall street movement un-american in your opinion. yeah i believe it is i don't think it's i don't think it represents the way that american democracy works the idea of consensus which is american democracy is american democracy work isn't working for the average person today. the average person or an oracle system i want i want to know that it's it's the oracle it isn't treating average american very

well right now but that doesn't say that the business from the way forward and our political process and democracy democracy takes time and so even though our political process is stalled right now and it isn't seems well it really isn't hardly if i can go to james if i can go to james on the banks were in trouble the congress got together pretty fast and bailed them out did they mean really matter of weeks ok it goes move very quickly as they sense are invested interests are at stake here but the very principle of a representative democracy seems to be pretty low on the priority list right now because this is the whole reason why people are opting out of it because it didn't work for him i think out by wall street is quintessentially american because its fundamental question is how do we achieve equality patrick may be right democracy is ugly and it works slowly and it doesn't work on consensus even so it seems to me that the fundamental question they're asking is how do we achieve equality that there's nothing more american than. francis i mean i don't know if it's how to

create equality may think what a lot of people are saying they want to fair playing field i think that's that's fair to ask isn't it i mean when you look at all of these graduates coming out of university terribly in debt and they have to go back and move in with their parents and get you know hourly get paid an hourly wage and i just creates a vicious cycle of debt that you'll never get out of and i think that's a good enough reason for a lot of people to protest i mean the system doesn't help them the system helps the people that are have vested vested interest in keeping the system the same way is it is today i worry and i think that most of the participants in occupy wall street would agree the issue is extreme in quality and the political economy that isn't functional for working million unemployed for the millions of young people who. graduate from college only to find themselves deeply in debt and unable

to get a job for people who don't even get help from the tattered safety net in the united states and meantime and everybody knows this now as a result of the scare and all looks that the scandals that emerged during the financial crisis mean time lots of big companies hardly pay taxes we bail out wall street we bail out general motors and the banks refuse to write down the principal of an inflated mortgage is this is it isn't working all right i want to i want to quote from the mistakes that are coming across on in the euro i think it's interesting you're talking about the occupy wall street movement their food system does seem to encapsulate quite neatly their vision for how the world should work free high quality stuff should appear for their consumption what do you mean by that. well i mean i think that he was a particular if i think that's why that's why they called it

a go ahead high cause they're going to cite high quality. then a couple of their cooks are actually employed at blue hill stream expensive restaurant westchester county and interesting what's what it's it's not really ninety nine percent of america out there it's these it's for a large extent unemployed college graduates just basically who are overeducated are well educated if you want to call it. who like to you know sort of get out there and do their democratic thing but those really are the people that are hurting in america and i did this did represent the those who oppress america and just let me finish i mean the college if we're done with if we're really if it's really about say writing down student loan debt for college graduates are unemployed now because graduates are the only saying in america right now they're actually doing very well the unemployment rate among them is going to four or five percent and their incomes have grown over the last twenty or thirty years i mean that's that's a perfect example of why wall street is really representing sort of the the teachings of the of the chattering classes in not both the you know the middle and

middle americans who are really really hurting james you want to jump in there the chattering classes i had yes yes i i i i have to say that look i find it ridiculous that permanent residents of zuccotti park might well fit the demographic that you're citing unemployed college graduates but if you watch what happens. after hours after people have gone to work it's very very different if you watch the demonstrations if you watch the marches if you participate in them you'll see that the labor movement is there you see that all kinds of people there in fact the mail that i got after i did an interview for rutgers on this question came from people who said to me i can't get there i work for a living what do i do i want to support this movement i cannot because i'm working nine to five what do i do so i think that's in this characterization and least ok francis i want to give you the last word on this program a year from now where is this movie going to be. i think a year from now this movement will have panned out from the parks and plazas where

there are relatively small in town thousands of people by the way all movements begin with relatively small groups the civil rights movement didn't start out as a majority area and movement nor did the american revolution this movement is in that sense. but all right our answers are going to have to jump in here are very very interesting discussion folks many thanks my guest today in new york and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are to see you next time remember rastafarians . can. still. compete if you want to be. in indonesia she's available in the ground you know the truth sure it's

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