tara exporter in the world the israeli government and its security forces will continue to act forcefully systematically and calmly against international terror in from iran. a potential israeli rocket clash looks more likely than never there is speculation a preemptive strike against iran's nuclear sites could happen as early as spring or summer although that's not causing undue concern in israel i think possibly people you know they make their plans for a vacation you know pass or a vacation summer vacation possibly people are beginning to wonder well is there going to be a war is something going to mess it up or i think they're probably going ahead with it with sort of a thought we're back home or it would be nice if we could get a flight that we could cancel you know is that sort of thing israel has previous experience when it comes to putting an end to new visions which pose a potential threat in one thousand nine hundred one is jets wiped out reactors in iraq they struck again in two thousand and seven hitting sites in syria but with

iran's nuclear program things may not be so simple if israel attacks iran it will not stop iran forever from getting nuclear weapons the only postpone it for a relatively brief amount of time the. installations are too diverse and far flung to destroy a fact of fully israel does not have us poured white house secretary adviser was in israel over the weekend warning against a move on iran saying it was better to wait for tougher sanctions to take effect in the coming months but mines may already be made up i think one of the things to create this aura of inevitability is to shut them up to shut up opposition at home and of course to convince the united states and europe that this is an inevitability it's going to happen daughter pose that in fact why don't you help us out there is a question mark however over whether israel has what it takes to carry out the

mission i dog with the we have the capability. of creating damages to the extent of the media to the program and even if israel's military prowess will allow it to carry out a strike on underground facilities in iran chances are it won't and there are as you know saddam hussein and bashar assad by the time they knew what was happening was over and could just you know grumble without having to fight back you imagine you run sitting still all day day after day day after day what is really triggering it back i think any any sane person realizes that they're all almost guaranteed the missiles falling on israel and considering iran for one of the twentieth century's longest wars against iraq in the one nine hundred eighty s. the consequences could be far reaching and destructive. to zero has been suffering some bad weather as of late but it's likely that even the strongest winds will blow the country's foreign policy after its course and when it comes to israel's

forecast for iran the storm clouds seem to be growing every darker in tel aviv r.t. . u.s. presidential contender ron paul is warned that his country is slipping into a fascist system with a broken government ruled by big business speaking to supporters in kansas city the republican candidate said americans individual liberties were being stripped away let's now talk to jeff steinberg he's from the executive review magazine which focuses on national security so jeff is ron paul right. well i think he is correct in what he said but i think that the reality of the situation is even more dangerous and as a member of the house of representatives i would hope that a representative form would be foreigner who bipartisan group that would finally draw the line and say that president obama has committed impeachable crimes both from the standpoint of going to war against libya without any effort

control to get the permission of the congress which is demanded under the u.s. constitution the assassination of the former head of state cannot be once he was disarmed and in custody there are at least three instances where american citizens have been assassinated overseas without any due process these are among the most serious crimes that have ever been committed by any president perhaps even surpassing the crimes that led to richard nixon's resignation so i think that while congressman paul is accurate in saying that this is a slide into fascism this kind of corporate of this structure the reality when you dissect it in more detail was even worse and congress ought to have already taken much more decisive action can explain a bit more you've talked about foreign policy and overseas operations but in terms

of the country becoming fascist for those who are living there what does he actually talking about what way for the average american is america slipping into a fascist state. well you have two elements of the picture number one i think rather than using a very over general term of corporate government collusion in the case of president obama he has been from the first day he entered office completely under the control of city of london and wall street finance it's a very specific financial apparatus that has dictated terms to this president and president obama has gone beyond all of the app excesses of president bush and vice president cheney in asserting a policy of unitary executive presidential dictatorship which is

a profound violation of the constitution for example the recent national defense authorization act which i know representative paul did mention in his kansas city speech which you're referring to under the n b a the u.s. military has been given the authority to arrest and indefinitely detain any american citizen who is quote suspected of any kind of ties to terrorist organization this is a violation of all of the fundamentals of the u.s. constitution and so in these measures we are seeing the executive asserting the kinds of dictatorial authority that we haven't seen in this world since nazi germany so in that sense yes there is this drive towards executive dictatorship but i think it's very important to realize that it's being done on behalf of a policy of bailing out

a london centered international financial oligarchies and to do that we've basically bankrupted large portions of the american population taxpayers here of late. more than seventeen trillion dollars or idea of valor since two thousand and eight you know what i'm not resided over much of that if you're bush and cheney jeff we'll have to leave it there thanks so much for your thoughts geoff steinberg live there in the usa this is all t. here in moscow where the twenty four hours a day business is next with dimitri. thank spilled oil prices have jumped to the highest levels in nine months after a run halted crude exports to the u.k. and france on sunday now that moves follows the european union's decision to stop buying uranium oil starting in july the west hopes to bust persuade iran to curb

its nuclear program brett is currently trading at over one hundred twenty dollars per barrel have to games for west texas crude which is currently at one thousand one hundred five now experts don't expect crude prices to climb much higher as they say the risks for the most part of already been priced it despite a surge in prices and this decision is more of a symbolic act even servility metals and coffee from north capital expects the issue to keep prices high for months to come. this particular story has been taking a lot longer than one should expect and i expect it can last for another several months during which the oil will be a normally high. but i am pretty sure that as soon as this will be the result one way or another of the lies what is the normal prices for oil definitely for w.t. i eat should be below one hundred dollars per barrel because otherwise the price

for. regular unleaded will be more than four dollars a gallon which is kind of disasters in the year or the presidential campaign whatever is higher than that i consider is a normal level but we can definitely experience that in the months to come. meanwhile iran is turning to barter as it offers gold and oil in return for food economic sanctions by the united states and europe make it difficult for brown to pay for imports in euro's dollars ring in traders are in talks with russia will survey using rubles to pay for grain over the past two weeks iran more than one million tons of grain from russia and that's a significant increase in last year so quickly take a look at the markets in the u.s. they closed for presidents day in europe the monday session was positive that's after the french finance minister is that all the elements were in place for greece

to get its next bailout a lot meant for point seven percent in frankfurt the dax is up one and a half percent. and russia pretty much the same picture we are more than one percent of my six point seven percent up my search was mainly driven by energy and financial shares with gazprom gaining point seven percent to burbank three quarters of a percent but the outstanding gainer was of course russia's largest be a brew a baltic it's up almost fourteen percent on news it's pair. company carlsberg will be buying out the remaining twenty percent stake involved with the premium and they are seeing some gains versus the dollars in hopes that european leaders would sign off on greece's second bailout package on china's monetary easing over the weekend and that's it from the business team for today but do join us at eight twenty moscow time on choose day if you can of course we will be here with an update.

down the official ante up location. i pod touch from the. life on the go. video on demand tease my old compass and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your.

wealthy british style the sun moves. on to the front. of the. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy cause a report on. the life. stories chinese state media says the u.s. and nato countries support of syria's opposition forces is driving the nation into civil war beijing and moscow calling for a political settlement in the country with a top chinese diplomat recently visiting damascus. greece's creditors' debate whether it will sink or swim as they decide on the new. one hundred thirty billion euro bailout packages met all demands to secure it if the population rages against

deep cuts. in washington one israel against attacking iran's nuclear sites for time to let sanctions do their job to run currently being visited by u.n. inspectors insists it's atomic program this piece. with more news stories more developments for you in less than half an hour from now in the meantime peace in the battle that is crosstalk gets discussed whether the global financial crisis is slowly swallowing up the middle class heated debate next on our. well. science technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia we've got the huge earth covered. and you can.

blow in welcome to cross talk and people of all the trials and tribulations of the middle class long considered the pillar of the west political and economic border it is now the victim of a long term downward mobility why is this the case our government policy is to blame or is this due to what is called the politics of dependency. and. to cross talk to decline of the middle class i'm joined by louis shoval in new york he is a sociologist professor at and invited professor at columbia university in chicago we have david psychotic he is a professor of philosophy at loyola university chicago and in los angeles we go to tony katz he's a tea party organizer and a radio talk show host all right gentlemen cross talk rules and if i mean you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it tony in los angeles you got

up early as for this program some going to go to you first why why has the middle class been suffering so much over the decades is it government policies that have done this to the middle class or is the middle class itself it's changed its values its structure and this is just the way of capitalism it's the still way it works that's there's been a myth about the middle class for a century and it's just something that's changing. first of all it's good to be here and let's not engage a conversation where we're blaming capitalism capitalism is not the problem capitalism is what allows people to thrive and survive and grow and allows for opportunities i'm never going to allow anybody here anywhere else to have an attack on the open markets and free markets that just that's just for hardy nonsense but i think there are interesting conversations as to what are the forces at play that are making making a living difficult right now how do you change those forces those are conversations about taxation those are conversations about what it is that

a society needs to offer what it is that government is supposed to do for us as opposed to do to us those are the real conversations i don't even think that they're political i don't even think they're right left or or or anything like that they're about what are the constraints of government what are good tax policies government policies that allow people to thrive and survive i think that one should gauge those conversations here but do you mean being on the left is going to be living nonetheless i think we would all agree on this program in our view my viewers too is the middle class has taken a real clobbering over the last thirty years and particularly since the advent of the financial crisis in two thousand a david if i can go to you the fate of the middle class i mean it just gets worse and worse and worse and i will part company with tony i think it has something to do with capitalism i think it is an important conversation david go ahead in chicago. well i mean i certainly think so too but yes the middle class has really taken a hit as joseph stiglitz nobel laureate in economics remarked a few months ago we can no longer pretend it isn't true the upper one percent now

owns forty percent of all the wealth now it takes home twenty five percent of all the income the average income the median income in the united states household income is fifty thousand dollars right. there four hundred billionaires in the united states if you get a five percent return on your on your billion you know you get fifty million a year doing nothing. you know a million times more thousand has more. but the root cause of this i think really does go back it's not something that's just come about because of the financial crisis it really goes back to the mid seventy's a striking thing when you look at the data is that household incomes have been rising steadily through till about one nine hundred seventy five and they have flat lined since for the middle class this would seem to create a problem because if people aren't making more money you know yet more and more

stuff is being produced how come the economy hasn't been in crisis since then and i think we know the answer the answer is people have been borrowing the money in effect the wealthy capital is classes instead of raising wages regularly let's so you can buy our products will loan you the money so you've got this massive debt that finally exploded finally gave us the melt down but even then what i think the root cause goes back to something earlier than that the new technologies that were coming online that made it possible to offshore production and to set up factories abroad so that you do get around the globe global wage competition which is you know if anything is david it's interesting i mean with the things that tony said and what you've just said and i'd like to go to lean right now in new york it should we even speak in terms of in terms of the middle class anymore i mean because of the technological changes and because of the way the economy is involved

in this the financial ization of the economy is a very good point to the credit. crunch that that was just mentioned here i mean it has the middle we should be keep using this term should we be using a different term because middle these people are not in the middle anymore they're in the single digits at one end. yes the middle is the reason i didn't really go into your list i had no going to new york first yes yes in fact it's very clear that fifty years ago the western countries where the civilization of middle class the middle class neuroses technicians and engineers and the sky and of of associate professionals where as a center also says weed is a shun of western countries in europe in the us too the problem of heights now is that we have a shrinking middle class and the kind of explosion of middle class in two parts

a low well middle class that is sinking and on the middle class of professionals increasing in incomes in impact in political command of society and we are not we are no more able to to to to to to create new dynamics of either class the problem is not simply technology it's a problem is that investment technology could easily investment new businesses and new will be arsed from is more and more in china in india in buzz euna and inertia are this in less in the western countries and zoo loo where we don't class or western countries are completely sin king they are first hated they face political problems and difficulties and seats we are a problem for they were crises in most ways to go i want to see what i want to do with them with the us i mean and in the second half of the problem david you look a little perplexed if you want to jump in there yeah well there's two things first

of all the middle class is dissolving but it's not that fifty percent are going down and fifty percent are going up no it's about eighty to ninety percent you know are seeing their incomes stagnate or go down in the upper twenty ten and above all the upper one or two percent you know are doing well but the other thing there is this political dimension of the. it's not just technology there was also the polish move to advocate to push for free trade to dismantle any kind of protectionism so that our workers had to compete with workers everywhere else in the world this was a political decision that was unable to buy the new technologies that now made it profitable for companies here to do all this outsourcing of moving their factories and so on ok tony if i can go to you the most important and greatest export of united states is jobs apparently and that's destroying the middle class whose fault is that ok so just technology you know you know snooze you lose or is it on more

people with capital saying it sees will can make easier money in the bric countries for example is it a political decision. again we will not be attacking capitalism or the open market around but if we can being gauge in the side. of your intended ology god god god god forbid we should have the automobile we could just go back to the horse and buggy wouldn't we be all better off it's like dan rather saying that there should be protections in the us house of representatives amongst the federal government i should say for newspapers because newspapers somehow need our protection technology is a good thing advances are a good thing sometimes things fall by the wayside new things you are telling is that there's a middle class family on not just the middle class even if you for a moment because rich people benefit from these you know they do but just the middle class the conversation about jobs in america for example isn't so much a conversation about technology take a look at fracking technology take a look at what we can do to get the natural gas right from underneath our feet but

we don't seem to do it it's a conversation about regulation in america that keeps things from growing and thriving and prospering so there's only going to talk about. the benefit of all of us if we don't take it david you bend your hands on the technology. yeah i mean tony mentioned the automobile now that was an interesting technology but what was peculiar about the automobile technology is that it was a technology that generated far more jobs than it replaced ok yes the horse and buggy industry took a hit but you got automobile factories you got gas stations you got auto parts the new technologies that was an historical accident the new technologies may be wonderful but they do not magically generate anything like the number of jobs that they are every placed in in fact the newest technologies the big ten times the. cost of all the shut off shore sure those jobs ok let me and we're going to you

know when i go back and i new york i want to go back to new york chance please you know when we have their fair time here we do you see you see. what we call the middle class in the west recovering i mean what's going to take two for the west for the middle class to regain what it's lost over the last three or four decades. in trying to he gains indeed status fails to question is thinks of work it's a problem in many countries notably in though your poor western europe and countries of two strong welfare states is that so work the basics of work is disappearing but it's not simply that it's also investment in new businesses investment in and here universities and formations the development of a new intermediate professional class such as does it is that has been disappearing over the last thirty years so the problem is that thirty fifty years ago all associates proficient old professionals who are away or kind of the power of the

west of western countries the problem now is we have more of them are kind of not could anybody to sit on contrary is in front of the economic poor technological poor and poor of china and of these two on asia our problems is that we are forgotten that investment and the problem with investment is that it's not simply capitalism or big governments that are able to to to to do everything so calamity over the last thirty years is that both the big governments and both capitalism have forgotten a lot of science and technologies that we need in order to he create a middle class if it is ation that is disappearing quite you know all right interesting point gentlemen we're going to go to a short break and after that your break we'll continue our discussion and downward mobility of the middle class stay with r.t. .

if you want to. oh i see. it's all designed to keep you closed in your. world as a prison. you know you leave somebody in there for a couple hours like that in a stress positions. you have this fear of the unknown in this stress sort of building and. seen interrogations go on ten twelve hours they chose songs i remember from marilyn manson. slayer the two songs would be angel of death and raining blood to me going to war coming up here into iraq coming into baghdad.

johnny put the body to the floor which is the rock n roll band it was fitting for the job we were doing. wealthy british. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy with. no holds barred look at the global financial headlines kaiser report. and.

welcome back to crossfire peter lavelle we're talking about the prospects of the middle class. ok david i want to go to you in chicago i mean we mentioned before we went to the break when he didn't say it exactly but he was talking about what people say the politics of dependency and how the state has made the middle class dependent and because of the the rise and maybe we were seeing the fall of the welfare state do you think that's a mitigating factor in the fate of the middle class because no no i mean i think they had to go ahead and think so go ahead that that makes that make it makes no sense in the i don't see how anyone can blame the fact that there's people on welfare that's not what is responsible for the fact that we're the jobs are the

number of jobs are less and less available more and more people are losing their jobs it has nothing to do with the cultural defense dependency it has everything to do with the fact that the invisible hand of the market given a free rein will not create enough jobs in a very curious way marx is coming back marx remember predicted that when wages go up the capitalist will replace skilled workers by machines this will generate unemployment ok mark so you can reserve army to. push downward pressure on wages it's not ok i think he gets worse and worse a fuse with a fuse went off and. sure there. are let's make sure our fact let's make sure that we're all talking about a couple things karl marx was a first rate hike communism sucks so let's never engage the idea that karl marx is someone we should look up to second of all it is a true.