blow i'm going to washington d.c. and here's what's coming up tonight on the big picture we might be seen the end of the end for greece and the eurozone or perhaps the beginning of the end reasons president announced today the parties have failed to create a coalition government and has called for new elections in june so the anti austerity parties when they go again as expected with the eurozone as we know it do also as you're as austerity destroys europe occupy wall street working hard to prevent the same fate for the u.s. in occupy when the battle over austerity and what they need to be that tourists and

chicago police spent one million dollars on riot gear ahead of the upcoming nato summit with only peaceful protests planned for that summit of the detroit police or the chicago police department going overboard. you need to know this all signs now point to a greek default and exit from the euro greece's president announced today the parties have failed to create a coalition government and he's called for new elections in june when greek voters hit the polls again the far left sarees a party is expected to win big a likely be able to form a coalition government opposed to more trickle down austerity putting it at odds with the bailout deal reached with e.u. officials back in march greece could run out of money within the next month and without a bailout it will certainly lead default and be forced out of the euro now it's

just a question of how messy the situation might get in the coming weeks and whether greece will be the only country to part ways with the eurozone despite the certain economic turmoil that a default in would draw. all from the euro might cause greece it's still better than five years of austerity chronic unemployment and skyrocketing suicide rates and as other nations like italy spain and portugal continue to suffer from their austerity poison pills that it might not be too long before they exit as well but an end of the eurozone as we know it all together and if austerity can rip apart an entire continent in europe and just what imagine it can do to one nation our nation the united states here republicans continue to push their own version of trickle down austerity that asks nothing of the romney's version of super rich class even giving them a three trillion dollar tax break but asks everything of the american working class greece and the rest of europe should be all a warning sign to us all of what might happen if republicans win in november and

have free reign to shove their austerity agenda down the throats of americans austerity just doesn't work it's shock doctrine capitalism in a must be defeated in the same way that democracy is defeating it in places like greece and france and right now the tip of the spear fighting back against austerity here in the united states is the occupy movement so what will victory look like and how will it finally be achieved chris hedges joins me now as a journalist and contributed truthdig the author of numerous books including his latest the world as it is dispatches on the myth of human progress chris was also featured in one of our installments of conversations of great minds which can be seen at the website conversations of great minds dot com chris welcome thank you from where you sit today ones what's the endgame in all this depression revolution a decade of recession. well. i think we have to acknowledge that absolutely nothing is being done to address the

severe issue of climate change and the disruption to the ecosystem which will have dramatic economic and political effects throughout the globe. one of the engines that has been pushing the protests throughout the middle east is of course the rise in commodity prices we increased in price by over one hundred percent during last year along with other staples as well and when you're living on two dollars a day. and over half of that income goes to feed your family that inevitably pushes you out into the streets were already seen you know with the bottom. force of forty seven million americans in this country that have already they're spending now about thirty five percent of their income on food the speculators are back at work. two billion dollars loss at cheapie morgan chase the.

implosion of chesapeake energy these are warning signs that the system is once again teetering on the edge of collapse you mention greece withdrawing from the euro zone don't forget that the international banking system will destroy the greek currency in order to transfer out of the euro in i guess they would go back to the drachma that would mean essentially they would have to freeze accounts and during that period you would watch. the drachma itself sink to such a slow level low level that. and at a minimum people that money in banks would lose forty fifty percent of their investment in terms of what it's worth against the euro you already seen a flight of international capital out of greece this is just a harbinger of what's coming. we are not able to sustain the levels of consumption

. not only in within the united states but globally. people are waking up to the fact that life for them is not only going to be better but it's not going to get better for their children what causes revolutions as trained brinton points out it is a classic work anatomy of a revolution is not so much poverty but that gap in expectations what people expect from their lives and what finally is to liberal to their lives we are we are we are watching an essence the collapse of globalization and the consequences of that would be very far reaching it is fairly short sighted to write off the occupy movement it may not constitute itself in the future as an occupy movement around a camp minutes it will certainly mutate and changes all movements too but very clearly the force that drove people into the streets and into these encampments.

are are busy and work. in the country out from the inside and pushing us once more towards the precipice and you can read the most respected economic writers in this country from gretchen morgenson on down who are now really in the alarm bell over precisely. why do you think we're seen so much political turmoil and social unrest in those countries in europe that are racked by austerity but here in the united states where republicans are pushing similar and if not worse austerity or seemingly no political consequences and recent polls even show mitt romney winning the presidential election. well because it's not just the republicans who are pushing austerity democrats are as coal in this as the republican party and you know i subscribe to sheldon woolens argument that we have undergone a kind of corporate coup d'etat. and the corporate state has won. the democratic

party is as hostage or serve the interests of wall street as a situ asli as the republican party. and corporations know only one word i mean unfettered unregulated capitalism as karl marx understood is a revolutionary force they will push and push and push until there is a response they will harvest the nations of business term and you see it in every aspect of our lives of course this week we saw over two hundred thousand people lose their unemployment benefits. we are watching the destruction of our educational system hedge fund managers taking a fervent interest in the school system and impoverished areas in this country is not about teaching for children to write and. they know that the federal government spends over six hundred billion dollars a year on education this country and they want that money along with social security money along with everything else and frankly they're going to get it there is nothing within the political system to stop them the only way to push back now

is through acts of civil disobedience and it will come in it's in abbottabad going to come because there are there is no mechanism within the formal structures of power the whole this disembowel of not only the country but the global economy the creation of a kind of global neo feudalism a world of masters and serfs where everybody is told they have to be laborers told they have to be competitive in a global marketplace which in essence means being competitive with sweatshop workers in bangladesh make twenty two cents an hour for prison labor in china that's the world that's being created is was there a time when that was not the world and if so what brought this about. yes you know we watched i spent a lot of time in my book death of the liberal class tracing the destruction of radical and populist movements which really began around world war one and the

disempowerment of liberal institutions in the name of anti communism and the red scare remember after the mccarthy hearings in the one nine hundred fifty s. thousands of university professors and journalists have stone writers directors out of hollywood artists pete seeger. social workers high school teachers they all became prize they were pushed out of the system by the one nine hundred seventy s. we as as as a citizenry really had no popular or you know mechanisms propelled mechanisms by which we could fight back and we changed in the one nine hundred seventy s. in the words of the harvard historian charles mayer from what he calls an empire production to an empire of consumption in short we began to borrow to maintain both an empire and a level of consumption that we could no longer afford now the credit is dried up those mass produced goods especially with the rise of fuel. prices are no longer

cheap and the only mechanism the state has left security and surveillance state has left are these very trying coney and harsh coercive forms of control which is why we're seeing legislation like the national defense authorization act. the refusal on the part of the obama administration to restore its corpus the use of the espionage act to shut down whistleblowers and leakers anyone who provides information to the press that counters the official narrative i mean they they certainly know very well what's coming and you can look around you i mean look at what's happening in chicago right now as i speak to get a window into what they're preparing for. chris in the in the minute we have left what do we do well i'm not going to vote for obama. not vote for romney i voted for nader in two thousand and eight. i think it's a way to register are discussed at the entire system don't waste any emotional or

intellectual energy on these elections all hope is in the street oh hope is through acts of civil disobedience we may not win but if we're going to win that's the only place we are going to win movement politics chris hedges bank keep up the brilliant work thanks tom after the break more on the occupy movement and its plans to demonstrate at the upcoming nato summit in chicago bakley how much our chicago police are mean up to face off against activists.

download the official anti up location to i phone the i pod touch from the i.q. exams to. one job teach life on the go. video on demand r t's mine gold costs and r.s.s. feeds now in the palm of your. question on the ati dot com. more news today violence is once again flared up. and these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. china operations are all day.

later this week in the city of chicago a play host to the annual nato conference as a result the city will also play host to days of demonstrations organized by tens

of thousands of anti-war activists labor unions an occupy wall street demonstrators and the chicago police are arming themselves for that showdown records show that in the last few months since the nato summit was announced the chicago police department has spent one million dollars on so-called riot control equipment including a long range of who stick devices known as el rads like the one seen here breaking up demonstrators in pittsburgh back in two thousand and nine. so should we expect this weekend to once again see the free speech rights of peaceful americans a bridge just as we've seen over the last several months occupy demonstrations across the nation here's shed more light on this story is adam gabbett reporter with the u.s. the guardian u.s. adam welcome banks is there any evidence that the protests planned for the nato

summit are going to be anything but peaceful. certainly nothing i've heard and i've spoken to a lot of protesters from chicago from new york who are going to be there even people who are coming across from oakland i've asked the question to everyone i spoke to have you personally although you might not engage in violence have you heard of anyone else planning to engage in violence everyone i've spoken to without fail has responded in the negative they are not aware of anyone coming and being violent as far as they know it's going to be a peaceful protest and they want a peaceful protest how have the chicago police been intimidating potential protesters. well i'm not sure in terms of the actual intimidation on the ground i mean in terms of the amount of money they've spent on this riot equipment i think but is so intimidating in itself if you're preparing to go along to the protest and you know a lot of these people are is not necessarily sort of young black blockers or

something like that it's not as if there's a suggestion of that some of the people going are quite elderly they just want to express their of anti war sentiment in fact i was reading today about some people who've already arrived there who've been doing this sort of thing pretty much all their life they're in the seventy's now and i think if you're a protester like that or if you're planning to go down with your family as people might do it's going to be a beautiful day it's going to be a big occasion that chicago probably won't have seen before and then you hear that police have spent a million dollars on thousands of riot control equipment essentially including for horseback and i think that's going to intimidate you know it would me if i was planning to go along with you know someone who perhaps wasn't as braced for things of that nature as myself so i think that's quite could be quite worrying in itself and of course the devices whilst police have said they only intend to use them to emit messages to protestors we know they have this functionality to put out

a very loud piercing signal we heard at the start of the program they had to hold my ear as it kind of kicked in and when that was used in pittsburgh in two thousand and nine although it very effectively controlled the protesters i think there were only it was a very small amount of rescue certainly less than one hundred one woman actually complained thereafter and she's bringing a legal case against the city of pittsburgh she complained she suffered permanent hearing damage so course that is is going to be quite intimidating for some people in itself what what is the motivation of the police around so they genuinely concern for people's safety or is their duty. that this may fit better into the frame that chris hedges was talking about a few minutes ago that the institutions of this country in particular the rather corrupt corporate institutions just are hell bent for leather at crushing any dissent. i think there's

a little bit of both i mean whilst police sort of might say it's a duty to protect citizens some people might argue how many citizens are going to be in downtown chicago on a sunday when they know all this thing is going on anyway but of course they've got a duty to protect businesses and surrounding areas as well but i personally think some of it is just fear fear of being exposed in a way that if you look back at something like seattle nine hundred ninety nine i was reading a lot about that earlier today and police just didn't prepare for that this was the world trade organization i think meeting there was held in seattle in one thousand nine hundred nine and police admitted afterwards they were under prepared and far more protesters came than they thought they were over and it became a huge international story because of course once police are overrun they often while they feel they have little choice but to react in quite sort of strident ways and that's when you see tear gas and things of that nature i think one thing maybe

that chicago police will have in their mind is that no police organization in the u.s. really has the excuse of not being prepared now if you look at what we've seen over the last six months with the occupy movement we've seen events in new york i mean the brooklyn bridge sticks in my mind we had seven hundred arrests oakland i was over there myself and was at the front line as tear gas was fired at protesters there was the scott olsen tragedy i think when you look at those events and they've come over the last six months no police force can say well we didn't expect this you know these kind of these amounts of protesters with this level of iron anger so i think that might perhaps stress why police are so cautious and so determined that they aren't caught unprepared and perhaps that is leading to in the eyes of some that may be going a little bit too far like an arms race that's going out of control adam gabbert

thank you for being with us tonight. pleasure thank you the freedom to assemble and speak out is the primary right guaranteed by our constitution is the first for going to management if thomas jefferson could see the links the police are going to do today to quash that right to be shocked. in screwed news big oil is sabotaging our clean energy future the organization checks and balances recently uncovered treasure trove of documents outlining a strategy against president obama's clean energy agenda in particular wind power and behind this strategy are some very familiar names here tell us who they are and how they're trying to subvert clean energy in america is gave ellesmere co-director of checks and balances gave welcome to the program thanks for having me tom great to have you with us who are the major played well first of all before we get to who is behind this memo what's the essence of this memo what i found documents from

american tradition and suit fellow john dros that detail a national descent from ation plan to wreck wind energy across the country and it's part of a larger effort by fossil fuel interests to attack clean energy and what's interesting is that when you ask these groups about their ties to the fossil fuel lobby they don't want to talk about it really at all at all who who are the major players behind this well this particular meeting that i'm talking about happened in early february between at least two fossil fuel funded national groups the american tradition institute and the committee for constructive tomorrow they have connections to exxon mobil the koch brothers among many others including a petroleum company owner named doug lair in montana and it's you know it's the usual players that are funding these efforts to attack clean energy across the country yeah i saw in your report that there were in the memo that you published that they were talking about let's reach out to people like the heartland institute

in competitive enterprise institute in remember the whole list right it was the it was all the usual suspects yeah it's this echo chamber of fossil fuel funded advocacy groups and what's interesting is most of them claim to be free market think tanks or intellectually honest and. they ignore the subsidies for fossil fuel industry and instead they focus their tax on clean energy so despite the fact that fossil fuel companies receive one hundred or two hundred times more subsidies they focus their attacks on clean energy and it's no surprise when you look at their funding sources yeah i had a conservative my radio show today the first thing she went off on was cylinder and on the way that we're funding exxon mobil what are in the organization well these are these local answer when organizations and b. is an acronym for not my back right now in my backyard and these documents are the first time that i've seen evidence that these national fossil fuel funded groups are working with local clean local anti clean energy groups and it's part of

a full frontal assault on clean energy you have american traditions to they filed a lawsuit in colorado to overturn the state's renewable energy standard and they've worked in four other states are producing reports that use this information to attack renewable energy standards how do they get average joes and janes to support their agenda i mean on the surface it seems assert yeah let's be more dependent on saudi arabia let's burn more fuel it's going to ruin the environment and lead to global warming. and yet they're getting people to go along with us well you know we all want cold beer and we all want our conditioning and so when we look at our energy sources blowing up mountains for coal and you know digging to the depths of the gulf of mexico for oil it doesn't make much sense when you have solar power that's becoming cost competitive you know majority of americans in the next couple years are going to be able to buy solar power for zero dollars down and pay less on

their electricity bills than they do now right so that being the case how do they get republicans to show up at the polls and vote for politicians who are opposed to wind energy and how do they i mean this whole memo is about how we demonize when it right sickly how to shift public opinion so that when somebody says i'm in favor. everybody know it all but how do you do that well you have the koch brothers who funded americans for prosperity for years and they're spending millions of dollars on television advertisements and these fake grassroots campaigns like americans for prosperity what's an argument though is that you know birds run into the blades or that they're unsightly or that it's a scam or well what the what there's got to be some logic that's got to be some a book that the fossil fuel funded interests they're seeing that there's a long term competitive threat that clean energy poses to their bottom line and so they claim that clean energy is expensive and it doesn't work and people are watching television advertisements that repeat this over and over again and most

recently americans for prosperity they put on television ads attacking obama's clean energy investments under the stimulus bill and they've claimed that the money is going abroad and it's not and political fact or politico fact one of the fact checking organizations called this advertisement so bad that they were liars with their pants on fire. is there any evidence that this planned antionette anti wind network that is coming together that you've outed is having any effect on congress have every seen any. you know legislation come out of this or motions by anybody well there's definitely evidence that the network is already working john dros who called the meeting in february and is the american tradition institute fellow he bragged that he was able to recruit americans for prosperity to make phone calls into members of congress and you know so far the wind energy tax breaks that are set to expire at the end of the year haven't been extended besides the

fact that they have bipartisan support in congress. thank you very much tom for having with us for sure that the survival of the united states as we know it depends on a clean energy future we just need to get the millionaires and billionaires and the oil and coal and gas industry out of the way the best way to do that is to join the movement to get money out of politics going to move to amend. after the break a coalition of politicians in virginia barred a man from becoming a judge in that state just because he was gay is anything really changed since president obama threw his support behind marriage equality. there hasn't been anything good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact.

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. change. welcome back to the big picture i'm tom hartman coming up in this half hour despite president obama's historic announcement last week assaults on marriage equality and gays continue across the country politics and bigotry ever lose.