massive unrest in dozens of arrests as police and protesters clashing in chicago we'll give you a wrap up of the nato summit that's coming to the close for the next two days will meet the first his allies and then with president karzai and our international partners to chart the next phase of the transition in afghanistan. well protesters clashed outside inside the summit world leaders were a bit busy discussing a way out of afghanistan how much headway did they make and when will the troops come home for good some answers ahead. plus you can run but you can't hide as the

golden state's sinks deeper into the red california governor jerry brown says deep austerity cuts are needed across the board and it seems no social program is safe well tell you what he's planning to cut and how the public is reacting. it's monday may twenty first twenty first four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching our. all chaos in chicago as thousands of protesters clashed with police at an anti nato demonstration and it turned violent take a look at this. the protesters threw bottles and other objects at police decked out in riot gear using batons against them dozens have reportedly been arrested meanwhile iraq and

afghanistan war veterans joined the protest hurling their medals toward the convention center where nato officials were meeting or to correspond on a stasi the church is in the thick of all the action in chicago to bring us the latest. she called under siege. the last couple of days have seen oceans of protesters thousands marching under a blistering sun to vent their anger at the military alliance who are opposed to no because. this rally fronted by iraq and afghan war vets feeling betrayed by the system ruined their lives. after a minute of silence for those who perished in westwood wars. know rex today we're seeing the clashes began as protesters try to get through the barricades that the police have created on their way to the convention center. chaos but tons of

people shoved and dragged police thrown onto their knees bleeding faces right. one officer stabbed dozens of protesters arrested someday use these men made the shooter this conduct that they engaged in today unbecoming of the dignity that is demanded of them by their station hundreds and hundreds of police not just in riot gear but military armor with guns and but tons that they willingly deploy on people . who didn't really or a smaller but louder march also took to the streets it's an ad capital is large i'm sure everyone here hopes to start a revolution they're going to the chicago spring like the arab spring. signs ripped off crowds clashed with police but times and police bikes used to block off the crowds with more blood in the chaos. with over a million dollars spent on

a new year for chicago police a war breaks out with outraged americans fighting for change at home while he was president is busy hosting the summit and the future of warfare abroad incessant jerking our t.v. in chicago the room. for more i'm joined now by our to correspondent on a saucy churkin a who is on the scene in chicago hi anastasio so how are things escalated there and what's happening on the streets of chicago. well it's right now we're standing up on the avenue where the march of thousands took place on sunday we saw thousands and thousands of people walking down in this downtown area in chicago we're also about two miles from the convention center where the delegates are still meeting as we know of course the protesters were kept quiet far away and as we saw obviously there was a reason for that from where the delegates are holding the nato summit what it did up happening was they got a couple of blocks away from the convention center and there were about three or

four lines of police including police on horseback including police with riot gear trying to block them off from getting closer to the convention center after a ceremony of the veterans throwing their medals into the sort of the direction of the convention center there was a moment of silence like you saw in that report and all of a sudden all of a sudden the clashes began the protesters and the police were slamming into each other but tons were flying around people were falling into the ground it definitely got quite intense what ended up happening was police started issuing warnings that they might have to use chemicals on the protesters there were rumors going through the crowd that people should put in your logs to avoid getting hurt by the sound cannons that would possibly be used by the police this did not happen there was no tear gas no are all rads used but there was definitely quite a bit of violence like you saw in that report big clashes hundreds of protesters hundreds of police and da about forty five people were arrested and the latest that

we know right now is that the majority of those protesters have been released but about ten of them have been charged with felonies and. five common chicago there was another option earlier today where protesters marched to the boeing headquarters and held some sort of action there but it was not definitely not nearly as. violence and big as the protests that we saw over the weekend and so on as i say what's the mood like today have things kind of simmer down over there. it's definitely simmer down the nato leaders are still here they're still in chicago meeting there are as i mentioned there was action earlier today there are still groups of protesters kind of going around town but we really are getting a sense that because of all the insanity really that went over that took place over the weekend people have kind of calmed down the protesters according to them did all they could to try to get their message across including with the peaceful march and these clashes where they tried to get through so now things are on the calmer

side this of course comes after a week of actions taking place here with the culmination that took place yesterday and on saturday in an answer and sanity is the word that you described the crackdown between police and protesters things turned really chaotic on a saucy a what exactly were they protesting and no what were they trying to achieve . liz i mean all of the protesters gathered here there were smaller actions directed at certain issues we saw nurses march protesting against hospitals being shut down there was smaller action against corporations there were protesters outside the city. mayor's office and home there were all sorts of options taking place but generally everybody gathered here for these protests and marches people are here to protest nato as an organization as a military block all of these protesters are saying while nato is spending billions and billions of dollars on war including in afghanistan which is now gone on for

over a decade these people are saying it's enough it's time to put an end to this warfare they're seeing along the lines of the occupy wall street movement corporations are getting bailed out wars are being literally washing billions of dollars down the drain yet all of these people are going on hard and that's one of the biggest concerns of these protesters that were out here over the weekend so things are wrapping up today as part of the as far as the summit goes what to expect today. well what you expect today are possibly further smaller actions we are not expecting any sort of violence to break out today we have to say of course that one of the marches at least that we attended that you saw in that report that took place on saturday was not something that was known in advance something that was known about in advance and that's what some of the violence broke out so we're going to have to wait and see how events unravel if there are some sort of on sanctions on sort of documented protests taking place that are not expected there

could be some sort of action taking place like that but we're not hearing anything along those lines as of yet iran associate thanks for that thanks very much for keeping us updated over there in chicago that was our correspondent on a soft. and from students to veterans to journalists the ante natal protests have brought together thousands of people from all walks of life one of those journalists as jane meyerson he's a contributor for truthout dot org and he joins us now live from chicago hi there jay i so want to talk more about what exactly these protests are about and it's right outside the nato summit what are the nato policies that they are protesting against sure well i think it's wrong to think of this is protesting policies as much as protesting a sort of widespread system right so since the end of the cold war nato has lost its president which was protecting the world from the very means soviet and now

it's essentially used that as is the armed wing of the globalizing expansion of capital under the supervision of the unit polar world led by the united states right so every war is just a police intervention in every war the civil war that we're liberating people and and as a result the united states and its allies in nato essentially have impunity to go around the world invading wherever and whenever it suits the business interests that run the government so rather than thinking of nato as policies or specific nato wars the idea of a sort of global police unit you know that sort of enjoys a cloak of internationalism i think that is really the focus of these protesters because these nato actions have been shown not to further human flourishing and global community but rather to maximize the profits of the very wealthy at the

expense of the already very poor and in addition to that the nato summit is happening right where you are there in chicago and it's very decision to hold the pros at the summit in chicago that outrages protesters is that correct yeah that's right so mayor emanuel of course this is the. sort of political home town of the president and so he and his former chief of staff the current mayor rahm emanuel fought pretty hard to bring the summit to chicago and sort of increase the prestige of the city in the eyes of the international community the problem is that it's costing the city tens of millions perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars to hold this thing at a time when as as you know we been discussing over the last few days some pretty bad austerity has been going down in the city including the closure of six out of the twelve city mental health facilities so at a time when people are really really struggling and require a lot of assistance including veterans plagued with p.t.s.d. and people who've traumatically lost their jobs for no apparent fault of their own

they could really use some assistance we're closing that down in order to spend a lot of city money on bringing these wealthy dignitaries and essentially trumpeting the imperial prowess of the united states and a i know that you've been there covering this and chicago why do you make of the abbey a police presence there we only saw a lot of that video of swarms of police and riot gear really cracking down. it was an awful sight to behold i mean it really did look as though they were dressed for a situation like steria or gods are zen thing and they're in chicago this supposedly american liberals second city and as a things in itself so is but you know as we've seen it's sort of part and parcel of the way that dissidents is now treated in the united states. the more radicalism bubbles up because of the sort of increasing fallout of this kind of globalization

of corporate capitalism the more the system has to work to suppress that and especially in the post nine eleven era where everywhere you look there's a terrorist and terrorism is the reason for everything we do we found that domestic policing has acquired a distinctly military flavor largely because of federal funding from the. of homeland security trickling down into these various police forces and also training insubordination between them so we see that this especially in new york where i'm from has affected communities of color impoverished communities. muslim community with the spying apparatus and of course dissidents you know all across the country especially since two thousand and eleven and even more frequently since occupy wall street began we've seen police be especially heavy handed and employ increasingly intimidating technology against what is largely peaceful dissent and ultimately one of the ante natal protesters hoping to a chance well there is

a sense in this because there's a sort of pride in nato because it grew out of the coalition that defeated fascism eisenhower was the first. general it was thought of as protecting democracy and free. and really as it is currently formulated the protesters are saying that it is vastly more destructive than it is helpful and they're trying to get that word out i mean a lot when when that group of protesters attempted to essentially proceed through the police line what they were trying to do was shut down the summit right. and because the social distancing between the leaders who are making decisions militarily and in all other ways between them and the civilians of this country has grown so great that the options for petition legislation. thorough representation are so diminished that protesters have to turn to demonstrating that the sheer fact

of their disenfranchisement from the decision making process by attempting to do things like shut down constitution. and i want to talk a little bit about the recent developments what happened today inside the summit president obama at the nato summit today can for our firm the commitment to end the war in afghanistan and transition military operations over to the afghans it's an effort to bring the very unpopular war to a close is this in line with what protesters want or is it not enough it would it would be nice if it were immediate i mean michael hastings who the journalist who wrote this wonderful book the operators about the. war in afghanistan said that it's been decided that the war is going to be over we're sort of in a holding pattern but in the meantime a lot of people are going to die and are going to be forced into a lot of misery and suffering because of this there's also a sense in which like i just read the other day the afghan ministry of mind long

term business plan three twenty fifteen which is when we are set to be there through in order to deal with the more than one trillion dollars worth of minerals that were just discovered in afghanistan in two thousand and ten which general petraeus at the time said showed a stunning potential so part of this is trying to figure out a way that we can exit with. while having captured a lot of this wealth for american corporations and european corporations without having to support the afghan people part of the debate in the nato summit was about how we're going to finance you know afghanistan sovereignty and the sort of rebuilding of the state after it has been so thoroughly demolished over the last ten years of war and occupation and the united states which spent a hundred billion dollars a year during the surge in afghanistan is pledging two billion dollars a year after and that's the largest pledge that's come in from the international community so the decision to draw down military operations in afghanistan are

probably welcome but given their context it really is just a continuation of the same sort of pattern of global hegemony that we've been watching since the end of the cold war right interesting jay thank you for keeping us updated over that was a myerson a contributor for truthout dot org. well we've seen the massive protests that have swept greece over its economic policies as california next the golden state has been falling deeper into the red and california governor jerry brown sees austerity as a solution part of this plan is deep cuts to social programs including welfare and health care for the poor and elderly as well as slashing work hours for government employees the cuts are estimated to total over eight billion dollars it's aimed at cutting down on the state's debt which is now in the ballpark of forty billion dollars that was a greek tragedy a preview of what's to come in california here to discuss this is dr caroline holdren politics professor also dental college welcome caroline so we've seen what

happened in greece the massive protests as a response to the austerity measures now are things similar proposals in california what parallels can be drawn between the two. well liz i think one parallel that can be drawn is that both have a revenue problem and california has had an issue with its revenue that is raising enough revenue to provide the services that californians need since we passed prop thirteen in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight and really tied the hands of the states so that we couldn't we could only get revenue from certain sources which makes california heavily dependent on income taxes so this is not the first time this problem has come up it comes up every time there's a there's a crash in the stock market there's a decline for example in income exacerbated by this most recent housing bubble so when the housing bubble burst and we're so heavily reliant on income taxes in this state we saw our revenues go down dramatically and california has further tied its

hands by requiring a revenue increase through the state legislature with a supermajority rather than then a majority so we're in the situation every couple of years and governor brown is responding and perhaps the most draconian way that he can and that response is the kind of what's at the heart of the controversy and california where these cuts are being made and will mostly affect the poor so can you talk about who exactly will be most affected by the measures and if this is really the solution. absolutely so the people most affected are those who are receiving welfare benefits we will be slashing health care for the poorest for the elderly we will be slashing hospital funding and nursing home care in addition to that one thing that is not being slashed but is being increased as to wish and so in the last five years in the u.c. system we've actually seen two wish and nearly double and that includes

a six percent increase again this year so it's the poorest it's the elderly and it's young people those are the people who are bearing the brunt of this when really we should be getting a more equitable system of taxation and taxing the wealthy here at rates that are commensurate with other states so clearly california has serious economic problems the state has the lowest credit rating of any other state it's falling deeper into debt so is this just a reality that they need to face that deep cuts need to be made because they can no longer spend beyond its means well if i think deep cuts are inevitable when your hands are tied we need to untie our hands we need to be able to raise revenue in an equitable fashion in the state californians actually pay a lower tax base than most other states we have fewer bureaucrats per individual or citizen living in california meaning that we could do better we could pay more and the inequality between what the wealthy pay and what the poorest pay in the

state is one of the biggest gaps in the nation so what we need to do is untie or hands get a more equitable system of taxation we need to increase our revenue in a timely fashion and in a way that serves the needs of our citizens in the state of california and until we do that then yes trick pony and cuts will be inevitable so you're saying that ferrety as not necessarily the solution here that a more fair tax system is what needs to be in place as a proposed alternative a possible solution to this. absolutely and we've seen that austerity measures simply do not work they haven't worked to store italy they haven't worked in european countries during time of economic downturn what you really want to do is get money into the hands of those who will spend it immediately so austerity measures do it precisely the opposite they don't stimulate the economy in fact i would argue at the federal level that the stimulus package should have been twice the size and then we would have seen real growth what's happening right now is that we are starving the economy both at the federal level and certainly at the state

level in california now california has that risk of getting its credit downgraded and the governor there is arguing that austerity is the only way that can prevent this from happening unless he's right because our hands are tied with prop seventy eight in the super majority required to raise revenue although it's good to point out that he has gone to the citizens of the state and said look we need a three percent increase on those making two hundred fifty thousand dollars or more per year and we need a one quarter of one percent increase in sales tax both of which are temporary the sales tax for four years the tax on the wealthier californians for seven years and if that doesn't go through we face an additional six billion dollars in cuts but as it is because we can't raise taxes immediately even though we need to and our hands are tied these cuts will be going through and really it's affecting the californians who need help the most another proposal as you mentioned earlier another proposal is this intuition for college students in the state students there

we've we've covered this extensively i've been up in arms over the rising cost of college so can we expect more widespread protests in california as a response to the economic policies. well i think that as average americans look to washington and they see the corporations got bailed out they see that the economy was tank by deregulation and they're angry about it as we've seen with occupy wall street and the protests going on in chicago and certainly the protests throughout the u.c. system i would anticipate that wants to wish and truly is doubled in five years happening next year that we will see students taking to the streets taking to their quads and that's of course the most american thing you can do which is protest something that is so blatantly patently unfair and let's say that these cuts are made what the governor there is advocating what would that mean for the people of california and ultimately what would that mean for the economy of california it

means that those who are already hurting will be hurting more it means that the poorest californians those who are unemployed who are receiving welfare assistance sick people disabled people elderly people what it really means liz is when we spend money now we save money later for example in health care for every one dollar spent in preventative care that's five dollars we save in an easy our visit it really means that it's going to increase our deficit our budget problem in the future so it's really just shifting the problem to a later date and in causing californians who are already in pain to be in even more pain and it really speaks to the notion that the federal government which actually has the ability to coin internationally traded currency needs to step in and help the states in a bailout since there dig deregulation actually led to this economic downturn and the timing of this it is an election year what are the significance of this kind of a crisis during an election year. i think for president obama he

already has a lot of his base angry at him as we can see in chicago in the protests with nato and occupy wall street and if you look at polls americans are really his base liberal americans are very unhappy at bailing out wall street and not main street so i think that this will will add to that in california it's a done deal we tend to elect him a credit presidents so i'm i'm sure he's not worried about the state per se but i do think that he should be worried about the increasingly vocal protests of the left who is very critical of the fact that he is pro corporate. caroline thank you very much for coming on the show i was dr caroline how do you manage politics professor at the dental college. well up next on our t.v. is the capital account with lauren lister let's check in with learn to see what is on city of agenda lauren what can we look forward to hi liz well it's monday so why don't we give you a perverse notion of the way things work in this too big to fail financial system

j.p. morgan loses two billion dollars all of a sudden all eyes are on what allowed this trading loss to occur what this means for regulation what kind of punishment there should be if any and at the end of the day things come out and it looks stacked to j.p. morgan's benefit more of these factors working in its benefit and hurting everybody else or at least other firms and other players in the market let me give you just one example today we learned that investors are worried about the european mortgage bond market because guess what j.p. morgan is the largest buyer of european home loans and after this whole fiasco investors are worried that j.p. morgan is going to pull out they have such large positions that if they pull out there could be a significant increase in volatility which is something that could really hurt other players so that's just one example liz we're going to get into more and also get into what this means and what the solution to this is right well

a lot to look forward to a lot to talk about that's coming up next thank you learn for the day that's coming up next with the capital account with lauren lister for more on the stories we covered you can check out our you tube channel it's you tube dot com slash america and you can also head on over to our web site that is r t dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at liz wall we'll be right back here and a half hour. if you just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old don't you tell the truth. i'm a contestant i am a total get of friends that i love traveling hip hop music and. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the role without you see or his place. look.

i earn.

more news today violence is once again flared up. these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. sheinkopf oration to rule the day.