from all possible sources also as european nations continue to struggle through the economic turmoil of austerity citizens are turning to alternative forms of economies to survive are these alternative solutions that could help the american economy too and in tonight's daily take republicans say they're willing to make difficult decisions the really just the party of no. in the best of the rest of the news while congress the new york police department and our security state are focused on the threats of islamic terror the united states narrowly averted another domestic terror attack for u.s. army soldiers who were arrested on charges of murder are also being accused of plotting to assassinate president obama and overthrow the government the soldiers

belong to a militia group in georgia known as forever enduring are always ready for fear it already spent eighty seven thousand dollars on weapons and plot of the takeover fort stewart military base in georgia and then bomb several targets they even murdered a fellow member of the army and his girlfriend out of their fear that that plot that their plot might be exposed it's unknown if or how many other members of the u.s. army may have been involved in the plot joining me now to talk more about this is mark potok spokesperson for the southern poverty law center editor in chief of the s.p.l. sees intelligence report and eight watch blogs and gary berntsen president and of the concerned veterans of america thank you both for joining me tonight marc if i could start with you back if in the early days my recollection is the very early days of the obama administration a report which had been commissioned during the bush administration about the possible. the of domestic terrorism occurring in the united states was issued and

it mentioned the possibility of domestic terrorism being fomented within the united states military and there was this big her fall fall and a lot of the conservative right wing talk radio just went nuts about it and i think d.h. has polled it or at least stop talking about it. what is the nature of what is the state of this. well first of all the t.h.s. report at that time i think what it really said was that extremists on the far right but were interested in recruiting people coming back federer and coming back from iraq and afghanistan the idea being that they came with the skills to you know fight the coming race war and all that kind of stick and it was a real problem what is the status of the extremist military it's hard to say mean we have fought bit of a long battle with the pentagon in past years in two thousand and six he came out with a big story suggesting that there were quite a lot of right wing extremists in the army that they were coming in or in the

military in general they were coming in basically because people were having trouble meeting their recruiting totus and so we're kind of looking the other way certain signs in any event the pentagon did change its rules in the year two thousand and nine lakes with little fanfare and so i think that situation at least as far as a regulatory matter is kind of taken care of you know it's unclear to me whether these people develop their views lies unclear actually about this entire plot so-called militia plot but whether they've got their views while they were actually in the military or before there's very little known about this plot at least publicly gary you you've served in the military did you ever come across any of this kind of militia mentality or you know we've got to take the government down kind of mentality among the people you served with and i served in the united states air force one hundred seventy six one canadian and of course i had a career in cia i was twenty one years in central intelligence agency i have not and i. never had any contact with anyone while i was an active group we were

afterwards that you know expressed those sentiments but you know anything is possible and under any circumstance when you have a force as large the force that we have i don't believe that extremists are targeting the institution of the army as a vehicle for terrorism per se they want to obtain weapons they can do that on the outside i think though that the bar is very low in terms of. of of anytime we hear any type of threat it's got to be researched immediately it's got to be one of the grounds got to be resolved you know there have been crazy people in all sorts of. the walks in american life that have done claims and you can't dismiss this and you just have a hard to see what the best again brings out and hopefully it's not you know it's not true but if it is we're going to deal with them and deal with them harshly and immediately and so that that no one else will we would even think of something like

that we would speak about it. you know out loud or would even attempt a planned any other person mark here or you and your organization monitor a lot of these hate groups are are you getting signals are you hearing of them trying to get their people into the military in order to you know plan this grand coup or some variation on the old turner diaries story. no i wouldn't say that we're seeing that i don't think there's you know any certainly nothing suggesting any kind of plan or or even that kind of propaganda i mean a few years ago five six seven eight years ago was quite common to hear that kind of talk and you know some of the neo nazi groups we cover actually you know military court date or sex but i don't see really any sign of that right now and i doubt very much that this has to do with the outside world i think the city has to be limited to the store people who are arrested and perhaps a few others well that's on that's very good news actually thank you thank you for

that gary i'm curious what what what you're doing there at the. concerned veterans for america is an organization that is promoting you know the issue of trying to get all veterans involved the political process we want everyone to recognize that it's economics that matters more than anything else that the greatest national security threat the united states is our debt and our deficit and we're trying to carry that message and we're going to be at the d.n.c. hearing the same message ok and. you know we had a our debt at the end of world war two was one hundred twenty seven percent of g.n.p. it's g.d.p. it's far worse than it is right now eisenhower paid that debt off by spending by borrowing and spending money on the highway system on the schools hospitals what are you are you encouraging a stimulus program to get those people back to where i was tom that was a different period in time where the united states at that point had fifty percent

of the economic power of the world it was europe was destroyed japan and asia much of that was destroyed we're facing very very different circumstances and i recognize the importance of times of government spending on the benefit of the you know the g.i. bill it's a way educated myself and i recognize the problems. that you know certain types of government spending is good but we have to also recognize that when you have debt when you have unemployment when you have a world now where seven billion people are meeting competing for economic resources against changed a bit that's a plus for that's that's where i would argue that we should be looking at our trade policies and but it's all much larger conversation for another time period it sure is and i'd love to have that with you thought yeah we'll do it some day gary mark thank you both so much for being with us tonight whether you you think. what the story what this story really speaks to is the fear our founding fathers had of

standing armies knowing as so many previous empires that had standing armies during peacetime eventually succumbed to a military coup by the very same standing army as james madison the father of our constitution wrote a standing army is one of the greatest mischiefs that can possibly happen and in seven hundred eighty seven upon receiving the first draft the constitution thomas jefferson warned the virginia would oppose it if it didn't include a bill of rights one and one of those rights explicitly saying quote no standing armies and quote as president jefferson largely did away with our standing army taking it from over three hundred thousand men down to about three thousand by the end of his presidency in eighty eight jefferson had largely done away with america's standing army and he was thus inspired to write to his friend dr thomas cooper in september tenth eight hundred fourteen our men are so happy at home that they will not hire themselves out to be shot at for a shilling a day hence we can have no standing armies for defense because we have no paupers

to furnish the materials as he paid jefferson's advice before our nation to meet the same fate as so many other nations that have embraced standing armies during times of peace. it's the good the bad in the very very bar rapturously ugly. new zealand today new zealand's parliament approved a marriage equality bill by a vote of eighty to forty in new zealand nearly two thirds of the population favors same sex marriage right now civil unions are allowed in that country of a partners can't jointly adopt children is ilands prime minister john key threw his support behind marriage equality just a few days. president obama did earlier this year the marriage equality bill will need to be passed two more times by the full parliament before it becomes law it's

great that our friends down under are bracing marriage equality it's time america do the same thing the bad south carolina state representative alan clemens state officials in south carolina including governor nikki haley everett peter de lay claim that their new voter suppression idea law is not unfairly targeting african-americans however now it seems likely it may be as part of the federal trial underway this week on that law clemens' sheath to the chief author of the law admitted yesterday that he welcomed a racist e-mail from a friend supporting the law in the e-mail clemens friend said that after american and poor voters would quote be like a swarm of bees going after a watermelon if the state legislature offered a reward for obtaining id cards there's none of that this is that surprising because no secret of voter suppression id laws unfairly target and in fact african-american voters and the very very ugly r. and c.

attendees chris christie said in his r. and c. speech that the republican party would bring back american exceptionalism apparently for some of the r. and c. that includes over racism during the convention yesterday two attendees were ejected after throwing nuts peanuts literally nuts at a black c.n.n. camera woman and if that wasn't bad enough after throwing the nuts the two attendees were heard saying this is how we feed animals for their part and see efficiency call the acts deplorable and inexcusable and there are also reports that earlier in the day that delegate from puerto rico may have been booed after she joined in on a usa usa chant with other delegates. incidents like these are disgusting and completely unacceptable in our society and very very ugly. after the break as europeans continue to struggle through the eurozone mess many

are turning to alternative forms of economies in order to survive what kind of systems are europeans using and are these alternatives a possible answer to the global economic crisis. culture is that so much i'm going to give each ministry of our minds to the front doors of old revolutions occupations and regime change are among the most important elements that are making and remaking our world today.

me leave he. told stories in here before going global and now it's pulling viral. log in. the right to. choose your place. to ensure a stand. to. make your statement.

spread the word. she wants through the long. odds. there's something really interesting happening across the atlantic austerity ravaged europe. it is a breeding ground for new experimental mini economies in spain where a recession is expected to get even worse after the government passed eighty billion dollars worth of new austerity measures new economies local micro economies are springing up all around the country that are not dependent on the crippled euro the economies are based on barter and exchange for example time banks are popping

up around spain that allow workers to trade in their services in hours and receive other services from others in return labor and services of us exchange through hours and not through currencies tens of thousands of citizens are participating in more than three hundred twenty five i'm banks all around spain right now making one of the largest modern economic experiments in recent history similar type of banks can be found in greece and portugal too as alternatives to the corporate free market austerity and the austerity recovery being pushed by banks of technocrats as the washington post describes these new economies these experiments aim to take communities back to a time when goods and services were barred before things such as interest rates market speculation and derivatives complicated the financial world clearly the globalised free market experiment of the last thirty years has failed us vacherie

ism and reaganomics and it's time to look for new alternatives but are these the sort of are to alternatives we should be taken seriously joining me now is max frog wolf coniston instructor of the new you school university and senior analyst with green crest capital max welcome back to the program always my pleasure thanks for having me thanks for joining us first off what does this say about the current state of the european economy that alternative currency the last currency free economies are popping up. well it shows us that what's happening here at home in the us is happening there too perhaps faster and more extreme and that is just as the number of people left out and left behind from the mainstream the official the mass a colony gets larger and larger their creativity and their desperation drive them to look and to consider new ways to organize their economy now after all currency is something people agree on as

a basis of exchange it can be ours it can be seashells it can be gold necklaces and it can be a labor bank of some kind or a time bank now this is happening in the u.s. it's happening in europe in europe you've got the euro being imposed all these different countries and they don't have individually the the ability to control their currency here in the united states we have least control our currency. isn't there a difference between the two a qualitative difference that has something to do with that. sure i mean the sort of situation of the individual european nations particularly the less powerful nations is more like the situation of american states we have one monetary policy made by the federal reserve system for all fifty states and it will probably be accurate to most of those states needs where you can have a state that booming when others are in trouble or a state that's in trouble when others are booming so the european countries as individual nations gave up their national currencies and came under the euro rubric

with the single european central bank we don't have that problem and we've seen a lot of activity from our central bank the federal reserve which has done an enormous amount and continues plans to do more to stimulate the economy and many folks quickly in places like green greece or portugal or spain don't have that particular option to help them cope with really difficult macroeconomic times what's your take on these time banks and could you explain to our viewers you know in in plain english what they are how they work. sure well what money does what currencies or monies do is they provide this sort of measure of value how much is that worth we quote it in prices they also give us a universal means of exchange you know that you can purchase anything with this stuff currency because it's legally required that you be willing to trade currency for whatever it is you have to sell so it's a store of value it's a measure of value but it's a means of exchange those are part of the definitional meanings of money but you

can have all kinds of things function as money at different moments in time you know hatchets or cigarettes in a prison system or soap or you could have seashells of various type or some kind of precious metal like gold or you can have labor hours what produces value or wealth in a society is labor and therefore one way of measuring labor is obviously dollars what we're used to currency but you could actually measure value in terms of labor hours that take six hours to paint a house and two hours to shovel a walk when it snows outside then three shoveling of the walk are equal to one painting of a house so it's a also a store of value also a unit of measure and also a means of exchange and it's what you do when you've been what we call in the financial world disinter mediated or you've left the banks of the currency world behind because you don't like it because you're not allowed into it or because it simply isn't working for you on so profound an existential a level that you need to want to or have to find another way do you think here in the united states that we're being disinter mediated and if so do we have more

barter and alternative currencies when i used to live in vermont we had the green mountain dollars it was a local local currency actually that you could use only with local local businesses . well i think we know we are we know more of the activity is leaving the market the problem that we tend to have is economists and even policymakers is when people leave the market with their economic activity market economies tend to not count it by the most famous example of this is we record record in the united states all kinds of economic growth of the last thirty years a lot of which is actually women leaving the home and getting work outside the home we don't count the enormous wealth and value of women's labor and men's but predominately women's labor in the household when they're cooking when they're cleaning when they're raising children doing all kinds of important book keeping and financial planning but if you hire an outsider to do that and you pay your taxes and you report it it looks to us as more activity all that being said we know

there are more people bartering there are more people needing food stamps there are more people with little gardens and there used to be are going to food banks we know that there are more people in the free gaza movement literally eating the trash of other people who are doing better than them whenever an economy fails this royally this many people for this long we begin to see disinter mediation people lose faith they leave the system where they don't have a place for them the system no longer has a place for them and they seek out an alternative either by desperation or based on their moral or ethical or political commitments fasting max thanks so much for being with us tonight my pleasure thank you. there's something you need to know about the republican party they're going to

pretend to be the party of courageous leaders party is willing to tell the hard truths part is well you make the difficult decisions decisions that aren't politically popular they want to act like the the adults in the room but really. it's all just another republican con job take a listen to what chris christie said at the r. and c. about the difference between love and respect the greatest lesson that mom ever taught me though was this one she told me there would be times in your life when you have to choose between being love and being respected. now she said to always pick being respected i believe we have become paralyzed paralyzed part desire to be loved by our founding fathers had the wisdom to know that social acceptance of popularity were fleeting and that this country's principles needed to be rooted strains greater than the passions in the emotions of the times when our leaders today decided it's worth more to be popular the popular decision and do

what's easy and say yes rather than to say no we know is what is required i'll hand it to chris christie the republican party they have been willing to say no a lot they said no to the american jobs act which would have put two million americans back to work they said no to the next generation of seniors who are expecting medicare and social security they said no to extending unemployment benefits they said no to food assistance for poor people they said no to natural disaster relief for hurricane tornado victims they said no to women who want to collect equal pay as men or who want access to contraceptives they said no to environmentalists who want the air we breathe in the water we drink to be safe they said no to blacks and other minorities who want to vote they said no to unionized public employees like teachers cops and firefighters who want to be able to collectively bargain. in other words christie and republicans have a record to say no or a lot but pretty much exclusively to working people poor people women seniors

minorities the sick you get the picture but at the same time republicans love to say yes to people who have more than six zeros in their bank account or sit in corporate boardrooms or build weapons systems despite more than a decade of bush tax cuts that have exploded our budget deficits dramatically increased wealth inequality and crashed our economy republicans are sucking up to millionaires and billionaires offering the more tax cuts the crazy eyes and bachelor reality shows are bringing roses to the women that they want despite rampant fraud on wall street williams wasted and bank bailouts and outright predation coming from the financial sector republicans can't say no to the banks tears when they ask for more handouts and fewer regulations despite catastrophic oil spills record cases of autism and cancer soaring gas prices republicans can't

say no to the oil barons who want to keep collecting billions in taxpayer subsidies and have virtually no federal oversight over how they run the drilling operations despite a health care crisis in the united states republicans can't say no to private health insurance c.e.o.'s who make a living denying sick americans the health care they need to survive despite more than a decade of war thousands of u.s. soldiers dead and a military budget that's bloated and fraught with waste republicans can't say no to defense contractors which is why republicans are doing all they can to reverse the automatic defense cuts coming down the pike at the end of the year. the point is chris christie and the rest of the republican party say there's something courageous or respectful about saying no and they might have a point of certain circumstances but when the only people they're willing to say no to are the most vulnerable among us and that's not courage that's not respect

that's cowardly that's how bullies behave it's far more courageous to take on those in power it's far more respectful to tell those who have money and influence the time to make some sacrifices to tell the koch brothers in general electric goldman sachs and united health care know and while republicans are willing to do that. and until then they're the ones willing to speak truth to power we can't take a damn word they say no or respect seriously it's just one of the con jobs and we the people need to be waking up all our friends and neighbors to that republican concho. and that's the way it is tonight wednesday august twenty ninth two thousand and twelve i missed any part of tonight's show you can watch it now on h.d. on hulu at hulu dot com slash the big picture for more information on any of the stories we've covered visit our website at thom hartmann dot com free speech dot

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