tv Going Underground RT May 9, 2020 6:00pm-6:31pm EDT
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time after time here we're going underground on victory day when russia commemorates the 26000000 soviet citizens sacrificed to win european freedom and victory against the nazis 75 years ago coming up on the show can freedom be one again in europe this time after the so-called war on coronavirus has britain's death toll becomes the worst in europe we ask a former world economic forum director whether in nato why do you cannot make a depression well catalyze revolution and there's western governments shake billions from the magic money tree to tackle coronavirus we asked tribune publisher
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and jacobin founding editor. how mass working class mobilization could make elites finally see an apology as the world's deadliest pandemic coming up in today's going underground but 1st billions around the world today commemorates and celebrate 75 years since the soviet union saved them from the grip of the nazis after the red army liberated berlin but with the u.k. death toll now the worst in europe could we see a revolution everywhere to rival russia's 1917 revolution joining me now via skype from zurich is the chairman of think tank or racist dr frank you're going richter thanks so much for coming on as i say 75 years since victory in your approach some estimates have it say the japanese own financial times of 50000 may have been killed here in britain just before i get on to other or wide ranging analyses of coronavirus your take on the british response to coronavirus. well i think the
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a merck response came in a little italy saw yuki is one of the most hit countries in europe if not a lot and there might be a devastating 2nd wait for of course it's happening we have to wait until the u.s. senate is ready to file you maybe another 12 or 18 months and you'll finally get all worked arguably that was because in part britain was more concerned about bracks it than coronavirus what did you make of the use apparent 1st responder just to punish italy to actually find them for breaking state aid rules just because they were trying to save the lives of their population well 1st of all about. i should say that we are facing a double whammy in the u.k. press it and call it it's a very unhealthy alliance and i think the extension backs it that this inevitable i'm on call it and you keep asking should agree to the believe in
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order to avoid possible not you'll preface it but it spreads that term of course the main concern is well also in continental europe little wiscon to this because it by the crisis like italy spain and greece and i sing we have to shore solidarity to support each other stronger nations in the norse germany is going to new york holland supporting basalts in the west or in east so we should think about being finally occur on arm front or even calling up once as far as i know boris johnson continues to say and his whole team there will be no extension to break scepter deadline date do you think though that it has been the legacy of the $28.00 bank bailouts that is impacting europe's response to coronavirus obviously europe the worst hit the continent as regards coronavirus. well we're ilana lot from 2 laws and 8 and how to handle the crisis in the us not the white way and the
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right to find those countries and putting up borders again is definitely a rights in the corner i dispose of all doesn't know any borders and the whole building chinese walls around the continent is totally misleading or are as it's really a chance for bible of the book you're not going to face the disintegration of the union i think will come out of it even stronger and it will even medical advisor saying walls need to go up in venice you said uncontrolled capitalism has left europe afraid and forgotten do you think there are dangers of social unrest because of coronavirus you know already a privately called a crisis globalization has left a great portion of british and other western society impoverished uncontrolled form of avid listener favoring the richest few has increasingly diminished the middle
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class in a deep seated resentment of globalization is spoiled or what will white great portion of the law perceive perceive themselves to be globalization also it's social welfare systems its market is this global as it. already there are voices here in britain talking of post pandemic austerity do you think austerity policies could push your p.r.p. in countries maybe britain de de revolutions on the level of france in 789 and russian navy 17 and china in the devonian well or at the last you're proud to call it french you know west protests streets of paris and you've seen similar protests in the u.k. and around the globe the middle class wants to benefit of economic rewards just as elites do now didn't see that france rice or our space on this recenter and it was mostly elected by globalization losers and finally yes i think it might it's
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another revolution and maybe something similar to the the french revolution and the russian what do you think it will look like because presumably the rich some of whom may be watching this program feel they can lock themselves away in ivory towers they can use private. infrastructure whether it be water or basic amenities and ignore the masses. well a lot of rich london are so let corker on our berets and all sitting in their nice car and mentions summer and norse whereas we have unrest in. poorer cities and poor regions in the u.k. and across europe and the coronavirus really highlighting you case starkly white moment the look of health care and threats the social safety nets to call it if you will outreach you see the british government attacked the un special rapporteur
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when he was saying things like you are saying there about the political decisions that were made after 28 as regards austerity and do you think that a media here run by oligarchs can hide some of this from the general public or at least from the policy makers in decision makers so we don't fully understand the world the way you see it well and he has a very important role to play here and sing about in all spending now trillions of europe's pounds and dollars which of the money comes from and i sing the ben b. is indeed austerity but austerity it all group is talking we have to revise or commies we have to help the pro parts of society him and. maybe facing even the class warfare in u.k. europe and america in america i guess the minorities are dying at twice the rate of their white pews but it's really a longing. well perhaps there is some realisation of what you are talking about as
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regards class warfare because elites in nato countries. are very aware perhaps of this instability and they are blaming and britain secret services for instance blaming sabotage of health care services here from russia from china from iran who knows venezuela cuba and as you know donald trump sees coronavirus as a direct attack on par with pearl harbor and 911 from the people's republic of china. well yeah he's making this comparison but. our us and i think it's a wrong thing to do would still that different and i don't believe this comes from a lap one it's definitely not a good time to pick another fight is china so the us will definitely amplify the current economic downturn by terrorists to punish punish and that's what's rule in
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the else crisis think about not the great depression of 20 in 29 at the time most countries are very protectionist accelerating russian salaried in crisis in the same scene might happen again yeah but arguably with 645000000000 pounds of quantitative easing here the governments at the same time as they may be blaming china are pouring money into firms that are committed to globalization supporting your viewpoint and if it doesn't work surely natural they should blame bad actors russia china iran you know it's so easy to believe they're so thinking it's very much a 1000000000 mind so. it will really help the u.s. at the end of the day and i think us. response to crawl up what's very missile you know all of us is the built superpower and it was not really able to contain. the
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barretts i believe that's a call to call a crisis something like a swiss moment for america do you think the media as i say is being successful though in hiding that level of the crisis we noticed here that there were harley street clinics offering coronavirus tests for the rich in central pay apparently billionaires have been getting tests at the expense of the hinterland there or in the south or france is the nature of the class war ahead i don't think you know that the media is controlled in western society but the human media especially biased in the western media landscape it so nobody is following the leading your voice and everybody's saying the same so it could be it end of the media it's missing the point and not quite enough of what is coming through to shove and the coming hours or think about drinking of the u.k. economy i think we'll see a cheapie lots of media minus 1520 percent this year which this incredible
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person what it means for the trucks. but this way it's going to be comparable to the great depression or well the bank of england 48 hours or so indicating at 25 percent down in g.d.p. if g.d.p. is indeed a good indicator for quarter 2 you are arguably a good barometer of what policymakers and politicians are thinking about your company does these presumably zoo meetings now with the top ministers what do you make of your successor at the world economic forum arguably marc benioff chair of the tech company sales force saying capitalism as we know it is dead there longer can we maximize profits in a way that only fosters climate emergency is this the new future and do policymakers recognise it or will it be back to ideas of maximizing profits of obsessions with debt to g.d.p. ratios at the expense of the majority. well we definitely need for all countries
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the private sector and civil society to cooperate and capitalism in the old way this stuff we have to rescind capitalism and how economists work and for whom potentially oil and you will threaten with stout 2nd hand or the entire global economy all for green cross and ukraine you look something european union actually announced pro would you call up writers and you should look at it right now the market and yours is correct it's going to. be anglo-saxon style of capitalism expect us to reposition capitalism with the. social dimension of. dr frank you're going to breakfast thank you. after the break is it too late to save what was a western europe's largest socialist movement has essential workers continue to die without protective equipment in the face of an arguably ineffective post torben labor leader we asked tribune publisher and jacobin founding editor but because the
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current if there's any hope for the so-called party of the british working class all the more going on but to going on the ground. join me every thursday on the alex salmond show and i'll be speaking to guests of the world of politics sports business i'm showbusiness i'll see you then. welcome back this light coronavirus catalyzed government stimulus seemingly winning the economic argument for socialism across major nations socialist movements in the
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u.s. and the u.k. are experiencing that worst defeats for years so do those looking to create a world free from the ideology of neo liberalism need a new model of resistance and organization joining me now via skype from new york is jacobin founding editor and tribune publisher bus because of cholera whose new book the socialist manifesto the case for radical politics in an era of extreme inequality is out now basco welcome to going underground so tell me about this socialist manifesto book because it's come out and it's out now just as the dull compulsion of economic relations as you quote from looks in the book seems to have ended as government intervene overcovered 19 well yes i think we're seeing a return of the state but one of the things that i try to express in the book is that even though state policies might change at certain points so might be more laissez faire it might be more state interventionist and other points fundamentally
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the system is still based on a division are treated those who work and who have to work for others and those who were on and don't have the same compulsion of course they are compelled in themselves by the market so what i was trying to do with the book was to discuss what's relevant and also question perhaps what's not relevant in a classical socialist vision. and to look seriously at the history of past attempts to bring about a better world a world that truly represents not old spared in the enlightenment liberty equality and fraternity yeah it's internationalist it's local it's full of opium ism obviously was written before the pandemic cholera arguably affected paris in in the 19th century ahead of the 848 revolution 118 spanish flu catalyzed. apparently apartheid in south africa how can cope with 19 affect things in
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a positive way well i think at the very least it's shattering a lot of the illusions that neoliberal lucia's of the past few decades so we were already told that there is not enough money it's impossible these are these big complex economic and social problems and the state can't play a role in fixing the politics in other words democratic politics can't play a role fixing them but now we're just seeing that when it's needed to prop up the stability of the system to prevent a deeper prices the government can in fact aggressively intervene so what we need to think about is the slow moving crisis the slow crisis of poverty and of hunger and of declining living standards and wages and of bankruptcy is that people getting in over their head in consumer debt and household debts and credit card debt just to maintain a semblance of a middle class standard of living so if the acute crisis of coronavirus can be
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responded to with this intense state effort why can't the slow moving crisis to respond to in the same way and i think their real reason is because we're yet to be organized together as a class of working people to demand that our. every day problems are responded to as an emergency and that's going to take us creating a crisis of sorts for our worse because you write fairly quickly about the tragedy the defacto martyrdom of rosa luxemburg do you think it's still relevant today when you talk about how she said gradual changes compares it to the myth of sis offis the gradual change is not ultimately going to get anyone anywhere. i think that the secret of social democracy and more radical forms of socialism in the 20th century is that in fact radical radical change can get us somewhere and in
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a way it's breaking down this to contact me between reform and revolution as rosa luxemburg put it because in other words today the barriers to reform are so great that the elites. capitalists who own own things going trial so much of our societies will resist even minor improvements of change so viciously that you know it's hard to draw quick that condom in the united states we still have one 6th of our economy run by the private insurance industry you know these are people who have a lot at stake and even something minor like medicare for all of but if you have that part of the economy in the hands of private industry and you have you know thousands of people making millions and billions of dollars off of this then obviously they're going to resist it tooth and nail so i think we need to say that
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our immediate demands are demands that we would call social democratic demands that demands to expand the welfare state your people a little bit more security a little bit more dignity a little bit more respect in their day to day lives and society but in order to accomplish even these moderate goals we'll need to think about industrial militancy and how we can all typically a road the power of capital over our lives and i think right now the really important thing to remember is that the ideas of the political left or does that have historically been associated with political left for more justice and more security for deleterious measures like in the u.s. medicare for all and jobs guarantee and all these other programs now have the joy. early support i'll get to elections in a 2nd you know we have a think tank it called the i e a and jump on this program talking about his film the dirty war in the n.h.s.
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showed up privatization all of the national health service was one of the things he's a little bit about it reviewed your book and said it's desperate to excuse the failure of attempts to create socialism in the u.s.s.r. and china what did it mean is you yeah i think it's ridiculous you know i'm a democratic socialist democratic socialist were among the 1st victims of some of these systems but the key is to put this into some sort of historical context that's how we should really understand things otherwise it just becomes more of as a mountain heritage that china there was incredibly developed then perhaps he wouldn't have attempted crash agricultural collectivization if he inherited a country that was a ravaged by japanese invasion and european imperialism before then you know maybe you would be in a different condition you know we operate in conditions of not entirely our own making and you know obviously it's a shame that those on the right will always use any attempts of complexity or
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nuance or any you know look at the experiences that people had and with with the stain when in fact there's a reason why there's you know millions of pensioners and east germany today they yearn for the german democratic republic of the seventy's and eighty's and it's not because they love authoritarianism are these are bad people it's because they're seeing social chaos they're seeing cuts to their their welfare they're seeing what feels to them like an extension by by forces beyond their control and they didn't really have much of the same so i think we need to speak to the complexity of the communist experience while still criticizing the very gross and very obvious abuses of. human rights and individual freedoms and so on these systems as a publisher of tribune and and jack and jacobin and what do you think that is
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behind the criticisms that your friend tickly trying to protect your worldview and i should say it's not from the right mainly it's from the liberal left the criticisms tend to go well i think people on the liberal left like to paint and very broad stroke all forms of redistribution i said alex thank you so bernie sanders for instance and the democratic primary was attacked for saying the most minor things about cuba bernie sanders merely said that you know cuba has managed to do a good job improving the literacy in the country and for that he was considered on the left the ball he was attacked and whatnot for even basic things like in the 1980s you know saying nice things about the sandinista fighters fighting for for their freedom fighting against dictatorship fighting against right wing contra death squads you know this is controversial and the discourse in the united states
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still so i think what you often have is this. this is a very fragile defensiveness when anyone mentions anything i'm comfortable so for me bernie sanders send some mild points of phrase about aspects that you can system is way less disqualifying than joe biden supported the invasion of iraq that killed a 1000000 people but obviously that mainstream media the united states is never going to make those sorts of criticism and you saw the same thing in the u.k. or germany carbons tireless efforts for peace and places like iraq and for peace in places like libya for peace and palestine this was turned into some sort of radical islamist from a secular socialist much less you know and same thing of her support for the irish cause so i think this is something that we need to look seriously at which is
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the bipartisan kind of common sense on foreign policy even if some of these people might in name only at least be against austerity and join us in certain struggle i think we need articulate clearly i laugh when policy that's built on self-determination respect for people's rights to live without imperial interference i want to ask about the destruction of cool but in a 2nd but you mentioned bernie sanders donald trump seemed a bit disturbed by the idea that that is was can see the ng to biden just briefly tell me he's not gone from the ballot but he sounds people will be able to vote for him people will be able to vote for him in some states not all states there's about provisions that the local state parties have erected and some place in the senate if your campaign is suspended or no longer active campaigning you can be removed from the ballot we're kind of battling to prevent that from happening right now in new york state yes i certainly if i'm able to i'm in new
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york residence i'm able to i will certainly vote. from bernie sanders i hope everyone does very least or very considerably it's how we who look and so i should say has been on this show the green candidate gets your vote this november yes i'm in new york i would definitely vote for hollyhock and how is someone that i have known for many years on this group on many issues but he's a working or he's someone who understands concerns of working people i think his voice is very important to get out there and i think it's ridiculous the ways in which liberals try to prevent these expressions of i've discontent and try and sort of trying to win over the tension how we hawking's voters instead of nominating a candidate or having that candidates speak to the anger and ammunition the people who might vote for hawkins are feeling which are certainly you know met some votes instead it becomes a disqualifying things and we don't know who's going to win in november over here
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though we know that's a kiss dhamma is in charge of the british labor party he's put his place people in the shadow cabinet your reaction to the news not only that it turns out so-called israeli lobbyists have been. paying his stomach but also the fact that he hasn't suspended members implicated in the secret labor reports that we as a program any journalist is threatened from revealing to the public about what exactly was going on for jeremy cool been to be smeared and sabotaged as so that he didn't become prime minister well it's very clear within the labor party to be opposition to jeremy corbyn would have rather had to worry room and all the damage and devastation that that meant then to have a member of the labor left someone committed to rig the labor party says on paper. the labor party believes and gemma carbon actually believed that that was a sin we should not be confused by all these attacks and every quarter been the
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reason why they don't like jeremy corbyn is because he tried to enact the labor party's program well that's where the labor party's always said it stood for but in fact in reality you know we know the truth about the labor party and government so i think the labor party is still a terrain in which if you're in the u.k. i think you should be a part of the labor party you should struggle to build up the progressive wing of the labor party to fight against centrist vacillations and to fight against a labor right it doesn't belong to business interests it doesn't belong to these professional politicians the labor party by definition the u.k. labor party belongs to those and the u.k. you're out there working class but yes so far the response to the report has been absolutely. you know it's been devastating the lack of a response given how how callous and how vindictive some of the racial abuse that
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was that was released as part of that report and also the revelations about attempts to undermine german carbon journal campaign to defend in a chest campaign against austerity i campaign for the future of britain for building a few british creature for working people and of course you know all the internationals aspects the labor party these are all undermined and of course corben was was blamed for the whole defeat and there are lessons of this is don't let the kooky loony left yet in power again and we need to push back against all this inclusions buses or car thank you. and that's it for the show will be back on monday when one of the world's top risk literacy scholars explains how you should enjoy opera what the ruling classes tell you about how to live your lives during a global pandemic so your response is proportionate to the chances of you die until then wash your hands and join the on the ground with you through facebook criticize
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and. we go to work. straight home for. kaiser report never fails to deliver the goods you know we've been saying now for a few years that ultimately they're going to $100.00 trillion dollars japan's already down a percent debt to g.d.p. on their fed's balance sheet kuroda their central banker has already taken their
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central bank above 100 percent of g.d.p. in terms of debt that's buying a lot of junk a lot of assets so merican at 6789 fraulein dollars they've got another 60 trillion to go the globe is set to go to 100 percent g.d.p. debt to the balance sheets of the central bank. the silence here you see yuri. said. this is all going to be a palm oil plantations. in their. lives this is especially when they had to make.
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