well that's it for now keep a close eye on what's happening now media today if that story interests you a lot a lot of scientology they'll call me as well as the news updates here every hour i'll be here for next 5. and of course to be talking about so much more as well but for now this friday morning kevin 0 in on the rest the team in the gallery and on the scenes inside and off wishing you a great day and thank you for watching. hello

and welcome to cross talk where all things are considered i'm peter lavelle according to a new gallup poll over 60 percent of those asked are dissatisfied with the 2 major

parties the country is divided politically but the parties themselves are divided within edge of this the fact most voters do not belong to either party is it finally time to move on from this diwali. to discuss these issues and more i'm joined by my guests gloria laurie but in san francisco she was a 2020 presidential candidate of the party for socialism and liberation and the peace and freedom party in pasadena we have great job to what he is the co-host and co-creator of the independent media show congo couch and in austin we have wes benedict he is former executive director of the liberation party across up roles in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i was appreciated ok let's go to san francisco gloria you heard my introduction here why do you think over 60

percent of people are dissatisfied with the 2 major parties because we keep hearing the country is equally divided. and that's a media me but i think it's far more complicated than that because i i i mix with different circles and the majority experience i come across personally most people are political. homeless not a democrat in not a republican go ahead for. well i believe for many years people have tellt disengaged from the political process and it's reflected in the fact that maybe 40 percent maximum usually vote in the presidential elections and far less in the off year elections and i think it's because. they don't feed their life changed by anything that the politicians do and they hear the rhetoric they hear the promises that they want to get elected everything goes out the window and i think that's part of the cynicism of this past year in the last 4 years trying to.

exacerbate that situation and i think there's a lot of confusion by people but i do believe that with the higher the record number of voters and 2020 show that people were shot at which trumps politics they want to change and i think we're back to the same cycle of seeing in these last days of the biden administration the fighting debate and the lack of action inside of congress so we're back to square one well i hope we're not back to square one because i hope we can start moving forward a great let me go to you in pasadena here it is that it seems to me and this is the way i look at politics i look at it all up with the rhetoric that's being thrown around all the time but it's still the kind of basic economic issues that people are dealing with particularly during this pandemic an economic turndown and you know with this administration not just that you know that can take on trump and

i can pick on by an equal measure here you know when they were talking about you know of the $2000.00 check thing ok and they are who we go we have a female secretary of treasury right now i mean is it down moves the needle for anyone in the middle class i guess my point is is that you know i don't think trump addressed the middle class enough and i don't think biden is either he's just doing the culture wars which is infuriating for a lot of people including myself. yeah well i think you hit it right on the nose there peter it's just a scrapbooking theater going round and round and round and you can pick on biden just as much as you can pick our guy don't stop because once he got back into office it's the same old thing back to business and it's just me simply because whether it be i don't shop with the republicans or joe biden the democrats they don't represent the people they represent their donors i mean everything is so awful 80 percent of people still before this pandemic working paycheck to paycheck you know and now this game stop situation where you can see where the big guys are

still protecting their own and once again the little guys are shut out so i don't think it really makes a difference who's in office peter it's the same old same old and that's to go just use that divide and conquer strategy people claim that each other while he never addressed one economic issue and who suffers we the people do west the same and same question to you is so many people. are dissatisfied he went and by that is the major parties and the parties themselves with there's a civil war end up in both parties right now was it go on i mean well what point do people show their dissatisfaction by saying i just don't want to participate. yeah i think there is a lot of infighting within the republicans and democrats and it's kind of natural to expect that if you think about all the major important issues in the world or in the country there's taxes there are social issues terrorist trade issues personally research you to to group everyone into just 2 major

categories along so lot of people into a category where they're not going to agree with everyone else within their party even within a small libertarian party we have some minor disagreement some things so within the republican party you've got to i see 2 categories you've got the social conservatives who vote on religious issues and social issues and then you've got the economic conservatives who most maybe more libertarian stand for free markets those 2 groups don't necessarily agree on a lot of policies within the democrats i see it as you've got moderate democrats and then you've got the more extreme socialist leaning democrats and there are say a tension there and so you're lumping a lot of people like i said into 2 big groups who are just naturally not going to agree you know gloria i mean. i call myself

a conservative for many reasons but i think i actually have more in common with a lot of progressive on economic issues and i am fanatically anti-war and interventionist so you can see that i'm not very i welcome you can see why i'm not a member of the republican party never have been never will be because there are too many people in there that represent vested interests that i just i can accept and i think that you know in the and then i look at you know i was on the jimmy door show not very long ago and you know it was interesting that here is this really left wing progressive guy when jimmy door and i could agree on so many different things which i thought was so amazing because this is. do wabbly this binary that we're pretty presented all of the time in the media is either or i don't want either of them i could be a plague on both their houses ok i've had enough of them because they're not moving the needle on issues that affect majorities in america go ahead laura yeah i agree

with you and the plane is if they're not really 2 sites it's the same the same stuff they are capitalists they are big capitalists the fact that they. gathered billions of dollars in presidential elections shows they are represented at all and now you have i want to talk about 2 issues that are so critical to people one is what's taking place in texas that. deregulation the vultures just picking up people's bones right now and 4000000 without electricity their pipes broken and the poor the most effective but really everybody is a result of deregulation that has developed in this country over decades since the 1980 s. and then you have the fight for $1515.00 minimum wage biden proposed it but now being pulled back on it and had to fight for a shift just $15.00 memorization proposed over 5 years that doesn't mean anything

and on the other hand the people are the ones who made it happen it's the lowish workers and a unions that 1st made it a possibility and a reality in some cities and i think that's where people are going to start seeing where action really takes place and progress is by our own civic action by protests by organizing and mobilizing in the population the politicians as well wait wait wait can we get around issues that we can all work together on quickly go back to your infrastructure infrastructure in a little bit more infrastructure that might take care of of the $15.00 an hour issue i'm not a i'm not to die on that hill i've read different reports here as far as dignity regulation in principle i am fortier but i think that if we had a joint goal of rebuilding the country and rebuilding industry where people can have good paying jobs actually that might help the budget because you can tax them you know it seems to me i'm not trying to be simplistic here but i think that you

know they lose sight of a coming coca-cola can everyone can win ok it's either i only or you win and either if you win i lose that's. not of the duchess not a civil politics anymore go ahead. once again peter you hit it on the nose because here in america we have this cancel culture which means if you don't agree with what i agree then you're out if medicare for all is not at the top of your list then you're out which stops us from coming to that common goal and the funny thing is peter though i think it's all about the establishment whether it be the democrats or the republicans who've kind of implemented this kind of divide and conquer tactic so if you ask somebody else might one person might say well you know the establishment is doing a terrible job but i think they're doing the jet exact job they wanted to do because right now i mean everything is so polarized everybody is fighting with each other that we can't even come up with something simple like an infrastructure bill which we can all agree on and therefore nothing gets done and then they hold on to

their power. you know you know it was you know as a libertarian on this program here what majority hereon ideas we do present to people to get past this artificial divide go ahead with us. yeah i'm a libertarian and so that means i support free markets and when you think free markets are the way to economic prosperity and making everyone better off whether you're rich or poor it's hard to to let go of that concept and i i fully believe that and so when someone says the deregulation in taxes caused blackouts site to me it was poor regulation and it was in a free market situation and i think if you look around the world countries where people are doing pretty well are where they have the freest economies and countries where there are very core is where they have unfree economies and lots of

corruption so. i i think someone like biden has done a reasonably good job of unifying the country by rejecting some of the more extreme anti freedom economic initiatives if you raise the minimum wage if you could last a regulation is if you spend a ton of money that hersey economy i think truck hurt the economy with his stimulus spending and growing the deficit to trillions in one year or so to bring people together 8 you know. by who won the election he's done the best job of bringing people together i'm not i'm not buying supporter but that's that's the way i see it dammit gloria in its early days when it's a month and 40 days of this administration here but he's already walked back quite a few things that he promised during the campaign and not necessarily things i would agree with here but it seems to me and misses by my problem with

libertarianism it's not an attack on wes or anything like that is that again you know trump and now by they pick winners it's not the market that's picking winners is politics that paid winners here and that i find very frustrating is far is that you know a $15.00 an hour of just trying to make your case you're going to give me 30 seconds before we go to the break go ahead laura i think it really much more than that you know this now or i think when you have in the last year the billionaires getting $1.00 trillion dollars and well floor taking advantage gouging of people in a time of the worst housing crisis in history shows that if the system is capitalism that's a crisis it's a crime and that no in fact it is the regulation that costs this disaster in texas ok on that point there we're going to jump in here we're going to go to a short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion on america's broken political system stay with our team.

the british and american governments have often been accused of destroying lives in their own interests or you see in this these techniques is the state devising methods to him to essentially destroy personality of an individual. by scientific. this is how one doctor's theories were allegedly used in psychologic. wolf air against prison is deemed a danger to the state that was the foundation for the method of psychological interrogation psychological torture of the cia disseminated within the u.s. intelligence community and worldwide among our allies for the next 30 years and how the victims say they still live with the consequences today.

welcome back to cross up where all things are considered on peter lavelle remind you we're talking about the party system in the united states. ok let's go back to pasadena craig. this is a i have this thing that i'm fascinated with and i'm trying to get people excited about i'm very much for 3rd parties i think there should be 5 parties 6 parties why not ok maybe i won't be politically homeless anymore but in lieu of breaking this to wobbly which almost seems impossible they seem so institutionally ingrained and there's just too much corporate money sloshing around just so much of it but there's in lieu of all of that and i think you'd be on my site here realignment there's a realignment going on in politics i mentioned earlier i can talk to progressive

you know if you look at trump's supporters and you asked them about health care but you don't use these these toxic terms about health care you know the socialism or something but if you ask them you know do you think that you should have affordable health care we want and you know what the majority say yes i do gas will be a good idea ok and ok but of course you know this is dennis waitlist style that you know maybe you get used to but actually cuba has a good health care system but my point is that a lot of conservatives and a lot of progress isn't it's the way we talk about these issues in many ways and not let the middle man the media and these political talking heads and these you know in think tank to stay in and all that be the filter if we take that filter away there's a whole lot more commonality there and we don't have to talk about personalities all the time which annoy me ok yeah you know it's funny because i consider myself a leftist libertarian i voted for gloria and they and their general election but

there's a lot of things i love about the left part of the libertarian party as far as their protection of civil liberties or whatnot and like you said peter we can sit down and come to a lot of agreements i lot of things but the powers that be do have a spoke is that each other rather than talking about the nuances of these policies and you know there's a lot of clerical work. needs to be done to get a 3rd party party signatures or getting a certain percentage on the ballots and what not but that's actually the easy part the hard part peter is getting people in the same room getting him to be comfortable with uncomfortable conversations and that really is the hard part because it seems like american culture is so set on these you know cultural issues where we're fighting each other rather than sitting down and saying hey man what do we agree juan and yes the nuance of conversations are important because i do believe there are a lot of people out there who are somewhat libertarian my did that do want you know health care what not and but it's the way we go about it because there's also that

argument that with incomes the socialist parties that they have this little kind of a storage area and streak in them that if you don't go their way that you can't get it so i think we the whole ends of the spectrum back junk we have to find a way to come to the get together in the middle and find common ground with people like gloria and people like to the libertarian right up there you know any westmead i think really helps and really on the head there is that all our politics are it's identity it's all purity tests if you have to pass a purity test and you can't deviate i think that's more a problem on the left than it is on the right because people on the right are usually lazy and a lot of them are just stupid ok because they they do you know they think they do it their donors wanted them to be done i mean how do you know how many republican senators do people know they don't ok because they're not there to serve the people they're there to serve their donors and democrats do in a different way the left doesn't aim for a way they may end because and they're much more in tune with the culture wars you

keep their coalition together but at the end of the day it really is about the donors here so i mean this purity test we need to get away from it wes the libertarian party definitely has spirity tess and i don't think the green screen party this well we we you know we. if you could an outsider would look at our platform and hear what we say and say wow you are all on the same page and we all get together on occasion want to rip the page and the smaller pieces and we tear each other up look the republicans do have a purity test it's pro. pro-life and the democrats have a purity test is pro-choice. there are some other examples but that's the that's the biggest one and i think if you had if we had something like a proportional i'm sorry but isn't it purity test because it's a barrier to entry is it an intentional barrier to entry i mean it and i think the

data that plays a role in there it's a cudgel in that sense i don't think it's really about the issue of your conscience your consciousness about it a moral issue is that it's a way to keep people out and it's a form of entryism to we'll let you win if you believe this that that's what i just think it's kind of just a straw man and i and i think that's an area that we need to start discussing and not to completely dismiss someone because they have an attitude on that issue. well it and i would say i do think the vast majority of americans are pretty moderate and pretty much agree on a lot of issues. where we're not i do a lot of door to door campaigning and that kind of work and talking to voters and forums and when i talk to republican they're not extreme free market supporters most of them are not extremely religious or bigot is a lot of them are just pretty moderate in the same thing with democrats

a lot of them are not extreme socialists a lot of the more moderate capitalists and sort of support civil liberties but not too many civil liberties. i think if there was if we had something like proportional representation i think you'd see more like 4 or 5 or 6 significant groupings. and political parties which survive and libertarians would be one of them but probably not the biggest even though we should with. well a glory i mean. pluralism i mean they take it they always talk about diversity again this is my criticism of the left but it's not it's not diversity they want uniformity and and that and that's very a lean ating in many way for a lot of people here is it again this purity test has to be applied here like you you know you will openly criticize capitalism i have a lot of problems with the economic system but i don't approach it by saying can't we have to destroy capitalism i think there should be free markets real free

markets and helping them they the the middle class middle class business as i said i'm very pro i'm pro union is well people should have choices and they need to have power ok and again by kind of this language of. excluding one idea for another i think alienates people i mean that is my everyone has a right to their opinion but you know i do travel around and let him lead the circles and i i'm very careful my language and people know i'm very careful my language because i don't want to be a barrier for us not to agree go ahead gloria. well you know this discussion today and what you hear in the media in general is about the left and the right and the polarization but the true left has never had a voice on television he looked at the presidential debates of 22 like you might like a number he sense you mean part of bernie was saying he certainly was raising issues

and talking about socialism as a democratic socialist and i think it open people's eyes to accepting there is there is some legitimacy in what they're saying we're talking about something completely different i am a socialist i was a candidate for president for the party for socialism liberation and peace and freedom party and we got the highest vote in 44 years even with the lack of any media access even with. base being solely between one billionaire backed candidate and another it's less like airy and fighting all the time sham people just their eyes glaze over like where do i fit in that's here's a simple way to talk about health care give the same health care that each member of congress gets very very with that we my health care can have good that truck got when he got sick. and the fact that we have happened 1000000 people who have died and they were going to die because they can't seem to get that back to everybody's

aunts i think the crisis is capitalism the political system is a reflection it comes from the economic system and perelman that that's an argument to create i would say the political system now is designed not to take people's interests. into account whatsoever i mean i think. i think the republican party is making a big mistake by not embracing the working middle class that because that's something that is really a huge change but the mcconnells of this world they just who these people you know i don't really you know you know he. this is simply to some this professional career is a position of not embracing people that want to embrace you but you have to recognize our needs 1st and this is to say this is a historical moment but he said most republicans in the g.o.p. leadership are just dumber than nails they can understand it go ahead and then also

reject any candidate that gets a little bit of both sides what not really speaks to the people i strongly support it's also gabbling gabbert in the primaries because i think it's both sides and i thought she had these great libertarian views i met so many great libertarian people and we talk about protecting our civil liberties and stuff but then we talked a lot of socialist people you know who wanted good working rights and whatnot and i did vote for gloria and general election but that's the problem i often see too as well i'm with a group of people we're talking about where do we go from here or do we go into the green party try to take it over try to change the party or do we go into the libertarian party start to left this caucus over there because we do need a mixture of both sides of like libertarian minded people talking about our civil liberties protecting our elections and we also need social safety nets if we have all this money for war and that's the reason why i voted with larry because he was the biggest anti-imperialist candidate on the ballot then we should have money for education money for health care but they never want you to have that and you have

you fighting with each other so it's one of these situations peter like i really wish we could just be comfortable with these uncomfortable situations say hey gloria what do we what do we take from the socialist party a west like we take on this limits area party for me to gather in really get some work done for those people who are you know so we stream for either sides west are you what are you when. you're ready for less pay randi kaye i am i'd love to see a good strong 3rd party and i stand about 20 years trying many others have tried for longer than i have and i guess hard to do did. the way this 3rd parties have been majorly successful in the past is stave coalesced around a major personality like ross perot and i think. you know someone like trump if he was younger and interested could actually form a 3rd party it might not be a party i would agree with i think he you know he is the type of person who can

make it happen so i don't know say yes to your question for a 3rd i'm for more parties i'd like to see the libertarian party do better but. for me it's still the issues and i don't want a bad big 3rd party is a very good point here because unfortunately there's a lot of bad political actors and with that a lot of bad policy that ignoring the vat that the majority of the electorate the majority of the population the political system isn't for them and we need to take it back i want to thank my guests in and san francisco pasadena and in austin and i want to take our viewers who are watching us here r.t. see you next time remember. it's been decades since the fall of spain's fascist regime but old wounds still

haven't healed you in 2000 going into the times when it was. because only from you know. nickel freedom market it was a poll so go to me in the present the system you know would have the answers and that's important too 8. 1000 of newborn babies were torn from their mothers and given away and forced adoption i don't know a lot of money was the feast or the role but it's a fairly well meant to this day mothers still search for grown children while looking in hope for their parents. seemed wrong. roles just don't call. me. yet to shape out to stay active. and engaged equals betrayal. when some find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground.

in the headlines this friday morning from international armenia's parliament is on the siege by opposition group says the country spirals further into crisis the country's opposition stands with military chiefs calling on prime minister nicola to step down after he yesterday sacked the head of the armed forces said that he thought he was part of an attempted coup. and move triggered a standoff between thousands of his supporters and opponents leading to clashes on the streets of the capital. to brief you on the e.u. chief prentiss open conflict with the head of the biggest member states germany as .