welcome back you're watching r.t. live from moscow a reminder of the top stories in libya mannie celebrate as the country's transitional government officially declares liberation following the death of val's the leader of water production but questions remain over whether the prize paid in the form of lost lives and ruined infrastructure was too high. also probably bigger ring but now breakthrough in the search for a solution to that you used debt crisis at a summit in brussels kids have offered that as the french and british leaders r.v.o. worth a ukase of hands to influence europe's future the supply not being part of the eurozone. meanwhile in the u.k. itself there are growing calls to reconsider its e.u. membership due to the ongoing financial turmoil that has as a parlin prepares to vote on whether to hold a referendum on the issue. for the top stories here on r.t.

within news continues at the top of the hour in the meantime though peter lavelle and his guests discuss the power of social media in changing the political landscape as happened during the arab spring cross stock is next. wealthy british science says the time to explain. markets why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy because a report on our team. can. blow in a welcome across talk i'm peter lavelle the new weapons of mass mobilization you tube

facebook and twitter they are favored tools able to bring segments of society together in the name of change this is being witnessed in the arab spring europe season of discontent and america's own anti wall street protests powerful tools indeed but can social networks really alter the political landscape live came. across the digital technologies and media i'm joined by any sector in new york he is a journalist author and independent filmmaker in san francisco we have john perry barlow he's co-founder of the electronic frontier foundation and in london we go to laurie penny she is a journalist and feminist activist all right folks this is cross talk music and jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first marcia is social media driving the process it's more complicated than that though we have witnessed over the course of less than a here is remarkable three north african regimes down the larger part of the arab

world ablaze and now civil uprisings are gripping settings from italy to the u.s. to japan to that and many have raised questions about how much information technology accounts for the scale of the process and as recent events in egypt and elsewhere have shown we are only just beginning to comprehend the effects of the info. nation revolution on power in this century the the internet and technology were part of the arab spring is narrative is beyond question the video clips of the first protests in tunisia were recorded using mobile phones and posted on facebook making their way across the arab world and eventually being picked up by news channels later many will refer to the generation revolution as the twitter or the wiki leaks revolution and bloggers will be basking in recognition likely now ben many has even been suggested as a contender for the nobel peace prize. i think we should recognize cyber activism as a movement this can change things and make things better and recognizing that is what governments in countries like egypt libya and syria have done when this article

cracking down on online media and even in europe protests over budget cuts had authorities contemplating the same we are working with the police the intelligence services and industry to look at the right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are probably violence disorder and criminality even though governments have always had to worry about information flows this is the first time there was finding it hard to control political discourse and it marks an important paradigm shift in which the powers that be are now under intense scrutiny but then it could also prove to be a double edge sword double edged sword thank you very much for that matter laurie fine are you first in london activism over became cyber activism changed the world well i think in some ways mistakes are being made between what's this and can help people do and what's the effect of cyber activism on protests because these protests across the world aren't happening because of the internet they're happening because of a global crisis of capitalism and people rising up in hundreds of countries all

over the world and nine hundred cities at the moment are occupied because of anti hysterically movements because people are dissatisfied with their lives they feel there's a crisis and represent in representative democracy it will their governments that represent them so let's get that sorted first people don't just look on the internet one day and decide to have a revolution what social networks can do is they can make that process much faster they can make the sharing of information much quicker and much easier especially if you have people on board like anonymous little sec. cyber activists and what some people call her core hacktivists who can facilitate the process of information now in for a nation liberation if you like and. oh. ok danny if i go to you and we look at what's going through the arab spring and we have what's going on in wall street here what difference is social networking

making because there is the anger out there just as social networking make us more aware of it but you can be more in touch with people because it's it really has nothing to do with the root cause it's just a tool for others to communicate their their discontent even their rage. well you know it's interactive so people can connect with each other as well as with information it's also quick and rapid and it's a way to get access to information some of it though rather superficial what you have is for example twitter feeds that are linking to mainstream media articles it's not all you know generated in the social media world it's often generated in the mainstream media that's why i think you need that sort of sense of a media college easier that all this media amplifies a what's going on it makes it something that the public itself finds out about here in new york three by a three to one margin new yorkers say they support you know wall street it doesn't

mean they're all online they're reading about it they're seeing it on t.v. and they're going down to the park and they're meeting people there and getting you know exposed to it and turned on by it and we're seeing more and more surveys showing approval of the sense of the central message even though people don't know a lot of specifics about it the idea that people are fighting back or resisting or raising these economic issues or targeting wall street all of that is a turn on for people over the world and they're getting information from multiple sources and it's very interesting if we can go to john you just get i get it going to john real quick here john you know it's i think it's very interesting and we look at the coverage of how social media is used it i mean stream media and thinking of television specifically bill covered chair anything related to terrorism terrorists different groups around the world groups that the united states doesn't like and its allies if you know when it comes to social discontent and these kind of protest occupation protests people find out through social media

first not through the mainstream. well i think that's because these movements are social in their nature they're not ideological and that's a significant difference in the past what you usually had was some firebrand who wrote. a big book that contained an ideology that led to revolution and now what you can get is this tender field of discontent that has said only ignited by almost an arbitrary incident and blows up to be a movement overnight that doesn't have an ideology and doesn't have a leader and i think that's profoundly different from anything you've seen before also i think because of the digital media people are able to marshal a lot more information that is within their own media ecology to develop a media ecology and i would say that that

a lot of people who didn't know very much about the banking system didn't know very much about the the way in which the lobbying combine works are suddenly very well informed on that by virtue of the fact that they're passing around a lot of charts and graphs and data about the grotesque concentration of wealth in the upper one percent on a global basis. ok what do you want to jump in there laurie i'm getting a lot of break up only because well i'm laurie. yeah break up that's replicated to some extent offline if you go down to the occupy wall street protests in the london you find it full of information leaflets pamphlets lots and lots of books the idea is that we're very very free information is power and you know amassing information and informing yourself but most replaces a defined ideology in terms of you know having a leader and but also the fact of being involved in social networks and the of this

class of being involved in what you call in the media ecology i think in which governments cannot control access to information really changes the relationship of the individual with power because one of the ways the individual bit governments sorry exert power over individuals is to censor to control information especially in times of crisis you seeing from london to terrorists where governments cracking down on the use of the internet use of mobile phone technology you know when there's civil unrest and actually the fact having internet technology and being able to break those censorship and those censorship in force meant really empowers people in a very very rare and valuable real way it makes people a lot of people are able to experience that protest in real time almost as a mean ok. i think so i think so but i don't fully agree with it you know in terms of people are you know getting turned on just by the internet

they're getting turned on by participation by king part of a community by sensing a movement that is in just thirty days gone from one park in new york to the whole world i mean i didn't hear some of what john had to say because the audio seemed to be breaking up at least in my head here but anything he says i tend to agree with but you know i would say that we were not being educated enough and there are a lot of people at the park and in the movement who feel it needs to be more education i personally you know i've been doing a lot of work on financial crime i've made a film about it i've i've written a book about it you know and i find that a lot of the people there are not very well informed about the details of it because it hasn't been covered either in the independent media or or in the in the in the social media so i think we have a long way to go here in trying to educate this movement so that they realize this is

a long term struggle it's not something that's going to change tomorrow morning john you want to jump in there and i talk about phil i'd like to talk about filters too because a lot of good i can send things are going to john i'd like to brag up a bit go ahead. yeah you know yes it does allow for a kind of very thin but broader participation but i want to issue a couple of caviar it's one of which is that you know there used to be the term armchair revolutionary the well no no there is even more widespread phenomenon which is that the mousepad revolutionary. which is somebody who's sitting at his computer you know probably in the basement with mom on the first floor and thinks that he's actively engaged in a revolutionary struggle when all you're doing is tweeting about it and i've been somewhat guilty of that i say often means that the things that matter involved involve getting getting out with your body and being there and being present ok so

you know he's i mean it's just been there before we got to the break and i had no right to me yeah firstly hundreds of thousands of people are in the streets putting their bodies in the line secondly you know i just had revolutionary and what we don't understand is that these protests are not just physical process that's the process they're about solving minds and beings and some people are able to engage you know better on the internet what it is we're not just you know this is not just about reading blogs tweeting we have videos taken from underneath hosts is one thing times square i don't care what you are coming correct anyone who says this movement's been going for a few days this did not start with occupy wall street much as the focus is here we're going to go with brains and after that short break we'll continue our discussion of protests in social media state with r.t. .

if you. come. let's. just say. he's coming. to some it's. coming.

could you take three months for three. months three. three. three. the old free born killers videos for your media drug free media gondar tetons com. taking the system. into the pacific. welcome back to crossfire computer about to mind you were talking about the influence of social networking and global change the i can see. ok danny where you wanted to say something right before the break so you go right ahead yeah yeah i did it yeah i did and you know i'm not saying that the whole movement started thirty days ago i'm saying that the

occupation of the park here in new york city started thirty one or two days ago and it's quite amazing that in that short amount of time this whole example spread around the world the way it did but obviously they're out at the scene site and in june i was in madrid in the possibile soul which had a big encampment the indignados of spain have been part of this this this movement and movements like it are not new but what is new is this media component and also this sense of global solidarity it's not just the national the anymore a local deal that the protests in egypt started two years earlier but for example only found that it's actually are square there were people active so so in you know should there is all about those facts in a chronology but about what the impact is and what it's likely to be ok john go ahead you want to jump in because i want to ask everybody a question about the arab revolutions earlier several thought. there are several

things that are new and i think they're important one of them is that. to an even greater extent than i saw in the sixty's this is a generational phenomenon. where the people who are sort of natives of cyberspace have a very different sense of the world than the people who are immigrants. and they're they're much more able to communicate organize assemble and change their views using digital media and their parents would be that's important and i the really important thing though is the absence of ideology in the absence of leadership and i think that those are both in principle extremely good things but when you get around at the end of say a successful revolution and you try to form a government day you go suddenly you've got a vacuum and this is much of the problem in the arab world at the moment and i'm very concerned about what's going to happen that still you know will and so already

what is what is what happens when you succeed i mean stand i'd like to ask everyone a question here could could we've seen the i don't want to know i don't know if i want to agree with the world revolution but the changes in egypt in tunisia without social media would it it would if it happened anyway or was that a critical element a critical tool for it to happen laurie what do you think about that. well i don't i am going to be laboring here in london for me sorry man speak a few days into the egyptian revolution. barack sat down mean and everyone's huge surprise there weren't huge surprise the revelation kerry don't have it wasn't just social media people from all over the world were actually getting information to activists on the ground sometimes using fax machines and this is not just step out the technology itself it's about the mindset created by that techno actually and part of that is an emergence from the technology but it's just the timing people are fed up with being controlled by the tape is they're fed up with cats are

working in the way because they're fed up with being controlled by people they spread out with not having a real say in their own lives understand i think some of that posturing we're not not the way we're discussing it now but some of the posturing in the mainstream media over this is the twitter revolution is quite the place it is i find because it seems to suggest that this comes that this happens because of the internet rather than because of a massive deep global crisis of capital and people being fed up with that ok jenny what do you think about that i mean how critical are you seeing the sudden and a sudden all of the sudden let me just jump in here you know all of the sudden then the conversation has changed to the issue that wasn't really being discussed the power and abuses of wall street of economic power is now being discussed all over the media you know things start in one way but they also morph into something else you know back in the sixty's we chanted the whole world is watching well now the

whole world is watching let's not forget al-jazeera is wrong the role of other t.v. outlets in bringing this to large audiences all of the world that helps spread this message also i think this notion of an easy ology you know is a little stasi i mean people don't have to have a political line they have a shared set of values and convictions. and a sense of who the enemy is and what's wrong and i think that that is some merging in these protests it's just it's not being done under the banner of the old left it's being done under the banner of a new generation but many in the older generation gray heads like myself are also involved in being supportive so it's multi-generational it's multi racial it's international it has a lot of can be politicized there they only get very you knew. you had john i think that the absence of ideology is is almost always

a positive thing and i don't think there is an absence of understanding i mean simply because there's not a an ideological take on this because you know it's not marxist or something like that i think that this is actually quite valuable because what we're doing here is identifying and clarifying the problem and then collectively getting together to come up with solutions to it which i think is vastly superior to having some guy. describe the problem in some point and have everybody fall in line with his solution ok you know it's i think we've done a lot of this remains here a revolution will be got a lot on your ankle development for me but it is it's a state it's taken out of you i would be here whatever it is it's really just if it also just a failure of what was generally called mainstream media because people are looking for alternative news they're looking for an alternative points of view i mean we in mainstream media you know in the u.k. in the united states are still very dismissive of the occupation movement and things like that they're a bunch of loons they're on the fringe they're laying the lies i mean let's go to

laurie. was lori go ahead let's put that you can go ahead gloria. if i can if i if i can come in. the the the tension between mainstream media and online media is very very interesting at the moment because obviously it's not a straight divide you have people out there who are journalists like myself blogging and tweeting and you have people who are mainly involved in the movements organizing online going and writing op eds for mainstream papers like the guardian or the new york times but the tension is very much between many to many medium which is the internet and associated digital technologies and a few to many medium which is the traditional mainstream print radio television press and the relationship with power that that generates people feel that they don't want the mainstream media dictating what politics is and how simple how sick

how the symbolism of politics should work anymore and you've seen that over the summer with you know that stands with the murdoch press people of very very people are sick and tired of living in living under the dictates of the third estate people don't want what they see as corporate interests controlling the media involved in their politics and now having digital technology allows people to feel that they're more in control that they are the media they can create the media they don't have to wait for protests to be mediated as it were they can they can make that breaking out of the. very direct approach as soon. you know at the same at the same time and i'm speaking now as an independent journalist who was also at one point a network journalist you know i see an interplay here you know i don't think we want just to talk to ourselves i think we want to talk to the whole society and the

media started off by ignoring it then after the police attack people here in new york they started covering it then they started ridiculing it and making fun of it now they seem to be reporting it in a much more serious way and public opinion is showing itself to be very supportive which is a good thing it's the movement's power it adds to the movement's appeal and i think we want that to happen to the same time the social media is able is not the mainstream will hear is. that manipulates them. as i think people are just people i'm sorry the mainstream media they can plait. manipulates then i guess what's most clever about this movement if you go to answer any of the big occupations in london in the trick you find a century of paperwork percolating up press releases you know speaking to the mainstream press on the phone generating the story so it's very very smart very very encouraging with how the media well this is not what stuff people are saying

this is a bunch of crazy crazy trial to write press releases with as much current as i've seen these guys do ok john you touched upon something earlier in the program which really isn't in tripoli john i think it's an illusion something we're not going to judge in san francisco it is that you mention something really is very interesting is it when what is success for this kind of social movements i mean it when we does that mean ok how does the world change because you know you point out i mean a lot of people sitting in their basements writing you know tweeting and things like that and there's no critical mass here so if there's no critical mass in the movement how can to be critical mass and some kind of outcome oh i think there can be. critical mass and the outcome i mean obviously i don't i don't believe that what we're trying to do here in the united states is in any way similar to what had to be done in egypt say where they really literally had over overthrow the government and probably have to do it again now. but what we have to do is to is to

get people to seriously take a look at how our government is working and start to put in the necessary inhibitors to this kind of of spin up in the concentration of power and wealth people need to know what the hell's going on first of all there has to be a movement of understanding that sees that the plutocracy has literally taken over the well supply in the power supply. and already i'm going to do the thing. i noticed and laurie want to she's in a kind of glory may you be the last word in the program go ahead. i think one of the things that's important about that is tone saying it's not government that need to be overthrown necessarily in place this is a movement that is global it's global and the technology the internet allows people to start thinking about global solutions to global problems like john says this is talk honestly this is globalized principally toques the end monopolization of wealth that needs to be fought simply overthrowing

a government is not going to be all right and all right danny you want to know you to be such a bad idea so you would just say you know a lot of really don't know the smiths overthrowing governments governments that are not doing their job that are broken that are not responsive to the people don't deserve to be there but it's not just a political issue it's an economic crisis and we have to focus on that we find a lot agreement on this program here many thanks my guest today in new york san francisco and in london thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t.c. next time and remember. to keep. the.

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