the only auto show picks up on the occupy wall street protests looking at how the media is covering events. welcome to the show we'll get the real headlines with none of the mersey are coming live out of washington d.c. now it's time to speak with lawrence lessig about the occupy movement and his new book about how money has corrupted our political system then lucy cavanagh is going to give us a few updates from zuccotti park now the protesters are allowed to have tents and there are talks of forming a different type of political structure then security researcher christoffersen

going is going to join us to talk about the risks of the technology and constant government monitoring pose the confidentiality between journalists and their sources if the time the journalists are to beef up their own computer security skills or have all that and more food and i include a good dose of happy hour but first take a look what the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so i think they're all well aware by now that i mean through media kind of sucks at its job as in forming the public seeing the bigger picture talking about fundamental shifts that are happening in our country and said they like to focus on partisan tit for tat on the daily developments in elections stuff that nobody really cares about but over the last two days i think it really outdone themselves in terms of finding a non-story to spend countless hours obsessing over. secretary of state hillary clinton has been lead over mitt romney rick perry and herman cain putting the secretary of state up against the three presidential g.o.p.

presidential candidates hypothetically she beats them all if hillary clinton were running for president next year she would destroy romney cain and perry if the secretary for president this year she would trench the competition a little showing in fact would be beating mitt romney by seventeen points. and come on guys really now they can't talk about the prospects of chris christie entering the g.o.p. field because he said no that he won't be running for the hundredth time now they define him even more a realistic story to latch on to not only of hillary said that she will not be running for president again but also these kinds of hypotheticals are just plain old stupid yes hillary clearly showed her chops during the last presidential campaign before obama beat her and became the nominee but that's kind of where it ends we have no idea what kind of a leader she would have actually bit people change when they get into office and i think that the current president has taught us all a lesson in that so a sense of the economy is still in the gutter since the country hasn't seen the

change for the better that was promised of course the other candidates look more appealing but the thing is you can't turn back time unfortunately that's just not how our world works and the reason that this really gets my blood boiling is because it's not like there aren't other stories out there that should be dominating the news cycles non hypotheticals real time events see real time consequences of the clashes between police and protesters of the occupy movement like the story of scott olsen the twenty three twenty four year old iraq war veteran who was hit in the head at close range by a tear gas canister just days ago compared to the hours the respect discussing this poll about hillary clinton scott only received a few minutes of coverage on all the networks today. the iraq war vet starvation his goal as you may recall fractured during an occupy rally with you tonight witnesses say he was struck by a tear gas canister fired by police officers family members say that you can now talk to the right but doctors still haven't ruled out surgery. i personally find it

outrageous that every news channel isn't spending time talking about the occupy movement the importance of veterans becoming a part of that movement or talking about the militarization of the police force in this country the fact that practicing your first amendment rights has become criminalized in some respects we don't have the greater issues that need to be addressed and need to be solved those are the conversations that analysts pundits experts whatever you want to call them should be brought on for should be paid to discuss as they are in so many other channels but who cares about what's really happening right debating polls about hypothetical situations which are so much easier and so that's what the mainstream media chooses to focus on instead of real news that they choose to miss. now at the heart of the occupy wall street movement is discontent of the corruption in our political system the fact that it's money that wins campaigns instead of

good ideas but it's money that gets legislation passed and not common sense but it's money and it's tight grip over the government that keeps wall street bankers out of jail while americans keep losing jobs losing homes and struggling to pay off their debts and americans have clearly woken up to that reality if you take a look at a few recent polls a c.b.s. new york times poll that came out this week showed that eighty nine percent of americans don't trust their government to only nine percent approve of congress and forty three percent are now agreeing with the occupiers so we know that we're here but let's look at how we got here to figure out how we now can bring about some change to any from our studio in los angeles to discuss it as lawrence lessig professor of law at harvard law school and author of his latest book or pup. lost how money corrupts congress and a plan to stop it or as i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and you know we will get into what's happening right now in terms of populist movements are people rising up but first let's just start with what we're seeing our government do and our congress do or do you think that they have that they forgotten that

they're actually supposed to rule by consent of the government of the governed excuse me do you think that they really represent the needs or the interests of the people anymore. when members of congress are spending thirty to seventy percent of their time raising money to get back to congress for to get their party back into power of course it's hard for them to keep focused on what their job is supposed to be about and when they do that they lead most americans to the conclusion that money buys results in congress which is why only nine percent of us have confidence in them and you know we should put that in context there are plainly more people who believed in the british crown at the time of the revolution then who believe in this congress today so yes there's a question when is the country when is the government actually bankrupt and when to just have to admit that it's lost the faith of the people well do you think though that it's just a perception that the people have that you know that money buys congress or it isn't that the plain old truth. it is

a great question to ask but i think that it's pretty overwhelming that the money is distorting and bending what congress does it's not buying congress and the old quid pro quo bribery way nobody is alleging and i don't believe that this congress is corrupt in the sense that rob blagojevich or randy duke cunningham were corrupt but it is buying or bending congress in the sense that as these members dance to figure out what flushes the most money into the system that dance just doesn't happen to be the sort of dance that makes the people have any confidence because surprise surprise the funders of the campaigns are not the people and that's the fundamental fact that makes this government so untrusted so what do you think is going on right now if we look at this deficit super committee right that only has a couple of weeks let a couple of weeks left until they're supposed to cut a minimum of one point two trillion dollars and they've been doing it in a pretty secretive fashion terms of all those questions that they've had but every report that has come out shows that they're not getting anywhere but the main breakdown right now is over taxes republicans absolutely refuse to budge when it

comes to raising taxes and so whose interest necessarily is that serving. yeah well it's going to be it's very unclear right now because we don't see what movement there is going to be what we have seen is a really interesting fight break out about the super committee about whether members will leverage their super power as members of the super committee to become super fundraisers for their party or for their own campaigns and as that's happened it's only exacerbated the sense that the thing that they care about most is what makes it easy for them to fund campaigns and what they care about least is actually solving problems that face the country and it to me it's not clear they actually have the political capacity to solve these problems because as they answer all of the special interests that fund their campaigns from wall street on down to the oil industry or you pick your favorite bogeyman they can't help but. boy resolving

questions in a way that actually makes progress on these fundamental problems ok so on one hand it sounds like you're saying that you know that the members of congress aren't necessarily completely to blame for whose interest they're serving because this is the way the political system works those are the people to fund their campaigns but in terms of president obama when he was still campaigning he said that he was going to come to washington and change washington and i you know i've read before that you said that you feel like he betrayed us in that statement because he didn't try to change so is that a betrayal or is he also in some ways in able and capable of changing the system and just has to work within it. you have also first to be clear i don't think that congress is filled with a bunch of crooks but i do think that congress is responsible for allowing this system of corruption to develop and not taking steps to change it because they could constitutionally the supreme court is not to blame they could be changing the system so that people would have trust in it and i thought that's in fact what barack obama was going to do barack obama was a colleague of mine in chicago i supported every single one of his campaigns i was

on the campaign trail supporting him in the last election but i do think though he came into the campaign saying the reason i am running is to take up the fight to change the way washington works he gave that fight up he picked up the hillary clinton playbook you know she to her credit said look my job is not to fix the horse it's the race the horse as far as i can and so we had a clear choice the reformer or the person who is going to run the game the way the game has already been run and we picked the reformer but the reformer picked hillary clinton playbook and ran by her rules now i think maybe she would have been better at running the hillary clinton playbook than bill that he was but i think that the fact that he promised us reform promised us a campaign and administration of reform but then didn't do anything about it was an extraordinary betrayal and it leaves many people to believe that there's no chance that anybody inside this system alone can change the system and that's why this populist movement on both the left and the right i think is so critical for the future of this country and so yeah that's what we're seeing right now is that

people don't feel like the government is ever going to change itself that one person is going to come in and reform the entire system and they're taking it into their own hands and we've been following the occupy wall street movement here on this show since day one and i completely agree with you that i think that the occupy wall street movement that the tea party movement should join together because fundamentally they have the same issues in the same concerns but you've been actually ridiculed by some people when you mention that weren't you. yeah that's right it turned out to be a much harder argument to make than i thought it would be i mean to be clear i don't think that the tea party and. the occupy wall street movement should pretend like they believe the same thing about what government should do or what government should be there very different movements they have very different values and i think they should celebrate their difference and respect their differences but the question is if you're going to represent the ninety nine percent you've got to find those things that the ninety nine percent could actually agree upon but they could actually say yeah this is something i believe and so to do that i think we should

focus on what i believe is the root cause to the structure of the frustration on both the right and the left and that is the corruption of this government so when point zero five percent of americans contribute to the maximum amount in a congressional campaign and therefore have the attention in the and the ears of members of congress point zero five percent that i should think that the rest of us the ninety nine point nine five percent should be able to look at that and say a system where power is allocated to the tiniest selection of the american public while the rest of us can barely get our answer our e-mails answered is not a system that reflects the will of the people alone which is what our framers thought so i think that both sides don't have to give up their differences but they have to acknowledge out of the many come the one you pluribus unum the one idea here that we all should be able to agree upon is this government is corrupt and that corruption has to end how do you see this movement ending and where do you see in the meantime there is no leadership there are no concrete demands you think that

we should have another constitutional convention here in the united states do you think of that could come out of this movement out of the occupy wall street movement where they have to be two separate things. well i think one leads to the other i think that if this movement matures and grows in size and begins to articulate its positions in a way that people on the outside of the movement can understand them and resonate with them so you know when you talk about the one percent of the ninety nine percent what is the point is the point that you're upset with the extraordinary corruption that is wall street that sort of argument is something that i think everybody across the country should accept and agree with and if that's in fact the point then i think that more and more people begin to say how do we change that corruption how do we end the sort of system where wall street can buy the sort of deregulation that gives them the chance to gamble with our money but get all the upside when we pay the downside and then move this to the kind of reform that our framers and visions i mean the framers said congress is going to be responsible for

most of the amendments but if congress is the problem we need a way around congress and that's what the convention was supposed to be so we need the steps to the place for people can accept the necessity of this outside the beltway reform movement if we get there i think that we can begin to talk about inside that convention what changes are going to have to happen. and what happens if that doesn't happen what happens and americans don't agree that that corruption is the thing that bothers them most and they think that it should continue to be gay marriage and abortion and certain social issues that polarized them or perhaps you know what a celebrity is doing this week what's going to happen in this country. it terrifies me you know as a father of three children and looking at a nation that can't address the most fundamental issues that are supposed to be able to address like health care or global warming legislation or getting our deficit under control or having a tax system that made sense any of these issues this congress cannot address cannot resolve and if it doesn't resolve them then we become rome we become like

every great nation that passes from its greatness into its past and in this context in the world today we don't just fade into oblivion and there are huge social problems that get manifest and break out across this country in a way that i think everybody should be terrified about i think that what we need to recognize is it is time now to get our politics in order so that we can reform this government and it can restore it we can have some trust in what it does so that these problems can be addressed and resolved right now nobody believes our government can solve these problems and that's the core problem that our country faces i lines i want to thank you so much for joining us tonight and i hope that the people do realize that that's the biggest issue and don't instead choose to be distracted by the raf thanks so much thank you. that's out of town tonight snow is in the forecast for new york this weekend and how the fire department is confiscated generators made by on my wall street protesters says an attempt to freeze out the demonstration is

a kind of par for the state with our teams lucy craft not only the arts. read. the book. for your media project. r t v dot com.

well this morning the occupiers it's a copy parker paid a surprise visit by the new york city fire department and the n.y.p.d. which conducted a safety inspection of the encampment now as part of that inspection they went from ten to ten and confiscated all generators propane and gas tanks and anything else deemed a fire hazard effectively point the plug on the power of occupy wall street all with the reported cooperation of the protesters now the surprise move came as new york city braces for a freak snowstorm over the weekend is the city attempting to free the protesters out and why are the suddenly allowing the protesters to erect a tent city joining me from our studio in new york to discuss it is r.t. producer lucy catherine off lucy thanks for joining us tonight and so you know from what the reports said the protesters were peaceful they let this happen but how did it actually all go down i can't imagine that they were necessarily happy about it. i mean the way mayor bloomberg described it as if the protesters you know

personally came to his home handing over their much needed possessions know that approximately eight thirty in the morning some reports say it was twenty to thirty fire department police department officers showed up at security park fire chief used a bullhorn to essentially ask the protesters to bring forward any generators and sort of items that would be deemed a fire hazard the protesters didn't do that and then as you described the fire department officials about twenty of them along with police in uniform essentially went tent to tent searching through people's possessions and in the end they ended up confiscating something like six generators about thirty. gas gallons of fuel including a bio diesel generator and a generator that ran on used cooking oil which is kind of interesting so that was it was a bit surprising but protesters are finding sort of different ways to prepare for the winter because again as you mentioned it is cold today and a snowstorm is coming. so do the protesters feel like this is are just an attempt

to free them out we've heard the mayor bloomberg say the past when he decided that they could stay indefinitely you know basically making his own assumptions that once the weather got cold and thought they would leave now it sounds like the weather is getting cold and they're trying to give an extra little kick to try to make sure they leave. well look i mean of course no one is questioning. the idea of keeping the occupation safe from fire hazards is a lovely wonderful initiative especially in light of the fact that it's gotten bigger there are tens erected throughout the park but conveniently it does also remove major source of power and heat for the protesters so yeah i mean most of the people i've talked to think that this is absolutely a backhanded tactic to sort of freeze them out of the park and you know dampen their motivation to stay there but they're finding ways to fight back for example they had a donation of several solar panels that they're going to be using for power some of the protesters i talked to today said that they're getting these stationary bikes where you essentially have to pedal on a stationary bike little bicycle thing to power up whatever technology you need to

use so they're finding ways to do this but again it's not the best time considering that we are expecting snow tomorrow and i should also add i mean these power generators weren't just in the media area or the food area the medical tent relies on power so that's a really critical. health issue for the protesters are now lucy you've been our go on the ground there park you spent a good couple of weeks and you came back to washington d.c. but now you're in zuccotti park again so just tell me in just the four days that you were gone what's changed over there. well i mean it physically it looks very different very very different especially from the time that you guys were down there they do have these times now i mean it kind of looks like a i don't know base camp at mt mt mt everest tents are all over it's a lot harder to get through the turnout is still pretty big but again the weather is getting cold so he almost have this blanket of gloom across the park but

physically just the way the weights change was the biggest surprise for me and i feel it's sort of divided the park to some degrees i mean they need the tents in order to survive the winter to stay in the cold but at the same time it sort of changes the atmosphere a bit because things used to be a lot more open one of the protesters i talked to said that you know in the past sanitation teams for example as they're cleaning the park areas if they saw any sort of riffraff or were people doing anything wrong it was a lot easier to sort of self police themselves now that people have tents to crawl into it's a little bit harder to manage the the issues among protesters on the ground also have been there why are they all of a sudden allowed to have tents because this has been a very contentious issue for a while they were told they were only allowed to have tarps on the ground no actual tent city they couldn't occupy the way they wanted to and why did that suddenly change. yeah you know it's a good question i mean i was physically there several occasions when police officers went into the park to remove ten structures including the suit coat jewish

religious and religious structure saying that that was against the rules of the park and it was illegal for them to keep that there and i've witnessed police officers to turn that down so it is really surprising bloomberg when asked about this said that or one of the police officers i apologize when asked about this said that it's not that they're choosing not to enforce this rule brookfield properties which owns the cody park hasn't asked the city officially to tear down those tents but at the same time we've seen police officers randomly enforce certain rules at their will so it's a bit confusing why they're letting the stay maybe you know who knows maybe they're trying to dampen their motivations a step by step maybe next week they'll come in for a big raid but i know a lot of the protesters will be holding their fingers crossed for that not to happen given the weather well you know in terms of what's going on around the country i'm just wondering if that's a motivating factor or if it brings the spirits down for the occupiers and partly seen a logger rest this week from atlanta to especially oakland where we also saw scott

olsen be injured by that tear gas canister what's one of the reactions there been like. oh people are furious about this because remember this is a very web connected occupation there very much on top of what's going on in other cities and other areas across the country the beating of scott olsen the excessive violence and force used by the oakland police department was very closely monitored here people were furious about that and in fact it did sort of result in a boost in numbers which was later dampened by the coming rain and the weather but we saw even just two nights ago for example a major protest where one of the activists the i spoke to said that they've spent all of these weeks training people to be nonviolence to be calm or just sort of give no reason for the police to crack down well because of these crackdowns in oakland they saw a lot of activists who were you know a little bit more rowdy than usual pulling the orange netting out of the hands of the police officers for example trying to turn down knock down barricades so it's

sort of yes it's energized the movement but it's almost brought out. an unseen rage that we haven't really felt from the protesters before and that's a dangerous tactic if i were a police officer you know i think these heavy handed tactics could inspire resentment and anger and lead to more clashes are these they want to thank you so much for filling us in tonight and you know hopefully every survives the snow out there if you're going to be there this weekend to stay warm thanks thank you. and now the occupy wall street movement attracted a large number of young people a lot of them fresh out of college now saddled with mountains of student loan debt and this week president obama used his power of executive orders to pledge support to help ease their financial burden but is it enough as our team liz wahl reports the price of college here in the u.s. is simply too much for some to afford. they call it the american dream because you have to be asleep to believe a student debt is crushing the american dream for millions of students and college

graduates it's this thing that eventually you'll have to kind of face but until then you kind of pretend it doesn't exist because if you did then it's it's a bit daunting vast majority of youth are unable to pay these pay for college unless you have rich parents for the first time in the u.s. total student debt has surpassed one trillion dollars now more than the nation's credit card debt this as unemployment amongst college graduates is at an all time high president obama recently announced his plans ease to loan debt we're going to make it easier for you to have one payment. at a better interest rate and this will pass it won't cost taxpayers a dime but it will save you money and it will save you time but his plan won't help millions of americans already drowning in debt and it excludes private loans which is where many students run into trouble due to their high interest rates move on dot org launched a petition to eliminate student debt which has garnered over six hundred forty

seven thousand signatures if you put more money into the people they're going to spend and that will create demand it will create economic growth and it will create jobs robert applebaum says bailing out students rather than banks will stimulate the economy by putting more cash in the pockets of the educated middle class they're not starting businesses they're not buying cars they're not buy houses they're not starting families not. in other developed countries getting a financial education isn't such a financial burden you have free tuition and for. mark in sweden finland they don't pay anything a public universities and when they do pay the price tag isn't as shocking as it is in the u.s. twenty one countries in europe for which we have data. there's only four who have to wish and more than two hundred dollars compare that to an average of over eight thousand for public and over twenty eight thousand dollars for private u.s.

colleges many cost much more the average schools are charging thirty five to forty five thousand dollars a year and we myself personally i work at two universities and i net about. twenty eight thousand dollars a year and it's not getting any better over the past two decades to win has skyrocketed over four hundred percent this year alone the cost of college shot up over eight percent occupy wall street protesters camped out here and across the nation say this is yet another example of rising inequality with millions shackled to college debt for years and in many cases decades in washington liz wall artsy. i still to come tonight after some foolish statements about foreign policy a presidential candidate claims that he's been studying world events and i told him where the first amendment guarantees freedom of the press here in the us what should americans journalists now assume that their community communications are

being monitored by the government providing that topic in just a moment. we'll . bring you the latest in science and technology from the realms. we've done on the future of. modern. history cold. friendly. dynamic. through different. month. broadcasting live direct from the heart of moscow this is r.t. glad to have you with us let's take

a look at your top headlines. in the cold in new york city police seize power generators and gasoline canisters from occupy wall street protesters authorities claim they may have presented a fire hazard and eye wall street protests have been going on for almost six weeks now with people showing support all across the globe. nato is set to end its military mission in libya while colonel gadhafi son is in talks with prosecutors that could see him blow the lid on dodgy deals with alliance countries the late dictator's most powerful son saif al islam fled to me and is looking to surrender himself to the international criminal court where he is wanted for war crimes many nato member states had business dealings with the late libyan leader until protests erupted in the country and today abruptly changed tack. russia's world renowned ball choice theater reopens in a spectacular style following a no expense spared refurbishment that took six years of my.