martial arts fighter on his views on the off by wall street. and while the outlook of the occupy protest might be a big hazy the trends research institute says that the future is crystal clear where to look into their glass wall and get more of their economic predictions for twenty twelve. getting it's wednesday january eighteenth five pm here in washington d.c. i'm lucy catherine of and you're watching our t.v. well it's lights out for some of the internet's most popular websites today in protest of the anti-piracy legislation that is currently making its way through capitol hill the so-called sopa and people stand for the stop online piracy act and the protect ip act the hollywood backed house and senate bills are designed to fight online piracy and according to the music and film industries these pieces of legislation are vital to protecting american jobs so then why is it that opponents

which include tech giants like google human rights groups free speech advocates and others why are they warning that all of this would result in censorship if you want to see what that might look like try signing on to wikipedia reddit craigslist or any of the other seven thousand websites who went dark today in protest of what in protest of the legislation in fact google's surrogate britain even warns that the legislation would put the united states in the same league as china or iran when it comes to internet censorship and there's a lot to discuss here so let's turn to someone who's been following it all to them mccullough has been tracking this effort for sina news and is with us from san francisco declan now i don't want to stay technical in the situation i want to make it very easy for regular people who don't follow these issues to understand so. do these bills stand to affect the way you and i and our viewers use the internet and how. yes they never nasa's and that is their current form yes what they do is they

create an internet blacklist so bad the sites that are accused of harboring piracy and that would allow copyright holders in the u.s. department of justice to going to order requiring that they seem to be in contact and want to return service or rather you use a home to block to them is something that hasn't been done before in history of the u.s. internet and if they're not said in their current form you know would change things but even months ahead and in their current form because the sponsors are now saying well hold on hold on though if it's the worst part but we haven't seen the details yet yeah i'm just imagining the senator leahy or something sitting over his christmas ham with the younger i don't know step necessary something getting yelled at about the legislation but why why why would being called a censorship effort how would this actually curtail freedom of speech and well it in a few ways i mean little less going to be an example of how you have. a photo hosting

web site kind of like a flicker or google cost a life website based on your own european soil using european servers call my photos dot com i don't personally actually michael does not come with making this up but then you do sitting here in the u.s. upload your family vacation photos to my father and your toddler photos and all of your favorite family photos my photos dot com and that and then someone else on there i use it to friends us copyright law well i guess it's going to happen is there's going to be maybe a page down others as orders saying that i have peace in the united states can't connect to my photos i'm anymore and you better hope you know that because my photos are some i'm going to be offline now if this is the so-called blocking action and protect these they in there they may not but we haven't. in the language yes and my understanding as

a language we have seen is kind of vaguely worded now you know i don't want this to be misinterpreted but i mean the average agent in congress is a bit on the older side we saw the late ted stevens describe the internet as a series of tubes that gets backed up and that sort of raises and tell me if i'm wrong the concern that maybe these guys don't really get the internet enough to be able to legislate in a way that doesn't break it what do you make of that you don't get the internet but in fairness all the sitting i mean you have representative ron paul on the libertarian leaning republican presidential candidate who signed a letter with as olof a who's probably a grandmother by now representing our result value saying so it was a really bad if you don't go there and so it's i'm yet to hold on to the internet but it's their job to be generalists of me probably don't understand details of defense policy or culture all it was their own role in committee it's just hasn't

been that has been perceived as compared to the interests of hollywood how to spend silicon valley companies between seven times to one and ten to one depending on what kind of metric you're looking at well let's talk about that because this is of course something that hollywood has been aggressively pushing for there's a lot of money involved is sort of the titans of hauling the hollywood worse as the titans of silicon valley why why why is hollywood so keen on this do these piracy efforts actually make the country lose millions of jobs like they claim. well you look at the amount of that on growth that silicon valley has created in the last ten fifteen years versus hollywood i mean i thought the scale of this it's all a value and so we're just talking about the economy then because the defense industry over but you're seeing a lot of stats thrown around because there are hollywood assumes that everyone who would have down or who downloaded something would have bought it full list price

i'm probably not the case so a lot of the figures are slightly fanciful in terms of the actual law universe though i mean hollywood has the motion picture association of america which has offices a block or so from the white house they're very well into groups like chris dodd he's not of the washington political establishment i mean they are the washington political establishment and so they're used to getting what they want i think this time he might have bit off a little bit more than a jew but i'm curious about that i've been reading a kind of conflicting accounts in terms of what people expect will actually happen yes you know to some degree you have these lawmakers do a sort of about face and they took out her watered down some of the more controversial provisions but i'm still reading that a lot of folks think that this effort will still go through in fact i think we have a quote from president obama the obama administration apologize which spoke out in opposition to this legislation but they still say that we believe that the on law

online privacy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response that is why the administration calls on all sides to work together to pass sound legislation this year so declan it is this effort continuing or is it going to be blocked by by protesters you know there's this is a very fluid situation it's hard to say you know what's actually going to happen to the white house grounds very nuanced responsible who we can it's not we steadfastly opposes not you. that passage of what i want to occupy the nice middle you have just yesterday you know senator kerry represent whom are smith sponsoring the house and we're going to go right ahead with that mark of going to happen the committee vote next month or so and then of course you have the senate floor going on to protect i the legislation next week by the handicraft is something that something is probably going to be enacted what it's going to be i just don't know if the

today's protest is having some effect we've seen about four senators so far so they drop their support all republicans as far as i can tell dropped their support and say we're no longer co-sponsoring this and so it's had some limited support but i mean if you start with forty one senators supporting it and you only lose four and it's not that huge been passed i just have this whole issue raises an interesting other interesting issue which is sort of the role of direct protesting with these companies right i mean they're not you know google isn't as a force google does have lobbyists but hollywood may have tons of paid lobbyists walking around capitol hill but as you wrote in some of your piece says voters and viewers have much more affinity to say facebook or google or these sites that they actually use and are therefore able to sort of stand up and protest against this kind of legislation should they find it disturbing what i guess my question is what does this say about sort of. pitting hollywood. tech giants for says lawmakers i

mean is this a losing battle for for the lawmakers if these companies can speak directly to their users ok reminded only a third of a sense of real action and so they're buying a few years ago if you're an incumbent u.s. senator if you really like this bill maybe you're getting to go all the wonderful hollywood parties that you you can probably guess that in a few years your constituents are going to want to something else. and so that's that's one flaw in the process in this process but also the tech companies aren't quite serious yet they're almost there but you don't see it as. see them saying please contact members of congress who don't have that sort of home page blocked out well there's been a find a petition now look i mean there's a petition to get five hundred thousand signatures big deal if you're a member of congress you're going to want to your you care a lot more when someone shows up in person or are calling this was for and said i hate this legislation so i think you are still being a little wary a little leery facebook can put anything on my home p.c.

amazon dot com have some link buried in the pop writers even after members of congress either haven't done anything e-bay pay-pal haven't done anything that facebook does have laws that i thought that much about reaching everyone so there's still a long way to go to get serious about political activism and very briefly we haven't seen that much media coverage i mean a lot of print coverage of course your work a lot of reporters say in print writing about this but not a lot of the networks discussing this someone had a raise the point that n.b.c. and fox news did have some vested stake in this legislation is that correct and what's behind that was kind of to look at the motives of mining the poll of journalists i mean i think in terms of the journalistic companies we're talking about the companies what are they in the end of the drift the journalists who are going to be reporting the story i think you're probably going to see some more. some more coverage today after the week the media blackout and the wall street

journal is covered pretty thoroughly as they go in the news pages that i did a fair job and hurl pages the we love soap and protect might be all right well it seems like the battles only beginning in the deck when i know that you'll be covering all of this so we'll keep you in mind for the future to see how it all plays out thank you so much for your time of course that was a correspondent for c.n.n. news that one might call a. all right well the occupy wall street protesters may be prover or believe fighting to change the system but one bonafide professional fighter has actually jumped into the ring with his own support for the movement if you follow mixed martial arts then you'll know my next guest says the snowmen of talking of course about time a.t.c.c. world champion jeff monson he joined us earlier today to talk about why his politics are getting as much attention as his punch take a look well i think great what they're doing now because what the what the movement has done you know started four months ago is it led us to

a feeling of solidarity that we had each other's back that we were you know able to make some changes and that if we you know plant the seed right now that the greater changes could come and even know some of the you know corporations have gone out of status quo you know i think that you know down the road there's going to be big changes and actual social changes so this is a continuation people you know have like i said have a solidarity and you realize that that with the strength of numbers and we can make some things happen but congress theoretically supposed to be an extension of us the citizens the people right i mean we voted these guys into office i mean do you feel are you i mean do you feel that our lawmakers represent us and our interests. well i mean it's a joke and it's one of the things that process me alive because you know we're supposed to have a democracy which means rule by people you know obviously because you know three hundred million people united states we have a representative democracy which means that they're supposed to represent the

people of the united states you know we didn't want to be in iraq you know we're misled and you know afghanistan and you know they're not doing the things that we want to do you know it's ok for you know a company to pay a legislator you know a certain amount of money to have him out on some something to a bill and you know a pharmaceutical or an oil company get some special privilege which hurts so much hurts incidence of the united states and it's legal and you know these people are millionaires and sometimes billionaires they do this so they don't represent us at all they represent the corporations and you know the mass media and you know if if there's something else needs to be done by the people we have to take to the streets well take to the streets but at the same time we saw a couple hundred turnout yesterday and i you know i don't want to be dismissive of the movement i think it seems like they've at least shifted the national dialogue but do you really think that a few protests here and there are going to change things. well like i said i mean

even even the mass you know occupy new york movement occupy wall street. you know was an isolated united states as thousands of cities worldwide and you know did the corporations have their profits reduced you know not really but what it did is planted a seed for the future basically let us know i hate that we realize what's going on we're educating people we're educating ourselves and that hey there's other people like us and we are the working class the government and these corporations would have us like to fight each other you know they would have housewives you know fight race wars and you know. different problems within ourselves but we are the working class without us nothing else happens you know we're the people who you know wash the cars who make the hamburgers to sweep the driveways who who build this country the way it is and without us there's nothing you know so i think in the future you know if we if we had a general strike or some i doubt it was shut down wall street shut down this

country in a heartbeat jeff i mean you obviously have a sort of a mass media platform here very well known for what you for what you do for a living very well respected other people that listen to you i mean if a guy who cut his teeth i guess being an activist and the street organizer in chicago could be president of fates are you willing or interested in stepping up and trying to sort of be the proverbial leader of this kind of way when they are talking about. well that's the thing you know it was funny because you know the media pretend like where are the leaders where we're you know whatever the man's of occupy wall street would have a want and i think that's what's so great about the whole movement it's a paradigm is change it's like we the people you know we were doing this it's not individual leading us we're not following anybody we're working together and that's the beauty of the whole movement is that it was a social class

a working class of people united solidarity where people like saw each others the things that they needed a hey we can do this together and we don't need someone leading us yeah there's going to be people you know educating and that's kind of my job you know as as an anarchist obviously i would be against what i believe you know take a political position or. you know a position of leading but you know i'm going to do my best to educate people and they say the best way to to lead is to to yourself so and i'm just curious i mean why do you think if these interests are so indeed entrenched in congress if they're so against the working man as you said working class person why do you think more americans aren't joining up with the movement. it's come for you know if you have a place that you're living in right now you're barely making your bills if you're you know able to get by are you going to sacrifice that potentially lose those

things to go protest you know lose your job and you know have your kid not to go to school or you know maybe you should not be able make your car payment because you're missing work so i think it's just comfort and as more and more americans are being discomforted by losing their jobs and not be able to have retirement in and working longer and those kind of things i think you're going to see the movement grow like i said i would definitely see has been planning but i said this last time i was on the show is that we need a social change not a political change and the only way that social change is going to happen is if the masses us the people that let them sleep at night stand up and say we've had enough because they're not going to do it themselves you know the corporations the government officials they're making money they're doing fine they don't have to worry about you know making the next mortgage payment or the next rent or you know if we're going to have a job next week they're fine we're the ones that are worried about this where the nonsense need to step forward and make a change but like i said more and more people get put out on the street or you know

how their kids and i can't my kids a four point zero student i can't it's for to send him to college this isn't right i think you're going to see people step up more and join the movement and jeff you know you're talking about sort of people stepping up more people waking up more to these economic factors do you think that we can afford to wait for a slow gradual sort of evolution or are we talking about the need perhaps for something closer to revolution. that's the that's a wonderful question i don't know you know you know i go i just say take every little step you can get at a time push forward and every little victory in the long run is going to make a difference right now honestly i don't believe you know in my lifetime what i what i envision you know people working together decentralized system where you know everybody's equal you know i don't see that in my lifetime because of like you said the government in the corporate how entrenched they are and how we are entrenched

power and in thinking that this is the way it should be tom it's going to take a little you know little pushes a little victories here and there to make that happen but we just got to be you know push forward and people sometimes criticize me they're like jeff you're in our case here you you want big government and you want this but you know ironically that's the price you pay you know you know i do want more parks and i you want more involvement in government and you know making the schools better and money for you know welfare and money for you know people get laid off for the extended unemployment those kind of things because that's unfortunately the irony of having accomplished that system is you need counteractive you know government you know benefits to try to try to help us out so i think you need to push for those things pushed by for the movement right now and you know step by step you know changes will happen but education is the key we got an educator who knows that hey there's there's a different way and not because like so mindset like a they this is what they told us you've got to realize all the changes ever been

made you have the civil rights movement your unions those kind of things they all broke the law they broke the law in order to make those changes at the time they were you know demonized and seen as you know these are criminals you know put in jail or you know hosed down or put it you know kicked off the bus whatever you know it was a crime but now we look back and go man i was so glad that they they stood up to the way the system was so that's really a that's a really interesting point jeff especially when we have so many pundits on the mainstream press but attacking the these guys is essentially lawbreakers that they were out of time but i really want to thank you for speaking with us today and of course that was the american mixed martial arts martial artist and political activist jeff monson. rebel from internet censorship massive protests economic instability it seems like some of the biggest trends launched last year are only growing in force now that it's twenty twelve and nine eurozone countries were downgraded by the s. and p. last week the greek government just still scrambling to avoid a default and the u.s.

economy seems no closer to turning around for the better so what does it all mean and where are we heading going forward we decided to bring on a guest who makes a living off of predictions in terms of what's in store gerald solenn d. is the publisher of the trends journal and the founder of the trends research institute they joined me earlier today now the first question that i posed to him was where he saw the occupy wall street protests sort of evolving to take a listen. it's global it's not only it's wide in eighty countries fifteen hundred cities worldwide and it just continues on it's going on in ireland as we speak so what it is it's basically when the money stops flowing down to the man on the street the blood starts flowing in the streets it's class warfare it's as simple as that far too few have much too much away too many have much too little and what's interesting about the occupy movement is that the very weakness that the

critics claim it to be that they don't have one voice or one single message that actually is their strength for example we saw the wiki leaks movement dog i even though they were putting out very damaging revelations from the embassy cables because they chopped off the head so to speak of julian of songe so the occupy movement is just beginning it's not going to stop and it's going to take very different forms very different issues and again it's going to spread worldwide you cut off one tentacle another one grows misled to have forced governments don't like instability who does so we can assume. predict that they will take some sorts of measures to sort of calm things down a little bit or perhaps pass some tougher laws i think those who are in some of their predictions let's talk about some potential reactions that we can see either from global governance or here at home with the n.d.a. bill. well exactly the. sign dawn why new year's eve when very few

people who did to the news happy and scowling on around the world what happens is this lucy the bigger the screw ups of government the greater their failures the more they clap they clamp down on the people so we soar with n.d.a. we're seeing it in greece we're seeing it in italy we're seeing it in hungary we're seeing it everywhere the greater the failure the bigger the crackdown so now what have they done they've turned the bereket into a battlefield america i mean you can't make this kind of stuff up where they just it's to no bill of rights that they just passed so they know what's coming they see the they see the protest worldwide last year at this time what was it tunisia they don't went to egypt it went to yemen bahrain this still going on over in greece there are there are protests all that simon happened this summer over in the u.k.

oh no it was just hooligans oh the occupied movement oh we know newt gingrich told us all these people have to do is go take a bath and get a job that's how disconnected they are one level but the other will level is they know this thing is coming down and they have the plan they now have what the military they were they repeal the cop posse comitatus act of eight hundred seventy eight the military could come they have now in day control they know it's happening well let's talk about that you bring up the nomic martial law and one of our protections how could we see that play out that sounds quite terrifying to me frankly i'll go back anybody could google has put in john kors zines name the guy who brought m.f. global down he was running for reelection of governor in june of two thousand and nine the obama administration got sworn in in january two thousand and nine there's joe biden vice president campaigning for it and biden says. one of the

first things the day we were after we were sworn in number one priority was whether or not to call a bank holiday that's how bad the economy was it's no holiday you can't get your money out that speech before the fed pumped in what sixteen trillion dollars and that loose years before the european system started to collapse we are forecasting there's going to be a major major turmoil coming out of europe it's going to roil of financial markets they probably won't blame it on that they'll be a false flag maybe an attack with iran something that will force them to close down the banks now i'm saying this because of people remember you go back to nine eleven you know what they did they closed down wall street you know what that meant that meant that if you had certificates of deposit for example you could not care for them in so we're looking at something of a major magnitude because of the failure of the financial system that they are not

able to fix all they're doing is throwing more money on top of bad body that they can't collect and this major meltdown they are talking about you're predicting this for this coming year this twenty twelve specifically yes it is it's in the works now they cannot fix the european debt crisis and they're already priming the people for a greek default and then there's italy and then there's spain then there's portugal and then there's ireland and it doesn't stop look they just downgrade it as simply why nine countries and by the way they did that very sly they did it on a friday afternoon after the markets closed and. at the martin luther king holiday so the impact was felt right away well there was one of the top politicians in germany said that you know this whole downgrade thing this s. and p. issue with their euro zone that's really just part of the u.s. trying to undermine the euro what do you what do you make of that do you think

that's the u.s. is trying to undermine the euro by everybody's undermining everybody yells the whole thing is collapse the unit americans are drawing to blame the europeans look what they just did they just increased our debt levels in the united states so now when you have the problems going on in europe they the americans blame the europeans for a full having you know. really how a recovery the europeans on the other hand they are in a mess over there now they're blaming the americans anybody you blame these are politicians that's what they do well politicians we're almost out of time for a very very briefly you mentioned something about the so-called big brother internet in a sentence or less what can we expect in that and that regard bring it back to economic martial law bring it back to battlefield america they keep taking our rights they keep clamping down on us and they're going to grab more and more from the internet to watch us and stop us that every level of freedom that we have it's

a trend that's been going on since george w. bush with the patriot act and it's excel aerated of the robot all right well some terrifying predictions there from our friend of the publisher of the trends journal and the director of the trends research institute thank you so much. i will that does it for now but be sure to stick around for the alone a show in about a half an hour she'll be speaking with the founder of reddit dot com about the internet blackout to protest the anti-piracy sopa bill and also rolling stones in my case things will be back in our studios where he'll be talking about julian assange as well as the future of. what. now in the meanwhile you can get more info on the stories that we covered by going to our website that's at our t.v. dot com slash usa of course all the interviews are also available in full on our you tube page in order to watch those should point your browser to youtube dot com slash r t america i also want to hear from you i want to know what stories you want

to be talking about i want to know what you thought of the stories we've covered here today and in order to do that and get in touch with me on twitter all you got to do is follow me at lucy catherine if that's one word i'd love to hear from you susan. collins or is that so much that i think you should be sitting on the mark when i'm featuring a wide range of issues the standoff between iran and western powers has gradually that is the west preparing for a military confrontation.