the u.s. has never been as divided as it is today so mind the gap because it looks like you won't be crossing it any time soon. and as americans fight an uphill battle against an unwavering economy it's a slippery slope of accusations against iran's nuclear ambitions and lawmakers aren't the only one sliding around the facts so are these fears justified or is this just nuclear nonsense. it's thursday january nineteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching our team. all right there is a lot to talk about tonight regarding some new developments just over the last few hours and this is big it all started today when the feds shutdown of megaupload the file sharing service that apparently has more than one hundred fifty million registered users and fifty million daily visitors now it's been accused of taking

away five hundred million dollars from copyright holders so the founders and employees of mega upload have been charged by a us grand jury with copyright infringement and at least seven of them have already been arrested around the world agents of also served at least twenty search warrants in response the largest ever attack by the hacktivist group anonymous they haven't so far attacked and successfully shut down the sites for the u.s. department of justice the u.s. copyright office universal music group recording industry association of america the motion picture association of america and just a few moments ago the f.b.i. web site now you may have heard about some of these enormous related hacks in the past to take down other government websites but they have never gone after so many at once. well just a short while ago i spoke to barrett brown the founder of project pm he has also worked with anonymous on various operations in the past now i asked him first of all if this was indeed the largest ever attack headed by anonymous here's our

interview. it seemed like of the nature there were a number of targets. that were taken down in some instances for quite a while there were a number of lesser assaults on what i have stocked of. defense of the sort of in style go and sort of music industry association as well. i think it's still there actually the talk all right so i know that it was these department of justice that actually announced. we tell you and i guess against mega upload and then you guys went after a u.s. justice department talked to me about why you picked some of the other websites i think i have a hunch that it might have to do with people and then also what can we expect next time i've been keeping my eyes here on on white house but what's what's on the horizon here will be the view us into x. are all the being perpetrated on the inner. and so you can see

the extent to which this was prompted these reactions were prompted by the make up we're going to go out in about seven minutes so if that's within seventy minutes of . a new status so you've been announced anonymously but a press release and or they can do this. and a few others so obviously this is it could have come of the worst time for and sort of the government's standpoint they could not have chosen a worse time to take down the. coming as this is the author of all these websites blacked out in protest of so in this obviously the megaupload issue because the flaw goes into the other issues so now in addition to everything that was planned in terms of attacks and payoffs. and several of operations you know were done on the banner of operation may go now in the meantime. probably pm what you would some

unknowns and some others. we launched like was there order to the washington post. reporter another operation called operation gone wrong this is predicated on the idea that here we have we've got a number of congressmen switch their votes and it grew twenty four hours based on the blackout you know. others. while also. the democratic congressman who are still planning to vote yes on so supportive and the reasoning from their standpoint is that you know they're not going to get anybody you know if you're so many of them that it won't read or they'll be able to support so no money from the donors ministry and going out of what's the change that. now i should fill our viewers and first of all that's a very interesting name for your operation i want to say it again but just for our viewers i want to tell them and just in case they have been sleeping this week. and

people stop island online piracy act proposed in the house and the protect ip acts proposed in the senate as you mentioned a major change and many lawmakers who were once for it now coming out against it especially after some of these blackouts yesterday by the websites including like a p.d.f. google had a symbolic blackout but apparently bear at the government didn't need sopa and pipa to make these arrests today so i'm wondering what you think i mean where does this battle go from here as well you would illustrates is that even without so past year the riemann always had tremendous powers to do some of the things that they want to do so even without it so this is what would occur without so it would be one hundred one who after so. think. that we're not going to give up on this is this is a war they are. playing on fighting you know to the end and so we so we can expect great to have

a purpose or we're going to see that stuff. we're seeing more people learning how to use their life oh i see tool to use in taking down the web so it's about what i'm going to say but i mean what does it mean when you say this will not and then tell you and tell you succeed i mean obviously you succeeded on momentarily or anonymous succeeded momentarily in shutting down some of these websites but you know they're back up right now what are you hoping to achieve with this is a victory will look like this there will not be any more bills for you on the stand with the incidence of dual use items there will be in the new bills that you sort of technocratic members of the congress specifically seek to stop these sorts of things and it's not going in for a while this process by which it's going to be possible for us with the interest of few weeks or few days to prevent any more bills to go forward to prevent things like megaupload from being raided but we can get to that point and it's a number of steps in the first is showing people that are lawyers that are

congressmen that it's not going to be on their side because in the long term this is the winning side. now i want to ask you i mean i know you haven't said whether or not you've participated in today's attacks give you the opportunity to say that if you want but but even showing your face on here barrett i mean what happened today is certainly illegal. why are you willing to show your face why are you willing to come out and talk about this and affiliate yourself with with what's going on here the money's been open the use since the. early on before i got involved in on this and i have remained you know i don't know if i don't care about the rules of the mirror you can you can measure how much i will go through the rule of anonymous you know. so i go with my who is also a more useful. name is the person with the name that. you meant approached by the government all. i have approached some of them oh interesting.

they have never gone that order me to be on investigation report on that was. something i had to go against them and they overcame exactly no one sort of interesting so i guess just finally what should we be watching for here what should we expect to happen next from from the angle of anonymous you know what are they going to do next i see white house dot gov is still up do you think that that is going to be successfully taken down tonight. if anonymous a smorgasbord of what's worked in the past there was just. going to. prompted some leaders of this massive switch and people who were supporting so in the house there was also you know the mother of one of russert certain weeks. as we go forward. to be seventy says the most. and so are who are far more methodology you know it's been split into small groups who work together

better and more efficiently there's going to be so many things going on that's giving it a possible assess. right. hope you keep us posted on what's going on our team dot com is certainly reporting on the very latest in all of this it was big news today once again the biggest. take takedown by anonymous in its history founder of projects pm and barrett brown thanks so much for watching here is now into a discussion about class now when you think of society with a clear cut class divisions it's easy to think about you know old europe great britain for example where there underclass is an upper classes and royalty but it turns out if you look at england today just thirty percent of those born into the lowest income bracket never escape it that's compared to forty two percent in the united states so basically nearly half of the people born poor will stay that way and. turns out people now have fewer illusions about that reality a new pew research center survey found people believe there's not only

a major divide but conflicts as a result of that divide check this out about two thirds of those surveyed about sixty six percent believe there are very strong or strong conflicts between the rich and poor in america and that's an increase of one thousand percentage points since two thousand and nine. but what about the american dream and the notion that no matter where you're from and what your circumstances as long as you work hard and go to college you too can rise to the top well we decided to take our own survey to find out what people around here think. and you think that no matter who you are or where you're from no matter what socioeconomic background that you're from that you can be as successful as anyone else i think that anybody if you're determined enough and you're motivated enough you can do anything here in this country it is in a nutshell the american dream a dream so big even those on the other side of the world know about it you know i am chris i'm from sydney and i suppose it will go to that the american dream is

that anyone can achieve that the american dream is to come here and make the most of yourself. do you think it's still achievable today tireder but it's still achievable achievable for a few but the reality supported by facts both from the u.s. census bureau and the facts of life is that it is most often a cycle repeated and whether you're born here or here most likely that is where you'll stay still for some politicians believe it's a matter of teaching those poor people a lesson i'm going to continue to find ways to help poor people learn how to get a job learn how to get a better job and learn someday to own the job owning the job even getting the job harder now than ever the whole pull yourself about a model is fake is that real especially for those born on the wrong side of the wealth gap now since the one nine hundred seventy s. income inequality in america has been on the rise but today it's now at the highest

level since the great depression and while the occupy wall street movement has helped shed light on some of the biggest problems for a lot of people a good concrete solution is still a long way off your out a hundred k. when you when you get out of most public universities right now how do you get how you climb and all that that was why she was a shrinking job market it's pretty ridiculous as i just found out i just graduated from college with a degree and i'm working at the same little thai restaurant that ivan was working in five ago years. the middle class no longer able to stay in the middle never mind rise to the top there are a lot of smart people that because of their situation aren't living up to what they could be and they say that if you work hard and you be successful you say that's true that's a lie because if you go to pour neighborhoods that are hard is what you want to plant are. working hard with little chance of realizing an ever more elusive

american dream in washington christine present r.t. all right so it seems and those poll numbers show as well americans are waking up to this reality that it's not as simple as if you work hard and go to school you'll be rich and successful that's the point of this you know it's not to be a downer it's a talk about some of the real issues here that are getting in the way and i think it's safe to say now more than in the past getting in the way of hard work and motivation being key factors to success to talk more about this i spoke to the founder of why don't wake news dot com charlie mcgrath and i asked him to give me his thoughts on these numbers that we put up a little earlier ago here's his reaction there most certainly is what you know and fortunately with the tea party movement as well as the occupy movement. and unfortunately because of the situation on the ground it with the economy of this country more people are waking up to it that pew research poll what i thought most interesting about it is fifty five percent of people who call themselves republicans believe in this inequality gap and this is been you know this is been

the time for the g.o.p. to come out and start talking downplaying this class warfare or or start talking down going after corporations pay their fair share but when when fifty five percent of republicans more than half of republicans surveyed say there's a disparity you can be rest assured there absolutely is what i think that was a so i think that's a really good point let me let me just interrupt here real quick because it's not just republicans surveyed it's also republicans that we're seeing a whole lot of i'm talking about the g.o.p. candidates and certainly the front runner right now has given his thoughts all of them have given some thought i want to play a quick clip from mitt romney in a recent interview. i think it's about and i think it's about class warfare i think when you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing america based on ninety nine percent versus one percent and those people have been most successful will be in the one percent you've opened up a whole new way of approaching this country which is entirely inconsistent with the

concept of one nation under god charlie what about that concept when it makes me sick christine really to hear that you hear mitt romney say that you know this is somebody who has got to direct advantages of being a wall street insider he can't fail he's too big to fail look christine if i give you a trillion dollars and you go out and blow it for this lee and you blow it erroneous lee and fraudulent lee and then you take your failure and hand it to the government just giving you a blank check once again you two cannot fail and nobody would fail under the conditions that wall street is paying playing it the fact of the matter is you know the girl you interviewed for the spot earlier you know this college girl still working in her thai restaurant that's reality that's main street in two thousand and eleven eighty five percent of college graduates were forced to move back in with mom and dad carrying a thirty thousand dollars debt load with them mitt romney has no clue he's been born with a silver spoon in his mouth he's been this raider of companies destroying them

destroying jobs and now he's up there saying it's class in b. it's envy because these top one percent who cannot possibly fail and when they do we socialize their failure it truly really makes me upset to hear this kind of same old rhetoric out of the g.o.p. the good news is the pew research shows fifty five percent of republicans are saying you know what i don't believe that anymore these too big to fail or the problem with the country certainly an important point as specially when it does seem like a lot of these republicans in the spotlight are taking from the same pot of talking points using this class warfare rhetoric and people just aren't buying it anymore let me put up real quick on screen charlie a chart that shows people's income growth. from the last from the late one nine hundred seventy s. until recently now if you look at this it shows the lowest quintile versus the top one percent and how much of their growth has grown from this period of time and you just see three hundred percent that's how much the top one percent of wealth has

grown so you know it's one thing to start low and growth suddenly and to start high and grow suddenly everybody's growing but to say that you know there's it's so disproportionate and i think it's to say it's safe to say by the way that that this trend is still continuing how do you reverse the us well i think it's going to reverse itself because i you know this pew research study shows more people are waking up to it the occupy movement which was trying to be sold as just this leftist vent is waking a lot of people up ron paul is waking a lot of people up with his surprising success in these primaries but the boot the thing that's going to wake most people up is the reality of an economy that's bad parading before the very start the standard of living is evaporating before their very eyes i thought a religious thing i recently quoted the new york comptroller on a survey from two thousand and seven to two thousand and nine wall street's profits are up seven hundred and twenty percent in that same amount of time unemployment is

up one hundred twenty percent and main street the majority of the people that are middle class put their or their savings in their home their equity in that same amount of time has fallen by thirty five percent so the disparity i think is going to lead to one all to make conclusion which is the everything that these the g.o.p. and even the democrats come out and say about we have to give these incentives to corporations and we just have to suck it up by our bootstraps and get out there get a job i mean the reality is the the economy just will not support people who are looking for work so i think the reality on the ground will catch up and more and more people will continue to wake up and it's truly the only solution and there is so much corporate. corruption between wall street in washington d.c. that we have this legal based capitalist system and we recently saw this with the attempt to pass. you know giving and advantage to big business in hollywood as well as the music industry people are starting to wake up to this game and they're not

believing the lies because they're seeing you know the proof on the streets of how difficult it really is to make a living that is a livable wage or a middle class i think you're a really good point i mean in terms of you know it's just sort of the information getting out there people waking up as you've said several times. but as far as concrete changes i mean the tricky part for me is that it's still those people who benefit from this system that are the ones in charge so that's what i'm wondering i mean just for my final question for you is how does that change i mean those are still the people in power the people who benefit from the system why would they give it up. well you know they're not going to give it up they're going to be kicking and dragging your screaming to give up their power i think the only solution is this the this mess awakening that i think so already begun i think it began with the tea party and then it continued when reality started to turn negative in this country economically with with this movement of the occupy

movement the merger of these two energies i think would do a lot to change what's going on in washington d.c. and look you know again let's look what's happening with ron paul the mainstream media has been absolutely attacking this guy from day one in two thousand and eight he won one county in iowa and now he's you know double digits and he's coming in second in some polls have him you know nationally there with the front runners i think because of the situation on the ground people waking up that is why ron paul is having the success he has and as we continue down this road of being totally and completely lied to by washington d.c. and wall street we can't help but to wake more people up because that and that is going to be the only solution christiane that people wake up to say this is it we're done all right the founder of wide awake news dot com charlie mcgrath in bozeman montana thanks so much all right well the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff army general martin dempsey is in israel today and no doubt the number one issue on the agenda i'm going to give you a guess are you got it iran there are

a few reports out now that show iran has abandoned any and all plans to develop nuclear weapons but there are also several other reports that suggest at least that that's not the case the question is how does the rest of the world react to what they think is going on tell me said some light on all of this earlier i spoke to research director at the national iranian american council raise a mirage and i asked reza whether he thought iran is in fact in the process of building a nuclear weapon here's what he had to say. well i think it's a court to consider what the consensus view or the consensus thoughts of the u.s. government is and in two thousand and seven and again in two thousand and eleven the national intelligence estimate of the united states of america which is a consensus document representing twenty seven intelligence agencies said that from two thousand and three onward they have a high level of confidence that the iranian government had abandoned its intent and its process towards developing a nuclear weapons capability then why is it that we're constantly hearing this talk

of you know they're actually not and even if they let the inspectors in to the places that we know about how do we know there's not other places then we hear the crazy rhetoric on the campaign trail from a lot of these republican candidates bomb iran bomb iran they want to bomb us first why is if what you say is true that you know this is the consensus for years is there this other side of this argument that's very prevalent and there's a very question you know the united states and its allies have differing views on this issue particularly when we juxtapose the israeli view to the american view really for the better part of two decades the israeli government has said that iran is one to two years away from developing a nuclear weapons capability and i think the jury's in on this one of this point so i'm more inclined to follow what the american government's point is because the american viewpoint has proven to be correct or brief the same period of time and that being the case because iran hasn't made that decision it actually leaves a fair amount of time to pursue a peaceful diplomatic solution to this problem i think it's important you bring israel up because certainly all eyes are on israel when we talk about the issue of

iran and any sort of future violence there but israeli defense minister ehud barak recently said you know a decision about attacking iran even a decision is a long way off although this week israel and the united states decided that they would suspend or even stop those military exercises that they had planned so what do you think i mean is this a sign that israel now too is backing off a little bit less concern than we previously thought sorry the israeli government has been pretty consistent on that if you regarding iran. the program for the for decades now at this point i think what we're seeing is the most senior level u.s. military official currently in tel aviv visiting his israeli counterparts and the israeli government likes to portray or make an appearance of you know close relations and no problems between the two governments particularly when somebody of that stature from the american government is in their country the truth of the matter is there are serious and deep divisions over the iran issue between the

israeli government and the iranian government and that's why general dempsey is there right now to try to figure out what those differences are and how to bridge the gap there's a lot of talk also right now i think it's fair to say from both sides of the aisle politically speaking that president obama should not negotiate meet with talk with . ahmadinejad or anyone else you know at the high levels of the iranian government however there is talk i'm sure you've heard of this this letter that the obama administration apparently sent to iran to ayatollah khomeini that says first of all that closing down the strait of hormuz is a quote red line that it shouldn't happen but also that. offer to talk so you know the administration i should say has denied ever sending this letter but even if it did what do you think this meeting what does it change anything i think it means two very important things one that our president is living up to his commitments when he says that he is willing to sit down and have substantial

discussions with the iranian government on issues of high concern both to the united states iran and america's allies so that's one but two and more importantly i think it means that the president is attempting to push back and cut through a lot of the rhetoric because it's silly season in washington right now and the president and i can always silly season in washington rather not exactly different hard to agree but particularly now because it's an election season people are hunkering down on their political positions and trying to box the president in and i think he's doing a good job of demonstrating a that his national security credentials are actually. top notch and be that his iran strategy has been working on that latter point i have differences of opinion but that's what he's trying to do right now and i think him pursuing. a willingness on the part of the american government to sit down with the iranian government in concert with america's allies at the negotiating table speaks volumes about the president's willingness to take risks for peace i mean that's certainly your perspective and i think that it's very easy to see that from that point of view the

president is willing to negotiate with anyone who is going to come to the table and at least talk why not walk walk in that hurt however as you already said and as everybody knows we are in an election year and this could be spun. negatively to to the present i mean i want to get your take and in terms of all these g.o.p. candidates and the large and loud and roaring applause that they get at some of these debates when they talk about iran being a threat when ron paul is the only candidate that's talking about. backing off a little bit from iran why is this view so popular that i don't think that the view is necessarily popular because when you look at opinion polling that's taking place not only amongst the american population but even within the republican party itself in the sixty percentile they're opposed to war with iran i think there's always going to be a minority view that supports a militarized foreign policy in the united states thankfully that's a minority view i think the majority view is that this country has been involved in two wars that have cost a lot of blood and a lot of treasure and people are more willing and more inclined to figure out if

there's a better way to solve problems on the global level what about that gray area in between i mean there's a there's a large gray area i think between negotiating talking with iran and war with iran what about increasing ctions what about sort of a more hard line attitude than we're taking now as a country i think that's one of the reasons why obama administration officials are taking a step back and pushing back against some of our allies not just israel that are pushing us in a direction that i don't think anybody in the united states certainly not the majority want to go because when you're not communicating which the united states and iran have not been for the better part of three decades. it increases your likelihood to misperceive and miscalculate and when you misperceive and you miscalculate you escalate and when you get into this cycle of escalation rather than the governments controlling the conflict dynamic the conflict dynamic begins to control the government so thankfully we have a responsible president taking a step back and trying to figure a way out of this crisis but there is something happening right now that some would see as an escalation of something whether it's just sort of a word we were right behind you better watch out apparently

a second carrier navy carrier as has been sent towards iran because of this sort of threat that iran has given about closing down the strait of hormuz iran has warned the u.s. do not send the second carrier don't do it and yet it has it could that be seen as an ass collation i certainly think that that's part of what has become a cycle of escalation between the two countries and because they're not communicating something that iran things is a response is perceived by the united states to be an escalation so you get into this chicken and egg argument but that's not really what the issue at hand is the real issue at hand is not who started it but how do we take a step back and how do we take a step back and resolve it so it's going to take some adults in the room and both teheran and washington to be brave and take those risks for peace certainly a lot of geopolitical things to consider here not just israel not just the united states also saudi arabia that's a discussion for another day research director for the national iranian american council reza marashi thanks so much. well that's going to do it for now but for

more on the stories we cover to go to archie dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page it's you tube dot com flash r.t. america you can also follow me on twitter at christine for that but for now have a great night. well. science technology innovation all the moves developments from around russia we've got the future covered. in our sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lang.