revisit accept the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement that is just signed in a secret ceremony in japan by a few more countries but protesters are already coming on the streets are going to get all the details there and then newt gingrich has some a lofty ideas for space and colonizing the moon while everyone's laughing about that we should wonder if the military really has plans for using space as the next war zone or have all that morphy tonight including a dose of happy hour but first take a look at the mainstream media has decided to miss. all right so it's the another day and we have more obsessive coverage coming from the mainstream media about the republican candidates as they prepare for the florida primary they're continuing to stoke these fires on the battle between new king bridge and. by days until florida's republican presidential primary just hours from the c.n.n. debate mitt romney newt gingrich locked in a dead heat in the polls and this debate could be

a game changer newt gingrich today is trying to rally conservatives out of tea party rallies hitting mitt romney pretty hard if you look at the polls it does seem that newt gingrich is surging as he did in south carolina beginners' doesn't have a lot of money but he does have a super pac spending a lot of money in support of him at this point. so aside from most of the pointless banter that last little clip there really did pick up on something interesting the fact that new gingrich's entire campaign is essentially being kept alive thanks to funds from just one single man. give this to me is worth is around twenty one billion and he and his wife have almost singlehandedly kept newt gingrich's campaign alive newt gingrich basically has kept on life support by sheldon adelson he's the son of an immigrant cab driver and the country's wealthiest according to forbes worth over twenty one billion just behind the koch brothers to a large extent gingrich's candidacy is possible thanks to billionaire if you know mogul sheldon adelson in just the past month alone he and his wife have pumped ten

million dollars into the program super pac winning our future the to give spine mr adelson ten million dollars in one month that we are aware of we've been told that there is much more to come for him. now this ladies and gentleman is the perfect example for you of citizens united in action those that study campaign finance say that the two contributions of five million dollars apiece by adelson are the largest known political donations in u.s. history so that is how far our political system has been corrupted to where one single donor can give as much money as they want to a super pac with absolutely no restrictions and in this case it's ten million dollars i think that it's good that at least m s n b c is all over the story today but they're the only network doing so the problem there are two is that they don't take this even further they'll focus on just this one man their question his motives how they affect the gingrich campaign but hello just because we know how much he's giving doesn't mean that he's the only one that we should be worried

about it's the entire system and citizens united this created the fact that there are so many campaign contributions coming in from various super pacs that we have no idea about and we have no idea who they're coming from according to a just in the first four presidential primary states alone super pacs have so far spent nearly twenty million dollars on campaign activities so this is why we're seeing a nationwide movement to get citizens united overturn this is why we're seeing amendments brought up in congress resolutions passed in more than fifty cities in the u.s. thus far and yet the main. media they pay very little attention to all of that so i guess it would make sense that they also paid no attention to a new bill that's being brought up in congress by two democrats in the house right now see last year democrats tried to get the disclose act passed to increase the transparency in election spending but they failed to pass it by just one single senate vote so now we suddenly hear republicans like gingrich and romney and john mccain below ning the negative influence of money in the election so thanks to this

mood and this momentum democrats are going to give it another go now this updated version of the disclose act or disclose to as it's colloquially being called would do the fall it would require super pacs corporations outside groups to stand by their ads but one of those i approve this message on the back end of that possibly even with the name of the top five funders in the at would also force corporations to disclose campaign expenditures to their shareholders it would require lobbyists to disclose their campaign expenditures to these groups and would require timely disclosure by the super pacs in the five a once before don't get me wrong by no means is a still perfect and by no means is this bill enough you know we really need is for citizens united to be overturned in this bill doesn't change the legal ruling at all but it's a start it's an attempt to at least in some way get the democracy back to expose to americans who is influencing their democracy with their money but in order for legislation like this to be noticed for the momentum to be build we need the media

to actually pay attention to it to fight to get the money out of the political system now that can happen without the press also taking part so i'm asking the mainstream media this time to cover not only one donor or another but the entire problem i'm asking them to take a look at the efforts being made to take back this toxic ruling and give us back our transparency i'm asking them to choose not to miss. well the world economic forum in davos is still underway with business and political leaders meeting and greeting and finger pointing and trying to solve the world's economic woes while basking in a luxury at a mountain resort yesterday we heard from german chancellor angela merkel today china got a little bit of grief and u.s. secretary treasury secretary tim geithner has now arrived right after an interview with bloomberg came out where he announced that if president obama wins a second term he does not plan to serve alongside him so how is davos taking the

news and does it affect the weight of years yet to be made statements earlier from davos i caught up with lauren lyster host of the capital account here on r t and i first asked her if there have been any reactions to geithner's announcement. you know i think this is really a bigger story from what i could tell from everybody else that was maybe on the east coast because i was getting tweets from different. kinds of different people about this saying hey when you see timothy geithner ask him about what he said about you know not serving the obama administration again if obama gets reelected and maybe that obama would sack him more all of these reports and speaking about that interview but here yes word is that timothy geithner had arrived but if he's here he's maybe we're still way into some. meetings behind closed doors that i am not aware of and definitely not privy do because he's not officially on the program until tomorrow so there wasn't a whole lot of buzz about that that as far as i could see here in davos but i'll

get back to you as soon as i hear more ok go i can't wait to hear from that day but in the meantime today he's having all closed doors meetings tomorrow he'll finally be giving a speech that's open to the press to we have any idea what exactly it is that he might be saying you know i'm just wondering if with this announcement that he won't be staying on if maybe tim geithner isn't going to carry as much weight on the international stage any more. well there's been a question of how much weight timothy geithner plays on the international stage he's always asked about europe and anyways him but we have heard reports about european leaders you know shutting him out and saying get your own house in order before you tell us what to do and other meetings that he's been a part of over the time that this crisis has been dealt with so i don't know how much he's been able to play a role although of course there are always always leaders coming out saying oh we appreciate him put in we value what he's saying so from what i've heard he is expected to address the eurozone crisis and that is an important part of what he's

talking about because that's such a big part of this forum because it's such a big part of the concerns that the global economy has right now is the eurozone crisis and a lot of people here from prime minister david cameron to george soros saying the. the solution for the eurozone crisis is no solution and the prognosis at this point is still bad so i think that that's a big part of it but timothy geithner's program tomorrow is about the outlook for the u.s. i believe and and for that i would imagine some of the talking points that we would typically imagine that things are getting better and things are on the up and up and all of these kind of selling points to politicians make and bureaucrats make and then you know dissect and discount every day. maybe the whole use the state of the union is getting stronger obama's line there although you know i guess you could say that we've also seen a little bit of anger and resentment from some european nations when you have timothy geithner coming in and telling them they need to get their house in order and so you know in that respect i'm just wondering if ben bernanke is announcement

that interest rates are going to stay where they are he doesn't see them changing until at least twenty fourteen if that there is any way you know what the talk is over there at davos because some are saying well hey that's good news interest rates are going to stay low but at the same time it gives kind of a gloomy outlook for where exactly bernanke you think the economy is going to be headed over the next two to three years. exactly alone my question is for all these people that are bullish on the u.s. economy are saying things are getting better if things are getting so much better then why is the fed keeping interest rates at zero until the i can see for years that doesn't make me feel like things are getting better and that's making it so that savers still can't make any money and are oppressed which is a major concern for you and for people that aren't the speculators the jamie diamond the brian moynihan those guys that are here at davos as far as the reaction to the fed i think that we probably saw some from people that were asked in interviews about that that maybe were doing press but as far as it being an important part of this forum i think very surprised at the lack or maybe i

shouldn't say surprised i guess it's not surprising among this crowd that you wouldn't see it but there is a lack of attention to central banks in general criticism of central bank policy evaluating the central bank policy of valuing the role of central banks that's just not on the agenda there is one session i saw tomorrow on the prognosis for currencies for the dollar the euro and the you won which you know obviously the central banks play a large role in currencies but there is not serious discussion about central banks or about the currency wars we see as a result of central bank policy and printing so that's kind of biggest takeaway for me interesting i know that you know a few chinese business then were in the spotlight today and of course trying to get a lot of flak on the world stage for being a currency manipulator what not some people are saying pointing at specific bad businesses comparing them to you know the new colonists so what did they have to say for themselves or was it more of a defensive move. well you know i think that this is something that we see where

china is both looked to as a beacon of hope because it's such a quickly growing economy still projected to grow nine percent second world's second largest economy driving a lot of that growth at the same time there are concerns about the economy about housing about the fact that it is export driven and could be hurt by the eurozone crisis and be affected by. moves in currencies that sort of thing so there are concerns and there are also concerns that you point to which is this perception of china and the reports i was reading coming out of the conversations had today and some of these sessions is that china is facing a perception problem that western countries think that maybe china is out to have a resource grab and a technology grab and not playing by the rules and china says the participants that spoke today said china is just trying to invest their money and not lose it not watch the the value of it diminish and that is why for the foreign investment in the sort of thing but what you can really see this clearly is if you look at through the lens of what we've seen in the united states where you have high

unemployment and people see china is growing and people accuse that china has taken manufacturing jobs and us politicians and maybe the media use that as a scapegoat to say china is a currency manipulator china's not playing by the rules so that there's an excuse and a villain but at the same time you don't see the u.s. actually labeling china a currency manipulator and taking that step the treasury has neglected to do that several times several years in a row since i've been covering this issue so at least two maybe more so essentially what you see is a lot of the politics that come into play but china was trying to reassure that it is. that it is playing for the rules it is investing for the proper reasons and i actually thought was interesting i saw that the c.e.o. of nasdaq was saying in contrast to us it took to the u.s. when the u.s. had sarbanes oxley which was fresh regulations that corporate community was very disparaging and was was not happy and was dismissive and that in contrast he said

that china seems to be more and more looking towards good governance and striving towards that and it's really this perception issue lastly we didn't get to this yesterday but there is a theme to the world economic forum this time around it's about shaping new models and so you know you and i talked about the fact that there. political leaders business leaders of over seventy billionaires there but in such crazy times you know is it really in their hands or they really think that they can shape the new models at this moment. that is a great question because so far you know you and i have been talking about this from the lens of the occupy protesters or you know the ninety nine percent that feel that they're shut out of the discussion and that's very hubris stick this one percent of the elite around the globe to come together and say oh we can solve the world's problems but then there's another layer to this that i think is important to get to which is can anyone predict what the economy is going to do and claim to

have any kind of solutions or new models that are going to actually solve that in a way that they can measure no matter how rich no matter how powerful no matter how much political influence or what elected official they are because all we have seen from so many people is signs that the that nobody knows where the economy is going i mean that's something that c.e.o. their c.e.o. pimco which is the largest bond fund in the world has told me that these are paranormal times where they don't know literally whether the whether the economy is going to move towards deflation or inflation what the impact of central bank policy is going to be if it's out of bullets which they believe it is this is something we hear from people like jim rickards who's author of currency wars and data will effect on things and how these are uncertain times as a result i mean really to act as though you know where the economy is going and that you have the policies in order to control it seems a little farfetched and i think that's probably why certain people have mixed emotions towards this world economic forum in davos a learned thing that much for filling us in tonight. after the break we're going to

ask if he should have the right to be forgotten on line that it and my mobilization and protests help prevent sopa and pipa from becoming law for now and the new focus has shifted to accept after the break we're going to tell you about this international treaty and why people are trying to fight it.

let's face it a lot of people out there have pieces of themselves in the online world that they would love to forget on twitter ashton kutcher is famous mr tweet about joe paterno and of his reign as the king of the twitter verse on facebook i think we all have some images on facebook showing us that keg are in college that we kind of wish would just cease to exist and miley cyrus well she's got pictures all over the internet that well not only do the rest of us not want to see but we assume one day she'll probably regret them too and all those are perfect examples of situations that we would like to forget but those images unfortunately live on the internet for now thanks to social media sites here in the u.s. it seems impossible to leave your past in the past but if you live in the e.u. that could very well change so they're now working on a bill called the data protection directive which calls for a person's right to be forgotten in the online world article seventeen would give residents in a bowl right to decide what information stays on line and what gets deleted when

that person per person personally post the information themselves or not now this also spans all publications so it's not just restricted to social media and the bill reads to strengthen the right to be forgotten in the online environment the right to erase or should also be extended in such a way that any publicly available copies or replications in websites and search engines should also be deleted by the controller who has made the information public now the bill also lay out fines against companies who violate this regulation but there will be limits on what a person can have a move so if any data is necessary for historical or scientific research purposes it can live online but let's admit that sounds like those can be brought in to extend to a lot of information but overall this kind of seems to make a lot of sense it's just that the current draft of the right to be forgotten is being met with a lot of criticism especially from those in the tech world that are calling for several revisions to be made before anyone votes on it so it's still in the early stages but i have to admit i think it's kind of a good sign and we see somebody in the world working to protect the rights of us

users rather than just the companies to prove that somebody in the. you take the right to privacy seriously and frankly i wish that we would see some of those same measures put in place right here in the u.s. just think about all the bills that run through we've spoken about the protecting children from internet pornographers act which actually just lets local law enforcement access their data for a longer period of time by forcing iowa's piece to keep it for longer we've also seen some moves to make privacy rights on social media more restrictive if anything the right to online privacy here in america seems to be going in the opposite direction to take your rights away yesterday we just told you about google's latest plan to migrate all of your personal data. the new policy reflects our efforts to create one beautifully simple experience it means that if you're signed in we'll treat you as a single user across all of our products combining information you provided from one service with information from the others so you have a better more intuitive experience from the moment you sign in to the second you log out. yep that cute little ad was the major search engines way of warning you

that they're collecting all of your data across all their platforms and retaining it meaning your g. mail your google plus even your youtube accounts all go into the big google vault so my question is what is going to take to see some form of the right to be forgotten at least discussed here in the u.s. i'm hoping sooner rather than later because like america internet and social media companies all want to hang on to every piece of information they learn about you and they want to keep it forever. well it seems like the web protests against sopa and pipa here in the u.s. are just beginning today thousands of people took to the streets in front of the european parliament office in warsaw to protect act to protest act at the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement anonymous also took on the polish government's websites there g.d.s. attacks as a topic we've discussed many times here on the show an international agreement that loves piracy and counterfeiting into one which has been discussed behind closed doors for nearly six years and was only when wiki leaks published

a discussion paper in two thousand and eight that it came to be public knowledge last year president obama signed an executive agreement to get the u.s. on board without asking for congressional approval and other signatories include australia new zealand canada morocco singapore and south korea but in a secret ceremony in japan today several european nations also signed on and the protests in warsaw so now the public is more aware of this agreement and with the anti sopa and anti pip the momentum behind them could act as still be changed or stopped joining me from our studio in new york is adam clarke as does a blogger at the atlantic wire and i want to thank you for joining us tonight if you can first give us a little refresher as to what exactly it is in act that should make us so worried now we know that of course there have been some drafts of it that have been leaked online we don't know the exact language of whatever the final bill is but you know it's raise concerns for reasons. you know thanks for having me on the same kinds of concerns that people have about. there's

a was the one that had about soap and about pippa about how the bill sort of holds internet service writers responsible for kauto that they're hosting and. has provisions in it that could publish those eyes to use for websites that are going. that is kind of a lot of people believe that that's the beginning of censorship online and closing down the open and that's the big thing that people are concerned about the second thing and i think the one that's a little more. pressure that maybe is the fact that this has been going on for a long time this bill is like you said happening behind closed doors and obama had the agreement signed last year and when he he did it he did it without the need for congressional approval because he said was operating within existing u.s. law and i think that what we find now especially once we saw what happened with the protest against open pippa is that the u.s.

public does want to be more a part of these conversations because at the end of the day of yet another something that we all use and it's something that we're all part of. yeah i definitely think that you know the protests verses against and and show it that the u.s. want to become a part of it but you know at the same time when president obama signed after last year we didn't see thousands of americans take to the streets the way that we're seeing in warsaw now so what do you think of that is it because we just didn't know enough about it and we see some more of the. type of momentum that's transferring over to europe or is it just kind of a different ballgame in europe where people actually go out and protest against you know a copyright agreement. i think what we're seeing now is sort of a watershed moment for american people realizing that. copyright law that was written a hundred years ago doesn't necessarily apply to the internet age you know there are organizations that have been working hard to sort of. make sure that the laws

keeping up with the technology organizations like the electronic frontier foundation which is based out of san francisco that has been. writing about and criticizing act you know almost since the beginning back since i think about two thousand and eight and the fact of the matter is no one really understood that these issues what effect that money daily basis until so it became about and it became a major news story that the provisions in sopa could actually take down facebook because of what people were uploading to it or you know it could put justin bieber in jail for three years because he is playing a copyrighted song and uploading the video to you tube and so i think that once it kind of hits home people realize that the law really isn't keeping up with technology and as we've seen everyone is very concerned about it well is there anything that we can do it now at this point a way for the u.s. to turn back i mean we know that for example senator ron wyden has written a present to the president telling him that hey you know you did this without congressional approval normally international treaties although i guess the

president tried to change the language and just call it an agreement require congressional approval there is a white house petition out there that has at least six thousand signatures calling for president obama to do something about this so you know is there is there anything that can still be done. i mean it is sort of futuristic as we saw protests get with sopa and with anonymous mobilizing and bringing down u.s. government websites i don't think that everybody has to go and jump on board and participate to that extent there is really just a classic way of doing it which is get in touch with your legislator let them know you're concerned about it and hopefully the american democratic machine will. a kick into effect and it may be it congress will decide to act on this to decide that that really act is not something that totally exists within existing u.s. law or maybe it's something that we need to discuss more publicly now do you think that this was you know while the public was completely left in the dark of a negotiation and what's going on with act supposedly the entertainment industry

and the pharmaceutical industry was not kept in the dark so do you think this specially for the entertainment industry was this always kind of a back up first sopa and pipa or was this the original you know i guess this one came first. yeah it's really hard to say and then again the digital millennium copyright act has been around for a long time and what we saw with the mega upload takedown was that u.s. lawmakers don't need to be able to take down a website to be able to arrest people for copyright infringement even if that person lives in another country and i think we're about to see a long drawn out legal case with the megaupload founder kim dotcom. they need to extradite him from new zealand and. i think that a good part about this process is that these questions are starting to be asked and hopefully we'll get some answers but again. the u.s. government has the has the ability to take out websites now you know passing so

passing sort of. further kind of set those abilities in stone in u.s. law and i think that. what we saw with act and what we were starting to see with sopa and pipa is that the entertainment industry has a vested interest in sort of getting these bills through quickly and you know they want to have the most aggressive. legal combat against piracy that they can and it's in their best interest to kind of get the laws made and started forcing it before the public has a chance to weigh in on the government seems to be helping and that let me just press in a different you really quickly we just found out that twitter is changing one of its policies and they're enabling the ability to read reactively withhold content from users in a specific country so you know if something is if a tweet is illegal in a certain country they will actually censor the tweet in that country what do you

think of them from twitter. you know i hate to say it but i think that it was probably bound to happen at some point in time. you know i been covering companies like twitter and facebook for a while and what i've seen with twitter is that they really do have sort of a unique emphasis on user rights and on free speech however as these small companies become big companies they have to start working with governments not just the u.s. government or governments around the world and unfortunately not every country in the world has the sort of reverence for free speech that we do here in america and you know i covered a case last year where a super injunction that was filed by a footballer because people were kind of slandering him on twitter saying things that were not true they tried to get those tweets taken down and twittered you know stood up for free speech at the time they didn't have the technology to actually censor those tweets and now they do have the technology and i got it i got it because because we got ahead a break but sure there are

a lot of people that won't be happy about that thanks for joining us tonight. i was taking a break but we'll be right back. well with. technology innovation all the developments around russia we've got the future covered. follow the top story marty h.q. in moscow with me kevin no in syrian opposition fighters tightening the control of the damascus just fifteen minutes now from the center that says the u.n. thank you for closed door talks on a resolution which bags arab league calls to get president assad to go for updating his brother night crowds gather outside the polish presidential palace as people take their own get to the top over the long line and to piracy part which threatens

regular internet users. libya's new leaders face accusations of torture is doctors without borders pull out of a key city now saying the same patients keep returning but with new interrogation. that's the update from moscow next just twenty seconds away from washington d.c. again and the ilona show. hi guys it's time for selling talent and i program last time we spoke with colonel lawrence wilkerson that the g.o.p. presidential candidates end there.