you weeks ago twitter introduced a new censorship policy leading to many users blacking out the site for a day in protest or is there more to this new censors censorship policy than meets the eye investigative journalist russ baker joins me now joins me now moment to connect the dots. and if you commit a fraudulent action you go to jail but if a bank executive commits the same broad to an action they're rewarded with more and more money. the answer in tonight's daily to. the best of the rest of the news during last year's arab spring movement it wasn't just the plight of working people in tunisia or the kleptocracy of the mubarak regime in egypt that led to revolution it was also a social networking platform it was twitter twitter allow those involved in the

protests an uprising to share ideas and to communicate and most importantly to organize in fact out organize police and security forces on the streets it's simple if there was no twitter or facebook revolution might have been achieved but it would have been a heck of a lot harder now one of those nations that is escaped the arab spring relatively unscathed so far is saudi arabia and it looks like saudi arabia may have a hand in silencing or i should say paying off twitter with the new censorship policy that could derail future uprisings in the arab world for more on what i'm talking about i'm joined by russell baker investigative journalist and editor of who and why dot com and author of the book family of secrets the bush dynasty russ welcome to the show. thanks very much so let's let's start you know from the ground here what is twitter's new censorship policy and how does it benefits

governments might be repressing their people. why i think it's important for us to know that they released this policy as unobtrusively as possible this was oh about ten days ago they put it up on their website with the most bland sort of headline so that almost nobody would even notice it and they just said you know as we evolve we of course want to make sure we're in compliance with the laws of all the countries in which we operate and you know that means we've got to be sensitive to their concerns that's really kind of all that had said and by putting that up on the thursday night really didn't get noticed much it got picked up got a little bit of coverage on friday which is one of the slowest news days of the week i think that was intentional. what really is striking about this is that what they're basically saying is that the entire i think reason that many people equal a twitter with democracy and with

a powerful communication is possibly being negated because of course when you say we're going to conform with the laws of each country in which we operate many of those countries are dictatorships and the laws are you don't talk about the government you don't talk about changing the form of government or creating democracy you don't talk about any of those things it's all illegal and what struck me and what we wrote about on who what it was. is the fact that about a month prior to that announcement a saudi prince the wealthiest man in saudi arabia took a stake in twitter he put he bought three hundred million dollars worth of shares from insiders and as i understand it it's not possible to do that without the concurrence of twitter itself and so seemingly the. we're knowingly allowing somebody who has every incentive to shut down that democracy function of twitter

they were allowing him to buy a stake in the company and then a month later you saw exactly what you would expect to happen happen right and you know this new censorship policy it's basically says that it will block out your tweets in the country where it's illegal but twitter twitters like it's ok though everyone else around the world can see it i mean what good is it for me in washington d.c. to see that people want to organize a rally into rear square if the people who want to organize the rally into rear square can see it kind of misses the whole point of what what their social networking site is used for during these revolutions. well that's exactly right also what was strange was the sort of the way that they explained how they would do it they seemed quite ambiguous and then they mention something about retroactively eliminating tweets and i don't know how you retroactively do that unless there's some sort of a delay meaning that somebody tweets and then they block it before it is broadcast

we need to know a lot more about that and not surprisingly the corporate owned media have done a terrible job of reporting on this again more than ten days or so have gone by and we don't see any kind of serious inquiry into exactly how this is going to work and it seems like the only backlash is not come from media but actually twitter users who staged a protest a few weeks ago but let's let's talk about this prince waleed bin talal i mean he's a major investors going to vestments all over the place i mean twitter seems like it's doing pretty well any reason why they would want to accept you know three hundred million dollars from this guy. i mean other than yes it's money but i mean is what was the reason behind the investment here. we don't know that is a great question and things have gotten to the point where i mean the new york times quoted a fellow from a company that as consulting on marketing and he said oh i i don't think there were

any malicious intent on the part of the saudi prince i just think he sees a good investment well that's just ridiculously naive i mean of course it's a good investment but as you point out it's a good investment for everyone and a sense twitter is so far has remained private with the rest of us who might like to get in just as has with let's say the the facebook i.p.o. where most us can get it anyway but with twitter we certainly can't get in we be glad to get in on that why twitter has to go to somebody who has a stake in suppressing free speech i think that's a very very good question right there. in just the thirty seconds we have left for us the prince probably well he also has a five percent stake in news corp which owns fox news that explain why fox news was kind of raining on the arab spring during its coverage the whole time just thirty seconds. i didn't know but certainly fox news has not been a leader and covering these kinds of things and by the way that was

a many arab spring and saudi arabia that we've covered on who what why that has not been covered almost anywhere. great great point russ baker who what why dot com thanks a lot for coming on thank you. in other news as we talked about on the show last night the republican strategy on capitol hill of legislating through hostage taking work yesterday and now unions are screwed house republicans demanded that a routine f.a.a. spending bill include a harsh anti-union language that makes it harder for transportation workers to organize see the change raises the threshold for those who want to seek a union from getting thirty five percent interested to fifty percent for transportation workers and republicans basically said that if democrats don't agree to it then those shut down the f.a.a. again just like they did last year yesterday despite nineteen labor organizations writing a letter to democrats calling on them to oppose the bill. democrats kate the majority

of senate democrats helped pass the bill and new anti-union laws for transportation workers by a seventy five to twenty vote and this is just the latest in a nationwide war led by republicans against working people from washington to ohio to new jersey to now minnesota and arizona the war continues but it was when governor jan brewer in arizona picked up the fight against working people last week that tom had to know and gave this rant about how important unions are to our american democracy take a look. last week the number one priority for governor jan brewer was boosting her own book sales that's why she met president obama on the tarmac at the phoenix airport last wednesday started a fight with a man wagged her finger in his face for the perfect photo op to publicize her book and by the way it worked the book shot from number three hundred forty three thousand on amazon that meant there's three hundred forty two thousand above it. to

number seven mission accomplished now this week governor brewer and a republican soldiers in the state legislature have a new priority going after public worker unions republicans in the arizona state senate introduced legislation this week that puts wisconsin governor scott walker's war on unions on steroids the bills would ban collective bargaining for public employee unions forbid public employees from deducting part of their paychecks to go to union dues and unlike in wisconsin the bill also targets police and firefighters as the democratic senate minority leader david shapiro described it it looks like an all out assault on the right of workers to organize is right but it's more than that it's an all out assault on the middle class an american middle class that is quickly vanishing not over here and take a look at this chart this is here we go here we have. union membership as a share of income and a share of income going to the top one percent is pretty straightforward stuff when

union membership goes down so does middle class income union membership is the red line middle class income the blue line and mother way the top one percent that's the green they go up ever since we started reaganomics thirty years ago eighty percent of all new wealth created in the united states since reaganomics as gone to just the top one percent and before reagan and the pure you see the numbers and before reagan the c.e.o. worker to pay ratio was thirty to one now it's four hundred seventy five to one in some industries it's ten thousand to one. unions democratize the workplace the reason why these things are so intertwined like this is because unions are democracies within the workplace we have a demonic democratic government within that we have an economy that has little kingdoms these kingdoms are called the workplace and when the kingdoms become

oppressive you get a democracy inside there to balance the power of that zero pressure and then what happens is a fully democratize workplace will help both its its owners and c.e.o.'s and its workers create a strong middle class but when you take democracy out of the workplace take out that balancing power of workers the middle class dies and for the oligarchy that's the whole point they want it all for themselves even if it means doing it by creating bubble in a crash economy you know rebrand spin and bubble and crash again let's steal as much of this is this is all about ripping off the middle class and we were ending up very rapidly with the middle class in america that pretty much is it. and that's a tragedy for all of us and it's also dangerous for democracy. after the break if you went to the bank to try to cash your project in check you'd be arrested but if

executives at that bank sign foreclosure documents fraudulent foreclosure documents make themselves a bunch of money they walk without saying one day behind bars so why is that tom we'll explain in tonight's daily to. ensure is that so much time in which of course he wanted to leave you a sports initial public offering is being called a very big deal and many hope the i.p.o. will lift the entire tech sector but is the.

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so a woman in staten island new york is suing the city and its administration for children services she's seeking a modest nine hundred trillion dollars that's right it's a nine hundred trillion with a t. lawsuit even mitt romney would say that's a lot of money the woman claims the city improperly removed her children from her home and illegally placed them in a foster home three years ago violating her and her children civil rights the city on the other end game the mother mentally unable to raise her children and perhaps retaliating with a nine hundred trillion dollar lawsuit doesn't exactly help your case but the woman did win a case recently in family court to really regain custody of her children so she may have some legal standing if only she didn't decide to sue for nine hundred trillion dollars which would make even ben bernanke blush. if she wins shall likely have to

go to that quadrillion dollar shadowy global derivatives market to collect on the bright side she'll probably be paying a lower tax rate than she was before. a missouri grand jury last friday indicted one of the largest foreclosure companies in the nation on charges of forgery doc x. which has signed millions of foreclosure documents on behalf of the big banks over the last few years was one of many companies caught using robo signers people hired to sign names to fraudulent foreclosure documents to make it look like the banks own the property when that the owned the property a they were foreclosing on all along even though they didn't own it think of it like writing in signing fake

checks it's completely illegal so far this is one of the few instances though in which criminal charges have actually been sought in the robo signing scandal and it's mostly the small firms that were working on behalf of the big banks on wall street that are being targeted not the banks not one criminal charges been filed against any executives at those big banks on wall street that were overseeing everything basically when the super rich commit massive fraud in america they state it's like they live in another country where the laws don't apply to them in fact they do live in another country they have seceded all together from the united states that you and i live in and it's the subject of tonight's daily take. in nineteen thirty six franklin roosevelt was president and he spoke to the nation about a war now this was three years before germany invaded poland so he wasn't referring

to world war two instead he was referring to a war with in america a war against the same economic forces that had crashed our economy a few years earlier in one hundred twenty nine and had corrupted our institutions of government it began in one nine hundred twenty one with a republican warren harding administration widely regarded as one of the most corrupt presidencies in american history then it continued through the republican coolidge administration and into the republican hoover administration complete with his stock market crash in one nine hundred twenty nine so by one nine hundred thirty two when f.d.r. came in the american people finally had enough to kick the republicans out of office and as roosevelt. it is not alone a war against want and destitution and economic demoralization it is more than that it is a war for their survival of democracy we are fighting to save

a great and precious form of government for ourselves and for the world. to roosevelt our democracy hung in the balance one hundred thirty six and he referred to the enemy trying to destroy us to destroy our democracy as economic royalists they were the banks toure's the corporations the industrial giants of agriculture and machinery they were the forces that screamed that roosevelt's new deal with things like social security were communism yes they literally called social security was communism and they fought to stop the development of a middle class to the union movement they explicitly wanted a nation made up of the very rich and the working poor these economic royalists even recruited a few hundred men and tried to get marine general smedley smedley butler to stage a military coup against president roosevelt so he really really was

exaggerating at all when he talked about it being a war. in regard to the tactics being used by the economic royalists roosevelt said this. they this economic royalists complain of that way of saying so up throw the institutions of america. what they really play. is that we seek to take away the up oh and famous they seek to hide behind the flag because. then the blindness they book gets what the flag on the concept of fan. this is a very important clip for us this that that moment and this moment because mitt romney the man who will likely be the republican nominee for president is an

economic royalists except today we don't call him economic royalists anymore we're for these royalist as the one percent and mitt romney's trying to hide behind the flag in the constitution. here's what he said on thursday to a man who asked romney what he would do if you were president for the ninety nine er's the ninety nine percent of. america is a great nation because we're united nations and those are trying to drive in asia if you're trying to do here as our president is doing her in this country seriously the right course for america is not to divide america drive divide is between one another to get there is a nation that if you've got a better model if you think china is better russia is better. for north korea's better right here are my hero you're right and you're wrong. america is right and you're wrong and if you know i can't then just go live in north korea that's essentially what romney just said. and this is the strategy of today's one

percenters this generation's economic royalists their strategy is to deny that there is any quality in the united states to deny that they live in an america that they live in which is vastly different than the america that the rest of us live in and they hide behind the flag by saying that any criticism of there are enormous wealth and political influence is somehow un-american as romney said america's right but you're wrong but it's a lie. if mitt romney wants us to believe there's no such thing as the one percent i'd like to hear his take on why is it that the top one percent have seen their incomes grow by two hundred seventy five percent since one nine hundred seventy nine while the majority of our incomes of fall are why the top one percent share of national income has skyrocketed while the middle classes has collapsed or why it is

that eighty percent of all the new wealth created in america since one thousand nine hundred eighty since reaganomics has gone to just the top one percent or why there are four hundred billionaires in america who are more wealth than the bottom one hundred fifty million americans combined or why the six walton heirs own more wealth than the bottom thirty percent of all americans or why the one percent pay a different tax rate than the rest of us a tax rate that like romney's averages around fifteen percent with no payroll tax paid one percent versus ninety nine percent it's not it's not campaign rhetoric it's not a slogan from occupy wall street it's math it's right in your face the only people in america who pretend that they don't see this conflict who say they don't see their own class warfare or the one percent themselves. according to

a recent pew research center poll two thirds of americans across party lines across classes and across races strongly believe that there is a class war in america today. as billionaire warren buffett said there is a class warfare in america going on right now and it's his class the rich class the romney class that's winning but i guess you can't blame multimillionaires like mitt romney or newt gingrich or billionaires like the koch brothers for not being aware of the class warfare because they live in a completely different country than the rest of us. they don't care about paying their fair share of taxes to make sure our roads aren't potholed and our bridges aren't crumbling and they have their private chauffeurs their private jets they don't care of police budgets are getting cut they have their own private security their care of our public schools are running out of money and failing our kids in their own private schools they don't care if our health care prices are skyrocketing their top notch insurance plans are just pocket change for they don't

care if young men and women are being sent off to die in the middle east because they know their kids will never have to go they don't care if a generation of young americans are saddled with over a trillion dollars in student loan debt because their kids will never need a student. they don't care if seven million homes have been foreclosed on and another five million homes in america right now are on the verge of foreclosure they've got homes all over the planet but one percent have already seceded from the united states which is why the romney presidential campaign is so ironic this guy doesn't really live in america at least not in the same america that the rest of us live in the one percent have retreated to their mansions protected by iron gates and private guards and are sucking dry the middle class and then moving the money into their offshore bank accounts in the cayman islands they've become a cancer and are just as big

a threat to our democracy now as they were in one nine hundred thirty six when president roosevelt first warned us about his generation's economic royalists is generations one percenters in fact they're a bigger threat now because of the supreme court's citizens united decision because that decision has given the power to literally by our elections to that one person . and that's where we have to start right as citizens united right at the idea that corporations are people and money is speech if we hope to turn the tide in this war the roosevelt started more than seventy years ago and the warren buffett warned recently is all about lost today federal courts across america were occupied by the ninety nine percent i showed up and helped occupy the supreme court here in d.c. an action organized nationwide by move to amend or to carry all of us forward in a struggle for democracy and an economy that benefits all americans repeat the

montreux money is not speech it's property and corporations aren't people and should be forbidden from meddling in our politics go to move to amend or for more information. and that's the big picture for more information on the stories we covered visit our web sites at tom harmon dot com free speech dot org an r.t. dot com also check out our two youtube channel is there a link to tom foreman dot com this entire show is also available as a free video podcast on itunes. dot com download the audio podcast of tom's daily twelve the three radio show and we have been i phone and i pad apps store you can send a speed back up twitter underscore hartmann on facebook at underscore hartman and on our blog message boards and telephone comment line at thom hartmann dot com and don't forget as tom always says democracy begins with you get out there get active

occupy something tag your it. is he.

breathing life into hopes for a peaceful solution to the syrian crisis as russia's delegation to the country. the both sides are ready for dialogue. the rift between the e.u. and the u.k. grows into a chasm after the european court of human rights orders the release of osama bin laden's right hand man in europe. and washington's top military official hands to cairo to try and suspend criminal charges against american and shield members as egypt's military leaders crack down on the western activists who helped them to power last year. in the russian capital you're watching r t i'm marina josh welcome to the program

both the syrian regime and the opposition have signaled that the solution to the to the bloody on rest may lie at the negotiating table rather than the battlefield that's after russia's foreign minister met with president assad in damascus the leader told the delegation that he is ready to implement reforms while the opposition says moscow should provide a roadmap for dialogue are going off explains russia's foreign minister sergei lavrov on the head of the foreign intelligence service neutral for of course has met with president assad and with syrian political elite and according to the foreign minister president says that he is ready for dialogue with the opposition with russia being the media you know this stephen was me to right after the meeting in damascus earlier on tuesday by russia's foreign minister and we've already had a reaction from the syrian opposition specifically from a senior member of the syrian council national.