today on our t.v. cyber world is getting smaller as congress tries to rein in the wild west ways of the internet with so many acronyms it's no wonder people are confused coming up we'll tell you why you should pay attention to all the legislation so it shows that it's sort of turning a country that is of the people by the people for the people they're turning it into a country that is bought and paid for by corporations it's total recall west constant addition for only the third time in u.s. history a recall election against a sitting governor is just a few days away protesters are using slogans as weapons while corporations are pumping millions of dollars to get their way we'll bring you a preview. and forget the freemasons today's secret society of the world shakers

and movers known as builder berg is meeting right now not far away from washington d.c. so why does this shadowy elite group insist on shutting out the world from its meetings and why isn't the media covering it artie's abby martin is on the case. it's thursday may thirty first four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching artsy. well today as a lawmaker is today discussing a bill that would extend the government's overseas surveillance powers the measure is called and it gives the government the power to monitor phone calls e-mails and all other communications of suspected terrorists abroad it was a hot topic back in two thousand and eight critics argued it could be used to target american citizens the debate today is over whether fice should be renewed and beyond so we're all we've already seen several bills aimed at regulating the

internet to some degree there has been the stop online piracy act better known as sopa and its partner the secure i t act they protect ip act and it's a brother pipa the cyber intelligence sharing and protection act known as cispa the first hit surveillance bill i just mentioned called and these cyber security act of two thousand and twelve now the senate is soon expected to vote on the controversial cybersecurity bill cispa backers say it's necessary to ensure cyber security but critics say this is a dangerous bill that would wipe out our internet freedoms as we know it senator ron wyden gave this warning on the house floor it creates uncertainty in place of trust it or wrote erode statutory and constitutional civil rights protections and it creates a surveillance regime in place of a targeted nimble cyber security program that is needed to truly

protect our nation. despite these warnings it seems the possible threat to our online freedoms is a largely ignored or accepted by most people but with so much of our lives being conducted online why are people why aren't people more bothered to discuss this and more our own r t a web writer andrew blake joins us now good to have you in the studio and so would you say that americans are apathetic to losing their online freedoms and online privacy we don't want to but it's kind of obvious at this point it's really really unfortunate and it shouldn't be the case but after years and years of congress trying differently censoring the internet and all different mediums all over the world you know outside the united states wherever they can the last couple of months have been terrible for internet freedoms in america and in people wake up well you know every couple of weeks and they say you know paper has

to go so it has to go system has to go and every single time you just comes back it comes back in a different name it comes back worse right now today down the street capitol hill they're going over five and it's said to be renewed right now for another four years and if i supposes as it is right now the government will be reauthorized the power to go in and go through your e-mails to go through your phone calls without a warrant and they can do it right now and people don't realize that there's a nothing's happening right now on the internet that are dangerous that people can even keeping track of them to be american with an internet connection right now is very very great if you want to share and spread information but even this technology catches up and gets better and better the government is still finding more and more ways that they're going to try to go in there and even if they don't mean to keep you from getting that information they are finding ways to at least stifle you and it's it's very upsetting and people need to wake up and it's

unfortunate and we're seeing a lot of this legislation we went over the. variety of them a little while ago but you know in other countries will use holland as an example citizens became outraged when the government tried to do the same thing when it comes to act and because of that they didn't pass act. why don't we see such a huge public backlash here i think i think one of the big things was is that people don't realize the harsh reality and how quickly it's going to come i mean we can cross our fingers and say there's no way this is going to happen and unfortunately what a lot of people are doing but the reality is it's already here and it's only going to get worse you know you grow up if you grow up in america you learn in school every day that use is the greatest country in the world and you can do whatever you want the land of the free and all that jazz but you don't think that they're going to start attacking you over the internet and that is the case like the n.s.a.

the f.b.i. the cia every i don't mean to sound like a kook saying that the government's out to spy on your net but the legislation is there and it's been authorized and approved time and time again and you know we did see that backlash against sopa and that was great over a couple of weeks people of websites like reddit put out a fight to make sure that did not get passed and it didn't you know sopa disappeared it was awesome when you only days later they were back with cisco you know it's not necessary the same kind of internet legislation is it focuses on cybersecurity as opposed to copyright infringement but it's still detrimental to the future of share that you think people americans take for granted the internet freedoms that we haven't. but i think it's sooner or later they're going to actually wake up i know some people already are but when when those freedoms aren't there anymore they're going to have to there's going to be no other choice you know i met a lot of hacktivists who have fled america and gone to other countries because they

can do what they want to do they're not out there spreading child pornography and. you know maybe breaking down the walls of government websites and infiltrating services like that they're just trying to do what they want to do in these sometimes you things are legal you know the are right but because the government keeps fighting regulations to impose over every single part of the internet what you can and can't do with a keyboard in a mouse is changing every single day and as you just mentioned andrew there was a backlash against sopa and that's the reason why that bill didn't go anywhere is because there was this backlash want to remind viewers exactly how what this backlash the way it played out the act was so controversial that companies like wikipedia google read it yahoo and facebook took a stand against it and several as you see there even blacked out their websites for a day and protest and i guess it worked because it didn't go anywhere and that was

back in january but if we jump forward to today is the fact that the lawmaker that actually was behind that bill his name is representative lamar smith he won the republican nomination just last week so he's probably going to get his spot pretty much guaranteed in congress but so many people were opposed to that legislation yet here he is being reelected isn't that you know in a democracy how you voice your concern about something by exercising your right to vote and if you don't like somebody you vote him out but he's been voted back in to the american people forget looks like it doesn't it you know the backlash against representative thomas smith that was so ridiculously called for when it happened he authored and could've killed the internet for so many millions of americans and they didn't forget they put billboards outside of his house reminding the rest of the town in texas do not vote for this guy if you care about your freedoms on the

internet and you know even if campaigns went from every web site imaginable all over the internet it still didn't do anything in the end because people. will people like that particular lawmaker they're elected in a small district you know they're the voice of a certain amount of people certain types of people and then he goes to washington and then where he makes his own shots and unless people start going into every single congressman's office across the country in demand that they start stepping you know speaking up for them that you know we need that kind of action all over the country not just in texas and lastly andrew really quickly what will it take for people to care would you would you say well you know it's already here what's. the damning things that congress is doing to piss people like me off is ridiculous and unfortunately there's not many people like me that are pissed off so i will see that as more people get pissed off and believe me it's coming it's coming if this book passes you will get that and hopefully we'll start to see a change sandra bullock definitely don't want to piss you off that was our team

lead producer and your plate thanks liz oh in just a few days a statewide election will take place that may set the stage for not only the november presidential election for the future of politics over all last year governor scott walker took on unions on the rights of workers to collectively bargain than those workers fought back and took on scott walker is right to have his job our correspondent christine will be heading to wisconsin in a few days to cover that election but before she goes she reminds us why what happens there is so important. all eyes are on wisconsin a crystal ball of sorts they could predict the future of workers' rights in america . on one side governor scott walker who had a three billion dollar hole in his state budget and decided to plug it in part by taking on unions and taking away collective bargaining rights for workers this is alternately about a commitment to the future so our children don't face even more dire consequences

than what we face today but fourteen state senators all democrats fled the state in an attempt to block the measure meanwhile chaos erupted in the state capitol. and protesters remained for four months sparking a larger discussion about inequality and the power of corporations but we're here because a wall street reckless gambling angry ok that is why we're all here people are suffering. recalls scott walker organizers collected nine hundred thousand signatures and when you take on main street and you take on the basic rights and values of everyday americans whether they be in wisconsin ohio florida or what have you there we're going to stand up and we're going to say enough is enough union leaders have been on the forefront of the recall effort and are working to raise money for walker's opponent milwaukee mayor tom barrett so far his campaign has raised about three point nine million dollars it's

a sharp contrast to walker himself who's brought in more than thirty million dollars the majority of it coming in from outside of the state it's the koch brothers funded americans for prosperity it's the republican governors association dumping tons of cash and then basically every far conservative billionaire from the country is dumping boatloads of money into this thing tuesday's election is much more than about the fate of scott walker it's also about governors in states across this country. who also wish to limit the role of unions and in turn the rights of workers and it's also about those unions and the strength and power they have today and finally it's about money and its ability to control the message and have an impact on what voters decide at home in washington christine for. our team. the tambour of commerce getting creative at evading campaign ad laws earlier this

year a federal court ruling was geared toward revealing who the donors are behind political interest groups but the chamber this week said this week they can get around this by clearly supporting one candidate or the other that way they don't have to dish the dirt on who the donors are so why are these groups going to such great lengths to hide where they're getting their cash from and why such a strong fight against disclosure and transparency to discuss this and more is chris chambers is a journalism professor at georgetown university welcome to the show chris. so one other when a win for corporations will draw i mean you know people who are look who are advocating more transparency of obviously going into the court system because the congress is not you know obviously hospitable place for that given the amount of money that these same sort of people are backing especially in the house of representatives with the recent republican freshman that came in in two thousand and ten so it's a draw right now it's a draw i would say

a win for anybody but it looks like another loophole that they have found and being able to pump as much money as they won or kind of you know fund run campaigns kind of in the background well it's an interesting dynamic because you know you have you have the federal election commission you know in this you have the the federal communications commission involved in this you have super pacs which are actually exempt from all of this stuff i mean they're out there like another supernova waiting to explode that we have to. keep an eye on but these are just you know you're run of the mill garden variety political ads and you know it's interesting why they do not want these things disclosed it's the same argument that we talked about before when the f.c.c. said put your campaign ad stuff out there in digitally rather than in a rusty cabinet underneath the receptionist office of the average t.v.

station and they oppose that as if people were going to nationalize and you know take over their companies i think it's because you know they really perceive that they're under siege for some reason that summary for some way some reason so but how someone you know malevolent is going to come down and take all their money away because it other than that which sounds ridiculous obviously but what other explanation is there is that they don't want to be told what to do i mean internally they're having a fight over this because you know you have stockholder shareholder groups which is supposedly free enterprise the thing that they push you know as a religion at work you know they're owners of the company they get to have a say well these people are presenting ballot questions proxy questions to their boards everybody from wal-mart over the mexico scandal to news corp and rupert murdoch's problems say look we need we need to have a different direction we want to have environmental sanity we want to do this we

want to do that want to get out of alec which you know wal-mart just left today and now they're complaining about that too so i mean it really just comes down to control maybe just psychological control they don't want to be told what to do in the case of the chamber of commerce they claim to be not a political organization but in this case and it's interesting the way that they're going about it because and sad. you know having these ads target issues now they're saying in order to get around this we're going to. going to support clearly is a poor one candidate over the other so isn't that clearly a political yes it was clearly political or political before and the reason why this kind of regime was was set up this advertising regime both the way the dollars are funneled and you know which has the e.c. is involved in and how it ends up on the mass media which is what the f.c.c. is involved in was because they really wanted to keep the donors anonymous and

because they had an agenda now it's just going to be moving away from issues to the actual candidates well it's it was about the actual candidates to begin with it was about who we're going to root for who we're going to pull for the issue orientation of this was just a reaction to the regulations now it's we have another evolution another reaction so now they're just going to you know support whichever person they were going to support in the first place this way they can do it outwardly and still hide who who the donors are because you know they don't want i mean imagine this i mean it's not just internally with shareholders who might be upset i was a general counsel to a bank here in washington before i became a journalist and i know how that is once when shareholders are upset and they want to press their issues but that's part of our capitalist system that they say that they want to preserve supposedly from candidates that they hate now they want to you know fight back on two fronts it's very very interesting and all i can do is

look at it and come to the conclusion that it's about control they don't want to be told what to do so it sounds like shareholders are more important than transparency and that was shareholders that go with what they want to do there you go. you know chris this is a last election year is supposed to be the most expensive costly election in history yes we're seeing the at the super pacs and and how they're kind of playing into the mix now and we have this other loophole i mean is this all. just another sign that the elections have already been bought and sold oh of course i mean i think they were bought and sold back when justice roberts wrote the citizens united opinion but even before that i mean we saw just money just pouring into this and it was usually by people on the right wing the conservative sort of orientation and now even almost extremist right wing situations i mean there are billionaires

meeting now and there's a story in politico recently about how they're sitting there going oh my gosh you know stop picking on us stop picking on us for being picked on for trying to buy an election. to laugh a little bit about but you know they really really feel be set and attacked for this and again it seems to just come back to perceived loss of power and control to whom i don't know but there's no other explanation for this so at the end do you think that the you know the average voter the average citizen is kind of kind of losing his power and to the power of the money oh yes definitely i mean democracy is because been bought and paid for and now i mean it now is just in your face it was always under the table probably for the last maybe seventy five hundred years it was deep under the table now it's up there for everybody to see so you know we have a problem here and i don't think the f.e.c. or the f.c.c. or anyone or even internally in these companies with these kind of stockholder

proxy questions are really going to be able to reform that i think it's too late that the monster is out of the cave and we're not going to put it back crass pleasure to have you on the show thank you that was christopher chambers a journalism professor at georgetown university. secretive and elite the builder bridge builder berger group unites the world's most powerful people behind closed doors it's been happening for decades and this year it's in chanting early at the marriott hotel the secrecy surrounding the conference has sparked many theories as to what exactly goes on in the meetings some even believe it's a venue where the world's most rich and powerful conspire to carve out a new world order r.t. correspondent abbie martin was in chantelle leverage and it's a day to let us know what's happening outside of the build of our conference and joins us now to tell us all about it abby nice to see you so we have

a lot of powerful people all in one room happens all the time so what's all the fuss about i think the fuss is especially about this meeting it's different than other meetings because there is no corporate press coverage we see a lot of meetings happening we're just on nato g eight and seems like everyone the world knows about that and there's tons of press tons of protests but unlike the build a bird group like the builder group is that again we build a group build a bird group doesn't have any press there's no press releases there's no official attend the press release out there so no one really knows who it is that attends or what they're talking about. so you were there outside i know you couldn't get too close but you know there were protests i understand what exactly are they protesting their protest in the agree just violation of federal law there's a there's an act called the logan act which says that you cannot meet with foreign diplomats without congressional oversight and i think that that's really the main

key years people are like hold on why are there one hundred thirty of the most powerful world players and banking mining oil food media defense and politics why are they all getting together and meeting in secrecy behind closed doors without any congressional oversight or really any awareness of what it is they're talking about now we have the some of the most powerful people in the world so you can presume that something is happening something important is kind of brewing but we don't know what and that's kind of bred a lot of theories do we know what they could be talking about well i think i think some theories have arisen because of things like the euro the north american union these these policies that have kind of been presented right after the builder group that people kind of speculate hold on were these things theorized in this meeting and you saw in two thousand and eight when obama infamously kind of skirted his press corps which is with him twenty four seven onto another plane and said that he

was going to be meeting with hillary in virginia multiple meetings with multiple people and it was never really disclose what was happening and then right after that we saw that she was you know the the a very high position in his cabinet so people speculate you know who is what's going on at these meetings are these powerful political players being picked for policy positions and it's just completely unknown to the public and so people are speculating that this year like every year in the past they think that they're conspiring or maybe theorizing on how to control the occupy wall street movement control the arab spring movement and how to control the currency and i think that's what people are really worried about and so you know since since people can come in and they can hear what they're talking about is a lot of speculation a lot of theories that you just mentioned but is there any evidence to back up these suspicions or to back up these claims. there's no hard evidence other than what david rockefeller and also people in the build

a bird group have have come out and said i mean all you can do is look at the members who have attended there are leaks there are moles inside build a bird every year that kind of put out things that were talked about even though they're sworn to secrecy and media moguls who go there are sworn to secrecy but things do come out and they talk about you know they they release to the public what is being talked about and what is being said and what these people say when they're confronted by independent journalists you know what was said there what you guys do there they just say oh well we just meet and talk the problem about that is i mean when do one hundred thirty of the world's most powerful people just get together and just talk and have beers i mean there's they talk about policy and they talk about things that affect the entire world so the evidence really is the policies that we see after these meetings being implemented and you just have to look at the people who are involved and what comes out of it and it's really all speculation but then again is it i mean. this year is marco rubio

that that's what they're kind of talking about behind closed doors that he. will be the pick for the romney's running mate any word about that while you're there no word about that people have been speculating that and we'll definitely see what happens i mean we know that john edwards was picked after attending the builder group in two thousand and four and he was picked as john kerry's running mate some people have said you know they hand-picked him to really run it i mean it is really interesting and we see in david rockefeller's memoir he says if people charge me for running a secret cabal i stand proud of it and i hold those charges to be true i mean against american interests he said this is self and he is an integra member he is a member of the billboards steering committee that hand picks these hundred thirty people every year and it's kind of like their shining stars of who they think that they could really pursue whatever it is they feel they need to. so today is day one of the build of our conference what's next any big protests are they expected to

grow in the coming days as this plays out yeah absolutely this is the first year i think we're occupy wall street and kind of the new world order crowd have really joined forces and so we see the occupy build burg movement happening we see hundreds of people that were out there today which was really interesting because it's early thursday and it's only expected to grow alex jones came out there with his born right when i was taking back to the studios and he just told me that you know he expects thousands of people especially on saturday and sunday when people are not work and are able to show up so as you know he's very i know you. have a thanks for keeping us updated that was our correspondent martin thanks but next on our t.v. is the capital account with lauren lyster let's check in with lauren to see what's on today's agenda lauren what do you have going on over there hi liz lots of bad news coming out of the eurozone what else is new right well today there is this theme that emerges once again of national sovereignty countries time trying to

cling on to it and central authorities saying we need less of it so we'll talk about that you have ireland which is voting on a referendum whether to approve the fiscal treaty that europe is saying is required in order to be in the euro zone tightening deficits and debt limits now they're voting but you have to ask what kind of a vote they really have in order to get any kind of funds or aid in the future they would need to approve it so here is an attempt to exercise national sovereignty then you have mario draghi who's the head of the central bank saying with all of these banking disasters in europe what we really need is to give up a little national sovereignty over banking and have a central authority that deals with banking regulation so lots of issues going on the similar thing though that we always see even though there is new data so we're going to talk about that. the time. cavallo on the capital account thanks for that update lauren that's coming up next on the capital account of laura lister that's going to do it now for the news for more of the stories we covered you can check

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you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. is he eat. meat.