>> hello, i am willing king, a host of "white house chronicle." i am thinking about two countries, under the heels of the soviet union and darnell making different tracks, one read a disconcertingly, is moving from democracy. the other tentatively is moving into it. the good news is cassocks stand.

it has just had an election, has been criticized, far from an open and perfect election. overturning the authoritarian system that has existed for 20 years and has an excitement about it. a step in the right direction. for the first time, there will be more than one party in the lower house of parliament. the other and sadder story is hungary. once one of the jewels of europe looking as if it was going to be a beacon of democracy, and it is going the of authoritarian route, almost a fascist roots. people from hungary are depressed and tell me that nothing is looking very good in the future of hungary in terms of liberty and democracy. in kazakhstan, an important and large country in central asia, there is hope, a sense of excitement, a sense of a common

future that is better than the past and certainly a slight improvement on at least the democratic representative -- representation of the presence. tale of two countries, one going up, one going down. i have a wonderful show for you today with great minds to discuss the other issues. we will be right back. >> many have spoken out about the need to transition to a cleaner future. by 2020, we are committed to offsetting, displacing more than 15 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually through greening our operations, helping our customers and communities reduced their emissions and offer more low carbon electricity in the marketplace. we are taking action and seeing results.

>> "white house chronicle" is produced in collaboration with -- >> now the program host, will.i.am king -- llewllyn king and the linda gasparello. >> hello, and thank you for coming along. linda gasparello, giving away that the fact that she was in castaic stand, and is wearing a hat that she procured watching the elections there. how is that beautiful country? >> cold and beautiful. >> adam clayton powell the third from the university of southern california, welcome to the broadcast. >> less cold there.

>> i once went swimming to impress somebody off of malibu. extremely cold. she was not impressed. wayne madsen from the wayne madsen report, welcome back to the broadcast. tell us quickly about the wayne madsen report, for the few dealers who have not heard about it. >> it is an attempt to bring back something lost in this town, muckraking journalism, reporting on the things that the mainstream tries to avoid. >> and you have clean issues on today or is the much sticking to them? >> the more muck the better. >> tim foley as well is here. every saturday at 9:30 a.m. the best of political radio there is in this country.

you, yourself, if i must say so, do a wonderful job. you have a talent that i envy. you can read almost anything perfectly allowed. i cannot do that. i cannot even read things allow that i have written myself. >> it helps make because i do not need to have an original thought. >> now that we have all while and encouraged, what is happening, tim folly with the president? >> he is in the campaign, going to be of a long year tried to contrast himself with the republican candidate by not talking about what he has done so much, but by saying here is what i am coming here is what they are. beware of the scary republican, whoever it is. they are assuming it will be mitt romney. that is why you do not want to let them. they will take the country in two directions that will bring

us back to the bush era, the worst years before that. they are setting it up as a choice, not a referendum on the record. that is how it is being framed. >> how will the president attacked romney, if it is him? clearly, the man is very wealthy. one assumes his credit cards are paid up, that he does not owe a balance. >> also the idea that his retirement fund -- something like $22 million to $100 million? that is something that most americans would like to have in their bank account. >> even a fraction of that. >> to pick up your thread, the president will be focusing on the republicans. we have seen two waves of polling data from gallup. the first is, after the first of the year, president obama's approval rating is the lowest ever recorded by gallup of any

president in his first term. the second wave was this past week when they showed, the lowest numbers -- again, in the history of gallup polling -- of government and corporations. you have this lack of trust, support, a disconnect between those who are running the government and corporations, including the president, and the people. he is not able to run on his record as much as running against whoever is against him. >> that boy you are talking about indicated that at this point in the presidency, the last time it was that low was richard nixon, who went on to a landslide victory that year. >> linda, do we live in a democracy or a polacracy? >> a pollocracy.

one thing the president has to do is really -- in four years, he has not been able to tell us what he is about, what he is trying to do, the direction of his policy. he has a difficult time navigating that balance between politics and governance. he makes a lot of decision that our political and that do not seem to have very much to do with the way he should be governing. as you have pointed out, the energy policy is one of those things. it is just incomprehensible to me. it swings from left to right -- >> i have a feeling he writes as a lawyer, for the footnotes, and in order to understand what he is trying to do, you have to read the footnotes, but in politics, there are none. wayne, what do you think?

>> president obama is recognizing the fact that he has lost support from his liberal flank over some of his moves. he never shut down guantanamo, issues that the left-wing really wanted to see him do. two decisions he made, postponing the keystone pipeline from canada -- although if. the decision, he is not canceling it. again, is legalese. the other one was his coming out against the house and senate bills. people feel an assault on the internet freedom and the liberty, protection of internet privacy act, sopa in the house. even christopher dodd, now the head of the motion picture association of america, it is in support of this. obama came out and said time out

on that, i am not supporting this in its present form. then we saw a bunch of republicans and democrats pull their support for the legislation. this is an attempt for obama to reach out. >> this is a reminder of the new world we live in, the internet world. this was an extraordinary day. >> and explosive action. was under the wire, under the radar. 19 members of the judiciary committee moved -- wanted to move this to the floor. when i spoke to dan lundgren about this, the congressman from california, one of the chairs in the subcommittee, said that he had not seen anything move up from the grass roots that quickly to the floor of the house and senate. it was about the internet, and because of the internet, it was stopped in its tracks. >> we have seen this movie before. again, going back to the 1970's with the nixon, when peter finch

portrayed in the burke anchor who urged the risk to get up from watching television to open up the window and yelled, i am mad as hell and i will not take it anymore. instead of going to their windows, they took to their keyboards. >> there is something else going on, a shift in power from washington lobbyists to this direct access. some of the people making direct access are themselves large corporations, with corporate interests. google, they have large corporate interests. he shows a profound shift in the country, and it shows, i think, the isolation of congress. talking to lobbyists, each other, may be talking to us, yet, not realizing we are now entirely dominated by technology, and technology may be moving faster than politics. >> we are in the territory because we have a new frontier.

instead of being out in space, we are crossing borders. whatever the u.s. government does could run afoul of any one of the rights, whether it is right to privacy, question about security, which is important, and free trade. there are philosophical interconnectivity is here that are just -- the intersection is something that we have not seen before. it is fraught with exciting things, but also with peril. i am fascinated to see how it goes. at the very least, they wanted to have more hearings, the typical congressional reaction. >> this is the electronic equivalent of people running into the streets and jamming the square. >> it is true. >> i must say, i was excited about it. i have spent much of my life protecting public rights. >> there are an awful lot of things done in washington that people do not really care about, do not understand, but when you talk about their facebook,

something that will happen to that, you are going to see 100,000 people marching down the street. >> i was typing out my column and realized i could not check something on which bp get -- wikipedia. can be careful, it is not always right. every journalist has been caught of signing something incorrect. suddenly, i realized something that i had gotten so used to -- what does so and so mean? we do not go to a big book and start looking it up, as we once did, which was always a problem for me. >> i wonder, who would be policing these infringements? when you get right down to it -- >> wondering why something like this resonate so quickly, where as occupy wall street, which is a grass-roots movement, but has not, for whatever reason, had that same resonance.

it may be people are not as intimately involved. >> 7000 web said participated in the blackout. they were represented by the left and right. >> so many websites were effectively blacked out. >> i did the greuel approach, i had some sensors in there. "wired magazine" did the same thing. 7000 websites representing the left and right, unlike occupy wall street, and the tea party. this issue, there is a lot of commonality between the two political wings. >> program identification, particularly for our listeners out there. channel 124 sirius xm radio. you are listening to "white house chronicle" with myself llewellyn king, linda gasparello

come at adam clayton powell, wayne madsen, and tim foley. this program can be seen around the world on english language stations, "voice of america, " and just over 200 domestic television stations. >> i was going to edit that. >> i conditt myself. -- caught it myself. i was talking about the changes in the political structure, attitudes in two countries. sadly, about the hon carried situation, which is extremely desperate. you and i have talked about the situation in south africa where freedom is deteriorating.

the government seems to be taking more repressive measures. one of the bright things is the internet. the government cannot seize the internet, the way they could seize printing bands, imprisoning people. you can be outside of the country and do your work. >> i was lucky enough to be funded by the freedom forum in africa, asia, latin america, and eastern and central europe. programs every month on freedom of information, using the internet. the initial audience we thought was going to be journalists, but the audience turned out to be much larger. going back to 1990, 2001, 2002. invariably, the more repressive the government of the country where we were holding the forum, the more interested the audience and the faster they grasped that. this is something our government

cannot control. as you know, governments from china to iran are pouring lots of money into this trying to control it with varying degrees of success, but it is and enormously useful tool. we have seen it from north africa, a number of countries, through the middle east, and even in china, as a tool for free expression. >> of course, this has not always worked. in saudi arabia, we thought new technology would break into the conservatism of the government, the marquee tied in with islam -- monarchies tied in with his mom. rather, it tends to work the other way. instead of sending in e-mails and faxes saying, what about freedom, they send them in saying they are not strict enough, more is long, more sharia law. >> the first markets for these

firewall software programs, basically sensorware for the internet, -- censorware for the internet, they were the ones to buy these programs and successfully install them. there are worker rounds, but that indicated the fear they had in those countries of those technologies. >> any information technology tends to be greeted by government. during the days of apartheid, television was there really to go to south africa because they were scared of television. in fact, it was only about 10 years before the fall of apartheid that it was widely available. they were very scared of television and what it might do to the internal situation. >> and they underestimated the power of comedy and entertainment. there were more about news and cnn, but seeing a certain, the program was just as subversives,

in terms of apartheid government. >> traditionally, satire has been a way to get at governments. look at a wonderful thought we are having from comedy central "the daily show" and "the colbert report." >> the idea that he can have jon stewart running this pac, and he has no connection at all. there was a story that even if you are a business partner, you are the candidate, your business partner is the head of the pac, according to the law, there can be no collusion going on. that is a silly provision that he is looking at. >> one of the things that fascinates me in terms of gathering news, when it comes to how people are reacting, there is almost universal access -- depending on where you live -- if you have the right tools, you can go online and be a reporter.

likewise, there is a danger in when you actually see. so often, people interpret things to be true. it is not hard for something that is not true to get out there. as a result, we are seeing more and more often, i hope, skepticism about what people see on the internet. despite the fact that it can be a useful tool, we see how it affects our political process. so many candidates are afraid to do anything for fear of getting put out of context. mitt romney made a comment about firing people and the quotation was truncated. part of the problem was he was already seen as being out of touch as a patrician and so on, but his sentence was taken out of context. that is the kind of thing that can be used by a lot of people. many campaigns are not even using traditional tv, they are just putting it on the internet,

hoping it catches fire. >> and we have a problem with cable television. everybody gets the information they want to get. we do not have this universality of news. if you are liberal, you tend to watch nbc or cable. if you are conservative, you tend to watch fox. you get the news that supports the predisposition you had. i had a neighbor, a very intelligent man, but he is on the internet all the time, does not have television, listen to the radio, and he gets all kinds of conspiracy theories and all kinds of crazy things you are astounded to hear coming out of his mouth, but he has gotten them off the internet, and tends to believe them. >> i wonder if there will be a time where there will be an internet ombudsmen, or some kind of organization that sets itself up. >> is the internet itself. the community that uses it. celt regulating appeared that is the idea behind wikipedia.

you were able to go in and become part of that. the problem is, there are varying degrees of dedication to truth. everyone brings their own predisposition to that. >> one thing that has helped people who suffer, with disease, etc., one has been television, which is a great comfort if you cannot leave your house. the other is the internet. i have done a lot of work, a passion of mine, chronic fatigue syndrome. a truly terrible affliction. i find if i read an article about this -- make a youtube program on the subject -- it is around the globe. i get letters from brazil, hong kong. it is absolutely extraordinary. they are, in some ways, comforted by this. i wonder, do we lose nationality when we lived in this virtual world, where our friends can be in hong kong? i got an e-mail this morning

from somebody who is going for one month to rotterdam, somebody suffering from this disease. she said, it does not matter, i can do what i do. she is a writer. i can do this anywhere in the world. does this mean we are not attached to the communities we live in? are we in another community physically? >> there is no one way ticket anymore, the way they're used to be. wmd you remove your body, but you did not move your mind -- >> you move your body, but you do not move your mind. >> immigrants in the united states used to be out of touch, by letter -- letters to take weeks to get across the atlantic. >> if ever got there at all. >> now you have e-mail, a

country of origin media, so whether you are from el salvador, india, you can listen to and watch television news. >> we also have this interesting thing in television where major countries have television programs in america. russia, france, germany, and of course, the bbc, which has propped it -- practically taken over half of our television. you can see people actually assimilating. you do not need to assimilate in the sense -- >> what you are talking about, virtual communities are being established globally. their only threat to the prevailing structures -- for

example, europe. the people in hungary, that movement is very anti-eu. we see increasingly in france, the daughter of the perennial right wing candidate now coming on strong, some polls showing her head of nicholas sarkozy. even in finland, they went into the eu, got rid of the markup, adopted the euro, and now we see from finland, the eu is a threat to our sovereignty. now we see these countries pulling their resources. >> we are going to have to end that bit of our discussion. time for our high notes and the low notes. >> my i know it is our colleague connie, who will go on new year's day and found out she had a letter from queen elizabeth. she got the new zealand order of merit for her work in helping

new zealand earthquake victims. and many other things she had done in our broadcasting career. >> congratulations. we are all very excited about it. she is not in good health these days, and we are glad for her. adam clayton powell? >> an unlikely i know, the return of silent films. "the partisan." >> wayne madsen? >> the captain of the costa concordia who said he accidentally fell into the lifeboat. reminds me of the original titanic movie where he dressed up as a woman to get into a lifeboat. >> tim folly? >> this goes back to those marines that were investigated for urinating on the corpses. what bothers me is nobody has been taken to task for what

happened at arlington national cemetery. those were people who were generals and colonels in charge. they are more in charge for desecration more so than those brains. terrible for what they did. there needs to be something sad about that. >> you are right. and if it were not for the media, we would not know about these transgressions. that is our program today. we are so glad you came along. have a wonderful week. we will be back next week with more discussions on the news. cheers. captioned by the national captioning institute --www.ncicap.org --

>> many have spoken out on the need to transition to a cleaner future. by 2020, we are committed to offsetting orders but in more than 15 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually through breeding our operations, helping our customers and communities. we are taking action and seeing results. >> white house chronicle is produced in collaboration with whut, howard university television. from washington, d.c., this has been "white house chronicle." weekly news with a sense of humor featuring llewellyn king and linda gasparello. to view the program online, and linda gasparello. to view the program online, visit us at