the protesters have gathered to vos lashing out against prime minister vladimir putin. that's funny i didn't know there were palm trees in russia certainly isn't the first time the mainstream media has been dead wrong there probably won't be the last so why is it that the people americans turn to for news and won't do a little bit of fact checking before going on air. flow. and the mainstream media isn't the only one telling white lies these days president obama is pushing for international internet freedom and yet another case of do as i

say not as i do. and speaking of ordering people around police forces across the us have ramped up their raids on the occupy wall street movement suppressing the public's right to assemble one city at a time with military grade pepper spray and high tech weapons whose interests are they really serving and protecting. it's thursday december eighth five pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r.t. . well as parliamentary elections play out in russia it seems the us government and the mainstream media are pushing their own agenda and covering at harsh criticism over the electoral process attacking moscow for failing to conduct fair and free elections here's a look at some of the coverage. prime minister vladimir putin's party barely

hanging on to their majority in the parliament while most polling station is showing to have voting booths with ink that can be raised votes against the ruling party its alleged. it appears that a lot of people in russia are fed up with not having a choice but in covering these events it's the mass media that fail to report the facts even showing the wrong video all in an effort to shape the story r.t. correspondent takes a look at the media coverage of the elections in russia and sex sets the facts straight. america has its fair share of protests and political dissent to be dealing with instead of keeping an eye on the ball the country's mass media machine has turned to protests in russia and dropped the ball on reporting the facts. the protesters have gathered in moscow lashing out against prime minister vladimir putin and his reunited russia party the only problem is that this video is not from

russia fox news channel aired a video of fires and chaos in athens convincing viewers that this mayhem is playing out in moscow the fair and balanced network paid no mind to the greek lettering in the background in case you're wondering it says greek national bank what matters is that this is what moscow protests have looked like it's not surprising whatsoever that at the moment that there would be any kind of protest no matter how small it be in russia against the russian government that it would be greatly exaggerated in media and used by the u.s. government as well as a way to try to somehow push for a change in russia that would be more favorable to u.s. interests journalist and author eva golinger believes mass media is washington's most valuable weapon in encouraging revolt elsewhere under the mantle of spreading democracy such as the so-called orange revolution in ukraine. or ruse revolution in georgia. perception is created that something is happening in the

country that's not right and that the government is somehow responsible and so therefore if that government ends up being removed it somehow is justified that you know the media has played a key role in creating a justification for regime change similar anti-government demonstrators have been reported and others living in russia u.s. leaders have leveled harsh criticism against russia in the aftermath of sunday's parliamentary election and critics say it's free press has. worked to reinforce the narrative the media tends to march in lock step with the government it tends to take its cues from the government it tends to you know mobilize its resources to showcase what the government says is true even when later it turns out not to be true as was the case in this a rooney is c.n.n. report well in eastern russia more than three thousand people protested against proposed changes to the country's time zones the video shown by c.n.n.

is not of protesters but rather of soccer fans writing in moscow all over the killing of a fellow supporter the problem is that we showed the wrong pictures only after the error was repeatedly noticed c.n.n. owned up to its mistake we do apologize for the era and a grateful thing the many russian viewers who've pointed out to us the sloppiness of it all is reflecting you know the lack of awareness of the journalists themselves many of them are completely uninformed about the world they have opinions that have no factual basis to him but it doesn't stop them because it's what looks good that matters more than what really is true the truth is that america has its own social economic and political challenges to be dealing with and while washington works on getting its own house in order powerful mass media outlets can work on getting their facts straight marina point nine or r.t. new york and it's not just mass media waging

a war against moscow political leaders are condemning the country to take a listen to secretary of state hillary clinton's remarks. concerning russia you know we're watching the election results with great interest clearly the dumas going to have a different makeup than it did before this election. and we do have serious concerns about the conduct of the election the russian prime minister vladimir putin is accusing the last of stirring up the protests he says the u.s. and other countries pump millions and millions of dollars into influencing the russian a luncheons putin point his finger right back at clinton straightaway the secretary of state assessed the election this is dishonest and unfair even though she hadn't even received the observers material she set the tone for some of our personalities inside the country and gave them a signal our partners shakers from time to time so that we don't forget who owns this planet so that we know they have methods of pressure and influence on our

country from within you choose to do so when it comes to humanitarian or health issues and that's one thing when foreign money is being invested into internal political affairs that should make us think it's a little much what's especially on acceptable given it's a flow of foreign money into the electoral process and it's absolutely unacceptable so just how our western power is aiming to shape political change and russia to talk more about this i am more i was joined by the always outspoken asia times correspondent pepe escobar to start things off i asked him to give me his take on this blatantly wrong reporting here's what he had to say. if you think folks news seriously that's a major mistake but i am american says by people all across the world this basically is a p.r. operation of the republican party the real real will lead not perfection which is most of them of course c.n.n. basically is a mouse piece of the state department but i don't and the cia they will never

really is anything that was not proved with instances of american government so don't take these people seriously what we should take seriously it's what's really happening inside russia and then you have to pay attention to russian media today on almost the ducal mess. don't you know the barrel of able on the net you can the even use google translate and see what they're talking russian analysts talking ok there were some irregularities in the election just like barry riddle that it is in many elections in african countries in egypt there were irregularities in european countries in the us in two thousand and florida in the us in two thousand and four in ohio what's more important in my opinion is what united russia should do to address grievances from barts of the russian population this is the real issue and you know we just heard calling out western powers for using mass media to encourage

or evolve elsewhere in this case within his own country and we three are going to the nation such as freedom house they are tasked with what they call spreading democracy now i want to ask you what if we were it can turn the tables and russia or china were to pump money and time and effort into influencing the elections here look everybody knows that and he d. freedom house all these american n.g.o.s they influence elect date they flew as most of the colorful revolutions in central asia in effect the americas are now trying to promote the idea that gene sharp's effect info. rented that here square the egyptian revolution this is in it's a self reflection and it's a mix of ignore and send an arrogance that has been unmasked all over the world like you know give an example all over south america people don't trust anything they know that the americans tried

a military coup in his on it's doesn't do that they tried a military coup in believe in two thousand and five that they tried the military coping ecuador last year that they in fact. conducted and were successful with the military coping the enduros so all across america in latin america people have seen through it and of course they have been used to the american factories since the sixty's when the us supported all those military dictatorships in the specially in south america including chile which was the original nine eleven and nobody talks about that in the us anymore and that you know while the media and the government government leaders alike. they're there praising the protestors and russia for demonstrating against the government and exercising their freedom of speech but we have protests happening right here in the u.s. you know we've seen is violent crackdowns of the protests and occupy wall street protest amen and the police trying to silence them in the media their response in

many cases has been to be a little the protestors so why do we say that that it is pray as a protest abroad but when they're happening here they're condemning. it so it's a double standard look. i would say the response in moscow and st petersburg especially at your days was heavy handed. i'm not sure united russia knew how to react effect they should give a platform for those who were there express themselves include a day internet but in us your q. by movement has been militarily criminalized in effect if you if you watch fox news i have to for professional reasons in fact most of those wackos they are old fox news all the time they say that the york you buyers are terrorists. plain and simple like you know in russia of course it was a heavy hand of repression i would suggest in either russia to be more magical in fact but you know even in europe the occupy movement in european space they're also

being moral as criminalized as well in fact all across the world but one point that i would like to make which i think is very important this is just a detail in a much bigger picture the much bigger picture then we sat between us and russia is over like you know as we speak they are in brussels discussed the missile defense american ambassador to nato evil daalder said we're going to build it whatever the russians think about it and dimitri rubs off the russian ambassador nato said ok if they proceed like this we're going to have a we're going to establish our response which is. deploy radar stations and missile missile defense russian way in cleaning right for instance near the borders of poland to lead to a new so the reset is over plus it's that it raises absolutely me because russia and china vetoed a u.n. security resolution against syria and the fact that russia has

a naval base with also docking rights for iranian ships and they used to make it their own at the port of tartus in syria when you put this all together explains reaction especially from juba to stress especially from hillary clinton hillary don't forget hillary clinton published last month's the money fast forward to this century an american century as a pacific century and when obama went to southeast asia to australia and southeast asian his latest trip he announced the fact that the u.s. is going to basically cool date owned us bought china but also russia and central asia is the same same. that was a asia times correspondent pepe escobar and speaking of double standards u.s. leaders now urging governments abroad to embrace internet freedom today secretary of state hillary clinton was at the hague to advocate internet freedom and today as

people increasingly turn to the internet to conduct important aspects of their lives we have to make sure that human rights are as respected on line as offline and in the past president obama has also urged other countries to open up freedom of speech on the web the more freely information flows the stronger the society becomes because then citizens. countries around the world. they're all governments accountable but at the same time the u.s. is making moves to try and internet security right here at home federal law enforcement and national security aiming to get new regulations that would make it easier for them to wiretap internet communications so that includes email facebook skype and other sites the mandate what allowed the u.s. to wiretap these sites so how can the u.s. promote internet freedom and other countries get restrict those same freedoms here

at home here in studio to talk more about this associate editor at reason magazine mike riggs thanks for joining us matt so we just heard from both secretary of state hillary clinton and president obama they are pushing for it for other countries to to spread this freedom of the internet but at the same time the u.s. is cracking down on these same freedoms so why the double standard i mean there's i think there's always some cognitive dissonance between what the u.s. is promoting in terms of foreign policy and what we're doing domestically you know you can attribute this to a couple things one the agencies that are responsible for not violating internet freedom at home i'm not going to say protecting when i say not violating it it's not the state department you know it's the n.s.a. is the department of justice it's local law enforcement so on the one hand and then it's also you know the congress that is responsible for sort of like either

creating laws that protect internet freedom or more often than not creating laws that chip away at it so you have that sort of dissonance in the state department you know is not concerned with domestic matters the other reason i think we see this is that as terrifying as some of these laws are that the congress is proposing to stop online piracy act is one of them this this bill that is currently in the subcommittee that would allow wiretapping of digital communications making it easier. i think the other reason that that stuff is not it's just not quite as bad as what you see in southeast asia in the middle east that doesn't mean that there's not a degree of apocryphally there what we're talking about when we look at these domestic policies that we're facing is sort of are our right to be left alone sort of being infringe on right i mean nobody's going to tell us what sites we can and can't visit what we can say over g. chat really what these policies do is they expose us to interference in our day to day lives when we say something through digital communications that looks like terrorism or looks like a crime whereas in these other countries the the it's just

a much lower base level of freedom it's idea that in china there are just sites you can't visit you know in the middle east there's words that if you type you know that you can't search in a search engine stuff so there's dissonance there but it's far enough apart that we sort of have the luxury of being able to lecture these countries about what they should and shouldn't be doing right and. as we just heard secretary of state clinton lecturing these other countries you know saying that they shouldn't be disabling twitter and other types of communications that they are using to organize . their demonstrations over there in tahrir square but it's not like this is totally unheard of in the u.s. something happened in california back in september where cell phones are disabled so i know you're kind of aware of situations. right here in the u.s.

where right is the similar things that happens yeah the bay area rapid transit which we know by the acronym which oversees the transit system in the california shut down cell phone service during the beginning of the occupy protests because they saw on twitter and other social networks that protesters were going to try and move from one protest area to another via the transit system and you know. part is sort of a militarizing police agency which we saw right now i mean they had an incident where they shot a restrained suspect i think two years ago but what bart decided to do was they they shut down cell service they didn't actually have a policy regarding this. after the fact they came up with a policy saying anytime public safety is in jeopardy we reserve the right to restrict cell service and the federal communications commission is currently headed by a democrat just to show that this is completely nonpartisan. said you know that's great as long as it's for preserving public safety so in the u.s.

we have the public safety argument here and then in part of the middle east that have restricted access to social networks it's more it's also being wrapped in the same language the real point i think is actually to prevent regime change which is what they're going for over here and again this is just basically us being on opposite sides of this issue though we are moving much closer together i think eventually will see these countries liberalize and unfortunately i think will see us internet policy and communications policy get more restrictive over time that we will have fewer negative rights to be left alone on the internet so you're saying that we are moving in the direction of these countries that we kind of criticize and yes and i think that also moving towards us at the same time i know it's probably the place that a lot of world governments are going to find themselves maybe five or ten years down the road is there is one where a place like you're much freer to use the internet in china and much less free in your internet activities or at least you're going to have to be much more cautious in the united states and you just mentioned what happened in california and what this new push to regulate the internet do you think that will we might see more

more instances like this. there is definitely a possibility i think as of right now the people who see nothing wrong with restricting internet freedoms i don't think their primary interest right now is being able to shut down access in fact i think they actually like the idea of us using as many social networks as possible because what they want to do is they want to eavesdrop they want to be able sweet for data they want to be able to you know quote unquote prevent threats before they happen so it's i honestly think that the sort of prevailing ideology regarding internet censorship is one to late actually let people say as much as they want then let us watch let us collect it and then let us do whatever we want with that information whether that's indefinite detention or whether that's shutting down web sites but there's definitely that the prevailing ideology is let this get out there and then let us react however we want to it very interesting mike thank you so much for weighing in on bass that was

associate editor at reason that magazine like rings. well so ahead on artsy as the american media is starting problems with russia police forces are in the in the u.s. are launching an all out war against occupy wall street protesters from high tech weapons to military grade pepper spray they are armed and dangerous but whose interests are they really serving and protecting. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realized everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions to

break through it's already been made who can you trust no one who is you in view with a global missionary see where we had a state controlled capitalism is called sasha's when nobody dares to ask we do our t. question more. we take a look now at law enforcement in the u.s. and how their role may be changing and their power expanding well we've shown you image after image of police using pepper spray on seemingly peaceful protesters so pepper spray it seems has become the mainstream weapon of choice but that's just the beginning of what police have in their arsenal these days thanks to a program out of the pentagon one that not very many people know about local police are getting their hands on weapons and equipment from the military and two thousand and eleven the department of defense forked over five hundred million dollars worth of military machinery to local police departments so is the government gearing up

for main street to rise up to answer just that i spoke to writing fellow for the nation institute maxim blumenthal here's what he had to say. police have as you said just this year in two thousand and eleven received half a billion dollars in surplus military weaponry from the pentagon which is authorized through the pentagon's ten thirty three program during the late seventy's congress passed legislation called posse comitatus barring the military from operating on american soil and in the early eighty's there was an effort to circumvent that in congress by arming police with military grade weaponry and now we're seeing that play out in the streets people in the inner city in the u.s. have been experiencing this since the eighty's and now middle class americans in the occupy movement are facing not only pepper spray but things like the red sound cannon the long range acoustic device which can blast your cranium with one hundred

forty decibels shaking your skull so hard even earplugs won't stop it and as i reported for allah akbar english this weapon has been tested on palestinians in the occupied west bank by the israeli army so civilians in the u.s. are now up against basically military style policing so as you sound like you are calling this a military as ation of the police force why is it happening and what is behind it. well it's been happening since the war on drugs and what's behind it is a mentality among our police forces our local police that views common civilians protesters and common criminals or as common criminals and as i reported for. my piece the israel if occasion of american domestic security the former head of the israeli shin bet intelligence services avi dichter who is accused of war crimes against the palestinians. spoke beside f.b.i.

director robert mueller at a police convention at a convention before eleven thousand top law enforcement officers and after mueller called victor his mentor in counterterrorism dichter urged american police to see the the to view their opponents those they seek to arrest as crim a terrorist in other words to blur the line between common criminals and terrorists so what we're seeing is not only a legal blurring of the lines between criminals terrorists and protesters but something in the mindset of american policing and in their training in which the civilian population is viewed as a hostile and menacing force that can be acted against with military grade weaponry above why are we seeing this attempt to crack down on everyday civilians why is this over why are we think it's overwhelming police response to peaceful protesters almost i mean you're calling it like this military action it's almost as if we're

in a war zone and they're responding to terrorist threats why treat civilians like they are terrorists. there is definitely a fear among. michael bloomberg the mayor of new york has said that he feared that the occupy movement would gain too much of a foothold and would continue to expand and i was there at the raid on zuccotti park in downtown new york and what i saw from the n.y.p.d. reminded me of a demolitions i witnessed by the israeli army and the israeli border police inside israel and in the occupied west bank and as i reported there has been since nine eleven since the war on drugs transferred into the war on terror nine thousand american police officers have been trained by israeli security and intelligence officials hundreds of top law enforcement officers have gone to israel to train and what they're learning there is counter terror training by a country that has spent sixty three years dispossessing in controlling an indigenous population now they're bringing that back into the streets in the united

states against the civilian population so you see you're seeing a process since the war on terror of israel if occasion and this is extremely dangerous in terms of what it means for the relationship between civilians and their protection under stablished civil liberty codes now max who benefits from this no military as ation of the police force sino occupy wall street and they would say not the ninety nine percent. certainly not the ninety nine percent certainly not the police because police have to do community work and what we've seen is a counterterror creep in our local police forces through a program called. the joint terrorism task force where the f.b.i. and even the cia are able to come in and dictate to local police forces what how they can treat monitor and spy on local populations the n.y.p.d.

as i reported and as the associated press reported has set up what it calls a demographics unit and this is following police commissioner ray kelly s several trips to israel where they monitor they have monitored virtually all areas of muslim life in the united states so clearly they've gone beyond protecting civilians it's not it's not clear exactly who they're guarding what with respect to the occupy wall street if you go down there and if you went down there when the encampment was intact at zuccotti park they were protecting the financial institutions that wall street but at the same time there's there's simply there's simply an effort by federal law enforcement to take the reins of local law enforcement to corrupt local law enforcement destroy the relationship between civilians and the police and to treat civilians as criminals if not terrorists or as avi dichter f.b.i. director robert mueller his so-called mentor said terrorists i want to ask you because in some ways and it doesn't really make sense we point out on our team

before that these police officers they're part of the ninety nine percent so it's why are they engage in these hostility is against their neighbors their friends their and their community. you know that that goes to the mentality of just following orders. i've seen chants during occupy wall street demonstrations at the police asking them to to join the protesters and that's simply impossible and disregards the position that police are put in there basically working people so what this what this really goes to and what i'm trying to show through my reporting is the mentality of federal law enforcement leaders like f.b.i. director robert mueller and ray kelly who has bragged that he has a weapon that can shoot down a combat jet. of militarizing their police forces and putting police officers who are working people who are members of local communities.