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

and yet another case of the 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 but with military grade pepper spray and high tech weapons whose interests are they really serving and protecting. it's thursday december eighth seven pm in washington d.c. and i'm liz wall and you're watching r t well as parliamentary elections play out in russia it seems a u.s. government leaders and the mainstream media are pushing their own agenda and covering it harsh criticism over the electoral process attacking moscow for failing to conduct fair and free elections here's a look at some of that coverage. prime minister vladimir putin's party barely

hanging on to their majority in the parliament while most go polling station is shown to have a voting booth 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 the events it's the mass media that fail to report the facts even showing wrong video in an effort to shape the story or to correspondent marina point takes a look at media coverage of the elections in russia and 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 really united 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 a 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 other city 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 were. 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 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 i do apologize for the era of the great within the many russian viewers who have pointed out to us the sloppiness of it or it 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 comments 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 and russian prime minister vladimir putin is accusing the u.s. of stirring up the protests he says the u.s. and other countries paul millions and millions of dollars into influencing the russian elections and finger points his finger right back at clinton straightaway the secretary of state assess the elections is dishonest and unfair even though she hadn't even received the observers material she set the tone for some of the personalities inside the country and gave them a signal our partners shake us 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 we 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 it's absolutely unacceptable so just how our western powers aiming to shape political change in russia well to talk more about this 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. look if you take folks news seriously that's a major mistake but i am merican says by people all across the world this basically is a p.r. operation of the republican party really a real league 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 it is cia they will now have

a reason to sing it was not grooved we've 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 to the owner of the us to to call their sense don't you know that they're all of able on the net you can that will 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 there it is in many elections in african countries in egypt there were irregularities in european countries in the u.s. in two thousand and florida in the u.s. in two thousand and four in ohio what's more important in my opinion is what's united russia should do to address grievances from but some 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 think 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 to turn the tables and russia or china were to pump money and time and effort and influencing the elections here look everybody knows that and he d. freedom house all these american n.g.o.s they influence elect they they influence 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. and to that here square the egyptian revolution this is seen it's a self reflection and it's a mix of ignore and send an arrogance that is being unmasked all over the world like you know given example all over south america people don't trust anything they know that the americans tried

a military coup and is on its doesn't do that they try the military coolly believing two thousand and five that they tried the military coping ecuador last year that they effect 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 tactics 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 u.s. anymore and that you know while the media and the government and government leaders alike. a very they're praising the protesters and russia for demonstrating against the government and accessorising their freedom of speech but we have protests happening right here in the u.s. you know we've seen the violent crackdowns of the protests and occupy wall street protests and the police trying to silence them and the media their response in many

cases has been to be let all the protestors so why do we say that that's praise of 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 are there to press themselves include a day internet but in us your q. by movement has been militarily criminalized in effect if you if you'll 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 your cute 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 europe in spain they're

also being more or less 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 discuss the missile defense american ambassador to nato evil daalder said we're going to build it whatever the russians think about it and dimitri rugs. 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 the i might establish bases absolutely she mean 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 in the east to make it their own at the port of tartus in syria when you put this all together explain reactions specially from juba to stress especially from hillary clinton hillary don't forget hillary clinton bubblicious last months the money fast forward to this century an american century as a pacific century and when obama went to southeast asia it will strain in southeast asia and his latest trip he announced the fact that the u.s. is going to basically cool date owned a spot china but also russia in central asia is the same sake so the russians as if they say you know what they're going to do did not cut off the supply of nato u.s. troops in afghanistan by closing the the north. distribution network. it goes deeper than just network which is also rise but rush to supply build the war in afghanistan because it buckey studies they had enough with the americans as will

have a good idea of course the drug war to buck the system certainly a lot a lot going on here i want to get back to the elections in russia. and secretary of state hillary clinton in such a public outlash coming from her and regard to the election they have to be kerry as to why she's making such a public debacle over this do you think this is the obama administration putting on a tough face for the next election cycle possibly i mean today alone president obama said he killed twenty two terrace he said he killed them and he's telling his critics to ask osama bin ladin if he engages in appeasement definitely playing that up so what's going on with this tough act. look they have to go to like you know because of some of the reasons that we don't learn in a few minutes earlier defect that. don't forget that one of the key top picks for in terms of foreign policy in the republican campaign in two

thousand and twelve is going to be how soft obama is in terms of our strategic cold patters russia and china so russia bashing already started china bashing has been going on for the past few months in fact and iran bashi is not even bashing the fact there's a shadow war against iran going on for at least one year now and this is all interlinked because iran russia and china they have to close commercial ties nothing will be done i guess to run that little girl volk very very harsh response from both russia and china. that was asia times correspondent have asked. 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 pounds 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 of countries around the world. they're all governments accountable. but at the same time the u.s. is making moves to tighten internet security 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 e-mail facebook skype and other sites the mandate would allow the u.s. to wiretap these sites so how can the u.s. for all internet freedom in other countries get restrict those same freedoms here

at home while to talk all about that i spoke to here in studio to associate editor at a reason magazine mike riggs to start things off i asked him why is it a case of do as i say not as i do when it comes to the u.s. and internet freedom here is his take i think there's always some cognitive dissonance between what the u.s. is promoting in terms of foreign policy and then 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 i'm going to 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 business in the state department you know is not concerned with domestic matters the other reason i think we see this is

that as 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 hypocrisy there what we're talking about when we look at these domestic policies that we're facing is sort of our 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 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 it's just a much lower base level of freedom with this idea that in china there are just sites you can't visit you know in the middle east there's words that if you try you

know that you can't search in a certain age and 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. now as we just heard secretary of state land lecturing these other countries you know saying 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 the similar things have happened 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. it 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 nonpartizan. 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 imports 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 you 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 sweep for data they want to be able to you know quote unquote prevent threats before they happen. and i was associate editor at reason magazine mike ratings well another example of internet censoring this from an organization called ad backers dot com the web site helps logic grassroots campaigns and serves as a powerful tool for them to spread their message through advertising on the internet but for the first time the founder of the organization says he saw an attempt to censor one of his clients his client being occupy wall street earlier i spoke to add backer dot com founder sergey barr he told me all about what he calls a shocking effort to censor the movement. one of the first clients was occupy wall

street movement because it really suits for them because they're not they don't have a central organization and they don't have a bank account to pay for that. so they contacted us with pain with them and we are accepting the and. when they came there can be and started to grow we. have to buy. space on. the networks one of them was. so we set up by banners through the bright that war and then there was they received receiving email stating that all of those was. not allowed to show on their network and the reason this is a will giving us like sam or a lame excuse for this and not only is

a didn't allowed our banners. banner store on through the network they deleted the campaign itself it was a message to us to not to attempt any. upload any other banner so as a network so. i was shocked because this is an act of pure censorship so the next day i decided to run another campaign with them and we have another campaign. in regards of internet censorship in the guise of those bills in the congress that will if they will pass that will allow the government to shut down websites so with this campaign. they had no problems they approve it immediately and it's still running you're with them but

so it's kind of funny messages saying the like we are against censorship and internet but please now occupy banners on our network is this the first time that you've seen this i can at censorship. know i seen a lot with this campaign i haven't seen it i never seen it before because i was again painting for i was running campaign for joe biden for obama and for a lot of democrats for republicans all on all levels of. but. i have never seen since that she bought her machine that works not that sort of do that not because of their control style but because they don't like the message that kerry and that was surrogate barr founder of ad backer dot com. and as the u.s. government hones in on internet freedoms police forces across the country are honing in on another american liberty freedom of assembly these days it looks like

the role of law enforcement in the u.s. may be changing and their power expanding 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 the two thousand and eleven in 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 and what else is law enforcement getting their hands on these days well to answer some of these questions i spoke to max blumenthal writing fellow for the nation institute take a listen. speaking of police funding 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 l. rad 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 akhbar english this weapon has been tested on palestinians in the occupied west bank by the israeli army so civilians in the us are now up against basically military style policing so as you sound like

you are calling with a military as a nation of the police force why is that 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 allah akbar english in 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 and that was writing fellow for the nation and maxim blumenthal well that doesn't for now to see my full interview with max or from war in the stories we covered today got r.t. dot com slash usa and check out our you tube page it's youtube dot com slash our to america you can also follow me on twitter at liz wahl i'll see you right back here and half hour. you know sometimes you see a story and. you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear see some other part of it and realize everything you saw.