this is without question our number one geopolitical foe they fight every cause for the world's worst actors the id the idea that he has some more flexibility in mind for russia is very very troubling of the harsh words from the man who heard the president monday that everyone knows the cold war is over so one of the real reasons behind the tongue lashing legitimate fears or appealing to the republican base will explore. the death of a seventeen year old african-american teen has stirred nationwide outrage but it isn't the only example of a racial divide in the u.s. we'll tell you about another hate crime one that's getting far less attention from

the american media politicians know that if they attempt to speak up on this issue they're going to be not just vilified they're going to be defeated while their pack conference is mighty pro israel and they get all the fame and glory but there's a new kid on the block j. street and it's taking a new approach to the israeli palestinian conflict and eight two state solution well take you inside. it's tuesday march twenty seventh seven pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl you're watching r.t. . well it turns out russia is the u.s. is number one enemy at least in the mind of republican presidential candidate mitt romney and also from this exchange between president obama and russian president

dmitry medvedev it was all caught on camera but right. now romney it's not this opportunity to pounce on president obama for daring to be flexible with russia here is his response on c.n.n. if he's planning on doing more and suggest to russia that he has things he's willing to do with them he's not willing to tell the american people this is to russia this is without question our number one geopolitical foe they fight every cause for the world's worst actors the ide the idea that he has a more flexibility in mind for russia is very very troubling indeed. so is there around me and the republican elites that i'm bringing back negative attitudes reminiscent of the cold war earlier i pose that questions ivan eland senior fellow for the independent institute for you know i think it's campaign rhetoric and i

think it doesn't really square with the facts too well and i think people probably should be criticizing romney for his lack of knowledge of foreign affairs rather than for brock obama saying the obvious politicians in america always get in trouble for telling the truth that's when they get in trouble so that's why they don't do it very often in iraq obama telling the truth in this case that it's easier to get an agreement after an election than before it is certainly true but certainly that is true and he was just speaking the truth. now this statement that russia is the number one threat in the u.s. i mean obviously al qaeda you would think that it's a no brainer that they would be a bigger threat than russia but so when somebody like the presidential candidate romney. pens of russia up against terrorist groups what do you think that says about his foreign policy ideas well he does have neoconservative advisers and

that's gives us some pause and for concern i think but also romney is proved very flexible in his views on almost everything and there that's why the criticism of him so who knows what we'll do in office many times you get presidents who have an image like richard nixon was an anti-communist and he was the first president that went to communist china and opened relations with them many times the republicans in national security because their image is tough or they can sometimes work the back rooms to get a deal so we never know what presidents are going to do when they're in office but of course this is just campaign rhetoric and unfortunately does say something about being able to drag back the cold war in the united states and win a few votes from it so i think. particularly on the republican side that you even see democrats doing it once in a while to be tough and it's mostly rhetoric i think politicians in office and they have to make the decisions and in particular romney were probably more pragmatic

and i also want to point out the russian leader the new treatment get in response to that he's that quote ads for ideological cliches i have already spoken on the subject i always get very cautious when i see a country resort phrases such as a our number one enemy it is very reminiscent of hollywood and a certain period of history so barry is kind of mocking america romney's gauri his language is this how people abroad view the g.o.p. candidates well i think it's sort of dangerous because when you talk about countries that have many nuclear weapons in russia and the u.s. combined of ninety five percent of the world's nuclear weapons russia is still a very formidable power and a nuclear superpower and i think when you use this kind of rhetoric even to get elected or in campaigns it's kind of dangerous and it does it does whip up. anti russian sentiment even though it's being used joe probably just to get elected and

yet also went on to say that he is twenty twelve not the one nine hundred seventy s. kind of. referred to the cold war era do you think that this is the rhetoric that the g.o.p. candidates are going to continue to to revert back to well they're trying to look for enemies brok obama managed to kill osama bin laden so he's not quite as vulnerable as many democratic presidents are in national security so you know they've got to come up with something they're working iran thing that's the number one and now with this comment i think they're going to start working the russian angle you need an enemy when you're trying to get elected and i think they also are looking for things to criticize the president on as being soft on. foreign policy because this attack usually works for the republicans in some manner so that i think they're there pulling out the enemies maybe it'll be china next week but do you think this is kind of just what the g.o.p. is looking for somebody that is willing to take a very hard line hawkish tough stance is in terms of foreign policy and one that is

willing to be part of then well i think this is you have to in the united states there's campaign rhetoric and then this is what they actually do what's more worrisome to me rather than this rhetoric is the neo conservative advisors that romney has and when you have the president captive of one viewpoint and it's a hard line viewpoint i think that's a problem and if you were to get elected i think those people we put in high office and we saw what happened with george w. bush when that happened so that's the real problem those advisors rather than this rhetoric and so do you think so you are worried that this rhetoric can actually transmit into action well i think it will be tempered because the u.s. does in russia do cooperate on the w.t.f. so on afghanistan supply routes on fighting islamic radicalism and on the start treaty there's more to be done there a deal can be worked out with tact tactical nuclear weapons maybe even missile defense that the two countries you know after the election this could happen now in

the end do you think that this comment by mitt romney however ridiculous that was do you think that it helped or hurt his campaign well i think it probably helped this campaign of our own you know. obama we go after him and say listen that just doesn't square with the fact that russia is our greatest enemy and then i would show my knowledge of foreign affairs to refute that but obama has done that he's played defense and i think that's a wrong campaign strategy form i think it could be a good campaign strategy to show that mitt romney doesn't know that the cold war is over. that a very lazy is the case i haven't pledged to have you on the show that was ivan eland senior fellow for the and a pennant to. well two tragedies have ignited a debate in the nation over racism and racial profiling thousands of taking to the streets demanding justice for trayvon martin an armed black teenager shot dead by

a neighborhood watchman outrage also growing over the death of an iraqi woman in california she was be ence of death on a reportedly left her that said quote go back to your own country on the wake of these seemingly racially driven incidents as we ask is racial profiling alive and well and america i'm joined now by max blumenthal journalist and writing fellow for the nation institute welcome to the show max so while both of these stories are tragic only one of them seems to be capturing the attention of the u.s. media and that is the case of trayvon martin and why isn't this case in california of the iraqi woman nearly as it has talked about that's a good question and i was following the trayvon martin case from the beginning after he was murdered by vigilante. this year is. and it was actually the. groups of the calls that george zimmerman vigilante killer

placed to the police the release of those calls several days later that led to this flurry of media coverage where you know the this killing was confirmed as kind of a vigilante assassination and other facts around shame other wadi have not been confirmed yet although it looks pretty clearly like a hate crime this note go back to your country you terrorist was found on her door a week before the killing and then again it was found by her dead body and another reason that we haven't seen so much outrage about her killing although there's a lot of outrage online and in the muslim community in the muslim community is that islamophobia rhetoric in the united states has been normalized at the highest levels of our political debate by people like newt gingrich who headlined a protest against the construction of a mosque in downtown new york by people like rick santorum and other top republican presidential candidate in two thousand and seven call for muslims to be eradicated

and if vandalized in the united states so we're seeing this kind of rhetoric islamophobia hording to a poll by ohio state university has reached an all time high in the united states since the killing of osama bin laden and it's at all time highs among liberal democrats so it's been warm allies and whether or not this was in fact a hate crime committed by a right wing extremist people are are likely to believe that it was because they're just waiting for someone to actually act out their rhetoric they're hearing on fox news and they're hearing from political candidates now a real we recently heard the at the story of the n.y.p.d. targeting muslims and monitor and muslim mosques muslim students anyone simply based on the fact that they are muslim but are not there is probable cause that they're related to any kind of terrorist activity so this shows that police are now profiling people based on religion so would you say that discrimination is now shifting toward the muslim population. let's assume that

a right wing extremist killed china in my lower body. and compare it to the trayvon martin case then in both cases you would have citizens mimicking to some degree the behavior of law enforcement officials george zimmerman was essentially a vigilante who was trying to but want to be cop was trying to carry out police duties in his neighborhood and across the country the guy federal law enforcement using community relations with the muslim we need as a guys to monitor muslims in their mosques sending in informants in trapping people and convicting them on bogut with basically bogus convictions in new york the n.y.p.d. is not only monitoring muslims in new york we're monitoring muslims outside of new york and if we're going to a former official in the n.y.p.d. so-called demographics unit which is created specifically to monitor every area of muslim life in new york the n.y.p.d.

intends to treat new york like the west bank that's according to a report in the associated press so if you're treating new york like the west bank they're kind of encouraging citizens to see all muslims as potential terrorists as potential threats and to act out and we haven't seen we haven't concluded the investing asian in elko home of the a lot of killing but if it turns out that this is a right we stream this then this person was essentially acting out law enforcement duties in an extreme in violent fashion but but but their second degree the view of the wadi as a terrorist has been legitimized by law enforcement and by the right wing media. interesting connection in germany news recently came out of germany that the court there rule that it's legal for police to stop an id people based on their skin color so this is an example of racial profiling at that point i'm not even trying

to hide it or deny it right when you say that the same thing happens here in the u.s. but it just is more covert. there are thousands of. what's called stop and frisk for seizures in new york city where and where the n.y.p.d. stops young black males on the street first then less than thousands of these cases have been documented in the past year and the occupy wall street movement has an occupy the hood offshoot which is attempting to combat this practice and to see more transparency around it and they recently held the million hoodies for march for trayvon martin in union square in new york city after which fox news anchor other of arab blamed trayvon martin's hoodie for is killing men i've seen it in my own neighborhood i live in flatbush in brooklyn i see young black males stop by undercover detectives all the time for the crime of being young black men is often

leads to arbitrary arrests there are more black people in prison in the united states right now than there were in slavery in the south in the in in eight hundred fifty so clearly there is a racially inspired program of incarceration and profiling on its merit in citizens but that's many people would point to the fact that today we have a black president. and they use that as an example to say hey we have come a long way toward racial equality here in the us yet we still see hate crimes we still see that hate groups are on the rise so what do you think are we in fact getting better and terms of racial equality are what do you think about that. yeah i mean i don't i don't know of maybe obama has. helped change the atmosphere but he is you know leading is the leading president in deportations of undocumented

migrants from mexico who are basically productive residents of the united states and that isn't really on the on the radar only media's radar but if you compare his response to the trayvon martin killing to his response to the acquittal of the killers of sean bell was an unarmed young black man who was celebrating his birthday and was shot fifty times by new york police departments in the butt by the new york police my new york police officers and they were acquitted and obama said we simply need to respect this verdict he was running for election at the time he was reaching kind of a doctor and of post racialism we're living in a post racial society and it's time to elect me and i won't threaten. i won't threaten white people that's basically and in that space we would help him get elected now that he's secure as president and he's likely to beat mitt romney or whoever wins or republican presidential primary he's able to say that trayvon

martin could have been my son if i had a son he would have looked like trayvon martin and to make this. colorful statement against racial profiling for which he's being attacked by republican candidates on the other hand it's worth noting that barack obama in his entire term has not visited a mosque in the united states once and visited a mosque in it in egypt but not in the united states and that's because he's overcompensating for the attacks by the republicans by the right wing media on him as a crypto muslim who is not a christian and that is troubling to me because he is not speaking out against islam for we are trying to change the atmosphere mero and certainly there are people today that are still convinced that he has somehow i they're still convinced somehow that president obama is a muslim mac nice talking to you that was max blumenthal journalist and writing for the nation institute thanks for having. also ahead an artsy move over

a packed there is another pro israel called their conference in town this is j. street where the jewish community rallied to talk about diplomatic solutions to the palestinian conflict that story next. efforts for a growing gerard's right right i mean it's like a derivative of paper it's a product essentially i am much stronger than anything you see by are. stronger than any one of the. wealth of the aloneness so you'll get the real headlines with none of them are the problem with the mainstream media today is that they're completely disconnected from the viewers and what actually matters to those viewers and so that's why young

people just don't watch t.v. anymore if they want news they go online and read it but we're trying to take those stories that people actually care about and transfer them back in. the past few weeks to jewish lobbying groups held their annual conferences here in washington d.c. each with a vastly different priority apac has been around for decades j. street just a few years now both call themselves pro israel but one of particular calls for a peaceful resolution to the israeli palestinian conflict yet as you'll see it looks like money determines which groups a voice rings louder in american politics. mean streets a young lobbying group whose focus is to end the israeli palestinian conflict that will magically not militarily free use the settlements. and

move the infrastructural paulsen state democracy and human rights and justice across the middle east we cannot be saying that unless we're doing everything we can to bring democracy and human rights and justice to the palestinians just a few weeks ago more than thirteen thousand people gathered here at the washington convention center for apac just a fraction of that number in attendance here for j. street now both groups say they are pro israel but j. street says they're more focused on pro peace advocating a two state solution to the israeli palestinian conflict. organizers estimated turnout of about twenty five hundred street a low key event compared to rival jewish lobbying group apac some say that's because j. street is only a few years old j. street is only four years old so having almost three thousand people queued but many points apacs enormous influence on u.s. politics apac affiliated groups pump exorbitant amounts of money and so political

campaigns politicians know that if they attempt to speak up on this issue they're going to be not just vilified they're going to be defeated and it's become an annual tradition for presidents to speak at apac it was no different this year the united states will always have israel's back up to israel security how the senate in a third of the house made an appearance at apac republican presidential candidates ron paul being the exception all took turns making their pro israel speeches before the lobbying group. then to. and its language like this a street attendees say that hurts israel i don't think. really supporting real peace on the ground now but rather pushing towards the peace that the israeli government has a mind that is not really concrete on the ground it's a concept and not something realistic but with election year under way some say

catering to the rich and powerful group is the only way to say in the game that would be my guess that he just needs to be making sure that he does get the votes he needs. this year despite the pomp and circumstance of apac j. street attendees say they represent the voice of the jewish mainstream and their voice will only grow louder and stronger it only gave his dying day he means what i think it feeds on an older generation that is going to be replaced a generational shift they hope will push the middle east peace process forward in washington liz wahl r.t. now to talk more about this gay street versus a hacker larry i was joined by danny schechter filmmaker and blogger for newsday sector that nat i first asked how these two groups differ here says take. well you know first first of all it's important to realize that a pac is is an organization of organizations there's an organization of the

presidents of the jewish organizations many of them unelected not representative of any particular constituency except financed by a relative handful of people who claim to speak on behalf of the whole jewish community in america yet when jews are actually cold and surveyed you'll find a majority want peace in the middle east want are willing to trade land for peace are willing to a reach accommodation with palestinians so this is not a really representative force but it's a very powerful force because of the money that it has and the momentum that it has after being in office and being around the congress for so many years that also is affiliated you know kind of not publicly perhaps within the evangelical christian community that is also supportive of the more extreme voices in israel now i could have i went about a pack and straight and by attending both you could see right up about how much

more support there is for a pac and how much more money it was a much bigger of that and also a pac is attended by several members of congress president obama spoke at a packed for every single g.o.p. candidate except for ron paul gave a speech at apac but not a single one took the time to speak at j. street why not apparently it's not worth their time. well it's not but it's because they really are not interested necessarily in promoting a peace agenda what they represent is interested in doing is basically being seen by and appealing to certain constituencies and those constituencies as i've indicated are not really necessarily representative of the jewish community or the hopes for peace in the middle east that have been expressed by so many people over so many years and this is sort of standing in the way of

a great through here it's called the lobby and the lobby the israeli lobby is very powerful and it's also very belligerent and hostile the people who challenge it including politicians fear that if they question the lobby or challenge it the lobby will finance or the lobbies friends will finance a primary campaign against them and the like so it's a tool of bullying it's a tool of intimidation and that's what makes it so dangerous because it's not really a democratic movement bucker to do say that they're pro as the very very does try to highlight the fact that they are pro peace apac does say that they are pro but are that. everybody is pro peace but what they usually mean is there's a piece of they don't want to give away a piece of of israel as a consequence. really balance to a very hard line a government that government by the way is not representative it's a collection

a coalition of forces with parties you know with with almost a very tiny you know percentage of the votes having one or two votes in the knesset and therefore being able in a sense to dominate politics in a very non-representative way so you have the problem here is that israel itself is run often by the war cabinet which are the generals it's as much in a way as a organization you know rather of a country dominated by a narrow elite now you know when i asked them this attendee that gave three the same question about why it is so much more why eight i get so much more i pad ten by political candidates a lot of them attributed to the fact that it is a young organization but would you say that j. street that they represent the jewish mainstream. i don't think there's been any election or any poll that says that i don't think they can claim that i think they

can claim that they certainly represent the aspirations of many jewish communities for peace and a resolution of this issue and in that respect i think their growth is significant the fact that they're being treated seriously that they have ideas that they're representing and you know this is a complex set of issues i mean there are many in the middle east who wouldn't support a tax approach mcrib some of the palestinian organizations there's a big debate about is a two state solution even possible anymore or should there be a one state solution but the point is that j. street is attempting to create a forum for a debate apac it's trying to silence any debate that's the difference so would you say that there think that's fallen at least changing the dialogue the discourse over israel and i think they're successful in trying to do that they you know they are a young organization they do have to gain their sea legs so to speak they have to

be some you know more guts seek members of congress who will speak out and support the need for this type of a debate because as long as israel is controlled by this narrow elite and as long as israel is committed to a policy of no change really effectively we're not going to see any progress we need some people to step up to the plate and be willing to question this whole kind of deadlock that's been going on for sixty years. that's all the time we have for today thank you so much for weighing in and out with danny schachter filmmaker and blogger for news that fact there got now. meanwhile the pentagon is bringing back a former a project that former secretary of defense robert gates took off the table long ago u.s. congress and the pentagon have come up with a plan seville newer versions of the v one bomber the plane used in the libyan air strikes take

a look at this these are images of what the top secret long range strike bomber this is what it would look like the estimated price tag five hundred fifty million dollars apiece the air force has said that the plane may or may not be given a nuclear mission in the future and it may or may not need a pilot so basically what this could be is a drone carrying a nuclear warhead and now secretary of defense leon panetta went as far as to call the idea for a newer fleet quote critical to our national security this fall he delivered a bleak budget testimony on capitol hill just last month but critics wonder why such planes are needed at all when our fleet of bombers are currently undergoing a multi million dollar or multibillion dollar rather upgrades the other question on the minds of pentagon pundits is who the intended target is for such planes the answer just might be china but considering that the u.s. has spent.