tonight an artsy of the death of a seventeen year old african-american seen it stirred nationwide outrage but it isn't the only example of racial divide in the u.s. will tell you about another hate crime one that's getting far less attention from the american media 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 partially words from the man who could be president one day but everyone knows the cold war is over so what are the real reasons behind the tongue lashing legitimate fears or

appealing to the republican base will explore 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. the apac conference pro israel might get all the fame and glory but there's a new kid on the block of j. street and it's taken a new approach to the israeli palestinian conflict. and a two state solution we'll take you inside. it's tuesday march twenty seventh eight pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz role in you're watching all righty. 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 and on our black teenager shot dead by a neighborhood watchman outrage also growing over the death of the death of an

iraqi woman in california she was be in to doubt a note reportedly left the side of her that said quote go back to your own country and in the wake of these seemingly racially driven incidences we ask is racial profiling alive and well and america i'm joined now by the heart of the u.s. legal fellow for the institute for four for social policy and understanding she's also associate professor at texas muslim university's school of law she recently wrote an article called from the oppressed to the terrorists it can be found on the heart of the youth law dot com and she has studied the subject of racism in the u.s. extensively welcome to the show these now both of these stories are definitely tragic but why is it that only one of these cases is getting so much attention from the media. well they're both very very sad tragedy both resulted obviously in the murder two people in the case of trayvon martin

a devastating murder and are unfortunately part of a much larger race problem in the united states for young black men are stereotyping edge criminals and violent danger and as a result people respond are violent as we saw with mr zimmerman who yet to be charged to me in fact be charged in the future now with shame and i was being you have a very similar set of circumstances where you have a muslim woman who wear the headscarf and her head start is with those beaded with terrorism with violence with barbaric barbarism and. we're assuming presuming you did a hate crime in the middle the bill under investigation but assuming that that letter that she called her a terrorist one that was left next to her unconscious body after she was beaten to death and pain letter that was left of her house a week later were you were blind that was based on a racial stereotype or

a religious stereotype that her husband signified her as a parent and someone who was dangerous and someone who deserves to be murdered. now we recently reported on the n.y.p.d. targeting muslims muslim mosques community centers and students simply based on the fact that that person is muslim despite whether or not they have any leads or ties to terrorism do you think that discrimination is expanding or shifting toward islamophobia. unfortunately it is either inexpensively on the issue and for the first two or three years after nine eleven many of us in the at the infidel right world thought it was a backlash but it died down and hopefully you know america will get over it and will move on but unfortunately what has happened is many. of these types that have a cause to act america and asian americans latinos and they're very different types of stereotypes have now been adopted towards muslims arab and south asians and that

is again not a terrorist out there so that you are out by the little one unity and deserving discrimination profiling in any case bush and i want to murder because you are considered to school so it is unfortunate that things are getting worse and what the n.y.p.d. demick surveillance shows that the government will do to my thing the public by no by using government resources and using the authority of a state to survey all nearly every mosque in new york city including are surrounding areas and all the universities they knew run or dalal they're sending a message to the public and particularly to the bigot it's ok to destruct it's ok to engage in discrimination against them because we have the government don't trust neither. a report recently came out stating that hate groups in the us are at an

all time high and we're just seeing recently these crimes that seem like they are fueled by hate what do you think is fueling racism and to you last who was responsible. well in the case of muslim americans unfortunately there has been inserted efforts that are well funded with stern organizations maybe at their mission organizational mission to engage in an time bashing and to essentially indoctrinate the american public and we all know why not have any time in the air to go from islam and use your tactics and daring to try to create this kind of creating a stereotype and and in a case of african-americans. and you know the laboring is a very unfortunate mystery of the united states and bin laden they have struggled to overcome many races. behavior and actions but they are by the

public so it's a little bit of a different context and i'm a much more entrenched and certainly has been going on for years however it's the same kind of people saying bigot and they're exploiting the ignorance of the public or people who don't know anything about a particular community and using fear here in the black man and going you're the local management side bomber here's a muslim woman in her headscarf that represent her being an open we're going to a are in a better someone who helps parents engage in terrorism and not the united a not loyal and again needing to be dislocation of morality in other words is no longer a moral principle that if you are a moral self-defense just like them or men in the trayvon martin a. single ludicrous. defense in light of what we heard on the nine one case and similarly

a lot of people may think well you know she was wanting to have he gone she did her all right very interesting take there in a very sad case thank you for coming on the show that was a harvey's a selfie a law professor at the texas frontline university our legal fellow at the institute for social policy and understanding. well it turns out russia is the u.s. is number one enemy at least in the mind of republican presidential candidate mitt romney now it all stems from this exchange between president obama and russian president dmitry medvedev it was all caught on camera. 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.

. but if he's plotting a 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 id the idea that he has a more flexibility in mind for russia is very very troubling indeed so is mitt romney on the republican elite sat on bringing back a negative attitudes reminiscent of the cold war earlier i posed that questions ivan eland senior fellow for the independent institute take a listen. no 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 barack 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. telling the truth in this case that it's easier to get an agreement after an

election than before it is certainly true. 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 g.o.p. presidential candidate romney. pens of russia up against terrorist groups what do you think that says about his foreign policy of yours 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 that's particularly on the republican side but you even see democrats doing it once in a while to be tough and it's mostly rhetoric i think politicians in office when they have to make the decisions and particularly romney will probably be more pragmatic. and i also want to point out the russian leader dmitri response to that as he sat quote as for ideological cliches i have already spoken on the subject i always get very cautious when i see a country resort to phrases such as a our number one enemy it is very reminiscent of hollywood and a certain period of history. with various kind of mocking romney for his

language is this how people 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 and russia and the us combined have ninety five percent of the world's nuclear weapons russia is still a very formidable power in 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. russian sentiment even though it's being used probably just to get elected and yet also went on to say that he it is twenty twelve not the one nine hundred seventy s. kind. of referring to the cold war era so do you think that this is the rhetoric that the g.o.p. candidates are going to continue to revert back to well their turn to look for enemies. 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 the 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 his being soft on foreign policy because this attack usually works for the republicans in some manner so that i think they're they're pulling out the enemies maybe china next week so 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 high. tough stance is in terms of foreign policy someone that is willing to be partisan well i think this is you have to and the i say it's campaign rhetoric and then there's 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 he were to get elected i think those people will 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. 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 government cio on afghanistan supply routes on fighting islamic radicalism and on the start treaty there's more to be done there deal can be worked out with tack tactical nuclear weapons maybe even missile defense of the two countries you know after the election this could happen now in the end do you think that this comment by that romney however ridiculous it was you think that it helped or hurt his campaign well i think it probably helped his campaign if i were on the. obama i would go after him and say listen that just doesn't square with the facts 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 the wrong campaign strategy and i think it could be a good campaign strategy to secure that mitt romney doesn't know that the cold war is over. better varyingly is the case i have been pleasure to have you on the show that was an ill and senior fellow for the independent institute. well president obama set to meet with pakistan's prime minister today as tension flies high between the two countries pakistan growing frustrated over the u.s. using drones in the country the cia drone program aims to target al qaeda and pakistan but in many cases and it up in civilian deaths well in hopes of continuing its drone program the u.s. is trying to negotiate with pakistan offering to give notice before drone strikes and limit where they will target both pakistan flat out rejected the proposal let's talk more about what this means for you as pakistani time i was joined by scott horton contributing editor for harper's magazine i first summit first asked him if

you expect any progress from cities meeting here at this tape. well we're never going to know from the public remarks and in fact i'm not even sure that they are a particularly accurate characterization of what's going on in the background and we're dealing here with one of the most complex love hate relationship in the world today and that one of the big problems is frankly the prime minister and his government and president zardari their control over the actual apparatus of government in pakistan is relatively weak you have the you have the military general staff and you have pakistani intelligence the i.s.i. as the interstate running things and there's a rather difficult and complex relationship between them and we also have had a long history of the pakistani government the pakistani military saying no to the

public with respect to drones but in fact secretly wink nod approving u.s. drone raids so i think one of the questions right now is how much is that situation changed and all the available evidence would suggest it's changed quite a bit has changed in that the pakistani position has hardened against u.s. military presence and cia presence on its territory and against the use of drones and i think that's that's the reason you see this priority that's been placed on the talks and i think there is a sense amongst all of all that the counterterrorism relationship here is critical to all parties and they have to try and salvage something from the relationship but it's not clear going to be able to do that and you know pakistan obviously think they're getting sacked because drone operations gone wrong can you talk a lot of m.r. about how the drone program has in fact and u.s. relations with pakistan. well i mean it's been up and down i think you have to you

have to you have to note that. the pakistanis of pakistani public reaction when one of the leaders of the pakistani taliban was it was actually positive i mean largest been negative by and large the public in pakistan has viewed this as evidence of weakness of the country the fact that its own sovereignty is weak when the american government can run this program it can be can target and strike pakistani citizens without their government being able to control it and right now we're seeing the lead into a new parliamentary election then pakistan and anti-u.s. and anti grown rhetoric is at a peak and i'd say the new emerging potential political stars on the pakistani stage are united in their anti-american rhetoric anti grown rhetoric and this is definitely having an impact on the way the government and the military interact

with the united states it's much more who much more distance vision that that we have the you know the gross mistakes that the united states made in the last year the raymond davis incident the raid on the pakistani border post that killed twenty four for which the u.s. apologized but he was also decided just this week that it was not going to take any disciplinary measures against those who were responsible for that raid and as you can imagine that did not go over well in pakistan and pakistan has played out big roles here t.j. crane the u.s. militarily taking out a package in afghanistan neighboring how that's a fact u.s. military assets in the region now that acts can't they don't want to cooperate. well fact i would say right now for the united states and their nato allies this is the biggest single question hanging over the withdrawal plans because the decision

has been made to draw down and centrally disengage militarily from afghanistan and twenty fourteen and the big question is what this purpose on do when we reach that date and this is specious has been that the pakistani intelligence which clearly has very tight connections to these insurgents groups that have on the network for instance but not just them also various titles on groups this is position is then that they will use that opportunity to step up their efforts and try and reassert themselves inside of afghanistan and that would that would be a disaster from the perspective of the united states and nato right scott thank you very much for coming on the show that was on her and contributing editor for harper's magazine. in the past few weeks two jewish lobbying groups held their annual conferences here in washington d.c. each with a vastly different priority apac has been around for decades gate street just

a few years now both call themselves pro israel wants to kill or calls for a peaceful resolution to the israeli palestinian conflict yet as you'll see it looks like money determine which groups the voice of louder and american politics. thank you very young lobbying group the focus is to end the israeli palestinian conflict diplomatically not militarily free the settlements. will be infrastructural told students stay 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 for the palestinians so just a few weeks ago more than thirteen thousand people gathered here at the washington convention center for a pack just a fraction of that number in attendance here for j. street now both groups say they're pro israel but day three says they're more

focused on being pro peace advocating a two state solution the israeli palestinian conflict. organizers estimate a 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 is huge but many point the apex enormous influence on u.s. politics apac affiliated groups pump exorbitant amounts of money into 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 work comes to israel secure house 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 i think we've had an invented palestinian people who are arabs and it's language like this j. street attendees say that hurt israel i don't think. really supporting real peace on the ground now but rather pushing to us the peace that the israeli government has a mind that is not really funky to on the ground it's a concept and not something realistic but little election year under way some say catering for the rich and powerful group is the only way to stay 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 street attendees say they represent the voice of the jewish mainstream and their voice will only grow louder and stronger and i don't think that is dying by any means but 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 and washington liz wahl r.t. but to talk more about this j. street versus a pac earlier i was joined by danny schechter filmmaker and blogger for new dissect net and her staff about how the two groups differ take. well you know first first of all it's important to realize that apec is is an organization of organizations it is 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 polled and surveyed you'll find a majority want peace in the middle east want are willing to trade land for peace are willing to reach an accommodation with palestinians so this is not

a very 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 and 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 have i went to both a pack and a straight and just by attending both you could see right out there that how much more support there is for a pac and how much more money was a much bigger bad and also a pac is attended by several members of congress president obama spoke at a packed press every single g.o.p. candidate except our 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 now worth their time. well it's not that it's

because they really are not interested necessarily in promoting a peace agenda what they represent 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 breakthrough 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 clear 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 often and that's what makes it so dangerous because it's not

really a democratic movement now buckaroo could you say that there are pro israel gay straight guys trying to highlight the fact that they are pro peace apac does say that they are pro by our bank. everybody's pro peace but what they usually mean is as a piece of well they don't want to give away a piece of of israel as a consequence they are really balance to a very hardline a government that government by the way is not representative it's a collection of 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 alley now where you know when i asked them this attendee that gave three of the same question about why it is so much more like eight i get so much more. by political candidates a lot of damage the fact that j. street is a young organization 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 i in that respect i think their growth is significant the fact that they are 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 apex approached me perhaps 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 this trying to silence any debate that's the difference that would you say that they are successful in at least changing the dialogue in the discourse over israel or i think they're successful in trying to do that you know they are a young organization they do have to gain their sea legs so the speed there has 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 narrowly and as long as israel is committed to a policy of no change really effectively we're not going to see any progress and we need some people to step up to the plate and be willing to question this whole.