joy when the oppressor. the maple spring marches on and montreal's canada thousands of students protesting massive tuition hikes are now getting support from people angry at their government's new anti rally law hundreds arrested countless others hurt including our guest political commentator michael phoria will join us live next. and a new super virus has emerged that can do a lot more than steel door files it's called the flame virus and it can turn again it can turn your computer against you coming up next we'll tell you who's potentially behind this cyber threat and who it's targeting. plus it's the list you

certainly don't want to be on a secret kill list compiled and approved by president obama is now out in the open how did the liberal law professor and community organizer who campaigned against the u.s. iraq war become the man we know today. it's tuesday may twenty ninth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz mall and you're watching our. own massive protests in the canadian province of quebec and what started out as a student protest thousands of people have taken to the streets demonstrating against what they see as the government's attempts to deny protestors civil rights including freedom of speech and the right to protest now in its fourth month it looks like the protests are only growing it's being called the maple spring and it's turned out to an all out citizens revolt now the bulk of the protests are

happening here in quebec while many of the protest appear peaceful eighty four people were arrested last night and. he demonstration law has only inflame tensions there and while the so-called maple spring marches past its one hundredth day protests are are just happening to our north. down south in mexico thousands of university students union workers and farmers have taken to the streets to demand greater freedom of speech and also to protest the possible return of power by the institutional revolutionary party it's been called the mexican spring and it looks like there is no end in sight so so what exactly is going on here let's go now to canada where are to correspondent diana a teacher can is in the midst of all the action in quebec to bring us this report. it's not just about to lucian heights anymore even many of those who didn't care

much about the problems facing students in keg have now joined the ranks of protesters. it is something that we should and have to do in this region to protest against and we have to be there and we have to make sure you see it does its agenda of democracy have to keep on this way and the father of an old colangelo grandfather and for the future to ensure. the country and the city you need to tens of thousands marching every day making a noise to express anger at what they see as draconian government measures to suppress people's rights to freedom of assembly and expression earlier this month the government here adopted an emergency anti protests law to make it illegal to assemble without permission and to insist on a precise road map of any planned march or demonstration decided this is a map of montréal yet that's not the country always ducks. to think about don't

know what i think i don't understand or for democracy is very sad for tibet and the first time i live i leave the narrative at the start of the ads or i'm sure this sort of thing i got a day after the anti protest law was passed a quarter of a million people spilled onto montréal streets in defiance in a peaceful march more than seven hundred were arrested in just one day there were people coming out from the bar actually at that time and they were arrested and they weren't going into the demonstration there there had been tear gas. a lot of physical or spatial but the people keep more change and banging their pots and pans each now risking a fine of up to five thousand dollars when there are so many people that get rights everybody can it is me. media or in spending much time showing incidents of police brutality. journalists in canada live in which the politicians and the live

look to the good the gang guys making the rules so they don't going to get outside and see what's happening in the streets really and they don't want to know about what is going on that they did don't want to know about it. you can see how dramatically the protests have evolved over the past three months in february when they started it was that if you do see the government of the project the gatherings were generally very peaceful like the police reaction was overwhelmingly harsh and as if that wasn't enough to banks leaders a quick fix law to quell the protests would spell the end but it did now they're facing anger over fees and freedom i'm going to check on from the streets of montreal canada r.t. . as you can see the protests turned chaotic police resorting to using force to silence the protesters even journalists are being caught in the middle take

a look at this. dog look at. that a you see here that this is michael correa being papper sprayed by police and the man in that media joins us now political commentator michael phoria. hi there michael so what looks like things got pretty chaotic what exactly happened well that video took place about three weeks ago it was during again one of the nightly demonstrations that we see in montreal that happens around eight thirty happened a little bit around after nine o'clock when that occurred and i was caught in between an r.b.c. which is the bank in the downtown montreal on the corner of stanley and same catherine and i was just really there on the spot i didn't mean to go in the protests but i was caught up in it and i started taking footage and as soon as i did there was a few officers who started to approach me. told him to back down from where i was and said that i was in crime on there are a billet to arrest and deter the protestors and when that happened i succeed

shelter within the bank where i was and i opened the door and well you saw in the video i was shot in the face with that respect. and would you say michael that this . is showing exactly what's happening there are would you say that the protests are mostly peaceful i would say that they are mostly peaceful in terms of the ones that started in the park at any gemmell am again they is the park where they start every day at around eight thirty in montreal and this has been going on for about thirty eight days now there are always people within those protests who are the self described anarchists in who are there to sort of perpetuate the violence that's what we see from for most time as a journalist and as a as a commentator i'm able to be there and speak with people on the ground in talk to them what's going on and when i'm down there i see that over ninety to ninety five percent of the people who are on the street who are protesting are there as pacifists are there to just give a message to the government but there's always that five to ten percent who are in

the crowd that are the black bloc who are the enter key is to start this sort of violence and vandalism that we see on the streets of montreal that the media focuses in on now i know a lot of what is fueling the fire there is this anti protest law that was recently enacted can you talk about michael what exactly they are protesting and what they're so angry about well of course the protesters have been protesting about the law will debate the increase in tuition sixteen hundred twenty five dollars over the next five years the government has compromised making it the same amount of sixteen twenty five over seven years so they have been a bit of a compromise by the shred government but the students are still not happy with that the law that was implemented to deter protesters in the past few weeks has been billed seventy eight this was passed in combat sledger sleeves for the national assembly by the liberal party and. this was supposed to give people the sort of idea that. this is the protests have come to a point where we need to start enacting laws and restrictions the restrictions are

is that if you're fifty or more people and you've gathered for a protest you need to tell the police in whichever region of québec you are beating to big city or montreal that you are going to be protesting that evening or later on the day eight hours beforehand and the you have to provide a map now when this started months ago it was primarily a student protest but at this point it looks like it has become much more than that . very much so you have labor unions involved you have the everyday people in quebec society involved and this is become not just a back sort of revolution or a maple spring this is spreading across the world and it's interacting with other revolutions that you've seen either in in syria or in libya and even in the united states and say with the occupy movement and the occupy movement is very much involved with what we're seeing in montreal local members of the occupy montreal movement have even joined up with the protesters to be part of this and you could really say that people are now because of this law this new bill seventy eight which was good being used currently against people who are protesting it has sort

of inspired people who are not necessarily on the same side of the protesters in terms of the tuition fees going up and they're not with the protesters or the students they want to join in because they feel that the law is draconian and goes against people civil liberties how feasible do you think it is that protests like we're seeing in canada well spread here in the u.s. and when would that happen. regarding tuition fees i don't think it's going to happen regarding just bad governments and how government functions now people are upset with the status quo of government wherever they are i think the possibility is very large and like i mentioned before we're seeing across the world in terms of you know the arab spring we're seeing in montreal the maple spring people are going to be doing next with this wednesday to morrow coming up a movement which is of course involve the student movement in montreal which the everybody's going to be in the streets banging pots and pans in solidarity with the students so this is obviously spreading across i can't say that it's the message is

totally unifying in terms of tuition fees but i can tell you that people are upset with their government people in terms of you know the occupy movement in terms of people just being upset with bad government draconian government if anything this is what people are specifically targeting and turns of negotiations with students and protesters it between between them and the government does that look like that's going to happen any time soon well there were negotiate. yesterday there was supposed to be an announcement by the sra government later on today i do know and i was told by a friend of mine that two people who are negotiators for that class now that is the biggest of the start rather the most radical of the student unions of the four that are at the table currently at in the national simply with the government and the class to represent us and that look last negotiators were arrested on the spot upon departure from the negotiating table at the national somebody yesterday because they got involved in one of the protest outside of the national simply where they were located when this happened the police told to stand back and they just want to

show their solidarity with the students where they're protesting and their arrest on the spot one was released today the fate of the other one we don't know as of yet now i'm just hearing that right now negotiate negotiations are happening as we speak what exactly are they demanding. well there in the past few days we've seen from the association called the fed is the fed us. they are the college students not the university but the college students are the difference here they in the leader over there a leader the president. has come out of the last few days basically saying that students not only the government need to come to a compromise and he has faced a lot of backlash because of this and students are very much not happy with him from my perspective what i feel is going to happen and what the students i really think need to come to do is find this compromise i think it really showed how much of maturity leo had when he came out and said that the compromise needs to be met not just on the students on the on the government side but on the student side as well now whether or not this is going to come to fruition we don't know like i

mentioned before that class which is the most radical of the groups headed by get to be able to do what was also in court today facing a charge of that he violated a court injunction i don't think it's going to happen because knowing him and knowing the people who he's going to be dealing with it's doesn't look like it's going to come to fruition because of them they're the more radical groups right michael thank you very much for coming on the show and keeping us updated on the events going on there in canada that was political commentator michael for ian. thank you well still ahead on r t you can turn it can turn on your camera record your keystrokes and even download your documents. up next we'll tell you all about the new flame virus and who might be behind this latest cyber attack. our continuing. things are.

might be a revolution. and it turns out that a killer drink of starbucks has a surprising. to the company i'm lauren lyster. another weapon added to the arsenal in cyber warfare russian experts have discovered

a massive virus infecting systems in iran and other country is the size and sophistication of the virus dubbed flame leads experts believe that this is a state sponsored attack the virus appears to be able to collect huge amounts of secret information and what's creepy is how this can happen flame activates your webcam and microphone to spy on the infected computer and that's not all it can secretly record conversations that occur either over skype or in the computers in your vicinity record your keystrokes to figure out what you're typing scan all the traffic on infected machines local network and collect user names and password hashes that are transmitted across the network so in short it could literally control your computer and make it spy on you at this point it's unclear exactly what country is behind the cyber attack it's believed to have been operating since august of two thousand and ten the nature of the attack has led experts to rule out

hacktivists or cyber cyber criminals and of course fears have been ramped up recently the fear is being used as justification for controversial bills like cispa but does the legislation target the wrong people and are they too focused on citizens rather than foreign threats which as the latest attack suggests is the real threat but is it to discuss this is aaron swartz he is the founder and executive director of demand progress welcome aaron good to have you back on the show here so what is the significance of this cyber attack. well i mean i think it's fascinating to see this sort of thing happen in practice but you know we shouldn't get too excited this isn't cyber warfare in the sense that critical infrastructure is being taken down what we're seeing here is more like cyber espionage where you know just like spies used to in olden days put microphones in top of people were saying now they're using computers to do the same things now at this point the big question is who can be behind this cyber attack and what is the

possible motive. you know i mean well as analysts have said seems like a pretty sophisticated piece of technology to suggest someone you know with a great deal of resources probably a foreign government spent time putting this together but you know one of the things is it's hard to trace these sorts of things nobody's found her fingerprints or any kind of smoking gun all we can do is speculate. and feeling countries all over the world and that's exactly what they're doing right now is speculating and trying to figure out who is behind this the russian security for. the lab. they're the ones that found out about this that and here is the had talking about why he believes this is a state attack and not the job of a cyber criminal or activist take a listen we suspect that. there is a nation state behind the development of these cyber attacks and there are reasons

for that these doesn't feed into existing groups to develop cyber attack tools and we try not to speak who might be interested in such attacks we try to be pure facts we extract from the cold like a building which grew to six and in this case. we only trace this all of. that up with now that was out of spare scale lab that is a russian company what's likely to happen now as a result of this how can we expect the targeted countries to react. well it's tough because you know unlike. the act of war it's not clear who the perpetrator is and so it's hard to fight back you know again it's more like espionage where i think what we'll see is sort of an escalation of these quiet activities you know if one country is going in spying on people other countries will feel that they have to retaliate by upping their spy programs and still we're

going to see sort of an arms race espionage it's interesting that you say holiday in arms race because a lot of people are saying well this is the warfare of the future and is this just further evidence that cyber warfare is very real and is this is the new threat. you know i mean i think again we should put this in context google facebook all of these companies are already in watching a large emails they already have enormous amounts of private data about all of us you know this is not a word for attack in the sense no cities have been destroyed no houses have been demolished the hospitals have been bombed what this is is you know probably one country getting a whole bunch of data about you know government officials in another country and you know if you know that country that they're spying on it's a little scary a little frustrating but you know it's not an excuse for locking down the entire internet the way some people want to use it ok so it sounds like you think that this could be this could be blown out of proportion. yeah i mean i think it's very

easy for these things to get blown out of proportion and i think there's a huge military industrial complex that has an incentive on doing that you never read time they can say oh this is another instance of cyber war or the cyber criminals are attacking us again and we're all in danger we're all under threat they use those as excuses to push through more and more dangerous laws which like we've seen with being voted on this week could you know threaten all of our privacy and that's exactly how u.s. lawmakers are taking notice zeroing in on the dangers of cyber attacks and it's paved the way for bale's like but critics like you say it can infringe on the rights of everyday citizens and on our internet freedoms so would you say that bills like this maybe are targeting the wrong people in this situation we're seeing that is it's a state this is a state run a tack and not and not a hacktivist and not a cyber criminal so is this a targeting the right people who have been i think it's

a very common tradition you know attacks come from one source and that's used as an excuse to crack down on the general population for all sorts of reasons and i think we're seeing in the same thing here you know i've said before on this program that the right way to respond to threats like these is to invest more in making everyone's computers more secure instead what the government is pushing is a plan where they can spy on everyone in those kinds of spying programs make us all less secure it's totally the wrong solution so but do you think now that this will be used as a justification to support veils like this you know and ramp up support for it and say hey we need to do everything in our power and the name of preserving cyber security. yeah as i said the debate about this but is going on this week i'm sure there will be some senator on the floor who you know read half an article about this and will be able to use it as an excuse of why we need to pass this bill now and they'll be able to use it because right now very few details are available nobody really knows the full story and so it's easy to blow it out of proportion now this new is a virus it's called flame and it's a lot more powerful than

a virus that was launched against our used against iran just a couple of years ago and so if this can be done today one can only imagine how far cyber attacks can go in the near future. so there's no question that these things are getting increasingly sophisticated and they're also going to get cheaper and easier to spread you know right now the reason we speculate this is a government is because a lot of the technologies involved are pretty sophisticated kid and they're not in common use but you know the way of tech is that things that are pretty sophisticated not in common use pretty quickly get spam and everyone within a few years has a reason to think that won't happen here which is why if we want to protect against these it's so critical that we invest in making everyone's computers more secure rather than continuing to let these vulnerabilities hang out there and keep everything they want exposed. aaron very interesting thank you very much for coming on the show that was aaron swartz he is the founder and executive director of

demand progress. well we are getting an intimate look into the obama administration's counterterrorism tactics a new york times article expose the grim details behind a so-called kill list that is a top secret nomination process to designate which terrorists to capture and kill and as it turns out the administration has a lot more blood on its hands than many thought the president and president obama is insisting on approving every single name on the ever expanding list and for years osama bin laden was the most hunted man in the world to u.s. presidents promise to find him in the u.s. military left no stone unturned and its quest to find him beyond that many people don't know many of the names that are on that list or or the names of any al qaeda leaders who have been targeted and killed over the past four years but here is part of that list of some of the operatives who were killed from two thousand and nine to two thousand and eleven in which the obama administration played

a direct role and you may recognize a couple of the names and war and why are lucky was the american born cleric whose fiery sermons made him a larger than life figure in the world of jihad he worked with members of the yemeni sector of al qaeda and was the first american to be targeted in this war and of course there are plenty you haven't heard of in may of last year allocators chief of pakistan operations. was killed in pakistan by a drone it was a major blow to al qaeda as operations and of course this is just a small portion of the very long list of people the drone strikes by the administration seems to be nonstop take a look at this. this is a chart of the number of drone strikes there have been over the years as you can see the charts swelled in two thousand and ten and has now gone down a bit but that certainly doesn't mean that the administration is going to hold back

if it thinks it knows where someone some of its targets are located and now there is a word of this kill list a list compiled and approved by a president who campaigned against the iraq war and u.s. torture tactics so this shows the president's apparent evolution in dealing with counterterrorism and attempting to limit civilian casualties but some critics comparing this list to a collection of baseball cards for many it appears that the u.s. long ago turned from being a nation concerned with national security defense to actively going on the often now the only question is if the american public will find these counterterrorism tactics as palatable come november. and coming up next is the capital account with lauren lister let's check in with lauren to see what's on today's agenda learn what you have going on their lives it has been announced it is official china and japan will begin trading in their own currencies this friday

reportedly according to japan's finance minister liz do you know who or what that leaves out what does that leave all or and it lays out the u.s. dollar so this is just one of these pacts that we've seen we will talk to john butler he is an author he is also a veteran of global finance for more than a decade and he's going to tell us what he sees as the significance of this move away from the dollar in addition while we see a move away from the dollar we see an increase in the role possibly played by gold now despite the fact that the price has been going down since its high in august we'll talk about what really is the calculus of gold that we're not seeing in that price list because it might be more significant than any surge that we could see in the price well it sounds like you have a lot going on a lot of talk about that's coming up next on the capital account with lauren lister but that's going to do it now for the news for more of the stories we covered you

can head on over to our youth who carol we post everything on there at youtube dot com slash r.t. america you can also check out our web site some stories there that we didn't have time to get to on the air that at that web site is r t v dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter liz wall the capital account with lauren lyster is up next we'll be right back here and a half hour. he just put a picture of me when i was like nine years old i like to tell the truth. i confess and i am a total get of friends that i love rap and hip hop music and pretty much. he was kind of a yesterday. i'm very proud of the all the belgian she has played.

there hasn't been a thing good on t.v. . it is to get the maximum political impact. before the source material is worth helps keep journalism honest. we want to present. something else. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big

picture.