well. technology innovation all the developments around the world we've got the future however. the unrest in the middle east grows violent protests are spreading after an anti is long film sparks outrage our team is on the ground in cairo with an update will also take a look at the implications of the protests on u.s. policies in the region. and twitter will obey a judge's ruling on attorney twitter will obey a judge's ruling and turn over possibly incriminating messages in the criminal case against an occupy wall street protester what does this say about the social media giant and internet freedom and we'll debate the issue with. big brother.

and to protect and serve that might not be happening in los angeles for civil rights activists are demanding a federal investigation into the excessive police force and brutality there will look into their demands coming up. it's friday september fourteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. . well topping the news this hour it's a scene that millions around the world watched unfold a moment in history captured on cell phone cameras and through the eyewitness accounts on twitter for many the arab spring was a total upset of the past decades policies in the middle east government officials looked at the protests with an air of skepticism many others with a glimmer of hope for what peaceful rallies can do we want as the protests flared up toppled governments. and then died down but now in light of an anti muslim film

titled the innocence of muslims dozens of protests have broken out across the region this time the young arrests isn't focused on each individual countries governments but against the u.s. here's a map highlighting some of the regions that we know of gaza city tripoli cairo benghazi bangladesh baghdad jerusalem so now islamic teheran a kabul and jalalabad and that's just to name a few so for the very latest on the arm rest i was joined earlier by our to correspondent paula slayer she was in cairo let's take a look well it's about ten o'clock this evening local time and there is this heavy presence of mostly youngsters that have been on the streets since the early hours of this morning i was caught up in that demonstration on my way to this live position they're building tires they've sealed off parts of the road and these are all the roads that surround the american embassy here in cairo and essentially they're holding a standoff with the security forces now throughout the day they've been holding

large chunks of concrete stones and shards of glass at these security offices they had to have erected a security barrier that separates the protesters from the police offices and every so often you have the police firing rounds of tear gas and i've spent most of the day feeding a bee sting of their tear gas it's very very strong and that's why we have seen people here being rushed to hospital every couple of minutes even now you hearing ambulances rushing past we're also hearing reports of the first person who has been killed in this latest round of unrest here in egypt and paul i understand you couldn't leave your hotel for a period of time you kind of touched on that a little bit but can it can you go into detail of what was happening there and. well that's right i mean the scenes to some extent are innocent of the arab spring and what it was like here when i was here last year the internet has gone down in several areas and as a result the communication is very very difficult in this is largely because of the

overload of people in one specific area i was caught in the hotel where the hotel staff had actually barricaded the doors in the windows and fight and to let any people out on the one hand you had this bizarre scenario of people who needed to catch planes who needed to get to the airport and it was simply barricaded inside the hotel i'm not quite sure if this is making it into the mainstream media but there has been a lot of looting here in cairo all the shops in the businesses around these hotels and i'm talking now in the vicinity where i'm standing which is essentially not far from the american embassy here in cairo there has been a lot of looting there's a lot of lawlessness you have these youngsters just running amok speaking to some people here there is the feeling that this isn't necessarily a revolution so they're not the same kind of excitement that they was in some court has a little more than a year ago a year and a half ago but what you're feeling today on the streets of cairo is anger is frustrated but there is certainly an element of criminality in all of this and paul

i know that president mohamed morsi has come out and actually spoken out against these protests can you talk a little bit about that i mean he said that something to the to the extent of that these people are guests that these protests are not necessary can it cannot comment on that. well it's been interesting watching the muslim brotherhood deal with us of course the violence today is the first real space of violence that the new egyptian president mohamed morsi has had to deal with since he took the presidency he is currently in europe where he's trying to shore up investment pillages and so far he has managed to get some one billion pledges put forward for egypt but there was a lot of criticism for him here back at home saying this is a very real crisis why isn't he here and why is to be dealing immediately with the situation on the ground on friday the muslim brotherhood did call for nationwide strikes to protest against this this and this american based anti muslim film but later in the day they withdrew that call and said they needed to be smaller more

symbolic protests that message is not filtered down to the street and so the muslim brotherhood is taking a back step when you when you see the anger in the frustration and you talk to the protesters here in cairo they don't really care what the muslim brotherhood is saying visa take to the streets they are angry it's doubtful of course how many of them have actually seen the video but so if you they've heard enough about it to make them go to the streets and paul i know that there was a lot of questions over the muslim brotherhood taking over and then i guess the what you're saying is that you know they are even trying to calm it down there. are anti america protests and they're not even able to qualify selves. well said the muslim brotherhood and here we're talking also about the egyptian president mohamed morsi is walking a very fine line you have seen a lot of countries withdraw investments what he said on the fence waiting to see what develops here in the country and whether or not they'll continue to lend

financial assistance and other kind of support to egypt then at the same time you have the brotherhood trying to to keep these neighbors happy but certainly doesn't want to lose grassroots support and at the moment that grassroots support is very very much and the united states so they're having to treat this very very fine line looking at the the profile of protesters on the streets there isn't necessarily a strong muslim brotherhood presence certainly i did notice that when morsi was elected and in the last few months of and we still in egypt there has been a brotherhood poisons and a brotherhood face to the protests i haven't noticed that specifically today looking around at the demonstrators i would say that mostly the youngsters you do get a sense of people taking to the streets if some of them they are angry but certainly for some of them it's also just just something to do to pick up some stones to pick up some rocks and to hold them a police and we are seeing scenes that are reminiscent of the kind of violence that has plagued this country for the last year and a half or so and part of what you are saying would you consider these protests to

be simply an america or or just film is this speaking to a larger narrative here i am at this moment at this moment i would say the protests are anti america they are very specifically geared towards this movie although as i say there is this element of criminality and just a lawless innocent monks then the question of course is what will happen to these protests moving forward and here what's particularly worrying is that we've seen the growth almost spiraling out of control that these protests have happened you mentioned earlier in your intro that we are seeing protests now in afghanistan we seeing them in lebanon where at least one person has been killed and several dozen were injured we're witnessing similar such protests even in northern sinai. where there was an attack on an multinational security force there with full multinational security force keepers being injured and the al qaeda flag being held up the latest that's coming out of libya and of course this is where the first person was killed related to the violence linked to this movie and that was the

american ambassador on tuesday the latest there is that an investigation is underway and that both the united states as well as the live in authority is all pointing fingers towards al qaida and we have seen all kinds of flags popping up at various other demonstrations throughout the region so the question is whether one of these demonstrations can be contained or whether or not believe it is something much more far reaching and i certainly can give you a sense from the media on the ground and that is that these demonstrations seem far from likely to quell or to stop anytime soon if anything they seem to be intensifying in the violence and paul i know that egypt is actually banned for an indefinite amount of time in order to try to prevent people from watching this film we're going to have to see how this plays out in the coming days r t correspondent paula sawyer please keep us updated. and as we watch the situation develop there are still many questions we simply don't have the answer to what was the point of

making this film why did it instigate such on rest and who was behind it there are also a lot of questions about the bigger picture what these protests mean for the geo political picture and more specifically for the new west so for a look at the bigger picture i'm joined now by gareth porter investigative journalist and historian hi there gareth i am so before we actually came on to the segment you were talking a little bit about egypt and how important of a role it plays why don't you go ahead and lay that out for us well i think that the the vents in egypt are the most important of all of these incidents all of the developments that we've seen unfold in the last few days precisely because egypt is the country that has the greatest. influence over the rest of the middle east that is the country that most of the activists islamicist particularly islamic activists throughout the region are looking to to see what's happening there. and it this is

of course the country that is going to have the most influence over the situation with regard to israel and u.s. policy so they're looking at the relationship between israel and the united states relations between israel. and egypt to the united states that that's where i think we're going to see the greatest fallout from this this set of incidents the violence in egypt i think has to be seen as in part at least a reflection of the underlying anti americanism that has existed for many years in that society particularly since nine eleven we have a lot of polling data that people have not been discussing unfortunately in recent days that shows that egypt more than any other country that was the subject of intensive. bowling in the last few years. the there's a very very high incidence of anti-americanism as much as ninety three percent of

those polled showed anti american sentiments a lack of trust me united states but even very recently we've had polls showing that two thirds of the arab world do not trust the united states so what we're looking at here is an underlying tinderbox which was essentially ready for any match that might be thrown for this kind of demonstration of an american is to be exhibited now you know i agree that the film itself was not that important it's a minor irritant in the broader scheme of things but what it shows is that it doesn't take very much and i think that's why you know we are facing such a dangerous situation that should cause americans to really rethink their relationship to the islamic world very fundamentally because if i have to ask i mean the hard work they actually did come out and say that he's supporting us and

this so we know that over a year ago that the people actually chose to throw out mubarak they chose war stay and yet he's kind of showing a discrepancy with what he is saying and what the people are believing it from what you're saying what's what's what this discrepancy there's going to inevitably be some tension between morsi is effort to get along with united states and the west in general and your intro there mentioned you know that he's looking for western. money western investment in egypt and that's one of the things he has to be concerned with on one hand and his missis necessary cultivation of the islamist based in egypt which again represents you know a huge majority in the country much of which is really strongly violently anti-american so inevitably there's going to be this time. he's going to have to handle it very carefully he can't come out too strongly in condemnation of

everybody who's involved in these protests at the same time he has to make some statement of course distancing himself from it so that's his that's his dilemma. and what we're seeing right now is that we saw the arab spring and now we're starting to see what some you know you couldn't you could almost call the arab fall maybe it's taking it a little bit too far but there are over a dozen countries right now that are having protests whether it's a few hundred people to a few thousand people it's costing people their lives so is this region just so unstable that nothing at this point is certain i think it's fair to say that yes it is unstable enough to say that nothing is very certain except for this that you have a set of of arab and islamic countries in the region which are. overwhelmingly anti american which do not trust the united states and they do this they have this attitude in large part because they view the united states as at war

with islam and this is a reflection of course of the history of the last ten years in particular when the united states has gone to war in terms of sending ground forces as well as bombing in iraq afghanistan and now of course the drone war in pakistan that has solidified this view of the united states anti islamic and hostile in a very violent way towards islam and so that is a fundamental issue fundamental problem that the bush administration failed to appreciate at all and i think obama had some appreciation of it when he was elected but he's allowed the opportunity to do something about it to slip by and instead he's continued the policies of the bush administration in many ways and since we're on the topic of politics let's go ahead and take i look at what's going on and how this has actually turned into a political game right now we had john mccain come out and say that the situation in the middle east is completely unraveling we had

a romney aide come out and say that you know president romney if there was one could have prevented this from happening and then president. mom of course fired back and said that you know for mitt romney tends to shoot before aiming so we're saying this this political dialogue has a kind of seems like a little bit of a game here what does it seem like it's new and is that any of this discourse actually doing anything productive it's the usual partisan discourse no question about it i mean both parties do this to some extent the republicans now are in a very interesting position and the last few years they have become a party whose policy toward the middle east is entirely oriented towards the interests of not just israel but the likud party in israel that is to say netanyahu is party and that means that they of course are violently against the arab governments of the region in general i mean they are taking

a position that mirrors precisely the israeli view the israeli view being that the arab spring was an illusion of course and we always expected the arab societies to become violently anti israel and violently anti western so i think the republican problem is that they are so oriented in their attitude toward reflecting mirroring what the israelis believe and say and i think that is going to get them into more and more serious problems as time goes by it already has obviously i think romney has really discredited and self by the statement that he has made the statements he's made. and i think we're going to see more of the future and i do we only have about a minute left so i'm being told but i do want to kind of turn the conversation just one more time let's look at oil prices we're already starting to save the markets

about oil prices and i mean i know that the october oil prices went up by about one point two per cent and futures breached one hundred dollars for the first time since may. fourth the problem is or the question is that many of these protests that are going on are actually surrounding the gulf region people are saying that it's not that they're afraid that it's going to affect the supply line but that might not necessarily be the case look i do not oppose as a specialist on the oil markets i was very familiar with the way the markets responded to the situation regarding iran in the united states and israel and that was sort of understandable it's less understandable why they should respond certainly with any fundamental shift because of these protests and this violence because it clearly does not portend any fundamental shift in. the status of oil markets so i would really treated at this point as a blip that doesn't really mean anything. gareth porter historian and investigative

journalist thank you so much for joining us we really appreciate your time here meanwhile it appears the los angeles police department is finding itself in on the other side of the law civil rights groups are demanding federal investigators look into a recent slew of cases involving excess the police force and police brutality questionable arrests caught on video are now forcing citizens to re-examine the old police montra to protect and serve our taser moglen know as the story. you know my. cell phone video shows twenty year old college student ronald weekley being punched in the face and wrestled to the ground by four l.a.p.d. officers weekly's father says his son's only crime was skateboarding on the wrong side of the road my son suffered a concussion to his head he has

a broken jaw bone right here and he's have a nasal breathing problems in his no weekly's violent arrest is not an isolated incident in this surveillance video police are slamming michelle jordan a thirty four year old nurse to the ground jordan was pulled over for allegedly talking on her cell phone while driving in another recent incident thirty five year old mother of two alicia thomas died in the back of a squad car while being detained you know want time. to time you will have to scratch your head and say that's a call will happen twice on video and then three times you say how long this seems like a pattern we've got to get to the bottom of this here or somebody else is going to get her or kill the los angeles police department has historically come under fire for excessive force we have the may day protests from two thousand and seven. and who can forget the l.a. riots twenty years ago you know he just tossed the bottle rocket the tour is

corruption in the department goes back to the one nine hundred twenty s. then and now people living in less affluent neighborhoods aren't convinced police are on their side the police still and i have learned from the days of rodney king that was also beat on videotape police brutality still continues so it's up to us to fight back against it where would rears its ugly head. other departments are not immune to allegations of excessive police force from seattle to new orleans to new york now. jersey police violence is drawing public scrutiny yet they not yet not be a series of impassioned protests ingolf the city of anaheim following several police shootings this year every man of any color every woman we are human beings and we and this is a shame when dogs have more rights than human being. what have this world come to

in an attempt to improve its public relations police officers are personally reaching out to neighborhoods the many community leaders say the outreach amounts to lip service bar. to two thousand and nine oscar grant shooting is one of the few times an officer has actually been tried for killing an unarmed person but even when incidents are caught on tape officers rarely face the criminal justice system we want to community called things where people do not live some free and some in a police state as more citizen journalists capture police abuse on video ronald weekley hopes justice will be served don't be angry for what happened. just fight for what's right. and just because we need it.

now as i mentioned earlier when it comes to spreading the word about the arab spring when it came to spread the word about the arab spring the social media site twitter was instrumental in getting that message out twitter of course has also been a major platform for the occupy wall street movement to spread its messages at first when the site refused the site refused to release tweets of protesters on the brooklyn bridge to authorities but it seemed as if that blast stand between protesters and the government was finally playing out this time in the form of twitter but today that line has fallen twitter released the tweets of malcolm harris who's been charged with disorderly conduct along with seven hundred others for their actions on october first two thousand and eleven for an update on this twitter swear off r.t. web producer and our web guru joins me now maggie right and you write down the latest on this case ok well this isn't going to be said since october first if you

remember occupied movement really started in september up in new york a few weeks ago by seven hundred people go on the brooklyn bridge sorry thousand people in brooklyn bridge seven hundred arrested including malcolm harris who is a mid twenty's writer from brooklyn now he was arrested along with seven hundred or so others and he was charged with disorderly conduct norinco. orders to get off the bridge now it's been almost a year now in this case has been repeatedly brought up over and over again in court because the prosecutors want to see his deleted tweets they want to see his record of what he was doing on twitter for a couple of months before and after these events on october first because they want to say that well we have knowledge that he knew that he was breaking the law because he might have been tweeting to someone like oh maybe through his deleted. he made plans to go one more step on the predator something like that so they want to be able to say ok you knew this and because of that we're going to charge you

this five hundred dollars fine for disorderly conduct but in the meanwhile this case been dragging on for months and months and months and finally today twitter couldn't do it anymore they had appealed over and over again they tried to fight it and a judge in new york pretty much said look you can give us this material that this person created and then destroyed and didn't want anyone to see. you can give us that or if you don't we're going to find you a lot lot lot of money so twitter has been putting up a fight for the last couple of months and god bless them they do a really good job they said that we're going to keep fighting to make sure that if you tweet something it belongs to you and the prosecutors tried to take him to the whole legal gauntlet and you know it was a fair game and it looks like it finally lawsuit today twitter handed over those tweets so which one says that if you do something on the internet even if you get rid of it even if it's just something about conspiring for a disorderly conduct charge not that i'm sure why would he even tweet that but yeah that could be brought into court even months if not

a year later but and i have to ask you once you put something out on twitter i mean you can have people following you that you have no idea who they are once you put something out in a public domain like that are you or are you not effectively releasing your rights to it you know that that's what the judge was saying that if you tweet something it's essentially the same thing is just opening up the window and screaming you were just saying this is what i'm doing this is it and twitter the a.c.l.u. in the f.-f. they were all saying well now the silly you know the person who tweets that they should own that they should be able to control the copyright they should be able to control where their information goes if they choose to delete it you know good on them they they have deleted it the court whining and said no that's not exactly the case and it's only like one of the several examples we saw this week of finally the courts getting their way in terms of being able to want to see destroy the internet but there is a really unfortunate week as far is freedom of speech in the first moment goes away

with internet rights not just a case of malcolm harris but we go back to i believe wednesday the house re approved the. amendments of two thousand and eight act so as long as it clears the senate and then the oval office which it means is the government for another five years is going to be able to do on an essential. watch everything they do on the computer for another five years so that's happening twitter is doing that it's pretty much this was a really really bad week for the internet i've heard your say that a couple times so that i enjoy i'm really upset because i i work on the internet i am the internet i do all of my stuff are there you know i've been doing stories for the last couple of days where i think communicating with sources who don't feel comfortable talking on the internet anymore will have to use you know special check lines using off the record encryption or some people don't even want to talk on the computer because we're worried that we're being monitored and i shouldn't feel that way as a journalist that i should be able to go out there and find out you know people should be able to talk to me they should feel free they should feel open they

should not be worried that because they're expressing their concerns about different political ideas that are going to be persecuted for them but that's exactly what's happening you know it may be of milk and harris was breaking the law i don't know i wasn't there but were his tweets really that relevant to this case like is this really worth the fight to to install this fear that anything you do on the internet really isn't safe i mean a lot of people already think that with the legislation that's been trying to push on this for the last couple years especially this year but yeah i'll say it again it was a really bad week for the internet and go ahead and talk about they feel u.k. so we've got i know they requested a. little off and on line things were really bad so if you file the foyer request months of months months ago because they wanted to see what was happening with f.b.i. surveillance of the occupy wall street movement specifically up in northern california the f.b.i. followed through and they said ok we'll let you know what we've been doing they are there for you requested provide them with some documents they said all right half

of these you can't see because it would be a national security issue so we know that the government wants to be able to see what you delete on your computer they want to be able to bring it up in the courts for you to use it for prosecuting someone for a five hundred dollars fine and we know that off the computer the f.b.i. is watching your. collectivities and they're not going to tell you about it will acknowledge it which they just did but you have no idea what they're doing we do know that they're monitoring you off and on the computer and so that. from what your care where you're saying i think i have to agree with you so i from everything from twitter to privacy to the a.c.l.u. and even to this fight that they say is the only thing you can be certain is that you're probably going to be monitored some type of way and they should definitely be careful with what you write on the internet and more importantly what you read on the trip everything or use a courier pigeon whether they like r t whatever.