market why not. come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike stronger for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. coming up this hour on our t.v. across the middle east and around the world protests are flaring up against the u.s. for an anti islam film we'll bring you the latest developments and those are the only protests our t. is keeping an eye on today. that. occupy wall street is celebrating its one year anniversary gone are the days when protesters were dismissed by the media as hippies and drug abusers i had we'll show you where the movement came from and where it's heading.

it's monday september seventeenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine frizz out and you're watching our t.v. . let's begin with the massive protests taking place across the world after last tuesday's attack on the u.s. embassy in libya which ended the deaths of four in the deaths of four americans including the u.s. ambassador protests have been spreading throughout the middle east and north africa there are conflicting reports regarding the source of the anger from a low budget offensive film about islam to overall frustration with the west u.s. embassies around the world are on high alert and non-essential u.s. government personnel from embassies in places like sudan and tunisia they've been

asked to evacuate in beirut lebanon today a massive protest was put on by hezbollah and our to correspondent lucy catherine of it joined us earlier for an update on that protest i started off by asking her how that protest was a little different from some of the others we've been seeing. well it's certainly not the kind of protest where you what about your american passport per se and wave it around but yeah i mean it does fanned out in stark contrast to some of the other uprisings we've seen across the muslim world it was one of the largest protests we've seen to date but of course this was taking place and daria this is the dockyard this is a largely shia neighborhood in southern beirut it's hezbollah territory this was ordered an organized by hezbollah we even saw the organization the militant organizations leader come out today surprising many to speak briefly before the crowd for about fifteen minutes haasan those raw and really even though the pictures are pretty interesting in the sense that there was

a massive turnout it's really more of a political calculation than than anything this is different from the types of protests we saw here in tripoli in the northern part of lebanon where the largely sunni groups sort of spontaneously took to the streets and ended up targeting several u.s. fast food chains there it's also quite different from what we've seen across the other countries because again hezbollah here really is more than just. a militia organization this is a political force and they don't do things whatever whatever your opinion may be of the organization the u.s. forces shouldn't consider that to be a terrorist organization this is a rational political actor and there is no vested interest in it to you know sort of repeat the kind of violence that we've seen in other countries that in fact being able to pull off such a such a large rally without any incidents of overt violence and we didn't see anything like that really is a chance for the organization to say to the west look you know we're really unhappy with what you've been doing with your policies with this movie but hey we can take to the streets peacefully and you know manage the situation down there so it was

quite interesting but there's also there's no lebanese forces no no police officers in the area it's all hezbollah. militants sort of guarding guarding the area which is a pretty. the discerning experience for someone who hasn't been to that area before yeah lucy i mean we've been showing these pictures and it looks like an absolutely massive protests we also today have heard reports of u.s. diplomats in beirut destroying classified documents what's their concern what do you know about this. yeah i mean there's the information is murky at the moment it does seem that this is more of a precaution precautionary move sort of and in fact i don't think it's just taking place in lebanon we've heard that other embassies may be considered considering similar actions but the reality of their concern of course is that the embassy could get storms the reality of the situation and we drove past the u.s. embassy here this is a heavily heavily fortified area there were several tanks outside of it will be dropped by this morning and you also have lebanese lebanese citizens guarding

millet's military citizens guarding the outside perimeter so the storm something like that don't have to clash with the lebanese i don't know i don't really think we would see that happen and moreover again i mean the more radical elements within this country. are are thought to be located in the largely sunni dominated areas not so much in beirut so i doubt that we will see this kind of violence escalate if the supportable situation doesn't change if we see something you know for example an attack on iran then i think the situation could be a lot more dangerous for the u.s. in beirut and elsewhere and so perhaps it's a precautionary move for for other considerations i guess was the i'm just wondering i mean have you had a chance to speak to some people some of the people on the ground there and what are they telling you. well instead of me retelling it why don't we play a sound bite that i think we have for you ok. so you know your position actually other than the gentleman called you with. john hope this works others believe what

the book is and what it's for show you what it is whatever it is this is what we call political almost all of this whether you thought the speech should be this is how we know about what is personal to people watch them to believe in what is called human beings on children. so it's quite interesting i mean we've seen a discussion here a lot of the people that i've spoken to you've heard this man gentleman that there has been a rally this morning they really feel that this is actually a human rights issue for them they feel that the u.s. should have done more to prevent this video from spreading he had said in a separate interview with us that the american should apologize to the muslim world for allowing this video to be spread of course this also gets into free speech rights but when we asked them about that and that's the opinion of many of the people that we spoke to they said what free speech i mean something like this is really seen as a personal insult not just to the people but to their religion as a whole and it sort of harps on some of these sectarian divides in this the anti

western sentiment that's that's steeped in religious beliefs there really could be a dangerous sort of blowback for the u.s. of if it continues but again we do have something called free speech that's a really tricky situation lucy i want to switch gears from my last question to you where we are running out of time but when you are here with us in washington and i know that you travel around the country covering our keep eye wall street you've covered u.s. politics in depth as well what role do you think these recent attacks and this unrest will play in the upcoming election. to be honest with you kristie if the election was taking place in the next week or two i think it would play a massive role but it's not and as we all know in politics a day even a week could be as a. year in the electoral terms i think it really depends on the situation on the ground at the moment for people go to the polls and you know the old clinton current cliche it's the economy stupid i think still applies the u.s. voters on the ground in the united states are probably going to be more concerned with pocket but book issues things that they feel affect them directly and

personally and not so much you know wave of anti-american sentiment that's largely spurned by a movie that you know very few people would stand out and say hey i support this specific thing so it depends it depends on how things play out but i think it would take a little bit more for this specific wave of protests to actually upset the balance of the election foreign policy in general yeah there's a lot to debate there but specifically i think we're going to be seeing good wine it's not even october yet but your sentiments that you just raised there lucy whether it will be the economy or foreign policy that will take a center stage that is something that we're going to talk about a whole lot more in this show but for now i want to thank you lucy always great to see you are two correspondent with the calf and beirut lebanon on. well one year ago today hundreds of people gathered outside of wall street and stage a protest against big banks corporate greed and the fast growing gap in inequality around the country they call the wealthiest people the one percent and everyone

else the ninety nine percent they say day and night in manhattan zuccotti park and within a few days there were similar protests in most major cities around this country and in other countries as well r t of course has covered it since day one but perhaps the incident that made others take notice happened a couple weeks later on october first. that's when thousands came out to protest and seven hundred people were arrested after they blocked the brooklyn bridge many involved say police corral them on to the bridge for police it was a wake up call in terms of the size and the scope of the occupy movement what you're what you wrote. what you read after we've weeks of tough action by police later that month in oakland california a u.s. military veteran scott olsen was critically wounded by police setting off a flood of anger and bringing more strength to the movement.

then images of police pepper spraying student activists in the face brought more attention to the clashes between the police and the protesters. as winter came the number of those taking part diminished most forced off properties they had been occupying many believe the occupy wall street would quiet down until a few months ago on may first occupy protests erupted once again. they varied in size and shape but it illustrated to activists and observers all and police alike that there are still thousands of people hoping to raise awareness and bring change system argy correspondent us on a stasia churkin now takes a look back at the last year at what has gone on. triggered by wealth inequality inspired by the arab spring occupy wall street a movement of the people bringing up real dialogue over the need to improve the way america runs. spilled onto the streets when the same bankers that

clapton economy were bailout by our taxpayer money that provoked occupy wall street and what we hope to do with brain that outrage outrage about very basic issues that most americans intuitively understand. the big apple became the birthplace of the occupy movement just one week into the protests all hell broke loose. when they pepper sprayed those those women and made all those arrests it was really intense police were telling it was brought into the spotlight hundreds of protesters grew into thousands then tens of thousands in a fight for a better country to play wall street certainly put forward to the issue of a poverty of a decline in the middle class but most prominently that economic power in the united states is intimately linked to political power occupy camps blossomed as the

movement energized more and more people. protesters often confronted by tear gas and pepper spray even war veterans injured you know faces bloodied demonstrators in the baton and dragged journalists abused and arrested for. camps in major cities eventually eradicated by officials one after another remembers a comedy park in new york's financial district it was here that the first occupy camp was set up hundreds of people made this their home on thousands showing support in a fight for change eventually it got cleared out and stands largely empty today occupy up to the same change the format to not going to head for the. when people go out and protest in the streets the naysayers complain and say what are they getting done and when the when the activists go and organize and actually you know effect change they're not in the streets they say oh look now they're gone well critics say occupy did not bring the change and accountability it fought for

because of a congress that hasn't done very much it's hard to say anything policy wise has really changed in the last year but i think it did start a discussion about economic inequality it started a discussion about tax policy and started the discussion about how we are treating unemployment and the unemployed and i think that was a discussion that wasn't really had few would argue that the economic and social issues that triggered occupy have been solved about one third of the american public is either in poverty or on the cusp of poverty that's one hundred million people and yet you hear virtually nothing about poverty in this election politicians are not addressing problems such as this one yet using them to their own advantage essentially obama is running on an occupy wall street campaign that they're trying to paint romney as someone who's out of touch and a leader occupy wall street started the fight of the ninety nine percent versus the

wealthiest one percent a year later the political establishment on wall street are still sleeping in the same bed this makes true reform unlikely until we eliminate corporate money from politics we want to change from that will be a central. part for moving forward closing the gap between the rich and poor eradicating sky high student debt bringing accountability to wall street all major issues yet to be tackled in the u.s. two thirds of the u.s. senate are millionaires forty five percent of the house of representatives are millionaires we have the best democracy that money can buy and actual democracy made a little more possible with the seed sown by occupy when we show our so. courageous and united in one fear the response we're going to get when we have some boy in march with mr. americans imagination and come home truly make this something a movement where millions again return to the streets. the spirit of the movement

still very much around one year. new york. well now that we've looked back we want to take a look ahead at what's next for occupy wall street and for that i'm joined by occupy los angeles activist now ward hey there matt let's talk about how this movement has evolved hey there what is occupy wall street today well i think that occupy wall street is really horizontal stand as moved into communities in a far more comprehensive way the dead part of occupy wall street would be the eternally long encampment model i think that was a tactic that was immensely valuable and i think that we're going to continue to see ourselves revisiting that concept but it really unlock the potential of what's possible at the drop of a hat if you have a group of people who are dedicated to affecting meaningful change let's get into

some of the specifics i mean occupy has been working on the housing crisis in california to stop banks from foreclosing on homeowners do you think this is a branch off of occupy or just sort of a different direction that it's taking. well i can only speak for here in los angeles was part of forming occupy fights foreclosures which is a subcommittee of occupy l.a. here so we're definitely still intrinsically linked with the larger movement and we feel that the message of defending homeowners trying to be robin hood refusing to accept money and in trying to organize neighborhoods organically to defend themselves and to support each other and to show solidarity we think that that's the greatest way that we can really continue to stick it to the banks while simultaneously helping people who need it the most and from what i understand that these are some of the tactics that have been most successful what you're talking about people who would have lost their homes are still living in them yeah we are

not hindered by a lot of sort of the the procedural limitations that attorneys and that other people are you know attorneys are constantly in danger of losing their bar certification if they do anything that sort of operates outside of the realm of the status quo and i don't think it's any surprise that with a kangaroo court system as we have right now most of the success is coming from activists who are standing up for homeowners occupy has refused for the most part to engage directly in the political realm so unlike the tea party for example it's hard for a lot of people to determine the real impact that the movement had. what do you think the answer is in terms of because obviously you who are kind of involved in this every day you see you know the progress you see the evolution but it is important i think you would agree that other people who aren't involved also understand. the results of occupies so how do you how do we measure this. well i think you actually can measure a lot of successes in

a quantifiable fashion it's just that unfortunately we don't have a mainstream media establishment that is a free press anymore and just to tick through some of the accomplishments that we've had here in los angeles that no one really talks about too much on starting out within the first days of the occupation at city hall we saw one hundred fifty people inside to pressure city council and actually to to physically wake up their sleeping in their seats to pressure them to wake up and to pass the responsible banking ordinance which they did that had been dead in committee for years and we managed to bring that revive that debate and got it passed albion a watered down fashion we moved on from there and as far and we're just talking about reforms changes here that people can really identify with in a direct fashion but we moved on from there and a gentleman with an occupy face foreclosures was critically instrumental in getting a homeowners bill of rights passed he flipped richard calderon who was one of the

the three dissenting voices in a three three tie that was intended to keep the homeowners bill of rights dead in conference committee forever because particularly in election season the democrats knew that they had to continue to pretend to support the middle class so they couldn't handle a vote like this that could put them against sort of the middle class that could be allow them to be seen as siding with the banks now of course republicans that's sort of their job is to decide with the banks so they had no problem voting against it but the moment that calderon was flipped it moved out of that committee to the larger committee that had to get voted through quickly and it landed on the floor and it was signed into law within two weeks now that is and a legislative change that occupy los angeles and occupy fights for closures is is i believe legitimately a huge champion for a third or more right now or we're we're also engaging with a bevy of different. medical groups and you know within activists communities but

also fundamentally i think that we can see a tangible change in the way that people i believe people feel more empowered i think that that's alternately our greatest job is to remind people that they're not alone that they have far more power than they think and that the moment that they stand up together they form a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts not a new political article claims that occupy wall street quote is over based on the metric of mentions of the term income inequality you know how much it was raised how much that term was used in the media and how that has gone down substantially so what do you think i mean has the occupy movement lost its ability to influence the discourse or has it simply switched focus is. frankly when you're inside the belly of the beast and you see everything that's happening articles like that really speak truth to the power that the mainstream establishment is terribly afraid of what we're doing i take articles like that as

a sign of huge success because when i look at our fights foreclosures meetings which happen on sundays and thursdays right near union station in los angeles we started out with you know six ten people then it was fifteen then it was twenty now it's between forty and sixty people and these are homeowners these are homeless people who are willing to go out and defend other people's houses because they understand that this is salt by the banks is is going to completely undermine the entirety of our society so i take things like that as a show of success and i take great pride in hearing how afraid the bankers the political establishment in the mainstream media are afraid of what we're doing now i think you can always look at it from a different perspective as well income inequality may only be used a few hundred times a month now but there was a time when it was being used thousands of times in stories in the mainstream media in alternative media and by average people who never knew what the difference between the ninety nine percent and the one percent even was so the discourse we

did see make a change even if it's not as apparent right now because of course the mainstream media is talking about other things maybe the election being one of them we appreciate having you on the occupy los angeles activist in that ward thank you very much. well in continuing a look back at occupy some interesting developments are starting to be made public that we want to discuss now you might remember one of the issues many occupy protesters spoke about over the last year was their concern they were being surveilled by police all many movements in cities around the country spoke with police on a daily basis there were some people who said they believed police were going undercover taking notes collecting information about people activists which would then be turned over to authorities well it turns out those so-called conspiracies may have in fact been accurate the american civil liberties union has obtained a nischelle documents they had to file a lawsuit to get their hands on and contained in these documents information about

surveillance of occupy demonstrations with me now to get to the bottom of all this j.d. to chile managing editor for reason a twenty four seven news j.d. these thirteen pages of documents show that the f.b.i. was monitoring occupy events in particular the port of oakland shut down on november second and the multi-city west coast ports shutdown on december twelfth talk about the significance of this it's amazing really when you look at the. really most were but you know really is. or not we're just wondering it seems pretty clear that we're in a reflective national security state at this point we're reporting on barbecues sponsored by your fund movement up at the anchorage sports but it's all about how well the occupy protesters are getting along with the longshoremen over at oakland there really wasn't a lot for them to report it's really there's nothing of note to speak of except for minor violent incidents and they support studies like this other there are other

documents that the f.b.i. chose not to release and they claim national security and foreign policy grounds for not releasing those documents we don't exactly we don't really know what's in there but based upon what they did release they really were thinking about a lot of information whatever invested time and effort they're putting into spying on a peaceful and perfectly legal for them both and i want to go back to what you just said i mean these documents he's thirteen pages these were released only after a lawsuit filed by the a.c.l.u. most of them are apparently not being released and as you said the f.b.i. is citing national security as a reason. what's going on here i mean do you think that these authorities believe that the national security threats events are being planned at these occupy protests. so much so that the minor possibility that there's actually something of note in those documents that the f.b.i. held back but by and large i think this is a reflects reflexive response on the part of the federal government is for it to

simply and invoke national security concerns every time they do something they don't want to be known to be spying on us i'm not sure that's conspiracy behind it i think it's just their go to what they do almost reflexively at this point such a concern of itself because everything is not a national security issue that should not be spying on peaceful political movements and they should be keeping secret the fact that they do so when they do so it was really interesting because we have been at the occupy protests actually since a year ago today since they first started and it took a couple months but a lot of these protesters we spoke to actually said they were concerned that this was happening that you know police were going undercover or they were being spied on that they were being surveilled and a lot of people said you know these people these occupy activists are crazy they're conspiracy ferris nobody wants to spy on them. what do you think it signifies the fact that they were corrupt having a slate of us official parents norris and it's amazing and some cases that the feds

may be the only ones on the scene for the reporting it was affecting the anchorage police department didn't even send any personnel to the process that the bet for a but the feds are getting in on it anyway and again you know there's nothing ground there's nothing earth shattering in them in the documents they released but the very clearly we're watching in these are the fifth peaceful protesters and so you know occupy had reason to believe they were being spied upon they were being spied on i mean can anything be done about this. a lot of people are concerned these days especially with. the birth coming soon of drone surveillance cameras some of these drones much smaller than what anyone would be comfortable with so you have this going on and off you have a whole lot of people starting to be concerned about hey you know is everyone going to start being spied on in this country even if they have no grounds for being. looked after by authorities what can be done. i think imports

a good one i think the authorities want to spy it whatever they can slow down when the capabilities grow when it becomes or cheaper in terms of demands on the resources. some of these drones into the sky with the cameras but then the undercover agents out into the field will do what they can afford to do to watch it because that's their reflex in terms of how we stop the requesters originally the democratic administration spying and occupy it made sense you're blogging about say the previous administration there but with the ministration under bush. but the other part is doing so would you go to two major political parties in this country both do the same thing so it sounds like you're going to change things by turning them over to them from one party to the other democrats the republicans both national security freaks they are both paranoid well and we certainly talk about this issue quite a bit here on r t and one of the responses we often get from people who think that this is legitimate that this is important they say you know if you are not doing anything wrong you have nothing to worry about you know so maybe you know there are

surveillance cameras all around the cities of tampa and charlotte where the two political conventions were just you know where they just occurred so what because if you're behaving like an outstanding citizen you have nothing to worry about what's your response to this. well i think we're all doing something wrong and for . harvey silver to let the civil libertarian out a book out a couple of years ago called three felonies a day that was his estimate of what the average american committed every day without knowing it was so many well as the so many regulations on the books they figured the average person was committing three felonies every single day if the authorities want to catch is doing something they will they can wear old breaking minor regulations laws big ones all that's on it we don't even know what we're doing and sometimes we do so yes we do have something to lose but being under surveillance we have our freedom and our privacy and maybe even a little bit of naive because as we find out exactly how many rules of theirs were in michigan. what's your take on what's going to happen in. the next four years no

matter who becomes president i mean do you think that people will start complaining constituents will start demanding that those representing them in congress and the u.s. senate that they make changes there is a constituency for that there certainly is there are a lot of people out there who wants to be left alone who do not want to be spied on and i would say that that runs across the spectrum of whether it's the party whether it's republican democrat super tarion split or maybe are they enough to make a difference in this country that's a that's another question the bomb an administration right now is pushing to reinstate indefinite detention under the n.b.a. which was knocked down last week by a judge this administration wants to reinstate that its main opposition mitt romney in a republican party doesn't want to get rid of it themselves so that constituency really has no place to go in terms of the major parties in terms of major outlets like noise but i do.