it's the seat of power here in the u.s. the place where longer made in decisions are debated but not this year the one hundred twelfth congress has been given the title the do nothing congress so how can washington govern in this partisan gridlock we'll dive into that topic in just a moment. plus mass protests were sparked this summer at canada over it to wish a hike with the newly elected party flexing their muscle and cut back those hikes may have been scrapped what does this mean about the power of protest in the power

of voting for your best interests. and from email to skype texting to g. chatting we live in a world of high tech world but how can you keep your private information online private well look at the cyber security and the trend of crypto parties. it's friday september twenty first eight pm in washington d.c. i'm meghan lopez and you're watching r.t. . now we begin today with a developing story coming out of libya hundreds of protesters have stormed the compound of one of libya's strongest armed islamic extremist groups this is just the latest twist in the story of unrest coming out of the middle east the target was the administrative center for the on so are all shot here militant alicia the protesters were shouting no to militias the militias of course began to grab power after the death of longtime dictator moammar gadhafi so why would libyans protest

this group well it could be the backlash from the death of the american ambassador chris stevens he was wildly popular among many of the libyan people for his work during and after the revolution his death was viewed as a tragedy both in the u.s. as well as libya now no deaths reported at today's incident but it does speak to the volatility of the region will continue to follow this story as it develops. and congress is officially wrapping up its last few days in session before the november elections and short of a mathematical miracle the one hundred twelfth congress could go down in history as the least productive since one thousand nine hundred forty seven that was the do nothing congress that served under president harry truman and this is something that hasn't gone unnoticed. god i have to tell you congress managed to get through last year without passing one single piece of significant legislation this congress

in vienna the word do nothing congress do nothing but you talk about republicans in fact the president's effectively campaigning against a do nothing congress of republicans i think he should run against the student i think that's why in the world would republicans be here today when there was so much other work that this congress has failed to do be here presenting what is really an anti-war resolution masquerading as pro work but it's worse than that the nine hundred forty seven congress was able to pass some nine hundred sixty bill and as of last month the one hundred twelfth congress has passed a mere one hundred seventy three but beyond the numbers the fact is that capitol hill is getting ready to close its doors without having found a solution to military funding taxes for the farm bill fiber security and much much more now as i mentioned many people are calling this the do nothing congress but

that's not exactly accurate individually the senate and house have both been very productive in passing bills and they've arguably worked more hours than the previous congresses so for an inside look of what exactly is going on there congressman danny davis who represents the seventh district of illinois join me earlier for more. well i think we have formally recessed. although we've been on recess i think for quite some time and it's so unfortunate because this was such an excellent opportunity to pass meaningful legislation and find serious relief for the american people to think that we don't have a budget you know live in only continue in resolution when there are things that we know need to be done transportation for example we know that everybody could benefit from

a transportation bill that would create jobs spur economic development as well as you know fix up infrastructure ways roads bridges all kinds of things but you know if you have one part of the process saying that their main objective is to make sure that the president is a one term president or that the president should not be reelected and they're going to do whatever they could to make that happen i hope that the american people will understand why we call this a do nothing congress. and i know that senator dick durbin actually called transportation bills the easiest on capitol hill now you've been serving in congress since one thousand nine hundred ninety six can you compare the congress then versus the one that we're facing today quite frankly i don't think that we've

ever experienced since i've been engaged in politics and especially electorial politics the kind of partisanship almost every item that comes up for a vote if it's meaningful you have democrats on one side republicans on the other or if you have the house pass a bill it is so outlandish until you almost know that the senate can't go along with that if the senate passes some meaningful legislation then of course the house is not with that and so we end up at a standstill we end up waiting for the november election to be some kind of vindication of which side was right which side was wrong and i think that's most unfortunate but i mean that's. what some people call

hardball politics and i hope that the people will realize that the best way to move the country forward would be to evil act and in some instances certainly re elect individuals who have the interests of the country at heart and do not play this partisan brinksmanship all the time and congressman i know that this is a sentiment not only felt by you and felt by the american people but it's one that's been expressed by members of congress very even complaining about the lack of work that's getting done i want to play for you a quick part of the speech that senator coburn delivered this week about this very issue on monday mornings when i get i get up about four thirty to catch a flight to come back up here. and i've noticed that i have an attitude problem i don't want to come anymore and the reason i don't want to come anymore is because

we're not doing anything to address the real problems that are in front of our country or nor in the real problems so we can create political contrasts for an election all the while. the country is sinking now congressman we also did manage to get a couple responses from other members to senator coburn's comments so i want to get a listen to them and then i'll get your opinion on both of them joya of the job to be representing the sixth district of pennsylvania and i get up every day and i enjoy the work that we do to help people in our district and have a chance to represent them here and vote on important issues so i look forward to it every day can't speak for other members of congress but i enjoy my job hasn't gotten that bad well i'm sure it is in the senate so you know i still think we can make a difference here but the senate frustrates me and makes me not want to get up on

monday and i'm not even in this so as you mentioned we know that historically congress is that are divided between republican and democratic majorities tend to be less productive but this is more of a partisanship this year right. i would think so because we've gotten down to certain kind of philosophical constructs much of the argument has been around the question of taxation for example is it fair to tax the mill class in appropriately and not tax the top one percent or the people with the most money and i think what democrats have been saying is let's be fair across the board and less provide the kind of taxation that everybody can be comfortable with where you tax those at the very top at least somewhere close to the same rate as your tax in those in the middle

and those at the bottom the republicans seemingly will not by that i mean so that's a big issue plus there's the philosophical issue some people believe that government really shouldn't do a great deal for the individual citizen and the individual taxpayer and that all of the programs that we call safety net that they are to be cut. wiped out you know there are times when all we hear about from the other side is cut that. cut in my position is or if all you do is cut cut at all you get is blah blah blah. and then the bleeding will be across the people of this great nation and that does not have to happen. now i know one of the things that you and your fellow house members

have faced personally is that this congress has attempted to repeal the house in particular has attended to repeal the affordable care act a total of thirty three times that i know of so they are attempting to do something are they spending too much time trying to do the wrong thing well i think that anybody who would try their best to dismantle and wipe out one of the most meaningful pieces of legislation that has been passed in this country in the last forty years or so i don't understand them. after medicare and medicaid in terms of health care for low income people for elderly people for people who don't have much we've never seen anything as impact for as the affordable patient care act i mean more than thirty million people get an opportunity to have health insurance who've never had it before people get an

opportunity to have a regular physician that they can go and see and not find themselves in and out of emergency rooms all of the time receive in what i call episodic care and so that has to be a big boon and yet we have people saying let's this. they don't need it i mean even to the extent of suggesting that that people will die and we know that they will if they don't have access to basic health care and so in that kind of thinking and system the only people who would benefit would be the undertakers and that just means that they would get people sooner because they would die sooner and so i would never vote for example to repeal

something like the affordable care act no it's like the mother's milk of health care for congress and i also want to take a look at some of the bills that have been passed versus the ones that haven't been passed when you go ahead and bring out that graphic so some of the ones that have been passed as a zero zero muscle barrier act of two thousand and twelve renaming dozens of post offices construction of several courthouses and a ski area recreational opportunity and handsome an act of two thousand and eleven and the other ones that are still on the table as the farms bill finances for the military a measure to. protect the victims of domestic violence bills to combat cyber crimes and bills to fund the u.s. postal service so it looks like we can agree to name the post office buildings but we can't find ways to fund them isn't there a priority left here or are these just the easiest ones to get passed well i think you're exactly right many of the bills that have been passed have been passed on

suspension and of course what that means is you're not going to have a great deal of argument i mean who's going to argue about the naming of a post office who's going to argue about the naming of a federal building but we've been trying for example to get some real direction own what the postal service needs in order to remain viable and we can't get that bill passed we can't get agreement on that and i guess we're going to really have to wait until matters are taken by the citizenry and i guess if the citizenry will elect. individuals come in from their congressional districts to help create the composition of the house and senate that can work with the president then i think we will be in much better shape and much better position i don't have

a problem with the idea that people will sometimes disagree but you don't have to disagree just for the sake of disagree met i mean you disagree when there is a solid logical position or reason that you feel compelled to take no we've had people disagreeing because they wanted to try and make sure that the president of the united states is not reelected i think the people are going to reject that i think we're going to see come november that the people do want agreement that the people do want some logical decisions being made the people do want to create jobs they want to spur economic development they want to protect the rights of all people including immigrants and others who would come to

this country and i guess matters will be in the hands of the people and that's where ultimately they always are and i think we'll see the changes occur in november and congressman we're almost out of time but i do want to ask one quick question and a sense of us can you tell me the one bill that you would like to see passed before congress is out of session well i'd love to see the farm bill passed farmers need relief we had a tough summer drought and all kinds of things happen and love to see a transportation bill so that we can do some of all these infrastructure things that we need to do and i'd really like to see. but the people can reliable they would use they'd know what to expect and the most likely to see that was danny davis u.s. representative from the seventh district of illinois now there are several

important congressional elections coming up along with the presidential contest and this is an issue our team will continue to cover in the days and weeks leading up to the election. well the u.s. congress might not be able to agree on just about anything these days but canada's newly elected party qua sure seems to be getting the ball rolling the party has canceled the university tuition fee hikes repeal the laws to restrict public demonstrations close quebec's only nuclear power plant and put shale gas development in the province on hold and even pledge to reimburse a two hundred dollars health tax credit credit to residents that passed last year and that was just one day of parliament session so the most astounding part of this is that the p.q. party still must build coalitions with other parties in order to pass legislation so they can't do it by themselves so is this first day of parliament

a sign of things to come to discuss this earlier i was joined by jeremy the dard coast person for class here's what he's on to say. now and their tuition hike has been cancelled as was the repressive bill so that you you really like to call the government's just a few days ago this is stopping six months of hard struggle of accidents and the broader can access against those measures and it's our first things of course are not to the government but us to those hundreds of thousands of good backers who have shown up to demonstrations who have gone on strike for their students well known casseroles for weeks on end for this broader population adjoined and it is because of them that we have finally been able to block this vision i think now premier mara said as she wasn't decreasing funding to universities as you said so there are so then where is this money coming from to fund all these things i mean

we are avoiding tax had to issue hikes here where they're giving back rebates to the health tax and they're also cutting back and shale gas development so is the province going to go bankrupt at this rate. oh certainly not in terms of what we've been saying from the very start. made turning to asian phrases actually very very easy by making a few economic choices as turned out to be true the new government has announced that it was due. to taxation level additional taxation levels that the previous government cut down so this was slightly increased taxation on the richer population of going back and this fall out of course to function properly fund those services and accounts not only for maintaining a situation freeze however. wants to maintain its will see. but also maintaining funding to other public services now the premier was not yet the

clarence intuition freeze which we have demanded through this strike they have a clergyman to be liberal tradition i but they will be funding a summit on education and the next hundred days where they will be pushing indexing to the cost of living which is a measure real. things are not over yet but we can certainly find funds in this province to fund public services a previous government has. voluntarily. cut itself from certain sources of funding and we hope that those alternative sources of funding will be restored and i know that the parties have a quality one father and terry it is expressed in the past that i want sovereignty and critics say that all of these bills that have been passed in just twenty four hours is a move towards sovereignty or at least showing that that yes they want to move in that direction and are willing to take

a step to do it can i get your opinion on that. well because in the support sovereignty however they have said they would not propose a referendum unless the winning conditions are in their eyes and we don't think these are moves towards sovereignty i think these are political answers to strong social pressures and strong leverage that we built off during the strike because our movement was not about only those wishing high for the so many of course which directly affected us but also was about to come back to others public services what about. this unrestrained developments coming developments that this bill which is our natural resources all of these issues are very much discussed throughout his brain. was no other choice to avoid further mobilisation further talk of the mobilization present in her leadership to pull off on those promises in the very very early beginnings of her mandate that's what she's done i don't think it's

a move towards our g i think it's an answer to our social movements and we know that a primary arrived going to meet with canadian prime minister stephen harper next month what can we expect out of that well time will tell i expect her to be rather disappointed by the measure the progress is measures that mao is now putting into practice harper's government of course sponsors the very same your liberal policies started premier shop here for nine years sponsor of course the fact that was responding to political pressure and come back may very well president stephen harper as he faces as a national level a southern reversions social movements inspired by ours against these neoliberal measures that he sponsors and of course the fast pass because i thought relations astro's and once again too. to choose the governments.

fundamentally different than the rest of canada may very well throw the new grass of liberal politics on this country as a whole in the long run and we know the student movement has seemed to have paralyzed the liberal party and boosted the p.q. to power as the course is among other things is this an example that the protest movements are making their way to parliament or is it bigger than that i think we are building a culture of our in the long term accountable will hold these governments accountable those will be able to push for reforms and i think this victory here of the student movements and other social movements growth of this can be done again and that's how we want things to proceed from i want to strengthen our social movements build links with others in canada and the rest of the world and for that one we are it starts the next time you are ready to respond strongly with first

crisis with a further means of pressure and this slow for us here that builds through the strike will continue to exist and we will continue to use it to oppose any measure that goes against the interests of students and of the working class and i want to look at the bigger picture here and compare the canadian protests that you guys have experienced with the us protests in the occupy movement we've got an election coming up is it possible that we'll see a legislative change that the student movement brought about in quebec. you know it's interesting because we've been studying a lot of time reaching out soon with other movements and other progressive activists in the rest of the country and also in vienna states so we've been able to make up with the occupy movement link up with socialist struggles in the united states and perhaps start about the lessons learned from this struggle.

as these movements strengthen themselves up in the united states dr own movement does not seem to be with me and as they learn from authorities they're nice lords exploiting these movements of course to we've actually say we want victories two years ago we were not at this stage and perhaps the united states will see that it will spray well it won't be a mobile spring of course all of that is going to have to we'll have to see about that but our do we have a spokesperson for class thank you so much for your opinion sir appreciate them. switching gears now if you were anywhere near an apple store today chances are you saw the black friday like lines of people eager to get their hands on the new i phone five it's all part of a cult like culture surrounding the company the new model has a wider screen and better camera and map systems along with many other a little advances there and as we talked about earlier this week the new i phone isn't the only thing apple is working on these days the company is finding new or

more effective ways to control where you use your phone but as both public and private sector look into new ways to rein in the wild west known as the internet others are finding a way to fight back r.t. web producer and your blake is this an inside look at crypto parties and what they mean for your digital privacy. right now right this second you're being watched no there might not be spies snooping around the corner or a vast surveillance system that may or may not be catching your every move what is for certain though is just about any activity conducted on computers can be collected and monitored but is there something you can do about it the answer is yes it's called the crypto party and they're happening right now around the world in places like boston chicago oakland in cairo people are getting together and learning about the basics of digital encryption from learning how to use the tor project a program that allows people to connect to the internet by sending data through

a series of nodes to essentially make traffic almost impossible to monitor or using a simple plugin to ensure conversations are encrypted from others here a beginner's guide computer cryptography is curate out in a single setting where amateurs novices experts and well anyone can explore and learn how to make sure what's meant for one person isn't put out there for everyone scoping out the agendas of some of these advanced crypto party dot org one can see that discussion is largely cover items such as smartphone security but some sort almost all of them as an introduction to the tor project developer nadeem kobe c. has concentrated his efforts in recent years on crypto cat a simple browser plug and that allows two or more people to communicate over the web off the record well a lot of people like to use facebook shots and google talk and you know the web services like that and that's great but these services actually communicate what you're talking about to facebook and google and there is no privacy you know your communications can easily be intercepted by these parties and also by governmental

organizations so cryptic out does the same thing it tries to establish a similar web service that's easy to use just as easy to use but at the same time there's also a transparent layer of encryption and all programs like the tor project encrypt or cat are being made so even americans can communicate freely with one another and might be the best move of any in hopes of keeping the internet open. with the launch of wiki leaks in two thousand and six activists around the world were given an established relatively accessible outlet to publish secrets about repressive regimes and air other dirty laundry that some states might not want out in the open but despite president barack obama's campaign promise is for the most transparent administration ever the government has ramped up its attack and whistleblowers in fact just recently the house of representatives voted three new the foreign intelligence surveillance act lets the government spy on e-mails and phone calls they suspect to be sent to anyone outside of the united states so whether you're a whistleblower or just a regular computer user who wants to keep their personal communications personal

there is a need for incursion even in two thousand and twelve even in the united states but it doesn't have to be a bad thing it's a reason to party in washington and you blake are to do. and that's going to do it for the news for tonight but we sure to tune in next week for a brand new line up the united states is tough on terrorists but it looks like the definition can be subjective depending on who bears the brunt of the attacks after years of intense lobbying the iranian opposition group known as the m. e. k. will be removed from the state department's terrorist list we'll see if they really deserve the ax next week plus doctors are supposed to be miracle workers that save you from death right or wrong a prominent surgeon shines light on this medicine industry is dirty little secret and finally neuroscientists are joining the ranks of the military by finding ways to manipulate human brains from everything from electromagnetic by.