so. twitter releases confidential information about how much this channel spends on ads with the social network as a part of a report on alleged russian meddling and the u.s. election. meanwhile wiki leaks publishes an e-mail exchange between hillary clinton's campaign chief and a facebook official who similarly pledges support in the two thousand and sixteen u.s. presidential election. spain's catalonia is poised to vote on independence from madrid but the authorities increasing pressure by moving in thousands of police to the region un human rights experts are voicing their concerns. and there are fears

a terrorist group is exploiting the fate of myanmar's persecuted broken broken minority to raise money for its activities. this is r t international coming to you live from moscow where it's just turned four pm. thank you for joining us this hour. twitter has unveiled a report on how it battled alleged russian interference and the two thousand and sixteen u.s. election taking aim at r.t. in the process according to the statement the social network giant revealed to the u.s. senate confidential information on artie's ad out like twitter claims a little vaguely that over a thousand tweets quote definitely or potentially targeted the u.s. market artie's editor in chief margarita simonyan however noted all media outlets promote themselves. twitter has disclosed in congress

a monstrous information we spend money on our own ad campaigns as all media organizations in the world do now we have to go even further and i honestly confess we also spend money on ads in airports taxes billboards the internet on t.v. and radio commercials were even on c.n.n. . artie's daniel hawkins joins me now live in the studio with more on the story ok so daniel tell us a bit about what the report twitter has released had to say this is the latest chapter in the russian election hacking saga in this time of social media that is involved in this twitter's release they report to congress investigating those alleged russian hacking links back in twenty six the report discusses a lot of information about troll account supports those automated call in authentic accounts on the social platform or twitter describes as malicious or the way that it. was many hundreds of which they subsequently biodata discovering them if that's

true but of course into the context of how many accounts there are that's not really too many yeah and those parts those accounts those were officially linked to russia well you would think so but twitter also mentions it was unable to actually verify any solid or specific connection to russia with these accounts take a listen to their own words we have not found accounts associated with this activity to have obvious russian origin but some of the accounts appear to have been automated. what does our cello have to do with all this then all or to get a special mention amongst julies the solace of trolls and bots and spam accounts they twitter revealed the amount of spending. on social media has already been chief said quite rightly a quote normal practice right now for many shells out of tires on social media quite why though is. bustling really because there's no specific allegation of any wrongdoing there against the whatsoever so what's there also raises questions as

well today we have twitter and it seems like social media just keeps going to drag into this over and over you know it was just a few weeks ago that facebook had a similar story facebook allegedly identified one hundred thousand dollars worth of spending as many as three thousand votes that was between the period of june twenty fifteen to may twenty seventh you know those were also allegedly linked to russian bots and russian. control factories so-called troll factories the question has to be lost in the grand scheme of things one hundred thousand dollars over the course of two years fifty thousand dollars a year is that really enough do you think to influence and change the outcome of an election we'll leave it to the viewers to decide on trump certainly seems to think there isn't any substance in these allegations let's take a listen the from him and by the way folks just in case you like curious. know russia did not help me ok russia. i call it the russian hopes one of the great hopes is actually that's the thing i was thinking about and

that's the thing that the democrats did best they lost the election and they didn't know what happened. and they needed an excuse so they said russia. now some media would have that the kremlin this alleged influence goes even beyond the twenty six the election of the kremlin is actually responsible for sowing discord problems within us society it's going to control most recently in fact the black gloves mounts a movement on the racial tensions and have taken place as well we can take a listen to that as well. that was bought by this russian troll farm on facebook why is a black live matter ad that was targeted specifically to the cities of baltimore and ferguson missouri and is based on my conversation my source is that the goal here was really about creating chaos they really make it seem like the kremlin's

reach has no end whatsoever and the allegations of russian meddling are often based exclusively on claims coming from u.s. officials today always hold up here that's what i mean just take the latest one where the department of homeland security actually informed officials in twenty one states that they had been targeted or they've been victims of an alleged attempted to hack attack boy the russians or russian linked accounts with regards to the twenty sixth the election are some of those states are actually come back and said hang on a minute this isn't the case at all texas for example and one of them the secretary of state for their role and. he said i'm just quoting him directly here that his office is the time and conclusively that it's agency website was not targeted and furthermore the d.h.s.s. has relied on incorrect information so they seem pretty certain that the information is wrong wisconsin is another state they have actually said that they were a victim of an attempted some sort but it was actually the department of workforce

development which oversees obviously employment and benefits etc that was targeted nothing to do with elections california is another one and one of the most important states they said the system targeted was the state's department of technology but that department doesn't. service is so good questions have to be raised with these modes are going to go just how many of them hold up what i was you quite rightly said earlier when russian hocking hits the media it's a big headline when the accusations of the there's less all the fuss made about it thank you so much for saying across that rather complicated story at this point already just keeps piling on it feels like every day r.t. is daniel hawkins thank you so much. while western media and twitter have been busy looking for russian fingerprints around the u.s. election wiki leaks pointed out that a social network giant even tried to back one side in the campaign the whistleblower published in the e-mail in which facebook's chief operating officer proposes helping hillary clinton's campaign chief sheryl sandberg added she was

thrilled about the progress hillary was making the e-mail exchanges dates back to the u.s. presidential campaign in two thousand and sixteen let's get more our more on this from our correspondent. ali tell us what was significant in those e-mails well wiki leaks has really put into perspective because on the one hand you've got the u.s. senate struggling to find that clear link between the alleged russian meddling in the u.s. elections and the kremlin and on the other hand you've got what julian asuncion is just sort of brought back to the surface from that trove of leaked predestiny e-mails and that's that we have clear evidence in these e-mails that facebook expressed no preference for hillary clinton in the run up to the twenty sixteen election in the u.s. take a listen to an exchange between john podesta ed that's is hillary clinton's former campaign manager and sheryl sandberg the chief operating officer of facebook.

i still want hillary rodham clinton to win badly i'm still here to help as i can i'm thrilled at the progress hillary's making going to help and support you can see it to working with you to elect the first woman president of the united states. well these e-mails beg the question is the u.s. senate intelligence committee going to be as interested in hillary clinton's campaign manager working with facebook to elect clinton as they are in russia allegedly hacking the u.s. elections and does the u.s. senate know for example also from these leaked e-mails that mark zuckerberg facebook c.e.o. wrote a personal e-mail to protest back in august twenty fifty saying that he enjoyed spending time with the protest and that their conversation gave zaka bug quote

a lot to think about now infer what you will from that but that will read like textbook lobbying to a lot of people and i think it's safe to assume that the silicon valley or the giant tech companies that were gunning for hillary in the run up to the u.s. elections. many viewers will remember was accused of calibrating their search results in favor of hillary clinton's campaign and subsequent leaks have revealed that eric schmidt who's the chairman of alphabet that's the parent company of google he had close personal ties with the clinton campaign take a listen to a memo written about schmidt by clinton's digital strategist i have been kept apprised of the work being done by eric schmidt's group and others working directly and indirectly with your team on the whole i am comfortable with where we stand and confident in our roadmap to launch day and beyond. would be

interesting to see is that no one appears to care about the links between these giant tech companies and the clinton campaign these are large companies that control huge flares of information but no one seems to have taken any notice of this clear preference that they found for the hillary clinton campaign rest assured for anyone who is convinced we have gone to in touch with facebook and we asking them if they're going to be reporting themselves to the u.s. senate intelligence committee for alleged links to hillary clinton's campaign it will of course be very interesting to see what if any response we get from facebook . reporting live from london thank you know. kilmartin explains how the scale of alleged russian interference is being blown out of proportion in the us. if you've been watching american t.v. lately you probably think you know everything there is to know about russian

propaganda and where to find it supposedly the vast plot to deprive hillary clinton of her presidential crown includes election meddling wiki leaks and of course this network russia's hacked into a lot of things russia was behind the election meddling russian hackers the criminal clan well according to certain voices in u.s. media and in congress this is just the tip of the iceberg because when it comes to russian trolls you should always expect the unexpected read it. a region and middle earth where trolls live the dark side of social media breeding ground for trolls now the news aggregator reddit the fourth most popular website in the united states may be a vehicle for russian subversion according to u.s. senator mark webb and there's a conservative news web site the drudge report it's also a tool of russian propaganda well that claim comes from media matters a center that's dedicated to quote correcting conservative dissin from ation drudge

has used his sights as a weapon traffic by applying for russian propaganda sites and even sports can't escape russia spell the media's covering trump spat with the n.f.l. players around the clock but somehow it's russia that spurning this debate over patriotism at football games hashtag ing out taken and also asked checking out what caught n.f.l. they were chicken botia of the argument this past weekend and pushing them off their troll farms as much as they could to try to just raise the noise level in america yes those russian trolls are pretty hard to find let's see if average new yorkers are just as good at spotting them as our lawmakers and the media which scandal was said to be the result of russian trolls by a u.s. senator was it a an f l players not standing up for the pledge or for the flag. was it b. confederate monuments or c.

the california independence moment california independence movement actually it was the first one it was a. a you're right see because i don't know i really don't know do you believe that kid no i don't know who is a russian agent is it alexander ovechkin matt drudge or tom cruise tom cruise no doubt that tom cruise strikes you as a risky he has that now definitely tom cruise but maybe i don't i don't even know the dude to be honest he's an at drudge drudge report you think he's a russian agent maybe that a is known to be very kerry close to russia but. since that's well known us a b. and you're right which is used as a tool for russian propaganda according to this same us senator is it a fox news be read it or see snap chat. read it yeah you're right about that quoting to us and i would probably be snapped up

actually it's read it it's in one of those i would say b. and that's what yeah the same guy said that read it down right so let me ask you now do you buy this idea that rush is everywhere russian trolls are in fla anon. do you buy that i think it's all over the internet so it has to be true but unfortunately the the country prefers to quick explanations without any facts or substantiation behind it cable mop and r.t. new york. daniel mcadams from the ron paul institute believes that the whole russia hacking story is falling apart due to lack of evidence that russia was linked to the us election anyway. i think the whole story has already fallen apart for the most part at first it was the russian government spend one hundred thousand dollars and facebook ads to support president trump well that completely fell apart so they started saying that this troll army somewhere in st petersburg spent this money

that's never been shown to anyone that's never been proven that's becky lation we've never seen any of the ads some of them we told our pro hillary and we're anti hillary some of. them are anti trump i don't even know what they're trying to say of the united states i thinks is now in the grips of a kind of a mass hysteria that we've certainly not seen since the height of the cold war maybe even going back to the salem witch trials where complete irrationality has taken over if it's a cloudy day it must be the russians involved it's absolutely hysterical. more after a short break stay with us. because there's a survival guide book stacie just like all the stars simply have all these are. there are you going to get them back. next year. oh heck no. repatriations look at the rest of seventy years. bill of the separate kaiser report

. here's what people have been saying about rejected in the us is it actually just pull along awesome the only show i go out of my way to find you know what it is the really packs a punch oh yeah it is the john oliver of r t america is doing the same we are apparently better than blue. sea people you've never heard of love redacted tonight i'm president of the world bank so they. were. seriously send us an e-mail. the modern international border centers on two basic principles the sanctity of sovereign borders and self-determination in this regard the kurdish question is particularly vexing and even dangerous will some thirty million kurds ever.

welcome back we go back to our top story over twitter releasing a report on our team's ad outlay we can now cross live to speak with david coburn a british army piece for the u.k. independence party now what do you make of this report from twitter and its references to r.t. and alleged russian meddling. well in the one nine hundred fifty s. the americans used to break marshals for. all this stuff seems that russia is getting the credit so i would not this whole thing is this is a mess the. president was elected because people were sick today of all the nonsense that was going on in america and they wanted someone to sort it out and he seemed to the man sorted out and what ever happened in the background is just so much conversation the zite guy used was definitely with president. he is present

united states i don't all the liberals and the lefties and the usual suspects are all trying to blame somebody and of course why not blame the russians they used to be used to blame the martians and then i have to simply most of all the people used to be the right wing america blaming the russians now is a left wing so i don't think it makes any difference to the to the outcome of the elation and hasn't made any difference to the outcome of the election of america now this report repeats a trend that we've been seeing that there is no evidence to back up its claims that the accounts were actually linked to russia so why do you think they chose to post the report at all and still point the finger at russia. now because you're convenient i'm surprised you have a lame general lord called wallace who lost the war of american independence with britain i think that there's always conspiracy theories that russia sees to be convenient they don't like president putin because president putin brings all the

two to a mess that is. in parts of the world syria whatever they don't like him so therefore he's a very convenient whipping boy. you know i i think the whole thing is laughable because everybody knew in america people were sick to death of the clintons they're sick to death of the american democrats they were sick to death of obama they wanted proper government and they knew they could get that. and so they voted for trump oldest stuff is morning and completely by a bunch of lefties who lost they lost because their ideas were wrong their principles were wrong and they were ruining your night to see so america and president clinton's going to sort it out. just last week i believe it was facebook laying blame at the kremlin's feet and now we have twitter do you think social media giants excitement to jump on the russian allegations bandwagon could have anything to do with all the pressure put on them in the aftermath of the

intelligence report on alleged russian hacking. well the internet is a great big bubble the vast majority of people don't take an interest in the except for whatever sports or holby they happen to have but there's this whole sorts of sphere go all political people sitting in their rooms playing with their computers and argue about this and that so i mean it's all just so much hot air. and blame for this being aimed at russia it's just well it's just ridiculous i mean people in america were sick today and they wanted something different and the liberals are just trying to find a way of blaming someone for the fact that they have their woman lost she lost because she was right at the job she did not good for president united states people didn't want to. you know that she just didn't appeal to the vast of a majority of americans a lot of these claims of russian hacking and being based ellen nothing with no

evidence to back them up and that happened again with some of the states in the united states they were alleged that twenty one states were hacked but many are coming forward saying that didn't happen at all do you think that undermines the credibility of other claims against russia. well i think it does i mean of course you know russia like any country britain i'm sure in every other country are doing things to favor their own causes in america or wherever else and this is just the way of things i'm sure there are plenty of people trying to affect things in russia when mr putin was standing you know just the way it goes but to be honest i don't think it was a great deal of undermining of the american democratic system quite frankly there are plenty of people on the internet saying that he didn't approve the democrats he didn't approve hillary clinton they thought obama run the america in a bad way and they wanted dramatic change and they got to the wanted somebody

different and they got the man and i don't think whatever russia was doing we were affected it that much these people are speaking over nothing you know i think when richard nixon there was. you know he felt that oh there is some of these people thought that there was some sort of shenanigans when he was standing against kennedy in one thousand nine hundred eighty you know. as i said he stole it fair and square you know it's the way it goes you know he won he won the election the vast majority of americans seemed to want him and hillary clinton was not the best candidate for the job and everybody knew that we should to put her up if they'd really wanted to when they should put up someone other than hillary clinton who had a lot of background. mr david coburn a british i mean for the u.k. independence party thank you so much for your time today and your insights on the topic. with the spanish region of catalonia poised to vote on

independence on sunday un human rights experts are voicing concern over the spanish government's bid to block the rup referendum and while thousands of catalans have come out in show of their support for the vote some have also made clear they're against it. was . fearless authorities have stepped up efforts to prevent the referendum from taking place fourteen rigid regional officials have already been arrested and extra police forces have been deployed to the region madrid has ordered officers to shut down all polling stations as the central government calls the vote illegal. get

a fit. what is being it's time to next sunday has been declared illegal by the constitutional court seek it out and the courts are asking that it doesn't take place this is a line in the sand when it absolutely determined to make sure the law is respected . get this thing interested by so called get anyone describing the current situation and would think that in catalonia they are hiding weapons of mass destruction a nuclear arsenal where the world's largest drug called the description is quite rightly apocalyptic in which the whole state has put itself into motion two out of every three anti-riot police officers and now in catalonia to stop what something is terribly criminal is a referendum this is not only absurd but it isn't going to stop the referendum. pro independence activists have even printed out packs of ballot papers at a secret location and volunteers are handing them out to people who want to vote our correspondent went to one of the warehouses where papers were seized by police . the national guard the police has been sent over this morning to this

area here as you can see probably behind me and they have been asked by the general attorney of spain to stop anybody to full going in or out with any material whatsoever this is obviously to prevent the material that is supposed to be useful the election to be handed over to all the voting centers a spread all across barcelona so let's try to talk to the local people to see what the people around here think about what's going on with the police and for the referendum this sunday but i'm not i don't i don't think the problem is the presence of the police they're just following orders. related. forces that we have right here continuously trying to invalidate the vote trying to confiscate the ballot boxes as if it work ok no heroin shipment because of them this is worse than drugs. a humanitarian and human rights nightmare that's how the

u.n. secretary general describes the ongoing situation in myanmar which has already resulted in the mass displacement of the real hin just ethnic minority hundreds of thousands have fled to bangladesh to escape what is being described as ethnic cleansing by human rights organizations. the situation is spittles into the world's fastest developing graph huge emergency and the humanitarian and human rights night's match . but. now there are claims that the plight of the real hinges is being exploited by

a terrorist organization no less the pakistan based militant group is distributing leaflets asking for donations the leaflets have appeared in newspapers and mentioned mosques and houses destroyed in me and mark let's take a closer look at the terror group itself it's one of the biggest islamic militant organizations in south asia and reportedly was funded by osama bin laden if he is accusations of conducting terror attacks and was recognized as a terrorist organization by a number of countries including the us russia and the e.u. we spoke to paul co-author of the book pakistan terrorism ground zero he thinks the terrorists could capitalize on the crisis using raised money for their own purposes . we have actually seen not only for life. which is the charity to front off. but the religious ultra right. has been given a new life time to the crisis in myanmar there is

a possibility. of me use this crisis for two purposes number one as i have said believe me when you believe this crisis is to claim more legit you may see for date existence number two the me use these finances for data activities inside and outside. don't forget you can find us on all of your favorite social networks twitter facebook and youtube and of course you can always had to our website r.t. dot com to find all of today's top stories and more i'll be back at the top the hour so do stay with us.