in. a satirical newspaper a prankster german media with fake evidence of a russian troll farm is meddling in the country's politics live on the program we've got the prankster also coming up more on the going home for suspected russian twitter is believed to have blocked nearly a colleague's belonging to conservative americans. a trial put on ice a medal winning russian curler who's tested positive for a banned substance in the winter olympics will now not take his case to the court of arbitration for sport we discover why.

just after ten pm here in moscow on fariba twenty first welcome to our to international i mean you know neal good to have your company our top story german tabloid billed published what they thought was evidence of the activities of a russian troll farm but the lead turned out to be far from concrete rock as he have joined me earlier with the details. bild rushed into this when they thought they had a real bombshell on their hands they thought that they would incite a national scandal a huge political scandal basically what happened is they got these allegedly leaked e-mails which involved the socialists the s.p.d. there precisely specifically their youth wing leader kevin kunar who was allegedly talking to a russian border factory to. an agent

a russian agent who introduced himself as yuri what they were talking about according to the e-mail exchange is the s.p.d. kevin kuhn is running a campaign against forming a coalition government with the angular merkel's own party. it's called the google the group will campaign and the russian yuri allegedly offered to use the use of his bots he'd sell the s.p.d. his bots to sway public opinion in germany and de rail this effort to build a coalition would be you know this would be a huge story the first direct evidence of russian meddling in germany's in germany is in politics. we've got the we've got the exchange itself and honestly it's something out of a spider movie or tacky one at that but here are some bits from it did kevin i'm ury i'd like to talk to you about supporting your no grow cold campaign

thanks for your mail jay already told me to expect a man from you but just to be sure could you name me g.'s favorite beverage as you can certainly understand this is a delicate matter mere mere multi ginger. dear yuri perfect that's a relief so what can you offer me basically we can offer you everything an opinion campaign with bots again schultz social bots on twitter or facebook or even a targeted facebook advertising campaign i think a targeted advertising campaign on facebook would be appreciated by the now graco movement how much money would you invest in these ads we've already roughly calculated the campaign and expect to pay around four thousand to five thousand euros we've included the social bots don't worry we'll pay from frankfurt the payment will not be traceable hi you really sounds good i'll collect the data for the facebook audience and send all the information to you soon so you can watch the

campaign immediately as long as it looks like juices pay for their ads i'm not worried looking forward. bild went into this swinging the huge picture of the front page of the title new dirtily s.p.d. builders very anti s.p.d. so with no surprise you know they dived into the story that was on friday that was on friday by wednesday satirists from from the tannic satirical magazine revealed that they were behind the entire email exchange they faked the entire thing and they left bill the red faced because many news outlets had seen this exchange german news outlets they had thought will you know this is this is new but suspicious a little bit suspect checked it exactly bill they had no such reservations it

emerged that the e-mail address that they that this e-mail exchange tributed to kevin kuhn of the leader of the species youth wing was fake you can't send emails from this email address and his real email address and with s.p.d. dot de so you know they they fail to carry out my basic checks and checks and very few occasions to build was left red faced and now there's. this saying themselves they should a statement on facebook on their website. saying that this just goes to show builds agenda an anonymous e-mail two or three calls and build prints that fits its agenda. well tannic has also. been online on twitter this milking this for all it's worth on twitter. the hash tag meal meal gate.

ginger of course being the drink the password drink mentioned in the email exchange . you know they're having a good laugh on twitter bill these days and what small bills while admitting that the e-mail exchange is fake they're still trying to defend themselves saying that you know they tried to grasping at straws saying that this e-mail exchange originated from the s.p.d. servers and what not but a good laugh had google around. for more on the story i'm very happy to say that we're joined live on the program by moritz and editor are titanic magazine who as we just heard came up with the idea for their prank you very welcome. did you ever imagine that the prank would work you know this is one of the most read if not the most read newspaper in germany yet they run your story without

a lot of fact checking yes like you said build is a tabloid magazine. we turn it over to record magazine we worked with the same. methods as built so we knew how to finkel i can boot editor and what we did was we came up with a story that was like inspired to just sat and we had a good feeling that this would work especially with bill. ran a campaign against the. social democratic party which not as a part of what was your intent in carrying out the prank in the first place. our intent was to spin this story more further and there seems to be no election in the past two years where there wasn't talk of russian meddling or interference but this s.p.d.

voting which is now evident in germany about whether they go into the coalition with merkel or not there were no rumors about russian meddling and we thought this this cannot be we have to. make a make an alliance with the boot the tabloids push a story about russian meddling. as we see now it works perfectly it just on that point what was your purpose in choosing russian truelove is there a thirst for anti russian stories fueling this is it so that it's there in society that people want to read it by this whether or not it's true is perhaps a secondary thing yes i think there are people who want this story to be true at least the editors built because russian trolls are interesting just like james bond movies which are very successful in germany as

well so we just thought it was a good story. yeah i think it worked perfectly there are other newspapers of course who saw all the. fake links in this particular the email thing but build did not do that and pushed ahead with what they thought was going to be an exclusive story is that why you think they did that because the the thirst for exclusive to get their first you know encompasses is much more important than the actual details that fox in other words. yes i think so we knew what we had to put in this story to make it interesting for built when there's a story like this for four built they don't care about details it's only interesting if the story is good and it was a good story indeed it was. like a good movie i hope it will be made into a movie sometime yeah he said you thought like build editors would think. do you

think that they're prone to things like this happening in the future perhaps a newspaper like this and perhaps other tabloids or other media in the country perhaps take things at face value that need a little bit more checking in the future. i think. i don't think this will happen again because built already did it and i think other newspapers and media. will fact checking but very glad about the story because i think we can all learn from this and i'm very happy you know to speak to a russian t.v. station because i think if people in russia or at the kremlin want information about how to deal with german newspapers they can contact us we're very cheap just a few bitcoins and we give everything away yeah it's particular with the value of bitcoins going up and down you might be very good value and just finally the german

people are actually are they getting a little bit more savvy to things that are perhaps fake news are not fake news and things like this perhaps really particularly the fallout from this because billed has been criticized for doing for doing this for just going ahead without the correct fact checking do you think the german people are happy without that they've been caught. i think no i think the readers of built just like the editors at build there are hopeless cases so you can't help them i don't think anyone will learn anything. new we ignore the people at build or german politicians or the german people but it was a good laugh now. and i think that's worth something yeah and thanks for coming on the program and sharing your view on this it certainly was a good for a headline or to hurt get

a read titanic my guess in the satirical newspaper who came up with the idea for the prank thank you thank you. know some people on twitter in the us are seeing their accounts blocked and their list of followers deleted twitter has allegedly branded some people with conservative views as bots. how soon to be trans parents thousands have accounts and will receive the same passage at the same moment to provide and then a texan through. to it's enough to know most value is simply because i'm conservative sixpence and live chrissy i wonder how many votes i'm wrong response from last tonight conservative twitter users are accusing twitter of intentionally restricting or blocking right leaning voices and they're even holding the company responsible for missing followers calling it

a great twitter purge and some famous users have even been blocked like mikes or no vision of the son of michael flynn and it's pretty widespread the hash tag twitter lockout has even been trending on social media but no official comments from twitter as yet some people online think that it could be a purge of so-called russian bot accounts is this all comes amid claims of alleged russian influence but twitter and nouns back in january that they would be doing this purge to combat so-called russian influence but it seems to have backfired they're now claims that real people were locked out of their accounts in fact when twitter launched the first wave of purges there was an american woman whose twitter account was suspended because an employee thought she was a russian bot when i realized it was permanent i was a little shot twitter kept saying that it was a permanent ban suspension because of harassment and i couldn't get them to explain to me who had our red state came back and told that it was because i was part of a russian operative or you being with. us. that i was somehow working for russia

part of the russian bots that were. sending out negative information during the election so well for some time now twitter has been helping the u.s. government catch these magical russian bots who somehow manage to sway elections and they've detected a massive number of them let's look back at a project veritas investigation for an idea on how they judge who's a russian and who's not a russian by. you know i don't want to you know. i don't know this and he goes. yeah like. the problem is i was. going to do it for you. we also spoke to christian munch you're a lawyer political activist. candidate he believes that the move goes against one of america's quirks values freedom of speech form like twitter facebook or

instagram these are forms where people have the ability of expressing their freedom of speech and their opinions i think that that's the point of these social media sites so if they begin to censor people just because they're coming under pressure then you know what's going to come next i think that this country has been characterized as always for the protection of freedom of speech regardless of what you think and as long as the message that you're portraying is not racially offensive or sexually offensive and you know other ways possible then you can not censor the opinion of a person simply because they go against you or simply because you disagree with them. on the program time to continue our look at recent discoveries from japan's official archives which shed light on the grim government run eugenics program which left foundations of people infertile over the decades lost in force.

their story. records of only a fraction of the people subjected to sterilization have been revealed but this may finally help the victims to get justice after decades of suffering and some are already taking action has a hard time going through the middle school that's when i was diagnosed with a mental disability my teacher took me for a medical check and then i was taken to hospital that's when i remember at home my parents told me that i was operated on and now i cannot have babies my father the school has to sign documents by my teacher and welfare offices but there are many more victims the government should make apologies and pay compensation to them it's believe they're up to twenty five thousand victims all under the eugenics protection law in force for almost forty years as late as the mid ninety's the procedures were in order to quote preserve the purity of the japanese race people with mental disabilities or hereditary diseases or targeted but mr agnosis of such conditions was common causing even more unnecessary suffering we managed to speak to the relative of one such victim when i got married my mother in law told me that

my sister has been sterilized after i made an information disclosure request i found out she was only fifteen when the ration took place genetic mental disease was the only listed reason for her sterilization however it is not true when she was a one year old she became mentally handicapped because of the anesthesia three different doctors gave her so she didn't have a genetic condition and over sixteen thousand cases the procedure was even carried out without consent and shockingly victims were as young as nine years old appeal to admit the practice had taken place were dismissed for years with victims being told that the evidence was simply gone the only show the question is who's responsible for all of this to me is the government's fault thanks akita the program as well as the national legislature which a doctor the law needs to take responsibility and make apologies a soonest possible doctors well sort of. sponsible but in

a way that we used by the government. i think that the now defunct eugenic protection law existed for the sole purpose to reject a band of disabled. when i requested the disclosure of the documents regarding my sister surgery and they told me the files which are said to have been strictly process had been thrown away the evidence of the mutilation of my sister's body will simply trashed in the case of another victim mrs zucker the documents were thrown into the fire when i heard about it i was beside myself with anger. hotlines have been set up to bring together big times for what's likely to be an extremely long and traumatic battle for justice but while victims one compensation they say money isn't the main reason their goal is to create awareness to ensure that horrors like this never take place again. or staying in asia and moving to the winter olympics inside a career where

a russian curler who won bronze and later tested positive for doping will have to return his medal lobby's rick according to the russian curling federation the athlete earlier said he wouldn't take his case to the court of arbitration for sport the highest sports court in the land. was in pune chang for us now with more on how the situation unfolded this is really unbelievable turn of events just thirteen hours before the court of arbitration for sport hearing on the russian curlers case was meant to begin the russian astley who won his country its first ever olympic medal and curling but then tested positive for twice at these winter olympics said that he's refusing to proceed with the arbitration. it's silly to deny it don't be rude violations when the presence of a prohibited substance was confirmed by to doping tests i'm ready for the verdict which is predictably the same in all cases i weighed up the pros and cons and

decided to withdraw from the cas hearings i think in this situation it's useless and senseless so alexander crucial needs he has admitted that there was a formal violation of anti-doping rules although he maintains that he has never taken muldowney and pills on purpose and the concentration of the drug and his body from these two doping tests points to single use and this could have played in favor of the athlete if he were able to prove that there was some sort of sabotage and and the last couple of days we heard other curlers and even coaches say that someone could have spiked alexander's food or drinks plus the man who invented the drug don't e m house confirmed that if you take the pill once or twice it's absolutely useless military is not medici in

which can be. used once or twice or three times you should take me with an a for a for fourteen days and costs ease of treatment is mutilate the recommended by but i'd use a. one man's three mon's even six months up to you it depends on the. disease the patients have. it is still very early morning here in south korea and to get the reaction of the international olympic committee the russian side and all the others here at the winter olympics i guess we'll have to wait till thursday afternoon everyone really expected a long legal battle but now it seems it's not happening plus something else that you have to bear in mind is that the audio cd was meant to announce its decision on february twenty fourth on the possible cancellation of the band of russia's

national committee and also on whether to allow the russians to march on their flag at the closing ceremony and everyone thought that this ruling depended on alexander's case what's going to happen to it now is a very serious question and just staying at the games earlier only whedon state two world records were broken in the space of just a quarter of an hour by russian up cleats the first was set by figure skater medved event in the women the short program and then her score was topped by fifteen year old teammates alina. r t has a special report on the two girls who are close friends in life on rivals on ice you can see it out in a web site. thank you. we we . was.

your biggest fear was excuse me once again there is a new way that i was the only bad part of this because you know in that my heart was you know what i was going to be a leader. was i think which. was yesterday and so yes just like. anything cancer can produce if. you're going to say something i see that. you. lose. thank you thank you.

i was issuing you know thank you. he knew. he could be. a prominent by really human rights activists job has been sentenced to five years in prison for criticise in the gulf monarchies role in the war in yemen on twitter he's already serving a two year sentence for previously having spoken out against the regime but john rose to prominence as an opposition leader during the mass pro democracy protests back in twenty eleven he's also president of the bahrain center for rights human. it's between twenty twelve and twenty fourteen he was imprisoned for organizing on or through rice demonstrations in the two years he's currently serving one hundred

done for quote publishing and. rumors and false news and current day in connection with a number of t.v. interviews that he gave in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen to remind you that by really uprising started during the arab spring a wave of protests across the middle east and twenty eleven the main demands of the opposition were more rights for the shia population and the application of the king of bahrain however police responded with what's been described as a brutal crackdown by senior adviser as the the bahrain center for human rights told us the latest verdict against an appeal or a job is completely unjust while the thumb to mockery to just a slap to the rule of law human rights values and standards and principles. after having more than twenty court hearings. to preserve substantial evidence to charge an a b.

. was he focused on warning. on the destructive result of war in yemen he called upon to resort to dialogue to peace rather than to done to war on destruction. being charged today for expressing his views openly. well rights groups are trying to draw attention to this case human rights watch asked by rians allies to push for an ability to mediate release while international has been calling on the king of bahrain to free no appeal. launched a twitter campaign. a russian boy who was left stranded in iraqi territory previously held by a slum mixtape has been brought back to russia to be reunited with relatives his parents are believed to have traveled to iraq to join the terror group here in russia his grandparents are waiting for him medina cots never was are to

a mosque or a port when he arrived. this is a three year old boy who is going back home from the orphanage in baghdad is happy he is finally going to see his family again here at the moscow airport the child looked tired and lost he was trying to hide his face from all the cameras and didn't respond to any questions or when he was called by his name he doesn't know what happened to his mother nor does he remember his father is too small to understand what happened to his parents that small boys traumatized is missing one little finger on his left hand and the injury that he sustained during a shallowing attack has spent over five months in an orphanage while all his documents were prepared for him to be able to leave iraq zaid has a little brother who's only one year old but his status still unknown moscow is not

his final destination his next step is travel to the city of grozny where his grandparents are waiting for him. here to moshe. was. that this was your idea to see which would show just. what the group will those years there's been this. group. who grew up in the room who do. you most i'm sure you furious.

bach and huff an arse time more programs right ahead here on our two international . i have to return to we're going underground fifty three years to the day of the assassination of anti imperialist human rights activist malcolm x. coming up in the show as us actors resign dawson and sarah silverman joining jeremy corbyn alice walker and angela davis in calling for israel to release palestinian teenager i had tell me we speak to professor norman finkelstein about the collusion of human rights organizations as more planes from israel on by britain again bomb gaza from the headlines the bank that likes to leave its clients hanging and i spy colbert in westminster but did he spied for

a country in the eastern block check it out all the civil war coming up in today's going underground but first not even elite mainstream media paid much attention to israel's prime minister in the past few days he brandished a bit of alleged iranian drone at the munich security conference attended by u.k. minority government be to theresa may and russian foreign minister sergei lavrov so given we have yet to interview anyone from the israeli government or the israeli embassy in london on this show has been even netanyahu. there's a piece of very very gross. what's left of the after we started there. are a lot of years you can see for so some commentators expressed doubt about politicians bringing props for their speeches arac declared eighty five hundred liters of anthrax but aside from colin powells un security council justifications for mass killing in iraq it was iranians foreign minister speaking in munich.