the headline stories the french interior minister the country. is the. enemy from within. we are not with any religion. with islamist ideology. grip muslim countries over among the friends of the right. they just his previous remarks islam is a. democracy is not considered democracy.

is playing with fire. reports on the us election potentially misleading senators accuse the social media . around the clock across the world this is your r t international from the team and myself you know me a welcome to the program. our top story france is reeling from yet another tragedy after a killing spree in a church in the southern city of niece the country's interior minister has warned the nation that more attacks are likely. france is at war we are

at war with an enemy from within and from without we are not at war with any religion we are war with islamist ideology islam islam is a form of 21st century fascism. of a church knife from page happened 2 weeks after the beheading of a teacher in paris who had shown his students caricatures of the prophet mohammed here's how thursday's tragedy unfolded in nice. no but in this new tragedy today you see victims of islamofascism child repeatedly denounced. physical abuse and it will be the job for the siren of the farm and the police arrived

quickly since really with the bikers and everything that followed then they set up a security system i went down with my scooter and i saw the guy come in take refuge in the cathedral afterwards i heard a lot of gunshots. the anti terror prosecutors said on thursday evening that they were still exploring lines in regards to the perpetrator behind the brutal attack it tack that took place just 24 hours ago in the behind me not to go down the silica in the heart of nice with 3 people were brutally murdered i just want to take you through some of the details we know about the victims of this latest terror attack air france one was a 60 year old woman who had gone to the church for press for the 1st mass of the morning

we heard from the anti terror prosecutor that she was almost beheaded by the perpetrator a 2nd was a man a 55 year old man who's been named this of all saw as a father of 3 who also worked as a sexton at the church he'd been here for 10 years and the 3rd person was a woman who said to be around 44 she's been named in the brazilian press as being simone about. silver she was stabbed she managed to escape from the church to raise the alarm. as a result of her heroic actions the police were informed and able to come and apprehend the perpetrator she succumbed to her injuries her last words were apparently tell my family that i love them president mark on has warned france's once again attack but when he visited nice on thursday he remained defiant that freedom and france would continue to up hold its valleys and some said think if we

were attacked once again it is for our values for our taste of freedom for this possibility on our soil to believe freely and not to give in to any mind of terror i say with great clarity once again today we will not give in this morning we decided to increase the vigilance everywhere in france to adapt to the terrorist threat i've decided that our soldiers will be more mobilized in the coming hours and we will up the mobilization within the framework of operational sentinel from 30027000 soldiers on the ground there referencing operations sentinel this is not ration that was set up back in 2015 when that 1st terror wave really hit france following the attacks it sharlie abdo and then later in the year in paris which saw the the battle plan attacked in those very many people who were killed in those coordinated attacks by terrorists $4000.00 extra security personnel now deployed across france particularly at sites like this church and also at schools and one of

the reasons that religious sites are getting the priority when it comes to security is because there was a release earlier this week from a thought but which is a press agency linked to the terror network al qaeda which suggested that christian symbols should be attacked in nice is already been subjected to terror attacks in the past including that horrific attack by. in 2016 that saw 86 people lose their lives when a truck plowed into a crowd of people who were celebrating the july 14th bust the day celebrations and nieces already had its fair share of terror people here disbelief shock once again that this could hit at the heart of the city but there is also anger to. the french the man justice who want these people to be deported to their country ok in security there is no safety 3 people are dead what you are married to build another

mosque sums up each we are in a country that has witnessed atrocities teachers being beheaded priests having the throats slit people are beheaded in a church that's not france and even if we taken all possible security measures have been able to come in with a knife and do his deadly deed 0 risk does not exist and that's perhaps the most shocking thing for most people is that this is 3 people who are inside a church and they're in a place where that should have been sanctity they should have been safety instead they met there and people have been coming to the church in lame true peace since that attack took place but the reality is that this is a community that is still in complete shock over what's happened since those attacks back in $2815.00 which started this wave of terror in france we saw all those huge attacks and that this is but since then every few months there is another attack just in the last 5 weeks france has been subjected to 3 separate

terror attacks it started with a stopping outside the form offices of show that followed the fact that the magazine reprinted controversial cartoons of the prophet mohammed angering muslims across the world 2 weeks later we saw the beheading of history teacher patti who had used those images as part of a civics lesson to discuss freedom of speech and now we. have this attack here in nice there have of course be angus spelling out on the streets hate to not just in this process we've seen over the last few days in muslim majority countries but hey in the song thursday night there was a demonstration held by the anti immigrant group. i didn't it says they came out to the streets calling for islam to be out of europe so there really is a huge sense of anger here on the ground to. the french government meanwhile has told its embassies to tighten their security now after

a wave of protests by muslims in several countries. in libya one local business went as far as placing images of the french leader on the shop floor for customers to stand upon them there are calls from muslims across the world to boycott french goods. as you see here. in the country. it's a little bit angry because of what happened. holding the messenger of god prophet

mohammed under the pretext of democracy is not considered democracy and as for france honestly we want to tell you that your statements are offensive to every arab muslim and to the whole world we demand demand for our. back road and yet that. is playing with fire in this case interesting that 'd we denounce france for offending the prophet therefore we denounce and will quote every product anything from france that comes to us. r.t. social media joined twitter to explain why one of our reports on us selection fraud was labeled as potentially misleading. the correspondent at the center of the story explain to me earlier what up. it's very interesting that this report has been

labeled misleading by twitter in regards to a civic matter because if you look at it none of the material is original to ourselves right i mean the report that i put together i simply drew from what's being said by international bodies as well as what was said by u.s. president donald trump this is what we included in the report this election will be the most rigged election in history this is going to be a fraud like you've never seen now we also included highlights of what u.s. media itself u.s. mainstream media outlets have been saying take a listen to that texas official is in jail accused of committing boger fraud manatee county supervisor of elections mike bennett says wiggins requested a mail in ballot for himself and his wife meanwhile the state election board is asking george's attorney general to look into 98 outstanding cases of voter fraud d.o.j. announced at the f.b.i. in the pennsylvania state police are investigating fraud in mail in ballots in loser and county that we also made a very important point of being balanced we did not only highlight the claims of

republicans and trump supporters we also highlighted the concerns of democrats about voting irregularities and polling places voter suppression etc take a listen to what we included from democrats who are also expressing concerns if congress and steet don't act immediately our country could face a new electoral tour noble this fall when twitter says that this report is possibly misleading about a civic matter that would make you think that we were giving people incorrect information about how to vote or something like that we did nothing of the kind take a look at the report it was simply pointing out the situation in the united states where there is widespread you know anticipation of this election and widespread fear according to polls that there could be violence in the streets and rioting after the elections and you know and the fact that if such an election were taking place in another country there would be statements from us a. fishel is expressing concern and that there would be there would be talk you

know that somehow such an election may not be taken seriously and there would be you know criticism of that electoral process if it was in another country we showed hypocrisy on the part of u.s. leaders in the up plus up lead in the leading to this election coming up in the united states so i'm looking for anything in the report that they say is misleading there was nothing in the report that was misleading we quoted other sources we showed what is the reality on the ground in the united states is which is that people are very nervous before this upcoming vote on november 3rd and earlier my colleagues here in the studio. discuss why twitter's actions again start to raise concerns. not a news agency has subject to broadcasting standards which means that every report must be balanced and fair and this report kaleb our correspondent has a hit to those rules ensuring to use key words like allegedly and sharing to keep it a little yet balanced and referencing all reports and official channels now what we

like to do here at r.t. is we like to bring a range of reports together dig a little deeper try to salvage some accuracy and call out any hypocrisy is why our tug line here is questioned more but twitter did say earlier this month that it was going to be ramping up its use of these warning labels on tweets to help curb any misinformation ahead of the elections take a lesson you may not use to it is services with the purpose of manipulating or interfering in elections all of the civic processes this includes posting sharing content that may suppress participation will mislead people about when where or how to participate in the civic process we believe we have a responsibility to protect the integrity of twitter conversations from interference and manipulation now as part of this twitter has announced that disputed claims in the election process would be flagged or removed tweets that include any premise your claims will be labeled as and used as what we directed to the official us election page to tweet same to inciting interference in the election process and all the results such as calls for violent action may be

removed and as we've seen recently it's not just r.t. that has raised red flags for the guys at twitter this comes just a week or so ago since twitter on facebook i decided to remove links to a story being run by the new york post regarding alleged e-mails on an old laptop of hunter biden now this is a story that was rubbished by his father joe biden and yet you know it could have cast a shadow over his chances in the race to the white house but twitter wasn't the only one to shun this story and after this twitter as well as other major internet companies have come under intense scrutiny and faced a grilling in the senate your position. that you could. but you can tell them what stories they can publish or american people what report like and here is that. our. organization. greased through terms of service you're still like me right now you're blocking the

post this senate hearing as you can see was pretty intense you saw the republicans and democrats interrogate the heads of twitter facebook and google and it really exposed this deep distrust in the power of silicon valley to police the web now this isn't the 1st time that r.t. has received a twitter label those who follow us on the platform will know that our count has been branded as state affiliated media tell us about that you write your twitter has previously labeled artie's editor in chief margarita simonyan as russian language twitter account as russia's state affiliated media which struck many as a little bit unfair considering that other news groups that are also state finance such as the b.b.c. and n.p.r. were not given similar titles facebook has also labeled artie's account of state affiliated media again failing to do the same for other foreign state media such as the voice of america or al-jazeera facebook's position back then is stated was to provide greater transparency into publishers that combine the influence of

a media organization with the strategic backing of a state so i think the double standards are quite apparent that nonetheless whether it's stories being run by the new york post by r.t. or anybody else questions are increasingly being raised over how much power social media hasn't it turning what people read or don't read and what they trust now we have that requested comment from twitter and we will bring it to you when we get it . well just a note and what you just saw about this between my 2 colleagues has also been flagged by twitter potentially misleading content well i'm delighted to welcome onto the program now a number of guests we're joined live by ben swamp an investigative reporter justin robert young host of the politics politics politics podcast and scott ritter a political analyst and former united nations weapons inspector you're all very welcome to the program ben can we kick off with you what do you think is twitter's

motive here. well i think twitter's motive is very simple their motive is to control what people see what people think and what people believe i know that sounds dystopian but i think that's what we're seeing across the board with social media companies right now in tech companies their goal is not simply to create fairness that's not what they're trying to do they say they're trying to prove prevent election interference when in fact those tech companies are creating the most election interference right now that we've seen at least in a generation in terms of affecting how people would vote the information they see before they vote information that listen voters should be able to make up their mind whether it's a new york post story whether it's an r.t. report people have the right to information and then make up their minds but tech companies and media companies have colluded together and what's really shocking here with intelligence companies to kind of create a perfect storm of we will decide what you see and what you hear n.p.r. stated about the hunter biden story joe biden's story that they refused to cover it

because they did not believe it was a legitimate story without having looked into any of the facts regarding the story this is hugely problematic and tech companies or right at the front of it and when jack dorsey says well everyone who uses twitter signs up for terms of service they don't agree to have you decide whether or not people can think things about them and by the way every time one of those reports is labeled misleading untrue untruthful or essentially a lie that's actually libel against the journalist who's publishing it in the 1st place just and we should remember that should we that twitter is a commercial enterprise does it not have the right to block or flag whatever it wants. it does and at the end of the day it is its own walled garden that can make the rules and they are making the rules arbitrarily as they go along if you want to look for logic in twitter's decision making then you can compare it to somebody being chased by

a gigantic flock of bees they aren't they have been running away from the idea that in 2016 they were charged by many in the mainstream media and on their own platform as being complicit in a election result that they were not happy with and now they are kind of flying willy nilly and just making things as they go along in the hope that people will not be mad at them this time i don't think that either the decisions are wise or that it will save them from the ire of the people on twitter because people are on twitter so they can be angry and yell at people it's kind of the point of the prop for scott we will widen the discussion in a minute but just to stay with our content do you think this action by twitter has anything to do with what was actually said in the report or are we veering into r t as a company and possibly even a little bit of russian sentiment thrown in for good measure. well there's no doubt this has nothing to do with the content and everything to do with the fact that

this is a so-called russian platform affiliated with the russian government which has been accused of interfering in not only the 2016 election but ongoing interference in the 2020 alleged there for anything any content that has that has a whiff of controversy it comes across r.t. is interpreted by twitter by facebook or taking their lead from the cia from the f.b.i. from the n.s.a. who have publicly said that russia is interfering in the u.s. election the irony is that even jack downing the head of twitter is said. twitters and capable of influencing the u.s. election so it's there's no logic but the fact is this has everything to do with the heavily anti russian stance of the united states state and nothing to do with the actual content of the tweet that's been that's been censored ben what's been

happening what congress has got quite fiery house and you've got republican senators directly accusing twitter or other platforms of conservative bias now if that is true high much of an impact could it have on the election just days away of course. well i think it remains to be seen how much of an impact it will have there's something called the streisand effect right which is i think what we're seeing right now specifically with the new york post story in which twitter and facebook both heavily censored but it actually caused the story to get more reach that it probably would have without them trying to censor it because there are people who are curious and say what are you talking about and they start to go and research the story there is a bigger issue here that conservatives talk about when conservatives say hey we're being we're being attacked by twitter and tech companies i think they only have it half right it's not just conservatives it's anyone who is not in a very particular stream of a stablish when thinking that is being censored and so i've seen it happen across the board to people who are libertarians who are progressives who are green party

there are people across the board politically who are being censored so it's not just one group but it is true that these tech companies are using their power to try to push forward one particular thought through the mainstream and the truth is that this election is just the beginning of it it's been going on for 4 years since 2016 it will probably only ramp up in the next few years unless congress does something about it but congress i think is missing the mark in what they're saying so i doubt they're going to have an effective solution just and i may be talking about cross purposes somewhat here but we do know that donald trump uses twitter for almost everything he ever say and how it's done for years to good effect is there a point that twitter has done more than any other platform to promote his agenda almost. no it's not about twitter although i do believe that donald trump owns twitter in a way that we have not seen a presidential candidate own a media arm sense kennedy did with television back in 1960 the real power that lies

in here is that most of the media lives on twitter despite the fact that most people in america and around the world don't go to this website almost every reporter an editor does so if you are able to wag the dog by posting something that is totally outlandish or at least abnormal and every single reporter is going to see it because they're obsessed with it then that's just going to be the reality of what our 360 coverage is when you go to a press pen to cover a any kind of rally for trump or against any sort of event and you look through everybody's laptop they're not writing notes they're all checking twitter and so that's this is been a capitulation of mainstream media and a declining ad market that they are chasing whatever heat they can that he does on

twitter donald trump's big there and that's where his influence comes from scott am i wrong to say that twitter is effectively having to decide what's true and what's not and is it in any way qualified to do that. oh 1st of all twitter is not qualified to do anything other than publish 280 character tweets from its you know from from from it's the subscribers the people who belong who are part of the twitter platform they have no inherent ability to ascertain what is dissent from ation what is misinformation what is accurate information that they're just not equipped trained staffed to do this but they've assumed that role i'll give you an example wal-mart today said i'm going to stop selling firearms because they're concerned about. electoral violence if i tweet that in my now going to have my we censored because some stature in twitter says oh this promotes

post-election violence you know that's that's the direction we're heading right now if i if i tweeted brett kavanaugh. opinion in the in or in a in the recent you know supreme court decision regarding polk county am i somehow promoting the notion of fraud or the potential post elect or chaos all of which is touched upon in his in his opinion twitter is assumed a role that it it's not designed not intended to have and they're doing themselves a great disservice because by doing this they're exposing themselves as being nothing more than a partisan platform and you know there could very well be held in pay if if the politicians why should you ever decide to hold them to account yet we will get to the point in just a moment but ben in terms of twitter if we could really talk at any social media giant here but twitter is the one in focus do you have any sympathy for them at all

you know are they caught between a rock and a hard place after the last election they were accused of allowing fake news to spread now they're being accused of censorship they can't keep everyone happy come then. they can't but listen the tech companies that have decided that they were somehow responsible for donald trump selection is ridiculous it is a ridiculous notion to think that tech companies if they had done more donald trump wouldn't of been elected dollar trump was elected because he won the electoral college and he won the most states with the most electoral votes in order to become president it's how the system works it is not the job of the tech company or the media in general to try to sway or shape or or sin an election in a particular direction it's not our job to do that and yet these tech companies literally act as if they had some job to do to make sure that donald trump didn't become president it's not their job but i also want to just mention quickly about

are they qualified not only are they not qualified but tech companies like facebook have actually outsourced it to 3rd party fact checkers who by the way if you go back and research which i have the funding mechanisms for those fact checkers they are all funded by special interest groups so special interest groups have been deputized by facebook and twitter to go around and decide what is truth and what is not when they are serving their own agendas and that becomes incredibly problematic so not only is twitter facebook you tube incompetent to be able to fact check but they've actually hired people who are funded by special interests to do it for them and that in and of itself is a huge problem just and it can be a risky strategy this content we've seen it with hoops with movies by censuring post social media could draw even more attention to those who wrote them and have a bigger readership certainly so and ben mentioned earlier the streisand effect if you're not familiar with the concept barbra streisand was upset that her house had

a picture of it on the internet and so she in her seeking to. ok just of a bit of a connection issue there with justin connection can we pick up scott on what you said earlier the perhaps ramifications of what could happen if there is a trump when do you think that social media giants silicon valley is going to be put in the spotlight in a situation that perhaps haven't been in a 2nd term for the trump administration could do that and hold them more to account . well actually you know it's not just a political account i mean you know congress has the ability specially pressured by the president to tighten the screws on these on these tech companies. but i think that the greatest risk is me and other americans like me you know how insulting it

is to have twitter tell me that i'm incapable of discerning fact from fiction that i'm incapable of make you know my own mind about what i believe and what seems true it seems false i mean the absolute hubris arrogant bs of these companies to believe that they are my guardian are my keeper they're not i'm going to american voter i vote the way i see fit it won't based on the information that i gather that i assess and i don't need twitter to the series a giant filter for me and it's deeply insulting to me and believe me to millions of other americans and this is where twitter may ultimately pay the price when the american people lose confidence in the twitter platform and they don't get it and they will because there's other competitors out there that may offer a greater freedom of expression that's the risk the twitter faces we're just running right out of time at we cut you off in your prime just then you want to help the last word we have 30 seconds.