rosalyn jordan al-jazeera washington. it was u.s. astronaut neil armstrong who made history when he said that's one small step for man one giant leap for mankind becoming the first person to step foot on the moon now almost fifty years later it's china making moon history it's landed a spacecraft on the far side of the moon the first time a probe has ever been sent the before could offer insights into the mint's origins and evolution getting to the dark side of the moon was key to what the chinese president has called his space dream to join in even need the world's space race now the historic landing really demonstrates china's ambitions to catch up with the u.s. and russia to become a major space power by twenty thirty it's often called the dark side of the moon because it can't be seen from previous spacecraft have seen it before from a distance twenty four lunar probe carried a rover with it and it's right now getting to work studying the moon's terrain and it'll eventually send back samples to china's space trains don't stop there in

twenty seventeen it announced plans to send a person to the moon and has dedicated eleven billion dollars to its space agency's budget or is jones is the author of where men walked on the moon joins me now from sydney good to have you with us on al-jazeera i mean why are the chinese interested in the moon specifically when other countries are going beyond that. well china is treating the moon as the first big outpost in deep space for its long term plans it's already sent several missions to the moon it plans to send even more in the future including a sample return mission at some point but china is also setting its sights from mars and the asteroids and probably beyond so i think it's sick it's a clear cut case that when a nation has big plans for outer space at some point you have to start exploring the moon and treat that as as part of your overall plan so why do you think china

is sort of focusing its program you might say now. in terms of visiting the moon going beyond it is it playing catch up to sort of the u.s. and russia why well in some ways it they are playing catch up but the chinese didn't even launch a satellite until nine hundred seventy s. so this space program does have a sort of a and historical lag with those of america and and russia but they're advancing very rapidly and even though it seems in some ways so be a bit of a catch up face the fact is they catching up to nobody by landing on the far side of the moon because nobody has done it before and it's a tremendous technical achievement just to set up the communications link between the far side of the moon and earth what do we actually then again from knowing more about the dark side of the mood and do you think china will share its findings

globally. ok i got a call at the far side not the. politics the fact is we know that the side of the moon yeah the far side yes the far side is geologically different from the nice side you don't see the dark see that you see so much of on the news side and that's an indication that not only is that the geology different on the surface but the properties of the moon a different but the ground we think that the crust is of a different thickness and we think that there they could be differences in the rocks in the way that. thermal conductivity other factors take place and so not just looking at the surface which you can do from all that but looking at what lies underground is one of the goals of this mission and the role of that's being carried as a radar system that's designed to penetrate the ground and build up a profile of the lower layers below the soil well for but we'll leave it there but

i think that whatever they do it's a set of a rock n roll for the chinese over the next few months for the moment morrison so much for joining us from sydney. thank you still ahead here on al-jazeera. that we are in africa is because st paul to find out the kind of a carnival is helping prop up nigeria's economy plus. inside this courtroom there's been stories of drug trafficking corruption and murder were halfway through closely watched trial one of the world's biggest drug traffickers i gave rose are due in brooklyn that story coming up.

howler the push of cold which represents proper winter is making a very obvious progress through central europe as a circulation here temperatures around low single figures and cloud carries snow for the alps in particular but also the low agronomy with three degrees in berlin the snow right down on the road surfaces that's true for poland is true for the west or at least it was just cold in there and weather's cold meats a circulation in the g.m. got a massive snow potential in the high ground in northern greece and beyond all rain for greece and turkey increasingly of the next two days is a very active area as weather of weather is this cools down and calms down and looks more like winter with yet more snow a good old breeze and four degrees and bill is an example and all this time we've been sitting pretty cold but sunny weather for france the british isles and downs but in portugal in particular so the place to watch that is the central eastern mediterranean if you're off to stormy weather that has affected tunisia and libya

in the last two days but don't think it will in the future is financial breeze so stop war and thirty now g. is but seventeen bengazi is about nineteen kyra and the rain will probably stay away clyde ling trees on the coast but the rain is heading once again towards the levant.

right here watching officer would be so wrong never mind our top stories u.s. president donald trump has described syria's war as nothing but sound and while defending his decision to withdraw u.s. troops from the country trump still hasn't provided a timetable for the military exit he announced last month and donald trump is also asking rational leaders to return to the white house after both sides failed to reach a deal to end the partial government shutdown. and here's your first look at the far side of the moon a scene from china's space for the chunky fall is a historic mission making china the first to learn to probe that i could offer insights into the woods origins and evolution. to south asia critics say the bangladeshi prime minister's landslide victory in sunday's election could

allow her to become even more thorough tarion shaken seniors party won more than ninety five percent of the seats in parliament securing her fourth consecutive term in office but a student movement which backed her campaign has been accused of violence and voter intimidation child strafford put those allegations to the movement's leader. twenty five year old son hussein is the leader of bangladeshis party student who would call the child truly. it has tens of thousands of supporters the opposition say prime minister sheikh hasina used the chance or leaked to intimidate threaten and commit acts of violence against them during the election campaign. including this attack on the motorcade of opposition leader kemal hussain. to be able to feed the victims with the awami league. mission there was no violence committed by the roaming the us we followed the election commission when we kept communication ties with the awami league candidates they needed to know what the younger generation

wants the opposition alliance has rejected the election is demanding another under a neutral interim government hussain rejects the allegation made by international human rights organizations that the awami league and the sheikh hasina has committed major human rights violations including forced disappearances and the murder of opposition activists. sina has become known to the international community as a mother of humanity we were able to help their hanger refugees or exult this proves she is humanitarian relief there was a lot of extra judicial caning him too in the military government paused do you deny that there was no intimidation by awami league supporters like your youth movement for. not only me but one hundred million voters they were new generation millions that through the won the league we won our independence and it's through the party that they dream of a modern bangladesh will be realised. the opposition say more than ten thousand of

its supporters were rest is it during an election campaign it calls a farce hussein and his young supporters say the opposition has no grounds for complaint. for al-jazeera dhaka. that is one person is dead in the southern indian state of kara after protests over the entry of two women into the subway mile a temple schools across the state of closed on public transport to has been suspended the women were the first to enter the temple since the supreme court overturned a centuries old ban on women aged between ten and fifty the protesters support the temple's refusal to implement the court's ruling saying hindu values are under attack. israel's public security minister has promised to make conditions worse for palestinian prisoners. jails will remove cooking rights begin rationing water and reduce prisoners' autonomy but also lose the right to be housed with members of their factions dan says the new policies aimed to deter future acts of violence

a prominent egyptian rights activist is appealing to the president to pardon his wife who's been sentenced to two years in jail for actress amala fatty he was arrested for posting a video online denouncing the treatment of women in egypt and accusing guards at a bank of sexually harassing her she was charged with spreading false news her husband who had last years in president a bill for the c.c. to view his wife as a victim hundreds of can and contacted tribes in brazil are in danger of losing their lands as part of a major policy of all by the new legal grated president balls that are as executive order puts the agriculture ministry in charge of deciding which parts of the amazon rain forest should be set aside for native groups that agree strips the indigenous affairs agency of power there are fears it could escalate conflict between arabs and tribesmen and commercial farmers nearby. the trial of one of the world's best

known drug lords is resuming in new york after the holiday break prosecutors have been outlining the allegations against mexican new york and chapo guzman since november but there have been some unexpected moments as gabriel is on the reports. still missing in. his life is the world's richest and most feared drug trafficker was dramatized in a hit television series and spondee genre of folk songs back in his native mexico but inside a brooklyn courtroom the real life which joaquin el chapo guzman is playing out and it's no less an say tional among some of the extraordinary exhibits seen by the jury so far pictures of specially built submarines that prosecutors say carried millions of dollars of cocaine from colombia to guzman in mexico and elaborate tunnels they say he then famously used to get into the u.s. and then there were cans of pickled whole opinio peppers which its claimed el chapo

used to smuggle upwards of forty tons of cocaine into the u.s. worth five hundred million dollars a year this was goods months favorite weapon a diamond encrusted thirty eight caliber with his initials on it. security is tight for the trial with no cameras or video allowed inside the courtroom but that didn't appear to stop guzman's beauty queen wife emma coronel who was at one point caught with this cell phone in the courtroom the prosecution claimed she was secretly trying to text her husband through his lawyers i'm going to. guzman's defense lawyers made the sensational claim that two former mexican presidents personally took millions in bribes from the sin aloa cartel they're pinning their hopes on an acquittal on arguing the real culprit is this man is.

a former ally of guzman and current head of this in a little cartel. you know i don't. know. but this rare audio recording allegedly of el chapo guzman negotiating a multimillion dollar cane shipment was played in court analysts say it will be hard for the defense to refute the recordings that we heard in court the recordings with all chappell's voice it just really stings and i think that that makes it very difficult that they'll be able to pull it off if convicted guzman faces life behind bars but with several more people expected to testify the trial likely will not end at least for a few more weeks gabriel's andro al-jazeera brooklyn. a manner of mexico's a southern state of what has been shot dead just hours after being sworn into office gunman opened fire on a one hundred a seesaw as he was on his way to

a meeting four other people were attacked also a man has been arrested in connection with the killing. the head of poll has partially blame the u.s. president's trade war with china for missing out on billions of dollars worth of business tim cook will be lower than expected earnings for the first quarter of the year also citing we can demand from china last year washington and beijing impose the same zaatar of something china's goods. a little commission in the democratic republic of congress says results for the presidential vote might be delayed because it hasn't received most of the ballots regional moderators say sunday's election was relatively well managed despite several challenges technical and organizational problems meant many people couldn't vote or more than one million others and three opposition strongholds were excluded because of the bowler and security concerns with the congolese ruling party says the internet will remain shut down to prevent disorder. from going to. the common front for the congo

regrets the internet shut down since monday but notes that some people tried to use the internet to put the congolese people against each other because. we asked the population to remain calm and white peacefully for the provisional results that the electoral commission will publish in the coming days. staying in africa. in southern nigeria used to be a month long event featuring mountain races cultural displays i think the beauty pageants economic turmoil has false organizes to make adjustments over the years but as i put it just reports from it remains the single biggest attraction in nigeria. nigeria speak a street party continues to defy a weak economy. the number of events and activities may have been scaled down but there is also high school. that come from different parts of the country and the world. we are telling a story well using to talk to bring people to nigeria to bring people to cross

arrested. for the ongoing generation. and for the past eighteen years residents and tourists have been treated to this spectacle music dance and a variety of food. the cost of us stayed kind of almost gone from christmas street . just west of nigeria anywhere in africa visitor numbers something from three hundred thousand. of them contributing to the local economy. as we heard about four thousand bedrooms in the big. rooms we had to about three thousand direct employment in the tourism sector to date about twenty seven thousand direct employment but it's small businesses like mary francis that i help most this is a single biggest event she and many other stick advantage of to make

a good profit for me. but. getting all lost but getting. the kind of kind of well used to be our month long festival runs into the new. economic realities including the loss of income from all force the government here to cut its spending. but despite this the festival remains one big party enjoyed by participants visitors and residents alike. nigeria and you can follow the story all the covering here on al-jazeera by logging onto a website. called. you're watching all it is their homes the whole rob never mind of our top stories u.s.

president donald trump has described syria's war as death while defending his decision to withdraw u.s. troops from the country still hasn't provided a timetable for the military exit he announced last month. when. somebody said for months but i didn't i didn't say that either i'm getting out we're getting out of syria look we don't want syria obama gave up syria years ago when he didn't violate the red line i did when i shot fifty nine missiles . but that was a long time later so syria was lost long ago it was lost long ago and. i don't want we're talking about and death that's what we're talking about what we want to protect the kurds never the less we want to protect the courage but i don't want to be in syria forever it's a man and it's death. us president. professionally just to return to the

white house on friday after both sides failed to reach a deal to end the partial government shutdown trump said he's prepared to let the shutdown go on until he gets his mexico border war funding. well here's a first look at the far side of the moon as seen from china's spacecraft the cheney for its historic mission making china the first to learn to probe their own could offer insights into the moon's origins and evolution. least one person is dead in the southern indian state of carola after protests over the entry of two within a mile of temple schools across the state are closed and public transport has been suspended the women were the first to enter the temple since the supreme court overturned a centuries old ban on women aged between ten and fifty. the head of apple has partly blamed the u.s. presidents trade with war trade war with china for missing out on billions of dollars worth of business tim cook warned that expected earnings for the first

quarter of this year also citing we could demand from china washington and beijing impose a series of tara each of those skits those were the headlines here on al jazeera more news in half an hour but inside story with laura karl to stay with us. here is a very important source of information for many people around the world when all the cameras are gone i'm still here go into areas that nobody else is going to talk to people that nobody else is talking to and bringing that story to the forefront. taxing the internet tech giants like google and facebook to generate huge revenues now they're being made to pay big taxes but also called digital taxation work and what will it mean for online business this is inside story.

hello there and welcome to the program i'm laura kyle technology giants face paying big tax bills in europe worth billions of dollars austria is the latest country to announce plans to impose levies on large internet companies and follows the french government so-called gaffe attacks named after google apple facebook and. this digital tax targets many revenues collected from advertising and market related fees france and germany want to european union wide law introduced to ensure companies making huge profits online pay their fair share of taxes but so far the european. commission has failed to get unanimous support let's take you through some figures top digital firms estimated to pay an average tax rate of nine point five percent in the european union was more traditional companies pay twenty three

point two percent amazon's corporate tax bill in the u.k. for example is believed to be eleven times smaller than that of british bookstores now france hopes to raise around five hundred seventy million dollars a year with its new digital tax facebook alone that in four days thank you. so plenty to discuss the and joining us here in doha to do so is nino cata c.e.o. of spock digital and a digital marketing lecturer at georgetown university in london have glenn goodman financial trader and former business journalist and joining us via skype from cork in ireland balkan kota and cyborg rights activists very will welcome all of you to the program glenn when you hear those figures this new french tax but it really is a drop in the ocean isn't it for these tech giants how big

a deal is the gaffa tax. on its own it's not a big deal obviously if other countries start following suit and several other european countries have already started making steps in that direction then it could become a significant headache for some of the big tech companies i think what worries me the most i'm sure we'll get into it in more detail is just the piecemeal nature of this it's just a dog's dinner it's a big old mess we've got france doing its own little thing which may or may not work britain has at least laid out some more detailed plans but they have got some significant problems involving those as well spain austria everybody doing their own thing it's very very complicated very difficult what we really need to see is a big effort by either the you or preferably the whole world including the u.s. to come together and decide how they want to tax these companies that's it will certainly get into in the e.u. or even global wide tax a little later first of all in

a set it's complicated and i know for myself it's complicated i'm trying to read about it today how will this digital tax work by these individual companies just in layman terms give us an idea of how these taxes are raised. well the main thing that they're trying to do is to tax and revenue that relates to users themselves in those particular countries so for example you know france is annoyed that certain tech companies like to put most of their business in places like our island and luxemburg places where they're taxed at a very low rate and so then what those companies can do is sell the ads from those cheap countries to french consumers and french businesses inside france and yet france sees no kind of slice of that ad revenue because it's all booked in ireland in fact there was

a big case recently where france took google to court and said you are us a billion euros in taxes for all this ad revenue and google said no we don't because it was all done in oil and ok it may have involved french people to some degree but the actual ad selling went on in oil and the court agreed with them so the french government is apparently appealing that one so from that kind of perspective you can see how governments could get very frustrated they've been trying for absolutely ages to try and work out a solution either you minister just can't come to a solution so the french have said well we've had enough of this we're going to do our own tax ok i want to get the reaction from errol of the tech companies disappointment first nino and talk about advertisers that's your speciality does this tax simply pass the cost on to them the me how is this going to affect all the businesses that like to advertise on these platforms scant details right now but from what i can tell it looks like they're going to charge a three percent tax to companies that are going to be using these platforms for

advertising so there's one hundred million businesses that use google and facebook to do ads to promote their products and services and so it looks like in their settings that's for example if they're going to target users in france then there might be an additional three percent added to the. per click currently it's set up in a way where it's an auction based system so the cost per each click for each advertiser depends on how many other advertisers are also advertising and what the competition is based on an auction based so it won't actually be the companies themselves that this bill doesn't look like it from what i can tell so they won't be worried about it but they don't much like an ideal stacks are starting advertising you might just see big companies advertising rather than smaller companies will be more expensive for everybody but by three percent so i don't know if that means people cut back on their ad budgets but if they're getting a return on their investment anyway then if i don't think it'll have an impact are

we haven't heard much from these big tech companies they haven't responded. much to tool what do you think their reaction is going to be if anything and it doesn't really sound like there's going to be much impact on them. i don't know i mean and and to be perfectly honest i'm not too concerned about what their reaction as i think we give too much importance to what they think to begin with they are corporations and it is the role of governments to regulate corporations democratically elected governments what's interesting to me is two things one that we're using this acronym gaffa google amazon apple and facebook and we're lumping apple in with these other companies but apple's business model is fundamentally different they sell products they don't sell people that's one thing and the other thing is how we're approaching this tax so it's an ad it's a tax on advertising but not all types of advertising what we're talking about

specifically is ad tech which is surveillance based advertising the way google and facebook make money is they track everyone and they profile them and then they manipulate their behavior and they rent out the information that's intimate insight they have about them to other companies so this is a quite a toxic business model and we're seeing the talks to get facts through cambridge outlets akai except trendy effects that the ramifications that it has on our democracy so i think we should start viewing taxes like this in the same vein that we would view taxes on tobacco and if we start doing that then three percent is nothing in france they tax tobacco at eighty percent now that's the kind of thing i want to start talking about if these companies are not good for our human rights if they're not good for the health of our democracies then we should be taxing them like we tax tobacco about our little it's very easy to say this is what we should do but how difficult is it to actually do that in practice when you have had courts as an island have gone to the nuts about these low tax havens and very well paid

lawyers to exploit loopholes that allow them to get away with paying that because it's been nominally difficult because our are institutions. corrupt the european commission is corrupt and i'm not talking about illegal corruption i'm talking about legal corruption i'm talking about lobbying so these corporations spend millions and millions and they have head could they have offices and in brussels and based you know the and all they do is they talk to these policy makers and try to influence them the same policy makers that are taking these this asians in a few years' time might be working at facebook and google i was recently speaking at the nordic tribe a see a reader and this is a conference of data protection officers people should be protecting us from these companies and facebook had a keynote there i had a keynote facebook had a keynote and the facebook keynote speaker his last job was as

a data protection officer working for the french data protection office he was a lawyer working for the data protection office so we have revolving doors and as long as we can tackle this influence of corporate finance and public policy making then we have a very difficult road ahead so we need to start talking about this and tackling potential corruption that is stopping us granted and what is incisional corruption that our is talking about is that the reason that we it's been so hard for the european commission to implement this wide three percent tax. well it's certainly one of the reasons i mean as our quite rightly pointed out you have this revolving door i mean just here where i am in the u.k. we have nick clegg the former deputy prime minister who's headed over to work for facebook. and he was reported in the past to have not always been entirely complimentary about them and and about well about the tech industry in

general so it's very interesting that that kind of thing happens an interesting in a very bad way and as i wrote quite rightly said but it is not the only reason why it's been so difficult i think the main reason why it's been so difficult is because you're trying to turks a slippery snake that keeps slipping out of your hands all the time as you quite rightly said not only are they able to move tax jurisdiction sort of a pretty much whenever they want but also we have the problem that when they do move tax jurisdiction you have to try and work out how you can tax these particular types of of ads and ad spending that is going on and at the moment what of course many countries are starting to do in europe including the u.k. is to look at revenues rather than the profits traditionally of course corporation tax and so when you look at profits because it's just fairer to tax profits than revenues that might be done at a loss but also it's kind of more straightforward now we're looking at taxing

revenues and different types of revenues on a grid and reading the ukase incredibly complicated consultation document about the new digital proposed digital tax for these big tech companies and they're saying right first of all we're not going to tax small companies it's only going to be the very beginning on pennies so they look at a kind of minimum revenue but then they start going into definitions about where we only want to tax for example social media platforms but not actually just normal e-commerce online you know buying things on amazon we don't want to tax that revenue so how do we. define what is a social media platform and what is just the pure kind of marketplace because obviously there are often big crossovers now between the two types and so they're kind of trying to get their head around all this really this is just going to be a bonanza for tax lawyers that are going to make a lot of money arguing these things in court for the next few years until the world can get its act together and really what we need to see is europe and america

getting together let's face it donald trump isn't exactly a big fan of tech companies always being rude about them they need to get together with donald trump and say right we need to do this together because if you're goes ahead and does this on its own which i guess eventually they will in order to stop countries from going it alone then america quite rightly is going to get pretty annoyed and said you were just targeting our big companies there are no big deal being companies involved here you're just trying to get the big american companies and we know how donald trump will react to that because we now really react to everything as they were let's look at the potential for upset saying donald trump worth not donald trump and certainly u.s. companies are they going to see it as something that is targeted at them and then is it going to in some people a sense gather that's going to exacerbate further this e.u. u.s. trade war do you think that the sunni no i don't see how that how that can happen in terms of specifics because what they're so right now anyone can advertise to

a company or to the population of france anyone anywhere in the world can do it so what this proposal seems to be saying i've read some of their previous proposals and from back as far back as twenty thirteen but what they seem to be saying is if you're going to target our population for ads then you have to pay an additional tax and i can see other countries wanting to do this as well trying to have it be done as an e.u. wide thing i mean lobbying works it works i mean i'm from washington d.c. i know it works and so i think that will be hard because there's a lot of millions of dollars being spent abroad. polls to argue the you know the point of view of google and facebook and they don't do it just with themselves they also set up you know tech associations they have right in campaigns they set up institutes at universities that probably produce scholarly papers they hire former members of the parliament and so it's not going to be easy to tackle it in that regard and i think that they're very weak in terms of lobbying within each

individual country they have and build up that capability they built that d.c. and then after the big find that happened i remember how many years ago when you and google down they built up that capability in brussels as well so i think doing it in a country by country basis is going to get them off guard ok do you think then they're going to have to put resources into not being in each individual capital they might have to ok i think i know the answers this question already from you at least. the french president that these companies are guessing simply too big to govern that the alsa of control is that something that you're concerned. definitely yes i mean we're talking about power relationships here and the core question is you know who's more powerful these on the elected corporations or are democratically elected however flawed they may be are democratically elected governments i'd like to see you know the governments have the the power in that relationship i mean ideally i'd

like to see us as individuals have the power in that relationship but we don't have the infrastructure to effect that sort of change yet at least but i again i think one of the things that we have to do and unless we do it we don't make a lot of progress on this issue is we have to make these companies socially unacceptable again look at tobacco there was a time when doctors were used for tobacco ads for cigarette ads there was a time people thought that it was good for your health that's kind of where we're at right now with the surveillance capitalists with google facebook etc so if we're to make any headway on this we need to really understand that these companies are not good for our health ok but everything you're an attack because that's pretty tall order isn't it to say to people don't use google it's watching you day is face but don't connect with people fail family or friends in the strain you have because it's watching you in the moment the benefits seem to outweigh the risks it's going

to it's quite a hard. quite a hard one to solve. yeah i absolutely agree with you there and i don't agree with our along that one because it's difficult to pin down the benefits and the costs for this kind of thing we're at such an early stage of understanding the impact that it has on ourselves as individuals and indeed our communities perhaps the impact in the long term would be positive perhaps it will be negative we simply don't know whereas the tobacco analogy i mean that was more clear cut and even then it took out silly decades for the lobbyists to be overruled and for governments to accept that it really was dangerous but you know you actually had doctors and medical studies that gave very very clear evidence yes tobacco is causing cancer whereas here we're talking about vague effects of vague impacts on things like our privacy and our identities this stuff is very difficult to kind of prove one way

or another whether it's good or bad i mean i do sympathize to some degree with our viewpoint there are certainly negative aspects to it but you know i enjoy using those services myself and to most people and quite frankly if i was told you know you've got to give them up because they're bad for your health the first thing i'd say is you know they're bad for my health and they know that we the power of unelected corporations i mean that's nothing new with the arrival of these tech companies it's been around since multinationals have been around but how much harder is it now to regulate police taxes basically govern these particular internet based companies yeah it is going to be difficult because if you look at when the u.s. congress interviewed mark zuckerberg of facebook and he also interviewed the c.e.o. of google the questions they asked showed how knowledgeable they are and how far along technology is car versus you know the traditional tax structure and the

regulation so they're they're in over their head so when a country like france good. it's out in front and does something like this they can set a precedent that other people can emulate and learn from their experiences their mistakes etc etc and that's that for gas as well france will be raising money that it desperately needs i mean it may not have a huge impact at the tech end but it will certainly have a big impact for the french government in its budget. indeed and i think there's nothing wrong with that but i do want to address a previous point because when we talk about whether or not people should be using the current social media platforms that exist what i'm what i'm saying is not stop using facebook stop using google but what i'm saying is there's a different way of building technology so there's a false dichotomy here where we're not limited to communicating where there is

a person in the middle that can hear everything that we're saying that's how facebook works that's how google works because that's their business model we can build technology where people can talk directly to one another these are peer to peer systems we know how to do this we are building technologies alternatives this way they're not being funded all of the funding and technology is going to building these surveillance based platforms so there's a false dichotomy where you say oh well should people not use social media then now we should be building ethical social media platforms that are decentralized that are peer to peer we know how to do this but they're not going to grow on trees right now there's an alternative called mastodon for example which is essential ice twitter but it was built by one twenty something year old person in france with no funding whatsoever and got millions of people using it but if we're serious about fixing this problem we need to invest from the commons in technologies that are ethical and for the common good that's not something is it that governments and particularly interested in then not seeking to tax these companies said that it

will force them to change their business model as such that's going to come from people like yourself and different sorts of no bias as it was. well we definitely need the political will we need to build the political will that's one thing i'm not holding my breath but some of us are actually building a technical infrastructure to at least make it possible to have these communication systems as an alternative and i think that's important as well but as i said yes you know if we don't do this then what's at stake really we're not talking about privacy as some abstract concept we're really talking about the future of personhood because facebook for example right now has about sixty people working on a project to literally reach your mind that's what the announced that they're developing a conference a while back so we're really talking about whether or not we can protect the rights the human rights we already have today and protect personhood and democracy that's what's at stake so we really do need to start talking and acting on this in in

a far different way than we have been so far in the backlash that we're saying against the digital well why is it it's hard to tell it's hard to measure the way we have got fronts warning that if it doesn't start imposing these sorts of taxes that the government will pay for it at the ballot box by law to dismantle businesses that look at these very unfair rates that they when they compare them do you think that's true glenn. it's difficult because i think ordinary people you know like the yellow vests pretenders in france for example i don't think this is high up among their concerns but as you say traditional businesses and the people who run them a lot of them are quite annoyed about this kind of thing about how slippery the big tech companies are in and creating an unfair playing field for people i would like to pick out on something our old saying there though i think he's right that decentralized platforms where you haven't got this almighty company in the middle

of a social media platform are the future they are being funded to some extent i mean i'm heavily involved in the block chain encrypted currency world and of course there was a huge explosion of money that went into that over the past few years obviously it's going to be quiet now the sector is in a bit of a kind of cyclical slump a lot of money billions and billions did go in to the kind of projects there are always talking about and there is still hope that some of those will get off the ground in the next few years and and while i'm on i'd like to just pick up and screaming nino's that as well earlier on he said that he's not worried about a trade war when it comes to the specifics that he wasn't sure that there was anything to worry about there i really do think there is and i'm not the only one philip hammond the finance minister of the u.k. said that he thinks that the u.s. would take any kind of e.u. wide digital tax as a hostile move also germany has been very very quiet on the issue and many people

feel that this is because they are scared because the americans by so many german cars that if donald trump does see it as a hostile move to punish american companies then he could just say oh we're going to have a twenty percent tax on german cars you know he do it you know he would likely the kind of thing he do so obviously there are kind of major real fears and of course the countries that benefit from low tax regimes like ireland and luxembourg who also total. against these tax ideas as well so there are a huge range of forces up against the taxes and if it's going to be done you've got to draw for america and all the major companies from countries from the o.e.c.d. into the equation i just don't think it should be just an e.u. thing or we could end up with a nasty trade war. for joining us. and thank you too very much for watching you can see the program again.

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on a dozen you know. i'm a fish every week a new cycle going to see a niece of breaking stories and then of course there's donald trump told through the eyes of the welts jan an ace that's right out of a hamas script that calls for the annihilation of israel that is not what that phrase means at all listening post as we turn the cameras on the media and focus on how they were told on the stories that matter the most in bad news a free palestine a listening post on al-jazeera. but i don't want to be in syria forever it's sand and it's death. donald trump defends his decision to pull u.s. troops to syria despite an upsurge in fighting between rebel groups.

books and when you're watching on my headquarters here in doha also coming up turkey and the us discuss the possible extradition of business but. can anchor accused of masterminding the twenty sixteen attempted coup. also the u.s. government shutdown set to continue into the new again after congressional leaders failed to reach an agreement on the border wall. and over the moon a chinese rover becomes the first to land on the far side of the surface. welcome to the program president trump has described syria's war as sand and death while defending his decision to withdraw u.s. troops from the country speaking at a cabinet meeting on wednesday trump didn't provide

a timetable for the military exit he announced last month against the advice of his defense chiefs but he did say he wants to protect kurdish people in the north of the country tribes been accused of abandoning the kurdish y p g you've been allies in the fight against. it with you but as somebody said for months but i didn't i didn't say that either i'm getting out we're getting out of syria look. we don't want syria obama gave up syria years ago when he didn't violate the red line i did when i shot fifty nine missiles or but that was a long time later so syria was lost long ago it was lost long ago. and besides that i don't want we're talking about sand and death that's what we're talking about what we want to protect the kurds never the less we want to protect the courage but i don't want to be in syria forever it's sad and it's death

at least thirty one people are dead after days of intense fighting between two are groups in northern syria the clashes are happening in parts of aleppo and it led qaeda linked fighters and turkish back to rebel forces are blaming each other for starting the violence is the worst fighting in this part of the country in three months or full of events there is our correspondent mohammed to die joins me from gaza in temple the turkey syria border and mohammed trumps comments really will raise eyebrows and calls consternation in some areas but really only confirm those strategy and long term understanding of the u.s. strategic needs its goals of the alliances in the region and that worries u.s. allies in the fight against terror groups. yes indeed of course the u.s. is not only in the. fight against the odds so they use an international coalition the bell in the some of them may tall eyes light. and friends

friends already in the north and the city and they need to when the united states forces want to get the troops will withdraw from city in the past two weeks we have had from a quick withdrawal which would hope that within weeks just forty eight hours ago it was four months i'm out i didn't say about. days no timetable for with the withdrawal of the of course he's comment about syria is nothing but sand and death also costs dollars on the commitment of the united states to finish . what is left off. the so-called terrorist organizations like al qaeda. syrian rebels so we're we are seeing us push and also where they cut is fight who had been. the most reliable of the u.s. officials have called them in the fight against i still have not been thrown under

the bus i'm not allowed to seeking new alliances going to have the city and government and by extension it on russia. you know terror groups. being. violent. in aleppo and they. is about four days all fighting now and the fighting on when we'll talk about two in the province which is the last remaining stronghold of the opposition the fight is between the rebel groups some allied to al qaida and the. buck free syrian army of course the free syrian army. saying that they have their positions on the offensive. by the al qaeda affiliates who they say want to

divide that they want to create that tended to be which divides their forces in aleppo and also in a free in on the most pot all for the city and border very close to tucky of course the. affiliates seem to be hardening dapat taking the strategic tunnel that it isn't and a few villages around it so the fighting is still going on on the shifting sands and how the u.s. withdrawal will fall on. the. place into confusion and chaos we'll leave it. with you through the day thanks with it. to the u.s. president. has to return to the white house on friday after both sides failed to reach a deal to end the partial government shutdown. to let the shutdown go on indefinitely unless you get funding to build a wall on the border with mexico. the garbage cans were

overflowing outside the white house on the twelfth day of the partial government shutdown inside the president had convened his full cabinet to extol the virtues of his wall and blame the democrats for a budget impasse that donald trump and said he would take full responsibility for just a few weeks earlier i will be the one to shut it down i'm not going to blame you for it he then spoke to the press and though to be said he was now insisting on five point six billion dollars for the wall not even the two point five billion for a barrier but the white house had offered democrats as a compromise once the shutdown began. this. could be a long time and it could be quickly could be a long time it's it's too important a subject to walk away from later in the afternoon the democratic leadership made its way to the white house for the first direct talks with the president in weeks however this was organized as a border security briefing by department of homeland security officials not as

a negotiation clearly the president was continuing to frame the shutdown as a failure of democrats to understand what he says is an emergency at the southern border even as illegal border crossings are at historic lows and after the meeting the democrats said their plans have not changed they are now feeling the heat it is not helping the president it is not helping the republicans to be the owners of the shutdown well as the president to open up government we are giving him a republican path to do that why would he not deal with incoming house speaker nancy pelosi has made it clear that she intends to pass several bills in the house on thursday to reopen the government with one point three billion dollars for border security but no funding for troops wall but to end the shutdown the senate will need to post those bills as well and the republican leadership there says it has no intention of even debasing them as i've said consistently for the last two weeks. senate what are ways to considering

a democratic bill which got out and which the president. the president didn't receive five billion dollars for the wall when republicans controlled both houses of congress now that power is split that goal seems who but impossible talks are being planned for friday she ever turns the al-jazeera washington. team of u.s. prosecutors are in the turkish capital ankara to discuss the possible extradition of a businessman accused of orchestrating a failed military coup turkey says that the mastermind of the twenty sixteenth bid to overthrow the government that led to the deaths of more than two hundred fifty people who has lived in self-imposed exile in the u.s. since one nine hundred ninety nine denies any involvement in the plot said in pursuit of joins me now from ankara and one wonders what sort of conversation is going to be had behind closed doors c.n.n. and what sort of statement if any we're going to get after this meeting finishes.

well so he'll actually we know that there is a delegation from united states specially came to discuss this issue with a turkish delegation that involves come to counterparts current then they are in a meeting actually hosted by the by the turkish justice ministry they are discussing the evidence that turkey has submitted to united states regarding. good and his followers involvement in the failed coup attempt that happened in july two thousand and sixteen and besides that when the when turkey's foreign minister chose sure look visited new york in late november last year for a united nations event he actually stopped method a list of eight to four names including fetlock and his leading of his leading followers and turkey asked for an extradition for these names and this list

was actually especially in mention by president are done to president donald trump on the phone before this united nations visit and we know that current that they're also working on the names that are on the list the possibility that the possibility is if they can be extradited or if they can be on there is some financial watch because turkey also claims that if it's a lucky man as a businessman in turkey other countries and united states have some corruption as well especially regarding the charter schools in the united states and turkey presented some evidence actually that this charter school if she has already been investigated by the f.b.i. for a couple of years even before the fav courts and or of course it is not for sure whether the united states is going to be building to extradite fit to luck good luck because after turkey released pastor bronson a u.s.

preacher a united the really. between the two got soft and the united states showed the positive stands that and said that they would consider turkey's request so it is a course of the ration right now but nothing has come up as a concrete the situation which turkey said actually president add on said a couple of weeks ago that turkey wants to see concrete steps from now on well we'll leave it there and of course keep a very close eye on the results and comments to come out of that meeting in the hours ahead sid and thank you still ahead here on al-jazeera why life is about to get harder for palestinian prisoners in israeli jails. says it expects to lose billions of dollars in the coming months but who's to be blamed for those stories after the break. by the spring time.