the close up team has been to know. where russia's first free elections were held a thousand years ago. party goes to the area that used to be a place of exile since the seventeenth century. where businesses take advantage of the wild growing products. where rich academic life gives birth to innovate of idea come to the thomas creature crusher close up. well to british soil it's time to. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global

economy cause a report on. the bill in. toto keep this photo nice twist never told. the city of slovyansk. historic. culture in the city. as a good up until the stroke for us to tropicana her toe. claims of british abuse in iraq expose the lawyers push for a full public inquiry into the alleged torture and murder of civilians by case soldiers. declassified documents showing us media have been on the white house

payroll for decades garnering public support for the government's controversial decisions. a multi-million dollar contract to supply fuel to american air base in kyrgyzstan gets the green light for you are the summit ongoing investigation and objections from the care of these leaders. and the russian close of serious will visit the city of tomsk home to the first. university a growing hub of penetration at a magnet for intellectuals. i. am in the russian capital you're watching r t with me joshua welcome to the program one hundred and forty to rocky civilians to claim they suffered abuse by british soldiers are waiting to hear whether the u.k.'s high court will allow a full public inquiry they all

a geisha include torture sensory deprivation force nakedness and stress positions the abuse allegedly took place in british controlled detention centers in iraq between two thousand and three and two thousand and eight the u.k. ministry of defense says it's investigating claims and there's no need for a public inquiry such bros have already been launched for two similar cases involving the alleged torture and killing of civilians by british soldiers david scheiner one of the lawyers taking the current case to the high court says abuse is systemic and any inquiry has to be public there's no doubt that this is systemic within the interrogation. policy because we have those documents from the bottom use inquiry so we know for example that there was a policy of getting the make you'd get the make you could if they don't cooperate the way in which there was to be searched the harshing we have fun video. the training video it's on the bottom of the website these are clearly systemic issues

and it's absolute nonsense to suggest this is a few bad apples that's the interrogation policy and needs to be exposed and we need to ensure that we never go into theatre again with with an interrogation policy which is blatantly i'm all for it and if you watch the full interview with david scheiner on sunday right here on our team. the lack of opportunities in iraq forces many civilians to make a living league. often putting their lives at risk just to earn a few dollars r.t. suggest the mayor matt some locals in northern iraq are trying to survive by smuggling alcohol across the dangerous border with iran. in northern iraq kurdish smugglers load their horses with hundreds of boxes of booze they're taking into a vein that although alcohol is forbidden in the islamic republic much of tehran's bourgeoisie can't resist a drink and these smugglers provide them with an extraordinary selection we hear in

a smuggler storm in a mountainous area of northern iraq that borders around absolute funky here teachers here mr chavez risky black and white whiskey back here we have johnny walker black label we have johnny walker red label over here and we even have over four different kinds of smear not. this box of luck it will cost a smuggler one hundred five dollars in iraq he will sell it in tehran for over four hundred while though the profits appear immense to many who actually take the dangerous journey are paid a mere fifty dollars a night this is not work for those looking to make a fortune he does work for the poor uneducated in desperate dollars that i do this because i'm a literate i don't know how to do you know it was so this is the only job i can do out of the rain is brutal in its approach to keep alcohol out a smuggler recently arrested and was sentenced to life by others who have been wounded in police ambushes have been fined up to half

a million dollars and then charged the price of the bullets that were shot at them with a mind they stepped on oh yeah we crossed the border and there are explosions shootings i restore fights it's terrible nothing we can do because we have who are. not only is the job dangerous but the living conditions are bleak on the iraqi side of the small river that makes the border so it's a series of shanty towns full of tattered checks serve a small showcase for the smugglers as well as stables for the horses the police is filthy and. of course down then. there is no food or drink it's given the cold in the way. on the other side hundreds of a reunion border police some in concrete towers others in canvas tents. in their pursuit to keep the smugglers out of their country a few days before we arrived mounted an ambush on one of the smugglers. came from

the other side and took three of my muse back across the border and showed everyone . the remains left the corpses rotting on the riverbank as a warning to the smugglers nine a phone call comes in saying that the route is clear the smugglers quickly finish packing their horses and then take off towards the border what awaits them on the iranian side it's uncertain what is certain is tomorrow dangerous job away to those who are desperate enough to do it sebastian meyer. on the iran iraq border. live from moscow watching our team playing out for you this hour including. businessmen say one of the main advantages of having a big is the abundance of great minds universities live the main street here in the city center and one of the six people is pursuing some form of education r t business want to brush as fast as developing regions where innovative industries are. different types of propaganda are used by states to

promote their interest but the history of one democratic country shows that so-called white propaganda is probably the cruelest without attempting to twist the truth as dictatorships do the us promoted activities to finance bloody wars using direct methods to influence public opinion and the main tool of men affiliation became media coverage kalen for reports. when most americans open a newspaper they expect all the news that's fit to print not to plant but declassified documents show that in the one nine hundred eighty s. the state department was doing exactly that known as white propaganda editorials and stories were planted and pushed in major u.s. media outlets the washington post c.b.s. usa today the new york times and more. and sharing favorable coverage of the controversial contra war in central america the office of public diplomacy had a very innocuous sounding name but in fact it was

a sinister covert office running illegal propaganda operations hello my name is art all right meet the man at the forefront of this effort cuban american called warrior and former head of the office of public diplomacy for latin america has the reputation of a tough operator that's. worth throwing employing special psychological operations experts to craft messages for the american public putting people secretly on the u.s. payroll reporters writers and having them then pretend to be independent and writing op ed pieces and nobody would know that this was a u.s. government financed and directed opinion apart from these declassified documents we know that auto reich was behind these similar tactics were used by the bush administration and the lead up to the iraq war the iraq war is a textbook case of how a government or a couple within

a government uses propaganda planting stories in the u.s. media to convert public opinion favorably toward a war within a matter of days on september eighth the new york times michael gordon judith miller published a front page long story you know which they talked about how u.s. intelligence officials had. found out that saddam hussein had purchased llewyn tubes which they believed could only be used for nuclear weapons what they did not see of course was that that was a minority view within the intelligence community the drums of war beat faster the u.s. invaded in march two thousand and three in two thousand and nine immediately after the president of honduras was overthrown in a military coup are reich resurface in the mainstream media quoted by columnists interviewed by pundits. well what i want to know about stuff like this there's

nobody else better to call than the guy you're about to meet right here you could better explain what is happening and duress and just about everybody else otto reich is what i'm talking about you know the response he was in charge of what he was doing back in the eighty's and he's been around like a like a ghost and you see him. personally writing op eds for important newspapers in the u.s. and you see him working behind the scenes for komondors in honduras and what you what you have to wonder is who's paying him to do so why propaganda has proven effective in garnering support for america's more contentious foreign policy the office of public diplomacy it became the sacrificial lamb of iran contra scandal follow your congressional investigation otto reich moved on unscathed first to become ambassador to venezuela then assistant secretary of state he remains an influential consultant here in washington frequently quoted in the media and regularly called to testify here on capitol hill as an expert witness for r. t.

washington d.c. . norman solomon american media critic and founder of the institute for public accuracy says political lobbying by a powerful government in democratic societies much more dangerous than in totalitarian states. in a dictatorship often it doesn't matter what people think and so propaganda is often less rigorous in a society with important elements of democracy it's all the more important to try to affect public opinion this is a characteristic of governments around the world there's a lot of spinning out of the governments and those who are aligned with it through the news media the propaganda game it's all the more important when it's a powerful country perhaps most important for the world when it happens in the united states and we have that going on where there are economic political social and military agendas being pushed and the end result is we have this worldview of being reinforced all the time which often has very little to do with human rights when you have this contradiction of how human rights as

a standard is applied in practice when you have a multiple set of definitions of human rights and kind of orwellian terms then you've got what you got from our right in the one nine hundred eighty s. in the reagan administration and all too often what you still get today. now coming up our special report takes a look at the spring of nine hundred forty five and the death throes of hitler's germany we explore the berlin operation of the advancing soviet army next hour here on our team. this is just a parliament building in. the. sixty's. we finally took. some from the army. became the symbol of the little sunshine sitting. on the big three or nazi germany. on r.g.p. . the u.s. defense department has given

a three hundred million dollar contract to supply its air base in kyrgyzstan with fuel to a corporation under investigation by the congress it's not it's not known who owns the media and brightstar companies but there is speculation that relatives of what else to care against president kurmanbek bakiev my be involved the deal goes against a request made by the country's leader by a she says russia's gas problem should supply the manassas base with fuel and a joint venture with a curious company steve levine a contributing editor at foreign policy magazine says the move approved by the pentagon lacks the transparency. two companies involved mean and red star both of them have a very strange mysterious appearance neither of them has an identifiable office they work through offshore shell thanks in gibraltar and the appearance of this is not it doesn't look transparent it doesn't look clear and

it's not clear why the pentagon would again award the contract to the same company as before how was the kyrgyz his government going to respond to this we haven't heard anything as yet. but how if the curators decide that they're going to complain about this officially if kyrgyzstan is going to to send a message to the pentagon that we don't accept the mina corp we don't accept red star then i think that the pentagon would act and perhaps change the contract perhaps it's a bet by the pentagon that it that that the status quo can hold these companies came out of nowhere and grab contracts that over the last several years have earned them three billion dollars and now and dish and all three hundred fifty million dollars it's not clear who really owns them it's not clear who works there who benefits from from the contracts who they're linked to the allegations are to the

former government incidentally the same firms during the regime of. were linked to that family and so all of these questions the appearance of this is not positive it doesn't look good for the united states it doesn't look good for the pentagon. every look at some other stories from around the world this hour we're told from the news daily will cain has climbed to ninety eight after the latest blast shot out clouds of ha gas and debris more than sixty five people were injured many of them critically eruptions of mount merapi have intensified in the last few days triggering mass evacuations experts fear that a new wall of a dome forming in the mouth of the crater could collapse triggering another massive deadly surge. the winds are picking up in haiti as tropical storm thomas approaches the island police have urged the island's one point three million

homeless to seek shelter but officials report most people in earthquake refugee camps have remained in their tan saying they have no word to go and it's feared that heavy rains could worsen the cholera outbreak in the country which has claimed over four hundred lives so far up next it's artie's close of series as we continue to explore the many diverse parts of russia. and this week we traveled to the tomsk region which lies in western siberia the city of toms because earned itself the title of russia's major id hub and one of the country's fast is developing innovation based centers test her celia has been finding out what makes tom's tick. well we are here in tongs in southwestern siberia now this is a very important region for oil exploration and production companies some of the

major industries here are machine building metalworking and timber but over the years this region has also diversified their industries and they have become known as a town of science and an important economic center here in siberia and it's also a center for nuclear research and production however today investment is flowing into new for lots of the new and growing industries and that includes technological innovation scientific research and development as well as start up companies well holmes is continuing to carve a name for itself in technological and scientific innovation now in this report we'll look at some of the people behind this effort as well as the business ventures that have come out of this region. it's one of the oldest towns in siberia but it was only officially open to foreigners in one thousand nine hundred ninety today wooden houses hundreds of years old still lined the streets and there contrasts it by the youthful enthusiasm of students who flock to tomsk the home of siberia's first university. is

a graduate of the thomas cloyd technique university he's only twenty four but he's already working on a ph d. and is running his own welding company with twenty six branches all over the country. because. i started doing this three and a half years ago while still in underground we sampled our first models in a small garage then we want to few contests and received grants which allowed me to launch the company. but in the world of business a great idea needs money to get off the ground. and that's where venture capitalists like nikolai but dual income in. my business model is if not me then who i was looking for different ways i could invest and i found something that i thought was best investing innovations creating new products new technologies. one of the many businesses but to invest it in is this water purifying technology it's still in the testing stage but he believes in its potential. first the main

goal is to filter out viruses but now we're more concerned with heavy metals arsenic in particular well after the process of filtering the water this is apparently drinkable so let's try. nope no arsenic there. but two and has another project up his sleeve a new technology that may be able to advance the battle against cancer. in two thousand days we started testing the drug silver all on twenty eight cows eighteen later tested healthy scientists still need to study this drug but i personally have not seen anything better for treating leukemia this was one of the main advantages of having a baby so when tom says the abundance of great minds universities live the main street here in the city center and one in i will six people is pursuing some form

of education. we were told that in this town it's cool to be an intellectual well one intellectual locals aren't cool with this russian playwright and don check of who once wrote to his sister saying tomsk is a very dull town to judge from the drunkards whose acquaintances i have made and from the intellectual people who have come to the hotel to pay their respects to me the inhabitants are very dull to. check of sun favorable comments earned him in this marking statue an amusing reminder that the people of tomsk don't take kindly to such remarks even from an intellectual. yes our cilia are reporting from the tomsk region. and you can always find more news blogs on our website which is r t let's now take a look at some of our online stories right now. in american teenagers seem to be falling into a trap that's t.v. adverts promote

a cure all wonder but it's not free of side effects. keep them all shoot the ball games like this are getting more popular but make sure you have plenty of room when you play you could damage the furniture got more about brushes interactive games fare r t. well brings us up to date here in our t.l.'s now take a look at what's happening in business charlotte's here. hungry for the full story we've got it for. the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers.

want you to be so which brightened if you remove a song from funniest impression. start t.v. dot com. hello welcome to business program with michelle i was following the skies are open once again across moscow a russian pilots no longer need to seek permission to fly in the city but wall says a regulations for lightwave have been canceled some obstacles remain and seeing a different fate of explains. the skies over russia open to smaller be an as of this week light aircraft flying below three thousand meters no longer have to seek

permission from their route twenty four hours it had been given permission authority is now required pilots to notify them of their flight plans small of nation existence is far from floor xing and while the new rules are welcome once will doesn't make a summer as the saying goes on an international regulations regional regulations are still an obstacle to open skies it's rather small but important development for russia's air industry well it gets a little small aviation can become a good base for pilot training because now we face a serious deficit of pilots small aviation can also keep alive the whole range of regional airports all. russia in the future it may even form the basis of commercial transportation. unlike europe and united states flights over big cities up and regional flights have to navigate a mountain of people who are records commercial and political will to develop the segment legislation might ease the way through but it wouldn't change dramatically

it's all market driven. and in our case or in case of the aviation market development in russia it's about the mentality change flying around russia even in small planes is still a law rather than an everyday reality with the rush is vast to tourists it's crucial to develop air transportation at all levels many starting small but the potential benefits are huge. in a diminutive a business r.t. . now the fed's decision to pump extra dollars into the u.s. economy is the worst thing they could do you think or into patrick economist and co-author of the book gathering storm way to an investment experts published their views about the global economy. decision to increase quantitative easing by six hundred billion dollars is a complete disaster i mean we're not in a situation where the total is going to be something like eight hundred fifty to

one hundred billion dollars by the end of next year and that's going to be approximately one hundred ten billion per month which effectively means that really what we're seeing is a sort of a repurchase agreement of the american deficit if you look at the economics actually manufacturing was rebinding in october according to american statistics true there hasn't been a particularly exciting number of private sector hiring but the truth is that actually the job picture was improving ever so slightly within the private sector which is the engine of the american economy the american government is certainly not the retail sales have been remarkably strong over the course of time therefore it's quite bizarre because what we're risking is an economic and market distortions the dollar is being pushed through the floor and that's really the sort of a polling beggar thy neighbor kind of approach which isn't going to help the american economy because it's simply making imported foodstuffs more and more expensive and creating inflation for the average working mom while at the same time

it's basically leaving places like the eurozone with a further problem because it's increasing the value of the currency and making those economies less competitive. time now to public health markets are performing and another green day for asian song high on friday following gains on wall street was irritated shares are on the rise to mattel momentum lining with five point three percent in techs gain two point four percent every take you. now will be ninety nine projects approved by russia's high tech corporation last night austerity ten billion dollars mistake hope ration provides four billion dollars of the rest to be tracked local and international invested david kranz out of a j.k. the capital told r.t. well it's been attracting foreign is in russia's top top they have a tremendous who full force. inside defect alent very good education people are very very knowledgeable they're quite understanding of the technology and they pick

ation of that the knowledge of. the world they need a little help is in how do you take the basic technology and commercialize it into a product into a product that the market wants what they engine even capability that they think of support capabilities only here tell us about your investment in russia silicon valley where looking toys are found that we will bring some outside money two hundred fifty million i'll probably measured here with another two hundred fifty million and we'll have about five hundred million to invest. in technologies that can either originate or find their way into commercialization here in russia how close is your phone to investing in russia we will be looking at something that is related to nano technology although in the united states we invest heavily with software and telecommunications with all the pros and cons of russian high tech the russians are very good at basic research they are not so aware of development and to try and direct the basic research towards

a development commercialize project i think is going to be the challenge for russian scientists in washington d.c. bigger profits from investing in most of them in the u.s. the higher potential return i believe is because the overall risk outside of their environment race meaning the development the talent the commercialization is likely to be lower here because the opportunities are going to be greater and you can pick and choose the kind that represent low risk over war so i think in reality if you can walk through the different environmental obstacles the opportunity to find it attractive investment from a technologist and point would be a little easier to find here and that update for now by most or it on our website tito com slash.