the world in turmoil as everyone awaits the next move in libya why is there a blind eye turned at play all rain and what exactly makes gadhafi so different from the rest we'll take a look at america's foreign policy a policy some now are calling upon us. and japan on the brink of a church noble life a task for free is it really possible to prevent a full scale nuclear disaster with both resources. and while libya and japan are in turmoil president obama heads out to a more stable and growing region talking about latin america chris now be playing

a game of catch up. it's friday march eighteenth seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for sound what you are today. well i want to start now with the situation in libya where much of the rest of the world has come forward with its reaction now as we told you yesterday the united nations approved a resolution to him impose a no fly zone there we heard from president obama earlier today who said the united states would not supply ground troops into libya and would not use force to go beyond the go beyond the goal of protecting civilians in libya but it's kind of a double edged sword there you know protecting civilians have in the past meant using force those two sentences somewhat at war with each other and how omar gadhafi has called for a cease fire but it's unclear what that actually means as reports of violence there

continue we'll start off with an inside look from our artie's tullus leader. we're certainly hearing that rebels feel it's a little more than a contradiction they simply do not believe the gadhafi regime they say that they will not heed this ceasefire call they point to the fact that clashes still continue in the east of the west of the country we know that in the town of misrata which is some two hundred kilometers from benghazi which is a rebel stronghold there were receiving reports of people who have been killed among them children clashes that also continue in the town of ajdabiya which is a little bit closer to benghazi we've heard unconfirmed reports that there had been two explosions outside the capital city of tripoli now the foreign minister certainly surprised the international community mr mustafa koussa when he did that libya would be implementing a cease fire immediately he said that they would be the station of all military activities he said that the government had a responsibility to protect humanitarian assistance to provide humanitarian assistance to protect human life to provide protection from foreign assets and

foreign citizens he also called a full open dialogue now the international community particularly the e.u. was striving to make sense of what we libyan foreign minister meant and what the position of the gadhafi government is you need to remember that it is less than twenty four hours ago that gadhafi sons say part is some say that all of this would be over within forty eight hours and he said he was alluding to move violence and more protests and more military action on the ground we're hearing from france that they are remain just we're hearing from london that gadhafi needs to be judged by his actions and not by his words and we're hearing from the u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton that the international community is still going to go ahead with increased implementing this no fly zone she too saying that only then can get deputy judged in terms of lucky's real motives of the rebels who are really do support the call for a no fly zone but even they are particularly cautious and they are against that no fly zone being enlarged to mean something with the question being asked is if in no

fly zone does not work if indeed a no fly zone is not able to stop. the gadhafi regime from one to come continuing with these military activities what will be the next step and expose has been banging the president off when exactly what his no fly zone be infamous for we still have no timeframe how long will it continue for what is all of libya who exactly will be involved and who will have the chain of command now we are hearing parallels being made with the situation in the operations in iraq and afghanistan here too the call is a for civilians to be taken care of but as we saw in iraq in afghanistan and lot of innocent people died and as we've heard from germany which was one of the countries to abstain from voting on this u.n. resolution they say it carries considerable dangers and risks the same caution was voiced by the russian ambassador to the united nations russia of course another country who abstained from that u.n. resolution the images are in essence

a whole range of questions raised by the russian federation and other security council has remained unanswered questions which were both concrete and if you support questions regarding how we're going to fly to be forged and the rules of engagement will be and limits to the use of force provisions were introduced into the text potentially opening the door to large scale military intervention responsibility for the inevitable humanitarian consequences and the excessive use of outside force unless you're fair and square on the shoulder you might undertake such actions if this happens only the civilian population. holding peace and security throughout the whole region because. there's a need to avoid such destabilizing. effect as ways that its concerns back to the question of where exactly all this no fly zone aims many unanswered questions many fears a lot of concern and certainly a feeling of uncertainty here in libya in tripoli libya that was artie's policy or

. president obama spoke about this matter in libya this afternoon and said in no uncertain terms that if the gulf he does not back down that the u.n. security council resolution will be enforced through military action he used alfie's threat against rebel forces to try to make his case take a listen and just yesterday speaking of the city of benghazi. a city of roughly seven hundred thousand people he threatened. we will have no mercy no pity. no mercy on his own citizens all right so listening to president obama's speech and thinking bigger about this we've got to ask why libya why not get involved in other countries also in dire situations all the help answer that question we go to michel chossudovsky the editor of global research joining us from montreal canada. hey there michelle let's talk about this decision by the u.s. as one of the members of the u.n. security council to support a no fly zone in libya and perhaps why it's

a first on the reaction to what's going on elsewhere like they in ivory coast or bahrain or yemen. well over her say i think we have to understand that this is not really a no fly zone a no fly zone in fact implies a bombing campaign and good credible reactions are ongoing i think the timing of this operation is stage we can't really make any clear statements although we have we have the statements made by by france and britain so that event that i think well should be understood first of all that this intervention even though it is adopted on the. you were you aware of the auspices is interrogation of international law and you can't simply go into a country and started bugging the other place color pretext that you're coming to

the rescue of civilians and since when has president obama come to the rescue of civilians he's bombing a lot of parker start with the drone attacks he's killing people in iraq. and those are and not to mention. so that the credibility of the west and starts it's very it's very weak another aspect is that nowhere in this resolution did it actually mention the fact that we're dealing not with a protest spoken with an insurrection and consequently this involves a confrontation between the two sides as an arms embargo but that arms and bar because the flight to aren't shipment to the rebels it doesn't imply. it doesn't provide the assistance which u.s. and allied special forces have been granted. the rebels right from the outset so from my standpoint and from the standpoint of international law this is

interference and affairs are a sovereign country michael be like caffeine or not that's not the issue the other aspect which is. very serious and we have to really analyze it is that this is of all what the answer we have three what gives us so little while is that all are true is a rather serious palace and all is the africa. because this but the possibilities of the escalation dog and what is constantly it's not only an accompanying it is also a grant or i wanted to say you guys you brought up so many points michel and i want to just touch upon one of the that you made with sort of to dig deeper into the air to air this idea it's not just an idea i think it's a fact that libya is a sovereign country and that when you have a sovereign country it's not in the interest of states to get involved in to get involved in these internal affairs so why is nobody talking about this why was this

not a consideration when making this decision well because you. china and russia have a great statement so the fact because and i think level that there are problems through this between the ocean basin exercise at the top the united nations security council prefer to have steady job and it's also said we are not going in and we're not going to be involved in any military operation i think that was a very good styles on the part of germany and other. brazil as well love what i once again the bric countries seem to be sticking together and of course germany here too but i do want to talk about the countries actually leading the charge in this africa great britain and france any idea michelle you know we've heard that they may send in planes even sooner than tomorrow and the idea what these two countries are up to what their reasoning is for being so in favor of this move.

well look yes three point five percent of global oil reserves. has the cheapest oil in the middle east as low as one dollar baloch holding southern estimates and. the trauma field because what this oil now i think consists. of the actual loads operational because goals of canadian forces as well from different countries is at the front because oil and its oil and gas and what these countries are and god is is what watch are they going to share this was a war i should mention that china holds or at significant oil interests. prior to the so the insurrection so this is this is part of the battle of is the battle for oil it's sculls us it's not a humanitarian war and you don't come to the to the rescue of civilians by bombing because that's precisely what you get so-called collateral damage which is is

really to try to get some benefits thinking of collateral damage michele i want to draw some other comparisons here we've got a situation that just happened in north waziristan pakistan right on the border there between afghanistan and pakistan this was a u.s. drone attack that killed a forty one people and you know a lot of times that when the u.s. government or other governments come out with reasonings for a no fly zone or other they cite as you said the humanitarian reasoning how can they say that in one breath and then we've got a drone attack happening just hours ago yesterday it's double standards i mean they killed more than a million people and there are now they can't tell us they're coming to the rescue of civilians it is absolute nonsense and. the situation in buffalo is very very serious and we even have reports of chemical weapons i mean you could see a against the against a violent protest movement and then you have the fifth fleet which is there. and

they didn't intervene they didn't even and they didn't even tell them you're killing people because just let it happen now. the country is up the gulf states are part of this coalition they have already they've adopted an arab league. organization and unity so that it can affect i think the western military alliance what it wants also is to have these other countries do the dirty work order egypt as it is agreeing in weapons. saudi arabia has has a lot of of u.s. military hardware but all of those actions in fact would be integrated into nato u.s. states or as an offense systems so that in fact the whole lives just six of this war will be controlled by nato even if. the reader who sends a government can know that but i don't bother. to insulate disaster but what

we have i think us understand and world public opinion must understand we are all of the above for one theater in north africa is very difficult to predict how it was unfolds but where you assume no fly zone and other measures that need military intervention and that means a lot and that means civilian casualties and you know michelle air i don't think you're the only one that thinks there's that a couple recent polls just came out that show even the majority of americans in in some cases depending on the wording of the poll seventy four percent oppose the u.s. getting involved in libya a lot of them seeing this as to what just what you said as the start of what could be a war of some sorts michel chossudovsky editor for global research that cia. on now to a chaotic of a different kind of chaos devastation and increasing fear in japan happening with the nuclear situation there you know we've all gotten reports that the situation is

at least as bad as the incident at three mile island in one nine hundred seventy nine r t five or bennett is in japan and brings us this report. right now they're still trying to reconnect power to the site so they can get those cooling systems up and running and bring the temperature down inside the reactor something about the only way they're now going to prevent what could be a real nuclear disaster they're now focusing on reactor number two because this morning that they actually saw smoke rising from the reactor they don't know what the cause was of that i don't think it was an explosion that wasn't hurt clearly the temperature inside is very hot or they've already managed to do was to lay a power cable from the main bridge a kilometer long cable to try and restore power but they haven't managed to connect that up yet the radiation is very high still and also the. casing of the reactor the containment vessel was badly damaged in the explosion that happened earlier this week now in the meantime the are trying everything they can to try and keep the temperature down to try to cool the reactors. off before the first thought

actually had explosions in the earthquake for example yesterday at reactor number three they doused in sixty four tons of water from a cot the frog and water cannons from below and the early hours of this morning the tokyo fire department they sent thirty of their fire engines to the spring everything they got that is the head of the u.n. nuclear watchdog international atomic energy agency and he's in tokyo right now meeting with the japanese prime minister he came out and said that to prevent this turning into a full scale nuclear disaster they're going to have to cooperate with international help the government spokesman dan ogola and chief cabinet secretary has come out and said that although there are very high radiation readings in some places he said it doesn't pose a direct negative effect to one's health because in these places it's not coming into direct human contact however a number of countries actually don't believe this and what they're doing is actually warning they're not to go within fifty kilometers of the sheema

a nuclear power plant whereas the japanese government have been closed an exclusion zone twenty companies to. he can stay away yesterday because the little bit from those two was the man we go i can't see what residence. this is the town of o.-r. i-a around halfway between tokyo and fukushima i'm still one hundred fifty kilometers south of the nuclear power plant but already the radiation levels here over double that of those in tokyo the geiger counter i've got just started beating wildly and shuts up to nor point five month receive it's per hour it's not harmful to one's health especially just yet but it is certainly a concern so much so that the army has started to hand out these face masks here that people are wearing. very afraid of the radiation who can do know much about it can do media and trust the government is. the tsunami did

actually come in this far inland with the town escaped most of the damage however since the earthquake they've been without drinking water here and the residents have to come and fill up the water they need from points like this in the town sets up by the army further up the coast it's a similar story we've been travelling along this road for the last ten fifteen kilometers looking for a place to have lunch but none of the restaurants are open well there it will take another week until we can open. this we can't do anything without water. this is the start of japan's ravaged east coast norene life by the day bridges lie strewn all over the place here so walls collapsed over here thousands of fallen down such as the force of the tsunami this is also the point where we're going to turn back because they die the counties reading the highest it has done all day one point zero four microsleep it's per hour out. here is that i won't be able to live here anymore and this is my home obviously i feared for my health for the radiation but

it's not just the bad i'm afraid i won't be able to come by here we're only around a hundred and twenty kilometers south of fukushima power plant now if the wind blows this way and even worse if the rain comes in the radiation will shortz arrive to inforce and i was hours a correspondent i were bare hands. and president obama of course is monitoring the situation and he also came outfront to say there's no indication that the united states should be concerned about any spread of radiation to this country and the president now is on his way to a different part of the world he said into latin america to brazil to visit brazil aisle salvador and chile so what is this visit all about for more on that i'm joined by deborah james the director of international programs of the center for economic and policy research and never let's talk about this on one hand president obama seems to be on a mission to you know sort of stay relevant to what these countries know hey we're

here we're interested perhaps in future business endeavors but there's is that underlying aspect of china the fact that china has done so much so many multibillion dollar contracts he's helped brazil grow immensely china has so is this about competition or is this about future business well i certainly don't think that the obama administration is going to frame it as competition but it's very clear china became the biggest foreign investor in latin america last year and the way that the obama administration has framed this trip is really about opening up new markets and expanding the u.s. presence in markets in brazil we have to keep in mind that we in the united states because of i think republican opposition were not able to do a stimulus program that would have been adequate to jumpstart our economy given the crash of experience and so because of that the obama administration has announced a policy of doubling exports twenty fifteen and what that means really is that we're sort of asking the rest of the world to bail us out because we weren't able

to do it domestically and brazil they see is an emerging market and a place that can help us do that so the entire framing of the administration around the strip really has been around trying to place more u.s. products in markets in brazil i think from the brazilian point of view it's a little striking because they actually went from a very big trade surplus in two thousand and six to a very big trade deficit with the united states. so this is not sort of a perspective that's necessarily going to resonate with them i think they have a lot of other issues on their agenda that's what i was going to say i mean it seems that this is not a totally new idea trying to do business and improve relations with these countries it seems that in the past in the past recent past that latin american countries have said you know washington you might have been a big deal in the past but not so much now yes i think it's really striking in the last five or ten years how much latin america has become a region that is quite independent in terms of its foreign policy from the united states it is notable actually america is more independent from the u.s.

than is europe at this point and if you look at a number of the key issues on brazil's agenda for this trip as well as some of the key foreign policy issues brazil has taken a different stance from the united states on many of the key ones we can go over and it really is striking it's not sort of the time of you know ten or twenty years ago do you think he has a good chance on this visit then to try to win their hearts and minds while their top priority really for this trip i think has to do with getting u.s. support for a seat for brazil on the u.n. security council and as you know the very powerful foreign minister of brazil celso amorim actually published an op ed this week saying this is a great opportunity for the united states to do that sort of it's time for the security council to become more relevant to today's power dynamics globally and brazil really does deserve a seat it's unclear whether obama will announce that but i think if you look at many of the different policies just take what's happening right now with libya there was a vote on the security council this week and brazil abstained along with many of

them urging market countries that's something the u.s. would have liked to have seen support on i think i don't think the united states was happy last year and november when brazil announced that it was going to be recognizing palestine as a state that's something that ruffled a lot of feathers within the foreign policy establishment in congress here in the united states i don't think there was obviously a very big problem last year when brazil. together with turkey to negotiate a nuclear arrangement with iran to try to come up with a solution did cause some ruffling feathers in the united states as well and that's just on the big international issues i mean when you look at what's happening within the region you know brazil has been un willing to criticize the democratically elected government of venezuela this is something that he's. ministration us as very much asked him to do the latin americans have asked for the united states to take a serious look and have some policy changes regarding to or the u.s. has thus far you know refused to do so so that i because i do want to talk

a little bit about venezuela now and. they've been kind of spoken of a lot lately especially because justice kennedy has this ad out in which he talks about thanking venezuela for giving them or oil for this project to give it to low income homes so i want to take a look one of our correspondents our t k one ford took a look at this oil coming from there and sort of the commotion that it's causing here on capitol hill. with dorothy de house every day is about doing a lot with a little notice wednesday so i. needed vegetable bread salvaged from the trash heap canned food to go needed at christmas that must last year and feed twenty five formerly homeless families live under duress group sharing meals parenting support and heat up until three years ago heating oil was the shelters biggest expense looking at the thermostat was something in dreaded longer do we have the many and it's so expensive kathy boylan has lived and worked here for more than

a decade helping homeless mothers have back on their feet with a budget of a thousand dollars per month we try on a shoestring to keep this home for twenty people there at the moment functioning so when citizens energy for her free heating oil from venezuela she took it and that's how much we had to pay for three thousand. twenty dollars so it's more than you know when it's all three quarters and parts are our rob budget is paid by so this is citizens energy is a nonprofit chaired by joe kennedy for six years it's distributed donated venezuelan heating oil to the poor in twenty five u.s. states and joe help is on the way heating oil it's forty six friends. but after a diplomatic freeze that sent venezuela's ambassador packing two months ago the only thing heating up between venezuela and the us is the thermostat republican congressman connie mack publicly denounced kennedy he should not allow his name to

be associated with this saga crap in latin america who was bent on talking about hugo chavez bent on destroying the foundation of what america stands for but matt did call for an embargo under forty billion dollars in trade the u.s. has with the chavez government congressman macas all of the sort of the right you want to call for an embargo or. venezuelan oil i i just think that it's interesting that one organization that he's chose to put in his gun sights is a little nonprofit or for big oil companies like a no go fill up exxon mobil and chevron texaco this stuff filling ten billion dollars a year worth of it is still an oil they're able to fund all of these congress people because of the profits that they're making and that they could be using some of the profits to help the poor that just wants it go to stop giving it away even

as president obama announced two point five billion dollars in cuts to america's own low income heating oil assistance program following a diplomatic spat washington in caracas remain without each other's embassadors in their country but with i'm asking revolution in the middle east and their actions may be forced to depend more on venezuelan oil as these families are ready to heal and for the artsy washington d.c. . all right deborah james kalan just said americans may be forced to rely more on venezuelan oil certainly not what congress people on the hill like honey mack wants to talk about this. fight this battle that's brewing over venezuelan oil i think it's interesting because we're just a kennedy first announced this program you really get a call to the domestic oil companies as well that people in the northeast needed support they were having a very difficult time in the crisis and they needed some help and there were actually no u.s. corporations that came through which is pretty striking considering that the

american taxpayer actually forks over billions of dollars in subsidies to these big multinational oil companies every year venezuela's oil company came through and i think for the people who are actually affected by this program they love it and they continue to depend on it and to need it and to make good use out of the subsidy so it's really striking how a politician like honey mack who is in this very conservative district. doesn't need needing well but it really shows the extent to which he would be willing to use them as well as a political punch bag rather than look at what is the interest of the american people which is obviously having good relations with that country to themselves i want to talk about venezuela a little more and especially get back to this visit that president obama is making to latin america obviously he's not going to venezuela there are several reasons for this but i want to know what you're going to get your take what do you think it says that the new president brazil dilma rousseff is needing with obama first even though she and her predecessor have had decent relations with venezuela and she has

not yet met with. i think this is that you know it's been scheduled for this time i don't think it's a big indicator it's very clear that brazil has a very strong relationship with venezuela they've consistently defended their country's democratic practice it's very interesting that they have put a very big premium on integration within south america so just last week that sort of the union of south american countries came into existence and this is very clearly a process of regional integration that does not include the united states it's not necessarily meant to be against the united states but it's reasonable that the countries of south america have their own political association and that is a very big priority for brazil so i think she's going to continue that and that was deborah james director of the international program center for economic and policy research and that will do it for now i want to thank you so much for watching we do have all of our.