the private voice mails of families of dead soldiers and of murdered children essentially we've seen criminality and invasion of privacy on a staggering industrial scale not even the rich and powerful could escape then chancellor gordon brown's baby was splashed over the front page of the sun his illness a sick headline royal family phones were hacked the scandal even goes right to the heart of the police force senior police officers were bribed by journalists for tipoffs on sensitive investigations private lives were made public now we've got. to be some hacking into gordon brown's private life you have to you have to start to wonder what else is in and of course it's not only it's not just. the use of what we call blanket these are people. information what should be private sources like medical records tax records it's taken thirty years for the worst

fears about the british press to come true but come true they have murdoch may own successful newspapers in an ailing market but their papers which have lost their greatest asset the public's trust the u.k. has more c.c.t.v. cameras per person than anywhere else in the world i've counted eight just in this small carpark so britain's always no big brother is watching but the question now is what's big brother watching for and more importantly who's trying to bribe lower and it r.t. london. well to discuss the scandal and its repercussions are joined live by ron he's director of new york based television producer deep dish t.v. thanks very much indeed for joining us here on r.t. . why it's only now that the full scale of the scandal has come to light many people will be wondering about the timing of this murdoch's bid to take over britain's largest satellite broadcaster is now collapsed do you think that could

have been the hidden agenda all along. well you know it's hard to say exactly what the competition and flashing knives are between the various media enterprises in britain or here in the united states for that matter but you know there has been a tremendous tendency towards concentration of all of the media and there are fewer and fewer hands and unit to look at the united states with the federal communications commission has been giving a.t.t. and their eyes and you know tremendous powers to combine with the some of the smaller carriers the same thing for the television broadcast murdoch was very influential in the united states in having the federal communications commission put aside roe ules and regulations that who granted that kind of media consolidation where one in or primes can own the newspapers and the television stations in one city but i think the deeper question here is not just about the

silliness of the british media which is the well known for many many years i think you just said good thirty years you know people have looked at the this secretary there i'd choose the british tabloids but i would make an analogy that goes much deeper than than just the competition between various media barons and if you look at illegal a small news on a big battle with that some of his competitors you know it's the theme of their control everything fading from more controlled but i think more deeply and we can make an analogy i think on an international scale between what happens in takeovers so the united states and britain took over iraq and who do they bring the power who they employ they employ with close loans and i think that same thing has happened in the tabloids where you have a man's power and again some murdoch and

a few of the other barons and who. they hire what type of boat do they hire not painting every journalist with that brush of luxury but certainly if you look at the murdoch world whether it's on television where you got paid verbal assassins like o'reilly and hannity and united states i don't know about britain. it's a whole culture of power and control and deception or an agenda and that agenda i think is the gender of the hours both in britain and the united states very much closer to the us it's interesting it let's talk about the global implications when you talk about the sleaze of british media because this goes beyond britain doesn't it it to with so and their implications then the usa and australia are you saying that this is just a part of on the hand journalism that was. supposedly reportedly part of the moto. meta organizations also to blame you saying the of this i'm not playing this and

this sort of way of gaining personal information from people in this underhand journalism isn't being practiced elsewhere awful couldn't this just be the tip of the else because the demands on journalists worldwide just the same well i'm sure it's i'm sure it's exactly the same you know in country after country i mean look where you a lot of the journalists get their information they get it not just from reading people's garbage or hacking their telephones they get it from leaks from within government and police forces now in the united states which i can speak to you had scandal after scandal of police organisations employed trading. civilian groups whether they're peace activists or or any number of social movement groups that constantly get infiltrated by the police and then stories are leaked to the press about the criminal nature of these organisations or the threat that they pose to match you know security and the media whether it's the new york times is

the new york post with a law saying. times stories as if they're actually true i give say the same thing athens and russia the same thing at once francis same thing happens in germany not that there aren't what did a minute honest borders and newspapers that attempt to you know. quote fair and balanced reporting but in general i think that same brush being used to tar murdoch certainly used on almost any media baffle and the likes of what's happening could it send shock waves through the media world and we previously those of us who could be targeted who have a politician celebrities could now be thinking my life's going to be safe and now or perhaps could this could tell press freedom which after all many journalists do not want to see happen. well the question of press freedom is is a tricky question and yes on some level i suppose it could but look what is this

press freedom we talk about today in in the united states there are over a thousand prisoners on hunger strike in california. san francisco chronicle which of some would get a minute not since and for the most part we bored it's that it's probably a criminal enterprise directed by gangs now everybody knows the prison conditions in the united states to tremendously over crowded now now is that is that some kind of sleazy reporting pain. effort by prisoners to get better conditions for their lives. as a criminal and your brights. you know it the direction of freedom of press only has to be examined much more closely than this we can write anything we want the question is does the press actually attempt to tell the truth or not and is of loud tell the truth and i think those are the two key questions very interesting here we

have to say thanks so much for joining us live there in new york thank you. other news now the debt crisis now focuses on italy where the senate has approved tough new austerity measures the package is set to receive fun and approval in the country's lower house on friday it comes amid concerns the euro zone's third largest economy may become the next to offer a helping hand if not as many thought in the portugal having their ratings downgraded to junk status stating a serious blow to the new road block which struggles to prop up its weakest economies writer and editor patrick young says the response of the italian public to budget cuts will be no weakening greece. there will be one significant difference between the people who take to the streets between greece and italy and ideas that greece at least find goodness. but taxi drivers don't go on strike where is nuclei expected almost everybody is going to end up on strike and it's going to be absolutely chaotic the only way they can slip this through is perhaps because we

do have this long lead in time until the cuts really start to make an impact in two thousand and thirteen but i think the problem is in the meantime a large amount of the sort of the leftist opposition in italy for see the fact that silvio berlusconi due to many of the reasons most of which are outside of the direct fiscal reason are well i mean he's a wounded animal at this point in time and in some ways i think that he's going to be finding it very difficult to hold his government together and this is really a crisis because i mean greece is only what two and a half percent of the entire eurozone economy something like that italy it's a serious heavy hitter as everybody who's ever bought a designer italian brand or an italian car or another is retired in engineering knows and it's ultimately going to be hugely difficult this is a fundamental debt crisis across the whole euro zone and in fact what's incredible is we have an atari and mario draghi who's going to be the next head of the european central bank he's coming into office at the moment and he himself knows

those sold and seat of sovereign states is no longer to be taken for granted in other words at this point in time any possible shock could take place the difficulty is but all of the large economies along side most of the small ones have all the road too much money there are big problems in western europe the havens to be in are definitely to the east everyone fortunately expect further to the prices because the epidemic the contagion seems to be spreading and we have no political leadership seeming to do with the. and as the global debt crisis sweeping through europe reaches italy max kaiser and stacey herbert discuss how its national gold reserves might make it a target for financial perspectives that's in the cards report coming away in the next hour before there is a quick preview for. italy's got gold at the i.m.f. and the people who support the i.m.f. the terrorists as i mentioned like eric cantor they are helping to facilitate the thieving of that twenty four hundred tons of gold because that is meaningful they

need that gold because of course is the i.m.f. going to get the airport landing fees from naples or sicily. now. it's the same credit rating agency that sparked fresh panic in the e.u. now threatens to review america's aaa credit score for a downgrade and that's for the first time in over ten years it says there's a risk of the u.s. could fail to resolve the deadlock in its budget negotiations well for more on that i'm not joined by max wolf he's a senior analyst at green crest capital joining us live now in new york the chairman of the federal reserve has warned that if the u.s. fails to meet the august second deadline it will be disastrous why disastrous but what will it actually mean for the u.s. economy. well less than three weeks from today the u.s. government world reached a worst case scenario in terms of

a budgetary impasse between the congress and the president we have a lot of obstinance we've had bunch of deals that were announced rumored speculated on and then fell through and as i sit here and talk to you now we're less than three weeks away from the federal government reaching the limit fourteen point three trillion or fourteen point three thousand billion dollars in total debt if united states without an act of congress an act we've done sixty times in the past by the way to raise the debt ceiling the u.s. government will be severely constrained of what it can spare. the money on because at the present rate the budget deficit being where it is the united states is borrowing about forty four cents of every dollar that our government spends so this is more about politics rather than finance because after all america's been running on debt for years can it just carry on the same way it's done. well i mean i think america's been running on debt for years this is a disaster in the making and i would liken the situation here to a cancerous tumor inside a body there's no better time to cut the cancerous tumor out as quickly as you

possibly can that said the u.s. government has been running on debt for many many years and we've been raising the budget the total debt ceiling for many many years as a budget issue and we've successfully had deals struck it has become the political norm in the united states that whatever party is in the white house has to ask to raise the debt ceiling it's always been raised in the past the party that's not in the white house that's out of power screams and yells for three or four days at most usually about how the government spending too much and should live within its means the debt ceiling demand gets raised and it's business as usual that's been the case for thirty years but as you say it's time to face is in what way can america reduce its debt and i'll you seeing any signs that the government's trying to do this. well we are seeing signs of debate certainly many of people are trying to make a career on being at least perceived by the public as those who are going to decrease the total debt and the deficits we do need that to be done we haven't seen any deal

be struck so no one's actually doing that at the present time and in the last few years we've seen major agreements to extend huge tax cuts which of course decrease the revenue of the federal government and increase and do large expensive new spending programs which of course increase the total spending so we have lots of people kind of claiming that particular crown that there are big debt reduction focus people but we don't see much actual action there and because the u.s. government is spending about forty four cents more than it's collecting in tax revenue if we don't come to a deal by the second of august for the first time since one thousand seventeen cents or russian revolution we have the possibility of seeing our debt graph downgraded and moody's actually issued a two part warning one part is something has to be done immediately for the near term looming. debt crisis with their reaching the total debt ceiling but even more than that moody's says they still might downgrade the united states if they don't see a resolution to the debt ceiling and be more importantly real movement to contain

the out of control budget deficit and therefore out of control growing national debt and that movement to you can tell you that growing national debt surely require tax increases and also cuts in social spending something the american people really won't have an appetite for we're not we've seen what's been going on in greece for example over their austerity measures. while the american people of course like every people given any choice anywhere in the world always say they don't want to spend more taxes and they also don't want to see spending get caught that said i think the american people will probably ultimately as they usually do have a much more realistic approach to this than some of their elected leadership so we have one side in the congress right now that's the cited no increase in revenue is acceptable at another side that has decided that not raising revenue is unacceptable and so we've reached an embarrassing impasse that has dragged on for weeks longer than it should and is the reason that we're going to see tim geitner our treasury secretary come out with dire warnings later this afternoon that we've

seen benjamin bernanke the head of the fed we've seen the u.s. chamber of commerce the business roundtable and a growing chorus of foreign and domestic voices urging congress and the white house to stop and riling already strained global markets with a political impasse next i do want to ask you before we finish moody's now they have been criticized by downgrading vulnerable european economies heavily criticized by the european authorities and now this agency has turned its guns on the u.s. economy after all this is a u.s. organization is it not so why do you think in the light of it perhaps upsetting all those people are finding it what's coming out six hundred eighty eight million dollars last year why should it now be turning its guns against america in the hands that feed it. well i do think that. moody's fitch instead and poor's the three large rating agencies all of which are u.s. based in fact based here here in new york city have come under increasing scrutiny over the last several years and they came in for the probably the most overt and

harsh criticism i've ever seen and i think almost anyone's ever seen out of the e.c.b. or the european central bank when they downgraded portugal several notches despite the assurances from the i.m.f. and the e.c.b. that help was coming and there was the specter raised that they were biased against non u.s. and tidies moody's has made various issuances before about problems in the united states they fired some shots across the bow and i think they were under both political pressure as well as economic pressure on the august fundamentals here to show that they will also hold the united states to the same standard that they're getting much maligned for holding portugal and ireland and greece to the media these days that is sitting in a way to justify their existence where they could actually threaten the struggling economy is just fine and they. i mean look it's a it's a difficult position that the rating agencies are in as well they're yelled at and screamed out for not doing their job if they don't downgrade countries and the

country's debt performs poorly on the other hand if you do downgrade a country what it means is a huge black eye in the p.r. space it also means that these countries have a harder time borrowing less money and paying more for the privilege which very rarely helps them turn the corner or write the course now it's really good to talk to you thanks so much for joining us live that max will have seen and understood green capital in new york thanks. as divers continue to retrieve bodies from the volga river the number of victims after the pleasure cruises sinking on sunday has risen to one hundred thirteen this was captain was also among the dead his body reportedly found on the bridge meanwhile more details emerge of procedural violations that could have contributed to the tragedy you can go to his crew reportedly understated the passengers on board to permission from the controllers to set sail and a number to be. just twenty instead of two hundred russia's prime minister putin has visited khazan and paid tribute to the rescue operation and said that those whose negligence and greed led to the disaster must be punished. reports on how the

investigation is proceeding. the first arrests have been made and this is starting to move beyond just a disaster recovery operation for two people that have been arrested so far. she is the owner of the company that rented the ball daria for what would be its final voyage also give us sure he is a state expert on shipping and sometime before that voyage he said that the area was fit to sail and so perhaps was negligent in that decision divers are still working in teams in our in our out in a on a platform out in the river over the sunken bulgaria it's now estimated there are around a dozen bodies left to be recovered divers have explored most of the ship now there might be some places left where bodies could be but it is possible that some of

those bodies may know may not be in the ship they may be in the water around the ship and in a worst case scenario currents may have carried some of the bodies up to two hundred kilometers downstream there's also been revelations added to the case of the of the bowl garia and was particularly concerning to ships just after the sinking but passed by and didn't pick a single person up there's been massive public fury over this and that space has recently been perhaps somewhat tempered by the views of some experts saying that actually these two ships that arrived with people in the water and in the oil slick around them they weren't passenger ships they were barges and it would have actually been very difficult for them to pick people up and they may have actually hindered the. third ship the arabella which came and did start to pick people up we earlier spoke to the captain an exclusive interview the captain of the arabella

saying what he found when his ship arrived at the scene of the disaster. it happened really fast five to ten minutes after we heard the distress call as we approached it was hard to distinguish in the dark water of people who were alive from the rubble that was floating around and people were in panic when we rescued them in a state of shock with some suffering from other traumas they were all covered in oil fuel that was leaking from the sunken ship it was a terrifying picture i have to say. captain of the arabella also added his own views to those of those two other captains he was in the vicinity as they were and he gave his own views on the public fury and the experts saying well maybe it was they didn't do such an awful thing let's hear what he had to say about that. when we were approaching the position of the tragedy almost at the same time as a heavy cargo ship i don't know why he didn't stop maybe try to but the inertia of heavy cargo wouldn't let him but as we approached the side its presence could only hamper the risk you want to ration out and to proceed and not waste time so there's

very mixed feelings now about the role of these two ships the rescue operation will shortly if they can recover the rest of these bodies be moving into its next phase and that is for two ships specially equipped to try and raise garia and then it will be known hopefully in a proper investigation can start as to why this ship sank and sank so fast causing so much tragedy. tom bot reporting there and we've got more on our website including footage of the recovery operation still underway on the volga river you can log on to r.t. dot com for the first hand account. hungry for the full story we've got it for us the biggest issues get a human voice face to face with the news makers on our team.

going to be so which writer if you knew about someone from the finest impression. these funds start on t.v. dot com. a wave of criticism is gathering momentum in israel over a new bill that outlaws the boycott of israel and jewish settlements on occupied palestinian territory opposition parties have called the law an attempt by weaken government to silence the people one peace movement has petitioned the supreme court against the bill prime minister netanyahu faced a stormy session in the knesset on wednesday where he himself was forced to defend

the law when some members walked out in protest the legislation imposes fines on boycott organizers and allow settlers to sue them for compensation and a booty from the boycott divestment and sanctions movement in ramallah says the bill will only make the pro palestinian action stronger. because israel has never been a democracy how can never be a democracy so long as it's an apartheid state so long. it has tens of laws discriminating between its jewish and none jewish citizens so long as it denies millions of palestinian refugees the right to return home and so long as it continues with its occupation of the west bank including his troops as well as gaza so a country committing such violations of international law and of basic human rights cannot call itself a democracy professor alan puppet israeli historian maybe had to try to when he said israel is that heaven for which is a democracy only for the master class not for everyone and if anything israel is

going it's really pushing fast forward in digging the grave of its occupation and apartheid as long as palestinian rights are not respected by israel as long as the occupation continues apartheid continues then i look refugee rights continues to listen to me and have no choice but to continue to resist to continue to struggle. to bring it up state for the moment i'll be back with a look at our main news stories in a couple minutes from now stay with us live here in moscow.

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hotels as a treat. from the russian capital twenty four hours a day to selling t. top stories now fresh arrests over the u.k.'s phone hacking scandal rocked rupert murdoch's already shaken end with the media mogul himself press into facing difficult quest. meanwhile public fury over the case challenges the future of britain's newspaper industry. calls for the u.s. to cut spending and threats of the country's credit rating could be done grading lawmakers fail to raise america's debt ceiling as more e.u. states plunge deeper into economic crisis with its really becoming the latest country to possible start emissions. one hundred thirteen bodies have now been recovered from the water after sunday's pleasure cruise

a disaster on the volga river while divers continue efforts to find around twenty still missing. i'll be back with an update on those stories in fifteen minutes from now in the meantime as hacking attacks go global many are looking for new ways to make computer systems safe and altie now talks to security software mogul guinea kaspersky who shares his views on the issue and that interview is up next here on r.t. . thank you very much for being with us today so i was just wondering did you or do you personally know someone who is directly personally involved in cyber crime. fortunately in the hall because we are great far from these people the keeper of a good distance. calls are working with police departments and different

cultures so we know the bad guys from all contacts and police and are also from news. fortunately the cyber police forces globally that they are doing their job better and better your body you're so the a more professional and the i think that i hope they were able to handle the situation so all we see these people from the news are we see these people in the grown internet forums and we see we understand this people from the drop of the door from their from the crime from a cyber crime which with treason by your money should score which would varies by statistics romantic to the computers actually where abortion in this world but we are not in touch with the well who are this people when you think about it are there was just some lunatics or well organized criminals.