international news and comment live from moscow we're with you twenty four hours a day the greek prime minister has backtracked on plans for a national referendum on whether to accept another e.u. handout to save the country from drowning in debt george papandreou as decision to hold a public vote over the bailout drew criticism from abroad and put his government on the verge of collapse but the opposition says it will now support the idea of help from the e.u. r.t. sara firth has more from athens. of course we've got the confidence vote coming tomorrow that's going to certainly be one that everyone's looking at now because that's going to be a more clear signal of the way forward and we had some strong words from the prime minister he was talking about unity about the country moving through this crisis together but of course the actual situation here in the country has been far from unified in a fight. between the governments decisions over the past

couple of months and indeed couple of years and what the government continued to do you know it was unmistakable that in his words he did seem to be moving away from the idea of holding a referendum he caving in a little bit that pressure that we saw coming from coming from paris coming from within his own party as we saw the concern that was triggered when he announced about holding a referendum that this it's been a really big problem since the very beginning here there's nothing much confusion around these decisions that a make people simply don't know what's going on they've lost oh credibility with the population here and so we hear just happened today saying these strong messages about the country moving through this together but of course simply not how the people feel and again we've heard him once again doing a u. turn on his words he talks about democracy he talks about unity leaving no credibility here in the country. political uncertainty in crisis here greece is dominating the g twenty meeting in cannes the world's leaders have been discussing

how to stop europe's economy being dragged down by greek debt well let's cross live now to ortiz a nice and now you. you've been following the summit today how have the leaders been reacting to those extraordinary events in greece. i think it's fair to say that the euro crisis and the developments in greece over the last couple of days have completely taken over at this summit here in cannes just on the eve of the summit of the greek prime minister summoned. here by what nicolas sarkozy calls the backbone of the eurozone that of course france and germany also sat down with members of the i.m.f. and the european central bank and it's pretty much a good guess just said that there were some very serious talks behind closed doors openly we know that they told him that his decision to hold that referendum which of course now we know has been taken back was unilateral that the country is independent it can do what it likes but won't get money if that referendum

basically doesn't go the way they would have wanted it to now we know it's not going to be how what that means for the euro is still a very big debate skeptics will say that it's just moving the problem down the line euro cross will say that this is what needs to be done to save the euro euro and europe as a whole nicolas sarkozy in his press conference on this first day of the summit congratulated the greek government for making this decision. the leader of the opposition party he made a statement today that indicated that he was supporting the twenty seventh of october plan that was to so that's very very important element and i can't do anything but to congratulate him on that because he was very courageous to take that step and also. mr papandreou statements also indicated that the referendum was not. an end it itself it was a tool that was going to be considered but this the opposition would take on the twenty seventh of october plan then the referendum became less useful. now the

thing that we're going to be hearing from critics over the next couple of days is that the euro backbone or so mostly germany of course and france is basically has basically told greece that it sent listens to its people many people know that if that referendum went ahead that most likely it would be a no vote so we're going to be hearing a lot about that most likely over the next couple of days and with the brics countries they met on this first day of the summit and there of course they discussed the euro. prices even though it doesn't particularly directly a fact they did promise that they would offer money and help the eurozone they haven't agreed. with president medvedev pointed out very clearly without hiding that there is a condition on russia and its partners of the brics giving money to help the euro stay afloat and that is that their voice really needs to be heard within the i.m.f. and other financial institutions let's not forget that the g twenty was created at

the height of the financial crisis in two thousand and eight and it was meant to widen the spectrum of countries that put in their voices and try to help with global economic solutions and a lot of critics say including these bricks that that hasn't happened yet. but it can he said thank you very much indeed for that live report there from the france. over the next day or two well away from the actual summit itself g g twenty marches have been held across the french riviera analogies daniel bushell has more. protesters marched here at monaco really just down the coast from the g. twenty summit in cannes because monaco is a tax free haven and protesters here are saying that a banker for example who got a million euro. public bailout can move here i'm not even paying a single cent in tax on that bonus world leaders at previous g.

twenty summit promise to shut down tax havens all types paradises as they're known and demonstrators are angry at the fact that no action is still being taken on that demonstrators in nicolas sarkozy dressed in ireland local and barack obama mosques have given an alternative summit press conference we've spoken to the fake nicolas sarkozy who says yes we can for a ritual going as a nation the g. twenty is a rich organization for the rich and we don't see anything wrong with the world economy at the moment the fake anger merkel says we're quite happy for greece to have a referendum on whether it should have the euro bailout as long as they vote yes considering the fairly vague official statements that are coming delta just down the road in cannes some here have said that this is perhaps the more informative of the two summits if you like it follows protesters in nicolas sarkozy masks on the mediterranean sea coast holding up signs saying the g. twenty is chile and we don't want to take any risks those are just really have

a new strategy i mean it's avoiding the violence that we've seen during previous summits really marking world leaders showing up the fact that they seem so out of touch with ordinary people's problems at the moment. daniel bushell there the prosecutor for the international criminal court says an investigation will be launched into war crimes allegedly committed by nato in libya alliance members will be investigated alongside former rebels and gadhafi loyalists for more on this i'm joined live from london by jeremy perkins labor and member of the stop the war coalition well the i.c.c. didn't care where nato forces bombed countries like iraq or the former yugoslavia causing heavy civilian casualties so what do you think is changing now. i think the controversy around the bombing of libya in the first place the fact that it's been under forensic media examination ever since it began and the very credible reports

from amnesty and other human rights groups such as human rights watch about abuses of civilians by both the gadhafi forces the kroeger duffey forces i mean did by the benghazi based transitional national council and very very disturbing reports about the treatment of african mercenaries or african workers who were in libya at the time of the bombing by the nato forces so i think there's going to be some very serious investigations undertaken interest and russia demanded. the i.c.c. investigate all aspects of this particular conflict and all allegations but nato would say simply this is a case of war and accidents do happen they didn't deliberately target civilians in the way that gadhafi troops. well they were they no doubt will say that there will be people defending colonel gadhafi that will say the opposite it's very important to be a thorough investigation into this and they're also be an investigation into the

killing of colonel gadhafi himself because this was not meant to be a war for regime change and it certainly was not intended for the assassination of gadhafi i don't know the details of exactly what happened except he was alive when captured and dead a few minutes later what if a case is launched how far would it really go would we actually see individual military officials being put in the dock or really shouldn't this be government leaders been put in the dock. nature can't put itself on a pedestal and say that it's undertaking humanitarian bombing campaign such as they claimed in the case of libya if civilian targets were attacked if nonmilitary targets were attacked of civilians died then those are war crimes and the i.c.c. must investigate. now then who decided to bomb which target is usually a military decision rather than a political one so in the case of iraq or the case of israel bombing garza there

was a clear line of political commanded instructed the things to be done i suspect that the politicians who decided on the nato campaign will say it was a military decision taken by commanders on the spot and i would imagine they would try to shift the responsibility to them rather than take it upon themselves i don't think they're going to be investigating sarkozy or cameron and his arm so what about the military now be saying hate what about the future for the future campaigns if we are liable to be prosecuted this is going to tire hands we will be able to do our job properly well the bombing campaign that took place in iraq in iraq was directed from outside any i.c.c. country during the time the bombing actually took place this wasn't this was directed from a base in italy and indeed of the u.s. or british bases across europe and so quite clearly there within the purview of the i.c.c. yes it will it will make a difference but that's the whole point of the rome statute is the whole point

about the international criminal court that it makes the commanders and the politicians absolutely responsible for decisions they take and for the deaths that follow can i just ask you about the immediate future now for libya the n.t.s.c. as you were mentioning a little earlier had been accused of recent atrocities isn't that therefore a case that nato should stay on there in libya and provide security after all its initial mission was to protect civilians. its mission was to protect civilians to prevent any flying by the libyan air force that time the mission is over they allegedly have been withdrawn but in answer to a parliamentary question the seems to me to be some obfuscation about what foreign forces and what special forces were in libya and indeed probably remain in libya the n.t.s.c. claim that they can disarm all the rebel groups and they can create a review of the five libyan army it remains to be seen i am very worried that we're

going to descend into lawlessness a civil war and they're going to possible to collect in the vast quantities of arms that are freely held by people all over libya at the present time jeremy corbin as always great here we have to say labor m.p. a member of the stop the war coalition thank you for joining us live there in london thank you. british officials are reportedly working on a plan to assist u.s. forces in a preemptive attack on iranian military facilities it follows claims washington is moving towards a policy of intervention out of fear that iran is developing a nuclear weapons program something iran has always denied and political analyst chris bambery has told me earlier that he believes the prospect of economic ruin that's motivating the old elite into action. anyone reading the press reports on these contingency plans being dropped by the minister of defense here in london for an attack on iran must be worrying that if iran is not developing and you could miss our it will be developing a nuclear missile face with the idea that the americans the british and he's really

he's are looking towards should an unprovoked attack on iran and the world a much more dangerous place i cannot imagine a worse alliance with these three people in the west seem to underestimate the strength of a reunion nationalism that is a strong national a sense that under remembrances of what happened. to. the shah was with that installed and maintained by britain and from america it's a people of long memories of the shah that we know in the west if the shah was with the regime there will be a bloody war if there is an attack on iran iran is not iraq as of two thousand and one there will be retaliation for my mass and the world is that the more dangerous place because of these reports it seems bizarre that you would have thought that anyone even thinking about contingency plans around would look at that and your position in this country britain for instance to the war in libya oh there was a majority against that but of course we're talking about economically declining paolo's in america and britain and their military assets remain there i mean the

one thing they can deploy and we know that britain and america pull in america are prepared to use their recognized military power to try and buttress their economic position in the world in relation to china in relation to me so i think what we're seeing here we know this from history economic instability often leads to military adventures often leads to wars and i think we must be worried at the moment the one thing i would say is if i was an american president i would be worried about thinking about any attack on iran given the level of opposition to the economic policies we're seeing on the streets of oakland streets of washington and new york and elsewhere with this occupy movement. log on to our tea dot com to find the latest details on this and other stories and find out how the. has mother has been driven to despair by the latest news from the u.k. courts that he has to be extradited to sweden she says unless his homeland of australia steps in extradition to the us is inevitable. plus

a belated how to surprise protesters in ukraine supporting convicted ex-pro minister you'd have to machine taken all public says they tried to storm the country's parliament. royd to get a club police officers of withdrawal from the streets of oakland after a series of running battles with occupy movement protested according to witnesses police ring to various protest strongholds throughout the city including a number of abandoned buildings once in position they attempted to smoke them out using flash bangs and tear gas to on the demonstrators much more serious way on occasions that police were deploying rubber bullets with courts that least one person was taken to hospital after being shot a correspondent couple of has more from the scene. again we're still reporting from the streets of oakland where as you can hear behind me loud explosions possibly tear gas from the police officers there are at least a hundred that not two hundred three hundred police officers in full riot gear

several in as you can see advancing behind us right now on the occupy oakland movement now we don't know how many officers are back there we saw a massive group of them sort of walk down that street before that was the street at the stand up for several protesters had barricaded the street from the police several several pieces of furniture and whatnot were lit on fire but again not enough of an action to provoke this kind of a militant response by the police force here we have to remember that earlier today thousands marched peacefully on the port of oakland shutting it down no arrests reported whatsoever in fact we didn't even see any of the police officers out there and yet this evening in the early and the early hours of the morning on wednesday after the peaceful march again this scene unfold. behind me on the streets of oakland no other media outlets no other television outlets here on the front lines we have been standing here we have seen tear gas fired several protesters injured from the tear gas in fact you can smell it in the air right now i wish i could describe it better but

a very intimidating show of force when you have this line of police slowly marching forward with protesters in front of them the mood is an extremely tense we don't know how this will develop but people are sort of running out from the side streets that perhaps there's more confrontations down that way whether or not they're going to clear the camera remains to be hated but as you can see these was there are marching behind as sticks in hand baton hand i don't know if you can get any closer on that shot but they're certainly coming here the crowd as you can hear is chanting oakland perhaps you can see over there several police officers with their weapons out shooting tear gas for these loud sort of don't read that don't actually hurt anyone but definitely here scared that the protesters and journalists on site . and with the occupy movement demonstrating resistance to police crackdowns and cynicism in the mainstream media that's now talk to me martin founder of media groups dot org and joining us live in oakland i understand that you were actually

the protests yesterday one of the biggest and see movement began do you think the message was brought across do you think you got your message across. well it's funny a lot of people try to paint this movement as you know we're not unified we don't have a cohesive message but as far as i can see we have one message and it's corporate greed and we're not standing for it anymore and no matter what your signs say or what you're saying it all stems from the same source which is corporate greed running amuck so i'd say that we did have a unified message there were i mean i heard some estimates up to twenty thousand people peacefully marching and successfully shutting down the port of oakland which was huge yes but let me to say that what about so many people shutting down america's fifth largest pool is your message more important the disruption you cool . well i wouldn't really call it i mean it was almost necessary to get the point across no one's really listening to us that mainstream media is pain as they're

trying to marginalize this movement so maybe it will take something like that to really get people to recognize our force and just talk about the mainstream media obviously a bit of a battle now for you to convince them what your message really is some saying actually you'll just simply being envious of the rich your idea of oh it's against corporate greed this is just and then view of the rich is no no no not at all it's about the disenfranchisement of cannibalization of social services and the extreme disparity that we're seeing in the rich keep getting richer and not just talking about people making a million dollars a year i'm talking about people making five hundred million dollars a year we're talking about corporations not paying taxes why should we there's a two tiered justice system. the corporations are not held accountable for anything that they do yet we are held to a different sort of justice system in america and we're outstanding for it anymore when i mean it's a persuasive argument and clearly you got a lot of support for it but as we've been talking we've been showing some scenes of violence in oakland are you concerned that actually this movement could be hijacked

by only because as we've seen with all the movements. by people with actually nothing better to do. well it's interesting that you see these anarchists come out when there is a peaceful protest where are they now why do they wait till there is a peaceful rally in order to go break stuff around town yeah it is true that there was violence in the streets last night it was very scary i felt like i was in a war zone in my own city i got teargassed very badly i saw a dumpster being lit on fire and i did see bottles thrown at the police officers after they tear gassed us it is terrifying but you have to ask yourself you know we know for a fact there was a cop watch a video done an exposé showing police working as undercover agents into the occupy oakland movement so who are the provocateurs if there was provocation in that group is it undercover police we don't know all we know is that we mass masses the overwhelming majority of us are remaining peaceful urging people to remain peaceful

and you have two people throwing things and lighting a dumpster on fire so were the cops we don't know but it's a shame to paint the whole movement as violent when it seems like there's just a few anarchists causing trouble let me just ask you finally. there have been accusations that the movement is lacking coherence and focus and there are too many messages within this movement. but nevertheless to do you think this could be a movement that would bring about a change in politics i mean we've obviously seen the tea party which obviously represent something very different but does the movement have aspirations for a new political movement now. absolutely and i think people are waking up to the two party dictatorship and they're realizing that both parties mirror each other and are realizing that the political system doesn't represent us anymore this country is founded on civil disobedience is protected in the first amendment or bill of rights we have the right to peacefully assemble it for a redress of grievances for our government if it doesn't represent us and i think that the sit ins what if rosa parks was teargassed we need to do this you know we

can't follow orders anymore to a coverage that doesn't represent us so civil disobedience is the only way to go and i definitely think this has enormous opportunity for massive change or i will leave it there thank you very much indeed abby martin founder of a. pleasure to talk to you thanks for joining us by thanks so much. this is live here in moscow twenty three minutes past the hour now here by the way you can check our t. lucy company twitter feed for the latest updates from the city and you see of course our correspondent there you can read a description of some of the most dramatic events we've just been talking about in that interview there in oakland. she tells us how the crew was blocked from leaving the poor talk to filming a car plowing into protesters all ending with a public vote on whether to allow them to pass that's a much much more on. twitter feed which we will also be retreating. on

the school. fit to breach defense preparing to appeal after he was found guilty in new york of agreeing to sell arms to terrorists and conspiring to kill americans the russian businessman could face life in jail he was arrested in thailand in two thousand and eight after a sting operation involving agents posing as members of colombia's folic group which u.s. considers a terrorist who was eventually extradited to the u.s. despite strong opposition from moscow his brother surrogate says the u.s. media launched a campaign which ruined his reputation before the trial even begins. which will. even before the cool hearing stone said the news channels and websites practically all the mass media to do nothing else but vick to boot his name is on the screen around the clock but apart from talking there is absolutely no evidence this is what a surprise the lawyer who would prefer but the prosecution could not give any they kept calling baron wanted all over the world because they said everyone was of to

him and tried to intimidate the jew is calling him a monster. he was flown out of thailand in a military style operation that most companies was outside the jurisdiction of u.s. authorities the thai court could not find enough evidence to try but gave in to u.s. political pressure russia insists that his extradition was illegal and wants to bring him home good when he's published book something to be just told me that the case against him was politicized from the start. the problem is that too many americans have heard so many bad things about him but the evidence against him obviously was to supposedly selling these arms to the dark horse a charge is only. considered a terrorist organization in america and in many other countries around the world is considered a valid political party i think the whole case is smacks of a political agenda when he was taken from thailand specially since the thai authorities could find nothing to charge him with and the we americans came in and

grabbed him anyways and i think he's taken over a lot of the business that the cia and other shadow organizations were working for themselves and africa was very big business supplying arms to africa and once things start to go downhill there the american businessmen that were supplying arms got out of the country and boot was one of the only people brave enough to you know be in there and i think we're trying to punish him for that sort of thing. well that brings up state for the moment tell me about with a look at the headlines in about three minutes from now and meantime stay with us here on r.t. .

wealthy british scientists are. not out to subscribers. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max concert for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to cause a report on our. move. to the

limited to just suit to. just see. if. please. explain.

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live from moscow this is r.t. top stories now the greek prime minister moves away from plans to hold a referendum on whether to accept an e.u. bailout after coming under pressure at home and abroad. europe's financial chaos hijacks the g twenty meeting in france as the leaders of the world's richest nations discuss what to do about greek debt and the teetering euro zone. down the road from cannes and g. twenty marches and alternative gatherings are being held surrounded by a massive police operation. oakland streets are littered with tear gas canisters and spent rubber bullets softer a rock police crackdown on a massive occupy protests that left an american fifth largest port paralyzed. and putting at risk the last remnants of stability in the war torn middle east britain puts the final touches on the plan to assist the u.s. in a preemptive strike against iran's alleged new.