international news and comment live from moscow with twenty four hours a day good to have you with us this hour the greek prime minister has ditched his plans to hold a national referendum on whether to accept another e.u. cash injection to save the country's ailing economy in the move comes after george papandreou as decision to hold a public vote drew criticism from abroad and put his government on the brink of collapse already sarah firth brings us the latest from athens. very difficult to say exactly what the plans were to come out parliament she adjusts for the prime minister george pop and it's been a very confusing day all round to be honest we saw a huge turn unmistakably on the plans to hold a referendum and they didn't specifically say in his address that that was off the table certainly the noises were being made that that was the direction we were going in and also that we heard from the greek finance minister he did categorically say that the referendum was off the table now when that was announced a little while ago that we saw. not just the eurozone countries and their leaders

but the financial markets as well and indeed within the greek government there was a lot of concern that those cool by the prime minister for a referendum we've seen him backtracking now a lot of people saying that he's caved to that pressure from berlin from paris from within his own government now what he was saying was that they say in the decision was always between whether they'd reach a consensus or whether they'd have a referendum say today the message was very much that actually in the presence of the decision to announce that they be holding a referendum was always the fact that if they could reach consensus about the bailout plans with the opposition in government then a referendum wouldn't be necessary. cost a lot of cynicism again here on the ground in the people because you know you heard the prime minister making a very strong statement a couple of days ago talking about the mochas in how this decision should now lie

with the people and now of course he's seen this u. turn happening and he was saying here right from the beginning to be honest they weren't expecting the decision to be put in their hands they really feel like brussels is the driving force behind a lot of what they're hearing at the moment and we've seen this time and again with the public me coming out onto the streets we saw again some people outside the polling the building today a lot of discontent here in the country. sheriff earth reporting there from athens and political uncertainty in crisis hit 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 and he said no he has more. 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 to 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 to say 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 with a unilateral that the country is independent and 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 the euro cross will say that this is what needs to be done to save the euro hero 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 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 sint listens to its people many people know that if that referendum went ahead. most likely it would be a no vote so we're going to be hearing a lot about fact 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 crisis 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. the president very clearly found 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 and he said knowing that one away from the actual summit and the g. twenty is have been held across the french riviera he's done a bushel has more. protesters must hear 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 pay

a single cent tax on the bonus world leaders that previous g twenty summit promised 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 must have given an alternative summit press conference we've spoken to the fake nicolas sarkozy who says yes we confirm we're a rich organization the g. twenty is a ritual going as asian for the rich and we don't see anything wrong with the world economy at the moment but we. will move. forward in the region and what i want because we're not very good for him and we want. most of. the fake angular 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 down 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 masts 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. the prosecutor for the international criminal court says an investigation will be launched into war crimes in. legibly committed by nato in libya alliance members will be investigated alongside former rebels and gadhafi loyalists jeremy corbyn labor m.p. a member of the stop the war coalition told me earlier that humanitarian intervention is no excuse when civilians still die nato 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 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 was this was directed from the base in italy and indeed other 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 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. british officials are reportedly working on a plan to assist u.s. forces in a preemptive attack on iranian military facilities for those 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 that he believes it's the prospect of economic ruin that's motivating the old elite into action. anyone reading the press reports on these contingency plans been dropped by the minister of defense here in london for an attack on iran must be worrying that if iran is not developing a nuclear missile it will be developing a nuclear missile face with the idea that the americans the british and he's really he's are looking to watch an unprovoked attack on iran and the world a much more dangerous place i cannot imagine a worse alliance with these three powers people in the west seem to underestimate the strength of the rainy and nationalism that there is a strong national

a sense. of what happened under foreign intervention into the country and how the shot was installed and maintained by britain and for america's people memories of the shah the way it's presented you know the west of 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 from hamas and the world is a more dangerous place because of these reports it seems bizarre that you would have thought that anyone even thinking i could see points around would look at that and your position in this country britain for instance the war in libya oh that was a majority get against that but of course we're talking about economically declining pose in america and britain and the military assets remain they remain one thing they can deploy and we know that britain and america. are prepared to use the economic military part 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'd be worried about thinking about any attack on iran given the level of opposition to the economic policies are seeing on the streets of oakland the streets of washington and new york and elsewhere with this occupy movement. police officers have withdrawn from the streets of oakland offer a series of running battles with occupy movement protest as according to witnesses police ring the various protest strongholds throughout the city including a number of abandoned buildings once a position they attempted to smoke the moment using flash bangs into the gas to on the demonstrators much more serious were allegations of police with deploying rubber bullets with reports that at least one person was taken to hospital after being shot a correspondent you see coming off has more from the scene. again we're still reporting from the use of oakland as you can hear behind me loud explosions possibly tear gas from the police officers there are at least one hundred of the

not two hundred three hundred police officers in full riot gear several i'm 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 of the standoff 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 in the early hours of the morning on wednesday after the peaceful march again or this scene unfolding 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 why. either or not they're going to clear the camp remains to be seen but as you can see these was there are marching behind this six hundred hands baton to 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 who lived their weapons out by a shooting here yes for these loud sort of done raids that don't actually hurt anybody but here scared that the protesters and journalists on site. and with the occupy movement prove resilient in the face of police crackdowns of the militant founder of media reached says that on the cover police could be the ones

instigating the violence 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 it 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 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 the group is it undercover police we don't know all we know is that we that mass the masses the overwhelming majority of us were meaning peaceful urging people to remain peaceful and you have two people throwing things and lighting a dumpster on fire so were they 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. and you can check our correspondent lucy cup in os twitter feed for the latest updates from oakland and they can also read her description of some of the most dramatic events during a protest. she tells us how the r.t.e. crew was blocked from leaving the port after filming a car plowing into protesters all ending with a public vote on whether to allow them to pass that and much much more on twitter feed which we will also be tweeting at r.t. underscore com. coming up in a few minutes for you here find out why social networking sites like twitter and facebook or are in danger of becoming a surveillance tool for the british government that's the head of. the first victim groups defense are preparing to appeal after he was found guilty in new york of agreeing to sell arms to terrorists and conspiring to kill americans russian

businessmen 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 fog group which the u.s. considers a terrorist group was eventually extradited to the u.s. despite strong opposition from moscow his brother said he says that u.s. media launched a campaign which ruined his reputation before the trial even began. even before the court hearing started all the news channels and websites practically all the mass media talked of 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 surprised the lawyer who asked for proof that the prosecution could not give any. spare and wanted all over the world they said everyone was after him and tried to intimidate the jurors calling him a monster. he was flown out of town and in a minute to start operating the moscow believes was outside the jurisdiction of u.s. authorities the thai court could not find enough evidence to try to gave in to u.s.

political pressure washer insists that his extradition was illegal and wants to bring him home and goodman has published books on that debate has 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 sell them supposedly selling these arms to the dark and the horrors of fargas 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 a this smacks of a political agenda when he was taken from thailand expects the sense the thai authorities could find nothing to charge him with and the america 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. the british government has blamed social networking sites for spreading on rest during the august riots across england to prevent similar trouble in future one part of london is now proposing to monitor online activity at youth centers but what is laura smith reports it's a risky game that may breach the vital bond of trust between young people and social workers. the reality of life in east london young teens take part in a workshop on gang violence with the government laying the blame for all guests riot firmly at the door of gangs one london council is talking about making youth workers spy on their members and monitor their social network activities and i think suspicious would be passed to a special anti gang unit but the m.p. for hackney where some of the worst on rest took place says it's not the technology

to blame when you had riots in this country in the twelfth when there was no internet and there was no. text message so it is not so that's. the real causes of riots rather than blaming the messenger and there's the real possibility it will backfire the some young people being used is a safe haven in the world and message monitoring could undermine the impatient relationship between youth and vulnerable teen making them less likely to turn to them in a crisis and more susceptible to guide. and ultimately crime and violence during the riots social networks like twitter and blackberry messenger were used by rioters to pinpoint the next location in market for destruction the government went to spar is proposing shutting down the services while two men were jailed for four years each for inciting rioting on facebook but teens say spying risks isolating

the very people they're trying to help. these. i think there are undoubtedly social issues and solving them requires walking a fine line between coming down hard on troublemakers and preserving civil liberties for everyone but it's clear that this measure which would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds to enforce could also cost the trust and goodwill of the same at risk youth the old thirty's is so concerned about laura smith r.t. london. to bring us up to date for the moment as our main stories for the moment here on r.t. next to the ambitious russian experiment simulating a manned mission to mars will come to an end on friday and r.t. spoke to the head of the project to find out what's been learned and that interview is up next i'll be back with some of our main news stories in eight minutes from now.

question what needs to murtha thank you very much for being with us to. five hundred is your idea that your courage and own it's close to its completion but what the experimenting members are about to walk out of this chamber or whatever in

college how does it feel it's been seventeen months are you nervous with the question cognition of all and of course i'm anxious as we are more anxious to go when they just walked in now we're looking forward to the end of the experiment and of course such extensive isolation will require the crew to spend some time in rehabilitation it would be hard work for us to analyze the results. from the very start there has been much controversy over marse five hundred especially among professionals when i mean yes people say that you can become a formula one driver by spending a year and i have any driver see ordinary people who don't know much about the experiment are likely to ask was the purpose of spending fifty million dollars to isolate six able bodied men and the rest of the world for seventeen months the words. of course call the perp. is as follows the experiment

has been designed to define the limits of human capacities like a mission to mars is an idea that's been on people's minds for at least fifty years it will put space science on a new level in terms of technologies knowledge and extended limits of human capacities well it'll grow. the experiment is supposed to stretch the limits of human capacities does it give you any specific answers right when can humans first reach mars who will be the chinee or to step onto its service. with regular cars or as a friend of mine once said it's not even the first step we've only lifted off to take that first step before we decide on the equipment that we use in a flight to mars we first need to have an understanding of the limits of the human body his psychological and physiological capacities secondly we need to decide on the amount of resources to be taken along on the way our life support system will operate during such long missions and communications between the crew and the earth will be a different ballgame in over two flights much of the work rests on the shoulders of

the specialists on the ground an interplanetary mission is also characterized by autonomy independence you can't turn back it's a totally different situation and without testing and identifying the primary elements the life support system the volume of the resources needed the human capacities it's difficult to make plans even on and initial design of a future spacecraft research in human capacities should go before the design of a spacecraft though our scientists are quite active in resigning new vehicles this is an experimental facility it can serve as a model or give us the data on the real science that we needed for a real flight anyway a mission to mars will most likely consist of four crew not six or more the mission will need to cut the amount of resources that we've taken aboard. that problem i think that the crew members know that in any case of emergency scientists and. interfere at any point unlike in space and solve the problem in

a way that would be different to space conditions so does this fact the scope of the experiment. doesn't although this is a major factor on a real trip you realize that you're away and you cannot make a u. turn even if you wanted to that you will take the road back only after you've reached that goal in contrast the crew locked up here is fully aware that they're not far away from the center of moscow it's very hard to take this facts of life but what we can imitate is the isolation from the outside world it's a lot more of the crew motivated by what can encourage a person to stay away from their relatives and friends for seventeen months but it's not really as likes to march the experiment one doesn't make them watch they miss and try to be the first to learn of mars and that we're going with. there's a profession called a test engineer and i think i can only count myself as part of this group it's the

people who are always one step ahead of what's actually going on in space before in the case of an emergency so what they're just enthusiastic helping mankind to move forward to could grow just interviews iesus incident months is a pretty long period of life it's really known. i'm among the fact that it. belongs in there surely had enough money for that with. no place is no big money in my view is it a secret thing no it's not pretty millar we promise to pay three million rubles. people don't get any sunlight given up on their favorite occupations per quite some time now what kind of psychological impact as it happened is there a risk that they. will encounter some kind of psychological follow on later. with. i'm not sure about the consequences but i do know that a person needs social rehabilitation after such experiments. because he practically drops out of his every day life according to long time want to say is that such

experience always leaves traces when a person gets used to living in a capsule is like it was never had time to get it changes everything is my movie why other people were there the crew offered the opportunity to take their own decisions or introduce changes from time to time this american thank you very much for this interview thank you.

i am. those who are fascinated with history. to those who have a sweet tooth. to those who can't live without the sky. and of course the nature of. this magnificent land offers its treasures. between earth and the sky.

news stories this hour here on r.t. 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 of the leaders of the world's richest nations discuss what to do about the greek debt and the teetering eurozone. and down the road from canon t g twenty marches and alternative gatherings are being held surrounded by a massive police operation. who can streets are littered with tear gas canisters and spend rubber bullets after a riot police crackdown on a massive occupy protest that left america's fifth largest port paralyzed. putting at risk the last remnants of stability in the water or the middle east region puts the final touches on the plan to assist the u.s. in a preemptive strike against iran's nuclear facilities. so those are our main headlines for the hour.