lawrence for dissent or for public criticism of either government policies or particular leaders use it all to me a freelance journalist should r.t. some shocking youtube footage from the protests this february that explicitly show iraqi security forces targeting him because he's a journalist. he shouts which is arabic for journalist over and over again but it makes the police more violent three or four maybe five right police were around me one of them slapped me in the had other one kicked me in the. drive me fast yousif managed to escape arrest thanks to two foreign journalists who intervened but since the arrest of one of his colleagues he stopped covering protests altogether it became hard for journalists for example to go to i myself i don't go there i stopped there long time ago not because.

i'm not that scared to be arrested. you know i'm worried to be mistreated we tried to speak to journalists who've been arrested in baghdad but everyone was too afraid to appear on camera so we came up here to the more peaceful kurdish region to see if the situation was any different here i met a young photographer who was arrested while covering similar protests in the kurdish region but after the interview he called to tell me he was scared of reprisals from the government and asked to blur his face and change his name after his arrest in april it was imprisoned for four days and tortured. six men came to the room and started to shout at me and to beat me with cables then they gave me electric shocks they wanted me to admit that i hadn't been at the protests. when he was finally released after four days a friend took pictures of his wounds and publish them in a local magazine immediately ahmed was rearrested as a punishment for publicizing his initial arrest. came and they held me for three

days and made me sign a document declaring that i would not talk to the press again back in baghdad the government spokesman admitted to r.t. that individuals in the iraqi government were indeed using their powers to silence the press not just that people been. using there but this is again is not protected by the government the government is against it and you can see that there are people in the midst of interior for example they have misusing their power against the citizen and that is you and that is they keep comfortable and some of them has been fired almost nine years after the invasion u.s. troops are home but what of the country they're leaving behind with politicians using the security forces to silence journalists it appears that iraq lacks any credible press freedom or freedom that is essential to any democratic country sebastian meyer r t iraq. well on our website we're asking what you think will

happen to iraq now that u.s. forces have left this but right now between about to see the country slipping into total chaos we call number between things get in. around with us or our police will overthrow the government that's known to us and determine their own future by the rest believe iraq will develop into a western style democracy don't want to go home and that your voice. a suicide bombing that killed at least twenty five people in the syrian capital has heightened tensions between the government and the opposition the attack apparently targeted a police bus most of the casualties a set of in civilians becomes as arab league monitors who are assessing ballance in the country due to give their first report this weekend antigovernment protesters rallied after the blast bringing the syrian government wants calling for international intervention for jordan based political analyst. says the bombing is a solid armed opposition is actively trying to destabilize the country. right from

the start the demonstrations were not truly peaceful and there were many incidents of. gang perpetrating crimes against the army against the security forces against the civilians and of course there were denying it the so-called opposition denying it for a long time but now everything has become clear these terrorist acts these shameful terrorist acts are a clear indication that there are gangs and there are terrorists working in syria to disrupt life in syria they are not aiming the aggression only against their regime but against the whole syrian people against the whole syrian obviously what we are witnessing in syria is not a revolution but actually it is a very ugly conflict to dismantle not only the syrian regime but to change the whole area has nothing to do with democracy and freedom and that there are certain

forces international forces local forces as well which are actually trying to change the situation in the area or do political reasons. respected the costs that will actually be imposed on the syrian people on the whole area or so they head for the sound the man who brings hollywood to moscow american bring stars and studios to russia as today's fun explains succeeding. movie magic. anime what should they be doing. they should be pumping more money into it pumping more money. president is in new york to ask how people there would go about fixing this problem global economy. the next christians well why they are celebrating christmas with the fall of the julian calendar and celebrate the birth of christ thirteen days after western worshipers. it also marks

the end of a forty day fast ride two hundred million people are victims to tradition one of the oldest christian countries georgian worshippers began the holy day with midnight mass bosnia serbs and oak branches to earn a spot of that christmas ritual. to warm the community with love for me to sing tolerance. midnight mass christ the savior. christians celebrating christmas and here in russia that was ushered in with a traditional service here at the christ the say because the jewel in the center of the russian capital now that service presided over by the patriarch of moscow and all russia kirill heads of the russian orthodox church attended by well the great and the good the dignitaries old russian society president dmitri made to get it in there as well as other senior figures attending this church service around five

thousand people in total crammed into the christ the savior cathedral more of them in fact actually taking places around the outskirts of the cathedral to try and get a view of the church hopefully she'll hear something what was going on inside it of course to hear the bells that had been a ringing out to celebrate the birth of jesus christ now. question it always comes up is why is christmas being celebrated in january now this is due to the fact that the russian orthodox church as well as some other branches of all the doc's christianity would use the julian calendar as opposed to the calendar used by western christianity which means that in russia as well as out some other countries christmas falls on the seventh of january huge day in the old calendar and something that has become a real tradition here in russia it's opening in one nine hundred ninety seven the traditional christmas vigil at christ the savior. while the festive failing

continues online as we bring you more on the orthodox christmas celebrations. in the form of christmas. to the. police american officers get special electric weapons and their non-lethal possible side effects include civilian burns including blankets details. but more now on the foreigners who are successfully pioneering business in russia today is that pathfinder is bob van roekel he used to be a restaurateur in los angeles until deciding one day to leave it all behind he's

now hollywood's man in russia that has already brought scores of actors and bands to the country. i basically ended up moving to russia all by accident in one thousand and ninety eight i was asked by a russian friend in los angeles if i could bring a hollywood studio to moscow because mayor luzhkov was interested in building multiplex cinemas and wanted a hollywood studio partner i had friends that were running warner brothers they sent head of international theatres with me. my first trip was very impressionable i couldn't understand how so many young people i was meeting were making tens of millions of dollars a year and some of them millionaires before they were thirty and these were some of the things that made me realize there's a lot of opportunity here there's not a lot of people who are doing hollywood business there hasn't been

a lot of contact and interaction with celebrities i love a challenge what could be more challenging than moving to russia and trying to develop and create a business here ross with the. i didn't know any answers but i started meeting them just to bring them to russia or can that project the russian comedy that's going to shoot in america steven seagal zola he told me they'll do it in a couple days for two hundred fifty thousand dollars bail kilmer's interested in helping out. then the wealthy russians started asking for other people and i just started calling everybody i knew in l.a. who knew a producer a new a director and i called them from russia after eight years i brought over eighty actors and bands to russia i think it's very important for you to go to los angeles with me in the next few months and we should meet with you hopefully make your releasing a different actors you would like to do cameos in this film the biggest challenge

to overcome is gaining people's trust and performing one. please recently i was asked to bring john claude van damme to chechnya for the president's birthday and day of the city and. elevated me for that because they don't want to go through all of it in my heart. it's a place most people are very afraid to go to of course john clyde you know his expenses need to be paid and others for him to go there and it's very frightening dealing and working with chechnyan friends knowing that if something went wrong didn't come and money is paid. who are people going to come calling and looking for asking for the money back and it took a long time for me to win people's confidence that they would send money to an actor or a band in advance russia it costs more than a lot of other parts of the world because russians have been willing to pay more you know if russians weren't willing to pay more celebrities would be coming for

less but when they have people making such big offers just to get them how can you refuse so russia's been great to help push up their prices jennifer lopez gets two million dollars to go and perform you know in russia and kazakhstan and some other places if you're american in the u.s. we understand our system how to set up a business where we can easily research any product or any idea we have to find out if it's been saturated or not in russia it's really different because it's so hard to get to the important people that make the decisions when i have to work with. a person who works for someone here i get no where i can't do a deal because they need to see so much because there are jobs on the line. they're so afraid that just drags on and drags on whatever i'm talking to them about when you can pick up the phone and call the head of the company or someone on the board

of directors i know in a week if i can do this deal or not with them rush is just much more individual you really need to know some important people here to have success you know i was thinking you're from here which is part of the reason i never learned russian is i just thought ok one year from now i'm sure something will come up back in the us i'll go back i'll start doing movies but exciting here every day and so many new things and new deals and new opportunities and i haven't been able to leave. out of those controlling finances and. actually failing to fix them. to the politicians in charge. today everyone's upset with how the world leaders are handling the economy so how

would you fix that this week let's talk about that country do you think it's doing a good job. you know now. what would you do to fix the problem in greece. injuries wow. i don't know how did that. because i know myself no no no maybe that's why it's going all wrong a good word to fix is each of our problems personally so if we're all out there working hard and spending money to local communities then that's you know a way of part of building up each local. he eventually the whole country gets stronger right yeah isn't it time maybe for the government to stop trying to fix it and let people and companies fix their own wallets i think that's a good answer yes to fix the economy what should they be doing. they should be pumping more money into it pumping more money they've been pumping millions and

billions in trillions and done any good so why is that the solution that we keep going back to the only thing we can do so they can also say just do nothing and let people sort it out themselves american people can sort of themselves it's not a matter of not throwing money into the economy it's a matter of living within our means if you don't have enough revenue then you have to cut spending yes so governments are trillions of dollars in debt so it sounds like they have no money right while they have to pay obviously you can't stop everything all at once but you do have to you do have to pull back and you have to come up with a reasonable plan to at least stop the hemorrhaging but we don't just keep printing money and we don't keep inflating government so that's when most of the european countries are having trouble because the government is sixty percent larger than it should be so why why do you and i see business and government leaders can't because we don't get paid by the people that are behind the scenes and since i'm not running for campaign i don't get time campaign contributions by people that need my help to american politicians are just. really so what should they be doing

better. probably trying to change the color of money from the oil economy to something else with we've got heaps of paper with lots of brains and we need to be doing something about the environment does people with brains are in positions of power. and so it seems like with the system that's currently in place for how world leaders get elected it might be time for solutions to come from someplace else. but a few hours on r.t. max and stacy home in on the bosses of institutions who can't stop raking in pounds of cash no matter what the consequences are the person in the street is what's ahead at seven thirty g.m.t. . big bank c.e.o.'s walk away with big bucks in two thousand and eleven. it's like paranormal that the bankers can continue to make money no matter what the

market down disasters collapse surging no matter what they continue to make more money my explanation my analogy is crystal clear the titanic is sinking they're making the whole bigger by keeping rates low artificially and this is benefiting a few people who are becoming fabulously rich paranormal a team designed way to impoverished the vast majority at the for the benefit of the very few at that very few number of very few is getting fewer and fewer with each passing day. as the taliban prepares to open up a political office in qatar the u.s. has indicated it's ready to back the initiative it's seen as a crucial step towards peace talks between nato and its longtime enemy the taliban

also wants high ranking taliban prisoners to be freed from guantanamo bay. contributor and we've got a who shot these the moves could signal a major american defeat in the decade long conflict. uncle sam has just recently authorized the opening up the official office for the taliban in doha qatar for. the opening detail about an office doesn't bode well because he effectively has been cut from this wheeling and dealing between americans and tell about on the other side americans it looks like a real deal it looks like they have accepted demands by the taliban that is to keep cut as a government out of the loop and as for taliban themselves they look like one in the only winners in this shadow negotiation the. taliban open out their office in doha they might as well door in it with the two nameplates with the calls from the

counterinsurgency doctrine first if we are not winning we are losing at dressed for the us armed forces and second if we are not losing we are winning for the taliban themselves. well look at some of the main news for around the world now and first a tragedy in new zealand where a hothead believed bust into flames off the power lines killing eleven people want to have been killed jumped out of the basket and. plummeted to the ground zero as deadliest and exhausted almost the. last crowds have gathered in yemen's capital and suspicions grow their presence sunday when the general named on his agreement to quit the testers also on the civil and political prisoners held since anti-government protests began their position they didn't use

the countries of the west to stay in power despite citing a region backed deal to control to his vice president in exchange for legal immunity. and outspoken. human rights activist in the rain there has been hospitalized the answers of the year seven was a brutal police beating at an anti-government protest. allegedly hit on the head and face with sticks and offices the government says police found a rash of injured while participating in an on the march when she began campaigning for more rights in sunni militant many years ago. but i want to bring you more of russia close up as we continue to explore the country's far east. they have barrel screens and eyes on the chinese border and this precious gateway

to the pacific is also a center of coal and wood exports to the heavily populated and feel asian economies but as artie's told barton discovered industry life doesn't have to be an expense of tradition. the bar or street in russia's far east is becoming a growing center for export to the hungry economies in the south china south korea and japan increasing material exports of warden coal are going out to the pacific and south and it's that they were looking at in my report. this monster called coal stacker is the new face of russia's far east coast it can load over four thousand tons of coal an hour into ships at this rapidly expanding sea terminal this year they exported ten million tons of the stuff almost exclusively south to hungry asian markets but we've noticed there's

a cool boom of coal consumption worldwide has increased so this port covers almost all of asia from the con comes from some of russia's largest deposits five hundred kilometers inland he joins the oil and flowing out of the region in ever greater quantities tugboats maneuver the ships into place through storms and the winter cold little new year's little when the bay freezes we know we're well equipped to break it sometimes these difficulties with some patches but with essential to help these huge ships dark and undock all year round. and even the most modern tankers once on their way helped along by a much older technology. this vast you ship internals a spring up to supply overseas markets will all see very foundations presented by this life pass which along with for help makes a russia's gateway to the pacific hundreds of lighthouses dot the coast all the way

from the border with north korea up to the arctic. victor has been manning his lighthouse for over thirty years but he's glad he's not too far out into the wilderness. we're close enough to the nearest town other lighthouse keepers are stuck out in the tiger without even roads sometimes a ship or helicopter deliver supplies there's no other way to come or go big has not had a ship run aground since the early one nine hundred ninety s. he seen bears moose and tigers visit his lighthouse and say's he never grows bored of the ever changing seascape far from feeling lonely he talks of the remand to system of being such a secluded spot on the coastline you know i used to go down to the bay floor am catching crabs and start a fire then my wife and kids would join me and we'd have breakfast on the shore and watch the sunrise in the summer this whole field would be bright orange and blue if

you could pick to retire next year he says he's come to love the sport like robinson crusoe silent and while he can remember the pristine beauty of his coastline others are seeing it sail on into the future where they discuss a little bit more about how bar offscreen role in the world economy is tentative she's from a local tourist agency and she knows the region well tanya give us a little geographical toll of the region's vast natural resources and its current ability to use. ok well you can have both they're still going to feed on to help out of twenty three i know that and lost that very natural resources now adays so their body started to possess is so effective is that produce a different to machine building products and begin new research she says and aircraft and so on they're through

a process an industry is still developing this is a canonic ties to resolve the contras so he's. in constant development nowadays because all the contests are interested interested to be in developing contexts peace and asha. then joshua is interested in exporting their natural resources to are the contras so i think that somebody has to come out of standard three we will become one of the main economical centers of russia is insomnia us about of stated to be has been developed in their comic ties to release such concepts this late in america canada and so on so who are these companies closer to collaborating with the russians and to help us to develop this industry so it's profitable boss russia and for them i suppose.

will thank you for the insight. region how's the results to participate in the world economy or at least two now is develop those resources and make sure that they get to the right place. to recap our top stories in a few minutes time things. i

had a family i lived in a fairly nice community wasn't which was an upscale it was just like you know archie bunker society ok then they started showing up what happened was my company decided i could get cheap labor and they got rid of us. through these are. negroes eaglets love legally we have to get up every morning we have to go to work and you know we have to pay our bills and we have to do it and that's just the american dream and if you want the american dream you have to go by the last i figure it's here's one of the major trails into the united states of the. i watch and they run run down my property and stuff about this noise. mean that crack mortgages from coming to the wire is protecting the country and the kind of guy who

doesn't mind goodness panch dirty so i come out here you know we're all immigrants as well that we all share some thoughts. top stories here on our team. american troops now out of iraq concerns are mounting what's being left behind is proving deadly for journalists who speak out against the country's government. security forces. a suicide blast targeting a police bus that killed twenty five people in syria's capital as tensions between the opposition and the government. on terrorists is finding it increasingly hard to . christmas as.

christians around the. one of the julian calendar open celebrations by attending traditional. stuff we discover a russian flavor of at least florence. hello and welcome to the program. the music russians have been fascinated with. for centuries and today they come here in the tens of thousands in search of everything from populist fashion to the world of it's how do you crazy.