is that the bloke's huge debt troubles out from under control. and that's nation on russia's not broke but it's great news mission went astray before settling that has finally plunged into the ocean two months after its launch but it's not yet clear if it's landed in the pacific or atlanta house. this is the weekly on r.t. hello and welcome to the program and first to news that shape this week the crisis in relations between iran and the west peaks again fueled by wednesday decimation of a top nuclear scientist in tehran earing officials blame the matter on the glass and israel want to stop its nuclear program meanwhile american and british warships are gathering in the persian gulf what ron had earlier threatens to block a crucial oil lane that's amid appointing oil embargo and forcing tehran top down

from if it had accomplished. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering. it seems the slightest increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. but where we'll be that boiling point the point of no return we're getting closer and closer to war with iran the iranians are playing with fire and the problems in a crisis if you get were any small thing can really set it off and it doesn't quell washington that the international nuclear watchdog is on the side closely monitoring iran's nuclear activities are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon no but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability and that's what concerns us and our red line to iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon iran's main source of livelihood is oil export is in danger the u.s. is imposing fresh sanctions that will dramatically. complicate transactions though

he ran central bank iran is also close to losing europe as a customer the reason that this is happening is that this is the logical conclusion of our current strategy against iran we have sanctions in place with no diplomacy the only way that that and is through confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions iran threatens to block the strait of hormuz a vital oil artery through which a sixth of the world's oil is shipped the u.s. replied by moving its fifth fleet to the region and saying if iran goes for it they will attack thousands of u.s. troops are being deployed to israel experts say the policy of isolating iran may lead to other threats from tehran and the possibility that one day they will go through with their threats but washington signals that it's ready or it wants everybody to believe that it's ready could wait up we had to without using nuclear weapons ourselves take out their their nuclear capability well i certainly want them to believe that that's the case well is that if i absolutely want them to

believe that that's the thing that secretary would you add anything to that some believe it's just a war of words and neither side will go for an all out conflict considering what it is that it will be for the whole region frankly speaking this tension is artificial it doesn't have to happen it doesn't need to exist the iranians would do themselves an enormous favor by saying less. and we would do ourselves a favor by ignoring most of it all of this i sadly i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons more than military iran might feel cornered and therefore make drastic moves right now it's in a war of words but one bullet shot and the powder keg can blow up the question is what's going to provide that deadly spark i'm going to check our reporting from washington our team. coming out this hour an artsy big cookbook of politics and

kazakstan takes up elections and an ear for the common people and reason with few people killed promises that the elusive recipe for peace that kazakhstan is serving up in the region is simmering within bread. also u.s. military optimism but i've got to progress is crushed by a leak of the cia report painting a grim picture of what's going on in the country suggesting natives decade long occupation has hated stalemate. syria's president bashar al assad has issued an amnesty for crimes committed during the ongoing antigovernment uprising in the country according to the official state news agency it will cover peaceful protesters also those who carried on licensed weapons and all of the defectors who turned themselves in before the end of the month meanwhile. muna has demanded that the regime stop the quad down on protesters with reports suggesting that at least seventy were killed last week this comes as the ruler of qatar has backed military intervention into the country if it's the only option to end the

bloodshed and he's the first arab leader to openly endure such a step. a middle east researcher at a time records university says this exposes double standards in qatar. this is just really unbelievable to hear this especially considering that today. mir is actually in sri lanka another country whose government violently oppressed its people and there was no word not a peep from the international media or from the international politicians and nor from the security council and so this is really problematic that sri lanka can get away with this kind of violence but you know when it comes to a country that is against western interests there is a different standard and of course we have to remember that the tar send forces to rain to help you know quell a demonstration a brutally repressed democratic protesters in bahrain. you know with the invitation from the back brainy royal autocratic government there are so this call for

interference or intervention in syria really is ridiculous when one looks at the undemocratic past and present of these gulf countries and how and why they believe that they can use force to you know interfere in a country that's going you know suffering from a civil war really and from the violence from its own citizens what you know who is who are the arab troops going to shoot at if they enter syria syria's long time ally turkey is among the increasingly vocal chorus calling for president assad to step down it's lending its support to the armed opposition and keeping its own troops at the ready near the border but as aussies mary a few notional reports on current might not be getting an accurate picture of what's happening in syria. the bloody status quo in the syrian crisis meant for months she is a growing violence we start spreading beyond the country's borders especially with

its close neighbor turkey wants to close friends too but now a harsh critic of damascus. syria is first priority should be to listen to its people and. not to denounce others sort of must agree people should listen to them . glitter glue is a harsh critic himself but he's criticizing the turkish government and korea is on the side with the free syrian army and the syrian national council and military and diplomatic forces and and overthrowing the regime of bashar assad it supports a buffer zone and a humanitarian corridor which some fear could bring turkish troops to syrian soil what does that mean according to international law it means aggression against a country it means war but any intervention would be different from the one in libya since russia and china have made it clear no more no fly zone resolutions

which means the role of vision players like turkey increases dramatically but for new claims and korea's behavior is irresponsible and risky it has larger implications beyond the bilateral context of turkey syria as such the situation in syria must be handled with great care by all powers and unfortunately i don't see that cache. sufficiently especially on the part of our government. works with a middle eastern studies center based in and kyra it's sponsored by the turkish foreign ministry to help shape policy and its opinion on syria it's clear syria is killing their own people. not always that's clear nobody has objectively information what is going on in syria the center specialists haven't been to syria for over a year it means the picture they paint for officials in ankara isn't likely to be

an accurate one the technology at changing you know when you look at the photographs or the videos coming from these governorates you can easily see that there is something going on but the sources of these videos are often questionable so it's easy to be misled to get a false picture of what's really happening but there does. researchers from coming to firm conclusions the military operations this is the last option which turkey does not want to see but this is an option it may have declared it doesn't welcome a military solution to the syrian crisis but turkey hasn't ruled it out either plain and if game if there is massive migration from its troubled neighbor turkey says it will have to protect its own people and marc fisher and korea insists it wants peace and stability in the region its troops are already just kilometers from the border with syria. r.t. turkey. the euro struggle for survival god that much more difficult this week after

a major credit rating agencies slashed the credit scores of nine e.u. nations they downgrades and handed out by stunned that pause come amid growing concern that the euro zone's failed to rein in its runaway finances and debt france and austria were especially hard head that prestigious aaa status that's made them a safe haven for investors so we are here from a unique is where the varied some calling the move and justified while others accepted the decision and called for urgent action economists across the you are now waiting for monday when not it's opened to gauge how much damage has been done to look at it from the institute for democracy and corporation of parents believe the euro project as a bridge before. the downgrading of france but not of germany obviously means that the franco german axis is no longer tenable proposition what we see in the euros are those that there's only one country calling the shots not two and that's germany there's no doubt that it will strike a terrible blow for sarkozy is only real chance of winning the election was to show

himself as a safe pair of hands as the devil you know in a crisis now it's clear that france has both a crisis and the devil you know i mean it's true that these agencies are not above reproach they've made a lot of mistakes in the past but i think that european leaders are being completely paranoid when they blame the ratings agencies for their problems any fool can see that there is a massive debt problem in europe and i think when the euro finally collapses as it will do surely within i would think probably the next year we will see just a this announcement that downgrading of france of as having been one of the decisive moments. and investment analyst patrick young says he believes the rating cuts were well over two it's been deserved frankly for several years i mean the french government has been economically incontinent for the course of several decades they've lived in never never land they have no concept of how to run

a reasonable economy in terms of not spending more money than they can afford it's a disaster for mr sarkozy but then again it's been coming since the start of his presidency it's been building for twenty five years and he did nothing about it so he's just as culpable as everybody else in this issue on the future of the year old everything is not up for grabs again it emotionally destabilizes every single aspect of the euro because we still have no leadership in the euro zone we've got situations like greece needing fourteen and a half billion euros to refund in march alone the euro cents on the precipice tragically and that's a terrible thing for all our viewers throughout the world this is darcy i learned later this hour tainted by torture are now ten years old. a report on the last british citizen being held in guantanamo bay describe rather than an election pledge to shut it down and repeated calls for the protestors to him to keep his

word. to well so look at how washington is latin america but the man wanted the hearts and homes of half a million people with the threat of. the debris of russia's failed martian space probe called for his group has fallen back to earth but whether it's landed remains unclear peter all of the has known the mission which has cost a one hundred seventy million dollars. it's a merge there to be three theories as to where the revenants of phobos grunt eventually hit the earth now most of the probe burnt up in the atmosphere along with any of the toxic fuel it was carrying but around two hundred kilograms it's believed all of the modules made it through the earth's atmosphere now we heard initially from the russian military saying that that landed in the pacific ocean around one thousand two hundred fifty kilometers off the coast of chile we then heard from cosmos the russian space agency who said this well maybe it landed in

the atlantic ocean over the other side of the south american continent now we've also heard from a ballistics expert putting forward a third theory which is that the remnants of they say this probe that came back down to earth could have spin spread over such a large area that it could have actually hit both the atlantic and the pacific as well as parts of mainland brazil it was a huge leap and dissipated mission from the russian space agency it was supposed to go to the martian moon a focus pick up soil samples bring them back to earth for analysis partially where it gets its name from food was good and basically meaning phobias soil in russian now that information that data that the scientists were craving could potentially they were saying of lead to developments towards a potential martian settlement a human settlement on the moon of course all that data gone now it was a hugely disappointing mission at the probe got into orbit and then pretty much

stayed there no matter how much effort was made by ross cosmos as well as the european space agency to try and contact it and get it back on its way eventually crashing back down to earth on sunday evening. well the shock this week by an online video that showed american marines urinating on the dead bodies of taliban fight says the u.s. military says it identifies the soldiers in that clip and appointed a three star general to investigate but regional experts say they've done it has already been done and it will be the u.s. troops troops currently in afghanistan who paid a price let's not forget that the americans came to understand with the explicit objective also off transforming this country into a more humane country into a democracy and we are seeing happening right now with the appearance of this kind of a video is the opposite and it is having an impact let's not forget that this is a region where religious values are really very deep deeply entrenched and the way

you treat bodies and the way you treated dead is something that is treated very secretly here and with this video you can you can rest assured that this will have an impact in terms of the kind of reaction the kind of backlash to this will generate this video will generate against the very. the american soldiers who are there right now in a lot of stuff it really in danger is their lives. and they now fear that the video will encourage more young muslims to join radical terrorist groups like the taliban or al qaida and. afghanistan will that transcends that this latest scandal along with previous that he says is the perfect at that assessment of recruiting terrorists. just to remind people of a few incidents that occurred a while back there was the the burning of the koran that happened with. terry jones as then there was the abu ghraib incident and before then there was the decision to

invade iraq that had nothing to do with nine eleven so all of these these situations pile on and they add up and what happens is al qaeda and other terrorist organizations and then using this video and they put it in their recruiting videos end up on you tube and across the jihad of web channels and they end up reading anti-american sentiment this is the hugest recruitment for al qaida that we can do in the un fathomable how pathetic this is become because the war hasn't been brought to an end like obama said he was going to do and what we're seeing abu ghraib happened twice now in afghanistan. and not everyone in america is outraged but the film marines are doing as you can find out on our website at r.t. dot com like a c.n.n. contributor praises the troops actions are scorned saying she would do the same in their position and also. in violent clashes spread across romania watch the footage

as a stereotype anger and frustration with government boils over into the streets for the fourth consecutive day. polling booths across kazakhstan have now closed and millions of people cast their votes to choose the country's new parliament and those votes are now being counted the elections come a little less than a month after all workers staging a prude long strike over poor pay well looked in fatal clashes with security forces the elections were set to take place in august but the president dissolved parliament last november and ordered an immediate vote as a poll so far show that the ruling knew or tons of party has amazed some eighty one percent of the vote with its closest competitor coming in at seven percent and that party will now become the second political group to enter parliament and does acts on a boycott reports preempting violent unrest is a priority in kazakhstan haven't learned disturbing questions from the arab spring . but it wasn't for the snow and the freezing temperatures kazakstan capital of

astronaut could easily be mistaken for one of the gleaming cities of the gulf a village just two decades ago it is now an oasis in the desert but it's architecture having a distinct arriving flavor like many arab countries kazakhstan's primary sources of income our oil and gas and it is that acts for that allow this country the luxury of building its new capital city from scratch in fact kazakstan is now producing about as much oil as lieve beer was churning out prior to its civil war and the similarities don't and here both kazakstan and libya have predominantly muslim populations both were considered still roots of calm in their turbulent neighborhoods and both have experienced decades of rule by just one man in terms of style that fast. is the exact opposite of erratic more market afy and of course he's still in power but the libyan scenario no longer seems improbable in kazakstan even to its leader some young people are fascinated with what's happening in the

world right now in africa and europe but we have to explain to the new generation that blindly believes everything it's told that there are those who envy our well being the countries who are revolutions took place have gone back ten to fifteen years economically speaking the town of john the sand is rightfully called catholic stands all capital but it's no match for glistening asked despite producing much of the country's hydro carbons for decades it's been poor and neglected. the uprising in western kazakstan has smouldered since last spring but culminated in december in a weekend of clashes with police that left seventeen dead and more than one hundred injuries as the protest spread to other cities. jittery in the wake of the arab spring it got it worse because extern has a semblance of. democracy with several parties in parliament and some of position media but the essence of the regime is similar to those of the arab countries

that's why the first thing the authorities did when their prize and began was to switch off the mobo networks and the internet connection before the people even demanded it out loud the chasm half the riches decided to offer political reforms the people are now going to the polls to elect a new parliament recent constitutional amendments guarantee they'll be more than one party that has been up until now the challenge now is to keep all the good things stability prosperity. and at the same time allow the society to evolve. meanwhile the authorities have approved millions of dollars worth of programs to give the rest of cd a facelift and create new jobs but unities. the president's close associates appointed to oversee the turbulent region says in a few years and will make some cities in the gulf pale in comparison. come here in

a few years and you won't recognize this city while the arab spring may have been sparked protests around the world it's also taught authorities valuable lessons on how to contain those rallies and like all rulers and those that are by would much rather learn from the mistakes of others especially if they come at a price paid by gadhafi son a boycott artsy kazakstan. this week the anniversary of the world's most controversial prison gone ton of day was marked by public protests on both sides of the atlantic demonstrators called on us president obama to honor his election pledge and shut down the jail but critics see little chance of that happening because of the recently signed national defense authorization act allowing america to detain anyone it deems hostile and thomas and well and i know of the several detainees in guantanamo believes that it's probably take that half out of mana back from closing the infamous jail as promised. this is

a political problem in our democracy when certain people are playing with fear the republican party is basically playing on fear to influence their constituents and in the face of that fear the obama administration hasn't had the courage to oppose it or the courage to get the job done other things like the economy you have seen more important it's a shame it's a challenge in a democracy and we need to continue to fight to have this close it's a stain on the reputation the united states it's a horrible place. this is one leader that washington often portrays as an enemy but as it turns out of venezuela's president they have the edge on his american counterpart because he is in a position to provide thousands of americans with the hazing oil they desperately need for free what can i explain. winter morning in the south bronx new york city outdoors the temperature is near freezing indoors. seventy

seven year old alice many otis is bundled up brewing a pot of coffee and raising the heat just enough it's good to take the chill out of the air the retired grandmother of seven lives alone on a fixed income and each winter as federal programs continue to be slashed the struggle to afford comfort gets harder i go around screaming and waving i mean all they do was raise raise raise raise and i mean it's the same dollar you get in so how far can you push it one hundred gallons of oil one hundred fifty gallons of oil is about. right now about close to six hundred dollars however venezuela has been stepping in to make alice's life a bit easier by delivering one hundred gallons of free heating oil each winter she is a four year beneficiary of the citgo venezuela heating oil program which provides free heating oil to five hundred thousand poor americans living in low income

neighborhoods and shelters throughout the country president chavez often demonized by washington helped launch the program in two thousand and five following hurricanes katrina and rita all i know is that he was caught and he was crying to the people of the united states and i'm sure he he he ruled differently like obama wrong does differently and who were we to tell these people how they should live or how i mean are they good invading our country with their not being generous to give us what comes out of their earth at no charge so could you really have ill feelings against them. i'm thankful for it. i really am in an interview with the venezuelan newspaper el universal america's leader well sort of expressing similar sentiments of gratitude president obama recently accused the chavez government were strict thing human rights and taking frightening steps. democratic

values the venezuelan leader didn't mince words walter spondon directly to his u.s. counterpart you know was a boma i feel sorry for you just toss the black communities in your country what you mean to them you are the greatest disappointment of recent years the poor people of your country you're a great disappointment to them it's time that we stopped minding everybody else's business and took care of business we have children that are graduating from college with eighty ninety one hundred thousand dollars that they have to pay back its to p.t. it's ruining them just and they can't get a job a struggle getting that much harder in the land of opportunity. r.t. new york. and next in the program our interview with american academic jean shabazz booker described by some as a long not work on nonviolent revolution that's just out of the headlines here on out.

now it's not about spilling blood. it's the war of the barricades from one side and fears blockade from the other. invisible border it has cut people from the land for twelve years.

the conflict that divided serbia into two hostile parts is still not over. when we could uncover the question leads to a grave accusation the world who is more as you know foggy with. the president who isn't supposed to hide anything. or it's someone asking him why do you make a secret of it when the powers to be suppress the voice of those who think different culture when you go experiencing very serious problems off of the saakashvili government came to power in two thousand and three but it will now. as when the problems began piling up. interviews were now off limits to our journalists they were all some peace not been humiliated in public and when the attempt to protect property puts life in real danger in fact we have been deprived

of the only means of earning a living and i have gone to the original source all the papers so that we are then liberalized the ownership rights on the basis of companies freedom becomes just. welcome back and this is the week from a new zealand town claims the us and he's well behind that fascination on iranian nuclear scientists and the city in an effort to block the country's atomic power i think but at the mounting tensions between america and they do not make republic. c. rist president assad releases the first political prisoners held during ten months of unrest while international pressure in terms of fighting with the you are victory general calling for violence to end.