and as web users across the world rallied to the cause of freedom of speech they may now have an unlikely ally iran's english language news channel press t.v. has been kicked off british airwaves in an episode it's called quote a clear example of censorship the official reasons given are a number of broken agreements and an unpaid fine but press t.v. says it's being silenced for its dissenting views it believes it's being targeted for its highly critical coverage of issues ranging from the costs of the british wedding to last year's london riots tilbury say u.k. based author and media analyst believes press t.v. is yet another victim of the ongoing campaign against iran. if this had been separated from geopolitics then no this would not have happened and some other kind of sanction would have been would have been made and the deal would have been

struck so i think the press t.v. has been viewed through geo political terms and that is the breakdown of relations between britain and iran at the end of the day i think that most of the criticisms of press t.v. ad been due to its coverage because you know it sees the middle east very differently for example than the mainstream media in britain this repeatedly comes up probably is really groups repeatedly complain about it we know very well that the british government at the very highest level was discussing with the american ambassador here how to limit press t.v.'s output in britain so now what we've got is we've got a real limiting of dialogue in the me in the british media and i think that's a tragedy and certainly a tragedy at a time when british arraying in relations are at their lowest ebb for a long long period. this is the crowds have stormed the headquarters of libya's a ruling national transitional council in the revolutionary hub of benghazi they were protesting the slow pace on the direction of the reforms by the brand new

authours he's the demonstrators threw stuff. at the building breaking windows damaging the car as well of empty seats chairman abdul jalil gunmen vented anger at the level of conversation there received from the interim leaders for injuries sustained in the efforts to oust moammar gadhafi western companies meanwhile have flooded libya bombarding the state with offers to rebuild the infrastructure the government's help to destroy parties works on a boycott. they may have how to bring down the house. but they were very careful not to burn bridges as libya rises from the ashes of civil war become trees the poor the oil into the fire and now mining to gas sheen undoing the damage the believe that russia benefited more than all others from trading with that opposition is very widespread here and simply it's simply not true in two thousand and ten moscow was number seventeen on the least of libya's

main trading partners accounting for just zero point four percent of its international trade the countries that had the largest trading volumes a good. sized lead the one that spearheaded the campaign against the european union the united states and turkey and they're all on their jostling for contracts to rebuild believe some of them helped to destroy your. everything good good good good. american business style is still a bit of an oddity here but it's already catching up construction firm on our richard peters arrived in tripoli just before their prizing to seal a multi-million dollar contract with get off his government the war and peter subsequent incarceration threw him off track but now he hopes to make up for it i don't condemn anybody even the people that work for him you don't have a choice here if you don't work for it what do you do die. to reach companies also involved in rebuilding iraq and afghanistan after the u.s.

led invasion and libya is familiar turf he even says the country's business potential make shamble all over their post conflict areas there's nothing they don't need here you know if you compare it to like the united states everything they need everything we have you know everything there infrastructure has to be totally redone all the all the facilities you know and some of the things we were involved you know was executive centers with golf courses theme parks americans and the only ones just looking for food called turkish airlines was the first to resume commercial flights to tripoli they're now packed with businessman scouting for opportunities. even during get out this time turkey was pretty comfortable doing business in libya and it was true police work largest trade partner lost here but many now hold for even better deals following its early recognition of the rebel authorities definitely if you have a strong relations. with someone that

confesses please. remember for the business. there's nothing more that the only ones who are still for small wonder it claiming their business interests in libya or russia and china both countries for vocal in their opposition to the use of force in libya a stance that has already backfired most russian companies who did business in libya prior to the war are still has it into some personnel back x. spirits of war and that they waiting game may not be the best strategy yet. we're going to lose libya like we lost iraq syria in the yemen will follow they see they can drive russian others out of the market and then take advantage we have to work there we will take measures we're going to enter those markets but the ones losing the most i believe them south in two thousand and ten day economy grew by about ten percent reaching abbey thing like that growth now seems as having

a load is building the country from scratch subway car to see ship. check out some of international news for you in brief this hour of the total number of people now killed in bomb attacks in northern nigeria as over one hundred sixty hospitals were operating close to capacity over the weekend authorities have lifted the daytime curfew imposed in kano city the scene of the bombing but most people remain home fearing further attacks by juries in northern states have been rocked by a wave of violence since christmas. egyptian activists have been calling for a nationwide street protests saying the revolution is not over the country has a long way to democratic rule this comes after islamist parties captured an overwhelming majority of seventy five percent as they won the country's first post mubarak parliamentary elections the new assembly is due to sit for the first time in just two days. a reporter at the jerusalem post says the new egypt will be

a much tougher political partner for the west. people have called for democracy in egypt this is the result when people call for democracy they may not always this realize that the electorate has a very different vision of how they would like their society is run then in other places such as western europe we have islamist hardline parties coming to power and it's going to be an earthquake for both egypt and for the region the muslim brotherhood has been preparing for this moment for decades they have a very thought out detailed agenda for how they wish egypt to look like and it's a very different egypt from what we've known until now it's going to be a much more religious conservative place and much more hostile to the west and this is r.t. they had us buying to rights that was the reaction of a top former british official as he admitted that moscow caught the u.k.

red handed spying on russia has come six years after the kremlin first presented the allegations of how a fake rock was being used for espionage. bennett has the story. it's not exactly the most glamorous of james bond gadgets but he didn't in this fake stone was a high tech transmissive british speaks used to spy on russia the allegations from moscow have always been dismissed but sixty's on this rock solid evidence the u.k. can no longer deny tony blair's former chief of staff's come clean admitting british spies were caught red handed the spy rock was embarrassing they had us bang to rights clearly they had known about it for some time and had been saving it up for a political purpose. the embarrassing revelations confirmed the findings of a russian television report in two thousand and six it showed this video of

a man slowing down and looking at the rock as he passed apparently an agent beaming top secret intelligence from a mobile computer to a digital drop point concealed in the stone another man was filmed picking up the rock and collecting the data. the moment of was the one behind the exposé and left no stone unturned but much more at first i had to be dealt i thought it might be a fake story or a political game but we cross checked everything with multiple sources and it turned out to be true some footage we didn't include in the film was particularly convincing for example there was a video of a british spy unit in front of the camera that camera was hidden under a tree in the songs lying nearby the guy wanted to look natural so we pretended that he needed to take a leak n.e.p. right in front of the camera before picking up a stone and leaving. but it was his word against theirs britain fiercely denied the allegations with tony blair laughing them off as russian propaganda the truth was

buried inside the u.k. secret service headquarters supposedly never to be seen again so after six years of dodging the bullet why admit it now they're very embarrassing but i think that the british government has decided. to have bygones are bygones and say ok we made a mistake. up and we want better relations from now on so i would see this as a first step on the road to improve relations with russia this is the home of britain's spooks m i six the government is a broad their job may not be secret but how they do it is or at least should be so the embarrassment of these revelations is not so much the spying itself but the fact they were caught doing it a post cold war agreement supposedly forbids britain and russia from spying on each other no doubt they'll be more careful from now on either bennett r.t.

london. well admitting to spy scandals may be painful but there are much worse problems in store for britain with the threat that it could actually break up altogether coming up next hour here the battle for scotland's sovereignty find out how london has switched its p.r. machine into full throttle in an apartment of effort to suppress scotland's growing clamor for independence. and i'll be back with a recap of the week's top stories on the headlines of today in just.

for the top stories of the week today this is the week. the arab league is set to decide whether to give the go ahead to another month of the monitoring mission in syria all of this while the opposition wants the u.n. security council to get involved. pushed to the edge of the internet erupts in a furor over plans to expand online censorship striking back with web wide

blackouts and massive hacking attacks. israel on the u.s. tactics over a possible conflict in the gulf the forces of iran supporters while the. alleged nuclear ambitions. found in romania public spills over hundreds arrested dozens of its police quell violence amid a massive ongoing antigovernment protests. when it comes to big money in america's politics lobbyist or the people who know exactly how it works and jack abramoff used to be one of us why he thinks washington is corrupt to the call. i. am sitting down with jack abraham off once the most powerful lobbyist in washington referred to as the man who bought washington he brought government officials in order to gain

political support for his clients in two thousand and six he was convicted of ripping off his clients jack abramoff served three and a half years in prison guilty of conspiracy fraud and tax evasion mr thank you very much for coming since your release from jail you've been very vocal about corruption in washington i read your book and i got a sense of your frustration about the fact that while you were sent to jail people involved in the same corrupt practices are sitting pretty in their offices on capitol hill well i'm a mom is frustrated that people didn't go to jail or prison and prison is not fun and i wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy but i guess what i'm frustrated about is that when they had my hearings and trials and when i was sent off there was a big exclamation and celebration here that they cleaned up washington but in fact they didn't clean up washington and so when i came out you have to rethinking my

life and what i was involved in decided that they want to clean up washington and i would help them figure out exactly how to do it during that senate hearing when you were publicly bashed by the senators what were you thinking what were your thoughts as you faced the distinguished panel well i probably was thinking they were a little less distinguished than others were thinking i was reminded continually by every word out of there mel that they were among the many who participated in some of the corruption that they were accusing me of when one of the senators a senator campbell was accusing me of corruption and me wrecking the democratic system i was thinking back to the breakfast. i had with him a couple years before where i handed him checks from my clients as contributions and he said that they would never have a problem with his committee so i was thinking that basically about each of them i didn't know a lot of them personally because i had people working for me had a staff of about forty lobbyists and some of them knew the people who work for me

but. i found the whole thing to be hypocritical it was a kangaroo court and it was a show people say you were a tory it seems your ability to buy members of congress how did you do that i don't think i was necessarily except on the margins much different than most of what goes on here but what happens here most unfortunate in which what i did in terms of pushing over the lines even of this activity is lobbyists and people want something from congress raise money for congressmen give money to congressmen in terms of political contributions by meals for them take them golfing take them on trips take them to sporting events and i probably did more of it than most did and i pushed over certain lines that are in the sand and broke the law but it's something that goes on far too often in washington you want to say that and i found it very very interesting that that once you just a moment you offered a job to

a congressional staffer you own them right there was no greater control that people could have over congressional offices than to have the head of that office know that they're going to come in a few months to come work for a lobbying firm from that minute on those people are focused on that lobbying from their clients and it's not just me i saw it all over tell me it's not something i bet it it's something i noticed and something that i propose now to get rid of by banning people who work on capitol hill who are members of congress from ever joining the lobbying industry or the influence industry in america what did your clients want by investing in politics by investing in you well mostly my clients want to the federal government not to. get all over their back and tax them and that. their businesses most the lobbying is deep keeping the government from doing things to industries and to companies and likely going to help them avoid to the things that actually they are but when i got presented in a bunch of indian tribes and the way i got into it the first representation i had

with the tribes was to stop the federal government from putting a thirty percent tax over the gross revenues of their gambling industry what was interesting about your case it was not just politicians who cheated but also you cheated your clients namely those indian tribes with gambling interests who paid them aliens if not i think it was what i did was where we're about to pled guilty to was some of the efforts that we did for the clients in their states worst to stop their competition from taking away their markets they would crush their competition yes we would attack their competition and we would do everything we could to keep them from invading the market of our client and that's normal in america fortunately for better or for worse that's not something we we made up we're going to have any regrets about doing that well at the end of the day i regret using the political process as a weapon against competitors because at the end of the day i don't think the government should be used like that i didn't have a problem with it then and i shouldn't even if we're talking about millions of dollars in contributions it's still peanuts for any big corporation it's

a tiny fraction of what they make did you get a sense of how powerless average americans are when the interest so big guys like that are at stake on capitol hill well americans have a very tough time competing with these special interests special interests come in with a lot of money and you're right it's miniscule amounts of money compared to what they could do and some of them do a lot of money but it's still a small amount the problems the average citizen is not engaged politically and when they're able to bring in money and influence members of congress to vote on things that are not good for the country and not good for the general interest because somebody with the special interests you. pushing on it that's where the problem starts so what i propose in my book and the effort that i've been engaged in since prison is a way to separate money out of politics here and basically to say that if you're a lobbyist or you're somebody who's trying to get something from the government here you may not give a dollar politically of any kind and that's one of the poor things that i've

proposed to clean up the system i think is very important because the end of the day political contributions if i give you something if you're a congressman and i give you a contribution and i want something from you that contribution may not be cold a bribe but it is a broad at the end of the day how many members of congress are involved in corruption like that in bribery like that well i mean ultimately every member of congress who's taking a check a contribution from a lobbyist or from a company or from a union or anyone who needs or get something from washington whether it's conscious or not they're involved in it alternately you can't accept something from somebody without unless you're at it all do well yes absolutely they all do and what i'm saying is you can't as a human being if somebody gives you something you're going to feel gratitude and even if you don't do with that person once right there and you say look you can't buy my vote for two thousand dollars and most of them say that of course but the

issue is if you do something nice for me in my heart i'm going to have to fuel a little bit better about you and what i'm saying is that is the moment of the problem if you're a public servant with all the crimes that you committed there's still a sense that you were used as a poster boy a kind of a scapegoat for the corrupt system that is very much alive and kicking i want to ask you about the supreme court decision from almost two years ago that allows on limited campaign contributions lobbyist must be really happy about that decision aren't they well some are some are and i think the decision was for the most part very good the decision basically said that people shouldn't have the right to get money constricted i don't have a problem with that what i have a problem with the. people who want something back giving money even a dollar that's the difference with with me now corporations the problem with corporations do you are contradicting yourself you were just talking about how eighty contribution can be seen as bribery and now you're saying no being able to funnel as much money as you want these perfectly fine in today's politics no i

don't think so i think people should have the right to get think i've been fairly consistent and not to expect anything in return one on one and why should you expect something in return there are lot of people who give money in this country by the way because they like the ideology of the candidate they like the candidate themselves they're not going in there and asking for a grant or a tax break or or a contract most people don't do that but it still contradicts what you were saying a few moments ago and that is with any form of contribution especially a big contribution an elected official finds themselves in a situation when they told their benefactors if somebody is worth a trillion dollars they live in some form in kansas and they never have any contact with any congressman ever and they see some congressman they love they want to give him a million dollars because they think they're fantastic and they never ask for a thing from that person i personally think that's all right they have been very hard to track down you ask possibly i've talked i've talked to law enforcement about this about my ideas and once the laws are set in place i think that they are

capable of figuring it out that decision only created a further complication in my view in the sense that it brought corporations them as a possible donor to political efforts and again don't you think it effectively legalize this corruption in washington i think corruption is legal in washington right now thousands of people took to the streets across america to say no to jack paper amounts to saying no to corrupt politics in washington do you think there is a chance that action like that that awareness like that can change anything i think the occupy wall street movement had behind it some good as things the problem is that they didn't organize themselves like the tea party mood. it did which was political tea party movement had a dramatic impact on the last election and probably will still in this election and i spoke to the occupy people quite a lot and i told them that until they get themselves organized politically they're not going to be meaningful because in america street protests don't really meaning

that people don't like street protests in america first of all the destructive there's vandalizing there's unsanitary things that go on and most americans in repelled by that but what most americans will respect is political activism an organization on the left or on the right now i think that there is anger out there and you don't have a money to hire a lot of. well that might not be a bad thing but. you know american people don't need lobbyist they need to organize themselves i think that in america getting it to first of all class and b. i think is very dangerous we've seen that every great. tele tarion movement in certainly in the twentieth century started with class and instead of class and be able to focus themselves not on those who succeed but those who cheat to succeed in the sense of using the government and using the state to make their lives easier to make more money and there are plenty of those that get it like like i did like i helped my clients do and like every lobbyist helps their clients do importunately

had it not being for the jail time which you have been just as we're painting as you are now if i hadn't had the fall if i hadn't had been destroyed i would love to sit here and tell you i would have all my own come to how bad this was and you know i should have been doing and i should have been involved in that kind of lobbying but i'm not going to lie to you i would never thought that i thought i was doing the right thing that's the sad part of it all for me so as i look back i would have stopped i would have still been doing it instead of sitting here with you i'd be sitting on capitol hill negotiating something for one of my clients. took my getting killed for me to come to the realisation that i should have been there what do you plan to do. in the process of. possibly one amp with a t.v. show thank you. when clinton comfortable question leads to

a grave accusation the world who is more xeno fogging. the president who isn't supposed to hide anything. or it's someone asking him why do you make a secret out but when the powers to be suppress the voice of those who think different or when you get experiencing very serious problems off of the saakashvili government came to power in two thousand and three but from a book that was when the problems began piling up. interviews were now off limits to our journalists they were often beason up and humiliated in public and one of the attempt to protect property puts life in real danger is that we have been deprived of the only means of earning a living i have gone to the original sit all the papers. got them legalized the ownership rights on the basis of companies freedom becomes just a stage prop. well see british science it's time.

for the. markets. scandal. find out what's really happening to the global economy cause a report on. the arab league is said to decide whether to give the go ahead to another month of the mission inside syria the opposition wants the u.n. security council to get involved. pushed to the edge of the internet erupts in a fury over plans to expand online censorship striking back with web wide. attacks. israel in the u.s. tactics over a possible conflict in the gulf i say forces that iran's borders all of this while the e.u. prepares its all in. iran's alleged nuclear ambitions. and in romania

spills over hundreds arrested dozens of police well some of the massive ongoing antigovernment protests. and all the action with kate the world of sports is next. hello welcome to the latest force and here's what's coming up. easy does it rafael nadal and roger federer hosting to the quarterfinals of history and i think the women's champion kim clijsters is also throwing off just really. top flight battles in chelsea while bolton strongly support pulsating day in the english premier league talk to her in action later. advantage prospects know the russian final at the friendly tournament dubai this is pakistan's on the european edge for us down

the line of a meeting with sydney. but first a ten is the second seed rafael nadal has beaten fellow spaniard felicity on the low pairs in straight sets took place in the quarter finals of the australian open the two thousand and nine champion was broken only once as the east to a six four six four six two victory against his misfiring davis cup team mate has broken the manageable if it's an. adult this overbold the knocking out is of course praying. for them that there is one of my best friends on the ground that the game but this boy don't you understand that's only a game in the stand. everybody wants to win the everybody wants them to have. the ones with the most with the was the better result but the motions are similar you know it. happens very often i think well up for that all next big serve in congress burdick who comes.