even flew over the kremlin it was so much fun will do no such fine some band but back in one thousand nine hundred one or one thousand nine hundred two. it was an amazing. fellow. of his. that's a nice piece of material and so easy to handle glo lewiston qualities of primary importance in our business is what you think of intentionally messed it up so you'll fall out of the sky that never absolutely no not a great job and i was very well done religiously and. the company repairs the existing believes as well as making new ones that receive several damaged envelopes a month this part of the balloon is subjected to wear and tear more often than others after the envelope is repaired and the new one is ready to test start.

because i o. nigel is the main believe tester of the to law and ops factory none of the balloons made by the company will be launched unless he gives the go ahead. are going to soon called us total our best gets met european standards. they were not as good in the old days but now there are russia's best guys in the who shows it's true i can't afford to pay the price but. i would buy one if they were not so expensive that. michelle knight golf is a veteran russian air and all that he's been involved with aviation for fifty four years mikhail is a boon designer by training he's built seven of them with his own hands. first to go ballooning when he was fifty three years old he looks forward to celebrating his seventy fifth birthday in flight you can test balloons at any time under any conditions one hundred flights a year is

a minimum. if you could see today flying is always a blissful whatever the conditions. were up and moving out of the ball vision normal position. the balloon is in working order as it should be. hopefully we'll get no complaints from the guys in about us. to look at the ils this is not what i call flying it would be in general i don't see being tethered is the definition of florida only with the out there who are we truly flying. a hot air balloon can only be in free flight during the daytime it's

a common role for all balloonists in the world the basket has to touch down before sunset. unlike balloons in free flight tethered balloons are allowed to be launched even in the dock in that case the burner illuminates the balloon from the inside. pilot's refer to this phenomena. known as the good organizers of the past to go with festival of balloonists came up with the idea for this spectacle to attract tourists. current simpatico such that early morning is the best time for taking to the skies the convoy of balloonists normally starts out at five o'clock in the morning to head towards the starting line. the success of the flight

primarily depends on the wind no matter how skillful the pilot might be balloonists good weather forecasts and reports about the force and direction of the wind from ground control safety services but then there is a simpler way of determining the winds direction the whole crew takes part in preparations for a flight normally it includes four people a technician carries out checks to satisfy himself that the balloon is in working order. have a good flight. balloons are raised into the sky by the pilot and the navigator but whether the crew will get home depends on those who stay on the ground.

so once a balloon lands the crew has to be retrieved from the spot. sometimes inexperienced teams responsible for retrieval can't find crews landing at dusk therefore those unfortunate balloonists have to spend a night out in the open not shock me as is another x. air force pilot. during competitions he is often charged with the task of ensuring the crew safe return to earth his job is retrieving crews of balloonists from wherever they might land. rainbow rainbow pick up his calling do you read pickup i can hear you. wonderful. nial has had special training to learn how to get his bearings in different conditions whether in the woods or mountains but tracking a balloon through the streets of a town is

a skill in its own right the. problem with tracking a balloon flying over a city or another population center is that there is a mass of people. you need to have a good knowledge of the city's top dog are free and the floods. what invariably ends up happening. is you get stuck in traffic. which is just great. you know and i mean. you know this is a very convenient place where's that from here we can see where balloons are going where they are likely to touch down but of the prophet. when you see our balloon rising over this town it's over by the hill. how far a balloon can fly depends on the wind what's most important is to make sure that it lands in such ways to make it easy for the retrieval truck to get it.

bring the rainbow pick up calling are you coming in time to work if i did. not pick up what i had down right away ok we're coming. to. pick up can you see us we can see you very well. but. a. couple of the. nile loses three or four kilograms of weight in a week of intense retrievals the crew puts the billing together and takes it apart several times the envelope weighs one hundred twenty to one hundred fifty kilograms . i think about what we entrust our very lives to this envelope higher than what

we make sure that no stones get in the way back up which might damage it but if the authorities doing. each gas tank weighs fifty kilograms if you add that to the burner in the basket the retrieval people will be hard put to collect it all. pylon kudo my lawn. tribute to. them now we're all. on face value ballooning is a simple affair behind the scenes it is a vigorous combination of efforts by a crew an escort truck and those who help build to believe these people define rain

snow bitter cold and scorching heat truly they're afraid of only one thing missing the ability to take to the skies. the sky does not misunderstand the sky does not judge the sky very simply it's.

well. science technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the huge earth covered. download the official publication to go on the phone all i pod touch from the i choose ops to. life on the go. video on demand tees and line old costs and says feeds now in the palm of your.

question on the dot com. me it is easy to.

get ready for a shake up rick santorum might have swept last night's primaries but don't count your chickens before they're hatched ron paul's campaign is on the rise so is joe is the g.o.p. ready to line up behind the party's most consistent candidate. this is a consistent pattern of a lack of concern for the environment and for human life and of course that's something that's part of an imperial mindset protecting american interests no matter the cost the pentagon is covering the globe both with military bases and pollution leaving you and i to pay the price we'll show you why

a personal safety doesn't help anyone. and it's the report u.s. officials don't want you to see you prove that the war in afghanistan might be a quagmire after all and that our enemies are poised to rise to power will bring you the state of the taliban. it's wednesday february eighth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm liz wahl and you're watching r.t. . well the race to be the next republican presidential candidate has shaken up this after rick santorum swept all three states in last night's primaries now mitt romney's cozy spot as front runner isn't so certain anymore throughout the race various county candidates enjoyed their time top in the polls only to be taken over

by a new g.o.p. flavor of the week but one candidates popularity has remained consistent ron paul and there are signs that he is gaining momentum especially after coming in second in minnesota where he beat romney and gingrich and take a look at this poll according to the latest telephone polls coming out of coming out front runner mitt romney lost some ground in recent days dropping from thirty to twenty nine percent ron paul is now in second place nationally after gaining support putting him at twenty one percent newt gingrich's support fell to nineteen percent and rick santorum support rose by five to eighteen percent so with support for other candidates slipping is it ron paul's time to shine well a recent event shows just how passionate paul supporters are in the vatican there was a special evening caucus to accommodate certain religious voters and it was read by

a prominent casino owner and the state his name is sheldon adelson here he is he pumped a lot of money into a super pac to support newt gingrich but that didn't stop swarms of ron paul supporters from showing up and causing quite a commotion and our next guest was there to tell us how it all went down blogger and activist just in trouble joining me just moments ago take a listen well i don't want to. and you know my feeling was this is regular people showing up because this caucus was held in the morning saturday and a lot of people missed it they couldn't make it so once they found out this thing about seven o'clock a lot of people showed up and wanted to participate and i felt like it was just regular people showing up so i called it ron paul supporters warmed it crashed it

i didn't feel that way especially since quite a few rabbis and us people spoke to ron or so what do you think it says about you know the fact that it was mitt romney who this guy poured all that money into yet you have all these loud very passionate vocal ron paul ron paul supporters really showing up to support what does it say about kind of ron paul's supporters and his base well it was interesting because this guy who owns the venetian. sheldon adelson he actually supporting gingrich and he was sitting right there. he was about the twenty feet from me and you could so he was a little irritated because so many people were clapping and applauding but the ron paul people were talking and there were quite a few people and rabbis who stood up and spoke for ron paul but he was sitting

there. because he was supporting gingrich through all of this. very interesting gap ron paul certainly has a very passionate following want to talk about some of the more recent developments as far as the election last night the results really shake things up for the republican race mitt romney's front runner status isn't so certain anymore is it not at all. i just think people don't really trust him or like him. it's just the media's been telling everybody well he's the front runner he's the guy you've got to go after. this is the guy but that's not really a reason why you or somebody i mean it was he was the anti-christ you're a liberal or maybe you could be a llama no. we're trying out each candidate i just wish they would run all right out newt gingrich he sucks now it's running out rick santorum he's awful with

you know anything about it hopefully ron paul be the next guy. and so with rick santorum sweeping all three caucuses last night the kind of shows that he is the alternative to mitt romney it's because some republicans conservatives are furred ahead as the massachusetts moderate so we are seeing this divide within the republican party but ron paul's followers are you know they're always there they always stick around no matter what what is this divide within the party me and for paul's campaign well i just don't think that anybody anybody calls them so republicans could say that they're good for the constitution or that they're limited government for that they're against the spending the homeland or defending our borders and since ron paul supports all those things it just baffles me that he doesn't receive more support but i think it's because people just aren't or they

just don't know they haven't really looked at him they haven't studied them they have no idea so if he got more coverage more people really sat and thought about it i think it's will continue to grow and what is it about ron paul that riles his supporters up so much. because once you start listening to him it's not so much just the overall message he's trying to get across you just kind of wake up and you realize wow our country is being run by the reserve which is a private organization run by private people and it's not a third rule institution you realize that i have to realize that wars are a lot you realize the war on terror is steak the war on drugs is a complete joke once you start to wake up to all this you get ingrid you get passionate and you stay around horses or you don't change. and you know the fact that he is gaining momentum and that he has made it this far is

a huge improvement from the last time he was running and the election so ron would you say that ron paul's image as a fringe candidate has changed it's absolutely changed is a war continues to grow he came in second a strong second and begin in second in minnesota so people are going to start to realize ok it's finished florida in a whole bunch of these contests so why can't we look at ron paul as being just as viable as newt gingrich early but you know it's and that was a blogger and activist just in trouble. and afghanistan where u.s. troops are planning to pull out that is not the only place where the u.s. has left a mass around the globe where america has waged war is and set of bases even here in u.s. soil the actions of the military have left a dirty and even toxic mess for a local community as and as it turns out the united states department of defense is

the biggest polluter on the planet and as you'll see the mass may just maybe just be too expensive for the pentagon to clean up. the united states department of defense the planet's biggest polluter with hundreds of military bases around the world the department is responsible for more ways than any other company or country this is a consistent pattern of a lack of concern for the environment and for human life and of course that's something that's part of an imperial mindset the problem has persisted throughout history from nuclear testing in the pacific in the fifty's fire. to nato attacks dropping depleted uranium in libya it gets into the water table and it does damage to the kidneys and the liver is very very highly dangerous some countries say they've had enough like japan which is pushing for the ouster of u.s. troops stationed in okinawa what looks like ninety thousand people in okinawa and

thousands others across japan seems to represent people saying as they have been for quite some time that they have just had enough others suffer in silence it tends to be connected at least conceptually to environmental racism countries are being occupied and just leveled or destroyed afghanistan and iraq now libya and if you look at history in the late twentieth century i mentioned vietnam earlier. is another place where you're going to see this happening this was going on a vehicle with naval bombing in puerto rico and it happens in our own backyard like camp was you north carolina where for three decades people bathed and drank contaminated water. only then. through. veteran jerry n's manner believes he lost his nine year old daughter to cancer causing radioactive toxins he and his family were exposed to while base there they were told that they have these and evidence and everything more or have years.

very. well and he's not alone one in ten americans live near a military site or something some superfund site because military bases extreme approaching in not only radioactive pollution also you know jet fuel how is this able to happen the entire politics is controlled by fossil fuel interests wall street interests and military interests and though the contamination is costing lives the cost to clean up the mast may be too big for the pentagon an estimated three hundred twenty billion dollars that's almost half the pentagon's budget instead the money is being spent here on wars in afghanistan and iraq and military operations elsewhere. and in today's climate in congress the environment is not at the top of the agenda this is the most. house of representatives in

history so far this congress the house of representatives has voted again and again to block action to address climate change to hold their for. water pollution well president obama recently announced his plan to boost military presence in australia a military buildup also happening and a province in south korea with the pentagon splurging on expanding their military reach there seems to be a little funding left to clean up existing basses around the globe and washington was wall. well joining me now for more is david swanson campaigner for it's actually nice to see you david so i know you are a very outspoken when it comes to the military industrial complex part of that system allows the department of defense to be the biggest polluter in the world how how is this able to happen. well it's able to happen as described in your story

which was very well done through the corrupting influence amy and there there's a there's a big wave now of books looking at the declining war making the decline in violence but about a lot of them seem to assume that as war becomes less popular it will go away the problem is that even if wars are unpopular even if environmental destruction is unpopular if a handful of powerful interests are controlling our government that may or may not make any difference and environmental groups fail to take on the military industrial complex in the way that they would any other polluter and this being of course the biggest one out there just as civil liberties groups fail to take on the military industrial complex those looking into the interests of labor and the poor and and representative government and the military industrial complex is the

greatest enemy that any any movement for justice in the world has but there's a reluctance to join all these forces together and take it on if we could get the environmental movement solidly behind that clean up you talked about it would take half the pentagon's budget well they've doubled their budget in the past decade take it back where it was we were doing just fine as far as being the the biggest military in the world and put that money into cleaning the mess up twenty five thousand contaminated sites just in this country from the pentagon and you take a big chunk out of unemployment in the process and they hit who exactly is that affecting from this. well profiteers are benefiting the military is of course ever more quote unquote privatized meaning it's our money but without the accountability. the the military industrial complex is

a huge part of how we funnel money from the ninety nine percent of us to that upper one percent it is it in rich is the rich and it's funneled back in now with barely any limitations at all into congressional campaigns and not just through contributions but through jobs through the pretense that the military is a good jobs program and congress members of course want jobs in their districts which you know is why a lot of the worst sites are in the southeast or in the poorest neighborhoods because going back to the thirty's it was seen as desirable to get military bases to come destroy your groundwater and poison your soil and that of the u.s. trying to advise other countries on environmental policy of how can the u.s. do this out when it has its own cleaning up to do. well with completed parker see is not to say that every other government is doing

a great job but the united states has no more moral standing on this issue within any other we have bases in most countries around the world in the super bowl they talk about the servicemen and women in over one hundred seventy seven countries many of those are doing incredible damage and most of the places where there have been wars and military action many of them involving the u.s. have done horrendous damage leaving cluster bombs depleted uranium white phosphorus nuclear radiation ruining water supplies ruining the ground for living in huge sections of the earth and we have children being born with three arms with one eye as a result of this and yet somehow that doesn't reach people's hearts in a powerful enough way maybe maybe if they mine the. straits of hormuz and the military follows through on its plan to send dolphins in to get blown up and find

the mines that will reach people i don't know well certainly very shocking at and terrible the consequences of this i mean the damage has already been done the messes have already been made why is it not a priority in that info for the pentagon to clean it up. well it's not the most profitable enterprise for the pentagon it's not part of the strategy of expanding power they would much rather build a new base or go into a new country then clean up an old one there they are going in as you mentioned into australia and other new nations including more than likely back into the philippines their desire is to expand across the globe not to worry about cleaning up the messes left behind and the damage in the places where they go in is incredible jade's you island in.