western and arab supporters of the syrian revolution meet in turkey to press the assad regime with some of the members pushing for further militarization of a conflict. president that of slim's u.s. republican presidential candidates anti-rational rand says an outdated hollywood the shape of american voters themselves could be jaded by alternatives to obama. anti austerity riots and protests a break out across spain is the government announces massive new cuts unparalleled since the dictatorship of general franco.

am in moscow i matras are bring you today's top stories and a look back at the week's headlines here on r t calls for more arms to the syrian rebels are growing louder with saudi arabia saying that supplying the weapons is a judy it's one of the major opposition groups of people to syria's neighboring states to allow the transit request comes ahead of the seventy nation friends of syria meeting in turkey that is already sara furthur reports could prove a stern test for the host nation. taking the hub of activity at the name into as it prepares to play haste to the friends the syria meeting the country's once again found itself at the center stage of the push to pressure the assad regime it has a history with history that syria saw certainly it feels justified that it is growing fainter to a certain extent. as well that's why it's going to supply having fully built up close economic ties to syria and sharing all the nine hundred kilometers of border

with its neighbor the distance between the two countries is now a gulf with turkey skulls seemingly closely aligned to that of arab countries such as qatar and saudi arabia and their strong calls for regime change. or very early in the face of syria one might remember. very quickly and very confrontational attitude towards. the struggle against in. iraq. the syrian national council themselves are battling their own fears divides that the group lost a number of members recently is accusations now that they're not representative of the interests of the syrian people this is seen as here. also i've not been so. someone. who is gonna stand muslim brotherhood.

member before was. also if the syrian opposition desperately trying to bridge their own divisions turkish governments now left in a difficult situation for his north after these things that people deserved the only team that can push is a regime change otherwise. his capacity of monitoring to the arab world from syria will be very very constrained and as take he gives that for the meeting. when it comes to understanding the complex syrian crisis and take his role in it they still left to guess what's really going on behind closed doors to turkey to once again emerge as a major regional calloused syria is said to need grieving and. he's been feeling very much to lead the way in applying threshold is that an end to the violence in the turkish government all too aware that a wrong we've now could lead to

a confrontation with the syrian army and the escalation of it already incredibly volatile regional situation. see istanbul. talk more about the upcoming gathering in istanbul let's go to joy poindexter blogger and peace activist. thank you for joining us so damascus says the battle to topple the state is over but it's not true given that arms are reportedly continuing to flow into rebel hands you know i mean i think as long as there's fighting going on and long as there is interference coming from other countries or road organizations. arming one side if you know that we're not going to really see an end to this now why do you think the assad regime has if you guys refuse to lay down its arms for us in response to kofi annan appeal to stop military activities as the stronger party in a good faith gesture. well i mean i think that they obviously are under pressure whether it's from you know the members of their own party or people on the outside

looking in and seeing that as an act of weakness perhaps they're kind of acrobatics up against the corner you know it's against a corner right now and maybe doing that might give the rebels even more of an incentive to continue on because a lot of these cease fire agreements have been on the condition that the assad regime be the first to end the violence early in the aggression and when it's one sided like that we tend not to see you know two out of too much poke in and bring that to an end so what do you expect that the outcome will be a befriends of syria gathering in istanbul today. i don't know there's been a lot of tension between some of the members one to go one way or the other and i'm hoping that there will continue to be and will more restrained i know that there are some groups that are wanting to try to deal with kofi annan six point plan and i don't know that that's going to be you know the better. outcome but at least it

would be better than going full bore military course on into syria now moscow says the group can't speak on behalf of the international community and says this all started in moscow and beijing have been a vocal a poll or a vocal proponents for diplomacy why do you think that this friends of syria group isn't representing the global community. well they've kind of i guess and center to take control over what kind of intervention there's going to be there isn't it obviously china and russia have been a little bit more reserved and would like to try some of these other diplomatic things first and when you've got you know big countries at least in terms of you know on the u.n. security council wanting to slow down and maybe maybe think this out a little bit more it's clearly not a representative. position to want to go into fast but i think ultimately we should not want to see these being organizations want to go into this country i

think it's an issue for syria itself to have to resort will come on. and finally washington says it backs kofi annan peace plan but there are strong voices within the u.s. leadership including certain republican senators and folks in the legislature who are calling for regime change to continue do you think this could hamper the mission this kind of two sided or apparently two prong message that's coming out of washington it could end up hampering it i mean it could be that the it stalls it and the intervention whether it's by sending diplomats or by sending men with guns in it could be that that that ends up if we screw prolonging this process of syria having to come come together and work this out i would prefer that be the outcome rather than have you know what's on the ground or. brokered deal where one side in that you know feeling like they got the short end of stick all right joe poindexter

a blogger and peace activist experience i thank you. as syria hovers on the brink of civil war we revisit one of the most controversial events of the arab spring. who have interests that could if he doesn't to that he should be silenced photo of . the man who engineered the libyan regime as downfall says the grisly end of moammar gadhafi may have been about more than just revenge plus. brutal clashes in the middle east marvel landay commemorated by palestinians and arabs with dozens of demonstrators ins are injured as israeli police use stun grenades and rubber bullets on protesters. the u.s. missile defense and visions emerged again this week to form a stumbling block between russia and the u.s. the pentagon now wants to expand their defense system to asia and the middle east this is president medvedev and obama held key talks on international nuclear

security at a summit in seoul. a microphone caught obama's private remark asking for a space until november as u.s. election has come and gone his republican rivals pounced to accusing him of secretly plotting with moscow but has more hawks on the anti russia bandwagon artie's guy who reports that the war cries they frustrate americans more than obama's policies. the run up to the presidential election in the u.s. . a perfect time to drag out the good old cold war skeleton from the closet. russia this is without question our number one geopolitical foe in the world of the presidential hopeful mitt romney russia is america's prime

enemy while it's president elect you should remember this. represents a real threat to the. world but that's in the world of mitt romney what about well america there is no evidence of any popular support for bashing russia for hostility towards russia so this idea that somehow or another russia is a concern for americans it just doesn't add up at all with a very small sliver of people asked about romney's comments president medvedev advised him to stop reverting to olden days hollywood steered types and take a look at the calendar. but it can go i would advise all u.s. presidential candidates to make reasonable statements it wouldn't do them any home to do so and such and they will choose it's the twenty twelve midnight and seventy's and even the current leaders of the two countries may have long delayed

the cold war to aggress but for some it's just too good to like girl boy to return to those cold war simple days. russia is not the only foreign policy bandwagon the republican presidential hopefuls are capitalizing on the list also includes china he ran syria each candidate except ron paul trying to sound tougher than the other the strategies they put forward warming harming isolating threatening. i want to beat china i want to go to war with china these guys around truce and the end of it and spend and look for ways to do it to want to harm us of course should take military action it is unacceptable for iran to have a nuclear weapon but what if all of what the trigger happy candidates suggest on foreign policy actually happens i worry about the worlds in which romney became

president because i think he would adopt a more militaristic foreign policy as rudy is depicted in which a sketch it has some kind of hidden if it will and very unreal view of the world if america takes up a much more aggressive stance towards lots of foreign countries it will be a much more dangerous world and they'll also be dangerous for america because we can't afford to do that mitt romney will most likely win the republican nomination and america will face a choice between him and president obama polls show the majority of americans disapprove of obama's policies but most experts agree that he will remember tbilisi win the election because too many americans are just plain scared of having someone like romney as their future leader i'm going to check our reporting for us and get our take. still to come this hour france for the french ideological eretz imprisonment and deportation the french presidential campaign turns to

a hard life competition as politicians tout on realistic solutions to very real problems. washington decides to leave north korea hungry having announced they will suspend food aid to the parish country the response of pyongyang has plans to launch an earth observation satellite. but first some of the biggest riots in decades swept across spain this week with mass protests coinciding with a nationwide general strike over austerity but the government remain undecided about see twenty seven billion euros worth of cuts the next day spending on education social safety nets and every other second. it will be slashed by about seventeen percent furthermore tax hikes are being introduced across the spectrum and speak workers will be hit with a pay freeze critics of doubly cuts the most draconian sensitive kater shikhar francisco franco three decades ago economic analysts make up michael ross things ultimately the measures won't work. what i can see is that to want to spend want to make the spanish government is not only visited the pill it's also

impossible when you look at the private sector private sector is totally over that more or less bankrupt when you look at the bearings over there bankrupt central bank bankrupt government also mourners men click on can you imagine authority pitch in these circumstances so everybody will see this rule this won't work but what i what i see is that spain is the last nail in the euro zone coffin so i mean we have to close abilities why the euro will be obviously not working well the first is there who have turned over the mess to insurrection in spain it's so have to pull out of the euro in order to calm the people of the other one is the financial aspect that it is not possible to have spain with five hundred seven hundred billion euros in order to refinance themselves so if this if you come to this point

and then i think the germany will pull out of the euro meanwhile oil prices around the world continue soaring amid growing tensions over the west sanctions and a rhetoric against iran is especially worrying for the e.u. which has been weakened by austerity and now with the mercy of market mandated prices from the national iranian american council thinks the sanctions work possibly need jerk reaction. real problem here is that the u.s. and the e.u. have passed these on president sanctions without a real strategy or understanding of comes next we're sort of making this up as we go along and we're finding that the sanctions that we put in place to try to restrict iran from profiting off of oil sales is really actually backfiring on us and that iran has tremendous leverage against us if we're going to take this confrontation to one to energy so i'm skeptical of the ability of the united states and france and others to actually mitigate this president obama

has even said a number of economists have said that the fear of a war with iran has actually added about twenty dollars to the price of a barrel of oil so this concern that israel may strike iran or that the united states may end up in a war with iran is one of the driving factors of why it is so expensive and simply addressing the supply issue is not going to mitigate that. still to come here on r t the states prying eyes technology in the u.s. that could leave the public with nowhere to hide. but first french police have carried out a series of nationwide raids arresting nineteen suspect it is limits and seizing caches of weapons the arrests came out a week after mohamed merah a frenchman of algerian origin was shot dead by police in toulouse those are so your reports his case is dominating the race for the country's presidency. mama never was killed by police after thirty two hours seizure him to lose his life may

have ended that day but his story has given france's presidential hopefuls an excuse for electioneering with ever more radical rhetoric. that's given rise to a huge political debate and what's needed to the foreground of the discourse is meraz background shit. from anyone who regularly consults internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison any person going abroad for the purposes of indoctrination in terrorist ideology will be criminally punished so that's in addition to psychos east policy of stripping of foreign born criminals of their citizenship for their tightening border control saying there are too many foreigners in france who clearly appropriating the political change in extremist view is not a crime we have freedom of speech in france and they don't see. the restrict its.

was a french citizen an east family came to france a very long time ago so. obviously this kind of terrorism. from inside friends of society it's not just something that is imported from the middle east. and you cannot. take away french nationality from a french nation or this is not allowed under the french constitution and then there's money in the pen the far right national front party candidate having long pushed a more radical and immigration line call for the revival of the death penalty for child killers and the deportation of any foreigner who goes of a suspicious trip to places like afghanistan how many mohammed merah are there in the boats and planes that arrive in france full of immigrants how did marriage is perhaps only the tip of the iceberg it's time. to read you on this from the mentalist political religious groups who are killing our children and friends of

islamic fundamentalism has been underestimated. i think all that's been announced after these tragic events are proposals put forward still reach for the election it goes to the one who proposes the most radical solutions which would aim supposedly at solving the problem but the problem is much deeper what was are now the growing number of immigrants in france about six million of whom are muslims is being labeled as a problem by some prominent figures politicians are throwing around what they call solutions but the question is whether any of these policy ideas on immigration or security are realistic and are addressing an actual problem or simply the consequences of something more fundamental the core of the call a musical tribute if you can do to treat people what is the called over the pool and there doesn't seem to be much consensus on that either tests are still here r t paris thousands of protesters took to the streets in palestinian territory in israel on friday to mark the land day the release of bile and bloodshed with more

than one hundred demonstrators injured in at least one killed as israeli police resorted to rubber bullets and tear gas against the crowds are his policy or has been. this year the annual land day demonstrations turned violent with one protester killed in gaza several dozen injured across the west bank and at least thirty four people arrested in the event marks the killing back in one nine hundred seventy six of six palestinians injuring a man confiscation policy of the van israeli government palestinians complain that the israelis took arab land and used it for building israeli settlements and since then this an event has been used to highlight the plight of the palestinian people this recurring side with what was dubbed the global march to jerusalem and it saw some eighty two countries participating the attention was focused on numerous palestinian cities and villages as well as arab israeli towns and the israeli borders along the. border some twenty thousand people gathered and while there were

no reports of violence and certainly highlighted the palestinian struggle among the groups there was a jewish group calling itself jews united against zionism and they were waving palestinian flags and chanting anti israeli slogans at the columbia chip point which is the main checkpoint between jerusalem and ramallah there was violence starting from as early as mid day friday here the israeli police were using rubber bullets and tear gas to push back protesters who were burning tires and also throwing stones at the israeli border police. fifty killed and almost five hundred injured that's a result of the latest throes of violence sweeping libya as former rebels and tribesmen duke it out for power the nation's governments now brokered a ceasefire but in reality it is little power over the vast number of armed groups left over from the revolution as violence continues across the country there's

a growing sense among critics that last year's uprising has produced little real change coming up later this hour our teams exclusive interview with the architect of the doppies downfall and a frank look at the cost and reasoning behind them for. so many go to his who have interests that could if he doesn't to that he should be silenced for that of you who is trying to buy time. he sent to leave it and that's. one of them was bush who saw who was sent to france who were. providing some sense who the what he called would win the solution with it who was killed by who for whom entity or libyans who were libyans and they have from others but he led them but with him say is that too many. of the interests that did this he just keep silent for him and. the next hour we take a look at another african country overcome by revolutionary bieber this week ali

was the scene of violence as the west african country was rocked by a military coup. and new n.h.s. reforms in the u.k. of what many wondering are free health care will be lost in profiteers he's had to make millions from the changes. but first pyongyang has slammed the u.s. over if this isn't just suspended food aid to north korea blaming washington for breaching february's humanitarian agreement two hundred forty thousand tons of provisions were promised in return for the communist state halting nuclear and missile tests north korea announced this week it refuses to hold back its plans to launch what it calls an earth observation satellite image april but the u.s. and south korea think the launch is really a long range missile test claims that sending a satellite into space very clearly purely for peaceful purposes has reportedly invited outside experts to prove its sincerity erik's iraq and co-founder of a campaign to end the korean war says washington is acting against international law by involving food aid in its political standoff. just

a week or two before we heard the administration in washington saying that this was a good deal it was going to get food to the neediest people in north korea and now we're playing politics with food food as a weapon of war under international law has always been illegal to use and we really need to find a way back to the table not see individual acts as a provocation they certainly have a right to put a satellite into space as other nations do but let's demilitarized let's look at the pace issues let's look at getting that peace treaty to end the korean war finally and then i think these kinds of issues one iraq. and increasing use of monitoring technology in the u.s. has left many wondering if big brother name or fact and fiction and use of for the use of forensics and even tracking online data it seems that soon nowhere maybe safe from prying eyes are he's wearing

a port i reports. well ten years ago bio metrics robotic spies and state surveillance were the makings of a side by flick starring tom cruise sort of from the summer of today many scenes from the hollywood blockbuster minority report have arguably e-com an american reality with life ominously imitating art your walking down the street of the camera takes a picture of you is able to compare it through facial mapping is able to compare it to your driver's license for them or some other photo maybe a mug shot maybe a surveillance photo and say all right marina was on the corner of forty second and . three o'clock last saturday in addition to facial recognition in new york city's police department is just one of many law enforcement agencies that also require citizens to undergo an iris scan before being released from police custody.

in the past six months iris scans have been taken from hundreds of occupy wall street activists police under arrest like christina gonzales they really don't tell you why they just say it's another form of identification and it's really creepy to have someone holding up the machine to your phrase that you have no idea not only the health of facts what there are clearly use it with their larger purposes of using it is more in the virtual world of tweets. facebook posts and search engines every internet user is defined by a data footprint if you think i'm not in his comments and blogs are protected think again through the use of what's called forensic linguistics us investigators can now uncover who something girls are behind every single keystroke if i have a good in a large enough sample of your writing and your postal card can take it and compare

it i couldn't even put it into a data. database. using that information finding every other post you ever get the digital data trail of every american will soon be connected to a massive building in utah a two billion dollar data center is reportedly being constructed for the u.s. national security agency the complex will allegedly be able to collect analyze and store all forms of personal communication including online purchases cell calls google searches and yes private messages for example when you use g. mail your all your e-mails are encrypted by default google has given you this service and has allowed you to say my communications are protected now the n.s.a. center is designed around building systems that will do your current that data and remove any protection that you can put onto it u.s. intelligence officials estimate that by twenty twenty up to one hundred billion

ordinary devices such as refrigerators and dishwashers could be wired up to the internet just the way p.c.'s and cell phones are now that bottomless pit of data would allow big brother to monitor virtually anything it wants even the cia director says the very idea of secrecy will change forever. part new york we're back in a few minutes with a recap of the headlines stay with us your art.

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