at least seventy eight people killed thousands of. with. across the country. but the.

it is a pleasure to have you with us today. live in moscow we'll go straight to our breaking news now at least seventy eight people have been killed in severe flooding. over the last twenty four hours dozens have been injured hundreds displaced as the floods caused widespread structural damage across the popular resort area. joins us live with the latest details on this developing story. we're talking here. amount of rain one of the conditions like at the moment in the flooded areas. something unimaginable those are the words of the regional governor as he flew over just one of the affected regions hit by a massive flash flooding in the southern russia the rains came at night a month's rain fell in just a few hours and that meant that when it hit three towns near to the coast of

russia's black sea coast the rain came in huge quantities it came fast and it came without warning the numbers of dead and the numbers of people displaced have been rising by the hour people were drowned in their homes or trying to escape from cars five people were electrocuted when a electricity transformer fell into the water and thousands have tried to escape the deluge of water by climbing on to their cars on to their houses to try and get some height we heard from some of them. follow your stream of water hit my car lost control of the car turned over and he did tree he just managed to climb out of the back door and cling to the tree which is a good meeting. local ports of navarre seas has suspended oil shipments but that's really the least of the trouble i witnesses reported traffic lights and pavements ripped up cars overturned hundreds of homes

have been flooded in the region and thousands of people have been forced to evacuate the area and to seek refuge around thirteen thousand people in all of corrected according to the local emergencies ministry extra emergency workers have been coordinated at the emergencies ministry behind me in moscow and more emergency workers have been flown to help the local staff around a thousand trying to help rescue people and to minimize the damage and two hundred vehicles working to try and contain the affects of these floods their efforts are being complicated by the region status as a popular holiday resort thousands of russians go to the black sea coast every year and there are also thousands of children around seven thousand it's thought in holiday camps there and that will raise the worries of the emergencies workers

about the location may many tourists there go just to camp on our own registered their whereabouts may make the the rescue efforts more complicated massive flooding also hit the region in two thousand and two killing hundreds and forcing around affecting around two hundred thousand people these floods say the regional governor in this local region are the worst for seventy years and the emergency workers are desperately trying to control the effects of the floods in a region that is at the moment in absolute chaos by tom as we're hearing right now as the fighting complicates the ongoing rescue effort our latest numbers we have tom now that eighty seven people have died in these floods tom barton and many thanks. this is r t it's been a rocky start to libya's first elections in half a century armed gangs have stormed a polling station in the north while boycotts shootings and abductions of affected

voting all across libya in benghazi where last year's uprising began protesters this morning burned a ballot papers and decried the vote quote a sham of a three thousand seven hundred candidates are vying for seats in parliament predicted to be dominated by islamists today less than a year since more market athey was executed by a crowd of revolutionaries it seems the country is more divided than ever former rebel commanders and tribal chiefs fight for power all across the country with little hope that the elections will stop the violence this report to wattis lucie county. this is the new libya political parties are now free to operate across the country. so too are countless armed groups they one spot to oust moammar gadhafi from power today it is they who are in control that tag militias who answer only to their own

commanders have grown more powerful than the biggest police and army militia which mark we must put limits on these militias because they are dividing the country they are while libya's falling into decay almost one year after a nato backed uprising ended gadhafi is rule libyans are taking to the polls for the first time in decades but with tripoli's transitional national council too weak to quell ongoing violence any fear that elections will do little to bring peace but where is the conditional council they said that they are going to protect this country and if gadhafi gone there is nothing left he said that libya will have national unity where is it. here is what libyan style democracy looks like armed groups calling for more autonomy stormed a been gauzy polling station last sun. setting voting lists and ballots ablaze with new tribal clashes broke out in libya's city of this past week alone saw the deaths of nearly fifty people with hundreds wounded and when members of

a local militia seized libya's biggest international airport in broad daylight last month security forces simply stood by and watched they vary in size from gangs guarding neighborhoods to small de facto armies like the one ins in taunton which still holds libya's most famous prisoner saif al islam when international criminal court staffers tried to visit gadhafi son they too were seized and held captive for nearly four weeks justice militia style may prove to be the biggest obstacle to whatever government libyans elect some groups are boycotting saturday's vote while others aligned with various political parties a dangerous trend that could deep in existing divisions secularists islamicists even former members of al qaida are among the nearly four thousand people vying for a seat in the country's national congress the choice of candidates is the will during for some that is precisely the problem this is because of their own i don't know. how congress need to forgive. this is i think because.

millions of and stained fingers will mark libya's first experiment with free elections but as the cases of iraq and afghanistan have shown voting booths alone do not equal a democracy and in the example of libya the line between freedom and anarchy is growing dangerously blurred whatever the outcome one thing is certain if unhappy with the result libya's armed groups now know what to do next. we are against i'm a dictator of history repeats itself. lucy cathy. wants. meanwhile there are fears that kathy's son saif al islam will be used as bait to distract libyans and mold public opinion even officials from the hague tribunal say his trial won't be anything but a kangaroo court although political commentator luke samuel says the international criminal court is part of the reason libya remains locked in violence. the disunity that we're seeing in really has come around as

a result of the western intervention in the uprising of which the i.c.c. was very much a part of the i.c.c. prosecutions are by their very nature political you know the i.c.c. is used as a mechanism for trying those individuals which may lend some political authority to the interventions of the west and that's why the i.c.c. is so often used in these interventions in order to bolster the earth already of western institutions and it's also the fact that the n.t. see how it's all forty on the ground bolstered by these indictments the indictments issued against the gadhafi family lent artificial cohesion to the rebellion on the ground a rebellion which has always been characterized by a very disparate set of material on the ground and what the i.c.c. effectively did was artificially give that rebellion a sense of unification an artificial sense of political purpose and that in the end

this group extremely destabilizing because as we've seen now libya is anything but unified in fact it looks as though it may revert i mean it's in danger of reverting to the kind of city state set up that we had in the nineteen fifties life from moscow this is a party still to come for you in this program that of discord in the heart of latin america the ousting of paraguayans president hits relations between neighbors one regional expert chances views on what lies behind the story. it's ten minutes past the hour here in the russian capital moscow has slammed the friends of syria meeting in paris describing it as one sided and immoral over one hundred nations taking part in the talks pledged to throw a lifeline to the syrian rebels and a u.n. action against damascus that amar's would include tougher sanctions and if necessary military intervention this undermines last week's geneva conference us. by c.n.n. special envoy kofi annan so the world's major powers unite over the idea that both

sides of the syrian war behind the violence and as all of these gun h.g. can explain the media coverage is equally biased. syrian rebels have rejected the peace plan that was put forward by the international community they made it clear that violence would continue so far the coverage of the conflict in syria has been so one sided that it seems the rebels could get away with anything the media in the us and in the west in general have focused only on what the us government has been doing almost entirely leaving out the atrocities act of terror committed by the rebels presenting a completely black and white picture but a conflict like the one in syria is never black and white and never simple the slanting of the coverage reminded some of former yugoslavia before nato when bombing former yugoslavia at the end of the one nine hundred ninety s. the media focused on crimes committed by the serbs completely hushing down the atrocities committed against the serbs with me here is jim the director of the

american council so i thank you very much for joining me thank you what are the similarities you see between what's going on in syria and what has been going on in yugoslavia inform you that there are similarities i would say on all three crucial levels as we look at syria one has to do with the international system the rule of law the rule of the security council another one has to do with the status of sovereign states and how you treat a sovereign state that has an insurgency within its borders and the third thing is what we might call on the ground when you take a complex historical circumstance with communities historic grievances and as you said in your introduction atrocities and violence of that are committed on both sides in conflicts like this and attribute only to one side what you do is you to you you come up with a concept of do you fit the facts into the concept you don't take a step back in good faith look at what's really going on look at the software. people on both sides and how in good faith can you poor poor water on the fire to

try to calm things down instead would you do if you find a small very far you've poured gasoline on it with words like genocide and so forth and then try to set the stage for what you really want which is the victory for one side the side you've chosen and the utter destruction of the other side you know and one of the side lights of this in both kosovo and syria is something that's important to me is the fate of the christian population and why is it that in the name of fighting terrorism and promoting democracy and all this other nonsense the united states always seems to find itself on the side of jihad just elements engaging in terrorism with the predictable results for the christian population as we saw in kosovo when half the christian population with a box christian serbs had to flee the province and thousands of them were killed by the liberators the cause why a british army. i think that there are the i think there are a couple of different explanations for it i think one is our cozy relationship with

saudi arabia the gulf states that we want to show we're on the side of our friends who are so important to us when it comes to frankly money and international commerce i think by the way that even in a less dramatic form we're making a similar mistake when it comes to egypt and basically adopting the muslim brotherhood is our chosen voice of democracy in egypt and which is also the same force that stands to benefit in syria if our goal in foreign policy is successful thank you mr texas we heard it many times the first casualty of war is the truth and we see it happening time and time again the media urge to simplify matters and to eventually push its agenda becomes a weapon in itself a weapon which creates victims of its own in washington i'm going to second. oh i do all right here at the center for research on globalization and all of the upcoming book subverting syria now joins us live to discuss the crisis in the country our thanks for coming on r.t. today it's good to see you as you were just listening the media and diplomatic

advantages seems to be on the side of the syrian opposition why do you think that is given that it has been widely admitted the both rebels and the government behind their own fresh air force know that thanks for having me on the show again i think the countries that are pushing and pushing military intervention in syria they see the toppling of bashar al assad as a way to undermine iran's influence in the arab world and these countries have a lot to gain from doing that both saudi arabia and turkey are both eyeing to be regional powers in many different ways and also israel they get a third of their water from the occupied golan heights netanyahu is that has a very ambitious plans for a greater or greater israel and let's remember in two thousand and seven it was seymour hersh writing for the new yorker that published you published an article called the redirection and which basically talked about a holistic shift undertaken by the u.s. and saudi arabia to basically form an extremist sunni front to pit against

hezbollah in lebanon the iranian government and also bashar al assad so these powers have a lot to gain from syria following as you say and certainly a lot of a regional interests at play here certainly behind the scenes at one point i do want to bring up hillary clinton recently called on washington's allies to make sure that russia and china pay the price for she sees as a star as you know she was meeting with the russian foreign minister sergei lavrov just in the past ten days or so in some petersburg they both came out of the meeting with smiles saying they both agree that a diplomatic solution is the only outcome for syria why is she saying that russia and china have to pay the price for for not taking the american side on this. she's completely insane completely and i think at this point. i think at this point these western powers are paying lip service to the the kofi annan plan and at the very

same time undermining it completely by letting the weapons come into the country from all sides just a couple of weeks ago the new york times reported on a bombshell article the cia that confirmed the american cia is operating in a base in southern turkey and they're coordinating arms smuggling into into syria to the from the free syrian army and if we look at things like the houla massacre and the kinds of bombing tactics suicide bombing roadside bombing that we see going on in syria now this is not characteristic of syria or lebanon this is characteristic of al-qaeda in iraq and just the other day i was reading just yesterday in fact i was reading al jazeera reading the story about hillary clinton's comments the very next article was was a warning from the government of iraq warning the international an international community that jihadi fighters were crossing the border in drew there's no editorial linking of these two and you know i must say i myself i saw i saw the

same article i saw the same article about the words of the of the iraqi prime minister a foreign minister saying that these jihadist groups are crossing over the border that it might seem to some the weather is nice i will the united nations of the west might even want to see this kind of cross border action or from so-called jihadists giving them perhaps an excuse to go into yet another part of the middle east. well yes absolutely but i think we really need to we really need to realize that i mean your story on libya just now foreign intervention is not diffused violence it in many cases it increases that and there's tremendous civilian casualties to boot there are no i think if we look at the kofi annan peace plan if it was honestly implemented in a very beginning of a few months back probably would be a conversation but you know at the same time there are ways that the u.n. can. do things differently in syria for example they need to investigate those institutions that are smuggling arms into the country they need to sanction those

institutions they need to lock down those borders and i'm totally against libya style intervention but i do think an increase of the u.n. mission if it's implemented honestly isn't such a bad idea well i mean as you say we just had a meeting in paris or so recently now with over one hundred nations in attendance suggesting that the u.n. get more directly involved and i'm so sorry i wish i was time for this your you were writing an upcoming book called out of subverting syria you your writer as well with the center for research on globalization always a pleasure to have you want to see thanks for having. all here at r.t. we're always eager to know your take on all the stories we're covering today we are asking you what do you think about the u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton slamming russia and china over the syrian crisis of course now but we just now say that he thinks hillary clinton is insane let's see how the numbers are not for this hour so far the majority believing the move points to the frustration of the west over their hump of the military drive now fifteen percent for the suring ensure that it undermines the geneva peace accord

preventing any joint progress and i was just under fourteen percent thinking the harsh rhetoric was aimed at securing more public support at a time of election for president obama now down to less than a tenth of you of the opinion the words have a point they think that russia and china are stalling the peace effort you can log onto our website right now and cost you fight. well you can find this. much much more on the line including fiery spotted in the sky over the us and europe the u.f.o.'s were seen flying in the night sky by people on two continents almost similar tenuously plenty more of this phenomena online. but israel slams the door on the un banning officials from entering the country on a fact finding mission to inspect settlements on the west bank.

r.t. is coming to life from moscow by the deadline set by the u.k.'s highest court for julian assange his extradition to sweden runs out saturday but says that he won't leave the safety of the ecuadorian embassy in london until a decision on his request for asylum in south america is made. possible from outside a songes current place of refuge it's been nearly two and a half weeks now that unionist sons have been holed up inside the ecuadorian embassy here in london after presenting himself on the nineteenth of june seeking asylum now today is the deadline for his extradition to sweden his appeal to the supreme court in the against the sexual assault allegations failed so it would have been the day we could have seen julian assange is put on

a plane and sent to sweden and of course the big. legal team have always said is that he would be. gets in very strict free trial detention conditions and the overriding fear is that it would make it much easier for him to be extradited to the u.s. but of course that's not going to happen today because julian assange took that gymnastics. to seek asylum and you can see here today a number of his supporters still keeping vigil outside the ecuadorian embassy banners of the poor for about seventeen days on a daily vigil we're hearing solitary read of chargers of war resister an all star standing with the ecuadorian people in the heart that i might the right decision which is to offer the guy short of a real sense among his supporters that this decision and the handling of his legal case it was a real failure for the u.k. in terms of defending human rights well now at the same time that you in the sound

is fighting his fierce battle against extradition we see wiki leaks once again coming into the spotlight and taking the headlines with a dramatic revelations over a new big leak the syria files more than two point four million e-mails that the group say that they have that they're going and have already indeed started releasing and that the inner workings of not just the syrian government but also western countries and western companies as well and that's going to be released in stages over the next couple of weeks the last big leak of course the u.s. diplomatic cables cable gates all the serious furloughs even bigger than that eight times bigger in terms of documents and a hundred times bigger in terms of data and already we're seeing some of the revelations from not being explored so wiki leaks once again showing really that it's still able to do what it does best despite the fact that today in a surges this fight continues. r.t.

sara further right than our venezuela has pulled its diplomatic staff from power why after being accused by the government there of meddling in its internal affairs last month's impeachment of president ferdinand the logo blame for a deadly crackdown on farmers has affected the country's ties with its neighbors political analyst adrian she believes it's a sign of the u.s. actually promoting its interests in the region paraguayans suffered a coup d'etat literally on the first twenty first of june when its democratically elected president for mumble new google was ousted in a twenty four hour impeachment trial it must be the fastest pietschmann in modern history there are such agencies as us aid the united states agency for international development and it all has a lot of other aspects that spillover outside of paraguay because paraguay is considered together with bolivia the geo political heart in the south america so american control over power of why we're also limited brazil's exit towards the

pacific as a brick country brazil russia india china and south africa and the united states at the same time is again promoting after the american free trade association with its traditional allies in our region mexico panama colombia peru and chile so we would serve as a pacific wall against what they consider what the americans consider dangerous brazilian expansion because of the fact that it is not just in the commom make within the bric countries but very much so even to a certain extent a political henri potential political ally of russia and china. this is r.t. and the u.s. prides itself on free speech but should the same right extend to social media one site is now looking at plans to block posts they deem to be racist and offensive and the president is in new york now to find out if internet companies should be able to decide what's acceptable and what's not.

twitter is instituting a new policy of blocking posts it deems racist is it ok for social media websites to pick and choose what can and can't be said this week let's talk about that mission posing a racial thing all right but some people still do. but that's the world we live in so should it be out there for people to see or should twitter take it down twitter should take it down so we're free over here in new york where we live free but doesn't the racist person live free to post whatever they want do you have kids do you worry about them being exposed to racist comments. well that's not good yeah but you can express whatever you want anyway you should be able to express your freedom you may not agree with raised as them but do you agree that people should be able to say what they want not in a social networking site like i know why not this is just going to tell us that

people should keep their own comments to themselves but that's the whole point of twitter is reading it out not knowing something way about what the resets were it's not ok to use to say whatever you want now the internet you shouldn't just be able to say whatever you want no the rest is the phrases though if you write something it doesn't have to be racist even though that the words are sometimes you can write some things that all races but the words are not so it depends on the human side how you interpreted it you block the negative in the drama but you're also providing a free speech right there so i guess it's a toss up so is it ok for twitter to decide what stays and goes and says their company. again they probably have to have an outside company that judges it because who are they to say what their website true true but who are they say what's racist and what's not there do you think twitter heidi back to. racists can find is going

to make a difference and help people not be racist or is it racist is is just going to process it's going to happen we've changed but not enough it's i think that's their way of preventing some form of cyber bullying but it's not going to change anything whether or not you think it's right for social media companies to censor content on their sites the bottom line is this wouldn't be an issue if people would just be better citizens and stop being racist. or not just a moment i'll be back with a recap of the headlines of an in-depth look inside the world's most infamous prison this insults from.

russia would be soon much brighter. about some from phones to question some.