rising up against austerity millions of europeans sign up for block wide action against cuts with mass protests underway in almost every nation on the continent. the foreign a former syrian rebels blog secures overwhelming recognition from france while other european states and america hold back. plus a sex scandal triggered by revelations the former cia chief cheated smashers america's push in afghanistan and toppled the reputation of the current celebrity come on.

it's good to have you with us here on our to today rule research showing life in the russian capital a series of make a protest are underway across the block with millions expected to show up in a resoundingly chorus saying no to austerity already we're seeing violence in spain as protesters duke it out with police with similar scenes pouring in from the italian city of metal and let's hear now from r.t. sara first at the epicenter of it all but you. were in the center and you can see behind me the police cars already lining the streets we've got a police helicopter a the head we're already getting figures in there's been a number of arrests already made today in the trade of course is not just spain this striking today it's political we've got greece we've got it's really all a getting involved in this movement and a number of other countries as well belgium cypress motet of the united kingdom are

all say going to be having various demonstrations throughout the day rallying around this one message and that is to a stereotype. now we've been covering the story very very closely since the very beginning of the euro crisis and as time has gone on we've seen other devastating stories the horrifying figures continue to climb in spain here the main that more than twenty five percent unemployment portugal where we were just a day or two ago of record highs the fifteen percent unemployment in greece of course to receive levels of unemployment that twenty five percent plus when you think these figures together sleep the devastating numbers of people now that's what she was suffering under these very strict all star team as you say it's estimated more than twenty five million people unemployed across europe this is the first time we're seeing this protest movement forcing food is in akutan ated

demonstration is moving these countries get together to take part of europe in isolation hold the debate and it's really going to be another wakeup call the european union leaders that we talk a lot about austerity of course a the last couple of days we've been talking to people in europe we've been on twitter using the hash tag austerity means almost thing people how this is affected their lives in the stories just keep on coming in and really do meet across europe now is that enough is enough this european leaders continue to push these countries a little already on the brink even further which very closely today what happens you going to see these large scale movements will it be a game changer will the european leaders actually listen to this follow us throughout the day we're going to be keeping you updated of course watching very very closely as the details of fodor's this european mega strike continues going all the way across the continent course want to surf reporting there from madrid

with jobs increasingly scarce and little prospects down the line southern europe is experiencing an exodus of workers having lost hope in those dreary economic times are many southern europeans are opting to travel north to find their fortune as aussies or if a national reports are now on the politicians who are struggling to bring about prosperity back home. and i was a low terry g. house anyone in need is welcome here in the queue for food traditionally immigrants from somalia but and this is new some europeans as well. who want a father of three came here from spain eleven months ago after he lost his job and gained debts instead of going again left but i was sad i came here with hope i was forced to leave spain due to the economic crisis and bank recession here i work and make three thousand euros a month and i can pay my debts in spain. milena is not queuing for food she cooks originally from colombia she first immigrated to spain but the crisis pushed

her move further on she now works at a cafe in always famous movie music and while she serves those who come here to admire the world famous scream she says her life if only they knew was probably for vogue an even stronger impression on the visitors. it's hard it's not as it is they show it on t.v. you go from one country to another like a rolling stone you have kids and nothing to feed them with and no job. in september the unemployment rate within the eurozone hit a record high of eleven point six percent in the seventeen countries united by a common currency for more than eighteen million people are now out of work that's an increase of around five thousand every day since august during the years of growth year of wasn't desperate need of a cheap labor force and therefore provided immigrants from all over the globe with work but with the worst economic crisis since the second world war now in the gulf

in the continent not only is the able to provide jobs for outsiders it cannot even create works for locals turning the tables and sending many of those in a search for a better life abroad to no way for example and non-user and only used state two factors some analysts say that have averted this can even country from disaster. in our region krone is one of the safest currencies in europe many people here in germany and in other european countries believe that our monetary system is being pressed up against a wall and this makes us weak is when the economic crisis fully engulfed greece last year brussels was on alert then a bailout treaty brought hope and relief apparently for mature space then portugal joined the club and someone will still be others to come let's release switzerland and norway are not a you members they're doing better than any other european country as we do denmark

in the czech republic or the e.u. countries and we never hear things about their whole system when it's steals all the major powers from states political economic diplomatic and military and give it to brussels and washington is doing with german chancellor angela merkel saying at least five more years will be needed to recover it's clear countries like no we will not have a deficit in labor force at least some more decades brief notion r t from no way germany and france. let's get some more on the so now on how the protests can try and achieve something positive here let's talk to our kate hudson from the anti cuts coalition of resistance joining us here live on the program welcome to the program here on our team results in a pleasure to see you looking at the protests we're talking about against austerity been ongoing for what two years or more right now today twenty three countries with millions of protesters forty unions taking part do you think for a moment the politicians going to listen to your please i think they have to listen

now if you look at the coverage from across europe you see the most incredible mobilization particularly in southern europe we see things coming to a standstill in spain and portugal other protests and demonstrations strikes coordinated strikes in italy belgium greece and elsewhere here in britain we're not in gauging in strike action but the first time we are taking protest action in solidarity with the trade union movements across europe this is a real sea change for the movement the trade union movement here in britain but also across europe and it's because people are realizing that if we are to turn back this devastating tide of terrible and useless cuts which are devastating people's lives then we have to take collective action ourselves as ordinary people as trade unionists as an employed pensioners we have to say that there are other economic policies available that will not only devastation and it's time for our

leaders our political leaders our economists and bankers to change their policy austerity is not. what you say you say there are other options to try and quell the austerity what are those options was apparently the politicians have no idea. well they have to look for example to the united states a different type of economic approach is turning the economy around we have to listen to nobel economics laureates like stiglitz and others who are saying we need to invest in our economies how can economies recover if they are being stripped down it's all wouldn't be people being deprived of the purchasing power through loss of jobs through loss of income which means they won't be putting money back into the economy to generate production it's a failed and the sooner the government understand that the way for the better now when it comes to the outspoken demonstrators continuing to amass across the entire

continent as we speak right now our correspondents through major european capitals keeping us posted both online on air as well and on twitter but let's talk about her for example in rome some of the protests there have actually coagulated now into one to heave ng mass in madrid at least sixty people detained over thirty people injured now we're getting reports that madrid riot police are using rubber bullets is that a disproportionate or is that a fair response do you think from the police. it seems to me like a disproportionate response you know if ordinary people if the spanish citizens the workers of spain a gathering together to say that they want a different approach their livelihoods are being destroyed their families are suffering then they have the democratic right to make those protests they have the right to withdraw their labor and to make their voices heard it's a story pass if workers and ordinary people can't make their protests without being violently suppressed their voices have to be heard it's those people that have put

the politicians in place and the politicians have to listen to the ordinary people and meet their needs listen briefly i'm running low on time here but one question i must ask you is that it's also perhaps a bit ironic that even as much as a europe comes to a standstill brussels today approved a five billion euro aid package to egypt of all places what you make of that well i think if if they decide to egypt needs to develop that's fine i'm not saying that we should draw the drawbridge is a not give support to other peoples in other countries internationally i don't have a liquid little england approach to this i'm saying that our governments the european institutions need to think again about the approach that they're taking it is clearly not working look what the approach of the troika has done to greece and the people see people in greece they can't get their cancer drugs they can't get enough the society is falling to pieces that is

a made sin in greece which has failed we do not want that coming to britain or any other parts of europe it's time for a change of policy any sensible person can see that we need a different approach kate hudson from the n.t. cuts coalition of resistance group a pleasure to have you on our to today thank you thank you. so if you can do stay with us here on r.t. for our coverage of the e.u. strikers workers continue to unite against austerity. this is r.t. syria's foreign formed rebel coalition is collecting international approval france's the first western state to recognize it as the sole voice of the syrian people and other european nations and the us which was behind the group set up all stopped short of just doing the same r.t.

correspondent in the middle east tom barton now has details on this there is increasing attention focusing around this opposition coalition still quite a nebulous group at the moment and france has gone the furthest recognizing this group as the so representative of the syrian people and perhaps expressing their hope than a reality at the moment when they added that they really were throwing their weight behind the idea of this as a government in exile just waiting to come in and take power the u.s. didn't go that far i did say that it recognized this group as a representative of the syrian people but they wanted to wait until this group better represented people actually inside syria the e.u. members as well they hailed the process of the formation of this group but they didn't go any further than that it was the france that made a similar declaration throwing its weight behind libya's national transition

council shortly after that the nato bombing of gadhafi forces in libya began france has supplied already communications and non-lethal equipment to anti asaad rebels in syria and rems a government is filmed it will consider supplying weapons to this opposition coalition at the moment though france's foreign ministry admits that it can't do that because there is an arms embargo in place on the sides in the syrian conflict however there are reports that the u.k. may push for that an arms embargo. to be lifted despite six of the gulf states giving their support to this opposition coalition the arab league itself wasn't able to make a unanimous decision or only support of this council and so wilson's able to give it their official backing this. coalition is being filmed in qatar after very

intense negotiations and some intense international pressure to try and unite this opposition it's difficult to see at the moment whether it is very truly representative of the syrian people in this brutal civil war that's going on but in syria that surface so far estimated to have claimed over thirty six thousand lives and professor of international relations mark almond believes the u.s. is trying to act as if it's not actually meddling inside syrian affairs the united states which is to lead from behind to use the term that was used about obama's role in libya it wants to give the impression that there are regional states playing this part and perhaps european states like france the other is the new united states is a bit of a quandary about who to support. in syria in the sense that we don't know exactly who come out on top president along the new coalition is not only the sole

legitimate representative of the syrian people but also been known to be the future government of syria but by definition a democratic government has to be decided by the people in the country rather than by foreign sponsors the point is that we have a chaotic ensemble of horses we have a growing role of islamists and islamists of course supported by the islamic regimes in saudi arabia in the belt states they are not worried by the sort of people who were very long beards and very taliban like after all they supported the taliban in afghanistan until two thousand and one. and the free syrian army now says it's not in control of exactly who is fighting inside its own ranks the spokesman of the key military branch of the syrian opposition admits that a growing number of extremists have now joined the rebel forces. the free syrian army is not a regular army but the soldiers of the revolution some troops claim to be part of the f.s.a. like you at the same town do not order the killings but as we are in

a revolution we cannot control such a young and certainly there are some extremists some guidance and some who want to take advantage of the. live from moscow this is our team china announces its next generation of leaders it's up to the politicians to develop the asian giants growth . in just a few minutes. it's perched atop a jar and the view from the kremlin stretches as far as the eye can see. for a city of siberia for centuries. it lost its economic importance even before it was bypassed by the chance i bear in railway but the cremains a spiritual. things

like these are a yearly occurrence thousands of worshippers implicity walter to commemorate the baptism of jesus. in the fifteen eighties the russians had only just conquered siberia taking it from the muslims. surrounded by enemies the balls to be their stronghold constructed on top of the city but soon enough it became an economic siberian oil of its time bringing in a third of all russia's state revenue put the location head of the uses for the russians the russian crowds who had a revolt against the czar in eight hundred twenty five known as the decembrists hair and drove. there they created a replica high society adopting the latest fashions as soon as they came out or at least once they made it from paris to siberia. but the city also serves up some bit

of irony for the russian royal family after the bolshevik revolution. this is the office where the tsar nicholas the second spend most of the last year of his life his whole family had been exiled here and they lead a fairly comfortable existence this was a big house but they weren't allowed to see visitors or go outside themselves was leading the ordinary normal countryside lifestyle they even had thoughts of escape but within the year the czar and his family would be dead. or at a six twenty pm moscow time this is r t thanks for joining us the u.s. campaign in afghanistan has suffered a military grade blow with at least two celebrity generals and veterans of the

intervention falling rather rapidly from grace a sex scandal that started with the revelations of the ex cia chief having an affair has now claimed the reputation of the current afghan campaign commander who kept off explains. in the papers here in afghanistan for transit star and battlefield felled at cia by an affair this situation the reaction on the ground has been one of outrage people are really quite confused by this this whole scandal one of the comments that i heard from a person who wish to be anonymous in the foreign ministry is office was they founded really indicative of how well the afghan war effort is going in terms of u.s. policy if the top general in charge of it had time to send twenty to thirty thousand pages worth of inappropriate e-mails people here have also expressed some confusion as to why these kinds of scandals would force these top men to resign and not for example the scandals that have really resonated among the people here on the ground for example the tragic massacre by a u.s.

soldier of sixteen civilians here in afghanistan the burnings of the koran by officials here as well as regular policy as like for example night raids which are so controversial here that often result in the deaths of civilians so people are quite confused by this scandal they're not quite sure what implications will have on the u.s. war effort here in afghanistan and of course it's coming on the heels of very important talks between the u.s. and afghanistan the two countries have been in negotiations over what the u.s. will do with the remainder of its sixty eight thousand troops that are here that are due to withdraw by the twenty fourteen deadline some analysts i've spoken to on the ground here in kabul think that this embarrassing scandal will really be sort of a pardoning chip for some factions in afghanistan and be able to effectively get more of what they want to say well look you know you guys here in the u.s. military top brass don't necessarily have the credibility to pull off certain policy options and that's really been the concern as one of the fallouts of the scandal but of course if we look at the big picture in terms of u.s.

policy in afghanistan it really has been crisis after crisis it's not just these resignations of petraeus and the implication of general allen we've seen the u.s. spend nearly six hundred billion dollars and it's eleven year effort in afghanistan the insurgency the taliban insurgency has law. actually remained on the ballot by that we've also see in the u.s. actively shifting towards other policies for example trying to train afghan soldiers or to take over after twenty fourteen and that too has been marred by scandal with a nearly fifty four americans being killed in the so-called green on blue attacks showing that the u.s. influence is really waning here in this country another concern is of course the implication on the morale of the troops here the american troops who are not in necessarily welcomed in this country they're not this is a scandal is not going to help them continue to operate on the ground and there's also the concern that the u.s. is really shifting from person based policy to a robotic policy what i'm of course referring to is the drone strikes afghanistan

has seen three hundred and thirty three drone strikes in the past year alone that's more than pakistan somalia and yemen combined. childcare from the school of international affairs believes the generals main mistake was out of a failure in afghanistan you have to look at it in the perspective of long wars and the stress of camano feed you are enough cover up these definitely has implications for the war that's going on there as well as the incident in libya when the u.s. ambassador was killed recently all of these are connected and the timing there's also use additional rivalry quite a few angles to give the administration the stool toronto as obama suited his victory on reelection day that you know we're going to end acute are normal for all we're going to endure unless you know some generals are smeared i don't know i mean just we need to explore how the public relations disaster that's happening right now in unraveling ease related to the larger political issues i won't be sources of

these wars and the recriminations that are bound to occur at the end of every major war make this we did not yield anything in the form of victory or a concrete outcome for the united states. and you can always get much more news on the line at aussie dot com including for example a clampdown on criticism in the united arab emirates oh michael the story of how the government of the gulf state has responded to what it calls insults against the nation. also the zero tolerance way of fighting internet piracy one man in america is jailed for fifteen years for simply selling his six counterfeit disks of a same sentence as a some murderers get. we

are not far off from the world updater finale though here on our teach chinese leader who jintao has stepped down as the head of the communist party clearing the way for his successor in a once in a decade transition vice president. is expected to take over as the party leader on thursday and that the next president in march the transfer took place of the party congress which was drawn to a close in the country's capital but the big question is how the new leadership will affect china's relations with its top political and economic rival course america. john says the u.s. is desperately trying to maintain its position in the face of the quickly emerging east. wind. or receive the always. or. over the.

what. the east. with the rise in the east you have a lot. of latin america in africa or in asia. well let's get some other global news for you here on r t now reports of up to were twenty fatalities in a series of explosions across iraq and central but that a car bomb targeting a senior general killed in the garden his convoy in the multi-ethnic city of kirkuk knowing killed in four civil ten years the last ten were also killed in a marketplace in a village just south of the capital and yes there were more detonations in other villages without fatal the t. s. and the attacks come on the eve of the islamic new year festival a special date for shia muslims who are the prime target of al qaeda. but this just in gaza is the governing party hamas says its military leader ahmed jabari was

killed today they say it was a targeted assassination by israel which has been staging airstrikes on gaza for the past week or certainly more on this as we get it here on. our tour here we are out to you in just a couple of minutes our special report business but you can stay with us for that i'm. looking at some talks you simply do not believe the const baek and goodness how they can run oh. it's an international sled dog race with those driving the dogs. coming from as far away as a strength in canada and the us they come to russia and everybody is so very friendly they welcomed me with open arms and the scenery is so beautiful it's very

much like alaska and so i felt at home the first black dog was brought here from australia now must have come to this remote ration village to take part in the race it's not surprising they love it this trail ira mazie. but even more amazing is the story of how racing first started here at toll it wasn't the top off sled dog racing who set the trail of lace but a nun and for all friends who brought their dia to life five years ago mother pressed care of a bill to dog kennel in the village kids from the local open age came around to take care of the dogs and one day they state their life might seem extreme to some the boys wake up at six to feed the dogs before school in the evening they spend up to three hours training their full legged friends but smother perske have also encourages her kids to become depth hands on the computer and internet the boys

regularly updated their website and they're in touch with the business model twenty four seven on the phone itself. but children are the most important thing my only interests not play any rule any more and regardless of whether parsky has hoskins window race or not she hopes the competition will take place in the village next year. but called these dogs and the children it really is not the winning but truly just the taking part that counts. i preside over one of the most successful companies in the market so it's a consulting company giving advice on legal and financial matters i can't imagine anything more efficient or useful. before making billions of dollars.