today's news and of the week's top stories on our loyalist clashes across northern ireland headed for a six week this off the belfast decision to fly the union flag over city hall only just. the french president orders tougher security at home following the country's days old intervention into mali a fighting air strikes have left eleven civilians. and venezuela supreme court suspends the inauguration of chavez amid intensifying speculation over the leader's health and the future prospects of his country. and yes so we can barack obama's pledge to shut down guantanamo bay still rings hollow but one hundred sixty

people still held in the notorious center without charge or trial. years. but the week's top headlines on our this is the weekly with me rory suchet live in moscow thank you for joining us. at least twenty nine police officers were injured . as violent clashes and northern ireland reach into a six week rest was triggered by the belfast city council's decision to fly the union flag above city hall for only eighteen days a year the latest clashes broke out after about a thousand. worth by locals and. the police were forced.

to disperse the. protests right. creational. some people are calling it. is working with. the tensions.

are in terms of. the playstation. homeowner and pays to get off their back ses peter robinson these doorknobs only not when he was the one that had to start. their day forty thousand they floods for us to come out on the street to protest against their land a nice scent on his back save maybe take all the flak he's called was rubbish and skull mannering out you know but when he wanted also it on the streets for his election we can make for anything the protesters would put it that any kind of

compromise when it comes to this is the guy who could bring the flag of it's the flag down and not said. we know we're not going to get it back up to normal action because it's the law of majority. any unionist horns now holds to try to reengage politically but we're told much more will need to be done they'll be a quick fixes here i don't think there's any silver bullet i think there's so many different things need to happen economic. investment political investment community investment by and by all the stakeholders in these communities to try to resolve the wide draft of issues that are a blight here it's a fall there's been a one hundred people arrested more than sixty police officers injured and millions of pounds spent in policing these riots and in lost business revenue. these riots

have been highly localized the damage has already been far reaching. this is a new generation putting back onto the streets of belfast it's a far cry from the darkest days of northern ireland's complex that doesn't make it any less troubling. and social justice academic peter shallow believes loyalist paramilitary groups could try to take advantage of the ongoing riots there are several issues i think first of all another area there are so loyal as possible to leaders who are against the peace process this other issues such as prelinger etc how can the covetous for people who disagree with the peace process from within the unionist or british community to to come together and to give and give to these types of activities who are mean to you with one as there have been problems in this area these profiles will last two years there are people with them up organization who are engaged in

this violence there is another problem of course in northern ireland on the other side of the houses were will be called this will republicans those who wish to create a united ireland and they have been involved in a series of bomb attacks and shootings for the last few years and have also especially during periods like this will try to use this obvious fear of disharmony to try to open the in terms of their own violence. you're watching r t now president francois hollande has raised the terror level in france but it's growing military action in west africa at least eleven civilians including three children were killed in airstrikes and fighting since the french intervention was announced that was just on friday the first french casualty in mali came on saturday when the pilot of a helicopter shot down by islamist rebels was killed the first task of troops in mali was to help the government regain control of the key central town of kona the neighbors of the west african state are also sending troops to help battle

militants and francois hollande said the military operation in mali will continue for quote as long as necessary but france based independent journalist robert harness says the country's foreign policy ultimately contradicts itself. i think as long as the french people are to buy the consequences of this sort of intervention they generally favorite this as a great military tradition in france and they've grown accustomed to interfering other people's countries but if you if the minute it starts to get nasty i think you'll find they'll be a very quick a reversal of public opinion these sort of islamist extremists they're very tough soldiers and they've grown tougher over the last twenty years and if france starts to find these people who have been armed as a result of the intervention in libya and all the arms of the swilling about in the in the sahara as a result of that intervention ironically instigated by france then they're going to

find it's a very dangerous place to intervene that mali has requested help and they get it instantly when the central african republic requested help from the french forces there they were told our no we can't interfere to tell any particular regime were neutral. it to do even if you had wanted to destroy the credibility of france and the western countries over the last five or ten years you couldn't have done a better job by the absurd contradictions in what they do. also this week two french soldiers died in somalia during a failed mission to rescue a hostage who was also killed in the raid began hours after french troops began the intervention to get rid of the islamist rebel groups in control of the northern part of the country and there are currently nine french people held hostage across northern africa. the people of venezuela still in suspense over the health of their leader hugo chavez who was recovering from cancer

surgery in cuba this week tens of thousands held a rally at a symbolic inauguration ceremony and chavez's official swearing in date was postponed indefinitely by the country's supreme court a pepe escobar from asia times online believes that but the absence of the charismatic leader is a severe power struggle well underway. so visible is not a monolithic saying like would dare to say the communist party in china dad least four or five different factions fighting for power and this is one of the problems a few we have an unsteady situation in terms of chavez house because there will be an eternal struggle for power inside this mall in that same time we're going to have more possibilities just go for it in their experience trying to you know louvered this process and i mean specially our friends in washington who have all the news will see an opening well maybe this is the beginning of the end of just

let's get it out i just don't in ten minutes past the hour in moscow time this is just around the corner eleven years of indefinite detention without charge or trial taking a look at the information one condom obey facility which remains open despite barack obama's long running pledge to shut it down. plus our team hold on what some experts fear could be a pretext for intervention into syria as the nation's alleged your rainy and stockpiles fall under the western microscope more on that after the break.

to have you with us here on r.t. today in just a few months the u.s. military in afghanistan will hand over leadership of combat operations to local forces and refocus on assisting them the decision came after discussions this week between the u.s. and afghan presidents sparking doubt over promises to pull american troops out of the chaotic country phyllis bennis from the washington based is through for policy studies says the afghan forces are in no position to currently take full control. we're talking about an official acknowledgement by the two governments that now the afghan military is in control what that means is anybody's guess but what it does not mean is that the u.s. troops are going to be pulled out early there's a huge occupation force in the country that's not going to be brought out in twenty thirteen in the spring what we're talking about is a claim that as of that time the afghan people the afghan military the afghan

government will officially be in charge they will be in charge of the military now the idea that the u.s. forces still there or the nato forces still there are going to take their orders from the the afghan military i think is rather spurious that's certainly not going to happen i don't think the afghan government has the capacity to survive without massive u.s. support that means both economic support and crucially military support but his reliance on that support leads to one massive corruption which is widely hated throughout the country karzai has very little public support in the country and militarily his his very large army isn't capable of standing up to the other militias it's one more militia the u.s. leaving will leave his government and his own position in a very and in a very precarious moment and he may well not survive that politically. one of the world's most notorious detention facilities martin celeb grim anniversary this week

with more than one hundred sixty people still being held without charge or trial the closure of guantanamo bay is a promise the barack obama has so far failed to keep or small calls to stop indefinite detention have largely died down in the u.s. or even torture is gaining acceptability she's gone nature can explain. president obama's call to look forward not backward has resulted in attempts to sweep the past under the rug including some of his own promises earlier i intend to close guantanamo and i will follow through on that colonel morris davis was a chief prosecutor at guantanamo and a george w. bush and he later became a vocal critic of the practices there and strongly supported president obama's pledge to shut down the prison he says the perception of guantanamo in the u.s. has come a long way since two thousand and eight when he was a burning and highly controversial issue with a nation demanding action he gets a free pass on i mean the public largely could care less the mainstream media now

here in the us. you know is more interested in car dash and then they are and what happens at guantanamo. so who's going to challenge it if we're looking for the biggest threat to america right now she's right there her name is kim carr daschle and. america has moved on and so has its perception of torture holes by the american red cross so the majority of americans now find torture acceptable sixty percent of young people agree whereas four years ago torture was largely condemned in the us. hollywood has arguably contributed to that evolution of public opinion in the movie zero dark thirty day or trade the information that led to the capture and killing of osama bin laden was obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques or torture and in fact that is simply not true actual information was

obtained through a report based interrogation techniques the government classified everything related to its torture practices which allows politicians pundits and filmmakers the freedom to perpetuate all kinds of myths although a slew of washington insiders including the senate intelligence committee point out how torture has proved to be in a fair. but in america it's often fiction not facts that make history this is more important than reality this is the movies where americans learn their history and today the history in the making is the drone strikes this amounts to the administration executing people without due process often in absolute secrecy in foreign lands with a remote control but will obama's drones generate as much of a backlash as one tunnel did for george w. bush that we've now got have a generation that only knows the post nine eleven here. where things like

guantanamo and the. warrantless wiretapping that's all they've ever known you know for a decade now and i think it's just become an accepted part of life unfortunately judging by how the guantanamo controversy evolved here is what may transpire with regards to drones the urgency of the issue will subside in the west because there will be no american troops dying there will be no strong public movement to oppose the program there may even be a movie or two to the logical capability of the drones and once the controversy dies down it will become the new normal and america will move on in washington i'm going to check. and early on my colleague kevin know and spoke with. who was held in guantanamo bay on what turned out to be groundless accusations he was released after the u.s. military failed to force him to confess to crimes he never committed but he says some others want quite so i'd like if you are not a terrorist they will live to try to make you

a. example imo so if i should agree that i am be a member of. that i did fight with are you going to go against american soldiers between the war. and i should say i should sign papers that i am be a member of but where the charge is the first. there was no reason for just the. pakistani people they saw nicholl bounty or through some dollar to americans they said this man he's a terrorist and very soon few months later they found out that i'm innocent and they want me. that i'm going to sign papers they forced me to sign papers that i should agree that i'm be a member of either because because they didn't have anything against me in their hands that i knew same for you how did they force you say what were they doing to shoot to do that. they used torture techniques like waterboarding and electroshocks they sought after this i'm going to sign and agree that i'm being

a member of al-qaeda and every time i refused to sign they tried another kind of torture they saw i was one time can you tell us the worst thing one of the better word that you saw going on there. i saw. i had neighbors they used to be just nine or twelve years or child's and. i think it was the worst i saw over there. there was not treating him better than us i didn't saw that they getting tortured but. to see children in the same camp it was bad enough for me and also i saw people they got killed on the torture the bigger portion of the. kill so. i mean i have seen many things during this five years many thinks this is just

a couple of those how do you feel after what you've been through in guantanamo through no fault of your own how does it make you feel as a human being. of course nobody can be happy after after all this happened. i'm trying to. humanize organizations fighting against torture around the world not just going. around the world it's just more that more than twenty one secret prisons people getting tortured to guantanamo is just one of course. the people of beijing have been given a strict stay indoors warnings. too risky to go outside those details that are dot com. and a thirteen year old boy has traveled a thousand kilometers across two international borders at the wheel of a mercedes without raising any suspicion among the underage voyage at our website.

twenty minutes past the hour moscow time a new round of diplomatic efforts to solve the ongoing syrian crisis has failed to reach a breakthrough the un's international mediator lakhdar brahimi reiterated this week there can be no military solution to the conflict and moscow again voiced its support for a political transition adding that president assad's departure cannot were a precondition for a deal to end the war i mean while on the ground rebels seized a large air base in the north regime forces bombarded opposition fighters out of the suburbs of the capital damascus earlier western experts claim the government may be hiding up to fifty tons of raw uranium roughly enough to make five nuclear bombs and after recent fears the regime may not control its massive stockpiles of chemical weapons and there's now concern that you rainier may fall into the hands of islamic extremists middle east commentator on blog culture shero things the issue simply put is being made up. of this.

group used. chemical weapons. nuclear granules thought of the syrian regime there's a process of planning for the day off their ass out as western powers are imagining it and i think they're buying up all these different reasons for them to step in and take control of stalin tria country it shouldn't happen i do want to start is that said now they're afraid that iran might get this uranium enriched uranium and in fact be conducting it now had to rush out of ice and have it so i think it's another in this long list of possible reasons for good as to our western states to intervene and it seems that there's a lot of preparation for pretext for stepping in and should i stand for and taking control of this situation including the u.k. when the u.k. government decided to plan for that possibility so you see that there are mounted

both failures engaged in that process which is kind of a really shocking the fate of syria could be decided outside this blatantly by just a moment on the aussie wild update a finale thousands of russian opposition activists have marched here in moscow to protest against a law that bans u.s. citizens from adopting russian children of course when you got this going off was that. the protesters are demanding that the e.u. the authorities abolish all walked past me slowly which bans americans from adopting russian children now this button is part of the russian lawmakers response to the money to be act passed recently in the united states which gives the green light for sanctioning russian officials suspected there in the state of violating human rights are the reason why russian lawmakers chose to balance from adopting russian children is due to the meaning pieces of lobby usually sometimes even deaths of russian kids after they were adopted and brought to the united states in

fact the whole issue of the option has been quite a problem between russia and the united states for several years now and officials in moscow say it's not only the key pieces of abuse themselves but also the lack of a proper legal reaction from american of gordie's including the lack of heavy jail sentences which could have prevented these cases from happening again so authorities say that banning americans from adopting russian kids is actually aimed at protecting them and it's fair to say that they do have quite a large number of supporters in society in the washout just recently about why the russian girl in her blog online wrote a personal letter to president putin for signs the bill in the end asking him to change his mind to abolish the slaughter and she explained it by saying that in many cases the orphans which are being adopted by americans and many foreigners but americans in this case they are disabled and they are simply not able to receive

the proper medical attention here in russia and the voters already heard from the president's press secretary to me that he was going to said that i was going to put in the will review this walk post even though it's not an official request oh so right before the end of last year one of the russians newspapers managed to gather . around one hundred thousand signatures are now protesting this law and under the decree of the president the power plant also has to review this protest it's also needed to point out bad to due to the current agreement between moscow and washington on adoption all those people who have already been able to find the children who are going to be adopted and brought to the united states they're going to be able to finalize the process so these kids who are already sort of. able to go to the united states all the way until two thousand and fourteen. reporting

right there ok let's do it into the arctic starting with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu was supposed to continue building settlements in the west bank just hours after the country's police a victim around two hundred palestinian activists and protesters from the site marked the construction of the outpost made up of about twenty tents was set up on friday to protest an israeli housing project in the contentious area known as the one televisa building plans are illegal under international law and would split palestinians from lands they claim in east jerusalem activists promised more protest camps in other areas. the family of internet freedom activist aaron swartz has blamed the u.s. criminal system for his death the twenty six year old co-founder of social news website reddit hanged himself in his new york apartment on friday walks faced thirteen felony charges connected with the hacking of the network of mit university

and downloading academic papers online he could have spent decades in prison for charges he pleaded not guilty to. egypt's former president hosni mubarak who was ousted in a popular uprising two years ago will be retried over the deaths of protesters during twenty eleven is revolt and the court's decision follows an appeal by mubarak and his former interior minister and both previously received life sentences for allowing the killings at anti-government demonstrations a former leader's defense says the court could consider his deteriorating health in the retrial. a roadside bomb has killed at least fourteen soldiers in pakistan's northwest it comes on the third day of protests by shia muslims in the city of quetta this following some of the deadliest terror attacks in the country's history which claimed the lives of over one hundred demonstrators blocked the city's main roads with coffins of the dead and families are refusing to bury the bodies until the government improve security. oh i just a moment aeronauts he shortly we take

a look at the occupy movement that swept through the united states so you can watch the first part of our american autumn right after the break. because of recent events guns have a good game become a big issue all over the usa both sides are throwing their talking point ammunition back and forth and we hear a lot of conflicting stories well in australia they got tough on guns and crime went down but then again others say in the u.k. they got rid of all their gods and all hell broke loose i've heard stories that you are way more likely to be killed by a deer in your headlights than get taken out by a maniac with a tech nine but then again i've heard that soon deaths from guns will exceed even

deaths from car accidents japan is safe because it has no guns but switzerland is even safer because automatic weapons are all over the place the information is all very contradictory but ultimately it doesn't matter what facts and reports you throw at the other side the gun question is a philosophical one some people would rather at least feel like they have their fate in their own hands even if there is a chance they will shoot their own dog in the middle of the night and other people are so concerned with safety and are so full of fear for their fellow man that they'd rather disarm everyone and leave all the weapons in the hands of the criminals who have them legal or not anyways and in the hands of the government to us seems pretty happy to use force at home and abroad i don't know i'd rather risk the unpredictable actions of some idiots out there in society but at least have the ability defend myself and have some control over my life in a means to resist oppression but that's just my opinion.