from steve. santagati dot com. today's news on the week's top stories on loyalists clashes across northern ireland head for a six week. flight the union flag over city hall only just days a year. the french president orders tougher security at home following the country's days old intervention into mali fighting an air strikes have killed eleven civilians. venezuela's supreme court suspends the inauguration of chavez amid intensifying speculation over the leader's health and the future prospects of his country. and yes we can't barack obama's pledge to shut

down guantanamo bay still rings hollow with more than one hundred sixty people held at the notorious center without charge or trial this now eleven years after it opened. but within weeks the top headlines here and this is the weekly with me rory sue show you moscow it's good to have you with us today. at least twenty nine police officers were injured on saturday in belfast as violent loyalist clashes in northern ireland reach now into a sixth week of the 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 unionists marching on city hall were attacked by locals in

a catholic area police were forced to use water cannons and plastic bullets to disperse the angry mob artie's sarah ferguson following the protests at the same. classes breaking out once again on the streets of belfast you can see the police say just trying to push back the crowds a great. number of police rather sadly fights like this becoming all too common now this isn't going to have been helped by the fact that many feel inflammatory political language has helped to whip up the tensions here on the straight. recreational rioting that's what some people are calling it. you can see the fates. just say the bronx the police responding with the worst a concert in the sun protests have been about the flag but the scale and intensity of the. this is a much much more than just look he students the director of the east belfast

mission creep is working with young protesters to try to calm the tensions some kids are doing it for fun or doing it for more sinister motives in terms of control terms of par in terms of ego some are doing it because it's sexier than the playstation you know young girls are doing it because girls even with young children we've seen on the streets who i don't think a fully realized what their actions could result but they're just. in some ways having a laugh and yet there's nothing funny about it one of the protesters here asking for just a one hour flight back up on one hour and pays to get off their back ses peter robinson least you're not silly not them he was the one that had to start. the day forty minutes for us to come out on the street to protest against. the nice and on his back save maybe take all the flak he's called was rubbish and. you know but

when he wanted also to on the streets for his own actions we can make for do you think the protesters would accept any kind of compromise when it comes to this when the flag. we know we're not going to get an annoying election because that's the majority really. any unionist warns now to try to reengage politically that we're told much more will need to be done they'll be quick fixes here i don't think there's any silver bullet i think there's a 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. there's been a one hundred people arrested more than sixty police. and millions of pounds spent

in policing these riots and in love business. that damage has already been far reaching. this is a new generation pulling back on to the streets of belfast it's a far cry. complex that doesn't make it any less. so. but from moscow this is artsy a rebel spokesman in mali says french aircraft of bombs targets into central towns of the country at least eleven civilians including three children have been killed in airstrikes on fighting since the french intervention was made public that was just on friday and the first french casualty in mali came on saturday when the pilot of a helicopter shot down by islamist rebels was killed on 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 quote for as long as necessary and france based independent journalist robert hollis says the country's foreign policy ultimately contradicts itself. i think as long as the french people aren't too bothered by the consequences of this sort of intervention they generally favorite has a great military tradition in france and they've grown accustomed to interfering other people's countries and if you if limited starts to get nasty i think you'll find they'll be a very quick a reversal of public opinion these sort of islamic 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 in mali has requested help and they get it instantly when the central african republic requested help from the french forces there they were told are 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 and of what they do. also this week or two french soldiers died in somalia during a failed mission to rescue a hostage she was also killed and 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 are still in suspense over the health

of their leader hugo chavez who is still recovering from cancer surgery in cuba this week tens of thousands held a rally at a symbolic inauguration ceremony as chavez's official swearing in date was postponed indefinitely by the country's high court a pepe escobar from the asia times online believes that with the protracted absence of the charismatic leader that's currently a severe power struggle going on show his war is not a monolithic saying like there exists a communist party in china there at 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 his house because there will be only journal struggle for power inside is more him at the same time we're going to have more possibilities of foreign interference trying to you know louvered this process and i mean nationally our friends in washington all of news will see an

opening well maybe this is the beginning of the end of just walk let's get it up you're watching r.t. and 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 in the decision came after discussions this week between the u.s. and afghan presidents sparking doubt over promises to pull all troops out of the country hillary mann leverett who has worked extensively with u.s. diplomats in the middle east and asia believes the afghan leader is in a no win situation. i think these talks are for the president and his national security principals to let afghanistan's president karzai down as softly as they can to let him know that unfortunately they're not going to make good on their promise to completely train. the afghan military and police before u.s. troops leave i think this this visit is about trying to let cars i know as as

nicely as they can that they're not going to make good on their promise to continue to defend afghanistan and train up afghanistan's military and i think part of it is that president obama you know after he agreed to surge the troops into afghanistan i think pretty quickly realized that he didn't realize even before the surge that there is no military solution for the united states in afghanistan i think for an american population that is both battered financially and very tired of endless wars and occupations this is something that will basically go go forward without a hitch in terms of american public opinion. or to still to come here on our eleven use of indefinite detention without charge or trial we take an in-depth look infamous one time obey facility which remains open despite barack obama's long running pledge to shut it down. plus we were told what some experts fear could be

a pretext for intervention into syria as the nation's alleged radium stockpiles fall under the western microscope more on that and more after the break. with. science technology innovation all the developments around russia. the future covered.

a pleasure to have you with us here on r.t. today on rory sushi one of the world's most notorious detention facilities it's a grim anniversary this week with more than one hundred sixty people still being held without charge or trial the closure of guantanamo bay it's a promise that barack obama has so far failed to keep or small calls to stop

indefinite detention of largely died down in america but even torture appears to be gaining acceptability. investigates. 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 i'm going to close guantanamo and i will follow through on that colonel morris davis was a chief prosecutor at guantanamo under george w. bush 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 polls by the american red cross show 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's is simply not true the 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 pointed how torture has proved to be ineffective 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 guantanamo did for george w. bush that we've now got have a generation that only knows the post nine eleven era. where things like guantanamo and the warrantless wiretapping that's all they've ever known you know for decades now and i think it has become an accepted part of life unfortunately judging by how the guantanamo controversy evolved here is what may transpire with

regard to drone the urgency of the issue will subside in the u.s. because there will be no american for dying there will be no strong public movement program there may even be a movie or two out of the top of the logical capability of the drone and once the controversy dies down it will become the new normal and americans will move on. in washington i'm going to stop. my colleague kevin allen spoke with more that couldn't that's 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 that he never committed and he says are some others weren't quite so lucky if you are not a terrorist they want life to try to make you or terrorists in i should example i must say if i should agree that i am be a member of. that i did fight with taliban together against american soldiers between the war. and i should i should sign papers that i am be

a member of al qaeda what were the charges first. there was no reason for just the . pakistani people they sort of threw some dollar to the americans. 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 beg me that i'm be a member of al qaeda because because they didn't have anything against me in their hands and you're saying force you have they force you say what were they doing to coerce you to do that. they used torture techniques like waterboarding and electroshocks they saw after this i'm going to sign and agree that i'm being a member of a kaiser and every time i refused to sign they tried another kind of torture they saw i walked one time can you tell us the worst thing one of the better word

that you saw going on there. example i saw. i had naples they used to be just nine or if you're sort of child. i think it was the worst ice over there. there was not treating 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 the 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 myself i'm trying to support human rights organizations to fight against torture around the world not just guantanamo there's around the world exists more than more than twenty one secret prisons where people getting tortured and guantanamo is just one of course. there are some activists that say washington shouldn't be lecturing other countries about human rights when its own policies include indefinite detention and the targeted killing of terrorist suspects. i think that the united states has very little to stand on in terms of its own human rights record when it talks about exporting the rule of law and promoting human rights and democracy in other countries it has no credibility actually at this point and we're not just talking about one tunnel we're talking about detentions and other facilities and now we're talking about killing we're

talking about a targeted killing program that is based on the same premise of this global war against al qaida and a situation where the administration is not only authorizing detention without charge or trial but now killing the use of lethal force outside of battlefields without charge or trial so in my mind it has very little to stand on and it's setting an extremely dangerous precedent for other countries. well the people of beijing have been given strict indoors warnings. so risky to go outside all the details that are dot com. and a thirteen year old boy has travelled a thousand kilometers across two international borders at the wheel of a mercedes without raising any suspicion on the underage voyage on our website. for now a new round of diplomatic efforts to solve the ongoing syrian crisis has failed to reach a breakthrough at the un's international mediator lakhdar brahimi reiterated that

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 be a precondition for a deal to end the war meanwhile on the ground rebels seized a large airbase in the north of the regime forces bombarded opposition fighters out of the suburbs of the capital damascus western experts claim the government might be hiding up to fifty tons of roar ukrainian that's roughly enough to make five nuclear bombs and after recent fears the regime may not control its massive stockpiles of chemical weapons there's now concern you raynier may fall into the hands of islamic extremists over some say that's just one side of the story. there's a lot of noise about it there was a bombing in two thousand and seven the israeli jets bombed the site in syria claiming that it is a nuclear site there was no indication yes the i.a.e.a.

visited the site the i.a.e.a. said that there were traces of fuel rain you're of depleted uranium but they did not confirm that there was any quantity or at least you know this huge quantity that is being publicized i mean they're saying fifty tons of uranium this is this is i don't know where they come up with the number. obviously i did some research and it appears that they came up with the number because they. are coming up with the story that this site that was there. that was bombed in two thousand and seven would actually require fifty tons that doesn't mean that the syrians actually have fifty tons and that doesn't mean that the site is actually for a nuclear program the city and central government was able to control more than past six months there is an advance of the syrian army and the syrian official police and they are controlling most of the country there are only some areas in the countryside where rebel fighters are in some areas in the countryside where the syrian army withdrew from these areas because they thought that these areas were

not important strategically but overall this is central government under the leadership of president assad controls most of the syrian territory obviously it's difficult because there are many fighters infiltrating from outside syria there are many a lot of money being infiltrated being pumped into syria to these rebel groups by a neighboring country especially by by turkey by qatar by other european and by the united states there is a sponsorship of these terror groups. thousands of russian opposition activists have marched through moscow to protest against the law banning u.s. citizens from adopting russian children. was in the hot. the protesters are demanding that the e.u. the authorities abolish the law passed recently which bans americans from adopting russian children now this button is part of the russian lawmakers response to the money to be hacked passed recently in the united states which gives the green light for sanctioning russian officials suspected there in the states for

a leading human rights are the reason why russian lawmakers chose to ballot merican this from adopting russian children is due to the meaney cases of abuse and 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 off goalies 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 russia just recently about why the russian girl in her blog online wrote a personal letter to president putin for the 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 we both 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 protesting the walk under the degree of the president. also asked to review this protest needed to point out that to do 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 approved to be adopted the will be able to go to the united states all the way until two thousand and fourteen. but if you got a person off reporting right let's do it into the r.t. world up there we go will start with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu who has pledged to continue building settlements in the west bank that's just hours after the country's police affected around two hundred palestinian activists from the side marked the construction of the outpost made up of twenty tents was set up on friday to protest an israeli housing project in the contentious area known as the one television building plans are illegal under international law and would split palestinians from the lands they claim in east jerusalem activists have promised more protest camps but in other areas. the family of internet freedom activist to aaron swartz has blamed the u.s.

criminal justice system for his death and twenty six year old co-founder of social news website reddit hanged himself in his new york apartment on friday swartz faced thirteen felony charges connected with hacking 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 year eleven's revolt the court's decision follows an appeal by mubarak and his former interior minister both previously received life sentences for allowing the killings of anti-government demonstrators the former leader's defense says the court could consider his deteriorating health and the retrial. and a roadside bomb has killed at least fourteen soldiers in pakistan's northwest it comes on

a day of protests by shia muslims in the city of quetta 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 road with coffins of the dead and families are refusing to bury the bodies until the government improve security. well right here on the t. will continue looking at the occupy movement swept through the u.s. the american autumn another installment of that in just a moment. crime is a plague of the big cities but in a tiny arkansas town of twenty five thousand it is really getting out of hand pure gold as a property crime index of more than double the national average and rape burglary

and assault are also way above average poor poor gold is a dangerous place to live in but what's the answer to living in constant fear of criminals well the mayor thinks that the answer to that problem is to live in constant fear of the government how logical the mayor and police chief have a doorstop plan to send out police patrols with fifteen's and full swat armor to i guess intimidate the local population into submission well actually the plan is for them to stand around it ask people an important question ask them to show id the answer to crime isn't a police state sending guys out with automatic weapons and body armor around just to check people's i.d.'s like it's the berlin wall or something won't do anything a guy who breaks into your house for crystal meth money isn't going to be affected by this only the good average citizens will have to show an armed thug of their i.d. just to go buy milk but that's just my opinion.