a series of bomb attacks a day through baghdad killing dozens and injuring hundreds as iraq struggles to get back on its feet on the tenth anniversary of the u.s. led invasion. begin saving losers save bank a super existence you see up to ten percent of their life savings wiped away over each new bailout conditions evoking fury among islanders and beyond. and the human rights groups turn a blind eye to the growing mass hunger strike among one tunnel bay prisoners i made claims of socials are doing everything they can to hush the protest.

it's five pm here in a moscow you're live with us on r.t. for more international news analysis and reports. at least of fifty six a people have been killed and over two hundred wounded in a series of bombings across baghdad the attacks are struggling to neighborhoods of the city and officials are saying there have been at least ten assaults including suicide car and drove side explosions in busy areas all within one hour on one of the deadliest attacks struck near the heavily fortified green zone the seat of a many government buildings and embassy no one has officially claimed responsibility but sunni militants have been stepping up their attacks in the country aiming to destabilize the government their souls come as iraq a mug's tenia as us is a coalition led by the u.s. and britain invaded the country with their freedom and democracy mission which is losing cavanagh has. at this hour american and coalition forces are in the

early stages of military operations to disarm iraq to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger. this was the freedom they brought shock and bombs over baghdad what the pentagon billed as a quick war to liberate iraq turned into a prolonged nightmare. ten years of bloodshed war occupation and deadly sectarian strife drained by afghanistan exhausted by iraq for washington the battle is over after a decade of work that's cost us thousands of years and over a trillion dollars. nation we need to build is our way but what if the nation they left behind. we're not. biggest regret the iraqi people who are the infrastructure is devastated the country is ruined. these

graves are a visual reminder of a decade of human strife almost everyone in this country has lost somebody whom they love no one knows exactly how many iraqis have been killed since the invasion and estimates range from more than one hundred fifty thousand to over one million for years the u.s. claims not to keep body counts but how do you mohamed has kept count his four sons and only grandchild were killed in a suicide blast. how am i doing i raised my sons and saw them get mahdi's and send them to universities i watched them die you asked me if it's better or worse now compared to ten years ago i still have my sons ten years ago so i think the answer is old and it's. others have seen their dreams of a brighter future shattered by years of violence. i was top of my class but when circumstances became very bad off to the occupation i feel that something. was

broken inside of me. and everything i used to dream of becoming a doctor or an engineer but conditions prevented me from continuing my studies but an education is no guarantee of work less than forty percent of our rocky adults have a job and a quarter of families live below the world bank's poverty line statistics that haven't improved much since the days of crushing u.n. sanctions in the one nine hundred ninety s. elections may have brought democracy to iraq but critics say the government is rife with corruption and infighting. despite the various that's occurred in the time of the former regime it is not comparable to the number of freely is by the politicians and the current government. and more troubling perhaps are the lingering divisions. this occupation separated us which is right as a better place the political structure of the tribal one which aggravated the political conflict i see no good in this kind of agreement. today iraq is facing a new political crisis there is tension on the ground between the sunni provinces

and the shia led government as well as between baghdad and the kurdish north i think if these issues are not resolved it can lead to more significant problems including conflict which can lead to i think the breakup of iraq and destabilization. and an upsurge in violence is sparking fears of a return to sectarian strife new figures show that death rates have actually risen since the last american soldier left a rocky soil. how long will iraq remain like this every day there are explosions every day there is killing every day there is terrorism. explosion after explosion iraqis have asked themselves that same question for most of the last ten years to see countenance r.t. iraq. from all the invasion of iraq and where it brought the country over the last ten years let's join british labor m.p.

jeremy coburn who's in london live with us so mr coben bridges out for prime minister day tony blair who's older why is bridges but dissipated in the very invasion ten years ago says that that one of been the any rock revolution or us then syria do you agree with them. no i don't turn to told us the workings of mass destruction there were no told us that there was a present threat to all neighboring countries including western europe there wasn't and we involve ourselves in the invasion which has cost hundreds of thousands of iraqi lives thousands of us british and other soldiers and billions of pounds the only people who made money out of this have been the arms companies and the security experts and companies and i think we see the devastation of what was a country with a good infrastructure a good standard of education but a very poor standard of human rights we should have addressed the issues of human

rights dialogue with iraq in the late the latter part of the last century rather than going to war in two thousand and three but then some might say that saddam hussein's political repression now that it's been it's been dissolved but the people left all more open far they have freedom of speech has it all been worth it always it just just speech that everybody gives us to condone what actually happened. well the west have very selective memories on this i was in the british parliament in the nineteen eighties and it was a very small number of us that raised the issue of the abuse of kurdish people the gas tax. and britain and all other countries in the region rest in europe that is and the usa continued supplying arms to iraq was there more interested in iraq's opposition to iran at that time the west created a lot of those tensions and turned a blind eye to abuses of human rights by its their own allies and i think we just

need to take a rain check on this and think very carefully about what we did in the past and what we should be doing in the future surely now the people of iraq deserve peace deserve security and deserve human rights they have none of those things yes a lot of people have made a great deal of money out of the misery of the iraq how will the how will the people of iraq to get that peace and stability that you're talking about if the troops left now they are now left with the victims of tara reid. they are indeed there has to be the construction of a political dialogue it has to be the construction of some kind of political consensus in iraq the alternatives are that the country descends into further chaos with suicide attacks and many other things or maybe even the country will break up as one of your commentators was suggesting with the kurdish area in the north has a very high degree of autonomy and of course it does have access to

a considerable number of a considerable amount of oil reserves i'm not in favor of the country breaking up but at the end of the day the people of iraq got to be in a position to make that decision i think we have to recognize we created a lot of these problems and we have to provide the support and the aid necessary to get out of those problems but it's centrally all walls and in a political dialogue it's important that political dialogue takes place with everybody. labor m.p. jeremy coburn speaking a line from london are with us thank you so much for your insight and your time. you're most welcome. to us taxpayers are probably asking how much mall they'll have to spend on iraq on top of what's already been poured in the cigar of over eight hundred billion us dollars continues to rise. as well as the costs of mounting every second from dealing with returning personnel to the broader social and economic impacts of the war and these are no it takes

a closer look at the numbers. the decade long war in iraq may be officially over but american taxpayers are still paying for the cost of the invasion let's talk numbers the u.s. has spent more than sixty billion dollars in reconstruction in iraq so far that works out to about fifteen million dollars per day overall cost and other aid adds up to seven hundred and sixty seven billion dollars since the american led invasion and that's according to the congressional budget office but national priorities project a u.s. research group they estimate the real cost at over eight hundred billion dollars and they add that some funds are still being spent on ongoing projects and that number continues to rise every second now a major problem it seems is that all this cash the u.s. is coughing up isn't falling into the right hands or projects iraqi prime minister nouri al maliki says funding could have brought

a great change in iraq but there was misspending of money i want to give you some examples of this missed spending if you can call it that there are too many to name but here are some that i think really stand out in iraq's diyala province the u.s. began building a prison in two thousand and four but abandon the project after three years to flee a surge in violence now have complete facility cost american taxpayers forty million dollars but since in rubble and there are no plans to ever finish or use it according to the justice ministry also sub contractors overcharge the u.s. government thousands of dollars for supplies take a look at this control switch the u.s. pays nine hundred dollars for that when it's actually valued at just seven dollars eighty dollars for a section of a pipe that is actually valued at just a buck fifty and when you're talking hundreds of billions of dollars nine hundred bucks of course sounds like small change but obviously it's adding here's another one widespread fraud led by a former u.s.

army officer cost tens of millions of dollars in kickbacks. nektar to government contracts for bottled water twenty two people were criminally convicted would fill tens of millions of dollars in contracts for bottled water but for iraqis they're paying a different cost a government rife with corruption and in finding near daily deadly bombing still blast baghdad streets and a quarter of the country's thirty one million lives in poverty. taking the bailout model to extremes the e.u. has given cyprus and ultimatum either force us save us to save banks all. the press send to see up to ten percent of their life savings a raise or all to secure indebted banks with the bailout from brussels the reactions been volatile with protests and people trying to take the cash from banks

more an hour from a looser robson who is a journalist living in cyprus this is what she had to say there are several parties which are against this this option that has been proposed by the government it isn't guaranteed at all but the government has said that it is willing to revise the terms of any levies initially they were going to be quite harsh on small depositors but there have been terms proposed about anybody with less than twenty thousand euros in the bank being tax free without any any outcome from this decision the government is toying with the idea of finding the five point eight billion replied euros from other sources and government bonds could be involved also possibly bank pension funds the e.u. has said that cyprus is free to some extent to find the five point eight billion euros where it chooses there has been a lot of anger and have been people saying that they want to remove that cash from

cyprus as soon as they can but really a feeling of expectancy here. back to the crisis in cypress now with the palm in their sets of the it on the bank deposit tax at about four o'clock g.m.t. today belgium m.e.p. data k u n f painter says that given european taxpayers are wary there's there's little alternative but to pass the tax cause the quizes ingres is mainly to blame for what's happening in cyprus now because the goodison separate banks have been exposed to greece. the european union is already trying to say agrees brees already has three bill out operations and is still in the middle of it so there's not much greece can do anymore and the only thing we can do is to try to save cyprus which is already the fifth bailout operation and of course there is also a limit to the patients are taxpayers in germany the netherlands and finland because

finally these are the people who have to guarantee the loans. and there is now is limited so i think it was. it was good to have a contribution of the savers in cyprus itself because in other countries we have a different sort of problems but remember in spain savers already have contributed those people who had an interest in the spanish bank bankia lost money some people in other banks have lost money and generally european savers are losing money because we have a policy of cheap money low interest rates that means they're saving money if you put money in the bank it costs you money. now the prices in cyprus has not only rattled the euro zone are sending the euro spiralling to yell long lines but the repercussions could be felt for either a field early m.l.s.e. ourselves explain to my colleague bill dodd why russia has none of this about the ease plans. well you know there's

a certain stereotype in the west about the russian mafia keeping their money in cyprus offshore accounts well of course to some extent there is some illegal money there but definitely fundamentally it's all about the big businesses because almost just about every big business in russia has an asset an offshore account in cyprus and the biggest concern which is now there and was talked about by the by the president by the highest officials in the country does not concern the big businesses in the sense that russia has been striving to have the offshore money returns to the country the government believes it's now you countries are more stable you need to provide healthy environment to keep the money inside the country so this is not the concern here especially with the government and the president saying that it wants the money to be returned to russia only we spoke to the spokesperson of the russian president and here's the note he had to say about i don't recall of mr president for sure is a show of russian economy. was made during his address annual address the russian

parliament this year and here still stuck to this idea that we really have to make environment and russian economy more comfortable for those that got to invest their money. and to keep the money here on russian soil the biggest concern in the biggest unfairness which president putin talked about here concern small businesses private interpreters who have the money in cyprus and we're talking here at least around forty thousand people who have their money in the offshore accounts they will suffer and this is something of course which is now being seriously condemned by moscow but then of course cyprus is in a very difficult position either it risks losing the bailout funds which of course will keep the country buoyant if it goes ahead with that then of course it loses its foreign investment investment so what does it do the reason feeling that cyprus may be shooting itself in the leg in a sense that it's been living off the offshore my. and for many years now and

russians have already started withdrawing their money from the cyprus accounts they may be soon followed by the japanese the chinese also have loads of money in the cyprus accounts and you know the world is a big place they're always find another country to have their money there. i'll be back with more news after this short break. they've been living this way to seventeenth century. tricked. their communities on the silicon. they clearly distinguish between their own and the alien. and guard their family and think treasure.

so. well for. science technology innovation all the list of elements from around russia we've got the future covered. welcome back he watching. the hunger strike at guantanamo bay continues to gain momentum as human rights groups that criticize week knowing the plight of the prisoners forty two days as new detainees join the protests u.s.

officials maintain that inmates have never been mistreated an attorney who has represented several gun tunnel bay prisoners says many of them remain behind bars even though there were a long time ago there are a hundred and sixty six people at guantanamo of those who are probably at most twenty guys who are bad guys who were taken in later guys like khalid shaikh muhammad the other people are and most nothing more than half of them eighty six of the may have been cleared at least for three years and some during the bush administration cleared as innocent people and they're still there and they're frustrated i mean i don't care if you're held in the dorchester hotel in london are the best hotel the ritz carlton in moscow and you're confined to that room for eleven years and you can't see your family you can't go out and talk to people you can't read freely you can't get about i don't care that allows you condition even if you're fed the best food every day and believe me they're not i mean they are

imprisoned improperly without a chance to get out that's the worst condition. so far tourney's are the only ones sounding an alarm over the hunger strike in one of the world's most controversial prisons artie's marina port by reports on the leg all visual reaction to the protest. as the guantanamo hunger strike enters its forty second day there's been very little response and no outcry from international organizations the united nations for example has yet to comment or a good knowledge of the get mo hunger strike now r t did reach out to un human rights bodies in geneva and officials have promised to respond to our inquiry with a comment by tuesday afternoon now on the other hand the international committee of the red cross which last visited the island prison the third week of february doesn't knowledge that a hunger strike is taking place but so far all the organization has done is release

a statement saying that the i.c.r.c. believes past and current tensions at guantanamo to be the direct result of the uncertainty faced by detainees now compounding this problem is that it's been very difficult to access any information about get most prisoners due to military censorship a reported one hundred thirty prisoners went on hunger strike in early february to protest the alleged confiscation of personal items such as photos and mail and the alleged sacrilegious handling of their qur'an now lawyers have reported that some of the prisoners are coughing up blood have lost more than twenty pounds and have been hospitalized experts medical experts say that by day forty five hunger strike participants can experience potential blindness and partial hearing loss navy commander announced that flights to to the island prison from south florida

will be terminated on april fifth now those flights have served as a vital air bridge for attorneys who are seeking to meet with their imprisoned clients critics believe that this is an attempt by the defense department to limit the access that attorneys. with their clients reporting from new york marina r.t. . we've been tracking the guantanamo hunger strike so if you were in the bigger picture log on to see dot com also while you're there we have campaigners actually taking action against this arise group has taking new york up with these went to court over claims its controversial stop and frisk policy unfairly targets minority get all the details all mind. and be as and to me and our government has accused the biggest bank of money laundering and other dodgy dealings running

into the tens of millions of dollars that's also on our web page at r.t. dot com. now some other international news in breve or syria's stated news agency is reporting that officers in forces have used chemical weapons in the northern province of aleppo twenty six people according to the syrian observatory for human rights a sixteen of the victims were soldiers rebel forces have given no response to the accusations so far meanwhile syria's main exiled opposition blog has elected a prime minister to administer areas are seized by the rebels the new leader who is a syria born american citizen has already been criticized by the desperate rebel groups fighting in syria. pope francis has officially taken his place as head of the catholic church in an inauguration mass attended by two hundred thousand people in st peter's square you

pledge to defend the weak and the poor mocking their humility he has sought to inject his purposes since his election by fellow cardinals a week ago earlier he greeted people as he toured the square in an open topped. an investigation into the death of russian lawyers said again magnitsky has been dropped he died in custody in two thousand and nine investigators found no evidence was committed. has been following the story there have been no trespassing in in terms of the confinement or criminal confinement or criminal investigation against us again magnitsky that he was essentially jailed all fully he was not beaten while in confinement and therefore they've also established that he has actually died from natural causes that is from heart failure and several

other complications all of which from several really severe diseases that he was suffering from and thus they have essentially ruled out any foul play which was the main point of contention between you can say the russian authorities and the family friends and several settler rides groups all of whom were saying that he was in fact beaten while he was in jail and that that was the main reason why he died in november of two thousand and nine in fact they have managed to raise enough controversy surrounding the case even for some of the foreign officials to interfere or to rather voice their opinion on the matter for example the u.s. congress has come out with this so-called magnitsky act which is essentially a less a list of russian officials all of whom according to the united states have been somehow involved in the case of whiskey and therefore they're now banned from entering the united states as well as all of their u.s.

assets have been frozen so this is sort of a russian case which has managed to breach the the ocean wide gap and has caused quite a lot of controversy both in russia and abroad. but off of the break a look at the lives of a community which turned its back on society centuries a day this is honestly. there was a time in america when buses were officially segregated and today if they tried to resegregate the wall next to there would be outrage throughout the usa every t.v. channel and newspaper so segregation in america was wrong but no america funding segregation no for via foreign aid seems to be a ok and jim dandy arab language

leaflets have been spread around west bank in palestinian areas asking residents to start using special bus lines please support palestinians on separate bus lines were first announced in november of two thousand and twelve after some complaints by jewish settlers of trouble on the buses between passengers of different ethnicities in regards to the special bus lines it's really human rights groups but selim said the attempt to bus segregation is appalling and the current arguments about security needs an overcrowding must not be allowed to camouflage blatant racism you know when south africa had apartheid they were slammed with sanctions including from the us but if you're israel go ahead and segregate all the buses you like and you'll still be the u.s.'s top recipient of foreign aid at three point one billion dollars a year if there's one thing i don't like it's hypocrisy like this but that's just my opinion.

been living this way since the seventeenth century. rituals are strict. their communities on the syllabus. they clearly distinguish between their own and the alien. and guard their family in thing to trash. one.