through the digital currency pushing its way into financial mainstream boasting freedom from government control and safety from trimming visit really risk free. north korea is expected to launch a ballistic missile test any moment with the u.n. warning that one wrong step could send the crisis spiraling out of control even though the world body is failing to resolve the deadlock. and sixty five days without food behind bars the one ton of my hunger strike is desperately push on with their protests as activists across the u.s. prepare to rally in support. international news and comment watching r.t. coming to you live from moscow now imagine having money that's free from government control say from haircuts and decentralize when there is such

a thing it's called big coin the cyber currencies value has increased ten fold this year surging past two hundred dollars a unit this week it is seen as a sign of growing skepticism about the existing global financial system. as more. these germans are sold on the idea. of the new gold and if you're not involved you'll be left behind every day you decide not to use a free and decentralized currency like bitcoin you actually decide for supporting the existing financial system with its flaws for yet another day created four years ago by an anonymous computer these lines of letters and numbers can be traded to allow instantaneous global purchases without being tied to the rules of existing and discredited financial institutions there is no organization no institution who

is able to control or manipulate the whole financial system of bitcoin no banks no central banks. no credit card corporation that means that nobody is charging you any fees nobody can stop you sending money from a to b. like if you would donate one would want to make donations to wiki leaks you can still do that in bitcoin following growing mistrust of a stop after the botched bailout of cyprus people want their money where governments can't touch it and i think the you did a really good job to raise awareness when they seized the bank accounts in cyprus since then i mean there's been a big con craze going on but coins are secure nobody can seize it nobody can freeze an account to get involved you have to download an application called a wallet that you can start to buy them at this bar digital currency exchange

a group once a month to trade their electronic cash and the establishment is happy to take coins as legal tender for any purchase but once you get all set up with the big calling software it becomes as simple as point click and your electronic. cash to enter into something very real indeed. now more than ever people want to make sure they cash is cared for using an online wallet is still a very new concept how safe is it some of them have been hacked some of them have turned out to be fraudulent but i think over time. the operators who survive providing these kind of services are going to be very diligent about about their security and they're going to have to be very diligent also about maintaining their reputation and if you're a little apprehensive about a currency you can't hold in your hand there's physical callings with an individual code on the back that can be punched into your online account but i think that's

that it's a good door for a good starter for people to know what bitcoin is if you present them with one of those because people like to talk to you. if you would want to give your nephew or a relative a present for for the next ten years one big card with probably the best in a physical form however you buy them with increased skepticism over established currencies we can expect to see more of the sign showing people are open for business peter all of a. bit coin's anything goes nature has made it a target for hackers who have quickly learned to steal the virtual money but when you move can entrepreneur who tracks big coin market says the actual damage is being exaggerated there was a loss of twelve thousand five hundred dollars just after christmas from on individual but in the united states clearly the f.b.i. there are three bank robberies today and it was seventy five hundred dollars each each time three times a day three hundred sixty five days a year people still use those facts but at least people with money in those banks

do have a guarantee from that bank who guarantees market killings. the numerical process guarantees your bit coins and it can't be altered by politics as the people in cyprus bit quiet and is a prime number series of prime numbers basically just like you can break a piece and it's hard to put it back together there are certain things you can do with numbers that are easy to do a bit hard to undo unless you know the secret and those and the secrets and bobs special numbers and so i can watch something away send it to you and nobody else can unlock it except you and that's the basis of secret messages it's also the basis of things that you cannot counterfeit just like you find gold in a sea of rock and dirt to find these special numbers in a sea of very very good numbers only two point one trillion of those numbers that are special about one point one billion of these numbers are eleven million

bitcoins have already been found another ten million will be found over the rest of history and most of what we found within the next three years were paid coins into a record price of two hundred sixty six dollars per unit this way you can tell a flash crash or lose half its value but he killed his way back up within a few hours the valuation roller coaster is ending the digital currency more and more attention in the financial headlines every bitcoin developer none been to find out whether it's still a good investment. well now you've heard what bitcoin is why is it proving say popular industry insiders that dismissing this as a bubble but right now they're having to dismiss bit coin is even more of a bubble and that's because this week for the first time the controversial electronic currency passed the two hundred dollar mark setting new records so it is proving popular i don't think it will be of use for a while yet because until the interface becomes user friendly it's

a bit like people think they have to understand it to be able to use it but i say to people look you understand how your body works and how money works you can use your body and use money i would because you don't have to understand how to use it but you do need into the interface and in order to understand money we have a nice interface to use money to use your body we have a nice interface called a called our body in terms of core and we haven't yet got that interface up to that level of ease of use the understanding until that day comes it won't be so widely available or easily used by people it's a big queens well and truly burst on to the mainstream now trading up around the two hundred dollar mark up from under just twenty dollars at the beginning of the year but is still a good investment now it is trading around that two hundred dollar mark while many people think yes it is and here's why let's take a look at the possible outcomes if you invested in but quaint right now the bubble could burst gavan trading around two hundred dollars to zero in which case you lose

one hundred percent of your money not good but you do only one hundred percent when it comes to bit coy but what if bitcoin raise to around two thousand dollars to start trading around that inconceivable maybe all the skeptics all the critics right now will tell you the bubble burst that won't happen but also. at the beginning is the year when big queen was trading around that twenty dollar mark you really think that it could start trading around the two hundred dollars mark. on that basis things can and do you happen. to start trading around two thousand dollars of the need invested now when it was around two hundred dollars you would get ten times your return so if you lose it if one hundred percent you win anyway the thousand percent now to anyone you can clearly see that that's quite a good bet and it's why right now along with all the global uncertainty with the big financial institutions many people consider that you could do worse than bet on

that calling so r.t. london u.s. citizens will get fired up over guantanamo later on thursday nationwide protests are planned to get the job done to support the hunger striking prisoners who are reaching the breaking point to stay and a third month of refusing food the details just ahead also the order the job we've done and how afghanistan's prospering drugs trade continues to be a massive worldwide killer more than a decade after the u.s. led operation to the taliban. north korea could launch a ballistic missile test at any moment south korea's foreign minister japan's echoed that worry adding that at least one ballistic missile is ready for blastoff from north korea's east coast young will conduct the launch to mark a series of national occasions thursday is the first anniversary of leader kim jong un becoming first secretary of the workers' party the country will also be

celebrating the birth of its founder kim il sung next monday a day which usually features a showcase of military strength south korea and u.s. forces have been. japan's deployed patriot missile interceptors in tokyo antiwar activist brian becker says the u.s. is trying to destroy historic political ties between pyongyang and china by creating a military confrontation. i personally believe it was very regrettable that the united nations security council adopted a resolution putting all of the blame and the onus on north korea in imposing economic sanctions of i believe the united nations has to be independent of the united states if it's going to be really a force for peace if it serves just as a fig leaf for the united states then the united states will use the u.n. as it did in one thousand fifty to launch its own aggression against korea the obama administration is taking the bush administration policy of provocation

escalation increased tension to a whole new level they want to create pressure on china to break china away from its historic relationship with north korea by creating a military confrontation or a near confrontation the united states is saying to the chinese look the stakes are very high time for you to change time for you to abandon your your ally in north korea and i think they think that they have that could be the the prescription the precursor to regime change in north korea if they could break china away china doesn't want to do that although you can see the debate going on right now within the chinese establishment the u.n. is worried that any wrong steps in the crisis could spin the situation on the korean peninsula and to control but the organization has to little to try and bring the sides to the negotiating table raising questions i've seen for you and so usefulness as an international peace broker kevin and and i've across the breakdown in the diplomatic side of the issue. on the one hand we've got

a rogue state operating in a defacto nuclear state operating with a bomb and on the other we've got a un which is either fails to reach out to north korea appropriately and bring it into the international community. and is conspicuous by its absence perhaps in a situation like banking just the other day warning of it spiraling out of control the danger of what is practically being done what we do know is that the international institutions the diplomatic institutions that would be normally be responsible for bringing north korea back into the fold have failed to do so north korea walked out of the. six plus one talks in two thousand and nine and the u.n. other than sanctioning north korea has failed to come up with any concrete diplomatic solution to reach in to the mysterious state and to bring it back into the fold so what is going on behind the scenes is there fever diplomacy or not well north korea famously enjoys bilateral relations with china and russia and there may

indeed be contacts going going through the channels we can say for sure that china is upset with north korea i think there's a why general recognition that china north korea is a close relationship is starting to disintegrate particularly because this saber rattling that we're seeing from north korea has brought very aggressive united states into china's front garden now it should also be mentioned now whether this is coincidence or not. live up to others to judge but nato secretary general rasmussen is also in seoul at the moment. conducting meetings with with his south korean partners that may be seen as an inflammatory meeting by the north koreans it may not.

we're going to take a quick break now but when we come back the nationwide u.s. protests to support the get my hunger strikers and how eleven years of nato action in afghanistan has done little to dent the deadly drugs trade stay with us. you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture.

the movie about international airport in the very heart of moscow. again thursday is expected to become a day of action against guantanamo across the u.s. the protests are to support the child hunger strike is to push for the facilities permanent shutdown r.t. spoke to photos of bars he spent several years at one town and moved to them in

solitary confinement before being released without charge he took part in the previous mass hunger strike there and shared his experience. i was taken in and forced into that time to forcing intravenous for fluids into you. and do something silly like put you don't know how many pouches when you only need maybe one or two an inopportune six or something or other there was one guy who was like doing a trainee medical course i don't know whether it's online or when he decided he was joking about which he needed to use or the use a big one and so forth so they were using me the guinea pig for for for the for the training so. the person who was putting a needle into me and it took a long time and i'm going to i don't know how many stars they took a moment but you know they missed in the midst of a in until they actually found it so either you know the medical past of these people. you know is limited you know they're protesting and this is the last right in terms of all the rights have been taken away from them they don't have the right

to. remain silent in interrogations or have them by the right to life in some cases so this is the last rights of people who don't have rights and protesting against the situation but primarily because their religion is being abused well onto its third month the lawyer for one hunger strike has received word that one of his clients tried to take his own life the military denies there have been any recent suicide attempts but clive stafford smith is not convinced. we talked to him directly but also we talked throughout the prisoners he the united states said today in something that is typical unfortunately of the full service that come out of that place that he didn't try to commit suicide but why did they taken to hospital for nine days which they did and then they took him back to campfire back home which is the worst place and grown time of day now and they took him there you know what do you do with someone who suicidal you put him in the very worst cell an entire prisoner i'm afraid that illustrates the really terrible lassitude the

colonel said he knows how to deal with my clients because he's got children a time where we'll check around and one of my clients said is we need to send the social services round to check on his house because if he's treating his children the way that these prisoners are being treated as a real problem what they do with some of the person is they force feed them in the most surrender this way you know but that doesn't solve the problem you know you can't take a piece of the true test like a hunger strike which is being done for perfectly valid reasons which i suspect ninety nine percent of the globe group supports that if you are cleared for release you should be released that you can't take that force feed people by stuffing tubes up their nose and putting them through even greater agony and think that that's going to solve the problem of they were catching up to the prisoners and some of the lawyers raise cain about that they did allow some of the prisoners to get back

with stomach the prisoners reportedly is still being required to drink the water out of the tap and i got a photograph just yesterday of something i have seen many times myself down in guantanamo which is the sign the taps which says this is not drinking water and it's foul stuff the a yellow orange color so they wanted to mine or mine to concessions but i'm afraid that's not the attitude that taking mistaking a very very harsh attitude which is doomed to cause greater problems i want to say that this is bad for america it's not just bad for these prisoners is bad for america because we are losing our moral standing and when we behave this way. the nato led conflict in libya designed to instill a democratic peace has still left the post gadhafi country in turbulence even beyond its borders online we've details of a new u.n. report that says the middle east and africa are now being fed with arms streaming from libya which are fueling warfare in syria mali and garza.

he's been pictured posing with a tiger club riding a horse bare chested and even flying with endangered now president putin is shown playing in the snow with his two dogs in moscow we've got the gallery at r.t. dog. afghanistan's drugs trade is flourishing despite the eleven years that have passed since the u.s. kicked off its operation enduring freedom even with the taliban forced from power the illicit industry still killing thousands of people around the world refreshen and now examines the deadly multi-million dollar trend which shows no signs of slowing down. around the old due to him and that's in just over a decade from when the u.s. led its enduring freedom campaign to rid the country of the tyranny of the taliban while the regime came crashing down it was quite the opposite for the drugs trade

and with russia now ranked the highest consumer that's got the authorities worried blueboy distributors the heroin production in afghanistan has risen dramatically since our region enduring freedom was conducted in two thousand and one it's forty times higher now any impartial observer would admit that the international community to this field to rectify the situation with drug production and in fact russia's drug control truth has described production and afghanistan as planetary and the figures prove it illegal often farming in afghanistan since two thousand and one has been on a constant rise increasing by twenty times in the last twelve years have gone count in a call to officials say they spray an estimated one hundred fifty seven thousand hectares of land have been illegally used to grow opium poppies that's the size of a major european city like london in each of the nine growing seasons there has

been more open poppy cultivation than during any single year of the taliban's rule the fields have expanded everywhere throughout afghanistan in the south of the country the rise was not dramatic but that's only because these regions have remained the biggest drug growing areas so there is simply less room to expand and the country's east bordering pakistan the land suited by opium poppies is now ten times larger this is just one of the country's many gates from where afghan drags pass through on their way to every part of the globe to pakistan iran middle east turkey central asia russia europe central. easton western europe africa and both americas interestedly in two thousand and eleven officially the country exported three hundred seventy six million dollars worth of trash and dried fruits spices carpets for that same year the u.n. estimates the country's opium income students one point four billion dollars the

lion's share of these money obviously goes to district officials insurgents warlords and drug traffickers while the people get instability and poor teens to add a third of the country's thirty five million strong population is jobless and more than twelve million people live below poverty line it seems the u.s. led enduring freedom operation all those years ago has left the afghan people with more than freedom to endure. our team moscow. a quick look now at other news making headlines around the world mass rallies outside congress washington d.c. crossed party senators raced to finish an overdue immigration deal is expected to fast track eleven million illegal immigrants on the path to gain citizenship and is due to be adopted in the coming days tens of thousands protested over the sluggish pace of reform the bill will also tighten border security and require employers to

check their work is immigration status. u.s. prosecutors must prove that soldier bradley manning knew his disclosure of state secrets would harm america and benefit hostile nations but was the ruling made at a pretrial hearing in mary land manning's been in custody since two thousand and ten and has pleaded guilty to ten of the twenty charges against him a u.s. navy seal who was part was reportedly part of the squad that killed osama bin laden is to testify that he found the leak data in the form of al qaeda leader's compound . in paris human rights activists state a mass demonstration against homophobia in support and in support of its victims it follows sunday's brutal attack at a gay man in the french capital after which a picture of the shocking injuries went viral on the internet the protesters claim that homophobic or selves have increased as opposition has grown to an imminent law to allow same sex marriage and adoption in france. a rights

groups warning syria's air force is carrying out both civilian and indiscriminate attacks as a serious violation of international law both the government and the armed opposition have long been accused of violations during the two year conflict the u.s. though is considering widening aid to the rebels in the fight against president sad r.t. spoke to a syrian presidential advisor who says western powers are only fueling the fire. the syrian uprising says has a regional and international level and less. these stool levels are sorted out and the less there is a real intention to stop the crisis it's very difficult to stop it inside syria because it's not a crisis that is only in syria but it is a crisis that's being threatened are financed by both regional and international forces there was no inside does not really live i'll do what it says so even if

they say. leave the weapons you know all be on letters that the fact that they're happening in syria or the killing of the kidnapping or the problem that our children our women are facing a horrible humiliating conditions and refugee camps and did he endured all this they consider it you know non-lethal they say we support geneva agreement geneva communique the first item in geneva communique is to stop violence by all sides and yet they feed violence. and that interview with president assad's advisor is only in full at six forty five pm g.m.t. coming up next breaking the set on how one american celebrity couple spy cation in cuba got the media back home in a spin. with

oil pipes bursting in arkansas people across the usa start to realize that they are moving towards what the atlantic calls the infrastructure cliff in short america's infrastructure start to get a bit old and according to infrastructure port org the u.s. needs about three point six trillion dollars of infrastructure spending by twenty twenty to turn things around the site sponsored by the american society of civil engineers gave all aspects of american infrastructure like bridges and drinking water in schools cetera some pretty bad great except for solid waste removal for some reason in their opinion everything in the us is going to crap except for america's ability to throw solid crap away i'm not trying to sit here and scare you there is nothing to fear this is a big challenge but it is a very possible one to accomplish according to cost of war dot org the last ten years of war of cost about three point one trillion dollars just cutting wars in half by fifty percent could put

a huge dent in the infrastructure spending and what about all those billions in bailout that were spent you see the money is there it just gets wasted if the money stops getting thrown away and start getting spent a well planned infrastructure then the infrastructure will start paying for itself rocket infrastructure creates wealth so don't fear the infrastructure cliff just stop wasting money or allowed politicians to waste money and everything will turn out to be just fine but that's just my opinion.

the about international law in the very heart of moscow. you live on one hundred thirty three bucks a month for food. you know how fabulous. i mean. the town i know that i've seen the same thing really messed up. the wall for so personally apologized and said. the worst sugarloaf a little flat out sort of a. radio guy in fort lauderdale minutes from a kick off if i want to watch close for a politician because you've never seen anything like this i'm cold.