bars the guantanamo hunger strike is desperately push on with their protests as activists across the u.s. prepared to rally in support. calling breakthrough the digital currency is pushing its way into the financial mainstream boasting freedom from government control and safety from printing but is it really risk free. north korea is expected to launch a ballistic missile test at any moment the un warning that one wrong step could send the crisis spiraling out of control even though the world body is failing to resolve the deadlock. i. welcome you watching r.t. was made and. now thursday is expected to become a day of action against guantanamo across the u.s. the protests are to support israel's hunger strikers and to push for the facilities

permanent shutdown r.t. spoke to a bar see who spent several years 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 did force and 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 where there was online or not and 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 the needle into me and it took a long time going to i don't know how many stops they took a moment but you know they missed in the midst of a in and two they actually found it so odd that you know the medical press to 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 other invited right to life in some cases so this is a loss right of people who don't have rights and protesting against the situation but primarily because their religion is being abused now into it's the month the lawyer for one hunger strike has received word that his client 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 suits 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 camp fire back home which is the worst place and growing time of day 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 chav will 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 is a real problem what they do with some of the prisoners they force feed them in the most surrender suerte 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 or it supports that if you are cleared for release you should be released and 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 cutting off would suffer the prisoners and

some of the lawyers raise cain about that they did allow some of the prisoners to get work to back with some of the prisoners reportedly is still being required to drink 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 yellow orange color so they wanted to mine or mine it 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 don't 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 in the world when we behave this way. still to come here on r.t. asia is on the edge the continent is keeping a close eye on north korea's widely anticipated mr launch with worries mounting the final move might take place during the pyongyang celebration season. and the

audacity of examine afghanistan's prospering drugs trade continues to be a massive worldwide killer more than a decade after the u.s. led operation ousted the taliban. now imagine having money that's free from government control say from haircuts and the centralized there is such a thing and it's called big corps in the side because it sees value has increased ten fold this year surging past two hundred dollars a unit this week its use is seen as a sign of growing skepticism about the existing global financial system where you move an entrepreneur who tracks bitcoin markets explains works. this quine is a prime number or 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 but hard to undo unless you know the secret and those and the secrets and bog 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 you find these special numbers in a sea of very very big numbers and it takes a supercomputer like i have to find them and to look for them or you can get a group of smaller computers working together and with those special numbers you can create a chain of infinite transactions that that will be secure it's only two point one quadrillion of those numbers that are special and you got to find them and then test them and so what you do is you look at each number and you say is this a special number you apply the test and if the test works then it's one of your special numbers and then you say oh i found a lot and you post it to the table special numbers about one point one five 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 but had useful is the case in the real world well peter all of his brain to a bar and the name to spend a few think killings. the germans all 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 laws 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 good point following growing mistrust of a stop after the botched bailout in cyprus people want their money where governments can't touch it but i think the big huge did a really good job to raise awareness when they seized the bank accounts in cyprus since then i mean there's been a. craze going 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 come digital currency exchange

a group once a month to trade their electronic cash on the establishment is happy to take big coins as legal tender for any purchase but once you get all set up with the calling software it becomes as simple as point click and your electronic cash to do something very real indeed. now more than ever people want to make sure. good day 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 coins with an individual code on the back that can be punched into your online account or if you thought

that it's a good or for a good starter for people for people to know what we'd call you if you present them with one of those because people like to talk. 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 this sign showing people are open for big business peter older r.t. . for big coins into a record price of two hundred sixty six dollars per unit this week until a flash crash saw news half its value but it was the quickly call it swayed back up within a few hours the valuation roller coaster isn't in the digital currency more and more attention in the financial headlines a bit coin developer tacky says the new digital currency guarantees financial freedom. i was traveling europe the whole of south america i don't have any bank

accounts. i was just using because exchanging with people in the in the street i was in using an exchange company in most banks nothing just trading because of people i didn't pay any fees for that whatsoever you can travel now or europe and not pay any fees you know so it's international currency of proper international currency that works globally you know paper alone blocks access from over sixty different countries so you know sites like wordpress which is a platform for people to blog about their free speech to say about the political situation in their company you know that a lot of people get shut off from that so that's why they started accepted it quite recently in the countries like ethiopia kenya or even iran let anybody now is able to participate that's what bitcoin is about freedom of financial speech you know wiki leaks they had a case where year and a half ago u.s. the part of justice shut down their payment options because these are master card and pay pal they love monopoly on the payment system so anybody so they control it

and when they deny service to wiki leaks you know their only hope their only option was because and that was what saved them through that time is something of a science fiction for first time in in history you can buy encrypted file storage on the internet using virtual digital currency no never for those possible interesting stuff now we're going to take a quick break but when we come back we'll examine why international diplomacy has lost its luster when dealing with north korea and how eleven years of nato action in afghanistan has done little to dent the deadly drug trade to stay with us. wealthy british. market. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with. no holds the global financial headlines to the report. see a story. you think you understand it and the. other part of it and realize that everything is. welcome to the big picture.

i. welcome back now north korea could launch a ballistic missile test at any moment so says 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 it is feed pyongyang 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 would also be celebrating the birth of its founder kim il sung next monday a day which usually features a showcase of military strength south korean and u.s. forces have been on increased military alert while japan's deployed patriot missile interceptors in tokyo antiwar activist brian becker says the u.s. is trying to destroy historical 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 and 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 control that the organization is so far failing to bring the sides negotiating table raising questions i would say influence all usefulness as an international peace broker kevin and i have across down 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. 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 would be no. really 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 un other than sanctioning north korea has failed to come up with any concrete diplomatic solution to reach in to the mysterious stage 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 to be 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 and that may be seen as an inflammatory meeting by the north koreans it may not.

the nato led conflict in libya designed to instill a democratic peace is still left the post gadhafi country in turbulence even beyond its borders online we have details of a new u.n. report that says the middle east and africa and now being fed with arms streaming from libya which are fueling warfare in syria mali and garza. making the most of moscow's record snow this winter president putin has been pictured giving his two dogs from playful exercise you can see the gallery at r.t. dot com. 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 force from power the illicit industry still killing people around the world riff an ocean and now examines the deadly multi-million dollar trend which shows no signs of slowing down .

one million people around the world do to. and that's in just over a decade from when the us 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 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 has failed to rectify the situation with drug production and the fact russia's drug control trip has described production in afghanistan as planetary and the figures prove it illegal or poor in farming in afghanistan since two thousand and one has been on a constant rise increasing by twenty times in the last twelve years i've can 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 sitting by opium poppies is now ten times larger and 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 top room income student one point four billion dollars the lion's share of these my name obviously goes to district officials insurgents warlords and drug traffickers while the afghan people get instability and poorer teen stad 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 headlines making news around the world mass rallies outside congress in washington d.c.

as cross party senators race to finish an overdue immigration deal it's 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 the reform the bill will also tighten border security and require employers to check their workers 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 maryland manning's been in custody since twenty ten and has pleaded guilty to ten of the twenty two charges against him a u.s. navy seal who was reportedly part of the squad that killed osama bin laden is to testify that he found relief in the form of al qaeda leader's compound. in paris human rights activists staged a mass demonstration against homophobia and in support of its victims it follows

sunday's brutal attack of 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 assaults have increased as opposition has grown law to allow same sex marriage and adoption in france. are rights groups warning that syria's air force is carrying out both civilian and indiscriminate attacks as a serious violation of international law both the government down 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. sophie shevardnadze spoke to a syrian presidential advisor who says western powers are only fueling the fire. the syrian crisis has a regional and international level and i learned these store lovers are sorted our down the list there is

a real intention to stop the crisis it's very difficult to stop inside syria because it's not a crisis that is only in syria but it is a crisis that's being played and are financed by both regional and international forces there was an inside does not really live out to what it says so even if they say. leave the weapons you know all the letters that back that are happening in syria all the killing because of not being or the problem that our children our women are facing a horrible humiliating conditions and refugee camps and dirty and driven all this they consider it you know non-lethal why would they be interested in creating chaos in syria and you know president assad keeps pointing fingers to turkey's role jordan the arab league for making the situation in syria worse do you have any other cards left to play because again is there any interest in the longer run and

unfortunately i don't think that those who are creating chaos and syria are right from the beginning how it totally independent will we have the card of syria under the syrian people it is the syrian people who are standing against terrorism it is the sudan people who are standing against car bombs and car explosion that to the syrian people who are standing against it are usually part of. that interview with president assad his visor can be seen in full at six forty five pm g.m.t. coming up shortly max kaiser looks at the economic pros and cons of the late margaret thatcher is going to tell you.

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 starting 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 and schools cetera some pretty bad grades 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 have 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 starts getting spent a well planned infrastructure then the infrastructure will start paying for itself rock'n 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. i am asked as are welcome to the kaiser reporting down the way it is dead this song is so. or to the top of the charts in the u.k. now is this just the odd manner in which the druids that is the say the british people mourn the passing of their former prime minister. or do they just agree with

what david cameron and the media claim that margaret thatcher saved britain not to me i see that margaret thatcher what she did is bequeath to the population a dream much more honest than the american one she gave them the british dream a dream that you can all strong to mature before your debts do i guess by maturity mean die stacey yeah you want to die before your debts catch up to you that's the only thing it's like extend and pretend this is the entire global economy this is what she bequeath to the world and that's what we're seeing we're trying to out run these debts and for this i wore this financial apocalypse t. shirt in honor of her death and but i want to look at this other notion that says she saved britain this is what we hear over and over she saved britain from those workers the strikers the trouble makers and look at this chart here this is north sea oil production this is why.