big brother is watching the middle east to be independent newspaper says the u.k. isn't running a secret snooping is station intercepting e-mails phone calls and web traffic. rush says online reports accusing the syrian government of a chemical attack were released before the alleged incident even happened she looks at how terrorist groups are taking advantage of the chaos in the region. and raised a full moon on breast these are live pictures from egypt for you now islam is a call for new projects a day after deposed leader hosni mubarak was let out of prison stirring anger among muslim brotherhood supporters.

you're watching live from moscow hello and a very warm welcome to the program the u.k. has reportedly been operating a secret data gathering base in the middle east part of a one and a half billion dollar investment in global surveillance britain's independent newspaper claims it a pained this information from edward snowden's leaks but the n.s.a. whistleblower himself says he has not released any information links to these allegations and laura smith is here with us to make sense of it all hi laura so first of all please tell us well it was reported in the independent newspaper. well the independent friday morning published an article that as you say it said came from leaks made by edward snowden about this secret internet monitoring station

based in the middle east to intercept all sorts of internet traffic in and through the middle east and then pass that on to western intelligence agencies basically what it does is taps into internet cables that run into the sea extracts that data and then passes it to g c h q here in the u.k. and to the n.s.a. in the states it's particularly valuable according to the independent because it can access cables that are passed between submarine to very sensitive data and it's part of this much larger project which is designed to. intercept global digital communications all over the world e-mails text messages literally everything there are over half a million miles of cables internet cables it's called the backbone of the internet running under the sea all over the world and they carry all the world internet traffic so emails tweets texts phone calls facebook entries every time you send an e-mail to anyone in a foreign country or anything that has to cross the border it has to go through these cables the cables then make landfall at various points and if we show you

a map of how the cables lie you can see that a lot of them make landfall in the u.k. those transatlantic ones so the u.k. is very important in this operation it. has to be very crucial in this operation passing days to other countries they make landfall at various points then the traffic's past two domestic networks and what the agencies do is that they gain access to those landing stations where the land meets the sea they use a small device just a small thing to capture the light that's being sent through the cable they run it through a prism that transforms it into binary code which becomes readable and then it's passed over to these agencies is imperceptible to an internet user a network manager because all they see is what could be a small block in the system the data runs through just as it normally would. so lots of transatlantic cables do make landfall here in the u.k. so the cooperation of g c h q and the authorities here is absolutely essential yeah and as you also mentioned earlier era snowden actually seems to be distancing

himself from all these allegations so what's going on there. he does. this the independent published the story this morning it was the first time that the independent had published a story which he said came from snowden's leaks but you know so far so normal really except that snowden now says that this leak didn't come from him a tall and glenn greenwald in the guardian says that it's the type of disclosure it's exactly the type of the station that the journalists working with snowden have deliberately avoided given that it relates to middle east surveillance and the potential impact that that could have on surveillance operations that then did release that will snowden says that he thinks it was the british government itself he says that the government's trying to trying to make out that the leaks from snowden are generally harmful across the board not in the public interest across the board and. they're doing that by deliberately releasing harmful information themselves and pretending that it comes from him in order to discredit him and the

journalist that he's working directly with glenn greenwald says that the very moment that there's this huge scandal over the detention of his partner at heathrow airport or port over the weekend and the government's trying to tell the courts that the really the release of this information is not in the public interest it could potentially be dangerous is a disclosure that could potentially be dangerous so it really fits in according to the guardian and to snowden himself with what the government's trying to do are you discredit these journalists and snowden himself. from london laura thank you very much indeed for that we appreciate it. russia says online reports accusing the syrian government of carrying out a mass chemical attack near damascus were published before the alleged assault actually happened moscow's calling on the syrian opposition to allow u.n. inspectors into those signs or that while the u.n. chief was urging the government to give approval for investigation rebels say wednesday's attack claimed up to thirteen hundred lives of those reports have still

not been independently confirmed sources with the. the russian foreign ministry suggests the rocket loaded with chemicals was fired from an opposition controlled area however the u.s. and says the rebels are not capable of carrying out such tonks and france has already called on fools to be used if the reports prove to be true with the syrian government under pressure from washington and its allies. now roger cohen is groups are taking advantage of the region's. while washington says he has crippled al qaeda in afghanistan and pakistan wising from the ashes of the arab spring is new all different affiliated groups metastasizing in the middle east and africa feeling more and more comfortable in countries torn apart by terror in the north of syria in the territories presumably controlled by the rebels the al qaeda affiliated is planning to announce an islamic state terror is not the only way they're winning

support their exercising its soft power to somewhere between preaching terror here you see militants doing some ice cream diplomacy with children and al-qaeda sponsored ice cream contests for kids what could be more innocent all kind of mind it or affiliated groups feel very comfortable in the post revolution chaos of libya in iraq after a decade of civil war still stages terror on a regular basis in less than a week more than two thousand prisoners many of them all qaeda fighters have escaped from prisons in iraq libya and pakistan those were violent raids around the same time washington closed almost two dozen of its missions in the middle east and africa fearing some major terrorist attack and yet at the same time washington says this as a result of the enormous pressure we've put on the group we have eliminated all of al qaeda senior leadership in afghanistan and pakistan and because the current leaders leaders of al qaeda core so worried about their personal safety they're far

less able to plan attacks the question some. i ask is how can washington simultaneously be paranoid about the war on terror and be so dismissive of the threat of terror at the same time in different countries the us as we pitted we put the threat of terror on the back burner for some greater goal in of ghana's than the goal was to defeat the soviet union the us directly helped al qaeda and bin laden there in iraq the goal was to get rid of saddam hussein there was no al qaeda in iraq before the civil war broke out following the us invasion now in syria the greater goal is to remove assad from power too often helping al qaeda directly or indirectly become the tradeoff that the us was willing to make to achieve a greater goal whatever it was but having made the trade off the us would then spend decades fighting what it had spurred in washington i'm going to check out. al qaeda has been embracing the media to promote itself recently by launching an

online magazine even allegedly attempting to advertise itself via tweets and this month and account pool shrewdly belonging to the terrorist group asked its followers for p.r. ideas but the campaign was torn apart by trolls and security analyst jim social networks to count with mccain tweets and let's have a look one of them included a proposal to release and film and title dude where's my car and how they use advised to use more cancer and diabetes and there was also a suggestion to open a fast food chain called jones among other ideas was to. assign a bin laden's porn collection on e bay to old is trolling cause the account to be suspended of course but beyond the humor colin campbell who wrote exporting made in america democracy believes the us is paying the price for allowing al qaeda to exist in the first place. al qaeda is

merely an instrument that the united states has. developed. and facilitated censors origin's in afghanistan we funded the foreign mercenaries these jihadists are a security agency believe that they are so earth skill that they can manipulate these your heart as. to their own ends but it's a cynical paternalism than any other jihad and should be aware of because they see them as easily manipulable but as we saw with september eleventh to those along the attacks on the united states and other attacks that is not the case . isn't the supporters of the else of mohamed morsi a gathering for frontrunners across egypt after friday prayers on me and police forces are on standby in cairo in case violence breaks out the protests come

a day after the country's ex-president hosni mubarak was freed from prison and placed under house arrest in a military hospital mubarak is still just on trial for allegedly ordering the killings of protesters during the twenty eleven revolution belcher reports now from cairo. no no. this was the chant the united to his square and the nation of barak get out during two thousand and eleven january revolution millions called for thirty years of dictatorship to come to an end a year later with hosni mubarak on trial the nation was still hopeful for justice crowds called for the aged autocrat to be sentenced to death but now after several rounds of deadly street bias that led to two coups in just over two years to harir is empty. the military overseeing a second transitional period and the one time leader is out of prison and the

country is going to be unsafe because his release will only inflame the situation people are afraid that he might make a return as president people came to the streets in two thousand and eleven asking for the ouster of hosni mubarak and bread freedom and social justice but years later the situation in cross the country is a lot worse the daily street battles that broke egypt have left hundreds dead economy is in freefall tourism has dried up and sectarian violence is on the rice with the release of hosni mubarak from prison to many this is the final straw. in the release means to january revolution didn't happen and also didn't happen writes one by the revolution and the martyrs are now lost oh no no no court ordered the deposed leader be freed from this prison in cairo although he still faces a read. for his alleged involvement in the killing of protesters and will be kept under house arrest some feel the court system has let him down there are claims of vital evidence in the proceedings had been destroyed. and people are disappointed

in how the trial went they were hoping that the country would try harder and keep him behind bars but it's we're angry because we didn't want him to be out. activists who are planning new protests say freeing of the ex-president is another sign that the army backed government is trying to back the clock i feel that we haven't progressed at all right now mubarak's release is symbolic of where we are now in the revolution i mean we never really managed to change anything at the top and this is why this is just a perfect reflection of our inability to change anything really and this is why we have to keep going forward but with his release it seems to me like we have a lot of work to do. in the meantime the eighty five year old mubarak will stay in a minute she hospital to await his next court appearance which is likely to trigger more protests and that's the last thing the divided country needs right now. for

our kyra. iceland is thinking of dropping is bad for membership of the country's foreign ministry will consider dissolving the special commission which is working on the negotiations i feel in suspended talks ahead of parliamentary elections in january on the euro skeptic coalition that wish to power has never restarted the and for more let's not talk to ourselves while fell's economics professor at the university of iceland professor welcome to r.t. good to have you with us so when i used to be a supporter of iceland's e.u. membership yourself have you changed your mind since then. yeah in my early years i was a proponent of iceland integrating further into the european economy. which iceland did in one thousand nine hundred four when we signed bilateral agreement with the un to its member nations on free trade of goods services finance and movement of people. and at the current point in time and. the

outlook in europe is still quite dire it is. it is in my personal opinion perhaps a little bit too soon to take a further step into joining the e.u. right but on the other hand i've been turning away from the idea of joining by you but there's still been no final rejection why is that. well. at the heart of the issue is that iceland is a resource wealthy island in the middle of the north atlantic whereas the european union is a central european project to integrate these central european economies into. a single economic area through institutions like the common currency and the common market now. the issue is whether fitting iceland in these news can negotiate sions is like putting a square peg through a round hole and that is the. source of the.

what you call it the going backwards in the negotiations and and it's important to note that they have not up. they have not quit the negotiations they've just postponed them rights and what was iceland hoping to achieve actually wanted apply to you membership back in two thousand and nine. well even though the membership application had parliament majority it did not have much of georgia with the population or with the local business interests so. it was many many people view it as a knee jerk reaction to the financial to the financial crises that that iceland experienced and i was pushed forward by. especially the social democrats and the left wing the solution to rebuild iceland

institutions worse by applying to the you now as it has turned out with. in the they lost in that in the last elections. and spring and now those who are in power they do this vision of all of that do you always at the heart of rebuilding iceland the institutions. and the disputes over fishing quotas in particular has been the major stumbling block between iceland and the e.u. if that that's overcome well i think become interested again in joining the bloc. i think it's unlikely because what we see in the treatment of cyprus and the treatment of greece there is. very deep skepta mis get this is in iceland that the small island resource economy in the middle of the north atlantic will have anything to. to say and i central european allies like you can unionise.

right. fellas the economics professor at the university of iceland missed about how thank you very much indeed for being here with us at aussie thank you. and right after the break out whole towns and gulped drives have already broken to a century old records but levels that's too expected to rise to bring you all the latest from the lot straight from flood stricken far east russia and it's all coming up in just a few moments for you. do

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is see life from moscow welcome back a league german security documents have shown the country doesn't trust the new windows eight system fearing it provides the n.s.a. with remote axes that's according to one of the country's. newspapers although the german government denies it and earlier reports indicated the country was a major target for u.s. intelligence let's remind you how much data that is say collected there and it's been more active in germany and i say i mean than in any of the e.u. states targeting up to hoffa bilin data connections every month phone calls emails mobile phone messages and web chat logs all of that data eventually made its way to n.s.a. headquarters in washington apparently allows this as snowden's leaks indicates they work with the n.s.a. no questions asked and on a regular day up to thirty million german connections are watched that could double

during particularly busy times how much and how exactly is the average citizen affected by this older finds out. should the average person be concerned about their online information being stored by security services you can analyze a person's social graph as it's called so you will know with whom this prison is and contact with and you will be able to identify all the communications partners on a lot of the type of communications. and out in respect to events in germany the country's highest court ruled that storing data on citizens was unconstitutional however leaked documents show very close ties between the german b. n. d. and the n.s.a. with information on germans being passed from one to the other all in the name of security says the woman at the top. it's impossible to have security without inconveniences those involved in data protection say these inconveniences have now

gone too far and we had suspicions that such a scheme was in place but not the sheer the mere extent of these regular and and. unwarranted and disproportionate measures that are taking place taken place by foreign intelligence services and we definitely need limits and effective and transparent controls the major worry for the individual is that a system that we are told is there to protect society has been used to keep the indiscriminate what we do online this is to me is not working for law enforcement this is no our catching rock to us this is about taking all of our communication and allowing to identify our communication. it's fairly common practice for an employer to check out a prospective employee on social networks to find out more about who they are about to hire however the level of information gathered by security services is in

a different league entirely with this level of information you could see exactly who people. all in email on a regular basis see that's it doctor the employer may think this guy's going to have too many sick days and go elsewhere using information that's supposed to be confidential on social networking sites like facebook people freely give away information about themselves but long after you've clicked like on a web page or even search for something online that information follows you like a shadow they will know what you have been in the last three four or five years maybe what you have been interested in through all the time you might not even remember yourself would you have been looking on google but this is done we'll know peter all over r.t. early libertarian taxes congressman ron paul spoke to larry king on

a new episode of politicking and he shared his views on the real nature of democracy in the u.s. saying it's more about two parties competing and protecting people and their freedom and you can watch the interview in full later today at sixteen fetta jam t.v. but in the meantime here's a sneak peek. we don't have much of a democratic process left you know we go overseas saying you're going to be good democrats and you're going to have elections and if you don't elect the right guy we're not going to support them. at the same time you know the competition here getting on ballots and getting credibility and getting in debates it's really pretty difficult and the process continues you really don't ever see in the changes in washington and i think it's because basically the leadership of both parties in spite of all their arguing they argue over power i grant you that but they don't argue over the issues that i consider important

i. myself lies and continues to devastate the far east with more downpours expected and here's a look at just how big the flood zone actually is it's proles over three russian regions and to give you an idea it could fit the whole of france and germany and how they're up that have avoided flooding but many more have simply been and golfed about of the main city within the flood stricken area the same face his post called has more now on the die situation that. well water levels in some parts of this region have already broken records that have stood since the eight hundred seventy six hundred and forty two centimeters in the authorities say that at the moment the water stands out above seven meters and with the rain set to continue on the water levels continuing to rise we could push the eight metre mark which puts the city in real jeopardy now the problem is being caused by the more river which you can see behind me it's bust its banks and the real fear is now that it's going to trickle

in and start to submerge the city authorities are working around the clock to try and prevent that from happening you can see the sandbags behind me dams have been built but the problem is as the water levels continue to rise the dams need to rise with them so it's a twenty four seventh's around the clock job to try and reinforce the city around eight hundred fifty people have so far been evacuated from the city or to be asked to leave their property some of decided to stay some have decided to go those that have gone have been housed in temporary accommodation centers in places like schools and sports arenas and sports complexes the authorities say they can house around four thousand five hundred from the city at the moment although that figure is expected to rise to about ten thousand should the problem it deteriorates and two planes of humanitarian aid are also heading this way from moscow including things such as food drinking water and medicine president vladimir putin is heading this way early next week along with prime minister dmitri medvedev and they're

expected to assess the damage which at the moment is mainly the rural remote areas on the outskirts of the city where entire communities have been submerged and destroyed but the theory is with the water level still rising this city could be at risk in the problem could yet get a lot worse and also some other news stories from around the wild two deadly blasts . have aaa have killed twenty seven people according to authorities injuring three hundred fifty others want to belie is a wash because a baithak one last. has blood dissident cleric preachers it's not clear if he was unsigned minutes later a second blast hit friday prayers at a mosque in the middle district responsibility has yet to be claimed or that time. security forces have fired tear gas at protesting students in columbus capital who responded with homemade molotov cocktails the black cloud youths said to be part of the urban sectional the fog terror group the clashes come amid most of us ratios of

farmers miners and truckers over the country's dismal economic state. and coming at peace now discusses one of the world is prepared to the globalized middle class next time. they see geopolitics is a lot like a schoolyard and what obama snubbing a meeting with the president of russia to in theory punish him for the stone incident sounds kind of amateur that is the kind of stuff the girl you did when you're sixteen would do cancel a date just to show you how much your feelings are hurt let's not mistake this cancelled meeting with cutting off diplomatic relations which is the total

rejection of any form of discussion with another country which really sent a bold and possibly dangerous but a cold message but obama did was more like a minor annoyance he knows that he will talk to putin again in the near future i mean how are they not going to talk in the next g. eight summit what is he just going to have to hide behind merkel the whole time and hope it works out or ducked behind the shrimp cocktail whatever here's a russian accent one could argue that to appease republicans he had to do something to look strong after the student but this grandstanding just comes across a silly passing something like a new jackson verda commandment yeah that is how you could shows people that you're really mad even if your anger is irrational because stone pretty much did the right thing but that's just my opinion. as.