the spanish. visit. the last few weeks have inflicted completely unnecessary damage on the u.s. government shutdown. and protesters and. police. at the government's new. budget. also this week. a huge spike in radiation levels. by thousands of times a day. behind the.

scenes but really this is a place that. they don't ever think about it. why they took. stories over the week here on it just in time for the weekly with me. welcome to the program it was. default for america this week just as the nation was about to run out of cash. last minute deal to reopen the government and push the debt ceiling even higher the whole world. watching the deadline drama worried it could

cause another type of global recession but the ending they got wasn't entirely good news as aunties and he said now explains. global market eyes were wide open while washington was shut waiting and bracing for impact. because that's not in households with a common more not an option to. but at the so-called eleventh hour congress struck a deal to deal with it later if that's what it is the agreement reopen the government and funds it until january fifteenth allowing the u.s. to continue borrowing in till february seventh america barely avoided defaulting on their almost seventeen trillion dollars in debt brand america took a beating here sixteen days of a government shutdown halted the capital to a standstill put hundreds of thousands of workers out of jobs and the world economy

on the verge of recession then surely the markets going we don't want to play that anybody more we're not usually you money at any price the scare sparked global reevaluation given the time and time again these political crisis appear in the us i think there would be more calls for sort of trying to reduce dependence in america in the same way as america has been trying to reduce dependency on the middle east for its oil ironically the shutdown didn't fave money it cost the us some twenty four billion dollars and credibility worldwide whether it's coming from the world bank whether the i.m.f. whether the leading bankers of the world or from china with now it's de americanization this was really a spectacle following a series of spectacles that has downgraded america's image worldwide. it's

a levels i've never seen. from say the scare was just a way to come in and save the day at the last minute up on the table this is the creation of a crisis atmosphere wall street and you know the one percent or corporate sponsors all of them they're not going to allow the meltdown of the international economy well they sure fooled me and millions of others congress now has some more time to come up with a long term budget solution before a new deadline comes rolling on the hill they will also have to deal with damage control both at home and abroad all while trying to solve a debt problem in just three months something they couldn't do in the years leading up to this sat down reporting from washington and he's now a party. two weeks of budget brinkmanship cost the u.s. leadership an awful lot of trust from voters before the long way to bill was passed we gauge the reaction from some of those on the other side of capitol hill it's

really frustrating for the american people and for myself to see you know our government be so inefficient it was pretty bad. have the shutdown was my job for a little bit. don't even want to go into the patheticness of. our government i think it's very sad we are the people this is for the people people are going to remember all this idiocy and food business during the shutdown i believe president obama had a plan that he was going to take and punish the american people but he went a little too far well as for president obama he put the blame for the lockdown squarely on the republicans he said squabbles in congress dealt an immense blow to the u.s. probably nothing is done more damage to america's credibility in the world are standing with other countries. than the spectacle that we've seen these past several weeks obama said the full scope of the damage is still unknown and

condemning what he called a self inflicted crisis. in the meantime u.s. debt is skyrocketing it rose a record three hundred and twenty eight billion dollars as soon as the deal to raise the ceiling was in place and there are just a few months left before the congress will have to face the same problems all over again. midway from the new economic foundation he says america's political system appears on able to do what needs to be done. it does look like a quite seriously dysfunctional political system and certainly most ordinary americans already view it it's quite seriously dysfunctional they tend judging by the opinion polls to blame the republicans in particular for this dysfunctionality but it's very obvious that you can't run the world's largest economy on the basis of lurching from crisis to crisis i mean this is this period we're going through now is itself the result of a temporary resolution to reaching a debt ceiling earlier this year back in may so yes it's a deeply deeply flawed political system and that will be registered and he's being

registered around the world you'd be find people less and less to treat u.s. treasury bills and the dollar itself as a safe haven somewhere that's guaranteed to be where you can put your money put your savings put your wealth and it will hold its value over time and here's one of the most dramatic moments of the crucial night time vote in congress the house transcriber right there unleashing a rant about god right before stunned lawmakers as you can see here she was forcibly removed from the chamber explaining later she was simply doing the will of the holy spirit let's turn our attention now to rome italy's economy ministry has been attacked by furious protesters good by the government's cost cutting drive thousands took to the streets denouncing the ongoing austerity measures for failing to dig the country out of recession our t.j. got a piskun off with. at some point during this mass protests rally which has been taking

place throughout the last two days really in central role. for young radical protesters started throwing eggs at the finance ministry and also throwing bottles sticks and these so-called thunder flashes or paper bombs as they're called here at the police who are providing security at the protest rally as a result several policemen were injured and we understand that arrests have also been made these rallies they've been going on for the past two days now and they are aims to protest against austerity measures and the heavy economic problems which italy is only going through according to different figures from fifty thousand to seventy thousand people took part in this event they are protesting against high taxes high youth unemployment and also one of the other sort of points of this protest was against plans to build a high speed train line between italy and france since they say that it's going to

be its construction is going to be harmful both to the environment and is going to be a threat to the health of the locals living in that area italy's going through the worst recession since the second world war youth unemployment is standing at just over forty percent and really these latest protests have been caused by the release . of state budgets which critics say doesn't really solve any problems and what we're seeing here now really reminds us that italy is still in law in the same line with other e.u. states like greece and portugal and actually for instance in portugal thousands have also taken to the streets also earlier on saturday also protesting against austerity measures. thanks for joining us here on our t.v. coming to you live from moscow as a record high radiation levels were detected around japan's fukushima nuclear plant on friday. water samples showed radioactive elements shooting up thousands of times

in just a day reaching the highest level since the meltdown of two thousand and eleven and this is just the latest in a long line of troubles the power plant has been struggling with its artie's now reports two and a half years to admit the painful truth japan needs help. we are wide open to receive the most advanced knowledge from overseas to contain the problem my country needs are knowledge and expertise the past few months have been marked by growing problems at fukushima several workers have been exposed to radiation the levels of which are reportedly at their highest since the accident in two thousand and eleven and on top of that there is the issue of leakage this is the reactor inside it is the reactor core the actual nuclear part of the plant this is water which is used to call the nuclear course or doesn't burst in flames that water obviously has to go somewhere so it goes into a special container where eradicated water is stored and then filtered this is the

ocean and the problem with the fukushima is that there is a leak so from there they read it water is flowing into the pacific ocean sadly russia has a lot of experience to offer when it comes to wiping up remnants of the nuclear catastrophe it has had its all and the last in a quarter of a century. one of the fukushima should be treated just like chernobyl as a record that must be retired and put into sarcophagus the problem with focus is that they can't decide whether they want to close it or to keep it going closing the plant doesn't seem to be an option for tepco the company operating the facility which many in japan blame for the failure to handle the fukushima crisis in fact tepco is pushing towards reopening it because she was lucky facility the world's largest nuclear power station it was shut down in two thousand and seven following reports of radioactive leaks after a powerful earthquake but the power giant seems undeterred by the prospect of

having to malfunctioning nuclear power station on its hands maybe hoping an international effort would solve both problems at the same time it in august go our team. and fukushima has problems go back two and a half years when a powerful earthquake and tsunami hit japan disabling the plant's cooling systems and causing a meltdown it took the government a year to admit that mistakes by the operating company code led to bizarre not actually the natural calamity itself several months later the company also admitted the crisis could have been avoided if indeed it had done his job a bit better this summer a leak was discovered at a storage tank for contaminated water and when tepco finally admitted to the spill it revealed that up to three hundred tons of radioactive water was making its way into the ocean every single day a nuclear power expert on old gunderson explain to us why that is so disturbing.

you know that this leech had something called strontium ninety in it. ninety is a bone seeker and it causes leukemia in huge quantities so now when he gets to the pacific ocean admitted leo it gets diluted in an even bigger pond of water but it's truly frightening that we're releasing strontium ninety into the pacific ocean. but we're also. going to send about the possible risks from natural disasters that are frequent in that part of the world is that even a slight earthquake could cause yet another catastrophe. they have a thousand tanks and they're all held together with plastic almost like you put on the swimming pool so if there's a moderate earthquake the plastic pipes will sail and all that material will run across the ground surface into the ocean and the facilities some sounds the four reactors that are most damaged are you know they had serious explosions internally

so it wouldn't take an earthquake as big as the one they had. two and a half years ago to potentially really do a lot of serious damage there they can always just a click over to our website for the latest updates on more analysis so on the fukushima crisis we've been closely following it and since the events struck that was just a couple of years ago extensive reports opinions eyewitness accounts all of that for you right now online at ati dot com. by quarter past the hour moscow time a lot more to come here on the programming calculating the actual death toll of the war in iraq it's proved less than simple a new study suggests that the real body count is much worse than anyone dares to admit their it out see we talk to one of the surveys or for those of us just to have.

we're not psyched to an active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced back in the months after announcing their strike never turned the world's attention to the place that some gulag of our time. is real journalism a thing of the past and much of the western world in the name of security challenging the official media message of the elites is often met with serious threats. blowers are damn in need to feel severe consequences what remains is a deafening echo chamber warning all to get in line or else.

thanks for joining us for the weekly here on out c it's a day a new report on the real death toll of the u.s. led war in iraq came out this week it's just that almost half a million people died as a result of violence in the country's poor infrastructure the study is based on speaking to randomly chosen iraqis. to date i'll be off one of the surveys all foods why many still underplay the human cost of the war. clearly. like in both the u.s. and u.k. . underestimates the number of people who died in iraq as a result of the war and that's been true for a long time and i think it's the result of a very specific deliberate. strategy on the parts of the coalition

forces to keep the public thinking that the death toll is low these were fairly rapidly unpopular decisions to to do this invasion and the less the public was able to track havoc that we were wreaking mongar they could sustain the end of the intervention without public outcry in the meantime iraqis are striving to survive through daily violence in a bit of sectarian divide part of the deadly legacy of the of the invasion in the first place thursday now the worst day this week with scattered attacks in baghdad and across the country killing at least seventy seven and amy hagopian also told us the deeper analysis of the war could reveal even more shocking facts. one major fly of the study is that households who experienced

a great deal of violence were very likely to leave the country and we are pretty sure we missed a lot of people who might have told us about deaths because those people have left so we think our count is actually low. this is r t as thousands rallied across the globe demanding a ban on shale drilling on saturday activists in over twenty countries came to send a message to governments over what they see as the danger of an environmental disaster in the making in canada protests held over the past week ended in violence and dozens of arrests activists from other countries joined in later for the anti fracking sentiment particularly strong across the u.s. on the other side of the atlantic europeans also campaigned as well a group called young friends of the earth gathered in london to highlight their worries about the younger generation that could be affected by fracking and one of the u.k. campaigners and he says the system will always put profit before the environment

but what you've got is a situation where they're going for ever more extreme forms of fossil fuel in a situation where we know recent reports from the on the school economics example show quite categorically that we need to be leaving two thirds of the known fossil fuel reserves in the ground if we're going to prevent catastrophic climate change but being the case over the last the last thing we need to be doing is looking for for more fossil fuels in the extreme for when the only reason that that's going ahead is because of the why the be all and gas industry has got their claws into governments across the world. when you go. to short term profit for from extreme fossil fuels whatever cost in terms of the long term environmental and social benefits of the people in the area this is r.t. allegations of abuse force feeding and a two hundred day hunger strike guantanamo bay prison is rarely out of the news now

r.t. has been granted special access to the infamous us jail but here's r.t. is an associate with her firsthand look across the fence. after a few months of people worked to get cleared to visit the base the trip to get mobile hop and a skip from the big apple to fort lauderdale in florida and from there were short hour and a half flight one largely kept under wraps with no indications of it on departure boards. the minute we landed were greeted by escorts who stay with us every step of our trip the special guantanamo joint task force media team. one of them sergeant rebecca wood far from the stereotypical face you might imagine working at a place like this controversial military base as we soon learned the first of many surprises this is a really big break for me in my career from my military resume the people i work with every day they they share the same idea like they're all very proud to be here she joined the u.s. military a decade ago with no money for college

a twenty eight one ton a most her second deployment you've heard about it like several movies but you don't really it is just a place that people forget about only they don't ever think about it getting to the main part of the base is a slow pace trip we have to wait for a ferry to take us across the bay and are taken to visit a beach first one of a handful of scenic locations you wouldn't really expect here we're headed to the logic area now it's about a twenty minute area right one side of the area where the airport is. several replies and says but the main part of the people and the detention camp are over there at a given its reputation guantanamo isn't quite what we anticipated as we approach the meeting area it's interesting to note that to be unsuspecting this place looks just like another tropical island with an american flag you would never feel that this is a place policy but a native state for us as the lodging area were taken to is like any typical hotel

with palm trees and a marine are right out the window first impression this can't be the place that has been casting a long shot. in america's human rights image for over a decade where torture allegations hunger strikes and force feeding have been making headlines i remember when i moved here i thought i would just see like people in orange jumpsuits and fences everywhere but i mean the families all stay on one side and the rest kind of happens on another the other side as where total of seven hundred seventy nine detainees of america's war on terror have been kept since two thousand and two a total of one hundred sixty four now remaining at a whopping eight hundred thousand taxpayer dollars. per year even though more than half of them have been cleared for release but we are in a remote location that factors into the cost it costs what it cost to do it right we're doing it right means to those running america's most infamous detention facility and what lays beyond the picture perfect scenery all the realities of guantanamo in our reports to follow and. cuba.

where the outside active camp at guantanamo where patients are forced that in the terms of their strike never turn the world's attention to the place that some. of our minds are let's go to paris here in our team to open up the world update now it's where hundreds of students rallied in support of a deported roma schoolgirl this comes just one by president francois hollande she could return to france but without her family the protesters surrounded by police marched through the city's main streets chanting slogans and waving banners at least one person arrested after trying to break through the ring of security officers. and there's a support for minority groups in the czech republic in the city of ostrava over

three hundred protesters demonstrated against the country's roma community there and they attempted to march towards a district heavily populated by the group but police stopped them with tear gas. and to washington for a commuter train slammed into a platform injuring at least eighty people in the capital born osiris it is yet to be determined why the locomotive failed to stop at the same railway station just last year fifty one were killed in a similar crash. now migrants in qatar working flat out to get the country ready for the two thousand and twenty two world cup for the foreign population there and in the neighboring united arab emirates is well beyond eighty percent and in kuwait around seven of the ten workers are migrants in oman and saudi arabia well it's about a thirty percent of the entire population means for the region as a whole almost a half of the total population come from somewhere else the artists are are silly i went to qatar to see how the immigrants there are fairing do we know to organize.

trended to fifth both car is cut. but the initial celebration and prestigious have been overshadowed by ford workers claims of maltreatment not getting paid and even that not being allowed to leave the country the international trade union confederation claims that about four thousand migrants could die before a football is kicked in two thousand and twenty two the worker becomes the property of the employer they are not allowed to leave the country they're not even allowed to leave the job and left the employer agrees this means that the workers have no real power no real voice to. fix up very very bad working and living conditions zire blueness knows this all too well a french football player who arrived in qatar in two thousand and seven he says he

hadn't been paid for more than two years he filed a lawsuit to claim on paid wages and says his club but then we fused to give him an exit visa unless he dropped the case. when i went to the tribunals i never imagined that i wouldn't be able to leave the country i didn't think they would block me my wife is depressed and she can't work i thought of going on hunger strike but my lawyers told me not to they already heard me and hunger strike would only hurt my wife and kids enough is enough. blueness is high profile story isn't the first either. doesn't change its ways i have the courage to say that in two thousand and twenty two we will have the world cup of shame the world cup of slavery bellew this in the meantime continues to hope his problems will soon be resolved i'll have to stop playing football they ended my career mentally i don't see myself playing and then i'll have to see what to do with my life. r.t.

. or thanks for joining us here on r.t. today i'm. up next. more on the default a near miss in america also a boy talking to an american businessman and financial expert in the world. the. economic downturn in the final. days of the deal sank night and the rest of the i think the case will be every week.

the welcome to worlds apart it's a quick fix for a long and increasingly intoxicating addiction the united states may have avoided a deep hole but it keeps dragging the world into an average deeper dad hold is it still possible to break this vicious cycle well to discuss that i'm now joined by an american investment broker and financial commentator peter schiff mr chef thank you very much for your time be i appreciate your being here now when i think about the kind of sick anomic relationship that the united states has with the rest of

the world it reminds me of a family with an addict somebody who used to be. a pretty good reliable guy but slowly but surely developed based addiction to foreign dad and this habit is definitely getting out of have and his behavior is getting more and more unpredictable and the rest of the family doesn't really know what to do with that because they consciously like that any longer but they can't leave him alone as well so he thinks this is an accurate metaphor i mean it's very close i mean it's almost like where the in-laws overstayed his welcome you know maybe he was a welcome house guest at one point but he stays around for a long time in eats all your food in the hogs the remote control you know and he doesn't clean clean up after of self i mean yeah i mean we have really almost a parasitic relationship i think at this point with the rest of the world with the world being the host and unfortunately america.