to teach. spiking civilian casualties steer iraq towards tragic new records r.t. assesses the worrying numbers with an in-depth database of the this isn't cost of terror also. is not being. britain's spy chiefs point to terror threats to justify illegal tapping and that the public exposure of what they were doing opens up possibilities for attack meanwhile secure surfing gets a boost in the states. it's the small internet company that was coming up i'll introduce you. to be. standing up to the u.s. government in the name of privacy. is king of the world's tax havens.

tendencies in overseas territories who have long been considered among the worst offenders of of world tax saving the u.k.'s offshore banking industry is found to be the largest most secret in the world despite number ten tax evasion crusade. are you watching r t with me and three pharma. now there's been another stark reminder that iraq is far from reaching any kind of stability any time soon a further sixteen deaths at the hand of suicide bombers at an army base north of baghdad you could piece of now on how the deadly mix of sectarian bloodshed and terrorist attacks are destroying chances for peace and setting new records for

civilian casualties. a journalist from baghdad abdul razzaq has grown used to being in the center of events but never before did he become the story himself until one day he was driving to work when suddenly. i turned towards the two storey bridge and the car exploded and i became conscious only twelve days later finding my leg was amputated. he survived but was shocked again after finding out who was behind the attack my neighbor admitted being an al qaeda member since two thousand and seven he said killing it was a direct order he received that. this issue we should iraq has long gone beyond sixty hours because it has become clear iraq has become subjected to a war of genocide by terrorists targeting all spheres of life. last week mr maliki met with president obama and the two leaders agreed iraq was in urgent need of help but besides general statements nothing concrete came out like how to save people's

lives on the ground. anyone who walks in the streets at any moment may face a car bomb a motorcycle bomb or an explosive belt and any moment anyone may be killed and. it's ten or eleven years now that they're talking about the new security plan but nothing changes in the situation is only getting worse. and neither new checkpoints arrests and more constant operations seem to be enough to gain control it's nearly impossible to establish exactly how many civilians were killed in iraq since the u.s. led invasion in two thousand and three many became casualties during military operations including shootouts and a shelling some died due to a lack of healthcare and ruined infrastructure but what we're looking at now are deaths specifically from terror attacks this year alone and the figures well the figures speak for themselves you've got this kind of r.t. moscow well among the thousands killed this year september is that the. so far more

than twelve hundred lives lost according to the widely quoted audit iraq body count all adding to the total of over one hundred thousand violent civilian deaths that iraq's witnessed since the start of the u.s. led invasion in two thousand and three many military experts blame the armed intervention for al-qaeda is rapid rise around four thousand suicide bombers blew themselves up over the past decade. or today artie's launched its own online project to record the civilian deaths in iraq you dress at the bottom of your screen right now and we're compiling it in cooperation with the iraq body count dot org which is often seen as among the most reliable data bases in this area or smith spoke to one of its co-founders about how to make it as accurate as possible a prominent u.s. general said of the war in afghanistan we don't do body counts it's too hard they

said to get accurate information out of such chaos so others stepped in believing the human cost of war must be counted the iraq body count was born and according to the website's figures this year has been the deadliest. and eight how many co-found how many why this upsurge in violence more than seven thousand people have been killed this year well there's a variety of factors but one of the thoughts is that we tend to focus on because we're looking at the rise in the statistical rise and this is the cycle of violence one of the things that we've observed is that as the violence rises and more reason for the lines to rise red gets again due to reprisals and retaliation attacks on the same day as the boston bombing there were fifty five lives lost in iraq and three hundred people injured but we didn't hear anything. because it's just accepted as normal for iraq is this is that's what iraq is doing into this new form

of freedom the government head and in iraq seem very reluctant to publish any kind of civilian death toll it's embarrassing and it's obvious it doesn't paint a very good picture of iraq or their. handling and management of the violence in the country and government say it's just too difficult to get the figure but you seem to manage how do you do it will mostly information we get is from these sort of small news wire type reports in iraq and media reports and so on the really make the news that the norden news consumer would see in other words it takes a research effort to pull together all these small reports that come from different parts of the country and list what you would think of a small events you know someone being assassinated blown up in their cards or a year of carnage than iraq and if you want accurate information about what's going on just go to our website artie's during a special project with iraq body count going take a look from friday

a lot of deaths resulting from the u.s. led invasion are often overlooked as artie's been hearing from a former u.s. marine who's also a three year iraq veteran you might find some of the images we're about to show you disturbing. well a couple of the big facts that need to be known is just to kind of you know quantify the human tragedy that that was the second seizure of lucia anywhere between three thousand and six thousand civilians were killed the operation created about two hundred thousand refugees we destroyed two thirds of the city i mean really just like level it to the ground and this was a city with three hundred thousand inhabitants it wasn't a small city it was just massive massive destruction and incredible human suffering in there is really a strong possibility that the weapons that we use during the siege all the scientific research that has been done on this topic so far is suggesting that those weapons have created a public health crisis and foolish

a really serious public health crisis that is causing incredible rates of birth defects in children being born in cancer throughout the city incredibly high rates higher than higher than hiroshima after the atomic bombs even the american author of blood on our hands told us that his research shows the operation is simply devastated the nation. the invasion was not just some sort of mistake the invasion and occupation were a serious crime that was that was a crime of aggression and the un charter iraq is still suffering from the destruction of its regime and its government and society by the united states. the united states employ the classic divide and rule strategy pitting people of different sects against each other and inciting violence that is completely

unprecedented in that country and and now has. has installed a sect a sectarian based government and this is this is just a reign of terror and in that sense some of the worst aspects of the u.s. occupation are still continuing today. just to remind you r.t. now has a special online project with a timeline of the violence in iraq and the web address for that is on the bottom of your screen right now. still to come this hour there could finally be delighted the end of the tunnel in the global diplomatic wrangling over iran's nuclear projects as america's secretary of state sweeps into geneva to push talks towards a long awaited agreement we'll have more on that shortly. edward snowden's leaks have given al qaeda another hand that is the view of british

intelligence bosses they've undergone a public grilling for the first time after revelations emerged that london was working alongside washington in global wiretapping but their own says fail to make the picture any clearer as our u.k. correspondent sara firth reports. we'll take you to the juicy bits if you like because obviously this questioning coming at a very sensitive time on the back of the edward snowden revelations of mass surveillance now we heard a question put to the chief of t.c.h. he said in a lot of the quieter of the three i think it's fair to say throughout the entire session now he was asked why it was necessary to the majority to have intelligence gathered in the attempts to catch the minority that are doing wrong and he answered that with an analogy of a haystack so trying to find a needle in

a haystack essentially the d.c. boss said that much of their success lies in terrorists being unaware of what they do and he went on to say that as a direct consequence of the snowden revelations their task have been made more difficult now let's take a listen to that. effect of the media coverage brutal media coverage will make the job that we have far far harder for years to come the leaks from snowden have been very damaging the put our operations at risk is clear that our groceries are rubbing their hands with glee. is not bring it up but do you have any. information you can share with those as to how to hard evidence the terrorists or potential terrorists have been looking at these reports not in this public form the thing that's quite in the u.k. as historic but right at the start of that session we heard it being said that

witnesses wouldn't be asked to reveal anything secret but also a lot of the answers that we saw from the teeth especially from the d.c. h.q. had with financially thing look take it on trust we're not snoopers i think certain you're going to see this debate continuing. well we asked former m i five agent and imagine about whether she thinks snowden's leaks have opened terrorist ties to anything they didn't know before all the terrorist groups for the last four decades have known that they could be under surveillance and they take very good. techniques in order to make sure they're not surveyed many brazil are ready to put in the one thousand nine hundred ninety ninety three so the idea that they're using that as an excuse to drop all our personal details and turn this into a police state is just not feasible as a former spy i would say that the best way to protect your country is actually targeting investigations but then we have this dragnet signal would probably use more information through that endemic surveillance and we probably put ourselves at

greater risk by doing so and also by doing that as well we turn the country into a surveillance state meanwhile u.s. media is reporting that edward snowden used the log ins and passwords of his former n.s.a. coworkers to access the agency's classified information whistleblower who revealed the scope of america's illegal spying had insisted they were necessary for him to carry out his job as a computer systems administrator those who unwittingly gave out their credentials have been removed from their assignments snowden himself is currently in moscow where he was granted temporary asylum and currently works for a russian website that since our internet privacy can i long to be taken for granted r t s a man who says he's created an online way sis that is free from the eyes of america's big brother. we decided to open a data center and here we're taking an exclusive tour through one of the few data

companies standing up to the u.s. government in the name of privacy i think we do residential are very well pete ashdown is the owner of x. mission and independent internet service provider based in salt lake city utah this tower here handles most of our e-mail unlike most power players in silicon valley x. mission refuses to give the n.s.a. backdoor access to its networks since one thousand nine hundred ninety eight x. mission has rejected a judge in the us government for some more information stored on private servers like these we don't share our information about our customers if you don't have a warrant the majority of law enforcement requests ashtown says he's received and refused have been subpoenaed is lacking accountability and necessary approval by a judge this is actually an amiga since launching his company in one thousand nine hundred three ashdown says he's filled no more than two customer data requests from the federal government was more like where we bring in customers with

a small team of forty employees x. mission caters to thirty thousand customers who pay for a foundation services like internet connectivity server colocation and web or email hosting your. money. while you can only mean. has. been serving in. the current climate of america's unrestrained surveillance matrix has been facilitated in part by verizon and facebook and other giant corporations who have spent years secretly working with the n.s.a. regulation government contracts and. monetary. compensation are in my opinion the three read. and why they're cooperating ironically utah is probably the most unlikely home for a privacy champion roughly twenty seven miles away from x.

mission. is the n.s.a.'s newly constructed one point five billion dollar data center i think it's a stain on the tech industry of utah all the n.s.a. activities are a stain on american internet businesses because people don't trust to put their information stateside anymore ashdown has vowed to face jail time if that's what's needed to protect his customers from being monitored what surprises this fourth amendment advocate is that big data companies like google won't promise to do the same marina porton i r r t you tell. now japan is embarking on behind the most dangerous operation yet at the fukushima nuclear complex engineers are preparing to remove fuel rods from the site a risky process to which there is little alternative. and in a couple of minutes we assess what could go wrong and why.

what's happened is law enforcement and the national security agency has gone behind our collective backs and tried to accomplish this using the courts in secret and that's truly what the issue is a broken whatever trust and violated whatever trust we may have had and that's the real issue and they're going to have to earn that back the hard way. one of the wonderful moment a lot of these policies i think you know. the

pleasure to have you with us here now to you today. hello again engine is at the stricken fukushima nuclear power plant are preparing for the most risky operation yet the removal of fuel rods from the reactor complex more than a thousand highly has a selzer at the site in damaged cooling pools to stop them from leaking radiation our correspondent alexei yarosh was in the exclusion zone. extracting these rods from the balls is a really hard task because each one of them called ways of more than three hundred kilograms and they can not even hit each other that's would cause a nuclear chain reaction not only these pools are crippled but the machinery the

automated machinery doesn't work as well so every rod has to be extracted from the pool manually the typical company running the fukushima nuclear up process and the japanese government are now in a vicious cycle situation because on the one hand they need to remove these fuel rods they are contaminating the water as has been reported in the waters of the fukushima nuclear power plant and on the other hand of course this is a very risky venture because they have to literally extract every rod and there's more than a thousand of them and each lot has to be extracted manually we also managed to take a peek inside the no go zone in other areas and you know what what shocked me the most that surprised me the most and i'm saying that by my experiences of traveling to the explosions on ensure a normal that in the fukushima area the towns which are just close to the station ten fifteen kilometers away from the station they have been reopened for residents were literally saw people rebuilding their houses in this area in case anything happens these people would have to be relieved evacuated again and or putting themselves under very serious risk well in fact in the fukushima region itself

there are several n.g.o.s who are do not believe the government and the tepco organization in their measurements or the radiation levels the one which struck me the most and we talked with them yesterday the movement called the mothers of fukushima these are ordinary women who are afraid for the safety and health of their children the radiation meters which the cheapest of them costs around a thousand u.s. dollars and they are just patrolling the area staking their own measurements and sending them to the government but the government as they say is doing nothing it is not considering the radiation measurements as if they're trying to play down the scale of the things happening even in tokyo in front of the industrial ministry there is a peek at that there's a protest happening for already eight hundred days with the people there protesting against nuclear energy and. the actions of the government and the tepco so you can see how serious the rhetoric of the anti-nuclear movement is now in japan even though they say that their voices being often silenced by those that power me manju clia waste kevin camp says that if ted fails to remove the fuel rods correctly the

consequences could be disastrous. it's absurd that tokyo electric is in charge of the globally significant extraction of the fuel from the pool if something goes wrong this could be a global catastrophe that dwarfs what has happened at fukushima daiichi thus far tokyo electric has shown its true colors time and time again it's incompetence it's dishonesty even the director of the nuclear regulation authority of japan has warned that this process should not be rushed they should not try to force these assemblies out of their storage channels there is no radiological containment around the pool and if this waste were to catch on fire it could be ten times worse than chernobyl tokyo the metropolitan area is thirty million residents and they might have to be evacuated if that waste catches on fire so that that zone could become a dead zone for all time it already is and the evacuation zone should be much larger

than twelve point four miles in radius even now. to help you understand what is going on we've got detailed illustrations and an explanation of the fuel rods removal process and r.t. dot com together with the possible radioactive pitfalls if it fails but also on our website there's been an embarrassing cyber sting in singapore the anonymous activist group saying to the prime minister's website a day after he promised to hunt down anyone trying to infiltrate the state's information hubs those details online and head of its space walk on saturday get up to speed with the olympic torch is incredible relay so far and find out where it's heading next it's in the follow the flame section at r.t. dot com. great britain has won the norm two flattering title of king of the world's tax havens a new report says the u.k.'s overseas territories make up much of the world's

secret offshore banking industry and aside from making promises london hasn't done too much about it breaks down the report for us. the u.k. government has been bashing tax avoidance for months in fact prime minister david cameron made increasing tax transparency a key issue at the g eight summit that he hosted earlier this year but despite all the efforts according to a group cruelties of the tax justice network britain is the world's worst offender for financial secrecy twelve of its island dependencies where the queen is the head of state by the way ranked among the top fifty most secretive tax jurisdictions in the world the laws relating to these island dependencies such as the cayman islands been huge a jersey and guns they have to be approved in london so campaigners say that the onus is on westminster to clean up their act what to talk about the issue i'm joined by salmond shaheen who's the editor of the international tax review magazine

simon thank you for joining us well the people that deposit their money in these tax havens do it through entirely legal schemes so what's the fuss about anyway but i think it's a misconception to describe tax avoidance as legal it's just not illegal and the reason for that government has been unable to anticipate the be the schemes employed by multinational corporations and their highly paid armies of accountants and lawyers that they've they've sent across the world to reach out the best tax feels their claims that britain has made a lot of steps to improve transparency especially over recent months they've certainly spoken a lot about it are you surprised by these negative rankings i'm not surprised but no i mean the crown dependencies in overseas territories of have long been considered among the worst offenders of all of the world tax haven read what is surprising is that the british government not doing very much about it really needs to get its network of tax havens offshore in the in order some machine thank you

very much for joining us well reports that large corporations and super rich individuals have been dodging billion. of pounds in taxes three entirely legal loopholes have caused public outrage here so the news that britain has been labeled the world's ruler of tax havens is unlikely to be met by cheers of approval here. r.t. . let's have a quick look at some other news now a protest in los angeles against the wages paid by america's biggest retailer has led to more than fifty arrests wal-mart is one of the world's most valuable firms but its workers say the company is contributing to the united states growing income inequality most of those who took part in the action were union members and activists. members of two militias have clashed in the libyan capital killing at least one

person injuring eleven more the fighting started after dozens of men in pickup trucks some with anti aircraft guns surged into tripoli forcing people to run for cover it's believed to have been triggered by the death of the commander of one group during recent clashes there. thousands of to kurds have protested against plans to build a wall along to the southeastern border with syria the day long demonstration was forcefully broken up by police using tear gas and water cannon kurdish leaders say the barrier is being built to split them from syrian kurds. u.s. secretary of state john kerry has jetted into geneva to add his diplomatic weight to the second round of negotiations on iran's nuclear program it is a sign that talks are moving forward and that rumors of a deal to freeze iran's atomic production in return for easing sanctions is close to being sealed the director of the ploughshares fund which campaigns against

nuclear weapons says john kerry's involvement bodes well for a breakthrough. he will be going there to engage directly in the substance of the talks and to ensure that the momentum continues to take hold and that they do get to a negotiated settlement the international community through the international atomic energy agency is going to have to get on the ground going to have to see that the enrichment facilities that iran has are not operating as they have been going to ensure the stockpile of twenty percent enriched uranium something is done with that and that's what they're negotiating about there's a lot of details to this it's highly technical but those are the kinds of issues that they are discussing for the first time in years with the purpose of seriousness and honest negotiation that does appear to be bearing some momentum thanks for being with you today coming up next.

illegal immigration is a hot topic and everyone always says that immigrants do the work that no one wants to do well let me explain why that is i would occur just on vacation got into a taxi drawn by a former migrant worker who used to make a living in moscow he told me that he really worked hard driving unloading trucks after five years he came back home and bought a house yes from the seller that russians can't even survive and he was able to buy a house employers in russia in america say that locals don't want to work or demotivated well what a margaret worker on a salary that could build a bright future woman compared to a local who can't even make ends meet well you could see why the margaret workers are a lot more motivated let me put it to you this way if you knew that you had to work five hard years of some awful labor under awful conditions somewhere far away like brazil or germany what would be able to pay off

a house would you do it i think you would let's not buy into this myth that locals and country x. don't want to work they just don't want to work and complete futility for table scraps but that's just my opinion. to u.s. presidents elected to a second term in office and leave the white house successful or even popular bronc obama is the case in point his poll numbers are low his legislative agenda is in deep trouble and washington's friends and foes around the world do not taken seriously is obama already a lame duck president. a little come to sit there and go on.