all the things that americans consume smoke use that to swear health some get the violent band hammer while others are completely tolerated if you ever talk to a hardcore marijuana smoker they'll tell you but dude we does better for you than beer and that's the eagle man and they kind of have a point i think there is this is one of those rare instances where a balance position isn't really a good idea well the country could go the libertarian route and let it be everything be legal let people make their own choices or do what i think would be much much better actually really bad all the things that are destructive to our health both of these paths have positive and negative effects but they are a lot better than our current plan of bands some harmful things for some reason and allow other harmful things because well they lobby better but that's just my opinion.

hello and welcome to sophie and co i'm sophie shevardnadze of the u.k. press says sunder a chat from two sides a pro base being held into alleged phone hacking and publishing the edward snowden so expensive revelations have led to barely disguised threats as the so-called fifth estate losing its power in britain. in the wake of the n.s.a. leaks the brits have learned that their intelligence services have been assisting us spies in europe. the press has been told they are irresponsible whistleblowers labeled as unreliable even traitors. partnership with the us is a key policy so how independent is the u.k. in its decisions. how far has power drifted across the atlantic.

and our guest today is lord charles baron powell of a waterer a deployment politician and businessman who served as a key foreign policy adviser to british prime minister margaret thatcher back in one thousand nine hundred eighty s. it's great to have you with us today so going to start with the latest news a new royal charter on press regulation has been introduced in britain most newspaper publishers in the u.k. see these as an attempt to control them and believe it's better for journalism for freedom of press and for the public what do you make of it. well you raise a very difficult topic that is quite clear that some of our board don't market popular newspapers to be breaking the rules for many years by bribing people to give them information by intercepting to the phone calls of many other things like that and there are some criminal trials for progress at the moment and they will decide whether people are guilty or not but it's quite clear that some of the bits of our press got completely out of have and only other hand there is

a very strong resistance in this country to anything which is like government control of the media and so a device has been found which is to set up an independent body which would monitor the media and stop it from the worst excesses of course the opponents of that scheme say this is just government regulation under a different name other people think it's not enough. through the stages to troy the new system and see if it works but there is a very strong resistance indeed of britain to anything which books like government control over the media well like you said you know maybe something like this was needed because the media was getting out of hand with all the phone tapping scandal that was really nothing that has nothing to do with the public interest but i read a statement from aspects person from the u.k. government's department of culture and it said i won't charge it will protect freedom of press whilst offering real redress when mistakes are made it does sound

like there are loopholes in this new legislation that really could be used to manipulate the press now. you know all legislation potentially has to pose in it we try very hard in parliament and i sit in the upper house of our part of the house of lords we scrutinize their position very carefully try to make sure they're old to pose but you could never completely exclude them i do think there's any real appetite in government to regulate the media not least because it would be a very difficult theobald much to fight an election if your opponent. in the election could say you've been trying to control the independent media i think you would lose a lot of public support for me it's pretty clear that government will be very cautious of the syria and won't want to be caught out well david cameron for example i mean he pretty much threatened the guardian or anyone else for that matter who wants to publish revelations like this from snowden could this new watchdog help him do that but i think you're talking about

a very different issue this is for the majority of the british media thirty opposed to what mr snowden that's dumb enough is of course to the release of what was supposed to be secret material which he had stowed away and that is you could rush or you believe in using state of goods whether in the media or you were ill so i think to say that you to equate that with control of the media is simply quite wrong the guardian have been warned to be very careful of what use they make of the student material and i think they have been quite responsible but know this it is clearly damage the interests of our national security of those of many other countries. people here object very strongly to that you were the support for mr snowden and his activities except about a small number of people on the left of british politics well since we're talking about snowden i'd like to talk about britain's role in n.s.a. spying everyone knows britain is america's number one partner it's always been like that but the question is how necessary and how moral is it so assisting united

states inspired europe including its allies. well i have to suppress a smile of being else that you want to do with russian television or russia generally or given the russian record of spying or deception of communications and so on we all know that in the modern world there is a great deal of monitoring of international communications a lot of it is directed to stopping and intercepting terrorist activities and i think that is legitimate and people people support that to my mind to the trouble is this that the technology has a run the political control exercised over it if the technology permits you to do something then on the whole people will do it unless they are specifically told not to do it and it's quite clear that we have perhaps gotten stuck to beyond what is necessary for dealing with international terrorism and international crime into areas where it is a question of. warranted intrusion into people's privacy that is

a problem we have admitted it to be dealt with very openly due course we will see a similar openness in these matters only on the russian side well i did take your remark about russian tapping with a grain of salt but with all due respect we are a fairly new democracy here compare as with britain and america i mean you guys are the beacons of democracy and transparency so for for the rest of the world it is even more surprising when it comes from someone like america and britain than from russia so the european delegation went to washington so i don't think i really don't think i don't think anybody was surprised by this i mean everyone has assumed for many years that all big countries are engaged in the intelligence activities whether it's a medical show or britain or china a little for a lot of others too to me the real problem has been the failure of certain people in very sensitive positions like heads of government in western europe not to

protect themselves the idea that heads of government think they could talk freely all the mobile telephones with. the risk of being intercepted whether by agencies of another state or even by by private enterprise is crazy most companies these days i speak as a businessman here most companies would take the mobile telephones or the i pads or they go to certain countries like china or russia for fear of interception and i think the responsibility lies very heavily on statesmen in europe and america to protect themselves and that is to me has been the the most glaring problem with this is that people are not taking sensible measures to protect themselves from interception and monitoring. you know many european countries who are in about a breakdown in trust what the u.s. what do you think it will also affect for their trust to britain i do think this is going to be a last thing to deal with and i think there are special reasons in germany. to be

rather sensitive for these issues given the history of naziism as litter the history of the stars in the former east german state and there are generations of german people who remember that bitter experience of their for rather a shock to be reminded of it and to find that some deception of communications has taken place but do i believe that it's going to result in some of the lasting breakdown or damage to relations between germany and the united states or between germany and britain no i don't but the evidence of that is clear today when you see that despite some speculation in the press negotiations about a trade agreement between europe and the united states are continuing so you know there were there won't be a loss to break down the trust the will be a problem which i believe will go away but what about the mood within the british public how do they view the fact that britain was behind the us to spy on everyone . i don't think there's any great mood in the british public the story doesn't

really run here the idea as much as it does in many other countries of the whole we've always accepted in this country that espionage is part of the nation's defenses. when it's carried out successfully it is something something to be rather proud of and i've noticed very much the same about attitude in the old soviet you it is these days in russia there's a certain pride at the successes of intelligence services that is really what dominates the mood here people see them fighting on behalf of our security our defenses they're happy to see that happen when you are right and that's how more c.c.t.v. cameras per capita at that anywhere else than anyone else in the world so that you have not surveillance it's nothing really new fort wainwright is the same concept just being expanded abroad. that we do have more c.c.t.v. cameras than in the world they were all installed during the time of republican

terrorism when there were frequent terrorist attacks of the very halt of london the best way to deal with those attacks and find the people responsible for them to the use of. surveillance cameras on the streets and they proved extremely successful they be very successful too in finding those who perpetrated. terrorism the extreme muesli available so they've served a very useful purpose there were protests and used to spy on him to subdue the vigils why should they be we are really interested in what people do in their private lives in this country all right thank you very much after the break you can be involved in syria and radical islam slipping into maintenance to care and doing enough to address the issue of stay with us.

arab nationalism from one end of the middle east to the other was the desire on the part of the bath party many arabs proposed this the national cohesion was not there and we're seeing that again in syria we're seeing that in iraq we're seeing that the fragmentation of these these movements these rebel movements are leading to the breakup rather than the unification of the arab world at least i never met a two state solution that's a three state solution you can't get hamas and fatah to work together let me say how what change could take place on expectedly. the prime minister netanyahu has been very bellicose about it starting a war with iran and the start of a war would probably bring on the israelis. is obviously more for the ladies because it's pink. women wanted to avoid rape

they really need to buy guns in america how to use them i'm. sure this is the one that i want to go with them once again it's the fear for women are definitely the target of the gun lobby and one you don't want to kill them not one that killing many but of so many with this with her. i'm noticing more and more and that's really scary marketing tactics which implies that women have some sort of moral obligation to protect their family and young girls shoot out here too so we do have a pink or. more kids young kids choke on food than are killed by firearms if being armed made us safer in america we should be the safest nation on earth were clearly not the safest.

welcome back to the show we're talking to a lower charles powell former hugh cave for a foreign policy adviser good to have you back. since we're talking about snowden and i just want to know your personal take on that do you admire likes of snowden and julian assange for their choices or are they traitors and trouble makers for you. traitors in trouble because the basically the what they're doing is they've stolen property and they are making use of that state of property and so i called anyway can do what they've done but. who can resist a system when system goes too far if not ok janelle whistleblowers but basically we look to poll the board to make sure and to our courts to make sure that the

intelligence services behave properly and that is what they do you may have noticed that the street heads of all three intelligence agencies were all summoned before paul but last week and questioned about some of their activities that i think is a very healthy democratic feature of the system and i'm sure you'll be seeing the same in the united states as the various senate and congressional committees question the heads of their agencies to try to make sure that they stay invariably within the law i would like to see that practice spread to other countries intuitive perhaps your country where i'm not sure i don't know about britain but i'm not sure that could actually happen in america because when obama was coming to power he was actually promising to cut down on surveillance but what he did was expand the program so no one really believes that that was going to that's going to be wrapped up anytime soon. well the programs have been extended to deal with the specific problem of extreme radical islamic terrorism that has been the purpose of stepping up intelligence efforts in recent years it is to defend our countries

against that and we have all suffered from it russia has suffered from it we've suffered from it in britain or the united states suffer from it too that is a legitimate target to have intelligence activities against people governments and our agencies are quite right to do that including the russian ones is when it goes beyond that to the survey to private individuals and private correspondence that one would have objections but i don't really believe that is going on as i said to would be a modern technology makes it possible to scoop up out of the atmosphere vast quantities of. but tiriel but no one pretends the cool to go all over the material to put just one or two indicators of people who are trying to plot terrorist activity is looking for needles in a haystack but the haystack is the vaults devoted to information which is out there so i think it's pretty discriminating in the sense that people not trying to interfere people's private lives just looking for this evidence of terrorism plans

for terrorism but you know after the boston bombing that argument kind of lost its purpose because you would think with all the access to social media that america's secret service has had they would actually detect that star not for others. would you do a particular restrictions do a ploy to america. it is just a bit in america to to spoil american citizens it's not surprising that once through the mit but we in this country have had considerable success in tracking. resolve it extremist sponsor terrorism through the surveillance methods which we have including c.c.t.v. cameras of occasionally it does that sort of besiegers and conversations coming out of the middle east so i don't see any objection to that sort of difference or to please to say that russia does it too and i hope we have some success in doing so i want to talk a bit about foreign policy which is sincere and pioneer in that field and syria is

an ongoing story why do you think the u.k. parliament refused to back a strike on syria was it cameron's weak argument or perhaps fear of getting itself into another war which could stoke islamic radicalization at home. i think it's a difficult question to answer with complete clarity i think there is an element that people feel off to the experiences of iraq and afghanistan that they don't want to see britain dragged into another conflict on the other had any of course a short time a year or two the british possible to do dorst the government's involvement in military action in libya so you can't say there's a clear cut definitive rejection of the idea of using british for surface ease i think the feeling was that the this time it wasn't entirely clear what the objectives of a military action would be that was not spelled out sufficiently for people to appreciate it the limited nature of the action proposed at the precise targets of the objectives in that situation and paul the moment which was recalled especially

to debate this issue perhaps took in my view is for the short sighted. attitude to the proposal on the other hand i have to say that even the possibility of the threat of military force kiddy in my mind clearly had the impression of increasing russian pressure of the syrian regime to get rid of its chemical weapons and the decision of the syrian regime to do so i think the syrians believed that they were about to be subjected to limited british attack on some of their facilities and it was this the two agreed to abolish the chemical weapons but do you believe the u.k. should be involved at all in syria either it's for supporting the rebels are an intervention. well the britain has a long history of engagement with the rest of the world but probably more international than almost any country i can think of we all members of the united nations security council we have responsibilities in that part of the world of the

same way as the others have members like russia from some charter in the u.s. so yes of course we should be involved to a degree because the united nations is involved and therefore its highest organ the security council must be. bald was the possibility whatsoever of british forces being engaged on the ground in syria mu. the one visits that this was the clear to the syrian regime there were limits you know which they really should go. on a different topic but also staying with radical islam this time slipping into britain just a couple of weeks ago we spoke to tom robinson the former leader of the english english defense league now despite all the criticism he gets a lot of his words about immigration and islamic radicalism appear to resonate with some parts of british society do you think the government is doing enough both to help the non brits adjust while protecting the interests of the wider population.

what did i think. of all the broad scale the answer to that is yes we have very substantial immigration to britain. and said so so does russia see all familiar with the problems too we need to even consider this country we need immigrants because they're good people they work hard they help our economy grow and as you may have read our population is set to grow very substantially of the next twenty years to the point where it will exceed that of germany because the german population is declining so immigrants are very important part of that equally immigrants do calls dhimmitude social problems in parts of the country where you get big immigrant groups congregating in this particular area the schools are dominated by immigrant children sometimes not speaking english social services and housing are dominated by the need to be because it's and that causes some quite natural tensions amongst the original british population you have to understand

that you have to work with it you have to avoid it try to contain those difficulties but i think most immigrants in this country it is extremely welcome i think back to the problems of the one nine hundred sixty s. and seventy's with the real demonstrations and worse than that race riots in this country that does not really help and that is a sign of the acceptance of immigrants or the way that immigrants are generally being very successfully integrated into our society but it is a problem i know no one could deny that it's a problem but the danger is that some groups of people will try to exploit that problem for the rather narrow political purposes and yes we have some extremist movements in this country very regrettably who use immigration as a means to increase social tensions. we have to avoid that we have to fight against it and we do. but when you bring up schools and you know parts england being

dominated by people who don't even speak english that only is the creates a lot of annoyance around what can be done to great step rift between the cultures . well the best thing is to proceed as quickly as possible with integration. the tradition has been successful in earlier generations of immigrants and they are regarded as absolutely full members of but your societies in the world these problems but sometimes with new immigrants those who are just arriving know all scholz from different societies for instance is the restrictions on you because from from some european union countries for the way the first problems particularly because when immigrants from europe come here they can sign only be it to our social benefits but people think that it's a bit unfair that they haven't been here before he just arrived and yet they're beginning to benefit already from the taxes we pay them for the benefits we give to people who are established a distance of this country and that's a good is a problem which is going to be managed and handled it will be our governments are

working very hard on that but when you look at the bigger picture it's not just a britain had that has to problems do you see the right right alone for you to see nationalists you know coming out and straits are you concerned about that at all and one sees the ones i'm concerned about that i can so devoted to russia to where we've seen thirteen million immigrants in russia since the early one nine hundred ninety s. we hear about politicians in russia to the stability of who who speak very very disparaging terms about immigrants and what should happen to them it's a it's a problem we have all of us and called them except those societies which virtually ban immigration of any sort of if you look. you've got five million even goods in to paddle you but many immigrants in china that is a way of dealing with it but even that is not a very attractive way to to deal with the problem simply to exclude them altogether but what it when you say we're going to deal with it how it how exactly do you deal

with it now not the boundaries are broken down within the european countries it's just so much easier to to travel i'm just coming back from france i mean people there and i grew up in paris you know and people there you know immigration has been a problem always but it's much more acute now than in ever was. i think this isn't it surely because the numbers of immigrants agree more people are coming into from north africa for that since it all cases particularly the immigration from east europe most of these two opinions we've had here have been wonderful people to have particularly from poto we've had hundreds of thousands of people from that they work very decent people they don't place much of a buzz and all the social services and so on that is that is very welcome others who would be entitled to come from rumania of dog area they're going to present a new problem we have to be honest about that but immigration doesn't come from just one source you know there are something like four hundred thousand people living in britain that is really quite a lot of course they do present

a new problems a tool they all but it will to be immigrants as well. thank you very much for the sum total and that's it for today we're talking to lord will paul used to work as a foreign policy adviser to the british prime minister margaret thatcher thanks but we go back on that we'll see you next time. if you've. got no opportunity where you did. you start to construct your own because. you don't want to be bad.

don't want to be gangsters you don't want to be drug dealers they don't want that but when the time. came to be with you can you see. just me rather than i was like in the. woods. well i said. i don't want to die i just really do not want to die young young a. clip on your. face.

a pleasure to have you with us here today i'm sure. the olympic torch is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through two thousand nine hundred two cities of russia. relayed by fourteen thousand people or sixty five thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. a limp torch relay. on r t r c dot com. photo on june sixteenth one thousand forty one we had

a graduation party at school and the war broke out. shops were always full of goods. in september leningrad was blocked. one day mom went and saw that all the shelves were empty. in november the. warehouses it was the main storage place for all the food in the city people are eating the earth because it had small traces of sugar in it i tried to eat it as well but i couldn't. just incredibly heavy bombing. it was a direct hit on that very shelter and everyone was buried underneath. all of the.

secret laboratory was to build a new most sophisticated robot which fortunately doesn't sound anything mission to teach music creation why it should care about humans and. this is why you should care only.

it's eleven pm you're moscow tonight taking on syria's toxic arsenal albania says no so now the search is on for a country to receive the weapons for destruction after damascus met its obligations to destroy all production facilities. also had lightning washington post whitewash a multi-billion dollar british inquiry into the roots of the iraqi invasion in case it reveals a few painful home truths between bush and blair don't. seem to succeed the result of murdering each other clashes with a militia group in the libyan capital leave more than twenty people dead as protesters in tripoli try to force out the gate seeking control of the oil legacy. an american food.