tensions run high in central kiev as thousands protest against the ukrainian president's decision to definitively reject an association agreement with the e.u. . tens of thousands are still protesting in ukrainian capital and hundreds of riot policemen are on the ground as well creating simmering tension. i began serious philosophical reservations about what the fed was doing and i decided to apologize to america as the black friday shopping in the us we look at where the wild buying spree of the federal reserve has landed the american economy. started. and nothing came out which was very frightening. great horrible a lot of fear. and if those side effects of fracking weren't enough communities

in texas and also had to cope with earthquakes which some blaming on the new method draining our top story. this is r t international live from moscow with twenty four hours a day. police have been deployed on independence square in the ukrainian capital where thousands have been besieging the parliament building. demonstrators are angry that the country's president refused to sign an association deal with the e.u. during an eastern bloc summit. in kiev. several hundred riot policemen arrived on the scene and created some tension they were here to literally cordon off the streets just to not let the people out on the street and now the traffic has been

suspended and people are protesting not only on the square but on the adjoining streets as well the biggest question right now obviously is how long this protest will last where they will result in any brawls and clashes we've already seen some pushing and shoving between the protesters and the police i even saw with my own eyes a smoke bomb detonated in front of the riot police but that is this far as it went so far nobody excluded that it might result in violence that might result in clashes in roles and also now the question is who will be leading these protests because the opposition leaders still not here probably that on the way back from vilnius where they also discussed the future of the euro station deal with the european politician well these are live pictures now from kiev which you can see him live on r.t. international from a news agency ruptly and you can see that massive crowds now gathering around the parliament building well earlier i spoke to a member of the u.k. independence party believes that these people don't really know what they're

running for that we have to compadres to process that big house way in the european union where you have to look at the protest being in greece why it's burning the european union flag and i think i think these people who are protesting propaganda i think the propaganda machine of the european union has still to down to these protesters actually if they really knew what was involved in joining the european union actually what it meant for that country i think would say a whole different thing as. well there is no agreement in vilnius e.u. leaders have failed in their fight to pull ukraine closer to europe on his pool scope was at the eastern partnership summit in the linea. if a moment of un power allowed access ukrainian president viktor young a cold which comes face to face with e.u. leaders for the first time since stalling on an historic trade deal the whole thing

caught on camera it's clear that kiev decision to hold proceedings has rankled e.u. leaders for years of negotiations yet to cultivate says the financial deal of alpha isn't large enough to prevent damage to ukraine's flaming economy the e.u. senses outside influence the fact that we have a strategic partnership with russia does not. dealing with another country we cannot accept any kind of party involvement in the bilateral relations these a matter of principle for the opinion and for all member states and it was very clearly stated this point yet oh so where does this leave the situation ukraine's proposals for trilateral talks with russia will reject it by the e.u. or brussels finances may not allow them to increase the offer to kiev causing stalemate so a you depart to vilnius contemplating what might have been despite courting president they simply seemed unable to offer him

a deal that was tempting enough scots vilnius lithuania the president of the euro commission touched on russia's proposal of joining talks on the deal and one financial analyst told r.t. that europe is just trying to divert attention from its own weaknesses. if the european union's leaders whether individually or collectively started to admitting to their shortcomings there'd be no end of problems wouldn't there i mean look at the european union massive run con employment throughout the course of the entire union we've got things like fifty percent plus of youth on employment in several mediterranean countries they have a euro currency project which is a fiasco built on sand by the sort of deluded technocrats who believe that they know the best thing for all people and therefore realistically the only thing the european union can try to do is keep blame storming anybody russia who cares because ultimately the european union that started and has rendered wonderful

supranational trade project is ultimately falling apart at the seams because it has become itself a crumbling soviet style empire which in many cases replicates some of the more ridiculous facets of the old soviet union. the first wave of anti fracking fury has gripped texas which has been struck by a series of small earthquakes some scientists blame the drilling for the tremors which caused no casualties but still left locals quite literally shaken when the latest three point six magnitude quake was the strongest in years and feel panic and some texan communities in the states are seeing a massive boom in fracking operations there as oil and gas corporations seek to tap into the most lucrative deposits well here i spoke with local resident sharon wilson who live near a fracking site but was forced to abandon. at one time i turned my tap on and

nothing came out which was very frightening the air was degraded horribly lots of air attacks trott's lie no i was just it completely changed the character the worst concern for me was to end up without water or that my son could end up being sick from the chemicals that he was being exposed to i lost eighty thousand dollars in property value as they expand this practice more and more people are harmed and more and more people join the opposition right now there is an entire neighborhood over five hundred pounds india where they are fracking very very close to two hundred fifty feet in some cases from people's backyards george butler has an activist who campaigns against fracking in the u.k. and he says the process is difficult to combat because of powerful because in london as the program starts emerging and they try and start holding these

companies to account what they'll find is like in both can for instance as a separate company called bull come with set up so those massive legal liabilities that might emerge in the future of actually impossible to link to the parent company called the resources. and managed by lord browne who is a member of the u.k. government and not just a member of the u.k. government advising on energy a member of the u.k. government gets to appoint people in every single other government department so when we look at the problem of fracking we see not just this immense threat to our local environment and to driving climate change wider but we also see the wider problem of how it is that these very powerful economic interests essentially dominating what should be democratic politics. staying with the u.s. the holiday shopping season has kicked off in america with some retailers breaking tradition by pushing their opening hours into thanksgiving night instead of waiting

for the official start of what has become known as a black friday and it's been exactly five years since the u.s. federal reserve began its own unprecedented shopping spree back in two thousand and eight it unveiled the largest stimulus package in u.s. history let's just see how it all panned out where banks were handing out just too many mortgages in this financial troubles plagued borrowers people couldn't simply repay the debt the u.s. federal reserve launched a massive program of bond purchases printing more cash and buying loans by pouring more money into the banks intended to help the average american by driving down the cost of credit so that more people could survive the financial meltdown but it turned out to be a bigger win for wall street than for the taxpayer of his murder one of those behind the fed's experiment to now sees it as a big mistake. black friday the day after thanksgiving is america's busiest shopping day of the year millions standing in lines for hours or even days before

stampeding into stores to snag door buster deals oddly enough the federal reserve bank has also used this pseudo holiday to launch its own on precedented spending spree otherwise known as want to t. that easy two thousand and eight presidential crisis the fed began buying up massive bonds to drive down the cost of credit and experiment pitched at helping main street as the program marks its five year anniversary the former fed official who helped spearhead the quantitative easing is publicly apologizing to all americans for the role he played his name is andrew who sar and he joins me now andrew what is so bad about quantitative easing that you felt you had to publicly apologize to the entire country i believe we had a very big wakeup call with the financial crisis five years ago we had a we realize we have this economy that was over we were lying on wall street where

the banks had become too big and too too concentrated for the larger economy and what i feel quality quantitative easing all to me has done is to reinforce. that structure in the u.s. economy and a lot of the benefits of q.e. have ultimately gone to the banks rather to to to main street america so if we see that over the course of five years those that have benefited from q e have been the richest people in the united states of the richest companies the richest banks in the majority of americans are not benefiting from this and why is still continuing the problem is. the the fed at this point is the only one doing something and so it feels like it keeps on the having to do something to help mild to my argument is what it's doing is it not only helping but it may actually be hurting for four more dramatically the u.s. economy. let's get more on this now from economist max for wolf joining us live from the states max surely there was no alternative it was

a good idea at the time for the fed reserve wasn't it no other choice. certainly we needed the federal reserve to respond and certainly there was a terrible moment there where literally the bottom was dropping out of both the u.s. and a significant portion of the world economy on the other hand the bailouts probably should have had strings attached they probably should have been fit and monetary policy done by the fed here would have had to go with fiscal policy tax and federal government spending policies and there we have a sort of strange dance between the white house and the congress which has basically refused its basic duty and left this giant problem for the fed has responded in ways many of which are not ideal talk about this problem where is the economy now as a result of all of this. certainly the economy is probably ahead of where it would be if the fed had nothing on the other hand the economy is still an economy missing seventy eight million jobs by the most conservative of possible estimates we've

said here with over seven percent unemployment five years into the downturn we've had absolutely no wage growth in the united states which means that ninety two to ninety three percent of americans who are working haven't seen their paychecks go up in many years now and unfortunately for them brands are more expensive gas is more expensive food is more expensive so we have a general public here the bottom eighty percent of which has been left behind in the crosshairs so you came up with a solution that they should have perhaps thought about five years ago what's the solution now what i mean obviously carrying on isn't a lot of easing but what should they be doing. sure there's a lot of things that could be different a lot of us thought about a lot of people thought about there's always a political constraints of the economic decision making that being said we needed to have down lower in the economic hierarchy targeted fiscal stimulus and we need to have a situation in the united states now where we raise taxes on high income earners lower taxes on low income earners spend more on infrastructure spend more on

education and stop leaving the federal reserve and monetary policy jobs best and only really appropriately done by fiscal policy of washington and that's a similar situation in the u.k. for example there are still a lot of people borrowing a lot of money despite the fact that interest rates are low some of those people still able to meet their credit payments if interest rates rise what happens next a similar situation to the u.k. as in the u.s. yeah i would the only thing i would disagree with you on is it's not a question of if interest rates rise it's a question of whether the interest rate rise the problem here is that the financial industry all this borrowed money is just a coping mechanism if the economy relies and people need to buy more than they can afford they borrow the difference the real economic problem is that people need and have to have choose to buy more than they can afford to either solve the problem or you have periodic coping mechanisms that introduce their new problems and eventually blow up themselves and that's unfortunately very much the story of the u.s. and the u.k. model you were talking about people what about governments i mean short it

basically the problem is not just in the u.s. but throughout the world money is being spent that simply doesn't exist where else are we getting such big debt problems in comparison to what we're seeing in the u.s. . absolutely look the federal government of the united states is running nearly trillion dollar deficits having run trillion plus one thousand billion dollars plus deficits for years part of the thing is the government's a very different situation the general public despite that everybody likes to analogize government said households a similar the government determines more or less how much income it raises by setting its tax rates the average citizen the average business is not in a situation where it could command everyone to pay them a certain amount of revenue or incomes the government sort of slightly different situation governments are mandating policies in other words they're deciding how much to tax and deciding how much to spend that don't align so you have a huge deficit and what that does is hyper accelerate the redistribution of wealth upward that's true in the u.s. and it's definitely true in the united kingdom as well max great to talk to you

thank you very much indeed for joining us live here and always good to hear your thoughts. this is the international live here most goes to the head feed the peacekeepers patrol the streets of britain. people are angry because a very small and i mean you don't see populated and people as you can see so terrace houses people living on top of each other with some anger about the flow of immigrants into the country some locals take matters into their own hands to try and bridge the divide the full story just a few minutes away here on altie international. early in the iraq and afghanistan war it was much easier to use a weapon and you always work with a ground crew i might be following a convoy if they came under attack i would work directly with the ground controller he would tell us where he needs help he would say you look up that arroyo we're taking fire from that arroyo and i would tell him what i'd see and then he would

clear me hot and the decision was on me for when to fire as the face of war changed those restrictions became greater and greater and greater we we could not lose weapons and towards the end of our occupation in iraq we were weapons tight it took an act of the president to say yes that somebody would be destroyed. u.k. is now home to almost two hundred thousand roma immigrants looking for jobs in cash many british or a greek because they believe few of the newcomers are ready to adapt to the rules

of their new home or the sarah first reports and how some locals have made an unconventional step to deal with the matter. wrapping up against the cold this team is setting off on one of their regular nightly migrant patrols organized by the pakistan community association their beat is this small neighborhood in sheffield in the north of england known as paige hall the trying to save a community tensions here i don't know there are tensions in the area and people are angry because it's a very small area very densely populated and people as you can see so terrace houses people living on top of each other it doesn't take us long to see what some members of the local community is so concerned about even on a monday night in winter large groups of roma men congregated on this small high street i did you see saw in our. seats over look around this mess you sensed that night most of the roma here from the back here and they're eager to tell us

that they don't want to cause any trouble for my friend you know my store up here people speaking just so to have them in horrible you know a pocket for a drawer you know problem here for two thousand and nine pm curfew has been put in place here under sixteen this curfew the police thanks coming back so they have what sort of significant presence in the area in let's have got a presence here from eight o'clock in the flame right the way through until i can i mean it's a very difficult thing to police the situation has gained national attention with some voicing concerns of a repeat of the race riots that blighted the north of the country to stave a decade ago it didn't concern me that it was going to happen what concerned me was how that would make very much population and the longstanding population feel that they're living in an area where tensions of perhaps not so hard either that might happen like all east citizens have the right to move freely throughout the european

union but so what is the most persecuted ethnic minority groups in europe the migrant patrol at. trying to aid integration here but with restrictions being removed next year allowing them remain years to enter the u.k. sparking wide public concern it won't just be the patrol keeping a careful watch on what plays out on the streets of this community so r.t. reporting from sheffield in the north of england the grand mufti of saudi arabia wants to protect the people from evil his eyes that means preventing women from getting behind the wheel of a car ahead online to find out more in this. bus a fully equipped cannabis factory in the u.k. designed as a shelter from nuclear strikes taken down by police now but you can read all about it at r.t. dot com. the most well known human rights activist in bahrain

has served three quarters of his two year prison term and is now legally eligible for release he was detained last year in july for organizing and taking part in illegal gatherings now this comes as a group of british and american rights lawyers take legal action to prevent a south korean firms supplying the bahraini authorities with over one point six million rounds of tear gas let's get more now from bill he's from bahrain watch. his free. it's hard to say i think probably the government will release him if and only if there are significant pressure from behind. the united states of the united kingdom. absence of that pressure i think the government was trying to come in prison in line with their campaign of trying to prevent any sort of dissent or create any sort of safe space for dissent will they get that pressure though. that's

that's definitely difficult to say i think you know certainly in the mainstream press and you know what's going on and you know in front of the scenes. we haven't really seen that pressure perhaps behind the scenes of the united states united kingdom might exert this pressure but it's really you know it's really hard to say what exactly is going to go on about this to gas issue they go condemn those use in abundance do you think think that your campaign which i understand is aiming to stop it will succeed in doing that. yes i think our campaign definitely has has a good chance of success so far what we've done is the campaign started when we beat the tender document from the ministry of interior and bahrain showing that they were planning on purchasing more than one point six million rounds of tear gas and of course this is more than behind the entire population of one point three million so the release of this kind of document kind of gave initial momentum to our campaign and ever since then we've been focusing on having protests putting

pressure on the korean d.a.p. a which is the export licensing authority there as well as the as well as the ministry of foreign affairs and we've been very fortunate that people in korea have taken up this cause with alongside us and we've had a protest a couple weeks ago with thirty one different korean n.g.o.s calling on the government to stop the shipment so i think the campaign definitely has a good chance of success and i'm optimistic what's your problem with using tear gas as crowd control it probably is more humane than other methods we've seen. so we have no problem and i don't think anyone really has any problem with the correct use of tear gas to disperse violent rioters what we've seen in bahrain though is exactly the opposite of this. and you can just look at this by looking at the sheer size of the tender one point six million tear gas canisters now we heard that the south korean company who's exporting this chemical corporation previously exported one point five million in two thousand and eleven two thousand and twelve and we

saw daily videos of nighttime bombardments of villages in behind with tear gas these are areas where there's no protests whatsoever going on the government just comes in and fires massive amounts of tear gas to punish citizens for expressing dissent or earlier protests so we're not seeing the use of tear gas in behind to disperse violent rioters as much as we're seeing it to punish as a weapon of collective punishment rather that that's our main problem and i think that's that's everyone's been problem with with the government's use of tear gas and as our statistics statistics that are been compiled by the physicians for human rights and n.g.o.s they can policy just that showing that thirty nine deaths in bahrain may be attributable to the government's use of tear gas what you will view and how the country should now solve this ongoing crisis. well it's definitely a difficult situation that's going on in bahrain i think the government can take some steps to solve the crisis first and foremost the government should release political prisoners that are that are in prisons for example in the bureau russia

is just one example there's there's dozens and dozens of others of political prisoners human rights leaders that are that are in prison and i think the release of these prisoners will definitely have a positive impact on the situation the government we've seen the government try to hold the so-called national dialogue with the opposition but you can't really have this dialogue when there's there's so many political prisoners and representatives of the opposition major players in the opposition in prison just briefly you did say that we don't hear much about what's going on in terms of pressure from the international community but perhaps it's a lot of pressure going on behind closed doors why is it not widely reported you and i are talking about it here naughty but not many other international news channels are talking about it just briefly want to. well i think there's there's definitely you know in terms of the issue of behind it not being covered by the news channels i think there's there's a lot of politics around the issue as well as you know there's

a lot of it's hard to find you know a good a good angle or a good angle on this i think you know with respect to western media like you know the c.n.n. the b.b.c. they do a bit of coverage but by and large the situation is not appealing to you know so there's no real appealing angle for them to cover i think in terms of you know balancing you know the u.s. position with you know the reality on the ground bill great to talk to you thank you very much indeed bill mozart from bahrain watch joining us live from the states thank you. time now for some other international news in our world update this hour police are trying to curb protests in several different parts of egypt's capital cairo security forces are using tear gas with the crowds responding with stones demonstrations followed days of similar walkouts in defiance of a new law which bans gatherings without government approval recent multiple arrests of activists including teenage girls have added fuel to public anger over the military's grip on power. a u.s. military commander has called the afghan president to apologize for

a recent drone strike which washington admits killed and wounded civilians a child was among those who died the death sparked outrage from afghanistan's government came during crunch talks in the security pact about outline the terms of america's military presence in the country beyond twenty or thirty. one years would be in the team and just over half an hour from the mean time just a couple of minutes away a former drone pilot tells about is killing missions abroad stay tuned for his story here on r.t. international. i hate to be a downer but i really think the olympics have lost all meaning in the past when there was the cold war it was like a battle between two ideologies taking place in the abstract at the one nine

hundred thirty six olympics nazi pseudo science their self-proclaimed superiority was put on trial for the whole world to see and it's quite the olympics having the majority of the countries on earth participating there now horribly horribly bland one could argue that they have become a great way for countries to show off their ex used to build up some infrastructure by think this is a big misconception let's look back to the two thousand a lympics in beijing yes china is really developed the last twenty years but the olympics really teach us anything about this country with a radically different political system or anything about their ancient culture or the way. they think of the way they live no nothing at all all we saw were some flags and some pandas that rather unique stadium which was mostly the work of a swiss company yeah i hate to say i think the olympic flame is kind of burnt out over the years although i have to admit that saying the torch in the space was kind of neat i think that when and if the world ever becomes an ideological battleground again and then the olympics will become worth watching but for now it's just generic sports from generic countries a generic stadiums but that's just my opinion.

delivered torch is on its epic journey to such a. one hundred twenty three days. through to the mother tongue two cities of russia. really fourteen thousand people or sixty thousand kilometers. in a record setting trip by land air sea and others face. olympic torch relay. on r t v dot com. all are welcome to set.