she was. off to. a christmas greeting with a message you'd never expect said snowden addresses t.v. viewers in britain warning much spying could damage the way the next generation thinks. there's still time for a cure. killings mass graves and thousands dead across the country. says it's question whether there's more to the rest than just an internal conflict. while the white house praises drone strikes as a pinpoint accurate terrorist weapon looks at the staggering number of civilian casualties the unmanned attacks of rate. leaves people there wondering whether the end justifies the means. i couldn't do anything at all

i think. i have no way i wish. to speak to some of those trying to keep a roof over their heads as banks push to reach some struggling families. to stuff the midnight here now so rick good morning for me in moscow this is the international top story christmas comes but once a year or so for those of you britain who may be cozied up in front of the t.v. to watch the queen's christmas speech it probably comes as no surprise that that wasn't the only message on the books an alternative address was delivered by a man who believes there's no reason to stick to the rules. as the story. christmas day here in the u.k. is a sacred tradition it's all about the christmas turkey the family gathering and of course getting around the telly to watch the queen's speech with your family this

year the queen was wishing brits a merry christmas she spoke about the birth of her grandson about the year's achievements bought channel for airing an alternative christmas message from n.s.a. whistleblower edward snowden who of course revealed the extent of mass government surveillance programs in the u.s. the u.k. and other western countries and he was speaking today all about privacy he said that george orwell's one thousand nine hundred eighty four was a real fairy tale compared to the reality that we're living with right now and he said that children born nowadays are really going to grow up with no concept of privacy whatsoever that all their thoughts are going to be recorded and analyzed which is pretty somber stuff for christmas day but he did end on a positive note saying that together the public can work for a better balance to end mass surveillance and the to remind governments that really

if they want to know what the public is thinking they should ask and it's cheaper than spying so the christmas message from channel four this alternative message has become somewhat of a tradition in itself it's been delivered in the past by the former iranian president ahmadinejad's by nine eleven survivors from new york by brigitte bardot margin lisa simpson and the idea behind it is really to provoke thoughts and to get people to question the status quo that little bit more channel four said that they chose edward snowden for this christmas message because of the extent of the revelations that he has brought to the public this year in the questions that he's raised around democratic societies so they can be hoping that they will have knowledge of us towards questioning that status quo that little bit more by having edward snowden talk to them about privacy today. the un is doubling the number of

peacekeepers in south sudan where violence has killed thousands in the past ten days the us too is sending marines closer to the country to help evacuate its citizens washington's been engaged in fact in the region since the one nine hundred seventy s. will join chevron discovered oil there it was also one of the biggest champions of south sudan's recent independence author of storage old hornet was a mediator in the sudanese war during the one nine hundred eighty s. explain to me why the us wanted another country on the world map. united states was basically the midwife for south sudanese independence united states in its real world posed to the khartoum government not least because it would seem as being anti israel and was perceived as being pro quo stonier not only that but there is oil in sudan and the oil in the south in this part out there going to war and then there is the china question the chinese oil company is deeply invested in south

sudan and for a way the chinese was also seen as a tool through which could be accomplished through independence assertion for south sudan chevron felt that it would be in their best interest if so sudan works as a seed because it would be easier to exploit the oil in a divided country as opposed to a united country that was a major reason driving the split do the math we're talking about hundreds of thousands of barrels produced in south sudan and with oil let's say roughly at one hundred dollars a barrel you can see that this is a pretty penny. still to come on the program a close friend of the a crate you know position is no longer welcome in the country the report on why former georgian president mikheil saakashvili ended up on no entry list and who else will be showing protesters in kiev in the near future plus to the fukushima catastrophe still causing huge shadow over the region with fears of fresh fish from the season around the plant to contaminated to

a. as you prepared to say farewell to twenty thirteen artie's looking at the key events that made the headlines of the past twelve months. these locals to be. braving the elements in order to stand on u.s. soil giants. this comes after a massive hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that summed up the gulag of our times. is an undeclared global battlefield in which a young man is just one of the front lines.

well this exam in the tribal zones of yemen a decade of america's drone warfare has left the population in fear of a strike any time anywhere on anyone this year a source of alien victims testify before the united states congress but their stories were waved away by the white house which insists the anti terrorist attacks are pinpoint accurate indeed in the latest since nope seventeen people were killed at a rural wedding ceremony in yemen on his lucy caffein off next to looks at the human price of america's war. it says no faith for the one who has no trust but both are now in short supply in this part of yemen for months the class has been without its mouth teacher and this pupil without his father this is the big show about a charity i didn't ask his name is still on the staff schedule but i leave hasn't been here since signing out of class on january twenty third the last of the the

final to be the father of three was killed by a u.s. drone alongside his twenty year old cousin salim a college student who drove them in a borrowed to yoda they picked up two strangers who turned out to be suspected al qaeda militants witnesses reported a whirring sound in the sky and missiles struck their car. the smell of death was everywhere some of the bodies were burned beyond recognition the rest were ripped to shreds and scattered all around. they found the part of so many men side the car the rest was outside but we only recognised him by a piece of his trousers. you couldn't tell who was who if they were even human it was sickening. one drone change the sleepy farming village for ever less than an hour's drive from yemen's capital lawn is far removed from al qaeda operations but without warning it was thrust into the war on terror. salim's mother shows me where her son used to sleep she can't bear to get rid of his things although she knows

she'll never return home. can't help us i didn't understand until the next day that an american drone killed my son why tell me may allah deprive them of their souls like they robbed us of our son he was the only one providing for this family all we have left now is our tears we only target al qaeda and its associated force and even then the use of drones is heavily can strike before any strike is taken there must. near certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured the highest standard we can set. out. except there was a deadly failure yemen's interior ministry confirms the cousins had no links to terrorism in a country where tribal ties surmount all the loss was felt far beyond the family the white house has never acknowledged the deaths let alone the strike but mohamed

shows me the evidence this is what kills them what's thought to be a fragment of a hellfire missile launched from a drone. the u.s. believes this is its best weapon against al qaeda although not officially out war in yemen the covert drone campaign has been dramatically ramped up here under president obama. yemen's al qaeda threat is real it's plotted attacks on international airliners and caused hundreds of deaths the cia described it as the most dangerous and active branch of the terrorist network. the defense is that drone strikes have seriously damaged his ability to plan attacks but critics here say it's doing the exact opposite it does not. contain the ghosts of the facts that may have contributed to the growth and expression of the at some point when i can slug enough powerful enough to be able to inflict

serious damage the u.s. war on terror has no borders often waged remotely with cruise missiles and drones it's an undeclared global battlefield in which yemen is just one of the front lines of fights against groups like al qaida in which ordinary civilians also end up paying a price. i ask obama to bring my dad back to life all the kids at school have their fathers but we don't reporting in ca law on in yemen i'm lucy catherine of. foreign policy analyst phyllis bennis told us the u.s. routinely turns a blind eye to international more wherever it stands in the way of the government's goals. there is no justification for killing children old people noncombatants there's no legal justification there's no moral justification the fact that these are the victims these are the actual of the crimes of u.s. drone strikes goes to the heart of what's wrong with drone strikes the idea that they are somehow surgically accurate is simply demolished that argument is

demolished by the amnesty international report by the initial report of the un special rapporteur the reality is that in the u.s. says we have determined that it is legal to use drone strikes in afghanistan to use drone strikes in pakistan where we are not at war the fact that it may be a violation of international law is simply dismissed as irrelevant international law in the united states unfortunately is too often only applied to other countries and not to ourselves it's not just the heavy civilian death toll of america's drone strikes abroad to pakistan people that can't even leave the area where the a manned aircraft are waging war a correspondent went to one region that's now walled off and so far the range for the u.s. military machine if you want to catch that one here again next hour. egypt's on the edge again and in a few moments we also whether branding the muslim brotherhood now as terrorists

officially could inflame the country's already delicate instability that more with me kevin owen here on r.t. international. journalists trying to release wiki leaks documents. more pro-american. peer. pressure. three blocks the way to information.

about interim government officially declared the muslim brotherhood now a terrorist organization authorities accuse the group of being behind choose the deadly bomb attack indeed on a police headquarters in the city of mansehra furthermore the issue let's go live to cairo and this she joins us on the line hi there thanks for being with us this morning they deny it but do you believe the muslim brotherhood would carry out such a terrorist attack. the muslim brotherhood have

already denied any involvement in that attack they issued a statement saying that they were not behind the attack and asking for an investigation so that perpetrators of the crime can be brought to justice however the fingers are being pointed at them again despite a jihadi group and sergeant roussillon claiming responsibility for the suicide car bombing so therefore what's the government trying to achieve by branding the muslim brotherhood as. could be more divisive than it is move absolutely well this is a new escalation in the long running feud between the security state and the muslim brotherhood what they're trying to achieve is to crush the islamist group

altogether and not to leave any room any space for that group to enter into political life again declaring the muslim brotherhood a terror group will mean criminalizing their activities criminalizing their financing and also criminalizing their membership their protests are already outlawed so this is a new escalation it's another repressive measure against them their leaders are already behind bars and thousands of their supporters languish in prisons. so a little stroke or your lead to it indeed. alters a lot of the supporters that are not in prison kind of ostracized to the muslim brotherhood out of big support now those supporters those population told their supporters attorney screw. absolutely they're not allowed to be members

anymore and if they've been given this chance to abandon the group and then be accepted into the mainstream society again. that is the proposal that the government is making but they seem more defined they never they've already called for protests on friday saying that the coup is the real terrorism here so i expect more violence more bloodshed and it's it's a vicious cycle so it starts a new year isn't it sure journalists are on the line from cairo there frank service much going on out. thank you kevin. ukraine has been thirty six foreigners including former georgian president mikheil saakashvili from entering the country those declared persona non grata or suspected of working with ukrainian opposition to destabilize the situation in the country

through the ongoing anti-government protests and she's very push kovar as more. well the most prominent person on the list is obviously former georgian president mikheil saakashvili a well known supporter of the so-called color revolutions he's already visited the independence square ones in december and there are allegedly another twenty nine georgians on the list among them is a man who is on the international wanted list for being behind the unrest that broke out during the protests in may two thousand and twelve in moscow besides georgians there are also european union and u.s. citizens who have been banned and crete to rain a ukrainian parliament member who initiated this move said that all these foreigners have been working with the opposition to destabilize the situation in the country however from what we know there aren't any high profile european or even american politicians whom we saw so many times in the end of independence

square in kiev and to name just some of them it's victoria nuland the u.s. deputy secretary of state who visited the protests twice and even hundred out some cookies to the protesters as a sign of support the e.u. diplomatic chief catherine ashton who helped talks both with the government and the opposition and even the u.s. hawks senator john mccain who is well known for supporting regime changes he was he had been to key of the so-called orange revolution a decade ago he was active during the arab spring in egypt and libya and he even let his support to the syrian rebels so far there's no evidence that any of them made it to the blacklist of visitors in ukraine and although the ukrainian authorities say the entry ban is temporary it seems to be already working as

several people have been turned down at the border. cover stories online to bring attention unhealthy food but not for the employees it seems darcey dot com got a story of why mcdonald's now pushing its workers to choose a salad instead of a burger and piracy for good on article called we tell you how an iconic heavy metal band plans dated from a legal song down those to fill their concert venues. the irish banks may have managed to shake off the burden of an e.u. bailout but what price for the man on the street homeless organizations there estimated sixteen families lose their homes each month in the capital dublin as artie's tester still finds out thousands more are still battling the banks to keep their homes into the new year. most people here remember the celtic tiger with this sense of known call it economic boom times or the mid ninety's up until two thousand and seven that went bust in no small way the young for the structure behind me would have been the offices of the anglo irish bank one of the struggling

banks that was effectively nationalized it was a stark reminder of the property boss to be back in crisis and the painful austerity that continues to today and for some irish families though there's also a daily reminder of the threat or reality of losing their homes we had a mortgage was very high on the value the property was falling below the mortgage so i ended up with a cash offer five hundred passengers in two thousand and eleven and i was delighted but the banks refused to accept the offer because it wasn't more which was eight hundred i climb with arrears so instead they preferred terms of course and repossessed the house while arlo may have officially exited its bailout it's still mired in debt and the end of september almost one in five home loans worth a total of twenty five billion euros were still not being fully repaid homeless organization focus arland estimates that sixteen families lose their homes each month in the capital the banks have had a catastrophic effect on data activity that aren't on business to paralyze the

entire nation they have failed to deal with the mortgage debt crisis but coming up with creative solutions we can measure how much the bailout has cost us in monetary terms we have never evaluation how much this is cost us in the motional and mental health terms i could barely push. one foot in front of the other because i just i just i couldn't sleep nights i couldn't think about things i get up at school run and then i go back to bed again and you know i guess i couldn't do anything at all or think i was this desk and i had no way out a new law was passed in december which would automatically discharge a person from bankruptcy after three years as opposed to the current twelve year term personal insolvency arrangements can also be made for those who want to just and other debt with this perhaps there's a glimmer of hope for people like julia i've got to back up for christmas you know . you know it's bad luck and the reason why i'm hoping to be bankrupt christmas is

that i can start again that we become what i was before does or sell your r t r l and if you will use a brief hundreds of opposition supporters a clash with police in thailand as they try to enter magistrate center for upcoming elections new polls will call for february after weeks of anti-government protest about a prime minister steps down the country's main opposition party promised more protests and said it would boycott the elections which the ruling parties widely predicted to win. the iraqi capital baghdad has been hipper twin blasts killed as many as thirty seven people injured scores more explosions targeted an outdoor market this time going to church as well as worshippers were leaving a christmas service we spoke to the president of the arab lawyers association in the u.k. he told me in fact the iraqi government is too preoccupied with an internal power struggle before that to deal with the sectarian strife. so you have money issues that you dictator in iraq and you have other politicians who want to remove them so that they can stay in this place and what is there is what's called the politics of

process which is really a sham it is not a real political process because you cannot have a political process when you are losing something like twenty thirty people a day this is a civil war the fault of the end of the day must lie with the government because the government any government anywhere has a duty to protect the people has a duty to protect the society has a duty to make the life of the ordinary people tolerable at least and this is what this government is failing. over one thousand people in fact lost their lives in violence this year in iraq it's been the deadliest in the country since two thousand and eight together with the investigative group iraq body count we launched project couple weeks ago to track all the deaths and attacks that ravaged the country it's very sobering read but if you want to catch it's not a dot com. it's

midnight twenty five twenty six here in moscow up next. it's the last of our wiki leaks road with the media stand if you're watching out international if you're in the u.k. they would have a special program for you i should return these going underground.

although i have gone duck hunting a few times i've never seen the duck dynasty t.v. show but gosh i heard about the scandal involving one of the stars of the show phil robertson who got suspended for making what many consider anti homo sexual comments in an interview this celebrity scandal is creating a lot of arguments about freedom of speech on social networks many people who believe that robertson deserved to be booted from the show for what he said argue that freedom of speech means that robertson can't be arrested by the government for what he said but the any t.v. channel has the right to fire whom they like the thing is that if this situation were reversed and robertson was fired for making pro l.g. p.t. statements then people who are currently defending any right to hire and fire as they please would all be bashing the t.v. channel for violating the star's freedom of speech think cry that firing him would violate his rights and i'm sure some websites would make him into a hero or demand a boycott a closing of the forever very few people actually believe in freedom of speech for all they just believe in freedom of speech for people who agree with them but that's just my opinion.

these locals are big chunks out here braving the elements in order to stand up to us oil giant chevron. this comes after a massive hunger strike that returned the world's attention to the place that some have jobs the gulag of our times. is an undeclared global battlefield in which a young man is just one of the front lines. now that he's got a job. for the us i think these these prisoners see very much even if you didn't spend

christmas for us on the troops this is the right place for proposing exploded or you're going to just these particular people we're working with who the fuck all that noise was was they didn't win anything. why would they work with these chemicals why would they not work with these kind of mold many of them for money yes and this needs to be said they do this for the money yeah but the i am why everybody has one thing well known what a liar it's why did you know that this year i am living for those who say that i was judging. and the man you are judging no not even a good thing this movie is judging that it's ok i'm just saying any should be we need to be concerned that we're not going around places saying we're better than you are because i've had this situation and i fucked off in years to that this is what i don't like you see this approach to the one where if you seem out of seeing

that you you go to two people you mean open their doors you start out with them this earlier we can extend then when they have with us as a strong reaction you're like strong reaction when the sediment comes the cables because they didn't only get to the first place it was no no you have to haul before you have you have water but then you get a slightly different opinion then you don't get that you only get the response they want to get is supposed to show in the audience what they will say about these things do you not think that it is an interesting question to see if media around the world will do this and he will and he when i'm still working on thing well that is an interesting question if it's an interesting question you know today or too scared to publish the way to go his argument in the morning with the riddle now or even if they say it is there are many other criteria witnesses tell you what walk walk or what criteria are used the argument. interest newsworthiness no no no you can write a script every news organization that has a website it has

a website developer who can discuss. like that and they get free hits in google. is very very it is very very profitable to publish cables because you don't have to write cable it's free stories. the point as far as i see it is that. there are boundaries to free speech as in the same way as there are boundaries to our thoughts into our language and. means between use to speak it is basically what we are dealing with and these boundaries they look differently in different countries but they are always exist in one way or another that is color sensors or conformism or self-censorship or whatever it may be and we have a very unique opportunity to actually just show where these boundaries are the.