in headlines this wednesday astra zeneca has code. only used in europe as people refuse vaccination of effort to see concerns at the same time as the world health organization points to drastic shortages in poor an age. half a 1000000 american victims and counting yet no mass vaccination in sight and despite no real pandemic policy switch since president nonetheless u.s. media seem to love joe biden little changed approach. and. russia slams the u.s. for undermining free trade and fair competition after washington boasts about european companies pulling out of the nord stream to gas pipeline project in the face of american sanctions.

what i want to be asked to do moscow time either this 24th of february watching out international with me kevin 0 in for the next half an hour i hope as it take you through all those stories and so much more 1st than the head of the world health organization has warned rich countries against restricting covert vaccine supplies to developing nations many in the e.u. are refusing western shots over reports of poor ethical leaving significant numbers of news jobs is or europe correspondent. germany is facing a touch of cognitive dissonance when it comes to covert 19 vaccinations on the one hand politicians on the population are outraged at how slow the process of giving a vaccine to everyone in germany has been on the other hand vaccination centers like this one here in berlin at the old airport which only gives out the astra

zeneca job well they've been struggling to get people to take up the offer that some shots aligned unused because not enough people enrolling or just not turning up for their appointment this is an absurd and unbearable situation as of last friday only 10 percent of the vaccines available had been administered the astra zeneca job is only approved for use in under 60 five's in germany due to a lack of data on its effectiveness in older people it's being made available to health care staff but tales of reactions to the vaccine have seen some german states suspend its use. astra zeneca has been criticized because on the one hand it seems to be less effective than the messenger r.n.a. vaccines from beyond. and on the other hand there have been reports of vaccine reactions both must continue to be well monitored at this point in time however we want to vaccinate as many people as possible as quickly as possible therefore i

think it is justifiable to put people who refuse to regularly licensed vaccine like astra zeneca at the back of the vaccination order there's something quiet for share there how can we do it to vaccine and then find out a couple weeks months later that it's maybe not as efficient as it was as it was promised i think this shows that the way the european union has been managing this whole vaccine campaign it was not only by the professionals that were supposed to be making decisions in the 1st place i think this is something which is wrong and now it's backfiring of course we see a very small. of western europeans getting the vaccine and now we've got very big doubts on some of this vaccine manufacturers big pharma. angle of merkel spokes person even had to put out a post on social media encouraging people to take the astra zeneca vaccine because there's a worry that the doses germany has could end up going to waste astra zeneca succeed

and that it prevents many infections and protects against serious illnesses vaccination can see. france has found itself in a similar position to germany when it comes to its citizens being unsure about the astra zeneca jab a general lack of vaccines across the european union added to growing fears about their safety i mean the 2 biggest eurozone economies germany and france are vaccinated just 6 percent of their populations but the head of the world health organization wants rich countries to check before ordering more shots and made diet shortages in developing nations if there are no vaccines to buy moneys irrelevant currently some high income countries are into contracts with vaccine manufacturers that are undermine the deals that call vioxx hours in police and reduce the number of those this box come by. we've already millions and millions of

jobs and we don't even know if these vaccines are safe and now that we've got these vaccines people don't want them so what do we do with them and there's no plan b. of course if some kind of trees feel safe with these vaccines and they want them to do that you should should have them or sell them or or get it to do that to the poor countries who can't have vaccines staying in it in. some or some cold spots because there's refrigerated areas around the earth but again before giving that out we have to go after medical process and think are they safe or no and if there are some vaccines out there which are not safe this should not only not be given to the european union but they should be given to the 3rd will be there i mean we're not going to get i was you know i don't see vaccines because they're not up to our standards this would be this is phrases with title while e.u. nations the did the ring over whether or not to get one of the main vaccines that are on offer poorer nations are running the risk of having no doses of any vaccine

at all peter all of berlin. talked about the uptake of astra zeneca with the director of health and care of the international federation of the red cross and red crescent emanuel coper bianca told me the consequences of not using all available doses a dire in his view. it leaves a nasty call that we have hundreds of thousands of those effective and safe vaccine lines and used in the european countries when we have many elves workers in the developing countries that are not getting any vaccine these are not only unethical it's extremely sad because every vaccine that is not injected in the arm of a person is a potential death due to. 1000 so we really need to accelerate the distribution of vaccines and to do that one of the critical point in europe has been information and mistrust in not only in europe we have

a lot of vaccine is around the world and i think there is a lot of work to be done to make sure that people understand that getting a vaccine that has a 60 percent efficacy rate is a great deal everybody should be going for that vaccine as long as the vaccine is safe because we demonstrate if it will actually do so there's no reason why those people should be declaring and not taking a vaccine they're putting themselves and their communities at risk besides creating problems for the rest of the world. in america joe biden's all the all flags on federal property to be lowered to half mast to mark 500000 u.s. deaths from coronavirus. reports next media glowing in their praise for the president's covert approach at the moment despite little apparent difference from the previous administration america's death toll from covert 19 is now more than a half a 1000000 that's more than world war 2 and vietnam combined biden marked the occasion

with a solemn ceremony at the white house on monday more lives lost this virus and any other nation on earth. with this rig known as the scale of the death in america remember each person the life they lived on the campaign trail biden castigated donald trump for his mishandling of the pandemic he promised that when he got into office he would turn things around he seems to have tempered expectations a bit as back in january he said he was powerless to change the trajectory of coded 19 and his anti coded defense has one key aspect where maleness everyone be mandated to wear a mask mask mandates mask mask the planet earth mass for god's sake. word mask if not for yourself for your loved ones well masks are proven to stop the spread of coded but is that it he's got the same advisor that trump had dr felt she

now says will probably be wearing masks until 2022 do you think americans will still be wearing masks for example in 2022. you know i think it is possible that that's the case many hope that under biden massive vaccinations might save the day but so far it does not look that way the next few months masks. are the best defense against kuvin 90 biden even visited a farm a facility to show he's got a handle on things however he says that vaccines won't be available to everyone until mid-summer we're now on track to have enough vaccine supply for all of our work by the end of july seems like the amount of time that donald trump that it took the chubby ministration to develop this vaccine which is record time now the by the ministration ses says that will take just as much time in order to have enough doses biden has had since november to start planning his approach to quit

what did he do what did he spend november december january doing well he had a stack of executive orders waiting on his desk to sign it seems bizarre because we know that there are millions upon millions of doses already out there perhaps he's just lowering expectations now you might think that mainstream media would now lash out on biden just like they did on his predecessor dear remember when all the covert deaths were being blamed on donald trump but think again we see with president biden he's demonstrated to the country what a difference. the change of presidents has made president biden is confronting this enormous loss directly and publicly help americans heal on any front that something good so biden is uniquely qualified to do resident joe biden giving america a message tonight them and one i think that only this president president could give not the former one seems that joe biden is being judged by

a different set of standards deaths are rising but he is not catching any flak oh well i guess we should all just get used to wearing masks for another year the major media isn't demanding the rollout be so. because there are guys in office this is a media that said a vaccine would be impossible to get out 1 in 2020 and made that happen and instead of the media focusing on what's happening with the by the ministration and the vaccinations instead we're seeing stories about joe biden's dog and we're seeing stories about him playing video games with his grandchildren if donald trump was playing video games with his grandchildren at camp david it would be a national scandal 'd and they would say he has graham was blood on his hands of course and joe biden's president he can play video games with his grandchildren at camp david and say that it's going to be till the end of july and we have another vaccinations for the president united states make it happen that's what plenty of americans are asking but of course some media is now asking that because it's their

guy and they're going to protect him and they're going to do their brand of meat bad journalism and it's all going to be fluff and softball and human interest stories for the next you know 3 and a half years. away from the. one account of this victim the stigma with the disease stopping money from reporting that they could be infected surprising to him but this is a story crunk received hundreds of death threats through it was revealed that the virus. a lot of people are so worried about having kobe not because of it's going to harm them but it's because they're worried of what the the population around them will think when you shame somebody and when you have this big stigma on people for having called it a lot of people who are sick you know that might have a sniffle or a sore throat or something they don't bother going to get tested because they they feel like they're going to be shamed so or shunned and so

a lot of people end up hiding their symptoms that's an issue because then you're not getting a true number on cases and and you know you have people going around spreading the virus not knowingly the they have the virus because they're too worried about what people might think that they have the virus but it goes on to say began getting hundreds of death threats a day of the big infected in october with people blaming him on social media for subsequent public restrictions the abuse even forced him to move to the other side of that country. people attacked me for no reason in new brunswick that's my hometown that's where i'm from there's a video that was on october 31st of me saying that i can taste or smell anything and the backgrounds reckon i do you tube video on this so that you know creates allergies where i can't taste her might you know my nose gets blocked up and and that's what i was relaying it to and that's why the 2nd day i booked a task like wait it's still there you know it could be covert i pulled out of the state so i'm just going to double check i'm pretty sure it's not because my spouse days prior tested negative for $191.00 of the guys i was on the trip with who came

home early from calgary he tested also negative for over $1000.00 which he actually had symptoms so i was like ok there's probably a very slim chance that i have. and when i was travelling from calgary back to new brunswick i was considered an essential worker so we were wired isolated and i didn't have symptoms at that time my symptoms didn't come to 31st and i was coming back to new brunswick on the 24th of october. moskos question the u.s. commitment to free trade after washington bragged that more than a dozen companies have quit russia's nord stream to gas pipeline project after american threats the us state department has acknowledged that america is undermining the principles of free trade and competition subjugating market laws to its own geopolitical interests and acting in spite of the will of sovereign nations . it is a correspondent who goes down off with more on the growing scandal around the u.s.

response. from the very outset the u.s. has been hell burned on do you really ignored stream to me so this time the u.s. state department has compiled and submitted a report to u.s. congress kind of detailing the measures they have taken so far in this direction and how effective these measures have been this report by the way also comes at a very sensitive timing because the biden administration has been accused of world inaction of not being keen enough on preventing nordstrom too from coming to fruition this report is not yet available to the public but ned price the spokesman for the u.s. state department has revealed or that some 800 companies european companies have decided to pull out of nordstrom to a med u.s. pressure and when i say pressure i mean sanctions so far the united states have been sanctioning the russians while the e.u. firms have remained sort of in the clear but that's only so far this constant

threat of sanctions coming from washington while it has always been and is still hanging over european firms so well 18 of them have decided that better safe than sorry and while they decided to cut ties with the project now when it comes to russia moscow has always been saying that the north that north stream too has nothing to do with with the united states that it is strictly a matter of relations between russia and europe and germany in particular because that's where the pipeline is going and all these efforts that the u.s. has been taking russia views it as world geopolitical warfare but there's an added layer of irony to this story because remember how they said that 18 companies have decided to cut ties with nordstrom to the right and the way this information was delivered to the media by price the spokesman for the state department one might you might be. misled into thinking that all of that was achieved under the biden

administration which turns out is not the case and it only came to light when price was confronted by a peace matley over the issue of how to listen our strategy including the legislative strategy of the strategy of course congress is has been behind has been working to good effect the plane credit for the companies winding down all of this work was done of the previous administration and out of all the been months mabena only been in office a month right are you telling me that in the last i am well weeks these 18 thought that he is all of a sudden as always you know you better not done anything with i am speaking for all those. guys are taking credit for stuff that the man said ministry i am not oh i do something for the department of state ok the people who have been working this ok are the people who are working this now or the same people a month ago or the same people 3 months ago 3 months ago. go go he takes no

prisoners there's a still ahead here and it's international with me kevin owen we're talking about this us democrats doubling down on efforts to gag conservative media than seems they want digital t.v. providers to reconsider their contracts with the right wing networks to head. it's a article of faith russian liberals think not like. up until now russian liberals have been chanted with the western so-called western values twister's ideological because it is changing its focus of disparages tradition patriotism the family and even logic like the russian liberals this appears to be going too far are russian liberals falling out of love with the west.

and almost seems wrong why don't we all just don't call. me. yet to stamp out disdain comes to educate and engagement equals betrayal. when something find themselves worlds apart we choose to look for common ground. developing stroy to get across now human rights group amnesty international it seems it's changed its mind over describing election of ali as a prisoner of conscience with a jailed russian opposition figure making disparaging remarks about shooting ethnic

minorities and comparing them to tone code as across this song the so there's been a change of mind why take us through it while kevin it was 1st through an e-mail we saw on twitter that we heard of amnesty international's decision to revoke russian opposition activist alec saying of all the status as a prisoner of conscience we did contact amnesty to confirm the move and they did get back to us so let's take a listen to what they said in response. amnesty international is no longer able to consider the lexan of only a prisoner of conscience given the fact that he advocated violence and discrimination and he has not retracted such statements and it's interesting that amnesty international labeled the volley a prisoner of conscience in the 1st place back in january because he doesn't exactly have the cleanest track record when it comes to conscientious acts just last week a moscow court gave the man a nearly 12000 dollar fine for calling a 94 year old war veteran of the 2nd world war a traitor he's also never made

a secret of the fact that he believes russia should quote stop feeding the caucuses this is a region that provides russia with a large number of its immigrant population and he's also been catching a lot of flack for a video he made several years ago comparing people from that region to cockroaches . and what if the cockroach is too big and the fly is too aggressive. well in this case i recommend the gun. you could still find that video by the way it's actually still on alex saying of all these you tube channel something obviously he never seems he never deemed fit to clean up but that's probably one of the reasons why amnesty international revoked this status of prisoner of conscience from alex saying of all me but the organization still considers it considers the idea that this is some anti corruption fighter alex a volley sitting in jail because he simply criticized

a lot of their putin big big bad vladimir putin not because he violated a probationary sentence that was leveled against him in 2014 for embezzling money from a french company amnesty statement also doesn't mention the fact that the volley had violated his probation over 50 times before the recently without any read it without receiving any consequences so when it comes to the facts surrounding who alex cena volley really is it seems the human rights organization. isn't taking everything to account yeah a lot of what you think about the valley that video is peculiar isn't they are out on thanks for thanks for taking us through that now us democrat congress members of up the pressure on top digital and cable networks by asking them to justify their hosting of conservative t.v. channels like fox news lawmakers letter to the head of one provider accuses him 2 of spreading covert misinformation and promoting last month's capitol hill riots by working with those right wing station some purported news outlets of longer

misinformation rumor mill some conspiracy theory hot birds that produce content that leads to real harm yet to our knowledge the cable satellite and over the top companies that disseminate these media outlets to american viewers have done nothing in response to the misinformation by these outlets no surprise that their republican representatives are up in arms saying the move politically motivated assault on the freedom of expression end of the day the democrats are sending a message that is as clear as it is troubling these regulated entities will pay a price if the targeted newsrooms do not conform to democrats preferred political narratives this is a chilling transgression of the free speech rights that every media outlet in this country enjoys and someone else just has worked up about it legal and media analyst lionel who didn't mince his words branding the democrats moves a disturbing threat to constitutional values. since when is this

a country certain like. what if they see something that throwing to live with it on there's always something wrong who says it's wrong who says it's misinformation the next time you are a spouse or a partner or a lover or relative if they say listen i want to talk to you is he not i don't want to talk to you why because you spout misinformation when you listen to that so why the name of god do we put up with this nonsense we are looking at it complete and total disintegration of the 1st amendment and freedom of speech because now we're saying oh no no no we want you to speak we just don't want to hear misinformation disinformation dad information conspiracy theories unfounded who decides that since when is that

a disqualifier of the dissemination of information my gosh i'm telling you right now you're not going to believe this but help bet you somewhere some place somebody might think that what you and i are saying is descend from asian so what do we do shut us down if you don't like it go someplace else or clarify it this is the most frightening i have ever seen ever. something right now before a go one of the show these pictures it's sad and if you're aware of the story israel shut its beaches of an oil spill it's been described as one of most disastrous in the country's history experts are still assessing the damage but they worry it's going to take decades to clean up.

it's the 1st by the state of israel. dealing with it the petition to get money if it's from the north to south america percent of the beaches in israel polluted the good in the alps sand and no between. my legs in the they came to us covered in tar in their necks inside and out were full of tar obviously we had to clear their breeding channels as fast as possible and after that we clean the tar from their digestive system we continue to feed them substances like mayonnaise which cleans the system and breaks down the tar i hope that in a week or 2 these guys will start eating on their own to that we can see that they

are healthy and gaining weight we were able to release them into the sea. came here to the beach today to clean all the tar that spilled into the ocean and now it's on the beaches we did it work we came here to clean it up for the wildlife so that wildlife can continue living normally my heart wanted to be at the beach i came as soon as i was able to i want to help the environment damaged by the spill the oil is targeting and the still coming to our beaches. seems to be brutus you know we still don't know for sure to do a long time do we want to do or do beaches. on because they're under

water to pollute something seems to be severe but we don't know for sure is still investigating. we suspect there are some issues through video we have for some reason it was an accident maybe not but there was still more exactly what was the source of the words as far as i remember. is the marine is austin. and some stunning coastline there too as i listen to get a handle on it so and clear it up quickly but that's what we're talking about so far we want to see what else we're talking about marty del carmen reporting from moscow kevin there in the team signing off and have a great rest of this wednesday. hello

and welcome to cross talk you're all things are considered. article of faith russian liberals do not like a lot of your up until now russian liberals have been chanted with the western so-called western values western ideological locus an issue. aging us woke ism disparages tradition patriotism the family and even logic like math for russian liberals this appears to be going too far are russian liberals falling out of love with the west.

to discuss these issues and more i'm joined by my guest paul robinson an author well he's a professor in the graduate school of public and international affairs at the university of ottawa and also we have wendy's and he is a professor at the university of southeastern norway as well as author of the book russian conservatism and here in moscow we have to meet bob she's a political analyst and editor at you know it's me internet media project originally cross talk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want and i always appreciate it ok i was going to call 1st. in light of my introduction paul i'll ask the big question but i'm sure there's no easy answer but given that you know everyone on our panel here is an expert in russia. are russian liberals following out of love with the west because if they are all i can see.