ah. deadly bus bombing in jerusalem rockets from gaza and air strikes from israel and then there's libya afghanistan iraq the list goes on so could this be the beginning of world war three . and speaking of libya why is the u.s. military there in the first place or get into all sides of the debate. and the state department may be denying it but the b.b.c. did apply for some american money money that could be used against china so is the

u.s. biting the hand that feeds it. is wednesday march twenty third four pm in washington d.c. i'm christine frizz out there watching our team. well that's when you thought the violence was done spreading from tunisia to egypt to yemen to libya now there are rising tensions between israel and palestine after about two years of quiet and relative peace between these two countries violence has once again erupted with palestinian militants firing rockets into southern israel and israel responding with airstrikes in gaza so here's the question what happens if this violence escalates the u.s. would have to get involved right well you may have thought we were already spread a little too thin engaged in libya iraq afghanistan and also forget those behind

the scenes things that we're doing in yemen and pakistan well let's think about this this country in many ways is the closest friend of the u.s. after all there are palin's there and most presidential candidates make it an important stop on their campaign trail apac is one of the most powerful lobbies in this country there is little doubt that the u.s. would have to help so the question here is could this be the start of world war three earlier i spoke with norman finkelstein from our new york studio norman is an activist and author of this time we went too far here's part of the conversation. i don't think it's going to escalate into anything significant hamas just before the israeli attack which killed. because the numbers are around nineteen seventeen or nineteen palestinians must have been calling for a cease fire and i think the greatest likelihood is that there will be some sort of

settling down of the conflict because tonight states will not want a new conflict between israel and the palestinians and they'll communicate their desires to mr netanyahu mr netanyahu will defer to the american opinion on this one so i don't think it's going to go very far all right we always have you know why we probably have many problems right now and i don't think they want a new one with hamas but i mean why now i mean two years of relative quiet between the two countries i mean is this perhaps just the next region emboldened by what we've already seen in these other countries in egypt in libya and even here in the united states in wisconsin or is this something else i know you say that you don't expect it to escalate but there's something that triggered it. actually i don't even recall the particular cause in the sack or a sequence of events that led to the current escalation because there are for those

who follow these things closely there are israeli attacks and hamas counter attacks fairly frequently some of them make it into the news some of them don't some of them score late and some of them in this case there was an escalation and there was more media prominence but this is been fairly regular. you could say every week there are reports of poor it's the palestinians killed in gaza but they just don't really make it into the news or there are attacks in the west bank which also don't make it into the news but it's not as if this is. a major departure aside from the escalation but as i said i don't think the escalation is going to lead to very much but you have to bear in mind as every one of the a listeners knows and viewers knows there are major developments now in the arab

world and the israelis are very concerned about where they're going and i'll probably wait and watch to see where the dust settles but also as you said a moment ago they're going to be working very hard behind the scenes to try to get some control over the unfolding of those events so it's not really uppermost on their minds i'm sure they're involved in what's going on in egypt they're involved in what's going on in libya they have quite a lot on their plate now i don't see you thinking that i read the i mean you say as they're concerned about what's going on in egypt a lot of people of course asking the question and you even read some israeli news reports that in which people found the region believe that egypt by. there it's tomorrow or next year christie taking over at least in part by the muslim brotherhood there's a lot on israel's plate right now in terms of what they're thinking about you don't

think that there's any way i mean you say that these attacks go on every now and again but this one was somewhat significant i mean we saw bus bombing we saw an exchange not just one or two but several exchanges over the last few days between the two countries. there has been an escalation. but. you know i could be wrong on these things i know i know those who would say are but i don't really think that that's for israel's current investment of energy and time is it's not in the most their main concerns are what's going on elsewhere and you have to remember that snow israel is a small country and make any country that has a finite amount of resources and its attention is going to be turned to to the outcome in places which are not only a real impact on israel but also you have to remember that is we also service u.s.

interests in the region and the u.s. wants israel to be focusing on places like bahrain yemen. certainly egypt libya where so given the let's see hypothetically are about to spend because you don't think it's going to ask away but that is a possibility and certainly in some people's minds it's whether a small possibility or what what happens if it does ask away i mean don't you think the u.s. would certainly have to get involved. well you know i think there's a certain amount of confusion on exactly. when you say the u.s. has to get involved i don't think it's altogether clear to many people what that exactly means but for example look at the last d.d. see. our whole last b.b.c. poll show that about americans are split right down the middle on israel's in fact in the world forty three percent of americans said israel has basically

a positive impact on the world forty one percent said it has basically a negative impact in the world so there's no overwhelming american support for israel that's simply a myth number two if you look at the polls they show that americans say that israel is the victim is israel is the victim of our of aggression. as an hour of attack even if there is a victim of an arab attack the polls show that americans oppose americans oppose that are not talking about like a couple of are concerned i'm talking about what the government will do. right well what the government will do will be. will be due to the power of the israel lobby but it's not going to be due to the desires of the american people

now is norman finkelstein activist and author of the book this time we went too far truth in consequences. well so let's move move on now to libya where what we're hearing and what we're seeing are two different things president obama says not only is the effort being led by other countries france and great britain but it will be passed off quickly well we have seen three b. two stealth bombers fly in from missouri more than a dozen american f. if seen as sixteen fighter jets to u.s. destroyers three u.s. submarines and one british submarine and that was just over the weekend isn't going in multilaterally means with the backing of other countries but largely the intelligence the weapons and the personnel are here we want to cover this today from a lot of different sides of the story so we've brought in see not only president of less government as well as medea benjamin co-founder of the anti-war organization code pink let's just kind of start and get a feel for what you guys think about this should the u.s.

be involved in any sense in libya with you. well we should be involved in supporting movements for democracy around the world and there are many ways to do that but we shouldn't be involved militarily. there is no the only vital national interest one could argue for is the small percentage of oil that libya contributes to the world market but beyond that that does not justify we have zero national interest in this i would disagree with medea to a point which is we don't know who we're supporting but on the other side they're calling themselves a democracy movement because that helps them on their messaging worldwide but we don't know who we're supporting and what we're going to get when when if and when the others and the opposition succeeds and now it's i mean why do you say that we don't know who we're supporting because we don't know what they want to do once they oust gadhafi figure saying the strategy is not outlined right now but what will the strategy there of their motives their goals their objectives what they

want to establish once they could i think we don't know any of that we're just going in blindly and lively. uninformed and poorly objected and i would say that well it's one thing to support peaceful movements to overthrow repressive regimes we saw what a beautiful thing that was in the case of egypt and writhing that in other countries as well but this is turned into an armed struggle that looks very much like a civil war and it looks like this is going to go on for a long time and i think it's a big mistake to get involved in the middle of an armed conflict like that i would agree i think the only reason we got lucky in places like egypt is because mubarak wasn't as big a thaw get as could offer you the worst of the dictator is the worst he's going to treat people trying to overthrow him so so in that sense it's we just got lucky with mubarak isn't as big a thug as gadhafi is i don't know about getting lucky i think the egyptian people came out in huge numbers and every time there was

a police attacking people are being. died and hundreds of people there in the case of egypt more and more people came out more and more people came out i mean i was there in the square with a million people there comes a point when if you have massive nonviolent civil disobedience beleaguer has to step down or almost has to step down i don't know but i will go longer i will no i wonder what happened in libya if you just can't growing as a nonviolent movement kept growing and growing and growing when we were but again they were no that they wanted for that opportunity to get off and pulled out their guns rather clearly a different situation there but speaking about c. and i'm wondering why you think that the u.s. government chose to get involved here but not for example in bahrain in yemen if you know if we're talking about humanitarian aid why not are for if brock obama doesn't know how the heck am i supposed to know. we don't have any national interest we don't have any tether to why we're doing this obama hasn't made clear why he's doing this speaking of what you said earlier there's word today that

twenty three hundred marines from camp as you were just dispatched to libya that certainly sounds like a ground. situation which is not what we were told is going to happen i don't fundamentally understand from a national interest perspective why we're getting in the middle of a civil war we don't know what side we're supporting well the other thing also is look what happens when the u.s. has gotten involved elsewhere and we have two wars that are still going on we just commemorated the eighth year of the war in iraq the very day that the us started blubbing missiles into libya and i think it would have done well for barack obama and arm baster susan rice and others to say hey wait a minute aren't there some other ways that we can act other than violence sort of an eerie similarity there in the i know that you are code pink is very much against violence but let's break this time let's think about the state of our military today let's think back for example to another time when the economy was terrible

post great depression when the. military. is in cease to exist but it was very weak because frankly they couldn't afford it is this an ideal situation for you a time when you know the u.s. can't afford to have a good military and therefore doesn't is that sort of idealistic to you to not have to have a north terry well first of all it's a terrible time for us because it's a financial crisis and people in this country are really suffering and the kind of budget deficits that we see in every single state are hurting everyone from their teachers to our firefighters to or police so there's nothing ideal about this time and then in terms of the world stage it's a terrible scene but i think it's a time for us to really really reevaluate where we're spending our money we have as code pink already been pushing and saying look we cannot afford this kind of bloated military talk about smaller government let's look where the government is really going and that is the military and so we feel like winding down the two wars that we're already in would have allowed us to save hundreds of billions of dollars

and now all of us and we turn around and before we even knew it we are spending about one hundred fifty million dollars a day now on a new worry that we never even had a chance to discuss but what do you think i mean you seem to be sort of against this involvement in libya is this a time that you think oh we should be making our military why nora i mean i never want to make military decisions based upon domestic budgetary if there's a legitimate national situation that requires military action i'm not going to say well we can't afford it we've got to raise union dues you know i'm not going to do that if it's a national security issue we've got ahead of from a national security and we've got to do it regardless of what the cost is because the cost if we lose something like that or let something like that slip is quite dire this may surprise media but i was against nation building in iraq and penicillin was for removing the governments and then leaving so we wouldn't be eight years in and six years in respectively in these two places over there why are

you in favor of removing saddam hussein. but you're not in favor of removing gadhafi because saddam hussein was a legitimate threat to the united states radley united states us never having a weapons of mass destruction never even threatened to attack. and nothing to do he was attacking you know it's a cover no fly zones in the north as working the united the machine of american jets american jets were there then he was not attacking the united states at all alkaline. i would argue to the fighter pilots in question that we're being shot at we're going to fire my lesson from going to go from zero to being before and i think that is thing always in our building they're in there beforehand it was saddam hussein a threat to the united states before we went to war well again there was a global intelligence a plan to do that and turned out to be inaccurate i mean the british know is the answer what what what world were perfect the matters i wouldn't be there six years later one liners are several a day told us then they said five days a week five months there would be the next release of. a lot of people are worried

about the situation in libya also but let's move on to just something that happened even more recent and that is in the last twenty four hours what we're seeing between israel and palestine do you think see if this basket waits if this violence that we just had a guest on norman finkelstein who says he doesn't think it's going to ask but there are people who are a little bit concerned here this is somewhat serious bombs are being dropped if there's aspirates will the u.s. support israel and do they have to i don't have any faith and rock obama supporting israel which is perfectly absurd but there's a facebook page that's going out today for the third intifada and it's already got sixty five thousand likes that's terrible what we need to do is these things and when there is decisive victory israel's been attacked and four wars and numerous coalitions and now maybe three into fighters they've won every one but the world community has stopped them from winning decisively what we need to do is let israel be israel take them off the leash allow them to win decisively and these

problems. and with that they have the military capability to do what they have been told is that lever let israel win decisively they keep pulling up short when when when will they when they see all those who have killed all the people in gaza instead of just fourteen hundred of them. well there's a lot more than fourteen hundred enemy so yes the answer is yes they should have so you're saying that they should the u.s. should allow israel that the world's allow israel to go to the last and kill all of gaza imagine it is a measure of canada was lobbying since two thousand and five ten thousand rockets in. new york at some point would we want to go to war with canada they've watched more than ten thousand rockets in the gaza since israel pulled out every single last june circle or out of the gaza strip has watched more than ten thousand rockets into israel perhaps that would upset us if it were happening to us they are also said to somebody came in and stole your land but they did they gave them the land back and since then they've got some dozen rockets in the west bank that are

have their land the people in here is truthful no land is being taken away from in everything are going to take the lane god alone all right here in and out of this country they don't know it's not their last base there has already started the very way you know there are a lot of virtual prison and so if you ever want to see peace it's not letting israel off the least believe me it's putting israel on a lunch and it's allowing the palestinians paglia human rights because we have and how do you have rights without just there was no such it was a palestinian what if you are a person in gaza i did one thing sixty seven their local area now here are you they were here is there isn't in one nine hundred sixty seven a country started a war with israel israel won in six days and they took the west bank they took ours out and they took the golan heights because they were being repeatedly attacked from there you can't start a war or lose and bitch about how the matt strawn win the next war you can draw the map anywhere you want they took those territories they were repeatedly attacked from them they deserve to have them because they won them they've given them back which is beyond ridiculous in my estimation stop attacking them stopping the fight

if you don't produce. as you said no one of the palestinians they were jordanians they were egyptians and they were syrians if this was such a humanitarian crisis for these three countries and these peoples let syria do whatever jordan deal with them of egypt iran maybe i see you shaking your head i rarely listen to this ridiculous in a third mean i think the world knows what israel is doing is against international laws allowing building a billion dollar and says against international law the building of the apartheid wall is against international law and keeping the people imprisoned in gaza is it is against international law unless israel starts abiding by international law and the palestinians have justice there will never be peace they have more definitely and the u.s. should stop giving three billion dollars a year to israel to keep using to oppress the palestinian right unfortunately we're out of time certainly an animated discussion started off with a lot of disagreements did not end that way code pink opener medea benjamin and president of less government see it mildly. still ahead here on r.g.p. u.s.

taxpayer dollars hard at work for the b.b.c. well the state department says no but could the b.b.c. proposal for american money something. you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for lengthly you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm charging welcome to the big picture. what drives the world the fear mongering used by politicians who makes decisions so to create through thirty three may who can you trust no one who is your view with the global machinery see where are we heading state controlled capitalism is called session so when nobody dares to ask we do our t.

question more. there on the news cafferty been talking about friends and foes of the united states from libya go to israel from where do you say china fit well on one hand just a couple months ago president obama hosted chinese president hu jintao in a lovely state visit with a royal welcome this visit included various activities that portrayed the two leaders as friendly including of course

a state dinner and also in many speeches by president obama meant to highlight the strong relationship between the u.s. and china. the united states welcomes china's rise as a strong prosperous and successful member of the community of nations. and the china success has brought with it economic benefits for our people as well as yours . so why then would the u.s. government want to fight against the chinese government turns out that could be what's happening at least when it comes to their policy on internet freedom british news reports say the u.s. state department is that to provide thirty million dollars to britain's b.b.c. world service for anti jamming technology so it can penetrate into that works around the globe including china there are so many levels of discussion here which is why we brought in georgetown university professor chris chambers and chris we should start by saying the u.s. state department flatly denies these reports that they want to fight against

internet censorship and they're prepared to join great britain to do so however these reports are so showing in fact that this is the case your thoughts on well it's patently silly on the street levels you know we're talking about a lot of different things tonight but this is one of those things that really when you peel away the layers it doesn't make any sense. on one level you have the contracting with b.b.c. which is which is actually pulling back some of its world operations in certain areas they're getting their budget cut just like we're having budget cuts here why can't we do that internally number one number two you're paying them to give you anti jamming technology why can't we come up with that well it seems like sort of a our partnership that they're joining together on. the back of the b.b.c. would do this at all i mean in some ways this could be seen as an act of sedition a blatant disregard of early ninety's law that they would go in there is it right well i mean here's the thing i mean they are trying to to fight china in places

like iran and places like even other governments we've seen a lot of the arab protests were jamming social media jamming cell towers satellite transmission. the chinese have turned this into a high art form i mean do you really think the investing of pittel in amount of money with another government is going to overturn this i mean and then even if you do what are you beaming to these people i mean that's the other layer of silliness here because i've said it on this show the b.b.c. actually is a good model but not the b.b.c. world world wide but in terms of getting on the ground talking to regular people with real correspondents getting real stories finding what the real people what bothers them not being propaganda to people so you've got you've got it in the idiotic situation on many levels and let's not forget the us already has front of their own networks they've got you know voice of america whatever i are they're already contributing millions of dollars for some of these networks. and yet it

seems a lot of ironic i mean this could be seen as even outsourcing propaganda well yes that's what it is i mean they're you know ironically outsourcing you're putting overseas propaganda something what the president said he didn't want to do in terms of our own industry but yeah that's what it is it's outsourcing propaganda rather than developing network strategies and on the ground strategies for talking to the real people and getting to know their hopes and fears and maybe building on that we're not doing that voice of america could do that radio liberty that you know who are could do that if they switch their approach their approach has been very heavy handed and we've talked about this and we're in a run by people don't you don't even from there if you can stuff like like radio free europe at the old model the old school radio sometimes the old school penetration like radio can get through this jamming you know and we don't even know about what's going on with social media social media has worked in places like

tunisia where you have a population that's educated and already pretty much you know on that wireless. wireless and wired tip in china you have a whole population there but again what do. will you be giving to the chinese so let's talk about you know social media i mean you brought up the news or you brought up you know we've talked before about the immense impact it's had on the world really just in the last few months we saw what it did in egypt we saw how it coordinated movements. it's really interesting to think back to just you know when i was a kid when you were a kid. when we had three t.v. networks around the rights i not only did present limited choices but they kind of shaped the message i did what was appropriate to sell and what wasn't so i'm wondering what you think about this now that there's they spoke and you tube. do you think that i mean on one hand a lot of people go to these internet sites so they could support a lease that they already have exactly but on the other hand there's

a lot more choices well there is i mean and so that's what's so beautiful about social media in this context too is that you can explode these barriers especially when you have a lot of ex-pats look you know from all these different arab countries even china even iran living overseas they can basically mold the messages and send it to their family members within these countries if you have a barrier there i don't think that what they're contracting with the b.b.c. to do is going to really shut down that barrier i think that the social media contacts can jump that barrier somehow i mean i'm not a techie but i think that's what's going on with they're talking about a satellite t.v. and propaganda messages but ordinary people ordinary chinese iranians living overseas tunisians egyptians they can get that message to their people and that's what we didn't have but you also have to understand this where we had three networks there was always there was also kind of a journalistic creed you didn't have this point of view that everything have to be

political and that we had to pander to certain audiences to get them to watch we bait they basically put out the news product as if it was something that they could be proud of and you know so yes they did make it a tauriel in production solutions but there was not this pandering to certain points of view in order to grab an audience the audience was pretty much captive so that maybe that's the difference i think that's a really interesting point and certainly most of us like to look back to the good of the writer however but at the same time they're just really are more options to get a wide variety of information that just wasn't out there well and that's what and then. translate a bill to what's going on with this b.b.c. and state department thing a lot of people in these countries whether you know we're trying to compete with the chinese you know or whatever shady kind of purposes because i'm still not clear on this is there are those people have those choices and we are you know putting money into this on one choice is just stupid and again patently silly all right vernell isn't classified.