ah. deadly bus bombing in jerusalem by 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 we'll get into all sides debate. the bahrain video seen around the world and it's mostly thanks to social media so

how social media unlocks the pentagon's gate it comes to keeping the message under control and how could this shape u.s. foreign policy. and as they say partners may be denying it but the b.b.c. did apply for some american money money that could be used against well china so is the u.s. i think the hand that feeds it. is wednesday march twenty third five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine freeze 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 two years of quiet and relative peace between these two countries as a result of violence has once again erupted with palestinian militants firing rockets into southern israel and israel responding with air strikes in gaza so

here's a question what happens if this violence escalates the u.s. would have to get involved right you may have thought we were already spread a little thin engaged in libya iraq and afghanistan and also let's not forget those behind the scenes wars in yemen and pakistan let's think about this this country in many ways israel is the closest friend of the u.s. after all sarah palin's there most other presidential candidates make it and important stuff on their campaign trail apac is one of the most powerful lobbies in this country there is little doubt the u.s. would have to help so quit this be a world war three earlier i spoke with norman finkelstein from our studio in new york norman is an activist and author of this time we went too far here's part of that conversation. i don't think it's going to escalate into anything significant hamas just before the israeli attack which killed. just the numbers

are around nineteen seventeen or nineteen palestinians hamas have been calling for a cease fire i think the greatest likelihood is that there will be some sort of down in the conflict because the united states right now will not want a new conflict between israel and the palestinians and will communicate their desires to mr netanyahu and mr netanyahu will defer to the american opinion on this one so i don't think it's going to go very far right release have while israelis have many problems right now and i don't think they want a new one with hamas and 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 any other countries in egypt and libya and even here in the united states and with content or is this something else i know you say that you

don't expect it to after may but there's something that triggered at. actually i don't even recall the particular cause and effect or sequence of events that led to the current school ation because there are for those who follow all these things closely there are israeli attacks and. counterattacks fairly frequently some of them make it into the news some of them some of them school 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 two or three pounds ten years 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 i also 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 your listeners knows and viewers knows there are major developments no 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 cause is not really uppermost on their mind so 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 no i don't so you're not thinking that already 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 from the region believe that egypt whether it's tomorrow or next year could be taken 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 is 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 no no no soothsayer but i don't really think that that's where israel's current investment of energy and time is it's not in hamas their main concerns are what's going on elsewhere and you have to remember that snow israel is a small country and like any country it has

a finite amount of resources and its attention is going to be turned into the outcome in places which have not only a real impact on israel but also you have to remember that is we also serves u.s. interests in the region and the u.s. wants israel to be focusing on places like bahrain yemen. certainly egypt and libya where so given the west the hypothetical in on afghanistan because you don't think it's going to ask away but there is a possibility al certainly in some people's mind as a writer a small possibility what what happens if it does ask what i mean don't you think the u.s. would certainly have to get involved. but 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 for example look at the last b.b.c.

. our whole blast b.b.c. poll showed 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 miss. number two if you look at the polls they show that americans say. israel is the victim is israel is the victim of our of aggression. of an arab it's hard even if there is a victim of an arab it's half the polls show that americans oppose americans who oppose the war imagine writing about what the puzzle alliance and i'm talking about what the government will do. right well what the government will do you know.

it 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. that was norman finkelstein activist and author of the book this time we went too far truth in consequences of the gaza invasion. so let's move on now to libya where we're hearing it what we're 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 that it will be passed off quickly well here's what we think three b. two stealth bombers flying from missouri more than a dozen american as fifteen f. sixteen fighter jets to u.s. destroyers three u.s. marines and just one british the marine and that was just over the weekend i think going in multilaterally means with the backing of other countries but largely what the intelligence the weapons and the personnel from right here so should the u.s.

even be in libya earlier i posed that question to see not only president of last government and media benjamin co-founder of the anti-war organization code pink be 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. libya contributes to the world market beyond. 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 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 the opposition succeeds in analysis 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 so you're saying the strategy is not outlined right now what will the strategy there of their motives or goals or objectives what they want to establish once they oust gadhafi we don't know any of that we're just going in blindly and blithely on uninformed and poorly objected and i would say that when it's one thing to support peaceful movements to overthrow repressive regimes we saw what a beautiful thing that was in the case of these if then we're seeing that in other countries as well but this is turned into an arms struggle that was 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 i would have i think the only reason we got lucky in places like egypt is because mubarak was in his biggest dog as khadafi is the worst of the cator 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 is in his biggest august gadhafi or i don't know that getting lucky i

think the egyptian people came out in huge numbers and every time there was a police attacking people and a lot of people died and hundreds of people died in the case of these it more and more people came out more and more people came out i mean i was there being in the square with a million people there comes a point when if you have massive nonviolent civil disobedience the leader has to step down or almost have to step down but i don't know why we got water and well no i wondered. but it happened in libya if you just give growing as a nonviolent movement you have growing and growing growing when we will but again there were no that move they wanted for that opportunity and pulled out the going this route was a clearly a different situation there but speaking of that scene i'm wondering why you think the u.s. government chose to get involved here but not for example in bahrain in yemen is that you know if we're talking about humanitarian finance are for if barack obama doesn't know how to help them i suppose to know why we got involved we don't have

any national interest we don't have any tether to why we're going this obama hasn't made clear why he's doing this speaking of what you said earlier there's words dated twenty three hundred marines from camp luzhin were just dispatched to libya certainly sounds like a ground troop 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 when we don't know what side we're supporting well the other thing there 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 u.s. started loving missiles into libya and i think it would have done well for barack obama and our ambassador 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 they're going to i know that you are

a code pink is very much against violence but let's break this down i mean 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. isn't 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 military well first of all it's a terrible time for us because it's a financial crisis center. well in this country really suffering and the kind of budget deficits that we see in every single state are hurting everyone from my teachers to our firefighters to our 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 really evaluate 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 small government let's look rather government is

really big and that is that 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 a sudden we turn around and before we even knew it we are spending about one hundred fifty million dollars a day now on a new war that we never even had a chance to discuss everything statement when you seem to be sort of against us involvement in libya is this a time that you think that we should be making our military armor i know 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 a header from a national security we've got to do it regardless of what the cost is because the cost if we lose something like that or look something like that's what is quite dire this may surprise media but i was against nation building in iraq and

afghanistan i was for removing the governments and then leaving so that we wouldn't be eight years of them in six years in respect of what you used to place over there and why are you in favor of removing saddam hussein the two not in favor of removing gadhafi because saddam hussein was a legitimate threat to the united states of the united states yes never threat to united he had no weapons of mass destruction never even threatened to attack the united states nothing to do he was attacking united states every day come a no fly zone or provoking the united nations are going to american jets and there are contracts where there maybe he was not. attacking the united states that all outcome or no i would be doing really i would like you to ask the the fighter pilots in question they were being shot at why doesn't the fire my lesson somebody told me the area being built for it and i think that is a measure of our getting there in there before hand 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 that turned out to be inaccurate i mean the british had no is the answer what what what probably the fact of the matter is i wouldn't be there six

years later so i wonder if you are never what they told us then they said five days while we five months that would be the next we still have the yellow a lot of people are worried about the situation in libya also but let's move on to 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 pathway that this violence that we just had a guest on i'm going to go find he says he doesn't think it's going to ask away but there are people a little bit concerned here this is somewhat serious bombs a big drop if this ask writes will the u.s. support israel and do they have to i don't have any faith in iraq obama supporting israel which is patently absurd there's a facebook page that's going up 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 in four wars and no numerous skirmishes and now maybe three into father's 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 taken off the leash allow them to win decisively and these problems left where they have the military capability to do it in so it is our leader let israel win decisively keeping talking up short when when when when they when they see all should have killed all the people in gaza instead of just fourteen hundred of them rather than well there's a lot more than four hundred enemy so yes the answer is yes because so you're saying that they should that the u.s. should allow. israel that the world allow israel to go to a far less and kill all of gaza the magic magennis imagine if canada was lobbing since two thousand and five ten thousand rockets into ended. up upstate new york at some point would we want to go to war with canada they've lost more than ten thousand rockets into gaza since israel pulled out every single last june settler out of the gaza strip they've launched more than ten thousand rockets into israel

perhaps that would upset us if it were happening believe also it said to somebody came in cellular and they did a gate on the land back and since then they've had ten thousand rockets on people in the west bank that have their land the people endure is through still no land is being taken away from them everything up in the paper and god or later they already are in and out of their country they don't have night their land base their head i saw the lobby where you wait you have the right letter and a virtual prison and so if you ever want to see ts it's not letting israel off the least believe me it's putting israel on own shit and it's allowing the palestinians stably of human rights that we're after you my life without just it was just as you would never have been in. that was good pin co-founder video benjamin and president of less government seem oddly. well yet another sign that times are changing for the first time in history a poll found that the percentage of people who say they get their news online at least three times a week surpassed those as they get from newspapers forty one percent of americans said they got most of their news about national and international issues on the

internet more than double the seventeen percent just last year so what does this change well everything even though it appears the u.s. government and even the name stream media would prefer countries like bahrain and yemen stay out of the news videos like the one you see behind me make it so what's happening there does in fact reach people here i want to go now to woodstock new york where is the college journalism professor jeff cohen is standing by. hey there on one hand this explosion of social media has really given people so many options you know immigrants can keep up with news from their home countries people interested in multiple points of view can find it but on the other hand many use the internet simply to validate the points of view they already have talked about this strange you know to have a devil here. i think you've raised a good point that second point about people going just to get their views

reinforced but i would argue as someone who used to be a regular t.v. pundit i was a talking head on all three channel news channels but the quality of debates is much better on the internet between left and right. between people of different philosophies because i'm the internet when you say something you have to have a source and you have to actually linked to it you know the debates you see i'm c.n.n. and elsewhere between the democratic party hack and the republican party hack and i'm going to issues by the way they don't really disagree and some of the foreign policy issues your program focuses on there isn't a lot of disagreement i would argue even though people go on the internet often seeking out points of view that reinforce it's hard on the internet to avoid intelligent points of view on the other side there's raging debates among the real good bloggers they link to each other even when they're in those separate philosophical disagreement i think that debate among quality bloggers is better at

end of debate amongst the best t.v. mainstream shows in america and you can forget a lot of time he made that happen on t.v. i have to happen and you know three men or six minute blurbs so there's no sort of thing as or making connections there simply let's get that sound byte in there what do you think these night minutes of the ad. yeah i was going to say just what you're saying that in that i'm the internet if someone if you're a successful blogger and you've built up a following and someone went after you you're going to be the one who brings it to the audience and you're going to link to it so they can see what the opposing view is. as you say on television there's almost no sourcing other thing on u.s. television there's almost never a correction. you know to send better oh it turns out that the media got it right not just the government the media is almost never

a correct there's no correction box on t.v. let's talk now about what's going on sort of around the world right now these movements from egypt to now bahrain and do you think that some of these countries leaders will try to crack down more on what they allow their people to see or i mean is it simply too late has this become at the start of a movement that is here to stay even for some of these countries. it's here to stay and what they don't understand what they haven't been able to grapple with is how to close down the internet and social media the egyptian rulers had really a problem the organizing that preceded the marches of me and the liberation of liberation square was so much organized on facebook and you know here you had a government in egypt that had arrested bloggers they had tortured bloggers they've been trying to figure out who's behind these facebook sites i mean it's it's very hard for repressive governments to control the internet it's it's

a lot easier for them to control the state press to control the state television one thing they haven't been able to figure out what's funny about coffee i guess not so funny a couple months ago we have this rambling speech that's all over you tube where he was attacking wiki leaks and attacking the internet and saying any drunkard can get on the internet and i mean the reality is these dictators in the middle east i'm glad you brought it up they've really been hurt by the internet more than any form of media in recent decades we've got to talk to jeff and out what's going on in this own country for so long it was you know the big three networks and the main newspapers you know the nothing to say to the discussion and it was saved by them in many ways and they were the gatekeepers so now the gate keepers have been pushed aside do you think this changes the foreign policy. it hasn't changed foreign policy but i'll tell you this if the internet and independent media have been as powerful back in two thousand and two as they are

it's a day i'm not sure all will rise that came out propelling the invasion of iraq with some they would not have succeeded as it was there was an informed minority that was reporting each lie on the internet but the internet didn't help as you pointed out that you needed a segment didn't have the real saturation that it does now so the question i think in the future now that people have access to independent websites like truthdig and truth out in common dreams and technocracy now you can even watch al-jazeera online you know will it be as easy for an administration to use that media mainstream media to get their point across when there are so many other people putting out alternative messages that's going to have unfortunately we are out of time jeff cohen media critic and journalism professor at ithaca college thanks so much. revenue kathleen been talking about friends and foes of the united states from

libya to israel france where do they china fit him well on one hand just a couple months ago president obama hosted chinese president hu jintao in a lovely they visit at the royal welcome this isn't included various activities that portray the two leaders and friendly including of course a fake dinner and also in many features 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. indeed 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's provided thirty million dollars to britain's b.b.c.

world service for anti jamming technology so it can penetrate into networks around the globe including china as 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 this well i it's patently silly on a lot of levels it's you know we're talking about a lot of different things tonight but this is one of the those things that really when you peel away the layers it doesn't make any sense. on it on one level you have the contracting with the b.b.c. which is which is actually pulling back some of this it's 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 partnership but they're joining together on the to put back at the b.b.c. with do this at all i mean in some ways this can be seen as an act of sedition of blatant disregard for the ninety's law that they would go in there and do right well i mean do years the thing i mean they are trying to to fight china and places like iran in places like that and even other governments we've seen in all the arab protests where they're jamming social media jamming cell towers satellite transmission. the chinese of troilus into a high art form i mean do you really think the investing a piddling amount of money with another government is going to overturn this i mean . then even if you do what are you beaming to these people that's the other layer of silliness here because i've said it on the show the b.b.c. actually is a good model but not the b.b.c. world world wide but that 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 beaming propaganda to people so you've got it got it and it in any arctic situation on many levels i'm not forget the us already has some of their own networks they've got you know voice of america whatever. they're already contributing millions of dollars for some of these that work. and that is all that ironic i mean that this could be seen as even outsourcing company and well that's what it is i mean you know ironically that outsourcing you're putting overseas propaganda something that the president said he didn't want to do in terms of our industry but yeah that's what it is it's outsourcing propaganda rather than developing network strategies and on the ground strategies for for talking to real people and getting to know their hopes and fears and maybe building on that we're not doing that what's america could do that you know radio liberty that you know well who are a could do that if they switch their.