market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with much stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to congress report on our. ha ha. i doubly bus bomb in jerusalem the rockets from gaza airstrikes 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 an all sides debate. goes the bahrain video seen around the world and it's mostly thanks to social media though has social media unlock the pentagon's case when it comes to keeping the

message under control and how could this shape u.s. foreign policy. and the state department may be denying everything b.b.c. did apply for some american money money that could be used against say china so when the u.s. biting the hand it does it. is wednesday march twenty third seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine freeze out there watching r.t. . well just when you thought the violence was finished spreading from tunisia egypt to yemen to libya now there are rising tensions between israel and palestine after about two years of quiet and relative peace between those 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 one thought forget those behind the scenes movements going on in yemen and pakistan let's think about this this country in many ways is the closest friends of the united states after all even their pale and their right now many presidential candidates also make it an important stop 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 could this be 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 around one hundred seventeen or one thousand

palestinians must have been calling for a cease fire and i think the greatest likelihood is that there will be some sort of suddenly down of the conflict because the night states now will not want a new conflict between israel and the palestinians and they'll 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 it really is have you know what our israelis 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 any 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 ask a late but there's something that triggered it. actually i don't even recall the particular cause and effect or sequence of events that led to the current us collation because there are for those who follow these things closely there are israeli attacks and hamas counter attacks fairly frequently some them make it into the news some of them don't 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 palestinians killed in gaza but they just don't really make it into the news. or there are attacks in the west bank and show so 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 your 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 did the dust settles with 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 events so it's not really uppermost on their minds i'm sure they're involved in what's going on in egypt their involvement 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 they're concerned about what's going on in egypt a lot of people of course asking the question and you even read an israeli news reports that in a year in which people from the region and 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 that 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 a few countries. there has been an escalation. but. you know i could be wrong on these things no no i you know so we are 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 that has a finite amount of resources and its attention is going to be turned into the

outcome in places which are 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 let's see hypothetically not about to spend because you don't think it's going to escalate but that is a possibility and certainly in some people's mind that there 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. 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 but for example look at the last b.b.c.

or our poll the last b.b.c. poll showed about the americans are split right down the middle on israel's intact in the world forty three percent of american said israel has basically a positive impact in the world forty one percent said it has a sickly a negative impact in the world so there's no overwhelming american support for israel that's simply a mis 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. an arab attack even if there is a victim of an arab attack the polls show that americans oppose americans oppose that are not talking about what the title of what i've seen i'm talking about what the government will do. right well a lot of 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 . that is norman finkelstein activist and author of the book this time we went too far trusting consequences of the gaza. so let's not 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 while we have seen three d. two cells bombers fly in from missouri more than a dozen american f. if tina asked exchanged fighter jets to u.s. destroyers three u.s. the marines then one british submarine and that was just over the weekend if in going in a multilateral lead means with the backing of other countries but largely the intelligence the lap and then the personnel from i hear we want to cover this today from a lot of different sides of the story so we've brought in feet motley 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 the author with you well we should be involved in supporting movements for the macro see 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 the adult point which is we don't know who we're supporting on the other side they 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 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 screwed up and we don't know any of that we're just going in blindly and blithely our. 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 armed 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 that i would agree i think the the only reason we got lucky in places like egypt was because mubarak was on his biggest saugus could offer you the worst of the caterer 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 his biggest august because you know 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 i mean hundreds of people died 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 the leader has to step down or almost have to step down but i don't know why we got water i will know i wondered you know what would have happened in libya if they just kept growing as a nonviolent movement had growing and growing growing when we will but again never know that will they want to for that opportunity for the people about the going this route rather clearly a different situation there but speaking of that scene i'm wondering why you think that 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 aid why not and are for profit

obama doesn't know how the heck am i supposed to know why we got involved 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 luzhin were just dispatched to war. certainly sounds like a ground troop situation which is not what we were told was going to happen i don't fundamentally understand from a national interest perspective why we're doing in the middle of a civil war when 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 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 wait a minute aren't there some other ways that we can act other than violence sort of

an eerie similarity there medea i know that you are a code pink is very much against violence but let's break this down and 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 seized 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 then people in this country are really suffering and the kind of budget deficits that we see in every single state are hurting everyone from our teachers to our firefighters to our police so there's nothing ideal about this time in terms of the world stage it's a terrible scene but i think it's a time for us to really really really value weight 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 where the government is really doing 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 us and we turn around and before we even. nooit 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 what do you think 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 line or i know i never want to make military decisions based upon domestic budgetary if there is 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 to hit it 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 let something like that slip 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 we wouldn't be eight years in and six years in respectively in these two places oh then 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 senate from united states us never threat to united he was having 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 didn't the asking the united nations in american jets and there he jets were there maybe he was not attacking the united states at all come on you know i was a huge relief i was like you to pass the the fighter pilots in question they were being shot at why he doesn't fire my lesson so i'm going to go on my theory being before i think that is a mosaic arbitrary there beforehand it was saddam hussein a threat to the united states before we went to war well again there was a global intelligence and when you do that that turned out to be inaccurate i mean

the great shadow is the answer what world are the facts the matter is i wouldn't be there six years later but i was there to do whatever they told us then they said five days five weeks five months that would be the max we're going to be a model that a lot of people are worried about with 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 seeing if this ask away if this violence that we just had a guest on norman finkelstein says he doesn't think it's going to escalate but there are people a little bit concerned here this is the most serious gong to be dropped if this ask right will the u.s. support israel and do they have to i don't have any faith and barack 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 intifadas 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 then these problems will end when they have the military capability to do it their intel that is our leader let israel win decisively keeping pulling up short when when when when when they see all you could have killed all of these men gaza instead of just fourteen hundred of them but others well there's a lot more than four hundred enemy so yes the answer is yes they should so you're saying that they said that the u.s. should allow israel that the world allow israel to go to make far less and kill all of gaza god majnun imagine if imagine of canada was lobbing since two thousand and five ten thousand rockets in the end of. upstate new york at some point wouldn't 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 but i believe also it says here is somebody came in and cellular and they did a gate on the land back and since when they've had ten thousand rockets on people in the west bank or that have their land people endure is terrorism their land is being taken away from them everything updated. you're in and out of this country they don't know it's neither a lawyer spacefaring has already sold over the area where you are a letter of virtual prison and so if you ever want to see keith it's not letting israel off the leash believe me it's putting israel on a no show and it's allowing the palestinians family of human rights to human rights without just there was no such it was ever as it is look if you are a person in gaza i mean there was great out here that you they would hear it 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 then bitch about how the matt strawn win the next war you can draw the american he where you want they took those territories they were repeatedly attacked from them they deserved to have them because they won them they've given them back which is beyond ridiculous in my estimation stop attacking them start with the thought of if you both privacy seven there were no palestinians they were jordanians they were egyptians and there were syrians and if this was such a humanitarian crisis for these three countries and these peoples let syria do what they were jordan you will not egypt iran maybe i see you shaking your head or garrett is into this ridiculous myth that mean i think the world knows what israel is doing is against international laws or one building of the gentlemen says against international law the building of the apartheid while it is against international law and keeping the people in prison 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 oil actually and the us should stop giving three billion dollars a year to israel they keep using to oppress the palestinian right unfortunately

we're out of time certainly an animated discussion started off with a lot of agreement that they're not and that way people co-founder medea benjamin and president of less government. 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 on line surf . ask those who say they get it from newspapers so what does this mean i mean a lot of things even though it appears the u.s. government and even mainstream media would prefer that countries like bahrain and yemen stay out of the news. videos like this make it so that what's happening there does in fact reach people here so people use the internet to simply validate the points of view there and have earlier i posed that question to jeff cohen journalism professor at the college i would argue as someone who used to be a regular t.v. pundit i was a talking head on all three cable news channels that the quality of debate is much

better on the internet between left and right. between people of different philosophies because i'm the internet and when you see something you have to have a source and you have to actually make to it you know the debate you see on c.n.n. and elsewhere between the democratic party in the republican party half and i many 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 that 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 a most expressed philosophical disagreement i think that debate among quality bloggers is better than a debate amongst the best t.v. mainstream shows in america and you can forget a lot of times is the dates that happen on t.v. have to happen and you know three minute or six minute blurbs so there's no

sourcing or making connections there's simply let's get that soundbite in there what do you think though jeff these night minutes ago had. yeah i was going to say just what you're saying that. on the internet it's 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. doesn't matter how it turns out that the media got it right not just government but media there's 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 that the organizing that preceded the marches that made in the liberation of liberation square was so much organized on facebook and you know here you had government in egypt that had arrested bloggers they have 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 they control the states television one thing they haven't been able to figure out what's funny about gadhafi i guess not so funny couple months ago we had this rambling speech since all over youtube

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 nice 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 as death column media critic and journalism professor at columns. well throughout the newscast we've been talking about friends and foes of the united states from libya to israel friends whereas say china fit in 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 many speeches by president obama meant to highlight the strong relationship between the u.s. and china. the united states walkers china's rise is

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 well 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 set to provide if thirty million dollars to britain's b.b.c. world service for anti jamming technology so they can penetrate china's networks earlier i spoke to georgetown university professor chris chambers about all of this i asked him why the u.s. state department would want to fight against these internet friends or ship and even join great britain to do so here's his take. it's patently silly on the levels you know we're talking about a lot of different things and i know this is one of those things that really when you kill the way the layers it doesn't make any sense. but on one level you have

them 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 and they're joining together on the. back of the b.b.c. would do this at all i mean in for life this could be seen as an act of sedition a blatant disregard for the ninety's law that they would go in there and do well i mean here's the thing i mean they are trying to fight china in places around places like that and even other governments we've seen a lot of the arab protests were jamming social media jamming cell towers satellite transmissions the chinese have turned this into a high art form i mean do you really think the investing of pilling amount of money

with another government is going to overturn this i mean and then even if you do what are you beaming for 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 funny what the real people what bothers them not beaming propaganda to people so you've got you've got it in any arctic situation on many levels and let's not forget the u.s. already has some of their own networks they've got you know voice of america. they're already contributing millions of dollars for some of these networks. and yet it seems all of that ironically i mean this could be seen as even outsourcing. propaganda that's what it is i mean you know ironically the 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 real people and getting to know their hopes and fears and maybe building on that we're not doing that first america could do that radio liberty that you know al gore could do that if they switch their approach their approach has been very heavy handed and we've talked about this and they're in a run by people don't you don't even from there it even stuff like like radio free europe or the old law of 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 the 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 and wife i wire this and wired to china you have a whole population there but again what do you what do you believe in to the chinese analysis tamworth professor at georgetown university i'm not going to do it for now for more on the stories because.