while the congress and president obama mince words over national debt and fiscal cliff the occupy movement is putting its money where its mouth is buying up consumer debt and then immediately forgiving it and they're asking the public to help we'll tell you all about tonight's rolling jubilee telethon. and other tensions in the middle east weren't high enough aggression between israel and gaza just started boiling over this conflict has the potential to send the entire region into a tailspin we will bring you the very latest on the struggle and also the international cations. and unlike the days where the press and the public waited for days for pictures of wars to come out social media has revolutionized the way the world gets information even governments are getting in on the instant updates welcome to the

new age of. the afternoon it's thursday november fifteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine and you're watching our t.v. . well all week we've been telling you about the rolling jubilee that initiative organized by members of occupy wall street to raise money and put it towards buying up people's debt many are calling it the people's bailout so far they've raised more than two hundred thousand dollars but this evening the group will hold a huge fund raiser a telethon to try to raise as much much more money to help as many people as possible our correspondent on a stasia chair going to has been covering this all week she joined me earlier from our studios in new york along with our t.v. producer adrienne it was said oh i want to start started off by telling us what to expect tonight. so finally the days here the telethon starts and of course even

days leading up to this enormous amounts of money have already been raised and what we're expecting tonight is really even though the cause is really serious and the debt that there are trying to tackle this is going to be really fun event it's a variety show with lots of different bands and comedians it starts at eight pm eastern and goes on for three hours and of course during this time people will be calling in making donations they will still continue to make donations online and even at the beginning of this week tickets at twenty five bucks a pop were already completely sold out and it's interesting that at this event every ticket has abolishes as much as five hundred dollars worth of debt so for those people who are there they have already contributed for those who missed out there will be a viewing party several minutes away downtown manhattan where people will join to watch the live stream of the telethon and our crews were down there earlier today to check out the preparations and talk to some organizers take a listen again to the mission of what this rolling jubilee is all about well we're really trying to do is build

a global resisters movement and so what this project is really useful is shining a spotlight on different aspects of the way in which is used to bind the ninety nine percent shine a spotlight on different injustices and to hopefully help mobilize that kind of resisters movement that we need to actually create this massive nonviolent non-cooperation with wall street. and you know they encounter in juxtaposition really to what has been going on on wall street it's interesting that the occupy wall street movement with this project is being completely transparent they're promising to show all of the donations online as they have been doing these last several days as well as all the final sums of money that they gather and also promised to show exactly how they distributed and of course like the debt collectors hounding people on the market and out of the occupiers are actually making a profit off of this whole event was found about the occupy angola in this even

forbes adriano of the you know the financial publication they were on an article praising this method they said that the headline of the article was finally an occupy wall street idea we can all get behind the rolling jubilee even calling this idea more conservative than anything else talk about the long term impact of this i mean it's very interesting because i mean you know occupy is had sort of an interesting inception and sort of an interesting end goal which is a lot of people didn't know what it was a lot of different voices came together and sometimes it was a mismatch and people really didn't know what to make of it for a live very long time and now we're seeing sort of truth to power you're seeing sort of. things sort of coming and going and you're you're seeing actual change you have you seen change and acted so i think it's very interesting what you know what we heard from one of the organizes right now like the idea to shine a spotlight to a justices and to have sort of now the steam behind this social movement i mean it's very very interesting this is sort of how you get things done really at the

grassroots level so this can be just another example of maybe the grassroots coming together so it's very it's something that we should all keep an eye on so interesting because this has been in the works for quite a while but what we did see a couple weeks ago in the aftermath of superstorm sandy the occupy movement really come together and take the lead organizing help for people that needed it even working with fema some people is saying even being there when fema isn't so really after a year. a lot of messages and discussions some action that we're seeing play out before our very eyes on a stuffy let me go to you i know that there has been some mentions a pleasant surprise at this point before the telethon even began that so much money has been raised is this just from people logging on and pledging money with what's going on here yeah you know guys it's been absolutely shocking how much money occupy has been able to gather already in the days leading up to this movement last time we checked i checked

a couple of minutes ago they've already gathered over twenty two hundred thousand dollars two hundred thousand dollars and that's enough to abolish over four millions of dollars in debt and we have to keep in mind when this project they just started talking about it occupy was saying our goal are really fantasy goal is gathering fifty thousand dollars to abolish one million dollars worth of debt so right now they've already got four times more than that of the telethon the main event the main fundraiser has not even started yet and it's just been fascinating to see what a big difference tiny donations have been making there because you know ten dollars as much as two hundred bucks twenty dollars four hundred one hundred dollars two thousand so it's just really been fascinating to see how quickly that money has been donated and gathered by on their website in particular later today on the telethon and you know i wouldn't be surprised if we see after this fundraiser tonight them gather you know maybe enough to abolish half a trillion dollars and is that we have forgive me quickly forgive me if you've

already answered this earlier in the week i know you've been reporting on this story a lot but how are they going to choose whose debt gets abolished how are they going to decide. who to target for this short well you know that's one of the kind of most frequently asked questions we've been getting from our viewers particularly because people are like hey we want to find out i have all this debt i don't know how to get rid of it what should i do and the trick here is that occupies doing this kind of in a secret distribution there's really no way for them to donate to any particular. person so you know you can have an occupier for example abolish a friend debt for a friend or a family member because of the way the system works the distressed debt is really sold and balk and they get very little information about which people in particular they're going to be doing the distressed debt for those people wind up getting the calls and they only find out that they're the ones whose debt was abolished when they get an a call from occupy saying you know you're one of the lucky few but you know if we talk a little bit more about what to expect next in terms of occupy because this is seen

as a really important first step take a listen to how the organizers of this movement explain to us what is happening with this movement next and why this is a good beginning but you know last year going to the street occupying our public spaces exercising our first amendment right to peacefully assemble was in and of itself an act of resistance now they suspended our first amendment right with the eviction which happened last year today so i think what we're doing now is analyzing all of the different ways in which wall street is occupying our lives and that is that main intersection between our lives and wall street so we're trying to figure out how to push back so last year they even did us this year we're going to build a movement to hope even to wall street. well the guys so you know this strike that is one of the latest like you mention the hurricane relief efforts you know the big crowds that this organizer just talked about to us these are all stages that occupy has been through and with this particular latest fundraiser what they're hoping is

this might set a beginning for a bigger project and hopefully we see them gather enough money to really make some kind of a difference in the you know completely incredibly indebted country here we might see this project continue hopefully and then maybe other similar ones like this rise out so while we'll see what happens and i do want to relate what's going on here back to washington and back to some of the policies made here in washington and talk about somebody that we haven't talked about in a while and that is congressman ron paul a former presidential candidate he made his sort of farewell speech yesterday on the floor of the house of a forty eight minute speech kind of actually many of the sentiments that and principles that he has really adhered to over the years and one of those was about debt so i want to play really quick what he said take a listen. deficits rise to the sky poverty is rampant and dependency on the federal government is no worse than any time in our history most of our wealth today depends on debt. now and i don't want to focus on the economic so much as the

politics and the policy here why has this you know by now pay later attitude become so expected in washington despite the warnings of a you know long term experience congressman like congressman paul c. i think that's sort of a misnomer i feel that you know this entire idea that you know it's this entire crisis that we're in now was just because there were a couple of people that were trying to live outside their means i mean there is truth to that obviously we didn't get here because you know we were being prudent but however it's a two way street not just people but the government and the government as well so it's sort of interesting because we're in this crisis because there were also banks that were not adhering to those sets and standards as well so instead of being punished for those what they had what happened was essentially you know they got bailed out so i think it's a little bit of misnomer to say that things are so simple and so black and white

all right r.t. producer adrienne it was that oh and in new york r.j. correspondent ana stasi a char going to thanks guys. we want to get out of the escalating violence between israel and hamas the violence has gotten much worse and has reached levels not reach for at least four years there have been deaths on both sides and heart wrenching images like this one that have given the fight a face this is a photo of a b.b.c. arabic employee carrying the body of his eleven month old son killed by shrapnel during one of israel's air raids in gaza the israeli defense force says it's been warning people to take cover and posted this video earlier today in which they said they've been dropping leaflets which say in arabic quote important announcement for the residents of the gaza strip for your own safety take responsibility for yourselves and avoid being present in the vicinity of hamas operatives and facilities and those of other terror organizations that pose a risk to your safety hamas is once again dragging the region to violence and bloodshed the i.d.f.

is determined to defend the residents of the state of israel this announcement is valid until quiet is restored to the region israeli defense forces command so we want to talk about all of this and i've got max blumenthal writing fellow at the nation institute in our new york studio max first just let me get your take in on this escalating violence. well first of all as you can tell i'm not in your new york studio and. i well that's why they didn't have to deal with the traffic than i think one of the problems with the coverage we're getting in the in the u.s. and in and in what you're seeing in the international media networks like b.b.c. is a failure to recognize that it was israel that broke the truce that it was israel that on november eighth made an incursion into the gaza strip near time units in the northeastern part of the gaza strip and killed a child then ahmed abouta and this was the beginning of what is now known as the

escalation gazan fighters responded by attacking israeli soldiers not israeli civilians and that israel responded by killing more civilians in the gaza strip leading to the s.q.l. escalation so. it's really israel which actually broke a truce then proceeded to kill us much about ari who's the head of the military wing that some brigades of hamas who is the man who is really enforcing all of the truce is in all of the cease fires and attempting to punish the smaller factions in the gaza strip who fired rockets into israeli controlled territory this is consistent with israeli behavior over the years including at the beginning of operation cast lead we have to remember the first attack in operation cast lead the brutal attack on between two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine. was on a police station in the gaza strip an institution that symbolized stability and so

they attacked the structure of stability in the gaza strip the kind of structures that could enforce cease fires and truces and in doing so at that time they broke a truce and they broke a truce again just now so it's not clear that israel has any capacity for acting rationally. mike let me you you said a whole lot of things that i want to touch upon so is i want to start with as you were talking about to the killing of the of the military command commander of hamas this is israel's first major offensive into gaza in four years what are the reasons that the israelis are citing for the assassination of a mosque leader following these aerial attacks well it's easy to sell this is a nation to the israeli public and the rationale is that he was involved in authorizing the operation that captured gilad should lead the israeli soldier who was in forcing the. exterior occupation of gaza and who was held captive there and

so this is an easy sell to the israeli public what isn't recognized is that you barri was a figure who was maintaining stability inside gaza that often worked in israel's interest he was the person in hamas who negotiated directly with israel and according to gershon baskin who helped negotiate the release of gilad should be on jabari was involved in up holding the cease fire and bask in what speaking directly to him as sort of a liaison between the israeli military and hamas so i'm really puzzled by this personally because i thought israel's strategy as a sort of rational actor i mean i don't i don't support their strategy in any way it's a settler colonial strategy but their strategy was to domesticate hamas in the same way that they did with fatah in the past and to work with qatar to basically take. hamas and make them sort of who you know stable or of gaza and crack down on the

smaller factions and they're not doing that instead what they've done is they've put hamas back into the role as it into its traditional role as a resistance faction which means that a lot of credibility on the street and basically embarrass mahmoud abbas just serious about to go to the u.n. to seek you know lateral state of it which is another part of their strategy possibly yeah it is very interesting and i read this as well i mean this was a man responsible for keeping the border safe and you know did so for for a few years and if it got to a point where the border was no longer safe enough perhaps there was another option rather than you know eliminating as their words not mine this leader of hamas you talk about the timing as well max there's an israel and there's an election part of me coming up in israel talk a little bit about the significance of this timing a lot of people are wondering why now. well one figure who's been diminished as i

mentioned is mahmoud abbas western backed leader of the palestinian authority which is acted as an occupation subcontractor today breaking up a palestinian demonstration in the west bank but another figure has been diminished as a who the owner was actually the architect the the prime minister during operation cast lead. and was considering running again despite being mired in scandal netanyahu was planning on running in a coalition kind of a face in kind of a likud day tainio coalition with avigdor lieberman a right wing coalition and it wasn't holding up very well the numbers weren't looking as good as he wanted them to look and he was being challenged by omar or possibly he was going to run as kind of this candidate who had this record of cracking down on dollars that he took care of gaza and at the same time netanyahu has in his cabinet brock who was pushing for an operation on the gaza strip and was going to run in the elections as well so what does netanyahu he has to authorize

a punishing operation and in order to outflank all near the architect of operation cast lead and if brock who is known who has much more credibility among military the netanyahu so essentially palestinians are dying in order to win votes for benjamin netanyahu and his new partner as they were lieberman it's tradition israeli politics to campaign on the blood of ellis that ins we saw it in operation cast lead every major party including kadima then led by tzipi livni i'm boasting about how how much they supported israel talent in the gaza strip with city livni actually declaring that the israeli army acted like hooligans and that was a good thing so this is classic israeli politics and that's earlier on we showed a photo of a b.b.c. journalist carrying the body of his baby this was on the b.b.c. website and is no longer on the front of the website we think i mean is this just

because things are moving so fast there. i think it's kind of it's absurd that you don't see more journalistic solidarity more solidarity in the western media for one of their colleagues who is working in a war zone and whose family is dying as a result and the only answer is that because they're deeply uncomfortable about reporting palestinian deaths and indeed in the u.s. we're just really not seeing a lot of reporting on palestinian casualties which is plastic but you know what about the endgame here in x. i mean a lot of people are just wondering you know how does this end. i don't think israel wants another wolf well first of all the region is completely different right now you have a completely new government in egypt which reflects on the sense of the sentiment of these gyptian public much more on which it's controlled by the muslim

brotherhood and so this is a big test that the egyptian government that puts a lot of pressure on israel to end this operation because their relations with egypt have already deteriorated in the short term netanyahu doesn't want to long operation another bloodbath in gaza like israel saw with operation cast lead which will lead to an investigation from the u.n. in another goldstone report and he doesn't want it for political reasons as well so i think this could wrap up what israeli leaders are saying right now is they are waiting for hamas to beg for a truce which means that they're seeking a truce which means they really have let's look at the long term let's look at the big picture they really have no end game for how to resolve the situation with the gaza strip they've termed the gaza strip which is pejorative consists of a majority of the refugees were not allowed to return to their homes in what is now known as israel because they're not jewish it's been turned into a warehouse for surplus humanity exactly being said he wished the gaza strip would

just fall into the sea they really have no end game for the gaza strip. when to try to domesticate hamas but now we see them creating more instability and so in the long run we're going to continue to see chaos and bloodshed certainly a terrifying situation there max blumenthal writing fellow at the nation institute joining us from brooklyn new york thanks so much thanks and i do want to stay on the story but take a little bit of a different angle here the battlefield has actually expanded not just to the land and the people but to cyberspace as well the israeli defense force has been live tweeting much of the action including that the i.d.f. has embarked on an operation against hamas an iranian proxy response. for terror attacks on israel hash tag iran gaza later on they announced the death of the hamas military leader with this three word tweet ackman jabari eliminated it was coupled with the picture that you see here here's a tweet the i.d.f. sent out today we capping the events from the past few days the number since

yesterday two hundred fifty terrorist sites targeted by i.d.f. in gaza two hundred seventy four rockets have struck israel one hundred five iron dome interceptions even a little interesting exchange that took place in the twitter verse the i.d.f. wrote we recommend that no hamas operatives whether low level or senior leaders show their faces above ground in the days ahead to which the allco some brigades responded are bless the hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are in parentheses you opened hell gates on yourselves certainly a new generation of warfare and i want to bring in our two web producer andrew blake to speak more about the social media aspect of this pretty interesting that the i.d.f. actually announced the death of this hamas military commander over twitter this was before there was any sort of press conference or official statement about it but all this before they actually announced that they were beginning the strikes to that's how a lot of people if you weren't there to actually hear the air raid calls or watch

the destruction in the fatalities happened right in front of you you found out because they were announcing it over twitter this is what we're doing right now right it's that sort of like some of our you know our political wonk friends here in washington live tweet debate this is a live tweeting by officials of the violence is a little different was had well it's very different i mean but the fact is. twitter and other social media have really. changed the way that we see things especially in this case but only as far as the idea is concerned when you actually talk about civilians rather they're in occupied territories are not to be can't necessarily really are rely on social media right now because like we saw during the arab spring in places like syria tunisia just because you. the internet right now doesn't mean you're going to have it in a minute just because you have telephones or it isn't going to have it in a minute and there's a very large likelihood seeing some reported cases throughout gaza where the electricity is being cut communication lines are being severed the internet is disappearing and so while the i.d.f.

can get their messages out to you when you want to cross the world they can announce who they're striking how they've done it who they're killing. people who are actually there the civilians the activists and the fighters who are on the other side might not necessarily be able to get their voices across because we're seeing those lines of communication is just crumbling and this isn't of course just you know internet savvy people using the internet in the middle east this is going on everywhere and certainly one interesting element of this to have to this group anonymous has actually taken a role there have been several reports of them hacking into web sites talk a little bit about what their role so far this week is a lot like what we saw with tunisia or syria where they have a collective group has kind of decided on a single target the israeli government establishment and decided that they will do everything in their power to represent the people of palestine who are suffering right now so what a lot of have been doing were there the usual g.o.'s attacks where they would just

crumble the website pretty much overloaded with traffic and make it an operable there have been a couple defacements to within minutes to actually hack into the site and post a new message kind of taking over showing that you know they're they still have a little bit of power but one really great thing that we've seen in recent days or i guess the last day it's been moving so quickly at this point it's kind of a blur but then also members of telecom x. and other loose knit collective what they've been doing is supplying people overseas with the necessary information in order to get past these blockade well that's what i was going to say it's not just you know attacking websites that and government groups that they disagree with they've also sort of taken on a role trying to keep the internet active trying to make it so people can use the internet. and they've even put out some information you're referring to i want to put up i think we have a picture this is a first aid tips for people talk a little bit about the significance of you know methods like that and well i mean think about it the country is the area rather is pretty much on the verge of

another war right now and if you are someone there who isn't necessarily trained to i don't know save someone's life and might be kind of difficult for you so a lot of people what they've been doing is putting it i wasn't in the in the pamphlet no exactly why is i the i.d.f. will get away with this on the other hand is actually lending a hand and asking for people to help transcribe medical instructions basic first aid into english into arabic and any other relevant languages and also reach out people who are a little bit more technologically savvy hoping that those people be able to explain to others how they can still communicate in a really desperate time right now people are explaining how to use dial up modems how to dial long distance phone numbers in order to connect to the internet how to tweet updates using basic cell phone connection as opposed to broadband internet how do you create your own i answered i mean how do you i mean you know but if you go online people can easily explain this to you and they're distributing this information through zip files through websites through blog posts through tweets

where they're saying this is what you need to do right now in order to make sure that you can let your family know that you're ok and let anyone else know what's actually happening there are you mentioned the use of social media during the arab spring you mentioned tunisia talk a little bit about i mean does this connect at all in terms of people communicating with each other as you mentioned things are happening very very fast in gaza in israel but do you see any connection here well yeah polluted i mean if people don't have a way of communicating the truth isn't going to go out there i mean i really don't want to draw the comparison but we see something slightly similar in america where we have the obama administration cutting down leakers because they don't want information to get brought to the mainstream media and then bring up public office . mission here we're just seeing the facts of war being censored the actual atrocities are happening right now are going to be able to be communicated to the outside world like we saw during the arab spring because of censorship efforts in gaza but it one thing i just found out recently that said minute ago that if you

have like sim cards on your phone in your in gaza you might be able to pick up a egypt internet and that's one way of right there that you can bypass it and actually get your information out should the government decide to step up there are there attempts to censor people and just briefly and i mean big picture here not just with what's going on in gaza in israel right now but in the future i mean how does social media forever transform the way wars are fought i mean this is really seeing the the live tweeting of this this operation start yesterday it was really something that i don't think anyone was ready to ready to happen in the history books i don't think anyone realized that the long gone are the days of like a presidential proclamation of war that you know this is actually now how things are going to get started i don't know if it's going to be carried out we can all hope that it doesn't happen you know in the next u.s. operation we just heard today that the incoming commander going to afghanistan is thinking about keeping u.s. troops there past twenty fourteen you'd only imagine if u.s. troops start instagram in their photos like we're seeing out of gaza right now yeah

certainly i think if anything it helps to really fill in some blanks that were not there in the past in terms of having a better more truthful accurate history written it's really bring us there when we need to be absolutely argue our producer and you're like thanks as always thank you . well breaking the set is coming up in thirty minutes here on our team i want to check in with abby martin now to see what's on the agenda hey there abbi what's going on so if you're from think about is our society more different than the romans really with the bread and circuses the mindless entertainment that we have today and well i mean sometimes i imagine the outfits they wore i imagine toga style maybe you know confusing that with my college days but that i feel like a different i maybe you're going to disprove me you know i mean we're going to talk about kind of the similarities and how we're inundated with mindless entertainment really is the internet making war i mean we're going to kind of explore all these and more with a three hundred sero and we're also talking. and israel and palestine this whole city.