lowballed dubois. he's served the united states government for decades he's run for president three times after a long and prosperous career ron paul is hanging up his congressional congressman swan song coming up. as of tensions in the middle east war and high enough aggression between israel and gaza just started boiling over and this conflict has the potential to sum the entire region into a tailspin over you the latest information coming out of the struggle and the international implications. and unlike the days where the press and the public waited for days for pictures coming out of wars to come out social media has revolutionized the way the world gets information even governments are getting in on the instant messages welcome to the new age old rule.

it's thursday november fifteenth eight pm in washington d.c. my name is christine you're watching our t.v. while i'm sure serving more than twenty years as a member of congress and running for president three times yesterday congressman ron paul gave his farewell address on the floor of the u.s. house of representatives it was classic ron paul with messages of the need for a smaller government far less spending and also the need for a much stronger fight for liberty it was more than forty eight minutes long let's just play a small part of it. why do our political leaders believe it's unnecessary to thoroughly audit our own goals why can't americans decide which type of lightbulbs they can buy why is it the t.s.a. permitted to abuse the rights of any american traveling by air why should there be

mandatory sentences even up to life for crimes without victims as our drug laws require why have we allowed the federal government to regulate commodes in our homes why is it political suicide for anyone to criticize a pack while a whole lot of questions coming from ron paul and i want to talk more about the man and his legacy with brian already senior editor at reason turning brian at the end of an era here. oh my god yeah i think all americans should miss wrongful whether or not agree with the entire mess if you present because you there is no politician on the scene that we can imagine who is going to be best in that wider ranging in defending american rights to live their own lives make their own choices keep their own money and not only that i did a very interesting thing for the right wing conservative. he laid out this vision

virtue and morality it's not about policing people. but about recognizing that government force should not be used to manage other people's lives and i think that's a vision of virtue within moral people and i think we should all be able. to absolutely and not so harsh of terms basically called out the hypocrisy of those who call for more freedom and liberty but as he said they only want for themselves not for everyone else he said that is a problem talk to me about sort of the legacy that he will leave behind i know brian that the republican party this year agreed to include an audit of the federal reserve as part of their party platform what else though is realistic in terms of you know paul doctrine if you will actually getting a doc anytime soon. i think where you want to look for paul's legacy is not in any actual policy changes in the next two or four years but to the two point one million people voted for him in the republican primaries and. you know once you go

wrong all it's difficult to go back and i think that's a big part of the reason why romney lost is that he was not able to capture the. ron paul people and they will be out there looking for a politician that mantle i mean the most likely one right now or two in the next day care senator graham. who i think it's great and but these two point one million people and many millions more message on the internet it may be what it all are going to be pressuring politicians in the future the federal reserve like you said is definitely an example of an idea that was considered completely crazy five years ago ron paul was the only person to believe in it and it's now become pretty much the policy of the republican party an example that things can change very fast we should not right or wrong all along. yeah i mean there are there are people who who really follow him and he says the same messages over and over that is one thing that those dynamics followers the disciples as i call them of ron paul say and

they're right it one thing that no one disagrees that this is a politician who is consistent in his message does not change depending on who is voting for him or what kind of race he's running and very consistent violent play another part of that speech that really sort of hit home. he was my opinion that the course of the u.s. in bark gone in the latter part of the twentieth century would bring us a major financial crisis in the gulf us in a foreign policy that would overextend us and undermine our national security. to achieve these goals i saw that the government would have had to shrink in size and scope reduce spending change the monetary system and reject the unsustainable costs of policing the world and expanding the american empire just following the constraints placed on the federal government by the constitution would have been a good place to start. one of the things that still so few people at least in the

establishment republican party have adopted even though you know the tea party which swept quite a few new members into office in twenty ten you know have called for less government but ron paul says less government less government spending and that includes in their importantly less military spending why is this still something that nobody even seems to consider especially here in washington you're right that's exactly what the tea party missed about a limited number of messages that. you know democrats tend to be or whatever government program right and republicans tend to be for them as long as they have this adriatic error so it's very difficult to get either of the major party you get serious about foreign affairs and also the blame the voter by the way exit poll showed that foreign affairs were on people's list of what they're actually concerned about it's very easy in a world without a draft when we are actually being attacked by our enemies at least not for the

last eleven years for americans to just forget about the cost in the sense in the danger of our inferior foreign policy ron paul is the only one out there talking it out but i will say that there is a new wave of republican led by rand paul who are recognizing at least on the grounds that whether you want empire or not we need to recognize or ron paul was great at the actually. anyway long for us to be bombing the rest of the world about which there there is but if we can get republicans on board the goal of. that will be whatever it takes to pull back our extremely dangerous expensive and life destroying or well and i think i mean you mentioned this to to talk about foreign policy being fifth in terms of what people care about but i think one of the things that ron paul was able to make that strong argument is in is that the fact how it related it all is to domestic policy how the foreign policy of using drones in

other countries relates to the security of the united states how the spending on you know a million different types of equipment that isn't even used by the u.s. military relates to the domestic policy and the lack of available spending here within the united states and so that was one thing but i should say you know if you watched the forty eight minutes the speech yesterday which is very surprising a lot of people are tweeting that a lot of people did seem to watch i do want to point out it wasn't all doom and gloom so i do want to finish up brian by playing sort of an optimistic part of ron paul's remarks the good news is that compared in one thousand nine hundred seventy six when i first came to congress the desire for more freedom and less government in two thousand and twelve is much greater and growing especially in grassroots america tens of thousands of teenagers and college age students are with great enthusiasm welcoming the message of liberty. so that's my last question for you

brian i mean i mean what happens i know you said that you know ron paul's heir rand paul could take a leadership role in terms of you know a place for these young people to steer their energy but this really was something i've never seen before and i covered a lot of ron paul rallies how many young people are following this seventy six year old man so talk about the future of the ron paul revolution sure you know i've been following ron paul's nine hundred eighty eight john and i wrote a book about him last year and in all my years of talking to him the most depressing thing about this year was and he said this to me as well as he cannot believe how successful these ideas are amongst the kids eighty five hundred people at berkeley for goodness sake one of the most left leaning college in the world and that is really the hope you know you can get exactly right it's an interesting mix of apocalyptic looking to use the dangers of government overreach and the fiscal crisis facing us and because we understand that we return our government to

congress principles that we can afford free markets you create wealth and when he sees how many young people believe these ideas he's hopeful and so my because politicians are always going to be lagging indicators ok popular politicians are speaking so we need a population out there who wants to vote for ron paul's ideas and wrongful create that constituency and i think each ron paul van is out there being all wrong all so even if ron is not in office anymore i think it's going to well certainly one of the more interesting dynamic characters that we here at archie america have focused on over the years certainly probably a lot of our viewers are going to miss seeing our coverage of him but you never know there's always twenty sixty and ryan's already senior editor of reason dot com . and well we want to go now to the escalating violence between israel and hamas the violence has gotten worse and has reached levels not reached for at least four years there have been deaths on both sides and heart wrenching images like this one

that have really given the fight a face this is 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 even posted a video from earlier today in which they say 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 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 signed the israeli defense forces command to talk more about this escalating violence i was joined by max blumenthal of writing fellow at the nation the nation institute and here is his take. 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 when 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 abu khattala 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 escalation so. it's really israel which actually broke a truce then proceeded to kill off my job ari was the head of the military wing but some brigades of hamas who was the man who was really in forcing all of the truces

and 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 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 in for 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 and that means that a whole lot of things that i want to touch upon such as i want to start with as he were talking about to the killing of the of the military command commander of hamas

this is israel's first major offensive into gaza and for 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 assassination to the israeli public and the rationale is that he was involved in authorizing the operation that captured gilad shalit the israeli soldier who was enforcing 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 shalit i'm just sorry 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 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 in gaza and crack down on the smaller factions and they're not doing that instead what they've done is maybe 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. . 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 didn't sell 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 the leader of hamas you talk about the timing as well max there's an is where 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 sub contractor today breaking up a palestinian demonstration in the west bank but another figure has been diminished is a hoot olmert was actually the architect the prime minister during operation cast lead . and was considering running again despite being mired in scandal that's an eon who was planning on running in a coalition kind of a. in kind of a likud bit

a new 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 possibly who is going to run as kind of the candidate who has this record of cracking down on gaza he took care of gaza and at the same time that's and yahoo has in his cabinet who brock who was pushing for an operation on the gaza strip and was going to run in the elections as well so what does knesset have to authorize a punishing operation and in order to outflank all measure the architect of operation cast lead and who brought who is known who has much more credibility among the military than that in the i was so essentially palestinians are dying in order to win votes for benjamin netanyahu and his new partner i think gore and lieberman it's a tradition in israeli politics to campaign on the blood of caliphate in we saw it

in operation cast lead in every major party including kadima then led by sibby livni boasting about how much they supported israeli retallack in the gaza strip with soapy livni actually declaring that the israeli army acted like hooligans and that was a good thing so this is classic israeli politics a matter of the wrong resort 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 anything 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 in the in the u.s.

we're just really not seeing a lot of reporting on palestinian casualties which is classic but you know what about the endgame here max i'm in a lot of people are just wondering you know how does this end. i don't think israel wants another war 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 injections 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 a jar and consists of a majority of refugees who are 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. by 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 let's stay on the story but take a little bit of a different angle here the battlefield has expanded not just to the land and the

people but to cyberspace as well the israeli defense force has been why i've tweeting much of the action has here vandals the i.d.f. is invited on an operation against hamas an iranian proxy respond. simple for terror attacks on israel has tag iran has time gaza later on they announced the death of the hamas military leader with this three word tweet bari eliminated it was coupled with the picture that you see here now here's a tweet the i.d.f. sent out today recapping 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 and also an interesting little exchange that took place in the twitter verse the i.d.f. wrote we recommend that home no hamas operatives whether low level or senior leaders show their faces above ground in the days ahead to which the all kasam

brigades responded they said our blessing hands will reach your leaders and soldiers wherever they are in parentheses you open hell gates on yourselves this is a new generation of warfare. the i.d.f. announcing the death of a hamas military commander over twitter long before it was brought up in a press conference with more on social media the social media aspect of this our two web producer andrew blake joined me earlier and started off by talking about how officials used social media to also announce the beginning of the strikes. if you weren't there to actually hear the air raid calls or watched 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 sort of like some of our you know our political wonk friends here in washington live tweet debate this is live tweeting by officials of the violence is a little different i was having a 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 or not to they can't necessarily relate i rely on social media right now because like we saw during the arab spring and in places like syria tunisia just because you have 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 we've already 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 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 communications just crumbling and this isn't of course just you know internet savvy and people using the internet in the middle east this is going on everywhere and certainly one interesting element of this the 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. there were the usual deal less attacks where they would just crumble a website pretty much overloaded with traffic and make it an operable there have been a couple defacements two where they've managed 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 your friends 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 that i was in the in the pamphlet know exactly why inside the i.d.f. we'll get away from 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 or 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 sort of you know how do you i mean you know but if you go online people. 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 on leakers because they don't want information to get brought to the mainstream media and then bring up public opposition here we're just seeing the facts of war being censored the actual atrocities are happening right now aren't 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 minute ago that if you have like sim cards on your phone in your in gaza you might be able to pick up the 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 and not just with what's going on and 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 live tweeting of this this operation start yesterday 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 the next u.s. operation we just heard today that the incoming commander going to afghanistan is thinking about keeping you. us troops there past twenty four team would only imagine if u.s. troops start instagram photos like we're seeing out of gaza right now well 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 thanks as always thank you well that's going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash r t america or our website our team dot com slash usa and you can of course

follow me on twitter at christine for now i hope you great nights.