the turmoil in gaza intensified fighting in the region has left more than one hundred dead and growing calls to end the violence from the international community what role will u.s. policy in the middle east play in ending the conflict a report from the region is coming up. keeping the u.s. safe from a cyber attack congress can't seem to pass time or legislation so president obama has taken matters into his own hands but what he wants to do is shrouded in secrecy and has quite a few people concerned i'll take a look into that issue coming up. like father like son kentucky's rand paul is

blocking a key piece of legislation in the senate he's worried about indefinite detention so is rand paul going to be the voice of reason when it comes to civil liberties here in the u.s. . it's monday november nineteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for you're watching r.t. let's begin in the middle east where the violence between israel and hamas has intensified with bombs exploding inside of gaza. the latest reports we've seen have more than one hundred palestinians and three israelis killed over the last six days and much of the world is watching to see if the air war escalates into a ground war president obama was asked about the situation and made his position clear. there is no come through on earth that would tolerate missiles raining down

on its citizens from outside its borders so we are fully supportive of israel's right to defend itself from missiles landing on people's homes and workplaces and potentially killing so civilians oh quite a few people have been watching what's going on and making some connections here pointing out the vast similarities with what's happening today with what happened four years ago similar scenes of the tanks and bulldozers in the same regions not to mention the timing of this which is just after the us presidential election and just before elections in israel but despite some of the similarities there have been some major differences as well first and foremost that this time the arab spring has happened and policies made by the u.s. can change the region in a significant way for more on that i was joined by r.t. correspondent paula slayer in tel aviv i asked her if the people there are noticing

a pattern in the intensification of the air war between israel and gaza. says the people here are noticing this i mean you have a throwback to operation cost lead which was the name of these radio operation back in december two thousand and eight at that time the stated goal of these radio army and the israeli government was to completely delete the supplies of weaponry that hamas and other militants in the gaza strip have been hearing the same kind of warmongering the same kind of statements coming out of the israeli leadership i think the one significant difference is that for the first time ever rockets have been aimed at tel aviv they have been texas and we intercepted but this certainly has sent a chill down the backs of many israelis it was also a rocket that landed not saw from the city of jerusalem this happened over the past weekend it's the first time since nine hundred seventy that a must that a missile has reached so far into the country now the another says essentially is that since that last war must have been able to stock itself up on long range

missiles and if anything this is only going to be more of an incentive for the israeli government to move ahead with a ground offensive but again in terms of what all the similarities we saw the same four years ago that the operation from the israeli side started with airstrikes we've witnessed these airstrikes now for six days and then it ultimately ended in a ground operation and the indication on the ground as we see that tanks and armored personnel vehicles meet along the israel gaza border as we see some seventy five thousand reserve soldiers called up some forty thousand soldiers stationed in the south of israel or the indications at this stage of that a ground offensive could be imminent and let's talk now about the differences here of course mentioned some of these weapons that have been used by hamas that are i guess for about lack of a better word better more enhanced improved but of course another difference here is the changing of the guards in egypt i know former president hosni mubarak had closed off the rafael crossing in two thousand and eight between gaza and egypt but

the new president president mohamed morsi has not done so talk about what kind of effect this is having paula. well christine i think that's a significant point to make i mean we're looking now at a new egyptian leadership with the muslim brotherhood in power in cairo you do essentially have politicians there who have a much closer alliance to the hamas leadership in gaza but having said that though they do have a very delicate line to follow it's a balancing act that on the one hand they want to be true to their support base they want to respond to what people on the egyptian street are saying and that is to give support to hamas but on the other hand morsi and his government will not one to a made the united states so he they receive millions of dollars every year in funding from washington and so they'll want to be seen not to be too much in the hands of a must but certainly something more like

a middle of middle of the road mediator it's still questionable whether or not people see them as middle of the road but certainly they are seen as the most likely mediator in this situation they have been holding talks throughout the day sunday and monday with various players banking moon the u.n. secretary general is in cairo where he has been holding talks and what we're hearing from both the israelis and hamas is that they put forward their demands they are expecting that egypt will address those demands but you have a situation with both sides are waiting for the other side so as to lay down weapons before they say they'll come to the party and of course this is something that doesn't bode particularly well for the creation of peace but we're also hearing from these ladies one of their conditions is that the each action gaza border with russia remains open while they say they'll close down the border between israel and egypt israel and gaza and in fact this border has consistently been closed that is not something that the former egyptian president hosni mubarak would have done for instance he did not keep that border open on his on his side he

in fact kept it down in alliance and in coordination with the israelis so certainly the gameplay and has changed on the ground these are ve. i think we're just taking a look at the global chessboard here another example of the tide changing if you take a country like qatar an ally of the united states used to have ties with israel now leaders there are saying they're supporting hamas in this conflict talk all about the bigger picture here way not just dealing with you know egypt israel and gaza but there are several other countries that are sort of giving clues that this is in fact a very different battle this time around. it's . whether thirty is a very different battle this time around if you look at qatar for instance earlier this month the emir of qatar was in gaza where he played some four hundred million dollars to social projects there he has also been in egypt where he's been meeting

with the egyptian president and he too is trying to play a role in these mediation efforts what i think is happening as far as qatar is concerned and certainly this is an analysis that's backed up by me talking to political analysts who deal with the situation is that it's trying to present itself as the big brother of the arab world you have to talk trying now to play a leading role in the israeli palestinian conflict as well as in the conflict in syria and certainly from the sense on the ground i get is that qatar did lose a lot of face particularly with its border crossing of the arab spring tune a channel like old as there i mean many people say that the revolution in egypt would not have happened if it wasn't for al jazeera and so you have a country that qatar needing to reestablish itself in the arab world and so i think that is what it's trying to do now at least in this example these are the the israeli gaza conflict but this is a region that has changed and changed significantly in the last four years it's not going to be a region that is union to changes it's

a region that israel is having to adapt to it has its neighboring countries with new leadership with potentially new leadership and the israelis to a very concerned about this yeah certainly it's a major concerns on both sides everyone keeping their eye on that region thanks for your reporting r.t. international correspondent hala slayer. well the u.s. senate had planned to take a vote on the national defense authorization act before returning home for the thanksgiving holiday and but it appears that might be a little more difficult than they anticipated senator rand paul is holding up the vote in tell an amendment he's proposed is voted on the amendment has to do with affirming the sixth amendment to the constitution and the indefinite detention of u.s. citizens it states a citizen of the united states who is captured or arrested in the united states and detained by the armed forces of the united states pursuant to the authorization for use of military force shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein

the crime shall have been committed which district shall have previously been ascertained by law and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation to be confronted with the witnesses against him to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense while here to discuss what all this means that brian doherty a senior editor with reason ryan what's the deal here why would an amendment to a bill be needed that just affirms what's already in the constitution. and the really sad thing is that the senate really doesn't want to vote on the girl you want to be on the record. or or not or we will have. more fuel law in the united states i mean it's great that we're told this it's that he had. everything. this is an issue of course that both rand paul and his father ron paul

who you wrote a book about have been very vocal i want to play just a quick snippet of rand paul speaking about this last year. some say that to prevent another nine eleven attack we must fight terrorism with a war mentality and not treat potential attackers or criminals for combatants captured on the battlefield i agree but these are people captured or detained in america american citizens they were pretty simple all but by some of his republican counterparts rand paul is seen a little bit as a black sheep what do you think that's all about. their republican party is just very jingoistic they you know they love war and it is presented to them under the excuse of keeping america safe from the terrorist threat they are willing to throw out the constitution they're willing to throw out a trial by jury they're willing to throw out a b.s. corpus and it's disgraceful and it's sad that rand paul is about the only republican in the senate willing to stand up for these things but it is also great

that he is able to do this and he is still considered and rightly so a prospect for president in two thousand and sixteen and i think he's going to do it and he's going to be a bright light in the republican party when he does the only guy out there still willing to stand up for the constitution even in the face of the so-called terror threat and as senator joe lieberman as a senior member of the senate armed services committee said he hopes to get says done that the senate gets a sound from the end of the year but also noted partisan gridlock is a major reason for why it just might not talk a little bit about the politics of this. harry reid the democratic leader in the senate is very mad at rand paul for this and he was telling reporters say he wanted them to understand it's not the democrats holding up this defense spending fail it's the republicans but it's sad that the democrats are not willing to be the party that stands for civil liberties i mean the paul i think in the end rand paul probably will get barreled over on this because all reid hasa do is fall for

a so-called cloture vote he just needs sixty senators to say hey rand paul you don't get to have this vote on the you know whether the military can just lock people up without a trial and i'm suspecting that's probably going to happen but what rand paul will have succeeded in doing is marking himself as the civil liberties republican and a message shaming the rest of his colleagues democrats and republicans for not wanting to go on the record about this very important issue well that's interesting i mean you say a lot of democrats don't want to deal. this but why not i mean a lot of people who you know align themselves with the left also say that their civil libertarians say that civil rights and civil liberties are important to all americans so why do you think i mean a bigger picture here why is rand paul not getting a bunch of democrats who say hey i want to work together with with you on this and many other issues because like big they're not really serious of not civil liberties or you know they say they are really specially in the face of

a bill that's supposed to be protecting us from terror they were fifty or so long rand paul the limited government sort of conservative bonafide allows them to be brave on this in a way that maybe democrats are not and i'm afraid when it comes down to it what's most important to many democrats is merely question the income redistribution they're not really got curious about civil liberties and paul and ron paul were sort of gave you two with rules and democrats who said they believe in civil liberties but we're not leaving office. i mean it's interesting if what you say is in fact true that you know any member of this congress should think that soft on terror is the same thing as giving someone that's an arrest that's arrested an american citizen arrested a trial it's not like rand paul is asking for anyone to be let go if if they're found out to be a u.s. citizen he's just saying they deserve a trial as is already stated by the way in the sex the moment it is interesting but

i think brian one of the most interesting things is senator john mccain he himself detained and held as a prisoner of war for years during the vietnam time seems not to care for senator rand paul's amendment what's going on here. mccain has become the worst sort of defense off and there are all since two thousand and eight hoboken convention back in august where rand paul got off and was willing to say hey if we're serious about cutting spending we have to look at the fence as well mccain comes on i know you know you can't touch it and defense mccain i think is just pandering to this sense that we are under great risk and great threat which which in fact is near as we can tell we're not and any any respect for the constitution and the talk of putting the spending by a penny is somehow being soft on her and that is not true and it's sad that mccain who as you said should know better or should respect the rights of detainees and

the less the terrible on this issue and tell you what it certainly is interesting being here in washington for not even months but years having these senators these congressmen really do nothing now they're sort of rushing to try to get lots of things done and but of course the politics of it all is quite interesting and we thought this is an important story frank already senior editor at reason dot com thanks so much. i want to talk now about the latest efforts by the government to deal with the threat of cyber security now as we've been telling you recent efforts by congress to pass cyber security legislation have failed and president obama has now taken the matter into his own hands were portably signing presidential policy directive twenty according to the washington post this is a classified document which lays out what federal agencies can and can't do to try to respond to cyber threats or cyber attacks so because this document is classified

that means none of us can see it even those in congress will not have oversight that would could very well impact many americans so two attorneys with the electronic privacy information center also known as epic well they filed a freedom of information request demanding that the president release this secret directive but simply they want to make sure there is accountability in their foyer requests they write transparency in cybersecurity is crucial to the public's ability to monitor the government's national security efforts and ensure that federal agencies respect privacy rights and also comply with their privacy obligations under the privacy act i was joined earlier by one of the attorneys working on the case a misstep on a bitch i first asked her what we do know about presidential policy directive twenty. mostly what we know is what has been contained in the washington post summary of the document which is that it's given more and power to the n.s.a. to conduct cyber security operations and that underneath the directive that there

will be what they call the rules of engagement put into place where n.s.a. is able to reach outside of government networks and possibly into civilian that works in the united states we're not entirely sure what that means because we don't know what the document says so we kind of took that summary and we realize that there are a great amount of concerns here and previously we had filed a foyer request for a different presidential security directive that was on national security presidential directive fifty four which is a very long way of saying this is the n.s.a. cybersecurity authority that was issued under president bush we have a lawsuit going right now to pursue that document and we thought the logical extension was now if the n.s.a.'s authority is even creasing even more to try to get the public to see their increased in authority as well let's go to backtrack a little bit and talk about why cybersecurity legislation has not been able to pass in congress i mean if you look at the senate bill the recent senate bill that failed this had the backing not only of most of the democrats it had the backing

also a senator joe lieberman an independent and republican senator susan collins so i guess what are the political arguments here against this well there are two camps in the cyber security legislation world there is the camp that would like to see the department of homeland security had cyber security operations in the united states on this is a civilian agency they have very specific obligations they have much more transparency the military agencies and this is the route that epic support says this very public friendly outwit however there's another camp that would like to see the cyber street operations house entirely at the n.s.a. the national security agency which has a long history of just being a total black hole for public information not only the last two boy requests that i discuss. because gone to the n.s.a. up to ten times in the last few years asking them for information asking them for them to make anything that they're doing public to be held to some sort of

transparency standard and they just won't comply and we believe that given the choice of these two alternatives that we would much we would much greatly prefer the civilian agency than the military yet you know i think a lot of critics would argue that by doing this by having so much unknown and always keeping it secret in the name of national security it sort of cheapens what you know the things that do need to be kept secret in the name of national security when there's such a sweeping you know this is used and overused i think it could be argued as you mentioned the only place really that we know anything anything about this is in this washington post article. but in that article it says that you know it effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to for cyber attack so let's talk bigger picture here i mean does this you know make cyberspace the new battlefield people are saying that that's a little bit of a contentious point if you can call something that happens on the internet a battlefield i think that's an interesting analogy whenever it gets brought up.

when they're one of the reasons they're sending it is because it is you know basically congress or not congress that the white house and government in the military are acting without you know would be able to act without sort of votes taken or approval given that's how i would ask what kind of distinguishes it makes it a battlefield or a war exactly and i think it's the operation between congress acting in the president acting have been very interesting the president has said he cannot go as far as congress can go so all of this the different things that are included in one of these bills he has he has publicly said we cannot do all of this but some of it they can do they think by executive order a presidential directive that they can implement some of these measures without having to go through congress and we have to assume that some of that is what's included in the secret directive. the stuff that's more geared toward the n.s.a.'s actions another executive order is in the works supposedly a draft has been released that would give more power to d.h. s.

to do cyber security operations and these two based on what we know may work in conjunction may. complement each other but they would work outside of the guise of what congress is doing and congress could always come in and say this is the. procedures that we're going to put into place talk about some of the timing regarding this process i mean you mentioned that you are still involved in the lawsuit to get information released that was issued under president bush so that's more than four years ago and now you filed this request i mean during those five six years however many years i mean a lot can happen that the american people don't know about. so talk a little about that that's i mean that's why we're filing this we filed our first two thousand and nine obviously that's been three years ago since we filed it furthermore since the documents been released and then that time we believe that the public hasn't been able to involve themselves in the cybersecurity debate and the reason they can involve themselves is because they don't have the right amount

of information and they don't know what sides to be on and debate when you can't watch the debate bakley and supposedly there have been unclassified summaries of some of these person dental directives not supposed to have been unclassified summaries released but they don't say exactly what's in it you can't look at the text you can analyse analyze it and in some cases when these secret directives have been put forward not in the cybersecurity context in other contexts and members of congress have later come in and seen what these authorities are given they have come out and said you know you'd be shocked to know what agencies think they're able to do under these powers and i think that that's one of the great concerns as we like to see what the language says and see what power is given certainly the some of the proponents of keeping a lot of this information classified and secret and not available to the public they use examples like what we saw with the stuxnet virus a computer virus developed by the united states and israel jointly it caused quite a bit of damage at an iranian nuclear plant you know this want to say something

similar happened a virus that infected computer and software programs here in the united states that . the government needs to be able to act and to do so without being open about it what's your response to that well i don't think we doubt that the n.s.a. is. position they have expert computer security individuals working for them their expertise is unquestioned this well as the people at the h.s. working in cyber security they're at the top of their field these are incredibly intelligent individuals however i think that our government is based on public accountability and regardless of what actions they're taking maybe a different safeguards need to be built in notifying the public after the fact so that they're able to effectively counter maybe a dangerous virus or something however that transparency needs to be built and we need to know what they're capable of doing as soon as possible in order to educate the public and have

a real debate about what this means so your concerns on the concerns of epic really revolve around accountability and transparency exactly our aim is to panas the panavision with the electronic privacy information center thanks so much as always let's move on down to the war on whistle blowing a war that in the last few days and actually tilted in favor of those advocating for more protections it's certainly been a long time coming but last week congress approved legislation making it safe for federal employees who want to report wrongdoing at their jobs to do so without fear of retaliation to talk more about what the new law does and does not include i was joined by r.t. web producer andrew blake he first explained which government employees will receive more protections for whistle blowing. we're looking at a lot of federal employees of course not all of them that would be too convenient but one big expansion that we're seeing here is that workers of the t.s.a. the transportation security administration finally have whistleblower coverage which obviously makes sense but again we're looking at an agency that's still

rather in its infancy it's only been around since a little after nine eleven so it makes sense and we can finally like i'm very curious to see what kind of things are going to come out of that because that's one of those agencies where you're getting people from within the federal sector but people who are you know subjected to treatment by the by the t.s.a. every single day and it's kind of a kind of something that people aren't too crazy about and if you've been to an airport lately you're not going to be people who they're happy with what the t.s.a. is doing from the public facing side of it so it might be really interesting to see now is that that now that t.s.a. employees can actually come out and talk about abuse and misuse happening within the agency itself what actually is going to service are they going to go to congress and start complaining or are they going to go to their superiors and start putting in reports we can hope but there was one major group that we're going to start seeing ideally a little bit of phone response from items that they think are going to need a little bit of media attention public said of course not everyone is covered i

know the senate had tried to include provisions to protect people with national security clearances yeah this is very interesting the house republicans not only didn't include it they flat out blocked these two parts of the legislation and what you just said which is the national security intelligence workers. but so what's their reasoning here well i'm just a good question i'm not too sure but one thing that we do know is that president obama has supposedly saved the day and he's issued a little policy directive that will provide some sort of safeguard for these intelligence community workers who want to go out and speak up but no the congress themselves actually decided. that's not the best thing so we have you know the executive branch saying one thing legislative branch seeing another is it's still a victory absolutely but there's still it's not coded in there yet it's still just a minor win in the fight to actually have public employees like actually working

for the government be able to complain and in the intelligence community that's really where we're seeing the most people not actually just coming out and complaining for the most people actually being prosecuted for that too i mean if i ask you who is probably the most harshly prosecuted whistleblower in the united states right now you might say julian a song although i did not mean i would say it's bradley manning of course and bradley manning was a army intelligence officer who has been detained for over nine hundred days now for blowing the whistle of that in solitary confab salut lee and conditions consider torture a spread the united nations and for what he did allegedly was blowing the whistle war crimes and actually saying ok i work for uncle sam i'm in the army the army is doing something i'm not too crazy about it i'm going to and it was a law against law yes yes i'm going to blow the whistle and what yeah that's so means if you think that it may do you think that under this new law it could be argued. in a court of law that bradley manning should. be freed i mean it could be argued

should have been argued all along that when you have the state department saying that he hasn't done anything that's actually caused massive damages like the prosecutors want to say absolutely but is really going to happen that's a good question especially like i said when we have congress saying one thing the president saying another that was our two web producer and you're blake and that is going to do it for now but for more on the stories we covered go to youtube dot com slash artsy america or check out our website our team dot com slash usa and you can also follow me on twitter at christine. cool.