the turmoil in gaza intensifies fighting in the region has left more than a hundred people dead and more calls to end the violence from the international community so what role will u.s. policy in the middle east play in ending the conflict the report from that region coming up. in the usa from a cyber attack congress can't seem to pass cyber legislation so president obama has taken matters into his own hands what he wants to do is shrouded in secrecy and has quite a few people concerned will look into that issue coming up. why 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 in the united states. well good evening it's monday november nineteenth eight pm in washington d.c. i'm christine you're watching our team let's begin this evening in the middle east where the violence between israel and hamas has intensified with bombs exploding inside of gaza. the latest reports have more than one hundred palestinians and at least three israelis killed over the last six days and much of the world is watching to see if this air war escalates to a ground war president obama was asked about the situation and here's what he said . there's 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 civilians and quite a few people have been watching what's going on and certainly drawing some parallels pointing out the vast similarities with what's happening today with the way it unfolded four years ago similar scenes of tanks of bulldozers in the very same regions not to mention the timing of this just after the u.s. presidential election and just before the election in israel and by despite some of the similarities there have been some major differences first and foremost that this time the arab spring has occurred and policies made by the u.s. have changed the region in a significant way for more on all that i was joined earlier by r.t. correspondent paula slayer i asked her if the people in tel aviv are noticing

a pattern in the intensification of the air war between israel and gaza. seventy people here are noticing this i mean you have a throwback here to operation cost lead which was the name of these radio operations 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 these ready to ship i think so there's one significant difference is that for the first time ever rockets have been aimed at television they have been successfully into sifted but this certainly has been to chew down the backs of many israelis there 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 analysis essentially is that since that last war must have been able to stock itself up on long range iranian

made 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 a strikes we've witnessed these airstrikes now for six days and then it ultimately ended in a ground operation in the indication on the ground as we see that tanks and armored personnel vehicles move 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 rafał 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 the 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've put forward their demands they're expecting that egypt will address those demands but you have a situation with both sides are waiting for the other side 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 option 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 the

down in alliance and in coordination with the israelis so certainly the gameplay and has changed on the ground these are very easy. 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 that they're supporting hamas in this conflict talk all about the bigger picture here with 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 . well it certainly 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 guess is that khatami did lose a lot of face particularly with the border crossing of the arab spring tune a channel like al jazeera 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 like 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 a major concerns on both sides everyone keeping their eye on that region thanks for your reporting r.t. international correspondent hala slayer. well as i remember the latest efforts by the government to deal with the threat of cyber security as we've been telling you recent efforts by congress to pass cyber security legislation have failed and president obama has taken the matter into his own hands reportedly signing presidential policy directive number twenty according to the washington post this is a classified document which lays out what federal agencies can and cannot do to respond to cyber threats and attacks so because this document is classified well that means one of us can see what's in it even those in congress will not be able to oversee this though it could very well impact many americans so if your attorneys with the

electronic privacy information center epic have filed a freedom of information request demanding that the president release this secret directive put simply they want to make sure there's accountability in the foyer request it says 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 comply with their privacy obligations under the privacy act now i was joined earlier by one of the attorneys working on the case amy step out of it i first asked her what we know about presidential policy directive number 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 in power to the n.s.a. to conduct cyber security operations and that underneath the directive that there will be what they call 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 realized that there are a great amount of concerns here and previously we had filed a 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 increasing even more to try to get the public to see their increased and book authority as well let's sort of backtrack a little bit and talk about why cyber security 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 have 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 transparent see the military agencies and this is the route that epic supports is this very new no more public friendly outlet however there's another camp that would like to see the 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 just. because gone to 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's 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 thwart cyber attacks 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 one of the reasons they're saying it is because you know basically congress or not congress but the white house and government in the military are acting without

you know would be able to act without sort of vote taken or approval given that's how that's what kind of distinguishes that 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 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 to spend early step 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 a lawsuit to get information released that was issued under president bush so that's more than four years ago and now you've 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. or talk a little about that that's i mean that's why we're filing this we filed our first question two thousand and nine 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 side to be on and debate when you can't watch the debate actually and supposedly there have been unclassified summaries of some of these presidential directives not supposed there 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 cyber security 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'd like to see what the language says and see what power is given certainly though 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 that 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 we want to say something similar happened of virus that infected computer and software in programs here in the united states that you know 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 as well as the people working in cyber security there are 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 are taking maybe the 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 in 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 a pick really revolve around accountability and transparency exactly our aim is to japan events with the electronic privacy information center thanks so much as

always. also ahead here on araa to a major delay in congress's attempt to pass the defense authorization act one lawmaker says he's had enough when it comes to our civil liberties eroding here in the us that story when we come back.

a lot of american power continues. things are so bad. might actually be time for a revolution. and it turns out that a procurer drink at starbucks has a surprising. i'm

laurie mr. here is mitt romney trying to figure out the name of that thing that we americans call a dollar. i'm sorry i'm just a guy who cares an awful lot about his sorry. self. don't want to say defeat terrorism a liberal democrats. can scarcely. know the corporate media distracts us from what you and i should care about because they're profit driven industry that sells us sensationalistic garbage he calls it

breaking news i'm not me martin and we're going to break that. well the u.s. senate had planned to take a vote on the national defense authorization act before returning home for thanksgiving but it appears it might be a little more difficult than they anticipated has because sen rand paul is holding up the vote until an amendment he 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 his amendment states quote a citizen of the united states who is captured or arrested in the united states and detained by the armed forces of the u.s. 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 where in the crime shall have been committed which just so have been previously as

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 so to discuss what all of that means i was joined earlier by brian doherty a senior editor with reason dot com i asked him why an amendment to a bill would be needed when all it does is affirms was already written in the constitution the really sad thing is that the senate really don't want to vote on it when you want to be on the record. or or not or. most field law the united states i mean it's great that rand paul doing this that he had no belief that they were doing everything they can. or 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 then where do you think all by and 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 you know they love war and it's 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 trial by jury they're willing to throw out the escort 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 at the senate gets us down before the end of the year but also noted partisan gridlock is a major reason for why and 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 b. 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 barrels over on this because all reid have to do is fall for a so-called cloture vote you just need sixty senators to say hey rand paul you

don't get to have this vote on that 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 willis to keep in doing is marking himself as the civil liberties republican and in essence shaming the rest of his colleagues both democrats and republicans for not wanting to go on the record about this very important issue well that's understand when 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 to say hey i want to work together with with you on this and many other issues because i think they're not really serious of civil liberties i know they say they are but especially in the face of a bill that supposed to be protecting us from terror they are afraid to see what

they are soft on terror rand paul has the limited government sort of conservative bona fides allows them to be brave on this in a way that many democrats are not and i'm afraid when it comes down to it what's most important democrat you merely question the income redistribution they're not really got serious about civil liberties and rand paul and wrong paul were sort of standing with you to liberals and democrats who said they believed in civil liberties but we're not worried enough to stand with them all 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 and 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 die they're all since two thousand a public ng 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 fences well mccain comes on i know you know you can touch it and you have defense mccain i think is just pandering to this sense that we are under great risk and great threat which which in fact as we can tell we're not and that any any respect for the constitution any talk of putting the spending by a penny is somehow being soft on r. and b. it's not true and it's sad that mccain who as you said should know better or should respect the rights of detainees in

a less 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 or any senior editor at reason dot com thanks so much. well anything from your middle aged friend's new sports car purchase to david petraeus his recent sex scandal often gets blamed on a midlife crisis that all too human moment when people try to break out of a feeling of dissatisfaction with the direction of their lives but what if mid-life crises aren't human after all a report that came out today from the proceedings of the national academy of sciences found that great apes have the same dip in well being that humans do in their middle age already a body of scientific literature shows that human happiness resembles a u.

shape over time meaning that wellbeing is high in youth and in old age with a dip of being in the middle age while this same new shape was found in more than fifty countries and across a wide range of economic and demographic characteristics one place scientists how do you look for that you shape until now the animal kingdom but chimpanzees and hangs from america to australia to japan exhibited that same depth of happiness in the middle of their lives measured by a well established method for assessing primates so well many of blame david petraeus his decision to have an affair on succumbing to the temptations of man it might just have to do more with being a member of the primate family while guys that's going to do it for us for now but for more on the stories we covered go to you tube dot com slash r t america or check out our website dot com slash usa you should also follow me on twitter at christine for as our.