what's up guys this is breaking the set i've talked a lot on the show but the monumental shifts this recent election brought regarding gay rights indeed this country's come a long way but the struggle is far from over every now and again a story emerges that reminds me of just here's one example in a public high school in salina ohio twenty students were threatened with suspension for wearing t. shirts supporting the l g b t community they want to cite for fences they were simply shirt saying things like i support rainbow like this so you might say it's political agitation for the student body that student should take a side on a controversial issue here's the real kicker the same school students from a pro-life organization are able to wear t. shirts promoting their cause book according to a two thousand and eleven national survey eight out of ten l g b t students are

harassed and six out of ten feel unsafe at school for their sexual orientation this discrimination has to end students deserve more from their educational institutions they deserve not to be brought down by a school that's supposed to be building them up and that's why i'm breaking the set . on the last couple of shows i've been highlighting a lot of things i disagree with about israeli policy against palestine but you have to remember that it's not only me or millions of other people around the world it's israeli citizens as well every single military age citizen in israel are forced to serve in the israeli defense forces or i.d.f. and many of them like me are anti imperialists they do not agree with the occupation of god. in the west bank in fact today i'm highlighting just one of

these conscientious objectors his name is the ton belong when we can find a photo of him but it doesn't track from his good deed is nineteen year old from horry. sorry israel recently showed up in his recruitment bureau to inform officers that he's refusing to serve in the i.d.f. why while he's decided that it's morally corrupt to participate in a debilitating attack on the people of gaza this is the statement that he released he said it's clear that the netanyahu government is not interested in finding a solution to the existing problem but rather in preserving it we will talk of deterrence will kill the terrorists we will lose them civilians on both sides and we will prepare the ground for a new generation full of hatred on both sides and they can continue with this bloody cycle with no end in sight but we as citizens and human beings have a moral duty to refuse to participate in this cynical game that's why i decided to

refuse to be inducted in the israeli army on the date of my call of order nov nineteenth two thousand and twelve poetic inspiring words coming from someone so young but unfortunately the tunnel have to pay a price because freedom by tomorrow will likely be sitting in israeli military prison punished for this conscientious resistance you know if more people around the world refuse to fight their governments wars like aton perhaps peace would be a priority instead of a mere afterthought so for not letting your patriotic allegiance blind you from what's right and for standing up for human rights for everyone around the world long you are today's hero so he's the hero who's the villain all the person taking this dishonorable spot today is none other than gulaab sharon son of former israeli prime minister ariel sharon and response to israel's aggressive offensive on gaza which so far as claimed the lives of eighty one palestinians you. wrote an op ed

for the jerusalem post where he called for an even more extreme response to flatten gaza once and for all the article entitled a decisive conclusion is necessary goes on to generalize all one point five million gazans as guilty because they elected hamas as their government he says the gazans are hostages it hostages they chose this freely and they must live with the consequences actually there are a lot of anti hamas people living in gaza just like how there are a lot of anti netanyahu jews living in israel but i guess it doesn't matter to sociopathic war hawks like you who revel in the idea of ethnic cleansing as being the only solution to this one sided conflict apparently to you every human being simply living in gaza is fair game to be slaughtered if you think i'm exaggerating listen to what he had to say after he said the americans didn't stop with hiroshima

the japanese weren't surrendering fast enough so they hit nagasaki too so basically saying that it's a good thing that the us forces completely obliterated two thriving japanese cities with nuclear weapons so why even bring up this fact unless you're somehow insinuating that israel might have some moral imperative to completely obliterate gaza potentially with something as disastrous as a nuclear weapon now he sums up his his thoughts by giving an ultimatum he says there is no middle path here either the gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price or we re occupy the entire gaza strip a million civilians can't live under fire for long this needs to end quickly with a bang not a whimper. yeah sharon a million a half people can't live like this for too long and in fact already suffering a slow death then humane blockade psychological warfare constant encroachment of

their livelihoods social rone i think the gazans are already paying that price there's only so much dignity that can be stripped before the oppressed stand up to their oppressors i just have one question if the u.s. government is so quick to call. to be charged with incitement of genocide then where is the call to mr sharon for incitement of genocide against the people of gaza i don't know what else you could call a person wanting to exterminate one point five million people on this show that would be a villain so shame shame shame on you you lodge sharon. the way it were. never seen anything like that. folks last week we talked about cyber security and on wednesday the us senate once

again stalled on the initiative and in any possibility for a cyber build a comeback at least for the rest of the year but we also learn about a presidential directive leading us to believe that there could still be an executive order aimed at regulating the internet and it's all supposed to protect the country from what the government's referring to as an inevitable cyber pearl harbor sort of talk about cyber security in the government's relentless efforts at controlling the internet i'm joined by chief political correspondent at c. that declan mccullagh thank you so much for coming on declan. it's a pleasure to be here let's talk cyber security do it so. tell us more about this presidential directive memo i mean is it something that we should be worried about here. but we don't know a whole lot of think the first to report on it was the washington post which has a history of reporting on presidential directives and executive orders to texas classified we don't know see appears to deal security and securing government computers there is also a second executive order that may or may not happen it's been talked about for

months at least since august and some drafts of been floating around is probably the best discussed to executives order that hasn't actually become one yet and that is implementing some portions of the cybersecurity legislation through executive. that white house would be able to do things like require companies to do things but it could require federal agencies to do quite a bit. and the people you know like you just said a lot of this cyber legislation has been shut down a lot of people stood up against it do you think that's it and never that building here to see some sort of kill switch or executive directive aimed at the cyber legislation is it seems that you know so but people sense about all these things keep getting shot down well let's look at the history here it was senators rockefeller and lieberman a few years ago that initially proposed this kill switch they didn't use that term at least it didn't like that term but that's what it amounts to once you start

putting in legislation words like disconnect and urgency powers given to the president in a cybersecurity emergency that's pretty much what it amounts to right and then there were there was just a series outcry people did not like the idea of killswitch in the hands of the president a matter whose party and they backed down it took them a while they did back down and instead what we saw were two pieces of legislation earlier this year and one was a democratic bill that senator lieberman was. trying to move forward to and that would still allow increased surveillance and the other was a republican bill of the house of representatives the. did approve and that would allow but not require companies private companies i assume these evil providers what not to turn over information to intelligence agencies and other arms of the federal government and that there was a big outcry but to clear the house anyway well let's talk about surveillance you

know communications online exists kind of under this reasonable expectation of privacy and why does seem like we have to fight so hard to protect something that should be our right to privacy online back on well. you know this is been a fight for over ten years longer than i've been doing it i have been doing about fifteen covering these topics the way i think of it and maybe this is a little simplistic but if the police want to say read my diary they have to get a search warrant they have to come into my house they have to actually let me know that they've done this but if they want to read my cheat mail and this is what we saw last week with former cia directors g.-mail account all the need to do is get i did not not even a search warrant no search warrants required no no no notification is required this is the department of justice is position over multiple administrations expressed in court documents so you actually have less privacy online than you do if you have

a handwritten love letter stashed under your mattress. declan do you support legislation backed by the by the film and music industry to kind of go after piracy i don't really know your point or you or your stance on that. well i mean i'm not really in the habit of taking positions on these things but i'm going to have been skeptical of a lot of the proposals we've seen from hollywood. going back to the mid one nine hundred ninety s. with an electronic electronic theft act the copyright act we've seen copyright increasing in increasing in scope and severity in terms of punishment and that we saw as. sopa and protect ip about a year ago is when the fight really started and it took millions of people opposing it for hollywood to back down but they haven't given up there with the white house came out with a discussion draft of the paper and april saying that well some legislation like

this is still necessary so i think with this is something that's going to pop up again next year maybe it's not going to be called the stop online piracy act but it's going to have some of the same components i just can't help but think i mean is it fighting a losing battle here when you know you shut down megaupload and then you see other sites have to take its place it just seems like a never ending fight for. people who are going to constantly be there's always i mean piracy online. right and if you can't stamp it out well you can do is go after the larger sites the the big ones maybe this fall and so it's time to under the radar and i think that that is in hollywood's defense what they're trying to do now but the problem is that what we saw that this was you can also write legislation that so broad that you can target even the web sites maybe even privacy protecting are not anonymous in software would have on it under. definitions of soap at least the earlier versions and so you know they might be well intentioned legislation and they produce can be really brought out of it in copyright does does not exist in

a vacuum it's always in tension with free speech and so how where does this what where does the pendulum go from one side or the other for the last fifteen years maybe even the last forty years it's released one charge of the copyright side but now we're seeing it streaming back a little on friday there are a republican. that the republican study group in the house of representatives not with a report saying yeah let's let's really look at and you look back at lots of ricin this some of the more dramatic expansions of copyright law and they for reasons we don't entirely know reputed that their own report and rescinded it deleted it from their web site the next day well hopefully we can get some sort of compromise where there are privacy protections in place before they move forward with their navigable bill which we know probably will happen early next year declan mccullagh correspond forseen i thank you so much for coming on breaking it down thanks very much. like we've seen so far but our you tube channel youtube dot com slash break on the set and subscribe check out our facebook page at facebook dot com slash break in the set feel free to write and let me know you think as well and if you're

wondering what i'm doing when i'm not on there follow me on twitter abby martin i took a break from my preaching let's say to me going to results from the rolling campaign next. speak your language. or. documentaries in arabic it's all here on the t.v. reporting from the world's hot spots of a theocracy interviewer's intriguing story for you. then try a small t. arabic to find out more visit arabic don't all teeth dot com. a cook.

book. a i. play. and lead. plain.

english is going to be soon which brighton if you knew about someone from finest impressionist. means for instance totty dot com. last week occupy wall street announced its rolling jubilee fund raising campaign to buy and then forgive the outstanding debt quarter their website they've raised enough money to abolish seven point one million dollars of it so where does the initiative stand and where can it go from here to answer that i'm joined now by an organizer of the strike debt initiatives stephanie. the stephanie thank you so much for joining me thanks so much for having us and for covering this of course so you guys just launched last thursday how much money have you been able to raise how is it working out. we've just been delighted in overwhelmed we've raised so far over

three hundred fifty thousand dollars and the great thing about that is that it's going to go toward abolishing seven million dollars worth of medical day and the donations are still coming in awesome why do you guys choose to focus on medical debt first. well it's something that i think affects you know the majority of americans it's. something that's driving people into bankruptcy over sixty percent of bankruptcies have been caused by medical illness and there's really no safety net in the country for those so you know when we're talking about the stuff we're not talking about people you know some of the critics have said oh are you talking to people who are just shopping and racking up credit card debt and it's like this is affecting you know one in seven americans are being pursued by a debt collector and forty percent of people are using credit cards for basic living expenses like food so we're really talking about people that are struggling and people that need help right are you guys going to focus entirely on medical debt until eventually focus on you know student debt and are you can expand the

program i mean if this really does indeed it was well as it's going now are you guys can expand to other other forms as well yet we're currently researching student debt right now you know it's one of the most protected forms of debt so even when people file for bankruptcy their student debt still remains but we're looking into privately own student debt and sort of part of part of what we're trying to call attention to is. this sort of shadow we market where banks sell off debt they actually get tax incentives to do so and then you know there's this sort of unregulated very complicated somewhat mysterious shadowy debt market. and that's where people. get traded and so we're dealing with debts at the moment that we can buy in that market but we're definitely looking into two other other tactics the really. didn't really realize how it were going when i found out a rule in julio's and that's brilliant how are these debt collectors going to going to handle this when you continue to do what you're doing speaking of the grassroots

i mean you recently launched a some sort of kit for debt reactions can you talk about what that is sure so it's called the resisters operations can't and you know part of our we're doing this because this is designed deliberately to people you know keep people in the dark you know we really want to empower people so rolling jubilee is a tactic and it's part of it's just a component of this larger you know political movement that we're trying to get together with strike day so up on our website strike that dot org we have this debt resisters operations can all give you everything you need. to start a chapter in your area there have been affiliates popping up all over the us and one in london and some in canada we just announced we're going to have an open house for people in new york on december first but more importantly on january twenty first which is martin luther king day we're going to have this national visioning session and we really want to expand. the movement into this larger

political resistance against a system that is predatory and particular preys on people of color of low income communities the elderly and the disabled and indeed it could be a platform really to launch internationally i mean this model if it's working it is indeed working it can be a really inspirational thing to spread around the world so if any how widespread is this effort as it stands right now i know you just mentioned there's chapters open everywhere i mean are we talking about hundreds of people working right now in the campaign are you guys in college campuses. we're working on i mean we're in touch with sort of these affiliates that i'm popping up i believe there's one in oakland there's one in chicago there are also people that had viewing parties and that are looking to get engaged so we're working you know at the moment we are small group of volunteers in new york and you know it should be made clear to you nobody's taking any compensation every every penny that's raised is going right back into. into buying medical debt and you know but we are we are in touch with that with these groups and are trying to really facilitate working together in

a national and international way how do you think i mean have you had any reaction from from kind of these debt collectors pro to predatory agencies at all or those kind of ignoring this effort at this point. i mean i'm not sure how much i can speak to that you know i know that in order to buy the debt we do have to work with some partners in that way. you know so i'm not sure how qualified i am to speak is a no no problem what do you say to the naysayers stephanie the people who are like this is not going to work you know this is like putting a band-aid on something that's much deeper rooted i mean i'd absolutely say that this is a way to get people engaged in the conversation and rolling jubilee has been fantastic i mean it it is going to provide concrete help for people but we really want to get people engaged in this larger national conversation with strike day so this is this is a great way to get people talking it's a good way to also feel like you can actually contribute to to help somebody in the

solidarity we've seen has been amazing we got e-mails from people who said you know they have twenty seven dollars in their bank account they donated twenty you know to help other people so we're really seeing people band together and recognize that we all have this common interest and and we're all you know within the ninety nine percent we're all you know struggling financially so we can really help each other but in the longer term you know we need to channel that energy into this into this larger story get movement absolute's ingenuity and i really i'm for everyone to get involved thank you for what you're doing it's a great effort stephanie apolo organizer student strike debt sorry thank you. i i. i i want to talk about the latest news coming out of israel in the gaza strip the death toll from israel's military actions in gaza has risen over one hundred as of this morning the airstrikes are continuing over the weekend i learned that air

strikes on two media compounds in gaza left six journalists injured and either damaged or destroyed offices for a number of foreign media groups including the r.t. studio in gaza this recent offensive of course parallels israeli interventions in gaza in two thousand and two thousand and eight when media buildings were also shelled so for israel to claim ignorance on this matter doesn't hold water and as we all should know targeting media and war zones goes against international law polls are showing that fifty seven percent of americans support israel's actions in gaza which is no surprise when you take a look at how the us corporate press has been painting the crisis check it out. state of emergency as we get word and deadly fighting between hamas militants in gaza and israel hamas is still able to launch its. rockets towards so there is really even tell being with the world around. today not all are hitting their mark the growing threat from hamas is pushing israel closer to

a ground war is really troops and armor are massing along the border with gaza yep it's all about gazan militants spontaneously shooting rockets at israel totally unprovoked tom interesting how no u.s. news networks care to explore the events leading up to the rockets being shot in israel no mention of the israeli military forces killing a thirteen year old boy or ground troops tanks bulldozers already present inside the gaza strip leading up to the day the rockets started being fired no like always what we see from the corporate media in the us is just a regurgitation. of u.s. government rhetoric. will go on forever the 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 very predictable response from

president obama reaffirming in case anyone had any doubts that the us fully supports israel's right to defend itself that just so happens that these self-defense tactics include what the israeli military calls persuasion strikes to call these strikes precise is a misnomer just to warn you this is a very graphic image but it's just one example of the civilian deaths happening at the hand of these so-called persuasion strikes ten people were killed in this one gazan home including a mother and her four children i guess those two media buildings bombed by israeli drones yesterday must have been in the way of those precise bombs meant for militants oh and by the way the home of a b.b.c. arabic journalist was also shelled the bombing resulted in the death of his infant child and his sister in law and take a look at the b.b.c.'s web site several hours after the attacks there's no mention of the israeli military bombing military buildings i'm sorry media buildings and

gaza so let's pretend like the media does that there is no historical context to this conflict and that it started with hamas firing rockets keeping that in mind let's talk specifically about proportionality here since one day there have been three israelis killed compared to over one hundred gazans killed many of which were civilians and children gazans armed with homemade rockets are no match to israel's overwhelming military capabilities israel receives over three billion dollars a year in u.s. military. aid that's more foreign aid than that the u.s. gives every other country in the world combined there's no real sense of proportionality here but it's hard to tell when watching the way u.s. news outlets covered this crisis the claim of the military offensive against gaza is merely one of self-defense completely bypasses the fact that israel continues its six decade long illegal and aggressive military occupation of gaza and

violation of international law but no no you don't hear obama talking about palestine's right to self defense in fact any attempt at resistance no matter how ineffective is countered with an all out indiscriminate mass slaughter of the people of gaza. israel and the u.s. both continue to defy international law ignoring nearly one hundred un security council resolutions calling for israel to and they leave occupation and keeping one point five million palestinians living in conditions nothing short of hell on earth as americans we are uniquely positioned to urge our government to act in the name of justice and to that end nobody said it better than journalist chris hedges are callous indifference to the plight of palestinians he said and the hundreds of millions of poor packed into urban slums in asia and africa as well as our own underclass knew that the injustices visited on them will be visited on us and family members we fail ourselves.

wealthy british scientists not some expert on the. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy with max cons or the no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to kaiser report on our. do we speak your language i mean some of the well enough to do. with these programs and documentaries in spanish what matters to you. is a little too much of angola's keep these stories. here. try

to alter the spanish find out more visit. all tito's comb. have a vocal for books well get him a note so we have a lot of. groups of the. also. you know my marriage was like many it wasn't. just maddy when i was fifteen years old you can't liberate when you certainly can't do it through the barrel of a gun only effective social changes can be the afghans themselves ask again men and women we believe i'm going to spawn because not to across. without the participation it's a petition and that it comes to action to stop people in the obama administration talking about.