coming up on our team moving in on baghdad insurgents in iraq are trying to take over two key dams that provide power and water to more than a million people it's a battle over resources more on that just ahead. and a hackers convention the top of the cyber world comes together in las vegas just as a new report says over a billion e-mail addresses and passwords may have been stolen by a russian gang the host of boom bust earned eight joins us from las vegas. and a move some are calling censorship a new report claims the telecom giant forced an article to be taken offline because it was critical of

a controversial subject of net neutrality more on that later in the show. it's wednesday august sixth five pm in washington d.c. i'm amir a david and you're watching r.t. america. it's been a day of reflection after a two star general became the highest ranking u.s. official to be killed in either of america's post nine eleven wars fifty five year old harold green was one of the army's gadget gurus an engineer by trade whose goal was to integrate digital technology in a way that would improve military operations greene was killed yesterday when a gunman believed to be an afghan soldier opened fire and a military academy near kabul afghanistan more than a dozen other soldiers were injured including eight americans it was among the most

damaging insider attacks since the war in afghanistan again. a power grab is underway in iraq as this law make insurgents continue in their fight not only for land and supporters but also for the country's most valuable resources a mist heavy fighting the islamic state militants are also looking to capture a key dams in the country over the weekend isis launched a three pronged attack on the deep the dam which regulates the flow of the euphrates river in western iraq and also generates hydro electricity the militants are also fighting to seize the mosul them the country's largest along the tigris river in the north hydropower dam is near mosul the second largest city in the country which fell to the militants back in june so what could this looming water war mean for the future of iraq to talk about that i was joined earlier by daniel pipes president of the mideast forum and i first asked him what the appeal is for

these insurgents well in greaves if you control it in iraq you control. the two rivers euphrates and the tigris are the lifeblood of iraq. they're the source of water of course and electricity. there is no there is no iraq or best of the two rivers and the biggest in iraq is on the tigris river that we're north of the country. if you control the you control the city the water and you can threaten to flood and even to destroy by blowing it up. so you mention flooding i want to take a look at some of the potential scenarios there has been talk of threats that they will flood cities or farms as surrounding the dams is that a real possibility and what exactly would that solve it's a very real possibility because they've really done with the smaller the saluja

barrage into every day allowed a lot of water to go down and to flood so it's on their minds and this is a much larger that they could conceivably do you to i think the most likely thing is that they will use this as a lever to threaten basically the rock some are and most of the cities along the tigris river it's it's incredible. and as you mentioned this wouldn't be the first time isis would use water as a weapon there earlier this year we sized this capture the solution dam and it resulted in so-called water wars and can you explain a little bit more what happened there. well there are a lot of the water to come out fast flooded and it meant that farms were unusable and people had to flee by the way the largest example of catastrophic flooding was in one nine hundred thirty eight when the chinese nationals government hoping

to stop the journal. of china released a lot of the water out of them of the other war me estimates are that half a million people died or makes even more awful than it is that didn't even do any good and. so it has been done in history it has been done by ice it's small scale and it's my great work but it will do something more the strange thing is we don't know if they control the system there are contradictory reports so we would spit special to just. be still don't now but most will dam is an electricity generating dam electricity of course is a scarce resource right now in that region so it's it seems like it would be quite a great gain for them and how could they potentially utilize this resource at least politically to advance in iraq where they can make demands of the recipients of the water in that use and that they must do this and i don't want to continue to assume

water because they are in the current. system can they also try to sell it as well . so the down home so much as well electricity for sure and yes it does bring in income which they are very adept at they control oil fields they lean to the banks and they have substantial amounts estimates suggest one two billion dollars and yes this would be another source of ice this is not a hot headed group but i mean obviously the heavy sleeper so for the extreme but what we've seen so far in iraq other so-called capital in syria and elsewhere is that they're well organized there are more of incompetence and that too is important because the mosul down stands out as the worst constructed to have in the world it was done badly and it needs to be grouted it needs to be maintained basically around the clock and if isis or whoever controls it doesn't keep up and maybe it's there is the fear of catastrophic collapse of that too is to use not

just it's deciding which you want to do it's also having to tame. the maintenance of this to regular basis which is expensive it requires skill and it's certainly. you know this isn't the only resource that isis has gone after during just this this latest conflict we've seen that there's also plenty of oil in the country what sort of threat are they to iraq's oil infrastructure. they have substantial fields now under their control in syria to the west and they begun to get some lesser oil fields and. they threaten to take larger ones and to the north in those folks in the kurdish area and to take control of a very very large oiled machine. there on their own the i mean it is striking to see all the governmental forces of law and even the kurdish forces and are not able

to stop them there are the isis is winning everywhere you look there in lebanon. there in syria. wondering how can the. government of iraq armed forces are more the united states government. how can we use to the. militia on a country. that was daniel pipes president of the middle east forum. and now to the crisis in gaza israeli and palestinian delegations are in cairo for talks as a seventy two hour ceasefire in gaza appears to be holding for now a second day in a row u.s. and u.n. diplomats are also expected to join the discussions for the longer term truce which will deal with

a number of underlying issues that led to the violence over the past month both sides are coming to the table with individual demands israel says it wants gaza to be demilitarized and of course hamas insists that israel and egypt and there are long standing blockades over the region many are asking given the lopsided casual as he rate if the israeli military has gone too far earlier today on r t paul herson spokesman for the israeli foreign ministry commented on that question take a look the israeli military has taken unprecedented steps more so than any other military in the world to try and limit and minimize civilian casualties the israeli military operates one hundred percent within the dictates of international humanitarian law and there's time goes by and hopefully the dust becomes too settled in this cease fire does hold i think the facts will come out and for a closer look at the israeli military let's go to our tease policy where who is on

the ground in tel aviv. you know there there are a lot of soldiers a come back and say to yourself you know what the hell are we doing here you know why are we using so much force why we're treating them as way hannah is one such form israeli soldier she calls herself an anti occupation activist and was one of fifty reserve troops to sign an open letter to the washington post but fusing reserve duty aka national or the law and here in the service i didn't talk about this thing and so many are there you just a part of it but more and more soldiers are choosing not to be part of an army increasingly seen as the bully in the region we are spending billion billion a rural or. different through the system and there is no total different with the. pool. we are not prepared for. the possibility to overcome it five wars in eight years levanon two thousand and six

thirty four days more than eight hundred people killed and in the end israel faced an even stronger hizbollah for devastating wars with hamas two thousand and six eight twelve and fourteen thousand killed international outrage and in the end israel faced a unity government between former rivals hamas and fatah foreign policy was. we had four years in the which we lost the middle east. we lost two we in the way lost egypt. in. the in the middle east and many would argue more vulnerable the latest operation protective age has done seemingly little to protect israel in the long term you're not going to finish by trying to physically or the story hamas does and there's nothing that indicates that it will work this time or indeed the next time and that's taking its toll on the reputation of what was once considered one of the world's most efficient fighting force was

the hope is that the coming days will see a permanent cease fire in place but bottom line gaza is in tatters mistrust between israelis and palestinians is at an all time high policy r.t. tell of. the head of the russian investigative committee announced today that moscow has quote irrefutable evidence that illegal phosphorous bombs were used by the ukrainian military against the civilian population in the known donetsk region back in july these accusations words a night of course by the ukrainian government meanwhile ukrainian forces continued their offensive on rebel positions in the outskirts of damascus city itself came under air bombardment today claiming three civilian lives according to the donetsk city administration officials in kiev deny the strikes blaming the rebels the violence in the east has become so bad that the other ones prime minister has also

called a halt to the search for remains of victims of the malaysia airline flight crash seventeen the international recovery team had been working at the crash site after m.h. seventeen was shot down in eastern ukraine and as the violence in the region rages on the humanitarian situation has worsened in recent weeks with more and more refugees fleeing to russia to avoid the bloodshed artie's marie if an ocean has a story. in each of these cars individual stories of anger uncertainty and loss. these ukrainians are fleeing their homes for russia after months of conflict has left well over one thousand civilians dead and reduced whole cities to rubble the people in these cars have already spend six or seven hours sitting in line waiting to cross the border which is still a kilometer away but they say they are ready to wait as they practically have no

other choice but bill overclock the more well below average immigrants made up of them not with us you. live in is no car got more snow or this don't you don't usually many of the cars here have a sign saying they've got children on board a war doesn't discriminate between age or gender on your children or your choice it's a good image to threw. us off with a little sheepish will get us closer to his nose the way that little little girl requested by you know which are you waiting for me this is where many refugees will end up when they make it across the border to russia and people here are angry because i said the mafia brought america but i thought not all deal was if certain brought so i'm a bit from matter what it really got me to what i thought different scopes of us are than. the court or the doctor says he's family has need to

go back to your story of. your thoughts with your yeah right. no right. you have to use if you can't be ethical. he invites me to see where they've found shelter the rest so many refugees many don't have a proper place to sleep. because his wife also doctor tells us how she lost her home and is therefore does a. before. the litany of. the regular dorm farkle. this could be cheap this camp is designed for a thousand people but there are at least twice as much here now every afternoon officials managed to send up to three hundred refugees from eastern ukraine to different parts of russia but every evening even more arrive these people have

managed to escape but their fight for a peaceful life is just beginning. me from ocean r.t. from russian ukrainian border. edward snowden is now a household name gaming notoriety is the person behind the largest intelligence leaks in the national security agency's history but now snowden is not alone and u.s. intelligence officials have now confirmed that there is indeed another leaker believed to be on the inside this is all and reference to a scathing new article published on the intercept called barack obama secret terrorist tracking system by the numbers the twelve page document released yesterday outlines who is on the government's terror watch list and how their information is being collected according to the author of the report jeremy scahill the pentagon actually tried to soften the blow of the article by trying to spoil the scoop of releasing the information directly to the associated press who then

ran the story just after midnight on tuesday morning hours later scahill released a much more comprehensive and critical report detailing the watchlist expansion. all right it's the largest known collection of stolen internet credentials a ring of russian criminals has acquired one point two billion user name and password combinations as well as credentials from more than five hundred million e-mail addresses and a lot is interesting lee comes just as hackers gather in las vegas for the black hat cyber security conference it's one of the largest global information security events series in the world to discuss the latest in hacking i spoke earlier with boom bust host erin made she's currently at the conference and i first asked her if with all this hacking we should be rushing to change our passwords. that's a big topic of conversation this morning here at our black had

a lot of people say that the numbers of people whose copper owners passwords were actually compromised they're getting different numbers whether it's three billion or one point two one point three that's still in question but hold securities that was the firm that noticed this breach and they're the ones saying to people out there you know if you're concerned that your company's been breached come to us and we'll tell you if you're on the list opposed to that company command saying here are the fortune five hundred companies that have been hit by this and everyone who has done business with them or as any association might want to change the password so they're kind of working backwards which is an interesting thing as well but people are saying that there's two reasons this could happen either it's an amazing amazing fact and people were at the whoever it is was the russian gang that the mainstream media is alleging or if it was just the people based out of russia whoever was doing it they're same is either really impressive because they were able to have all these at once or they were kind of data mining pulling all this information from different sources and smashing it together which apparently in when you're

a college ister security expert isn't as hard as the former so that's really interesting but yes you should change your password they're saying that you know it's best to do it weekly apparently and you want a long password and most importantly one of the ways that you keep being compromised over and over and over again is if you don't change your password from one platform to another like if your bank has the same password as your work e-mail don't do that make sure you have a different and long one for each each entity that you do business with that makes a lot of sense and it's so ironic that you happened to be add a security conference looking at ways to protect against these kind of hacks that we're just talking about is this anti hacking world a growing industry. anti hacking i would say yes it's just as growing as hacking from what i'm hearing today you know it attracts the same kind of person it's like about mad is the best analogy that i can think of you're going to have people who use this information for good and people who. uses information for evil it's basically up to them to how they do

it but what's interesting about about this conference blackout opposed to a conference like def con it attracts a more formal i guess corporate client if you were a corporate person who's interest in this so you get the big players like microsoft and it's a bigger a bigger ticket so the price tags a little higher and not same at def con says the bad guys and these the good guys not bad at all but def con does attract a slightly more counterculture what you're seeing so is a growing industry yes but i would say with the internet growing in our lives only becoming more virtual it's of course only going to grow from here my will your around the latest trends in cyber security what's out there what should we know about right now. you know the biggest trend right now a lot of people are talking about this it's data security kind of you know meets the intelligence to be more intelligent about securing your data not just say no one size fits all for every corporation you know the needs of a medium sized business are different from the needs of

a massive massive fortune five hundred company or some sort of blue chip stocks are going to want different tailored security and you know threat intelligence is the catch phrase that we keep hearing over and over again if you have the appropriate threat intelligence we're going to be better protected so opposed to just using a blanket system look at where your system could potentially be compromised and then address that work and work from the evidence like a doctor would evidence based medicine use evidence based if you're. an interesting larry and you had to take some of your own for cautions before you even attending this conference talk about would you had to do to to prepare to go to this las vegas conference or. yeah actually it was a pretty funny to safety tips to our amazing i'm actually going to pull out my phone and i'll check this out and see one of these in a while non smartphone that we've got here now exchange to do who does that yeah i had to go and get a burner for us. but everything that's going on i haven't turned my phone on since

since last night and it's a little scary you know they say to be really cautious don't use any a.t.m.'s in the area carry a low balance credit card only use cash bring no credit cards with you because those could be don't bring your smartphone unless you're a security expert pretty bonkers stuff so i'm not a security expert and i never will be so i'm taking the appropriate precautions now as a host of boom bust aaron aid. the f.c.c. is latest network neutrality proposal has seen no shortage of critics and recent months they say creating internet fast lanes and a pace of play culture will destroy the idea of an open and free internet but there are people on the other side of this debate as well several civil rights groups backed recently wrote to the f.c.c. in support of chairman tom wheeler as planned but as one journalist is finding out there may be a hitch and has a little something to do with how the civil rights groups are funded artie's lindsey france has more. a journalist this week had his article pulled from

a news website nothing unique there except the website news one is aimed at an african-american audience the article was titled civil rights groups blocking efforts to keep internet fair and pointed out what journalists leave viewed as minority rights groups selling out to big business over internet speeds at issue here are two paths forward for the internet currently being considered by the federal communications commission are the reclassify it to resemble a public utility with equal access and rates for use or create different lines of speech and prices assigned accordingly something telecom companies really want just before the closing of the public comment period several well known minority rights group sent a letter to the f.c.c. claiming that if the commission chooses to regulate internet service providers like utilities consumers will bear the costs and communities of color will suffer disproportionately through diminished infrastructure investments and a weakened climate for innovation in the letter the group's expressed their support

for different pricing for different internet speeds net neutrality advocates consider this a sellout claiming that minority communities will be actually adversely affected if prices are tied to access speeds the minority media and telecommunications council coordinated many of these participants it's an organization known for taking money from large telecoms in fact according to a report published by the center for public integrity the m.m.t. c. has changed some of its views on topics relating to telecom cases appearing before the f.c.c. while at the same time accepting plenty of cash from those same telecoms in fact m m t c took in just under two million in two thousand and eleven. of that one point seven million was derived from sponsorships donations and fees from companies lobbyist lawyers and religious broadcasters with interest before the f.c.c. this according to an i.r.s. filing now back to the article according to editors at news one corporate

headquarters made the decision to pull the article an important side note here news one is owned by radio one which is in a business park partnership with comcast m m t c president david hoenig admitted to following that he himself reached out to news one regarding the report claiming that no other repeatable minority rights group supports internet reclassification and pointed out that while the journalist what he wrote displayed what he called the divide and conquer tactics used for decades to undermine the civil rights movement needless to say plenty of other minority rights groups weighed in and immediately disagreed what does appear by the paper trail at least to be undermined is the ability for this nonprofit to honestly assess the net neutrality landscape while staying away from the deep pockets of big business in washington and your friends are. and that does it for now for more on the stories we covered going to

you tube dot com for its last r.t. america check out our website r t dot com boards usa and follow me on twitter and i mean our david. ensor reports. on the finish line of the.

i'm in america and i'm sick of my government making war with the rest of the world and i'm not alone a recent a.p. poll showed that about seventy percent of americans want our troops out of afghanistan we're all sick of our government's war so what's popular sentiment against our current wars what's the u.s. government to do it needs war it has this big military industrial complex it depends on war to make money building weapons or contracting to rebuild infrastructure that we blow apart in other countries war is in teh growth of the us financial bottom line at this point so what is going to do is market another war to us and that's something our government is an expert at history proves that take a look at this poster the government made to market world war one which reads and

you buy a liberty bond lest i perish so i being the statue of liberty liberty bonds were sold to support the war and if you didn't buy them you were clearly anti liberty according to the government's war propaganda for this poster which says santa claus has gone to war your gift plenty of weapons that was made to sell americans on world war two of course americans have gotten a little more sophisticated when it comes to receiving marketing messages so now our government has moved from posters to fancy lie there's the classic weapons of mass destruction lie our government used to justify the war with iraq and then there's those fake satellite images of saddam. bunkers filled with chemical weapons or the other faked satellite images that h.w. bush used to justify the first invasion into iraq in the ninety's seriously the us has faked satellite images outright lied and made propaganda to market so many

wars is privately a national pastime and now with our current wars winding down our government is clearly lizzie's trying to find another war to market to us they're bringing out more satellite images our politicians are saying questionable facts about other world leaders what i want to know is why the hell would anyone believe them when they clearly just make stuff up as a reason to go to war all the time make no mistake the u.s. government is trying to manufacture more war right now you don't have to be a genius to see the war marketing of work from our politicians or from their lapdog the media. i just like to say to the rest of the world that i'm not buying it and hopefully for the sake of even more innocent lives the rest of my.