the whole idea of the country in occupying a country and disturbing their country creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and suffering military officials called warre a necessary evil are ron paul begs to differ and the aftermath of a tragedy at the hands of a rogue u.s. soldier two questions loom over operations in afghanistan why are we still there and have we created more problems that we've helped to solve and there's been some research that indicated at some point two million votes were lost in two thousand and eight do voter registration problems. you know the saying every vote counts

that might not be totally accurate in the u.s. will show you how it affects things in the fact if the voting process really is a debate some possible solutions. and a little bird told me just about everything there is to know about you that birds name twitter so be careful what you tweet you never know who was following your every move. it's tuesday march thirteenth four pm here in washington d.c. i'm liz wall and you're watching artsy. well the u.s. has apologized for the shooting rampage in afghanistan that killed sixteen people many of them women and children and the name thirty eight thirty eight year old staff sergeant is now under arrest being held at an undisclosed location the massacre has severely strained relations between afghans and foreign forces now

u.s. officials aren't. bating pulling out of the country sooner than planned and here at home a new poll shows more americans are growing frustrated with the way the war is going and want the troops to come back sixty eight percent say the war was not worth fighting thirty percent believe the afghan public support u.s. mission there and fifty four percent say the u.s. should withdraw forces meanwhile president obama today said anyone involved will be held accountable and really he reiterated the plan to draw down u.s. troops the united states takes this as seriously as if it was our own citizens and our own children who are murdered. we're heartbroken over the loss of innocent life the killing of innocent civilians is outrageous it is unacceptable it's not who we are as a country and it does not represent our military but despite the apologies in the wake of one tragedy at embarrassment after another

many afghans are pushing for the ouster of u.s. troops and with anti american rallies igniting in the country artie's guy into can reports the patience of the afghan people may well be running out. sixteen innocent afghan villagers slaughtered in cold blood on nine of them children u.s. officials are going out of their way to present the american surgeon who apparently committed a massacre as just one bad apple. and this incident is georgia can shocking and does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the united states has for the people of afghanistan this is not who we are in no way does he represent. the ethics and morality of the american servicemen and servicewomen and i think afghans understand that but afghans don't seem to be buying that at all. the rage and humiliation felt by afghan people

appear to be way beyond what apologies can make up for they've heard them all before in the last few months all too often and each one very similar to the next just weeks ago the white house apologized for the burning of the copies of the koran by u.s. troops an incident that triggered a surge of violence this was a deeply unfortunate incident that does not reflect the great respect our military has for the religious practices of the aqim people and weeks before that in january apologies again over footage showing u.s. marines urinating on dead afghans but these actions do not represent the values of the vast majority of coalition forces and some of the nations honorably contrary to what u.s. officials say some analysts believe that those incidents are symptomatic of how the military operation in afghanistan works it is increasingly the case that this is looking like. a brutal occupation which is killing a large number of afghans were afghans film selves humiliated insulted and instance

like this will be regarded as a symbolic of exactly what is wrong with the american occupation it is an absolutely cynical operation to say that they can't take in afghanistan for another three years how many more people will tell you how many more instances like this the only solution to this is to bring the troops no money for these for these governments to stop intervening in countries where they have absolutely no rights and copious apologies handed out by the administration don't seem to. to appease war critics back home let alone the afghan people. the whole idea of been eating a country and occupying a country and disturbing their country creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and suffering this it ever get to a point where apologizing about the korean is rather minor to some of the other problems that we have created the taliban has vowed it will take revenge and least

expect a fresh surge of violence children shot in the head women slaughtered it's incidents like the latest soldier's rampage in afghanistan that extremists of all kinds used to it new people to their ranks those new recruits to kill not even the most heartfelt apologies can change the minds of people on revenge it becomes a vicious circle that grieves even more danger spreading far beyond the borders of afghanistan i'm going to shift our reporting from washington arche. well the u.s. is oftentimes quick to cast doubts over the way elections play out another country of last week's russian elections just one example and then a few months of americans have to the polls to decide if president obama will serve a second term i am going to court and i reports there are several flaws within the u.s. voting system. one of these men could be president just eleven months from now as

president even if i'm president as president i'd say you got is somebody who can actually get it done in washington as americans head to the polls in two thousand and twelve determined to take part in democracy millions of votes may end up rejected almost thrown away com election night point two million votes were lost in two thousand and eight due to voter registration problems backer is the director of elections initiatives at the pew center on the states he says america's nineteenth century paper based voter registration system has left the nation's registration rolls plagued by errors we found roughly twenty four million records that are no longer up to date mostly because people have moved in some cases because people have died we found fifty one million eligible voters who aren't on the rolls but one in four of the older citizens united states a new report on america's quote inaccurate costly and inefficient voting system also found nearly two million dead individuals listed as eligible u.s.

voters and nearly three million citizens registered in more than one state we're seeing voting problems during the two thousand and ten midterm elections resulted in a record sixty thousand votes being tossed out not county officials say the misuse of new electronic optical scan machines was to blame yet paying the biggest price would likely be the integrity of america's free and fair elections we should assume that every citizen that is eligible to vote can vote and if there's some problem on election day there should be some way that they can correct so if they're not told i don't see you in the book even though you are a citizen even though you are eighteen your vote isn't going to count concerning russia back in december u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton said the same thing following russia's parliamentary election the russian people like people there. everywhere deserve the right to have their voices heard and their votes counted and come this november

those starts with american citizens will be counting on us leaders to stand there were you know r.t. new york. meanwhile several new voting laws recently enacted in the united states throughout the country sparking controversy here are the fourteen states where new voting laws have been passed from barring early voting to restricting where people can vote to requiring people to provide government issued photo identification some voters and civil rights activists are concerned that one of america's most fundamental rights is under attack for opponents of the new rules say it will prevent voter fraud but critics say it really needs an exclude a very significant portion of american citizens these people being mostly minorities that tend to advocate that that tenth of a democrat so what is really behind these new laws and could they potentially affect the outcome of the election well here to debate the pros and cons i'm joined

now by c. and motley president of last government and from our los angeles studio investigative journalist brad friedman welcome to the both of you brad i'm going to start with you what is the problem with requiring people to show but two ideas at the polls. so well the problem is that there are millions of americans who simply do not have them and it's not equally spread among all voters in fact minorities elderly student students and so forth are far more likely to not have the type of photo i.d.'s state issued photo id that's required by these new laws these new laws have been put in place by the way in order to keep people from voting keep legal voters from casting their legal vote despite a dearth of problems with voter fraud at the polling place that's the only type of voter fraud that can be stopped by these polling place photo id restrictions so

you're talking about keeping potentially tens if not hundreds of thousands of legal voters who have been able to vote without a problem for decades from being able to cast their legal votes under these restrictive new laws passed by republicans feet what do you make of that argument that this new law excluded thousands of voters here in the u.s. all of the tens of thousands numbers completely made up well what we've seen time and time and time again and the acorn scandal was just the top of the iceberg and pro piss down the produce here is a combination of. casting a provisional ballot at the polling place where you don't have a photo id or you can't prove you live somewhere and then matching that up with the fraudulent registrations that acorn register and other groups have registered and in the tens and hundreds of thousands so that's the kind of voter fraud that actually transpires in large numbers and that's the kind of voter fraud that a photo id requirement. largely eliminates and that's what they've been fighting

because as we know acorn was a democrat operation registering people then that then helped elect you legally elect democrats so that's the partisan battle were fighting at this point. to respond to that yeah there's nothing partisan about this other than where you've got republicans trying to keep the voters from being able to cast a legal vote in the case of acorn we're talking about registration fraud that was carried out by handful of acorn workers it was discovered by a hand of all worlds and turned into officials hand though there were a those thirty rock stations ever cast votes you got to keep that in mind there's a combination i just said every morning what i guess there is a seat and you ignore that israel and say here is the illegal registrations do you an illegal letting me what i was saying you're normal i understand your mind letting me i'm just going to jump i am i let me finish what i was saying there is not evidence of a single fraudulent vote ever cast wrongs of the an improper registry law and acorn

worker that is simply a canard where is it see there were any prosecutors they say. they were paid by not being prosecuted for that when we of course went down i don't want there is no prosecution against any case of voter fraud for any fraudulent register on by an acorn you're wrong grab your money and they do want to ask how this law got to be considered discriminatory echoed guys apply to everybody across the board no matter who you are if you're a voter you're required to show this idea so it doesn't discriminate great and that . well great question just yesterday the department of justice objected to rejected a texas polling place photo i.d. restriction because it found that hispanic voters are anywhere from forty six percent to one hundred twenty six one hundred twenty percent more likely to be lacking the type of photo id that is required over non hispanic voters would be

because others here legally own carolina wear black where black voters are twenty percent more likely to not have the type of photo i.d. required then non african-american voters so we see this same pattern all over the country and of course recall has no this place that's why they're passing these laws had back perhaps in texas the spanish one hundred twenty to thirty six percent more likely now they have already because a great many of them are here illegally and should be voting anyway with this these numbers are illegal voters can i finish these are legal voters seat but no what they're what they're looking at is they're fudging the numbers they cherry pick certain prison populations to look out for one number and they cherry pick another number to look at for different others they're looking at registered voters there are looking at the total population there but i've been looking at likely voters which of the people would actually go as it is it races even more actually is it was it races report out that are actually is it races for wars to require id

purchase. oh ok but ok is it raises the prescription for performance fees how or why right answer that. let me answer your question ok in texas we're not fudging any numbers because those are the numbers that were supplied by the state of texas to the department of justice they're going by their own numbers those are currently registered legally registered voters that we're talking about ok so what is your what ok would allow our bars races for requiring photo id to purchase our pharmacies races for acquiring a photo id to fill a prescription for the races these are are they racers twenty seven never said i've never said that any of this was race sure it is you're saying is that we're doing what it is i'm going to do you think you want to compete then here's an ad that somebody else who does that come into contact with a system that has been denied their rights have i want to play this clip from you

this is actually from a veteran he is from tennessee he's trying to use his voter registration card and he has the night let's take a look at how it went down this was the first this sort of news and through some of yours. my son who was growing up. with a future that's when you do it who have you not and you know. i have jim from the norm now say and i want your response that here we have a better and he's going deny the rights of values that he's been using that form of my different back a then and here laws change he's being obstinate he's easy being obstinate he can go into a bar and bitch and moan that he can't get a beer without an id but that's the law he can go into a pharmacy and basically he can't get a prescription pill but that's the law we want to cut down on steroids robeson feelings we want to call it down on fraudulent underage drinking and we want to cut them in fraudulent voting and hope so too i do recall. helps in that regard in all

three instances. no actually it doesn't and the bush administration itself its own d.o.j. was unable to find any instance of in person in person a shot at the polling place when i was there your airing this out have you watch the video to keep it ios when he walks in the new hampshire primary and vermont primary ballot james o'keefe where james o'keefe. committed voter fraud himself of course of sorts because you could. you do for us if you could ever your. son your garments are going to get is where you have to go and i didn't ask you because and also i have seen you in the islands with a rubber gun that doesn't mean that you know we have to keep everybody out of the bedroom here it's like you're going to see it was for voter fraud and cited voter fraud isn't happening all right the and i do want to ask you because it is proven that the people who are going to be prevented from voting are african-americans are

latinos are minority who don't get it and are at large and these are people that typically do go down a crap so this law would benefit republican walls and ugly i mean that way it could if they don't really have to know or photo id which most of them have anymore. it's very easy to get how many thousands of voters are you ok with just in franchising see i'm ok with that i was in the dark and crazy that acorn registered. with this enfranchise and that has. had dick tracy or donald duck ever voted in any election . in two thousand and six they have really yes i know that winter there. was decreasing mary poppins and i'm going to remember the names they always victoriously mary poppins and i think i know strydenburg most. of those and. you're making the things up side i do want to bring up and playing some of these

statistics to light here. at least fifty one million that's nearly one in four voters are not registered to vote no one in eight registrations are significantly inaccurate ordinal no longer valid and millions of people that are registered. they're registered to vote in more than one state so so brad doesn't that show that there are problems within the voting system as they do need to go through this oh yes there are huge problems within the voting system and so the list you just read the fact that citizens are not able to oversee the their own results due to the privatization of the corporate it has ation of our election system or voting machines and so forth there's lots of problems for example of mitt romney apparently voted in january of two thousand and ten in massachusetts even though he didn't own a home there until july of two thousand and ten and they are probably all having it is better for us that we fix this problem bad. well there is

a lot of things that you can do unfortunately what is being done what the republicans are trying to do here has nothing to do with solving any of these problems that's why mitt romney was able to commit voter fraud that's why the. secretary of state of indiana the first state in the union to institute photo id restrictions in two thousand and eight was found guilty last month of three felony counts of voter fraud that's the secretary of state of indiana but it was not done at the polling place people just don't do voter impersonation at the polling place there's not why god only knows i have you know who knows i do not watch the video the new answer of mine where he tilings i mean i know all right and i've got ballots. for names that were either dead or not them right here back. hauling i hope you're calling it like the republican mayor in new hampshire for

o'keefe to be arrested for committing a never voted look i can never vote i do very well out to his car to get his id. i can honestly say i wasn't out of here as you. said that this law is politically motivated because of the fact that it does benefit a certain the republicans basically because it would exclude a lot of democratic voters what is your response to that that there is a political motivation behind it's not my fault with more than republicans and we're precluding them from voting by requiring voter i.d.'s at the photo i.d.'s and the voting voting places. were evidence for that i was going to ask you the same thing i don't know when you said democrats are going to be precluded from voting by requiring photo why do you justify having i.d.'s does that mean that they're cheating the system well it means that it means that if the voting is overwhelmingly helped by not having a voter i.d. for democrats that pretty much leads to there's some cheating going on that benefits democrats all the corn. what does not having

a photo id have to do with cheating and what there's no what i'm saying is when you are in a photo id that cuts down on democrat votes you can easily draw the conclusion about how to not requiring a photo i.d. helps democrat voters obviously a very controversial issue because he has a lot of the voter new voter law as go into a fact and it's questionable as to how it will impact the outcome of the election but thank you so much are participating in this debate alice investigative journalist brad friedman and our los angeles studio and see in my seat see and not only president of the last government here in d.c. . well you better watch what you tweet these days because big brother can be reading from cell phones that track your every move it's a government agency is now turning to social networks to monitor people it seems privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past now we've seen how social media has been used to transform the way we communicate some say it played

a major role in the arab spring in the uprising for the occupy movement but as the government uses it to keep tabs on people using social media may come with a price that price being your privacy to talk more about this i'm joined now by jeremy liking because at it are our color lines dot com welcome to the show jamila so newly released records show that the department of homeland security is monitoring social network sites this includes facebook twitter you tube and other sites and blogs should the average citizen be concerned. the average citizen should be concerned for a number of reasons primarily because we think and on our phones we are a country and we are a world that is increasingly dependent on the mission of the store owner clones and what we do with our phones and continually for activists phones have become really important in terms of spreading the word about your message about a protest about something that you feel very passionately about and so we don't actually think that all of the information that we send across our network is being watched and that you know we need to be more careful about what we can on those.

and you know the document the reason that how we have that were released they use information the justification is that they use information that they gather from these sites to be aware of major events and which you know maybe their agencies have to respond to so this could include our mergence seas and things like that what do you make of this reasoning. well i mean it's the thing that makes sense right it's sort of a double of the double edged sword you have the fact that phones are really important in the sense that they do allow us to get written but i think that people should have a say so in how they're being tracked and when they need access to emergency services. when you see this sort of insidious ways that this sort of surveillance is used to monitor activists and this i so we're trying to do you see that it's sort of unfairly monitored in the way bad especially in the u.s. that people are kind of kept up and i know that you say that this is an issue that

affects the way we communicate and a democracy what do you mean by that. this is more than just a pocketbook issue this is not just the issue about who we support with our phones and what carrier we decided to go with this is an issue that fundamentally impacts how democracy in our countries is an issue that fundamentally shapes the landscape of activism of calling through the power but also how we communicate how we are able to send our messages across to another how we're able to find and have been. roll over of who we are in information we have access to so i mean it with social media being so widespread so many people are on facebook so many people use twitter and other networking sites blogging is very popular i mean what can the average citizen do to protect themselves against these things are is this just a reality that people have to deal with that they're going to be monitored and so the first thing is to get informants know which organizations are tracking your

information and there are organizations and there are people on the ground who are working on developing for instance apps for smartphones allow you to do your work in a bit more of a safe way if you're an activist i do think that it's important to be informed about what is happening with your lawmakers in your different countries and to know what is actually on the table and what people face and what you say that this is another sign that you know people's rights of privacy here in the u.s. is diminishing kind of becoming a thing of the past. i think it's a sign that we need to be more informed as a country about what's happening i think you know technology is not just something that's sort of we're moving far away from us is something that we have in our pockets every single day and it's something that we are very much invested in us people as citizens of this marker see and we need to take it on ourselves if you were born. and also want to ask maybe something on the other side of the argument you know if you're not really tweeting something that's incriminating or you know if it doesn't affect your day to day life why should people care if some of their

tweets are being read and they're kind of putting it out there anyways so why should people care well it keeps the door open right you may not care so when you get out you know your dog doing something incredibly cheap but you might care when you were talking about the fact that you were trying to mobilize against a local police department because they aren't always the end which is the case that happened in san francisco bay i think it's really really important for folks not to just look at the every day instances but often these instances are there is a which are our abilities become sort of a microcosm of what's happening in the larger world so i guess the message there is for people to just be more careful with what they are putting out there give me a lot thank you so much for coming on the show that was jimi like hangings editor for color lines dot com and that is going to do with for now for more on the stories we covered you can head on over to our team dot com slash r t america or you can also check out our website and. get our to dot com slash r.t.

america excuse me you tube is you tube dot com slash r t america you can also follow me on twitter liz wall we'll see you right back here at five. for. all. the fuss. if. any is believed to.

be. the same.