so i think there will be an effort to try to paint him as a robot soldier rather than focus on how we're treating our g.i.'s in general the u.s. military tries to quietly mop up the mess it created in afghanistan with swift action and a speedy trial but what will really be on trial one rogue soldier or the entire war we'll show you the toll a decade of war has taken to make sure it's. the supermodel. you know the plum job you don't get paid for or what you know about something that's going to. you know you just stay on the hospital and staying they are the occupy wall street

movement is crossing the six month mark first it was their motives that were unknown out there was all but for many at occupy d.c. and beyond that this isn't a sprint it's a marathon and one that's just getting started. while you're due with the socialism . i heard noise. the socialist news nature nonsocial. not exactly turns out many americans have no idea what socialism is and yet equates to a dirty word in american politics but what if i told you that most young people in america actually support it well. it is friday march sixteenth five pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for watching our team. let's begin this hour with

a look at the significant events of the past week and the role they've played in the relationship between the u.s. and afghanistan and started late saturday night early sunday morning with the killing of sixteen afghan civilians most of them children and two villages in the punjab we just heard of khandahar province afghan president hamid karzai said the story told by u.s. officials is far different from the accounts given by the villagers themselves an afghan parliamentary investigation team has implicated as many as twenty u.s. troops i was far different than natives insistence that it was just one rogue soldier behind the massacre an order has now been given by karzai that u.s. soldiers leave the villages and stay confined to military bases the taliban has canceled talks with american officials and now there are major concerns that would tell you tory violence will get worse in the days to come i spoke a short time ago with former u.s. marine a former u.s. marine who's also a current r.t. blogger. i can tell you that i've been the last few days i've been investigating

this i've been on the phone with people inside of afghanistan emailing except and firsthand account they've been telling me that it's very problematic the soldiers that are that were there trying to do the hearts and minds campaign have been hampered they are not allowed to go back out to the bases where previously were just a few weeks ago combat operations in these communities have largely stopped and overall what we've seen that this single event has set the united states fact months if not years specifically in the south in the that has a devastating effect on a so far and it does not look like the united states is willing to try to fix it because well if the damage has already been done and there's no way to repair the kind of. huge cost that the defense. what about this search engine that it was more than just one person involved from what i understand the villagers have even

been shown surveillance video and yet they refuse to believe from even saying they saw otherwise how does this investigation play out do you think. you know i'm not really skeptical about the afghan parliamentary investigation because the u.s. has these huge satellite imagery balloons that are you know maybe one hundred yards in the air above all of these major checkpoints and there was one in fact where this is where this event took place we have extensive video of what occurred and it's more than likely that it was just a single act or any member you know when you go on for combat tours as this soldier then you're very skilled you come in you can kill an awful lot of people and you know we saw major nidal hassan just back stateside with a pistol kill a bunch of people i think more than that so it's unlikely there's more however i think what the what we've seen from the afghan side is this outrage this investigation is and is a real life. exemplary model outraged by the afghans

and again the damage here is so great that the taliban the peace talks we had they've stopped the taliban have totally stopped talking with it which means that whatever. political goals we have been in the south and the east have now been. there have been destroyed i mean the information war has begun and the taliban are eating our lunch it's very bad let's talk quickly about this investigation this incident itself we still don't know the suspects name we're starting to learn a little more about hand and this morning and he said today so had his attorney on i want to play a little bit about what he had a sigh. i think this case is more political than legal and i'm used to legal things on the other things so i think there will be an effort to try to paint him as a room soldier rather than. we treating our g.i.'s in general and

with that we should be over there to begin with so it seems to me to act as lawyer is saying first of all he's worried his client is going to be made into a scapegoat and almost wants to put the war on trial instead of the stuff that's here. well i mean i tell you i think that that's where the war should be with the suspect not the soldier the soldier in return and stuff and he admitted to it the way we know. the real indictment here is about the mainstream media ok i mean are these going to great job highlighting a lot of the problems of current afghanistan that a lot of the other mainstream media in this case with this soldier the mainstream media up there is just one day story we haven't heard a thing about it since this complete negligence on the mainstream media. part by not discussing the major problems the major cries of the afghans they decry the soldiers that you don't want to be there and i think overall what we're going to see it in the near future in the twenty thirty especially the next election cycle

afghanistan is going to be continued to be ignored by the mainstream media and by the american public and it needs to change it's the challenge to c.n.n. and b.b.c. they need to start covering this accurately and get into the trenches and find out what the real really is going on there they're going to ask you we did have on this a little bit on monday now we know the answer that in fact there's absolutely no way that this suspect will be tried in afghanistan. by the afghan people we knew that that probably wouldn't happen now we know for sure but that's what they said they wanted a top official says you know what he needs to be tried by our legal system here. what do you think i mean just for the sake of conversation what do you think would happen do you think that would have appeased the afghan people had the u.s. government and military turned this guy over to them. yeah no i mean it's a great question though it would give it would debate things better be

a record president zardari as our long history of overreacting to the smallest of things and under reacting to you know like perhaps his brother who's been you know the world's largest terrilyn dealer you know it was a part of the afghan government so president karzai and much of the afghan government corrupt the united states was wise not to give they're still the soldier over to them but i think that overall if you if the government reform doesn't occur inside the afghan parliament you know we're going to lose we're going to see something that you know something that is making ninety's you know the taliban pseudo take over sooner or later i think to what you say about the information more important when i have a feeling too we'll be learning a lot more about this suspect in the coming days appreciate you having you on r.t. blogger and former u.s. marine they killed their son joining us from the u.k. well tomorrow marks the six month anniversary of the day occupy wall street all began and for six months we've been bringing you stories from the front lines from

new york to washington d.c. to oakland california and more this is a movement that is evolved greatly and shed light on issues like wealth inequality in america failures in the financial system and police brutality but we also want to have a better understanding of the occupy movement itself so for the last several months we've been hanging out with one guy the same guy twenty four year old washington d.c. resident joel northam and i knew right when i met him that his passion would fuel his taishan that he was in this for the long haul and it turned out i was right this month on jol is still committed to the cause of change and still very active in the occupy movement despite some of the challenges over the last six months much of which he spent living in macpherson square right here in washington here's a look at the movement through his eyes. never doubts a free will is but still needed to mobile the state should befall its obligation to soulfire me to get saturation we first met joe more than in the early stages of the occupy wall street was an option out here since i think october second i'm angry

a little bit just the whole of government corruption the wall street fights mostly the really incestuous relationship that they got a lot of. they. like it started it was possible for multiple atrocity wall why a former children's mental health counselor position with cuts and he was left without a job and instead found a place and a person here still says they come like a full time job you know i mean a full time job you don't get paid for course but you know if you love something enough that's kind of. you know you just stay on the hospital and stay he did. on the air cooled. rain snow freezing temperatures again. the school supplement that we just wrecked did to protect us from the outside conditions and those conditions not all thanks to mother nature every night there's

something there's always some fights there's always to some kind of drama happening there's a lot of fast a lot of ice where the police have been telling by junkies and drug do what i'm going to hang out what i'm experiencing. macpherson square one of the longest lasting occupations and it up becoming a microcosm of society itself with similar issues from comeliness to crime. still joel and many others here remain undeterred or today it is january the third two thousand and twelve. year the revolution as i'd like to call it. it is close to . maybe twenty six twenty seven degrees out but it wasn't the cold but these a vision notices that were posted on the occupiers tents setting off a firestorm of both anger and support and the construction of this tent of dreams. most people did end up leaving joel included i guess having the baby stop libya was

the way. that was i mean i was i mean they had infrared helicopters flying around at night you know having like little formal vision on the tents the make sure the people are in the tent sleeping but even police crackdowns have not meant the end of occupy wall street and this is an experience where today nearly six months after the occupy wall street movement began a few tense remain but it's largely symbolic though and the others say the occupation aspect of this movement is simply one chapter of a longer story with many more still yet to be written so while we do the dirty work for them the desire for radical change and a newfound belief that it can actually be achieved is strong enough not to be subdued and the brought it here was that feeling that something was incredibly wrong with society in the system in general and everything that we you know are you know should be naturally against human beings and. i think i found that there is

actually something that we can do about it in washington christine frizz now r.t. marked by wall street is a leaderless movement but it's one that is nonetheless brought about some leaders people who have stood out and have spoken out to help as most central messages across joel of course was one of them and another one is just really graca an active participant in new york i was straight and he's in our new york studios now to give us his take on. hey there just how is this chapter chapter one you could call it written in your mind. well to me i kind of look at things in phases so to me the beginning of the protests moving on through the eviction of new york city's occupied territory i call that phase one that's the waking up moment the idea that these problems just began immediately when president obama was elected is absurd we have a broken economy that for the last thirty years undermined the working class and benefit only the wealthiest the wealthy so people respond when you talk about that

since he is a sions of the occupied territories we've moved more into what i call phase two which is addressing the larger issues to me at the end of the day this is about changing laws this is about creating a framework for an economy in a political system that benefits everyone not just the people who can afford lobbyist so i see a transition but a very welcome one because the reality is it's now or never how are you finding those challenges i'm sure they are in terms of having some of those laws changed in terms of kind of bending the system it's a big fight but it's one that needs to take place i mean i know several different object my wall street protests in different locations have passed resolutions against the citizens united decision by the supreme court to allow money equal speech and to let the big corporate interests totally have outsized influence over elections this is basic nonsense american principles just the principles of democracy itself one man equals one vote if one dollar equals one vote and people

who don't have dollars will be voiceless and that's just not a democracy so to me the challenges are huge but the important thing is people are willing to take this fight of and despite the police violence against occupied despite the pressure of years against us we still go on if anything it speaks to the fact that my generation wants this change and we're not going to take no for an answer and what do you think a ban on most effective aspects that movement in terms of getting its message or desires. but you know what happens when you have an entire generation of educated people who can't find work they have to find something to do with those energies i think some of the actions we've taken to occupy foreclosed homes are tremendous it really points out with a problem is the fact that there are so many homeless people in america and yet we have houses vacant because we have a financial system that literally makes up things as they go along the foreclosure fraud scandal that the obama administration just settled that was twenty five billion dollars twenty five billion dollars worth of fraud that hurts the marketplace to see that regulations work marketplace more than the fraud does is

absolutely absurd but when it comes down to it there are a lot of different tactics to take the government has done what they can to suppress freedom of assembly i mean i think a lot of people participate in occupy didn't realize that we don't actually have the freedoms we don't you try to use a freedom assembly in the eurozone it's free as long as you don't try to do it either way about it the fights against us are huge but the fact that we cannot ignore this fight is what is very important but well though your whole generation of people jumping out into the streets to do some that is really inspiring and i think it's not just sort of the observations that you and others have made about society and about the system but i guess i wanted to talk more specifically about art i was worried about the movement six months in failures and successes in terms of communicating you know sort of the once they you have and the changes that you want. well it's difficult because there are so many different voices out there i think the hardest part of what we're doing is coming to

a big consensus to say these are the things that we need to face first before anything else i think one of the good things about having this grassroots movement is just having that conversation in the first place and taking the nonsense conversations and pushing them aside someone up in occupy boston put together a study asking people with a nonprofit movement which issues matter to them most and it turns out the deficit is at the bottom of that list a national debt problem of the list of austerity budget cuts part of the list the things people want to talk about is jobs protecting consumers creating a sustainable economy that works for one hundred percent of us not just the wealthiest one percent and it's not easy but it's important i think there are some things personally i'm not speaking for anybody other than myself that i don't like within the occupy movement i think the blame for the police thing is a bad move if i were an occupier and i saw that i don't think i would respond to it positively i think there are some brilliant things that we do though recently they had a protest against bank of america some protesters brought their living room furniture into the bank and set up and sold them or you store them so we're going to live

here from now on i think that stuff is brilliant i would love to see more of it so i would say that we have are growing pains we don't have millionaire lobbyist or advisors and i wouldn't want them if they if they were offered it's a lot of hard work and i think it speaks to the fact that even with high unemployment people are willing to do the work but we demand decent pay too it's really interesting to us because you are of course one of dozens of occupiers that we've spoken to here on r.t. and most of you say i often refer to citizens united as you just a moment ago and that case sort of being a profound wake up call in terms of the problems with the system with democracy in this country and i here we are it's twenty twelve it's an election year we're in the process of what's been a pretty long g.o.p. presidential primary and of course in november we'll have election. anything that you've seen already so far in this election cycle that either trouble trouble you or given you hope. there's a little on both sides there's been

a couple bills offered there's one bill called the occupied amendment which is a constitutional amendment to reverse a distance united now batman i love there's some really really bad stuff here though many republican party officials in states that are controlled by the republican party have been pushing a slew of bills to reverse voting rights to make it harder for minorities elderly people college students to vote it's basically jim crow two point zero and the idea that the guys who scream about economic freedom we want economic freedom but they want to make it harder for you to vote to me i find it entirely un-american and very disturbing to me i think if anything america has always benefited when we do extended rights when we expanded rights to african-americans and to women and then the civil rights movement every thirty years we have to expand our rights a little more and the days are coming back to that so the idea that some people are out there fighting to make sure regulation doesn't suppress commerce and at the same time they're making it harder for people have or it's an easier for corporations that writes i think history will slant on that now how's it looking

there in new york i mean obviously zuccotti park was sort of the initial front of the occupation is it still pretty common to walk around and see signs of occupy wall street in new york. a bunch of our friends were just at zuccotti today holding i think it was training sessions for a number of issues people are still out there walking down by wall street as the weather gets nicer we're going to have more general action you know i've heard the phrase from the military the beatings will continue until morale improves i kind of feel the same way about the economy the reality is if we were to go away these problems would still exist and if we get on the street and try to do something we can create the political pressure necessary to get these laws changed that we can bring back let's bring back the fire was separating commercial banks from investment banks taking back all of the basic protections that consumers had in the economy there to take a larger economy altogether so there are some good things within the political sphere i like to see the fact that we're talking about a millionaire's tax

a warren buffett rule i think is a good idea a return to the vote we're going to the volcker rule would be a good idea at the same time there's a war on women we can obviously see that they would love to. the people who don't want to have this conversation about fixing the economy the people who laid the way it is broken as it is and they don't want to talk about this they would rather talk about anything else are our job as activists to push beyond low thirdly it's been a very busy thanks months for you just the activist and writer for the daily kos thanks for all right so what's changed in the occupy wall street movement began well for starters the conversation we now talk into about wealth inequality in america the huge gap between the haves and have nots so do these systematic problems need this is them is broken some would say yes some would say that perhaps another system needs to be looked at are to correspond to ramon going to take a look at the increasing popularity of socialism among americans young people americans young people. it look obama is

a socialist if you take over banks if you take over car companies of i think those rocks obama is a socialist nearly four years after being elected there are still plenty in the right wing trying to vilify president obama as a socialist but in america there's still a little confusion about what socialism really means but in your view what is socialism. i have annoyed. me socialist means they can unsociable if i go to college and i don't know what it means and how to really expect mainstream america to know more than i do it mainstream america can't figure out what it means perhaps a socialist can help clear up some of the misconceptions i'm opening a socialist you know we have ran for office a socialist we tell the community i was socialist and the community here by a large supports what we do so what about obama. i wish obama was a socialist i wish that he would distribute the wealth in

a way that would benefit the majority of the people of this country but by no means is obama a socialist what's happening in venezuela and bolivia in other parts of the world that socialism where the masses of the people now have control of the resources of that country that is patently not the case here in the us where a small minority still controls the best majority of the nation's wealth but piers that young people seem not so opposed to the idea of sharing the pie a lot more evenly or we said about half of all eighteen to twenty nine year olds have a positive view of socialism up from forty three percent just eighteen months ago meanwhile the long accepted bedrock of america's well being capitalism got only a forty six percent paper ability rating with forty seven percent saying capitalism is actually negative so just why are young people suddenly more comfortable with the idea of socialism its rising popularity might be due to a popular uprising. a wall street movement expose the excesses of u.s.

capitalism free inequality to the forefront of the national debate. issues that resonate with young people hard hit by unemployment and crushing student debt even to the banking crisis and those ten things you see make how much is. just a greediness like the sub prime mortgages how much they green i don't want to go in on these risky risky deals that they. i don't know that's where capitalism has lead leading son to take a closer look at socialism it's for the people. it's just that some people in the past so twisted in terrible ways you can just live off the purity. of you know that we. are like ok. capitalism might still be all the rage on the big screen but it appears that

socialism is what's increasingly impressive. in los angeles. art. all right so socialism as you just saw it's often made out to be a very bad word just about every tea party rally i've covered there are countless signs like the one you see behind me signs calling president obama a socialist signs about socialized medicine so are we headed in a new direction paving the way even for a new system for some answers earlier i spoke to michael prysner a member of the party for socialism and liberation to get his take i asked him how people react when you tell them which political party he wants to take a listen. but things are changing you know that you know anti-communism in a way is was the unofficial religion of the united states for so many years but i would say that this statistic is very revealing and we can look at it very broadly and say of course young people will start to question the system and look for an alternative because for most people the system is not working as we've been seen

but every number in that statistic and every person who questions the system and then looks to the alternative which is the only alternative to socialism each of those people masochistic has a personal story behind it for example me i was not a socialist at all the two years that you know i was in the u.s. army i will be into military i volunteered to go to war in iraq but what made me a socialist was my personal experience that i went to what is now widely understood as a fact was a war for profit and what does that really mean a war for profit it means that the institutions of the society and the decisions that affect so many items are controlled by the rich and are in the interests of the rich that's capitalism and the party i'm in the party for socialism and liberation and you can go to the web site which is the web dot org and read countless testimonies from young people in our party about why they became socialists might be rejected capitalism why don't you look at those a lot of people in this country you know they'll argue that this country is founded

on principles of the free market that redistributing the wealth. kind of goes against the american dream and leaves us toward that other isn't that you mentioned communism talk to me more about my your argument that socialism is better especially in this country that really sort of preaches the ideal of pulling yourself. you know just look at the situation we're in today we already go to work there is of us who have not been laid off or able to find a job we already go to work and we already produce a massive amount of wealth i mean this is the richest country in human history the united states of america yet all of that wealth and all of those resources and all of the things i could benefit society are owned and controlled by a tiny minority of billionaires of bankers of corporate owners and that's capitalism and why does that make any sense why is it that we create all the wealth by going to work and then all the sudden these billionaires who sit at the top and do actually no work themselves sit in live in luxury off of the wealth we create

while we are getting worsening conditions every single day socialism what that is is it turns out equation on its head and it says that we are working in these factories in these stories in these mines and east fields and that we should control the wealth that comes out of it not some billionaire fat cat sitting at the top who does absolutely nothing himself and socialism under that system where the people control the wealth that we could provide things that people actually want free health care for every single person free quality education for every single person the right the legal right to a home the legal right to a job these are realized little demands and they're only not happening today because we have a rule of the rich in a society as a society dictated by the rich and that's capitalism a system based on inequality based on exploitation based on the wall of a tiny group of fat cats ruling over the vast majority of the population one final question for you a yes or no question is president obama. absolutely not of use

a socialist all that money that's being spent on the wars in the bailout to be going to meet human needs here at home because we really need it and that's what people are fighting for instead of waiting for it for a politician to be the change all right michael prysner a member of the party for socialism and liberation sharing his insight with us afternoon. and be sure to stick around for the alone a show is coming up at the top of the hour so i want to have state department employee and whistleblower peter van buren on the show he has come under fire recently for a critical book he wrote on the iraqi reconstruction effort he's now been stripped of his security clearance and banned from the state department headquarters for a time transfer to another job last week he received determination noticed based on the charges all this in a suppose that attempts to silence him well tonight he'll have a platform to speak on and be heard right here on t.v. that will be a new and a half hour. and for us here on the news side that's going to do it but for more on this.