breaking news out of afghanistan tonight as the u.s. military tries to quietly mop up the mess it created the name of the u.s. soldier being charged with the massacre of sixteen civilians has finally emerged over the latest in the developments in this case. the sequel model for the world. for poor sport you know most of them are. loans. and staying they are the occupy wall street movement is crossing the six month mark first it was their motives that were unknown but now it's the result for many for at occupy d.c. and beyond it this isn't a sprint it's

a marathon and one that's just getting started. plus conservatives sure don't like their rights to guns and free speech to be inhibited when it comes to contraception sure know how to clamp down even calling women that use it sluts however conservatives might not have such a squeaky clean reputation themselves so you have. good evening it's friday march sixteenth at seven pm in washington d.c. i'm christine for his hour watching our teeth. new this hour the name of the man who allegedly confessed to going on a shooting spree in afghanistan is staff sergeant robert bales he's the thirty eight year old u.s. army soldier who officials say left his base last weekend walked more than a mile then shot and killed sixteen afghan civilians most of them children and two

villages and the jolly districts of khandahar province according to u.s. military officials bales of father of two children himself acted alone a rogue soldier on a massacre but the story told by villagers themselves is much different with some saying there were several soldiers involved in the killing. an afghan parliamentary investigation team has implicated as many as twenty u.s. troops so in this week what have the implications been and how will this impact the relationship between the u.s. and afghanistan i spoke a short time ago a former u.s. marine who is also a current blogger for r t j tell parents 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 e-mailing except for a. firsthand account the 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 outside the base 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 back months if not years specifically in the south and the that has a devastating effect on us thus far and it does not look like the united states is willing to try to fix it because well if the damage is already been done and there's no way to repair the kind of. huge cost of this event script. what about this assertion jake 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 them 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 balloon that are. 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 members you know when you go in for combat tours as a soldier then you're very skilled you i mean 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've had they've stopped the taliban have totally stopped talking with you which means that whatever. political goals we had been the thousand the 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 real quick quickly about this investigation this incident itself we still don't have the suspects named but we're starting to learn a little more about hand and this morning n.b.c. today show had his attorney on i want to play a little bit about what he had to say. i think this case is more political than legal and i'm used to legal things on the political things so i think there will be an effort to try to paint him as a room soldier rather than focus on how we're treating our g.i.'s in general and whether we should be over there to begin with so it seems to me that this lawyer is saying first of all he's worried a client who's going to be made into a scapegoat and almost wants to put the war on trial instead of the suspect here. well i mean i tell you i think that that's where the war should be what's the suspect not the soldier the soldier if he's turning up and he admitted to it the

way we know the. real indictment here is about the mainstream media ok i mean artie's done a great job highlighting a lot of the problems of current afghanistan that a lot of the other mainstream media has been in this case with this soldier the mainstream media there's just one day story we haven't heard anything about it is complete negligence on the mainstream media. part by not discussing the major problems the major cries of the hour or cries of the soldiers that don't want to be there and i think overall what we're going to see it in the near future we're 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 the challenge to c.n.n. box them up and be that they need to start covering this accurately and get into the trenches and find out what the real what really is going on here just let me ask you we did touch on this a little bit on monday now we know the answer that in fact there's absolutely no way that the suspects will be tried in afghanistan. by the afghan people

we knew that that probably wouldn't happen now we know for sure that that's what they said they wanted compositional said 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 appealed to the afghan people have the u.s. government and military turned this guy over to them. yeah no i mean that's a great question though it would have appease them would have made things better the current president has had a 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 the part of the afghan government so president karzai and much of the afghan government corrupt the united states was wise not to give there's still

the soldier over today but i think that overall if the government reform doesn't occur inside the afghan parliament you know we're going to look we're going to see something that you know something that in one thousand nine hundred taliban pseudo take over sooner or later i think to what you say about the information we are important when i have a feeling she will 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. such an gears now to a debate that's been everywhere to cover or not to cover contraception and health care plans it's a largely political and you don't have to look far to hear what people are being says radio hosts and politicians let's listen now to what regular people think laurie her fitness is a resident not talk to people in new york city to get their take. do you believe contraception coverage should be mandated by

a government this week let's talk about that i think that contraception is. something that will protect kids from a thing unborn or unwanted child or unwanted grain and so use toothpaste or vans to pick a should that be covered to oh that's a good question probably no i don't think that i posed are the same category why what's the difference between a contraceptive well with a diet that's more of a health concern in terms of your own nutritional. you're in your own personal nutrition grade and so what's the difference of contraception that's your own lifestyle choice to have unprotected sex some people like it better than others and i do believe in the separation of state and religion so you think it's a religious issue only no i think it's a women's right issue as well but i don't think you can have a government mandate that providing something that somebody may not believe in so i

do believe there is a separation i think it's women's rights i mean i think that the government should subsidize these kind of birth control to women but is it women's right or women's choice because they don't there are other ways to not get pregnant yeah. they are gross also included and the government is paying for it yes i do two wrongs make a right. do two wrongs make a right so why do you think people see it as a health care issue. i think people get health care i think people get a lot of things. in the politics of everything. and you know i believe. that choice has to be at home and that's where that lies and i don't think the government should mandate that level of intimacy but i don't know why people think so but i think there are much more. important problems and important issues that the government should pay more attention to like seniors or people visibilities or people who are actually who need those money and need that help instead of putting

the money in the first control i still stuck on government mandated i do believe that birth control should be available to us we're paying high for these insurance . high end for insurance premiums and a vat is the kind of health care that i need i think it should be available to me whether a government has to mandate that or not i don't know the bottom line is any kind of pharmaceutical contraception is an actual lifestyle choice so. that. so as you can see in the report quite a few people are a little confused about what the debate actually is so i want to bring you some quick facts now originally the white house put forth a mandate part of the health care bill requiring insurance plans to cover birth control for employees employers even if those implore lawyers were religious in nature catholic colleges for example in which students would also need to be covered well the president obama announced last month that religiously affiliated

employers would not have to cover that contraception but instead insurers would do so a gray area has to do with self insured employers who directly cover employees health care costs out of their own funds that's a little bit up in the air the department of health and human services has been talking about that just today even some of those some of the language there but we do want to pull this out of just the contraception story and talk about what else this debate has sparked conversations ranging from the separation of church and state women's rights governments rights prostitution and even g.o.p. candidate rick santorum promising to quote initiate a war on pornography if he's elected with all this once again this juxtaposition between rhetoric and reality especially when it comes to preaching morality because when you do a little digging you realize that in places where people are using one hand to shake their finger and preach about right and wrong they're using the other hand to well do other things take a look at this map this shows states with the highest number of people who are subscribing to adult membership websites according to

a two thousand one hundred thirty eight out of ten of those states including mississippi arkansas west virginia those states went to john mccain in the two thousand and eight election so it seems in some cases the harsher the rules the higher the interests and i want to talk more about this with megan carpenter here executive editor of the ross story what do you think megan does the bible belt have a love affair with porn well i think americans have a love affair it's a multi-billion dollar industry in this country so when you look at pornography people are using it whether they're paying for. whether they're finding it on but it's ubiquitous in many cases and that's part of rick santorum is problem is that he doesn't think that he doesn't think that people should be using it he thinks that's contributing to the client families in this country but what do you think it says i mean this map that we showed that shows these red states you know eight out of ten of the top. states were people are members of these adult websites are you know traditionally conservative states what do you think it says that they're the

people that are you know consuming this porn i think it's really interesting because when you look at corn consumers in many cases it's seventy five percent and eighty percent men and obviously rick santorum mitt romney the p. folks in this in this debate are actually losing votes among women so to some degree it almost seems like this is an effort designed to gain back women's voters and women's trust after this debate on contraception where they're coming out and calling women sort of terrible names for using quite a few terrible names there's a new book out i'm not sure if you've heard of it it's called fifty shades of grey and it's basically a very graphic novel about a young woman a virgin who becomes sexually submissive to a man it's erotic some call it obscene and guess what it's reached the top of the new york times bestseller list at least for e-books so i'm wondering what you think megan i mean it will evokes make it so that you know people will now be able to

return to their sexual nature they can they can read books they can be reading about anything home design gardening according to the person sitting next to them they're actually writing about sex but i think when you look at when you look at erotic books everything from lady chatterley's lover to use then people have been consuming erotic books for generations whether they could be seen or not and you could always put the paper cover over it or beneath another book which is actually what i did when i was a teenager law very interesting why did you think you had to hire him. well i was a very very shy reader and i was reading anything my parents would or i could put my hands on but my parents didn't necessarily agree with that so i would hide one book behind another so i actually would read something behind something like a tree grows in brooklyn interesting here's something else interesting i just just to give you another example in lawrence county south carolina the local republican party is asking any candidates anyone running for office there to sign

a twenty eight point pledge. not pledge it includes making sure that those candidates oppose gay marriage oppose civil unions. and haven't had and don't have premarital sex pledge also states you cannot from now from the moment you sign this pledge look at pornography it makes it so you have to promise to push religion to have a compassionate moral approach to teamhair pregnancy and a high regard for the institutions of marriage and family so here we go with this grover norquist style of making people signed pledges in order to to kind of get to the next level what's going on here i think what you see is when you look at the republican party in the top three remaining contenders are. who is a serial philanderer i think it's fair to say mitt romney and rick santorum the social conservative movement is very concerned about being in a position where they. are it stands for but they don't like the things that he's done and they're looking to reduce these accusations of parker see within the

conservative movement unfortunately you know human sexuality can be boiled down to what you say in public what you how you behave in private and that's been apparent for decades i think that's a really good point and it's i think some of the debate too is getting lost you look on twitter i was just on and there's a lot of people tweeting about forced contraception and i think that a lot of. kind of the realities of this discussion are are not being put out there because the. political message seems to be more important to a lot of people what have you seen kind of in your coverage of this that's been sort of the biggest misconceptions about this discussion i think some of the biggest misconception misconceptions are the science tends to be really bad when you get into a political debate i mean news coverage isn't always good with science but you see on the right the reason they're opposed to birth control pills isn't because of the

idea that there is a mandate but because there are factions of the religious right that consider any birth control pills a kind of abortion and so they've designated a whole swath of contraceptions quote unquote a kind of abortion or they call it a facia and thus they're really opposed to any kind of contraception that isn't just barrier protection where the science doesn't really bear that powered put that's the message they keep pushing in the it's why everyone from the catholic church to some of these religious right anti-abortion groups are pushing this anti contraception message just talk for a second about the catholic church because i thought it was really really interesting that the u.s. conference of catholic bishops archdiocese of bishops one group of bishops basically said that this was the year that they were going to make this contraception mandate one of the number one issues ok the number one issues the catholic church the last time i checked was supposed to stand for you know helping the poor loving everyone just spite you know their thoughts and they're just

positions standing up for inequality helping people and yet this is going to be the number one issue for them it seems a little wrong to me i think it's proving very divisive inside the american catholic church and the vatican's out a lot of problems with american catholics i think for decades severson sabbatical american catholics have been sort of increasingly liberal in ways that catholics in other countries haven't known have been increasingly leaving the church and you see this sort of ad campaign that they're running the states come back and they're telling catholics like me who left the church years ago to come back to the. the church at the same time they're pursuing these super conservative methods messages on everything from birth control to apportion and they're leaving aside these sort of social justice messages leaving aside their you know opposition the death penalty it makes it very difficult for those two things to play but that's me like you said there have been some people there sort of a war within the catholic church i've heard from probably plenty of jesuit priests who think that some some of this language has gone too far i do appreciate you

weighing in as always megan carpenter here executive editor for raw story we also want to show you this you may have seen this floating around the into words today kind of sums it all up take a look at this picture. all right so if i don't have sex with you i'm a prude b word if i use the pill i'm a slut if i get pregnant i'm an idiot and if i choose abortion and same day. just let me tell you that all right switching gears now tomorrow marks the six month anniversary of the day the occupy wall street movement began and for six months we've been bringing you stories from the front lines from new york to here in d.c. to oakland california and more this is a movement that has evolved greatly and has shed light on issues like wealth inequality in america failures in the financial system and police brutality but we also wanted 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 now i knew right when i met him that his passion would fuel

his patience that he was in for the long haul and it turned out i was right six months on a jewel 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 and appears and square right here down the street here's a look at the movement through his eyes. ever gals of free will has been told made it's a global the say ship of poltava nature missiles like a media saturation we first met joel northam in the early stages of the occupy wall street movement and out here since i think october second up to go a little bit just the whole. problem a corruption of the falsely i suppose really incestuous relationship that they got off the. bike and stuff it was possible for multiple atrocities told by a former children's mental health counselor position was cut and he was left without

a job and instead found a place and a purse that is just here stis is a comic a full time jobs you know i mean a full time job you don't get paid for course but you know you must often enough of this kind of. you know you just stay on the house and stay he did. the air cool with the rain snow freezing temperatures again. the small settlement that we just wrecked did to protect us from the outside conditions and those conditions not all thanks to mother nature every night or something and there's always some fights there's always some kind of drama happening there's a lot of a lot of ice where the police have been telling the junkies and drug they want to get us what they hang out but it's very. big fierce and square one of the longest lasting occupations ended up becoming a microcosm of society itself with similar issues from cleanliness to crime.

still joel and many others here remain undeterred or today is january 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 the thing that maybe stopped would be a was the way. that was i mean i was going to have infrared helicopters flying around at night you know having like little formal vision on the tents to 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 make your sense where today nearly six months after the occupy wall street movement began a few tense remain but it's largely symbolic dolan the others say the occupation

aspects of this movement is simply one chapter of a longer story many more still yet to be written but 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 in the brought me here was that feeling that something was incredibly was with society in the system in general and everything that we you know are you know should be naturally against this human beings and. i think i found that there was actually something that we can do about it in washington christine for is now our team. so that was occupy wall street here in d.c. for the eyes of joy northam but with the six month anniversary coming up tomorrow we're going to talk to others as well and like us here at r t j a meyerson has been covering this movement extensively is a contributor a trick on dot org and join me earlier today from the birthplace of the movement in

new york city to talk more about how the movement has changed and where it's headed . i think that that wonderful segment was joe who i got to spend a little bit of time with when i was down in d.c. got it exactly right which is that the occupation was the first project in a long social movement. the montgomery bus boycott was in one thousand fifty five and it wasn't until sixty four and sixty five that we started getting the civil rights act and the voting rights act these things take a long time and they require a lot of different campaigns and a lot of different projects if the people committed to the movement really want to you know institute some fundamental changes like happened in the civil rights movement or the you know women's rights movement or the labor movement and so i think that it's right to conceive of the occupations as the first project in what will actually be a really long social movement a decade long at least to try and really achieve some fundamental change in the way

that business is done in the united states and all over the world but i do have to say i mean having that visual sort of in your face having. occupy k. street here in washington literally on k. street where all the lobbyists are having it in your face made people talk about it certainly people do talk about it a little less both in the mainstream media and the alternative media and just sort of by the water cooler what do you think it from what you research from the people that you're talking to you what kind of things can we expect to see in the coming weeks. that's a it's a great question and it's a little bit difficult to answer because there are things that we know are going to happen right we know there will probably be protests at the g eight summit in camp david or outside of camp david a protesters will be let into camp david but also that beneath the nato summit in chicago there will probably be protests at both of the democratic and republican national conventions this summer there's going to be a big need a celebration so there are things that we definitely know about and those anyone

can go online and find out but to me the most interesting things will be the what we can't predict i mean attorney general eric schneiderman task force might roll out indictments and that might provoke protests. the you know who we don't know exactly what's going to happen with greece and the eurozone if you know some horrible thing happens to that currency that will have reverberations the united states if bank of america becomes insolvent that will have huge reverberations it may trigger another bailout which may trigger more austerity which may trigger worse conditions and repeat the whole thing so there are a lot of things that we're not sure about you know of course israel could attack iran and throw the oil market the commodities market into complete chaos you know there are so many things that are sort of at a nearly a boiling point right now that if they bubbled over could really have major reverberating effect and provoke a lot more radicalism in the streets than we've seen so far let me let a little bit of a curveball actually oh. you're

a journalist i'm your editor for just for the moment and i say all right jay you need to write a history today right now this moment of the first six months of occupy wall street what would it include. it would include. i've sort of done this i'm working on a book right now about two thousand and sort of people's history of two thousand and eleven i would say that it would need to include a background on the financial crash and the bush years the sort of unbelievable levels of corruption and graft that took place then it would have to include the obama admin the obama campaign that everyone was very excited about in my generation and then once they realized that it was still business as usual they got you know this intent to be the political system and then it would require going into what happened around the world especially the arab spring but also in greece and spain and in england and all over the place and then finally we get to zuccotti

park september and then we get to the sort of growth of that movement the first initial police crackdowns that sort of exploded the coverage of the thing the big march on the brooklyn bridge the labor unions and other community organizations joining up for a huge march that ended with more police crackdowns the expansion to all over the place d.c. in oakland as you know in chicago and all over the place to come and washington in schenectady new york every tiny little towns. he attempted eviction of zuccotti park in october and then subsequently on october fifteenth the absolute explosion of the movement across the world tokyo rome everywhere times square got shut down and then we would go into the real backlash you know scott olsen being shot in the face in oakland and sent into intensive care the break ups of a lot of the encampments and then. what life has been like post.