detainees

The Republicans who will shortly be taking over the house after the recent elections have pledged to shrink the government and cut spending, but, Vince Warren notes, they seem to have no problem with "Big Government" when it's holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.The current flood of torture talk seems to have something to do with the elections as well, Warren says, as it's becoming more and more obvious that accountability for torture is something that only happens in other places. It did happen recently in England, with settlements being agreed upon to several former--and one current--detainees, and Warren discusses all this with Laura.Before the contested Iranian election of 2009, scholar Hamid Dabashi notes, most people in the U.S. only thought of Iran in terms of geopolitics. But when protesters poured into the streets that summer, he points out, "Suddenly people mattered. People's liberty, and economic and social well-being mattered."Dabashi has a new book out, Iran, The Green Movement and the USA: The Fox and the Paradox, and he joins Laura in studio for a conversation about geopolitics and internal politics, about the long, tumultuous relationship between the U.S. and Iran, and to discuss the best course of action for peace in the region, with hawks clamoring once again for war.Then, the financial crisis in Ireland is leading to a political crisis on the heels of a bailout and more “austerity measures.” But there's a familiar story behind the new crisis, and it involves multinational corporations, big banks, and low corporate taxes. Laura has some thoughts.

Fahad Hashmi is an American citizen being held in solitary confinement in Lower Manhattan, facing several years in prison for the crime of providing and conspiring to provide material support and making and conspiring to make a contribution of goods or services to Al Qaeda. The conditions under which he has been held, for two and a half years, are frightening: he is allowed only one visit every other week from one of his parents, and has been punished for shadowboxing alone in his cell. Jeanne Theoharis, associate professor of political science at Brooklyn College, CUNY and Fahad's former professor, wrote of the expansion of Guantanamo-like conditions in The Nation: "Guant?namo is a particular way of seeing the Constitution, of constructing the landscape as a murky terrain of lurking enemies where the courts become part of the bulwark against such dangers, where rights have limits and where international standards must be weighed against national security. It is an outgrowth of a "war on terror" with historical precedents that took root under Clinton (in legislation like the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act), spread like kudzu under Bush and infiltrated the fabric of the justice system. It is a pre-emptive strategy where stopping terrorism has come to mean detaining and prosecuting people who may not have committed any actual act of terrorism but whose religious beliefs and political associations ostensibly reveal an intention to do so." Theoharis, along with actor Kathleen Chalfant and actor, playwright and author Wallace Shawn of Theaters Against War, joins us to talk about Fahad's case, free speech and why we need to speak up for people like Fahad.