guantanamo

As I perused the latest WikiLeaks releases this morning, a retweet from their Twitter feed caught my eye: “Gitmo: Compare the first paragraph of these two stories about the same thing.” One was a link to the BBC and one was CNN. At the BBC, the title is “Wikileaks: Many at Guantanamo 'Not dangerous'” and the first graf points out that the US believed many were innocent or only low-level operatives. CNN's piece, by contrast, says that the released documents “reveal extraordinary details about the alleged terrorist activities of Al Qaeda operatives” at Gitmo. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"The key here for the Obama administration is not just to talk the talk but they have to walk the walk," says Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional rights. It's not just Libya he's talking about -- the US has a ways to go on many humanitarian concerns, from Guantanamo to the Mavi Marmara, the International Criminal Court to neighborhood policing. Vince joins Laura in studio to discuss the historic UN Security Council vote on Libya, the ongoing struggle for habeas corpus rights for detainees, and racist stop-and-frisk policies right here in New York. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Accountability and transparency are two key elements to a responsible government, notes Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, and WikiLeaks and other sites like it help fulfill the transparency side of things, at least. Accountability, though, at least from the U.S. government, seems to be slow in coming--and Vince notes that the Tunisian people, who removed their despot, could use our support as well. Vince joins us to discuss the situation in Tunisia, the anniversary of the Guantanamo Bay prison facility, and what is required to hold governments accountable to their people. "A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just."...A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." Those were Martin Luther King, Jr.'s words on war--but last week a Pentagon official actually tried to claim that were King alive today, he'd actually support the war in Afghanistan. Our friends at Brave New Films put together this film as a reminder of what King really believed. This week not only commemorates King's birthday, but also is the 50th anniversary of Dwight Eisenhower's prescient warning about the military-industrial complex, the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of John F. Kennedy, the 10th anniversary of the inauguration of George W. Bush--and the one-year anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision. Russ Baker is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years, and he joins us to talk about these anniversaries, and what they mean for the America we live in now and the history we've forgotten. Last week the World Bank warned of "serious tensions and pitfalls" ahead in the global economy, and less than three percent growth for the U.S. Laura reminds us that there are plenty of problems in our economy that we should be worrying about before we take the bait in worrying over Europe. Distributed by Tubemogul.

The Tea Party congresspeople are surging into Washington, bringing to their new majority calls not only to overturn health care reform but to ban earmarks and to generally stall major legislation on the Democrats' agenda. ; Meanwhile, there seems to be little coming out from Obama and most of the Democrats on what is exactly on their agenda for the next two years.So what are they thinking? David Corn of Mother Jones doesn't quite know either, but he joins us via Skype from D.C. anyway to give us his thoughts on Tea Party politicians, the earmark process, and other issues from inside the Beltway.Deficits, deficits, deficits. That's all we hear about lately. But in case Dean Baker's explanation of the deficit problem this week was just a little too complicated, he and his colleagues at the Center for Economic and Policy Research have created this video, via xtranormal, to break it down to really simple terms: it's the healthcare.The times are difficult and the challenges are great. But a sober analysis of our predicament suggests that there are accomplishments to be celebrated and lessons to be learned from the intense period of history we have just lived through that can inform a comeback strategy. As important as developing such a strategy will be upholding the commitments that have always nurtured the progressive spirit: to resist despair, to press on in times of uncertainty and to take risks to make a path forward.So wrote Gara LaMarche and Deepak Bhargava in The Nation, right before the election, laying out a strategy for progressive success in the wake of Republican likely victories. Now that we know what the political landscape looks like, we asked Gara to join us in studio to give us some ideas of what we can do to fight a reenergized, organized right. Finally, the New York Times is willing to call out torture--after the British government decides to pay out large sums to former Guantanamo detainees. Laura has some thoughts.