new york times

"The real issue is who was actually at Guantanamo, how were they treated, and this revelation gives us another chance to look at that," says Vince Warren of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who joins Laura in studio to discuss the latest disclosures from WikiLeaks--nearly 800 files on the detainees at the infamous Guantanamo Bay detention facility. Though President Obama promised to close the prison when he was elected, it remains open and 172 people remain imprisoned there, Warren notes, and argues that this disclosure could be another opportunity to rethink that policy. Shirin Ebadi was the first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first woman to serve as a Chief Justice in her native Iran--a right taken away from her with the 1979 Islamic revolution. Since then, she has fought for human rights, particularly those of women and children, and has campaigned to restore the rights of women in Iran. While visiting New York, Ms. Ebadi took time out to sit down with Laura and discuss the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, the struggle for civil rights in Iran, and why the revolutions will be incomplete without democracy and rights for women. Michele Bachmann and Nikki Haley joined a Tea Party crowd in Columbia, South Carolina to talk politics--and a Democratic consultant was in the crowd, talking to rally attendees. And finally, Laura points out some differences between US and overseas media coverage of the WikiLeaks Guantanamo documents--and why it matters, even if the complete documents are available online for all to see. Distributed by Tubemogul.

The ink on the compromise that kept the government open—barely--isn't even dry and they're already talking about the next round of cuts in Washington. The New York Times led off this week with an article about Obama's plan to reduce the deficit by making unspecified “changes” to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Sure, it also mentions increasing taxes and cutting military spending, but when we're embracing the conservative frame that entitlement programs are too big, that's not much to cheer about. Distributed by Tubemogul.

"Now we think not only us are going to have to review our sense of comfort. I am not very comfortable." says Leo Gerard, President of the United Steelworkers union. Gerard himself was once a union representative at a facility that mined and refined uranium, and he represents many workers in such dangerous conditions across the country today. The USW has long been part of the Blue-Green Alliance, creating a labor-environmentalist coalition, but stopped short of calling for an end to nuclear power--but will that change after Japan? Leo joins Laura via Skype to discuss the crisis in Japan, the situation of the workers there, and why this crisis is linked to workers' protests around the US. Republicans have NPR and PBS in their sights once again, and once again progressives and media reformers have to fight for every penny that public media gets. Just how many pennies is that, though? Sally Kohn of Movement Vision puts that funding in perspective in this video. "You see this coming together of networks of educated people—I call them the graduates with no future—with the urban poor, with sometimes organized labor. This mixture is there everywhere the protests have been," says Paul Mason, Economics editor of BBC Newsnight and author of Live Working or Die Fighting: How the Working Class Went Global. Mason notes that from student protests in London to workers in Wisconsin, revolution in Tunisia to uprising in Libya, many of the same characteristics are visible. Paul joins Laura in studio for a conversation about the global protest movement, the role of social media, what different areas have in common, and much more. You can see Paul and Laura along with Cornel West and Barbara Ehrenreich in New York on Friday night at the opening plenary of the Left Forum--more information here! Finally, the US Government paid $2.3 million to have CIA contractor Raymond Davis freed in Pakistan. But what are other lives worth--or other jobs? Distributed by Tubemogul.

"We need better intelligence, the kind that is derived not from intercepting a president's phone calls to his mistress but from hanging out with the powerless." That was one of columnist Nicholas Kristof's lessons for U.S. foreign policy drawn from Egypt's revolution. In the New York Times this weekend he pointed out that American journalists and foreign policy experts alike missed the warning signs of what was coming in Egypt in part because they talk to the wrong people. Aha. That's not exactly a revelation to consumers of independent media. Distributed by Tubemogul.