getting their diplomas. thank you for watching state of the union. i'm candy crowley in washington. head to cnn.com/sotu for analysis and extras. if you missed any part of today's show, you can buy it on itunes. fareed sa cara is next for our viewers here in the united states. this is "gps the global public square." welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world, i'm fareed zakaria. let's start the show with a look at syria, guantanamo and how to fix what ails us in america. we have a terrific panel, joe klein, richard haass and anne-marie slaughter. next, salman rushdie thoughts on the bombing in america. what is the easiest way to drive the u.s. deficit down and create jobs? what's a quick and perhaps easy way to drive the u.s. deficit down and create jobs?

i will give you a hint. we need to turn illegal in to legal. i'll explain. but first here's my take. those urging america to intervene in syria are sure of one thing. if we had gotten in sooner, things would be better in that war-torn country. had the obama administration gotten involved earlier, there would be less instability and fewer killings. we would not be seen in john mccain's words this week -- >> atrocities on a scale we have not seen in a long, long time. >> in fact, we have seen atrocities much worse than those in syria recently. in iraq, only a few years ago, from 2003 to 2012, despite there being as many as 180,000 american and allied troops in iraq, somewhere between 150,000 and 300,000 iraqi civilians died and about 1.5 million fled the country. jihadi groups flourished throughout iraq and al qaeda had a huge presence there. the u.s. was about as actively

engaged in iraq as possible. and yet more terrible things happened there than in syria. why? the point is not to make comparisons among atrocities. the point is the situation in syria is much like iraq. we can learn a lot from our experience there. all the features of syria's civil war that are supposedly the result of u.s. nonintervention bloomed in iraq, despite america's massive intervention there. in iraq, under u.s. occupation, jihadi terrorists flourished. they employed tactics that were brutal beyond belief putting electric drills through people's heads and burning others alive and dumping still breathing victims into mask graves. these struggles get vicious for a reason. the stakes are very high. joshua america's leading scholar in syria points out that syria is the last of three great minority rule regimes in the middle east. in lebanon, the first. the christian minority was

displaced in a 15-year bloody civil war. in iraq, the u.s. displaced the sunni minority but then fought back brutally. again, a long, bloody civil war. syria is following precisely that battle. the minority regime fights to the end because it fears for its life once out of power. the sunnis of iraq even against the american military because they knew that life under the majority shia would be ugly as it proves to be. the ruling sect in syria will fight even harder because they are a smaller minority and have further to fall. now, would u.s. intervention, no-fly zones, aid to the opposition make things better? well, it depends on what one means by better. certainly intensify the civil war and it would also make the regime of bashar ail-assad more

desperate. perhaps assad has already used chemical weapons with his back against the wall, he might use them on a larger scale. if the objective is actually to reduce the atrocities and minimize instability, the key will be a political settlement that gives each side minorities and majority an assurance that it has a place in the new syria. that was never achieved in iraq, which is why despite u.s. troops and influence, the situation turned into a violent free for all. if some kind of political pact can be reached, there's hope for syria. if it cannot, the u.s. assistance to the rebels or even direct military intervention won't change much. syria will follow the pattern of lebanon in iraq, a long, bloody, civil war. the united states will be in the middle of it. for more on this, read my "time" column this week. find a link to it on cnn.com/fareed. let's get started.

syria will be one of many topics for today's panel. we'll also talk about boston terror, the gitmo hunger strike. joining me joe klein political columnist for "time" magazine. richard haass president of the council on foreign relations and the thou or of this the book "foreign policy begins at home." and ann-marie slaughter, the future president of the new america foundation. all right. you heard me anne-marie and i think having read your stuff that you disagree with me. why am i wrong about syria? >> in the first place, you're wrong, because this isn't iraq. iraq we were a large part of the problem. we went in, we took out the government, our continue being there contributed to the insurgency and the conflict. i think we should get rid of the various analogies and look at syria as what it is, which is a conflict that has gone on for two years that has killed 70 to

80 thousand syrians, displayed a million or more and is destabilizing the entire region, destabilizing lebanon, turkey, iraq, jordan, throatening possibly israel. just looking at this and then looking at the fact that now the administration has acknowledged that they have been using chemical weapons and indeed there's evidence they have been using chemical weapons since christmas. we have to act. if we do not act, this country will come apart completely. we are looking at five to more years vicious, internal war that then filters in to the region and equally importantly, president obama said if he uses chemical weapons that's a game changer. that's a red line. now they have used chemical weapons and president obama is saying, well, we need to figure out the facts. agree he needs to figure out the facts but he is basically trying to create room for himself so he

doesn't have to act. i think his credibility is on the line. his kred sblt on the line with respect to iran and more broadly we need to lead. this problem is getting worse and worse and worse and we have to assemble a regional coalition and actually act. >> i know you are more cautious. tell me about on the chemical weapons piece, does that make a difference? i'm struck that we call them weapons of mass destruction, which was something essentially invented during the bush administration because they were worried that saddam wouldn't have nuclear weapons and so they lumped everything and called it weapons of mass destruction. >> actually predates that. chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction because they're much more local in their effects. on the other hand, we have said that if they were to be used, something of a red line. i think we have to act, as anne-marie said, but there's acting and then there's aking. syria is not the entire chess board. it's one square. how much are we wise to commit there? i would say simply given everything else going on in the region, iran, given what's going

on in asia and our strategic requirements to rebuild here at home, we need to limit what we do. second of all, you have to listen to what you have been saying how much are we wise to accomplish given the nature of syria and actually think given the sectarian divides in that country, almost no matter how much we commit, we will not have an outcome that will be commensurate. we do some things, lethal aid and maybe cruise missile strikes and more importantly than what we do is not we do not do in syria. >> do you think obama should have drawn that red line? >> no. i think the president has been talking way too much across the board when it comes to foreign policy. you know, the chinese believe that, the chinese act as if the strongest person in any room is the guy who speaks the least? china it's always the guy who

speaks the least. the president with this red line and also with the notion of taking deterrence off the table. and in iran has been making a series of statements that he's going to have to follow through on at some point or another and he may not want to follow through on. you know, i think that the president's actual position on iran would be containment because nobody really wants to go to war there. and, so, i think he has to be a lot more disciplined in the kind of things that he says. he's been very disciplined in the kind of things that he has done. and i think that he's essentially done the right thing in syria. >> can i ask you what you would like it see us do because one thing i'm struck by. people who want to intervene often say that and not only thinking of you, anne-marie, but john mccain inlandcy graham, of course we would never use american troops or do anything that would put us in the middle of it. how are we go going to achieve these fairly ambitious goals.

jon stewart said we are going to do it by remote-controlled freedom magic. >> i suppose the only way to get a laugh on such a dismal subject. >> so, a year and a half ago i suggested that we armed those groups that we knew to actually support the principles we would support. exactly the group, the syrian support group who for the first time we're transferring aid to directly 18 months later. we do know who those groups are and we could have been providing them with much more arm as for a long time. as things have escalated, i think we need to be more active. the next thing we could do is take out their air force. right? through cruise missile and air we could make it much harder for him to use chemical weapons. richard, i don't know, assad's father used chemical weapons and killed 20,000 people, possibly up to 30,000 or 40,000 at one go. that's enough mass destruction for me. i can't imagine being subject to a chemical attack. but i would take out his air force and, actually, i think, it

is possible to have a no-fly zone or to have safe zones, which would ultimately. what we need to do is tip the balance of power within syria so that the people supporting assad have a reason to come to the negotiating table. we do have a political settlement, but zero incentive for assad and his people to actually negotiate. he's got russia and iran behind him and we want him out. we need to tip the balance of power. >> trying to take out their air force and all that to fly over the whole country, that's called going to war. you have over 5,000 pieces of air defense there. that's a big undertaking. secondly, we won't have a negotiate a settlement here. this is a fight to the finish. among the majority, once they get rid of this regime, the only thing they agreed on was getting rid of this regime. zero agreement about what comes next. we are in for a prolonged civil

war in syria. like lebanon, like iraq, sectarian things have to burn out. this is going to take years. and it's going to spill over into lebanon and already has spilled over into lebanon. i'm really worried about hezbollah getting those chemical weapons but i do believe that we have pretty, a lot of evidence now that when we go in the kinetically, the unintended consequences dwarf our original, wonderful intentions or sometimes no so wonderful intentions. >> we will have to take a break right now. when we come back, guantanamo and some of the domestic challenges that president obama faces. mom always got good nutrition to taste great.

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try capzasin-hp. it penetrates deep to block pain signals for hours of relief. capzasin-hp. take the pain out of arthritis. and we are back with richard haas, anne-marie slaughter and joe klein. anne-marie, you are a distinguished international lawyer. did the president write that guantanamo should be closed and if he is right, why isn't it getting closed? >> he is right. absolutely right. you have over 100 people who have being held in guantanamo, more or less for life, right? they haven't been charged. there's no possibility of trial. this country was founded on the basic principle that you have a right to know why you are being

held and tried. although we have been fighting a war with al qaeda and took them as prisoners of war we condition hold them forever and he is right. we have to close it. the reason it is not being closed is because congress has made it impossible to move them here and try them and made it impossible to move them to other countries where they could actually be watched there. ultimately, i think the president has to simply say this cannot be. you can find legal strategies to say i'm going to move them out and restrictions that are unconstitutional or you can simply to this this congress but we can have not he's people there the rest of their lives and over 50 are on hunger striking to the point where we have to force feed them and we will see many more unless there is a possibility of getting them out. >> you, speaking of presidential authority, you and your column in "time" this week say you're glad that president obama is finally getting angry. you were looking at the gun

control debate. >> i think moderates have to start getting angry because the extremists have so much control over our system. in this case, in the guantanamo case, we have international terrorists who are in a super max prison in colorado. that was going to be another super max prison, it actually already exists and illinois was going to be reinforced and we were going to put a lot of the guantanamo prisoners there but the republicans in congress blocked it. this was a matter of politics, not policy. in their case, they are playing political games. >> in the book out this week, you feel that one of the things we've got to do when looking at foreign policy, looking at these issues of terrorism is kind of remember that, ultimately, our strength comes from the fact that we fix things at home. do you worry that, i mean, if you think about it, we're talking syria, iran, we haven't even talked about afghanistan and there is north korea and issues like guantanamo, al qaeda.

is it possible for us to, you know, put all that in perspective or, you know, in some ways ignore that? >> not a question of ignoring it, but a question of putting it in perspective. that's what we need to document foreign policy is about strategy. strategy is about choices, priorities. there's nothing out there. there's nothing that we could talk about at the table that is anything like the scale of nazi germany in the middle of the 20th century or we actually have a little bit of time and space and we need to use that time and space to repair the foundations of american power our economy, our schools, our immigration system. if we do that, we can discourage the emergence of our country on our level or if one can happen all the same, we should deal with it. for 20 years now the middle east distracted us. the time to end that era of american foreign policy and put a ceiling on it and focus the rest of the world more and above all, focus here at home. that is ultimately the way we'll be able to lead the world.

>> if you have a magic wand and get the president to focus at home, what would you say the top three things at your list. >> long-term entitlements which is the cancer hanging over the american body politics. fix our infrastructure, takes very little money to do it through public/private relationships. pass immigration reform. that's the driver of innovation and jobs and resist the temptation to get pulled in the middle east. the line in godfather three, michael, keeps pulling me back. the president has to resist the temptation. focus on asia and north america and remember foreign policy begins at home. if we get it right here, we can make the 21st century another american century. >> the other would be to deal with the financial sector. we have to have our smartest young people making things instead of making deals. >> and i would build an infrastructure of care. i would build an infrastructure

that guarantees that people can both earn an income and care for either their children or their parents, for their loved ones generally. that means better schools. that means better health, but it also means things like affordable day care, paid family leave. flexible arrangements. ways in which we leave no one behind. >> those invest s particularly in early childhood and education have big payoffs. one of the reasons that new york has done so well. >> >> if they're done well. one reason the sequester is so bad. confuses spending with investment. >> we actually found a point of agreement. up next, what in the world. a way to create jobs, increase tax revenues and expand the economy. and both parties should agree on it. how can it be? i'll explain.

now for our "what in the world segment." the latest numbers show slow growth in the united states.

bad for jobs, income and even those worried about the deficit because it means lower tax revenues. and it has prompted a revival of the partisan debate about what to do about it. well, there's one idea out there that could have support from both parties. i was struck by a study i saw this week. it turns out, there is one very simple way to increase tax revenues, expand gdp and create jobs all at the same time. what's more, congress is already weighing it. it's called immigration reform. how and why you ask. well, a new paper from the left leaning center for american progress actually calculates the economic impact of immigration reform. the study outlines three scenarios. in the first, all of america 11 million undocumented immigrants are granted not just legal status, but also citizenship right away. what happens? over the course of ten years gdp expands by an additional $1.4 trillion. an additional 203,000 jobs are

generated on average every year. and tax revenues increase by an additional $184 billion over the course of a decade. these are huge jumps. now, granted, there are a number of hurdles towards granting citizenship. so the study highlights a second scenario. here undocumented immigrants are granted legal status, but it takes five years to become citizens. look at the gains. gdp expands by an additional $1.1 trillion over the ten-year period and job and tax increase, as well. the third scenario proposes that undocumented immigrants are not granted citizenship during the ten years of the study's projection. instead, they are only granted legal status, even here gdp expands by an additional $832 billion over the ten years, an average of 121,000 extra jobs are added every year and tax revenues grow by an additional $109 billion. how does this happen? the study's author make the case that legalizing undocumented workers brings them into the formal economy.

now, they have to pay income taxes, social security and health care taxes and all those other things you see on your wage stub. it also gives them access to many more jobs and at higher wages. all these gains then go on to have ripple effects across the economy boosting gdp growth. critics often point out if illegal immigrants become citizens they become a burden on the system. impacting social security, medicare and made medicaid. but these arguments ignore basic economics. immigrants with legal papers are transformed into contributing members of society. and access to society services also makes them safer, healthier and more productive. this isn't just a left-wing argument. on the right, douglas aiken director of the congressional budget office under george w. bush and john mccain's economic adviser during his presidential campaign, recently pointed out that immigration reform could

raise the pace of economic growth by nearly one percentage noint the near term and increase gdp per capita by $1500. a recent pew survey found that only 51% of americans think it's essential for the president and congress to act on immigration reform this year. compare that with the 70% of americans who say that congress must pass a deficit reduction deal this year. the irony is, the two are actually linked. a wealth of data now shows that immigration reform will lead to deficit reduction and the sooner we act, the greater the gains for the economy. up next, is it the end of austerity in europe? i have two smart economic experts. later on salman rushdie. and islam extremism. digestive balance. ♪ stay in the groove with align. ♪ need help keeping your digestive balance in sync?

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i'm fredricka whitfield with a check on the top stories. authorities in white hazmat suits are searching the apartment of boston bombing suspect dzhokhar tsarnaev. reporters found explosive residue in the apartment in cambridge. we are getting new details on dzhokhar tsarnaev's death a copy of his death certificate shows he was shot by police, run over

and then dragged bay car. it also says he was dead on arrival. syria is blaming israel for an attack on a military research center in damascus. a syrian official calls it a declaration of war and adds that syria will retaliate against israel in its own time and way. the israeli military is not kmechbting on the report. there's hope on the fire lines in southern california today. rain is in the forecast. about a 50% chance. the fire is burning 28,000 acres, but it is more than half contained. thousands of homes are still threatened, however. a night out turns in to tragedy. five young women are dead after their limo catches on fire on a california bridge. five others manage to escape the burning vehicle. the latest details on this heart-breaking story at the top

of the hour. i'm fredricka whitfield. now back to "fareed zakaria gps." may day was a day of protests this week across europe, spain, greece, protesters hit the streets angry about the economy. but they are also expressing anger about austerity. the policy of trimming government expenses. with a number of politicians in the west admitting that austerity is failing, is it the end of austerity? i'm joined by two very smart economic thinkers and writers gillian tett from the financial times and rana foroohar. you wrote a column where you said everyone is looking at the numbers from the economic u.s. and said they're bad. you found a silver lining. >> yes, absolutely. the government spending has been down. we're feeling the effects of the sequester and if you look at the 2% economy, which we've been in now for a couple of years, that's in part due to the fact that the public sector has cut back so much. if you strip the public sector

out, the growth numbers go up above 3%. about 3.1% and most of that is down to the consumer. american consumers have done a really good job of balancing their budgets, getting out of credit card debt, managing their own personal finances and now dip a little bit farther into savings than they used to and that's what they did last quarter. >> she's highlighting one of the great unsung stories of the last year, which is that consumers have actually managed to adjust to the new normal, if you like. credit card debt, which was such a key factor in creating pains in american households during the bubble, that credit card debt is now down to ten-year low. people have been trimming their spending and what that means is that the consumers are not in quite the kind of situation that your grandfather was in 40, 50 years ago in terms of debt, but something much healthier. >> you said, you know, taking out the effects of reduced government spending. this economy looks pretty good. that's companies and people are moving pretty well.

do you think that people now feel that the government has been cutting back too much in a period of weak economic demand? in other words, are we actually witnessing a kind of shift where people are going to say, enough austerity. let's try to actually doing it. i hear the academic debate -- but i don't see any government policy changing. >> political gridlock in washington is going to make it hard to come up with the kind of spending that would actually be useful. yes, i would love to see more spending on things like infrastructure and spending. but there is this push back now against austerity. we can see that it hasn't worked well in europe and we can see that the government and public spending, the lack of public spending is a real drag on growth in this country. we just have the effect of being the prettiest house on an ugly block. we are still doing well compared to others. >> in europe, people like the president of ireland saying austerity.

has led us nowhere. >> we had some astonishing statements from ireland saying that it's not just bad economic union but social union and political union and if that phrase, the euro zone because the reality of the countries like ireland, like greece, like israel and portugal are getting absolutely fed up by being told by the germans and the imf that they have to do more austerity. you can see the results. 27% unemployment rate in spain. potentially even higher if you actually look at the numbers properly. similar levels in portugal and greece. you had an entire generation being thrown into the garbage can right now and the problem with that is they're not spending and stimulating the economy and not seeing the demand that you're getting in america. >> i think, also, you may start to see a shift in germany after the elections. you know, there's always been a lot of posturing on the part of

merkel and other jernl german leaders. they want the rest of europe to get the sense, well, germans will cough up money but if you behave more german or thriftier. that is the stance she has to take politically to sell any kind of bailout in germany. after the election, an increasing realization that germany has as much to lose if not more than any other european country if there is a fracture in the euro zone. a lot of their trading partners are in the euro zone. if they go under, germany's export economy, which is the driver, is going to really suffer. >> fascinating. you think that this fire in bangladesh in the factory might make us rethink this whole idea of outsourcing manufacturing all over the world. >> yeah. i did a cover a couple weeks ago with a colleague about the made in america phenomenon and a lot of people were talking about how manufacturing is back and it is back. the jobs haven't come back in mass yet because there are still these big, complex supply chains in places like india and china. but thing i heard a lot from

ceos was how risky these supply chains are now. they might cut a deal with a supplier and send inspectors, but those suppliers on the ground have outsource to, you know, mom and pop shops that are very difficult to regulate. this is a kind of political risk and a risk on the ground that is very hard to police. and i think companies have lost billions in recent years reputationally around these things. i think this coupled with rising energy prices that make it more cost effective to do production closer to home and the need for quick, customized products will all start to push people to start thinking about moving manufacturing closer to home. >> have you ever thought where your dress was made. i didn't think about it. we take for granted the prices are low. we are starting to see because of bangladesh is fire and social media is a degree that consumers can turn on a dime and serious

brand damage very quickly. the question of where things are made is increasingly important and also from purely rational perspective today the fact that you have american wages becoming more competitive on global standard. the fact that actually the cost of moving things around the world physically is high means that, again, we could see more and more of this kind of reshoring, if you like. this localization and taking hold of the theme. >> it's been fascinating. two brilliant women on and you don't even disagree. up next, salman rushdie on the boston bombers, immigration and more. don't miss it. it helps create a food seal defense for a clean mouth and kills bacteria for fresh breath. ♪ fixodent, and forget it.

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country. that one instant has spawned a billion dreams. it also became the starting point of one of the great novels of our times, "midnight's children." all the children born between midnight and 1:00 a.m. assumed

magical powers. >> a child and country were born at midnight. >> three decades on, the award winning book is now a movie out in theaters. i spoke to rushdie about the film and we began by delving into a somewhat different subject. how immigration impacts people in light of the boston bombings. listen in. salman rushdie, pleasure to have you on. >> thank you. >> when you looked at the picture that we know of the tsarnaev brothers, of these immigrants who come to the west. you know, something goes wrong. something goes wrong and the family structure. the father clearly feels home sickened and wants to go back. perhaps the parents divorce, riff within the family. the brother seems unable to make his way in the world. does it strike you as a kind of heightened version of traditional immigrant problems? >> i think it is in a way. i thought the uncle had it

right. when he said that their problem was one of making a successful of the lives in the new world, so to speak. he called them losers, which i thought was a much better description than terrorists. >> he was trying to say, don't blame all these larger things. >> i think as these little snippets of information leak out, they all seem to be supporting that point of view, this isn't part of some grand conspiracy. you know, a couple of very disturbed young people, you know, turning in this direction because of the failure of their lives. >> we sometimes do forget in the united states because we celebrate immigration as we should that there are -- >> there is a down side. >> in a way, you know, i'm a double immigrant and immigrant from india to england and from

england to here. i have written about this my whole life and, as you say, much of it is something that i tried to celebrate. all the great enriching qualities that come from the active migration, both from the migrant and for the migrated, too, country. and that's, i think, truly what's important even at these times. that actually we are all culturally enriched. there is a dark side. this is the dark side. >> being a double immigrant, what is your sense of the difference between immigrants in britain versus the united states. the conventional wisdom which i probably share is that america has been much more successful. >> it's a class difference. that's one thing. a lot of the immigrants that came to england came from very, very poor communities. they came from places like in pakistan and bangladesh and india. they didn't come from the upper middle class.

they came from the rural port. and as a result, their cultural understanding and expectations were much more traumatized by the engagement with western industrialized culture. >> all over europe. these people have tended to be poor, rural immigrants. >> this is just a generalization. but in the states, the communities that exist really are more middle class than that and therefore, i think, more easily able to adjust to urban life in america because they're from familiar with urban middle class life. through elsewhere. >> it is not a wonder the american civilization machine. >> it is that, too. i always wanted to, it depends where in america you are. one thing that is interesting about a city like new york is that there's much less of a sense of a dominant culture. you know, there's much more of a sense that everybody's culture is part of, goes together to make the culture of the city.

in england, again, i think a much stronger sense of that government culture to which people have to, with which they have to make an accommodation. here you can push things around. make an accommodation. here you can push things around. >> my impression, they generally don't care where you're from in america. everyone comes from somewhere else. >> yes. part of that again has a down side, which is a kind of lack of awareness of history. speaking as a historian, i want to know where are people and what their life experience has been and what brought them here from there. it makes it easier if the fact you come to new york and two weeks later you're a new yorker. that makes life a little easier. >> this movie, which is the movie of the book that made you famous even before ayatollah made you famous. is it weird to see something that in your mine's eye, you must have conjured up this whole world in your mind's eye.

now it's there on celluloid. >> there are things that feel weird about it due to the fact that the story on film can't be exactly the same as the book because there are shifts of tone. i think the tone of the film is slightly different than the tone of the book. it's more openly emotional, for example. the movie has a bigger emotional kick. i don't think people cry reading "midnight's children," but a lot of people cry seeing the movie, which i'm pleased about. that's strange to see the same story being told by another artist and coming out with a slightly different tonal quality. >> the movie is, in very simple terms, about crossed lives, two people whose lives get switched and reunited -- watch the movie and see what happens. do you think that -- did you worry people would have to understand the history of india? >> no. my rule whether it's a book or

movie has always been that the work of art has to tell people what they need to know. you have to come with no information. go see a movie. i think there is a sense in which it's not so hard for people here to connect. this is also a country which had a revolution against the british a little earlier. so that phenomenon of the meaning of independence, of casting off a colonial power, then the optimism of that moment, the hope of that moment, and then in many ways the disappointments of that hope is something i think is easy to connect to from the history of america, as well. i think those key relationships between individuals and power, how do the great events of history impact honored individual lives? these are questions we ask ourselves all the time. >> salomon rushdie, a pleasure

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we were reminded north and south korea are still at war after declaring the cease-fire were null and void. we were reminded two countries technically still at war many decades after the shooting stopped. which of these pairs of countries are still at war? which war is still being fought, technically? is it the u.s. and vietnam? the u.s. and iraq? the uk and germany after world war i or russia and japan after world war ii? stay tuned and we'll tell you the correct answer. go to cnn.com/fareed for more of the gps challenge. follow us on twitter and facebook. remember, you can go to itunes.com/fareed if you miss a show or special. this week's book of the week is by richard haass. it's called "foreign policy

begins at home." it's a brief, sensible and highly intelligent argument that america's influence abroad comes first and foremost from its strength at home. everything old is new again. capitalist russia is seemingly catching socialist stalin fever all over again. 60 years after the death of the dictator who murdered millions, his reputation seems to be having a bit of a rehabilitation. in a recent poll, 47% of russians said stalin was a wise leader who brought the soviet union to might and prosperity. on wednesday, may day parades in russia celebrated stalin. none other than president putin invoked his legacy in a ceremony. stalin was the first to be named a soviet hero of socialist labor. some 20,000 people were so honored after him, but then like the ussr, the awards ended abruptly in 1991. 22 years later, this may day,

putin revived the tradition, bestowing honors now simply called hero of labor. mr. putin recently said of his own regime, i don't see any elements of stalinism here. well, with a point of one. the correct answer was d, russia and japan are still at war after world war ii. never having come to peace terms, but president putin and prime minister abe met this week and announced peace negotiations would resume soon. only 67 years in the making. bonus points if you knew that the u.s. officially ended its war with iraq only in 2011. while the uk and germany weren't officially at war, the final aspect of world war i between the two nations wasn't settled until 2010 when berlin made its final reparations payment to london. one programming note before we go, next friday night at 11:00 p.m. eastern time here on cnn,

you can see the premiere of the next gps special "beyond the manhunts, how to stop terror." it's a deep look inside american intelligence and how it can best keep us safe. don't miss it. that's friday night at 11:00 p.m. thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. hello, i'm fredricka whitfield. a look at our top stories this hour. syria is blaming israel for an attack on military research center and a syrian official is calling it a declaration of war. in northern california a fun night out has taken a tragic turn. last night a fire ripped through a limousine carrying nine women. more than half of the passengers didn't make it out alive. details straight ahead.