lead. prime minister donald trump sturgis his parliamentary politicize the plane crash investigation that killed the country's president at ninety five others in russia last april it continually brow after the official accident for important milestone the pilot's. internet freedom is questioned in europe as a swiss banker is found guilty of breaking bad serious news for me to help we can agree to expose massive tax evasion as the. american president for our globe amore pushes china to increase the value of its currency as he goes try to use president hu jintao was on a four day visit to the united states and the chinese leader needs to continue the

dialogue. all the needs of the mutual respect and the transference internal affairs . the more of us trying to relations said whether america is really ready to accept china as a powerful economic force we had you over now to the old yana show from our washington studios. welcome the ilona show where we get the real headlines with none of the mercy or can live out of washington d.c. now today chinese president hu jintao is in town for an official state visit try to emphasize common ground between our two countries with two fundamentally different ideologies one can't help but wonder if these two powerhouses will ever truly see

eye to eye then it looks like president obama has a new fan former vice president dick cheney who is very glad that obama has finally come around to his administration's ways of thinking notably on the war on terror so what does it mean when dick cheney gives you his stamp of approval and it's not just obama who seems in line with cheney's way of seeing things yesterday a federal court of appeals ruled to allow the cia to keep documents which detail experience experiences of torture and get most secret so now with the courts gone were all victims of u.s. torture to do next then a kentucky state legislator wants to make all recipients of welfare submit to drug tests so is this just another example of the government invading it's citizens privacy or do taxpayers have a right to ensure that their money isn't going to people using drugs and then should women be able to fight in combat units will make up almost fifteen percent of the armed forces and they still aren't fully equally integrated so is this an

antiquated policy in need of removal or are women just fine where they are we're going to debate the issue with two veterans but now to move on to our top story. chinese president hu jintao is in washington today meeting with president obama to discuss everything from the economy and trade to the role that each country will play in the future it's a relationship with a shaky history but one from which many believe there's more to learn than fear from a rising china artie's kalen ford has more on what china is doing right. i went into burger king with my son and i thought of this and it's a i think it's a z h e u z z choose e z h u z h u and recognize the that is chinese percent americans the word china elicits fear does recognizing china's rise means recognizing america's decline of now we are getting not our toys there are things that are a little happy meals which should be banned there so dangerous. not just our toys

in the bag made in china. but the image and everything else culture coming from china. or others china elicits feelings of inferiority according to the pew research center forty seven percent of americans think china is the world's leading economic power only thirty one percent think america. that's certainly the opinion among students at millinocket school in maine which will welcome paying chinese students to close its budget gap next year i think the chinese are going to be total shock i think about high tech and way more advanced than us but ten times more money alike and a better society and then you look at eisenhower away hor and nothing as hu jintao towards the u.s. capitol american officials are eager to quell fears about what a rising china could mean for the world's only superpower still some analysts say that the united states should be focusing on what it can learn from china rather

than merely containing it china knows how to develop they're doing it we are expanding boring and consuming rather than saving and investing for the future a sentiment echoed by many we spoke to a lot to learn terms of productivity organizational resources and also having a culture that values hard work more than our own i think they're trying to develop their economy here's some of the wealth with the focus i could now mike lee politically militarily china is on the rise. and while the u.s. put education on the chopping block this year china invested four percent of its g.d.p. in primary and secondary schools in poor rural areas chinese universities are mushrooming all across the country and increasingly attracting prestigious foreign professors and even american students like philadelphia native zachary franklin seems. just a better decision to be in the country learning about economics where so much is happening that economically getting

a master's in shanghai doesn't mean crippling student loans chinese students themselves you know not plane absorbant amounts of money food water and education in this country. china is also speeding ahead on high speed rail lines in massive infrastructure chinese officials say they will complete the first eco city by two thousand and twenty which will be home to three hundred fifty thousand as u.s. lawmakers squabble for years over who will foot the bill for every high speed rail link bridge or metro expansion rather just adds to rebuild the old interstate highway system we built a gigantic infrastructure projects in the us in our history. to be more unified as people are moving in a positive direction and i wish we could say the same president obama has plenty to put on the table as he hosts his chinese counterpart at the first us china state dinner but will the white house be equally eager to learn from its gas and ford r t washington d.c. . and

a joint press conference today president obama ad who pledged to work closer for political ad economic cooperation but there was that sense that everything isn't entirely rosy between the two leaders but tensions are there but it looks like obama may have been the more agitated of the two he made it very clear that the u.s. is still the leading economy of the two despite having only a third of the population and the perhaps china can thank america for some of its economic success. but it's also thanks to decades of stability in asia made possible by america's forward presence in the region by strong trade with america and by an open international economic system championed by the united states of america. so what do we say was there a little bit of resentment in the room is the u.s. really ready to accept china as a powerful economic force her to discuss it with me is mark weisbrot co-director of the center for economic and policy research marc thanks so much for coming on let's

start with what we're seeing happening here which is these are two fundamentally different countries they have different political systems for now different economic systems as well that are i don't want to say clashing but they're being forced to cooperate to work together or at least paint that kind of picture right in the public sense but then we've had you know a lot of people that look at china's ascendance look at china's success right now it can say one of things that because they don't have democracy like we do in america you know thomas friedman is even argo if we could only be like china for a day we'd get so much more done do you think that's true no not real world in some senses but it's not of course you have democracy i mean there is a sense in which friedman's argument is true it's kind of upside down i mean basically the united states is that you know wall street and the big corporations big energy corridors they own the government and in china it's the other way around the government controls the big corporations and the banking system so yeah it is easier for them to get stuff done but it's not because of that the people don't have a voice it's true the people they don't have a democracy we have more of

a democracy but in some sense our interests are less represented in the government on economic issues because of powerful special interests here so we actually need more democracy i mean if you if you have to up to the people here you wouldn't have wall street running the country we have a. jobs program for example right now which we really need and we charted one through you know the world recession with almost ten percent growth because they control the banking system they ordered them to learn money they have twenty percent of g.d.p. is state owned investment so they were able to do what they wanted whereas we're kind of hostage to our corporations will go over in the opposite situation. where everybody is just on their knees doing what the corporations want or perhaps bailing out the banks and even obama today with hu jintao had a meeting with several corporate leaders and you know this is also part of the deals that they want to make it easier for american business you know to to be in china they made

a deal for forty five billion they're going to buy two hundred boeing jets but at the end of a word when that happens if it's easier for american corporations to then be in china is that actually going to help americans back at home is that going to give them more jobs or quite the opposite no of course not and the whole u.s. policy in china including china's assertion of the beefier was oriented towards making it easier for u.s. corporations to move their jobs there. but i think one of the reasons they don't reach agreement on the currency for example is that our government again it's like senator dick durbin said about. the banks own this place he was referring to the congress. it was up to us we would have a much lower dollar with respect to all the world because we've lost six million manufacturing jobs in the last thirteen years mainly because of the overvalued currency no part of that was china part of it is with the rest of the world the united states could do something about it but again since the financial sector and

wall street is most powerful sector in our country there really do they make a lot of noise for public consumption then they go in and negotiate with the chinese and they probably don't push them at all i want to talk about you know some of the things that are making the top of the list because we know that there are a lot of points of tension between china and the u.s. a lot of people are you know upset about currency manipulation but that wasn't really a hot topic today at this press conference between obama and hu jintao but we did hear a little about human rights and we have a clip actually from what obama had to say to play for you. china is a different stage of development that we are. we come from very different. cultures and with a very different history. but as i've said before and i repeated to president hu we are. have some view. as america about the universe

certain rights freedom of speech freedom of religion. now in china clearly china is a human rights offender of course but the u.s. works with a lot of countries that are human rights offenders and so why is it that with china they tend to make this the sticking point well i think it's just for show it's just talk and you know our foreign policy really is annoying to towards human rights at all i mean look at them care about human rights duress where we supported the government there last year we don't care what he would writes in haiti where our government right now is trying to tell them who their election should be you know so i don't think and the chinese don't believe it either in fact the chinese actually put out a human rights report on the united states in response to our human rights report. and it's very interesting because in the last few years they've added a section which is called the violation of human rights in other countries where they count you know the hundreds of thousands of people killed in iraq for example

as human rights violations committed by the united states and that's why i think the rest of the world as long as our government is you know killing so many people overseas even if we have more rule of law here which has been eroded as world somewhat in the last few years nobody's going to take our government seriously about human rights our mark i want to thank you very much for being here and i do wonder what's being said behind closed doors because it does seem a little tense and thank you all still to come tonight we'll look at how the government statements about the damage done to both american foreign policy and humans by wiki leaks wasn't likely after it and then you know when you're in trouble when former vice president dick cheney starts approving the care policy it's going to tell you who is winning as a nation next. right

. remarkably. we. heard. tonight we have a stunning revelation from the u.s. government they lied to everybody again apparently all those wiki leaks state department cables that have been released online they only caused limited damage to u.s. interests abroad the way what didn't the obama administration claim that lines were in danger that the end of the world was near when wiki leaks apparently released that information all according to internal u.s. government reviews the entire document released wasn't really that big of a deal a congressional official briefed on the reviews said that the administration felt

like they needed to hype the release and the damage that it could cause in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the wiki leaks website and to bring charges against the leakers cheese so the federal government hyping something for their own benefit and i'm just shocked are you now state department officials have privately told congress that they expect over all damage to u.s. foreign policy to be containable nothing more than just a little embarrassing but ever since the weekend leaks cables were released last year they have been consistent calls from politicians to pundits to rest julian assigned to shut down this web site for good and now since word that that leak might have only caused right not have caused any damage obama officials naturally tried to salvage the integrity insisting that there have been substantial damages caused by weaker leaks they just chose not to elaborate of course they wouldn't elaborate because they can't there is time barest by some of the candid comments in the cables and the fact that the u.s.

was caught lying to governments around the world and to their own people. now do you remember when barack obama was still in the campaign trail when he repeatedly criticized the bush administration for their actions and their policies he railed on against kuantan of obey torture rendition state secrets he even stopped calling into the global war on terror when he first stepped into office and for those of us who've been paying attention that obama seems a long gone the obama we see now has instead continued expanded bush administration policies with the exceptions of ending the enhanced interrogation program and closing the cia black sites instead he's placed american citizens on due process free assassination lists invoked state secrets a number of times has not only not close guantanamo but now supports indefinite detention and has waged a war on whistleblowers perhaps the worst part of it all is has he vindicated bush and cheney dick cheney definitely think so as he explained in

a recent interview with n.b.c. news. i think he's also. obviously has been through the fires of becoming president having to make decisions and live with the consequences. that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for. and now earlier i caught up with an experiment of the young turks and i first asked her if it made her just a little bit sick to her stomach to see dick cheney the man who once said that obama's policies are making us less safe suddenly start nearly applauding him for his actions. it does make me sick to my stomach because if i can recall back in two thousand and eight when i voted for obama i voted for a progressive i voted for a liberal i did not vote for a neo con and a lot of his foreign policy stances are looking more and more like the bush administration's he's looking like an eel con when he was campaigning he was very

much against the idea of off occupying countries just for nation building and now you know you have biden talking about how he's willing to stay in afghanistan until two thousand and fourteen and they're very much willing to stay the course in afghanistan even though polls in the united states show that people are against the war at this point they no longer want to occupy afghanistan even though we really haven't seen much progress in afghanistan anyway. well not only that but guantanamo bay is not only still open now we have people that are considered triable that obama is ok with detaining indefinitely right now we have american citizens that are on an assassination list without any kind of due process you know in the court of law i mean a lot of even right wing conservative pundits out there would say that he's only continuing expanding on george bush's policies but you know i think glenn greenwald from salon really wrote a great piece about this and he outlined a few things that he thought were causing the most harm from the obama

administration's actions and so one is that this creates the impression that republicans were right all along and all those democrats were criticizing them during the bush administration they've they were wrong to apparently according to obama do you agree with that assertion. the idea that the republicans were right all along is the most absurd idea i've ever heard of at this point we have spent so much money in afghanistan and iraq let me remind you we invaded iraq under i think nothing but lies there were no weapons of mass destruction and saddam hussein had absolutely nothing to do with nine eleven however the bush administration was really successful in lying to the public and making them believe that saddam hussein was behind nine eleven and you know invading iraq turned out to be one of the biggest disasters in u.s. history and no i don't think the republicans were right at all by the end of the twenty eleven fiscal year we will have spent one point two twenty nine trillion

dollars on these wars at the same time the infrastructure in the united states is falling apart cities like camden new jersey have to layoff half of their police force because they can't pay for it no the republicans were not right and right now obama's industry and their foreign policies are also not right well that's why i don't think that you know the glen was saying that the republicans were actually right or all along i definitely don't think so i know you definitely don't think so but if the obama. ministrations actions that almost make it look that way right because you know and i understand and i'm sure that when you get into the office of becoming president and you constantly are getting these briefings every single day about how many threats there are to america probably it can skew your mind a little bit you know the way that you came into it what does that mean that you then expand upon those things do you do you automatically say you know what maybe torturing those people was worth it. you know that's really hard to say i don't

know it's funny because obama was very much against. interrogation methods that were torture is he was very much against the illegal wiretapping these are all things that he campaigned against yet when he was in office all of a sudden going to prosecute the cia officials that were found waterboarding people ok all of a sudden i'm not going to prosecute the bush administration for wiretapping illegal wiretapping you know all of a sudden he kind of back pedals on things that he campaigned for and it's really hard to know what's going on inside his mind did he all of a sudden realize that bush policies were the best policies i mean we as the american people know those aren't the best policies but is that some sort of a finny that he reached i don't know i think a lot of it might have to do with the fact that he's so gung ho on being viewed as someone who's strong on national security and viewed as someone who's willing to compromise with the republicans that he's willing to really compromise things that he campaigned for when he was in the twenty two thousand elections do you think

that the media has begun to compromise too that you know the media that was the progressive left leaning media i guess you could say you know was very critical of the bush administration and their actions after it turned out that the entire iraq war thing was a lie the entire weapons of mass destruction where they suddenly got you know i mean why don't we hear more in the mainstream press about. obama and his actions and the things that he walked back on. i think the mainstream press is really good at getting manipulated by the government you know i mean a private example of that would be wiki leaks the american government the obama administration absolutely hates wiki leaks because it's humiliating for them and wiki leaks didn't do anything that would damage our national security but the obama administration somehow manipulated the mainstream media to indicate that wiki leaks is dangerous to us and is dangerous to the national security in the u.s.

so i think that it's really difficult to look to the mainstream media for real coverage on things especially on the war in afghanistan you know especially of foreign policy we were talking about that you know a couple interviews ago where you said that the mainstream media doesn't even want to cover afghanistan because they feel like it's too complex for the american public so when it comes to left wing media i think a really good example of affective left wing media would be shows like the young turks or salon dot com and you know those types of publications that are willing to criticize the obama administration even though they lean to the left so you see that on the young turks all the time we took totally point fingers to the obama administration and i read this great article in time magazine that did a great comparison on the bush administration and the obama administration and they showed the striking similarities between both administrations when it comes to foreign policy. we definitely need more programs like the one here like the young turks that actually call obama out on it because like i said all those voices we

used to hear have disappeared and i think so much for joining us. thank you. now to look at the obama administration's actions of going against his own words and promises that's disappointing but is just one element in the vindication of the last administration now we can look to the courts since the obama administration isn't doing anything to prosecute those who committed torture or approved it since they did. rather keep people indefinitely detained than have to talk about what was done to them out in the open there are organizations like the a.c.l.u. to take those fights on and yet just yesterday a federal appeals court ruled that the government can continue suppressing transcripts and which former cia prisoners now held a get well described abuse and torture they suffered walls in cia custody so does that mean that the federal court system is also vindicating and justifying torture well joining me to discuss it is attorney ben wizner litigation director of the a.c.l.u.'s national security project ben thanks so much for being with us can you

first give me a few details of this case i mean from what i understand there are suppressing here transcripts where you know guantanamo detainees said that they were abused or tortured allegedly but where are these transcripts coming from you know who were they speaking to when they said all of it. right well we've learned a lot in the last few years about the bush administration's torture regime what happened in the cia's black site prisons the waterboarding the other brutal techniques that were used against detainees what we have not really heard is firsthand accounts of those cia torture victims themselves who want to are still being held who were transferred in two thousand and six from cia black sites prisons to guantanamo and since then have been in complete isolation from the rest of the world even their lawyers have to sign agreements saying that they won't reveal what their own clients say to everybody else and this isn't because first the bush administration or now the obama administration you know they're concerned that details of classified programs will be released this is because that testimony

will be very powerful and that first hand testimony of the victims may create new impetus a new momentum towards accountability and this is what both administrations have been fighting equally hard to avoid is having the a perpetrators of these crimes of this torture brought to account in a court of law these specific documents that we requested were created when the former cia prisoners were brought to guantanamo in two thousand and six they were brought before so-called combatant status review tribunals these sort of kangaroo courts said kuantan m o that designated them enemy combatants during the course of those hearings these former cia prisoners described the brutality that they had endured in cia custody but when those transcripts were released every mention of the torture that they suffered had been blacked out in deleted and we filed a lawsuit saying there is no legitimate basis for withholding individual's first hand accounts of their own experiences the government has no right to classify what

happened to someone else if the torture techniques that they used on these people you know really are classified then they shouldn't have revealed them to the victims themselves by employing them against those victims and it seems quite orwellian to say. that we can reveal these classified techniques by virtue of in voluntarily imposing their mind you and then say that your your own experiences your own memories are classified and can't be shared with the rest of the world and that was what was at issue in this lawsuit well but i'm just curious why the justification did the court saying at the cia can continue to suppress this information. well it's the same old justification that we hear in every one of these cases the c.i. a came into court filed an affidavit insisting that if these. allegations by these detainees were released on redacted that it would reveal cia sources and methods and confidential and classified conditions of confinement that

terrorist out in the world would be able to look at what happened to these detainees and then train against these techniques their release of this information will be propaganda for al qaeda which is the most remarkable argument if the government can withhold information because its release would aid enemy propaganda that means that the worse and more criminal the government conduct is the more protected it is from disclosure and that's not any way to run a democracy. or very quickly to because they're running out of time i want to squeeze omar a question in does this say to you that the courts here are complicit that they're ok with helping the government cover up this information or you know quite the opposite is it sometimes that these federal judges become the victims because the cia or the government uses things like state secrets national security and essentially says you're not trusted with this information i don't think there is any way to avoid the conclusion that when it comes to holding the cia in particular accountable for what they've done the courts have been complicit that when the cia

says that allowing these cases to proceed will harm national security virtually every time the courts just really see their authority to the perpetrators themselves rather than exercising their independent judgment the way that you cheri ought to in a well functioning democracy well isn't that just wonderful another blow to our justice system here ben thank you so much for joining us thanks alina. coming up on tonight's show young british women are converting to islam in the ropes claiming up a conversion isn't affecting their lives all that much we're going to bring you more on this point on after the break and should you be forced to submit to a drug test before receiving welfare or is that just another way for the government to invade your life we'll have a debate on the issues soon as they return. in the united kingdom she's a big believer in the house bill and she was the one who took the only way for her to make it to the polls.