holes in its own wallet that now asked to make cut throat decisions about which of its kids get to eat and hungry is kind of like the red headed step child. in this case, all this flooding of the e with ukrainian grain could have been avoided. if brussels had just ensure that the food was going to the stated purpose that is feeding the world's poor, russian president vladimir putin had been warning all along that it was being misdirected spirit or why she would. but from august 1st 2022 to march 20th 202-3820 7 ships left ukraine, of which only 3000000 tons of grain were sent to africa. and 1300000 to the poorest countries in africa. as i said, almost 45 percent went to well fed european countries, despite the fact that this whole deal was presented under the pretext of insuring the interests of african countries, it is said. so after banning russian fertilizer, an energy brussels also made its farmers struggled to compete with a flood of ukrainian grain. and now the

e. u is having to pay the price literally to the tune of billions, yet another resounding policy success from the big brand brussels bureaucrats. our doughty contributor rachel martin. thank you. i thank you for joining us here for this program. lie from moscow. this is archie international. rachel evans, at the desk and half an hour's time. i do hope you can join us. ah ah ah, ah

ah ah ah ah ah, reporting on and investigating the lawless u. s. military prison at guantanamo bay. cuba is an important endeavor. thanks to a number of whistleblowers. we know what has happened at guantanamo and we have a feel for the war crimes and crimes against humanity that have taken place there. but what the human rights community, and indeed the public in general, really need, is a historian to lay out all the details for future generations. and to make sure that

revisionists don't try to change the truth of that history. i'm john kerry. aku welcome to the whistle blowers ah we're all aware of whistleblowers who have served at the u. s. military prison at guantanamo, thanks to people like joseph hickman and brandon neely, we know of some of the atrocities that have taken place there in the name of us security policy. thanks to the attorneys representing guantanamo detainees. we know about the utter lack of due process, about torture and degrading an inhumane treatment that continues to take place there. but much of what we knew in the earlier part of guantanamo existence was fragmentary. our next guest changed all that using his background as a researcher and an investigative journalist, he sought to document what happened to every single prisoner who passed through

guantanamo, as well as those who will likely spend the rest of their lives there. and beyond that, he has cultivated sources outside of guantanamo, that of allowed him to report on us covert action operations and capture and render people around the world who in the end have never been charged with a crime. andy worthington joins us today. andy is a british historian, author investigative journalist and filmmaker, he's the author of the book, the guantanamo files, the stories of the 774 detainees in america's illegal prison. he's also published a myriad of articles about one ton of mo, and he's the director of the documentary film outside the law stories from guantanamo. andy, welcome to the show. it's great to have you. thank you, john. thank you for inviting me to our pleasure, eddie. let's start with how you got involved in guantanamo and in human rights. you already had of sterling reputation as the author of 2 fascinating historical

nonfiction books, one on modern celebrations at the stonehenge archaeological site, and the other on a confrontation between police and new age celebrants. at stonehenge on june, 1st 1985. i remember that i was actually living in the u. k. at the time. how did you know? it was a lot of fun kind of a strange event. how did you make that transition to guantanamo and to human rights? and when did that happen for you? well, you know, the civil liberties in human rights are very closely connected. i'm sure i've always interested in the oppression of and adults. so i think, you know, the grand panama was kind of a classic case, really, you know, and if you look at grand panama history, the 1st lawyer that became involved when michael ran the senate right to human rights lawyer and then to death penalty lawyers who were immediately on the story

of guantanamo because they represented people, they were particularly treated as none the big tomorrow. so you know, civil liberties, human rights issues are always been important to me that one of my story i think was probably more a calling to lots of non americans from the beginning. but i was to people in the us to were encouraged to be in this this the state of vengeance towards the people who caused the 911 attacks. whereas around the world, people were looking at these parameters. furniture is when the people in the orange jumpsuits with them the ears covered kneeling in the gravel and shouted that by the god david that was, that was shocking for people around the world and britain, the right wing daily mail, newspaper ran and ran a headline of torture when, when the prison opened. but it took me when it took most people time to be able to

really delve into the grand panama story because of the secrecy. and in fact, i started looking in to try to find out who was at the prison in the fall of 2005. and that was when a couple of speculative listed put together by writing composed and by the case, prisoners there in the u. k. but nobody really knew who was there because the us government hadn't told the world who they were. and that didn't happen until the spring of 2006, they lost freedom of information lawsuits and were required to tell the world who they were holding their as well as to release thousands of pages of documentation supposedly about who these people were. and that's what i began analyzing and he turned to no one else attempted to construct a coherent narrative. so ready in the process of researching and writing my book,

panama, i kind of became the custodian of the men stories that lots of people have written about one time over the years. but nobody has done as thoroughly and deliberately as you have. what made you write a record of every person who's been true? guantanamo, what was your ultimate goal in taking on that job, which is a huge task. well, you know, there's a, there's a point of kind of statistical analysis that you can do with the grand panama, to establish as the whole local dave, that very few of the people who recall there was, there was at guantanamo, were actually in the west, the west and, you know, and they, they managed to get a lot of media interests, which, you know, is i believe. and i, you know, my research studies the same thing, very few, very few percent of the people that have been held at one time, 779 men held by the us military for when the prison opened nearly 21 years ago.

you know, a few percent of those are accused of having any significant involvement without kite or other talent. but statistics is one thing. another thing is, is who all these people and actually you know, what i found in my and that was based all the documentation that was made publicly available by the transcripts of basically these mickey mouse tribunals that they'd held at one time attempt basically as a way of insulting the supreme court africa simply hold, granted the prisoners have this corpus rights. they held the combat and status review tribunal, montana where they went a lot of legal representation where they threw a whole lot of allegations that people with no, you know, not saying well why these allegations came from very vague. so many of them and

then the men had to try and you know, i'm, i'm for these. and what happened was that you could, i could see through looking at the transcript, quite often translated from arabic. even with all the obstacles that were in the way, the personality, some of these people and actually, you know, one of the crucial things that the us government did it went from the beginning was to be humanized. the man help. that's what i say to the people was the worst. don't bother thinking about who they were looking at. you can sleep soundly at night. and actually these are all individuals. even if some of them a small number of these people, maybe what you would like to call the bad guys. they have stories. but you know, my sympathies lay in particular with the many, many hundreds of people who clearly were not terrorist actual. you know what my research indicated was that

a large number of people were rounded up by mistake quite often through intelligence failures and sometimes because the u. s. was paying bank payments to the allies. but also, you know, many of the hundreds of men how the guns animal were soldiers. they had many of them come from the gulf or other countries to help the taliban to establish a p. o is landing state by fighting an ancient muslim civil war against the northern alliance before 911. and these are the people who are all branded as tara, again, these are people who have their own individualized, their own individual stories. and so i've, over the years, you know, try and tried to tell the stories of the people how these are human being and i hope to do medicaid. i'm very interested also to know what kind of pushback you faced as you were doing this work. certainly, the american government couldn't have liked what you were researching or that you

were talking to former guantanamo detainees. we know from other whistleblowers that the u. s. government is not friendly to freedom of information act requests related to guantanamo. so what was the american government's reaction, like, did the government try to stop you or to impede your, your research, your writing, your filmmaking? and what about the british? it's interesting actually. i mean, the only there any time i go to any sign that they were paying any attention, really was when there was a story about 2 more italians being released. i'm going back years news report to the various other media outlets picked up on and and i reported as well and they turned out that it was completely untrue. and then somebody who worked in publicity sent me emails attacking me for not being a proper journalist at which i found an exchange about all the ways in which the

pentagon had lied about them. and you know, and that was the end of that story. but it made me aware that they were paying attention and certainly some people somewhere when needed by what i was doing. the thing with the grand panama is that you can argue with how i have piece together. what looks like a credible narrative about the people who are held at work. but i have used information that was made publicly available by the authorities for so much of that . so it's an interpretation. you know, i, in that sense, i don't, i haven't cross the line where what i was getting was information that they didn't want to be available. what i've done is that i've analyzed and given the taishan of their own information. they may not like we are speaking with author, journalist and filmmaker, andy worthington, about the u. s. military prison at one time of a cuba. we're going to take

a short break and come right back. so stay tuned. ah. 2 ah ah at the end of the 18th century, britain began the illegal opium trade in china. this har drug causing addiction and literally destroying the human body, became a gold mine for business men from the foggy albion. however, the ruling chinese jing dynasty tried to resist and to stop the illegal trade, which provoked the wrath of the london business community. in 1840 without

a declaration of war, the english fleet began to seize and plundered chinese coastal boards. the barley armed and poorly trained chinese army was unable to provide adequate resistance. the jing empire was forced to hand hong kong over to england and open its ports for trading the lethal good. in 1856, france and the united states joined in the robbery of china. the anglo french troops defeated the chinese occupied beijing, and committed an unprecedented robbery. destroyed and blundered the wealth of the un mean you and palace. the defeat of the jing dynasty in the do opium wars lead to the transformation of the celestial empire into a semi colony of european states and started it's age of humiliation. and the sale of opium took on colossal proportions and lead to the horrible deaths of millions

of ordinary chinese. ah, welcome back to the whistle blowers, i'm john carry. aku we're speaking with british author, journalist and filmmaker, andy worthington, about the u. s. military prison at guantanamo. andy, welcome back. thanks again for being with us. nice beer. i wanted to talk about the kinds of people who have been held at guantanamo, and who have undergone, in some cases unspeakable torture. i've developed a friendship with mohammed wood, sli he known as the more attaining and the subject of the award winning film, of the same name, mohammad, like so many other people. hundreds of them held at guantanamo was never guilty of any crime, but he was held there for well over a decade. he was one of the lucky ones. he was released, he wrote a best selling book. his experience was made into

a movie and he was resettled finally in the netherlands. but what about other innocent people? how have their lives been impacted by their kidnappings and incarceration at guantanamo? well i think, you know, it's, it's difficult to know in so many cases because that, you know, most of the people at guantanamo have been re, been sent back to their home countries. and then it becomes a matter of what kind of home governments they have. and clearly, you know, i would say that, you know, people who are returned to western european countries have generally fed quite well not, not necessarily in terms of a certain amount of harassment and surveillance, but in terms of being able to go on with their lives and having access to them to support that is not available to people in so many other countries. so much of it is down to the kind of governments that people have. i don't, i don't generally think that it's been very good from

a human rights point to be to been a savvy citizen in guantanamo, for example, and being sent back right aside here a bit. i think that's been a lot harassment to former prisoners. and i think one of them, the more difficult aspect of this story is people who, for one reason or another, couldn't be sent back to their home countries. this is primarily enroll geminus because there's a bam in post by congress on releasing any em. and he's back to their home country because of the war and the security situation. and for these prisoners, 3rd countries had to be found that were paid to resettle. and again, in some cases, this has been successful, i would say in western european countries, in particular, there was a resettlement program under obama, where people were sent to oman, which i think it's been very successful because it was in the country. and they've been able to rebuild their lives. there are other cases where it is when shockingly

wrong. the most extreme example is that, you know, 2 dozen men were sent to the united arab emirates where they were promised rehabilitation. and then being had to rebuild their lives. next, i ended up imprisoned arbitrarily under circumstances at least as bad as, as 1 10 am. and that was never adequately result. i mean, most of this was taking place on trumps. and i was literally no one in the u. s. government dealing with grand panama issues like this. but the yemen, it's all forcibly repatriated to yemen in the n. for some of them subsequently disappeared. i'm not sure if they are all still safe. and that was an absolute disaster. and you know, there have been other cases where the resettlement just has not been helpful. it has not worked out well for the men who were settled in countries where for example, the governments may not have been sympathetic. a toll where there is no little

knowing muslim presence and. ready what i find particularly shocking, john, is that all of these arrangements that were made between the united states government and these host nations are a secret and be not something that is, that conforms to any recognizable standards of rights and of human rights. that arbitrary secret decisions taken by the us about the status of these people. and i think they really, fundamentally, you know, haven't escaped from the situation that is always apply to them since they request these incent grand panama, which is the, you know, the united states determined at the beginning that they were holding people without any rights whatsoever, as human beings, and i think that's something that needs to be resolved when we can hopefully get the position where, where one day, one ton of most clothes that,

that needs to be accountability and redress for the situation that these people have been put. i think you're exactly right we, we don't know thanks to the freedom of information act for example that, that bradley burke and fell b u b s whistleblower was arrested in exchange for the government of switzerland agreeing to take 2 weaker detainees from guantanamo for example. we only know that things to wiki leaks. so i think you're exactly right that we really don't know much of what the, what the u. s. government has negotiated with other governments. it's still secret . what do you eventually? i'm sorry, go read quite fun to mental that they, that they literally don't have any rights. literally, they are there at the whim of the united states government, all the house, government, cold jurisdiction, making go to, to clarify what they're right. you know, and you see everywhere else around the world as well. john, when,

when governments either under the pressure of the us government or from their own governments, come on the any kind of suspicion they can be harassed, they can be arbitrarily detain. i mean, most bank, for example, the british citizen had, is possible taken off him, was imprisoned for a while. and then you know, when it came to putting him on trial, they miraculously didn't have any charges. that's what i meant to be given as possible. back on what basis. monday was held at guantanamo without charging trial . it's extraordinary. we're going to get to that in a minute. i have a personal connection. as a bag that i'm excited to talk to you about. first, i want to ask you, what do you see eventually happening to those few dozen prisoners who are still at one cono my. my own personal position is that they have a constitutional right to face their accusers in a court of law and to be judged by a jury of their peers. if they've committed

a crime, then they should be tried for it and have the opportunity to defend themselves. that has never happened and it likely never will happen. in the case of others, a beta whom i was responsible for capturing. if we're not going to charge him with a crime, then he must be released in the case of khalid shaikh mohammed. for example, if he truly was the mastermind of the $911.00 attacks, then charge him with that crime and put him on trial. how do you see all of this playing out in the end? well, you know, this again is quite a long story. the prison that is in 2008, the 2nd time secure would have is caucus, right? that led to the only time in guantanamo history. where the little actually applied and in a number of coal herrings over 3 dozen, these men had their release ordered by judge rule that the u. s. government had failed to demonstrate that these people were involved in any meaningful sense

without height or the taliban. on other groups and then the appeals court got all these decisions and then they started making life difficult. and eventually they, they passed a number of rulings reducing the prison as ability to successfully secure what we have. yes, rulings, and eventually, you know, came to the ruling where they said everything that the u. s. government says, must be treated as present to be accurate. and last men who held with rights misplaced some had demonstrated the best we should have that. but the supreme court then failed to, to take the culture of appeal. so the culture appeals, we wrote that have a decision that was taken by the supreme court. and since then, only one prison that must have behaviors. petition granted. so the law failed. a

quite nice part, the bio bama came up with the administrative process, but as i was saying that missed your process or the legal way, the government can say that they are going to release time from grant. and if they've been done, there is no legal avenue that right, a lawyers can use to to force them to be released. what i think will happen by that, and i think the pressure will eventually be that it is the men who have been approved for release will end up being released. you know, because although it doesn't have a legal res, legal weight, it absolutely has a moral and ethical way. and i would say that the difference that we've had over the years between republican and democratic governments is that there are always people within the democratic government understand fundamentally some nation of right and wrong when it comes to panama. the sonia issue, john,

these are basically the men who have been charged crimes. right. and they are of course caught up in this terrible groundhog day of the military commissions, which simply are not fit for purpose. and the problem, of course, with that is that these member told you what the united states government should have known from the beginning. the bush administration is that if you torture people, you basically inextricably separate them from the ability for justice to be in, in a recognizable court. what's gonna happen? i don't know. i mean, i think what's been encouraging you lately is the plea deal is being under way to attend, to negotiate the way this with the men who are charged with the 911 attacks and various other crimes. because the united states further complicated, the fact that they told you these people by insisting i'm having these cases be capital cases. and as you will know, john leo,

your people who are watching will know as well the, the level of defense that is required for a system or a death penalty is much higher than if you were not taking the death penalty off the table. trying to negotiate some kind of plea deal with these men. i mean that they're not going free. no, but to, to, you know, to bring some kind of conclusions. things would be b the way that it can end. but i didn't know this gonna happen. well, i'd like to thank our guest today, author, journalist, and filmmaker, andy worthington, and thanks to our viewers for joining us, today's. well, remember the words of the great american thinker, howard zinn, who said imprisonment is a way of pretending to solve a problem. it does nothing for the victims of crime, but perpetuate the idea of retribution, thus maintaining the endless cycle of violence in our culture. it is

a cruel and useless substitute for the elimination of the conditions that caused crime in the 1st place. poverty, unemployment, homelessness, desperation, racism, and greed which are at the root of most punished crimes. while the crimes of the rich and powerful go mostly unpunished. thanks for joining us for another episode of the whistle blowers i'm john kerry. aku, we'll see you next time. 2 2 for ah, government has been killing his own people and on boss for 8 years. it's amazing. the admission not being covered in western media and hasn't been covered for the last 8 years. i'm here for 5 minutes and then i'm told the 1st 5 people they found

it was 5 decapitated head valley. up in a quarterly equus thought demand, a boy foss cathartic to me. can you use me? no fiber to say keep these on your father law kid. even the information will almost all the independent journalists pointed out that nato and the u. s. were directly responsible for initiating the military conflict in ukraine, our casualties of it as long as we want the war to continue. we will fight that war using ukrainians as proxies and we will fight it to the last ukrainian death. that's what's happened in dumbass. this whole time, this is, these aren't objects, these are people that and so that's why i do what i do. that's why i'm here. ah,

ah, moscow says the u. k is escalating the course by promising decided depleted uranium ammunition to crate. russia highlighted the devastating health consequences for civilians and military after they've been used by the west in yugoslavia and the wrong one in journalist 3 more her shares and new details of the north through pipeline sabotaged it. germany is the whole thing america. i the true and tension between israel and palestine, flare israel and the palestinian radio broadcaster and interrogated journal with

.