Uprising was pre-empted on Wednesday May 31st to allow a special program on survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Sonali Kolhatkar will be away for a week and Maria Armoudian will sit-in for her. Maria will bring daily coverage of the upcoming Congressional primary elections. Sonali will be back live on Thursday June 8th.

Listen to this segment | the entire program

GUEST: Catherine Tactaquin, Executive Director of the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights

The Senate version of immigration reform legislation finally passed late last week. According to the New York Times, the bill as passed will give most undocumented immigrants an opportunity to become citizens. Now, SB 2611 has to be reconciled with the draconian House billl, HR 4437, which was passed last December. The Senate bill, which has come to be known as the McCain-Kennedy bill, after it’s key authors, was passed with votes from 23 Republicans, one Independent and 38 Democrats. James Sensenbrenner, the archietect of HR 4437, has denounced SB 2611, saying that it offers immigrants amnesty. But the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, the leading national immigrants-rights organization, has …

Listen to this segment | the entire program

GUEST: Yan-Ting Yuen, Director of “Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Model Works”

“Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Model Works,” is the title of director Yan-Ting Yuen’s new documentary film. In the film, she examines the role of opera during China’s Cultural Revolution that lasted from 1966-1976 and which recently marked its fortieth anniversary. During that time, Chairman Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, a former actress herself, banned traditional opera and commissioned a new propaganda art form aimed at transmitting the Cultural Revolutions aims. Eight such operas became historically noted as the model works and were an undeniable phenomenon in Chinese Culture. During the decade-long tenure of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, these revolutionary operas were the only sanctioned form of entertainment staged in theatres, and broadcasted on television, and radio. …

Listen to this segment | the entire program

GUEST: Dahr Jamail, independent reporter

Anonymous sources from the Pentagon have told the Washington Post that they think the massacre of Iraqi civilians last November in Haditha was the result of a rampage by a small number of Marines. The Marines allegedly snapped after one of their own was killed by a roadside bomb. The Military had previously refused to believe Haditha residents when they accused Marines of murdering unarmed civilians, despite evidence unearthed by an investigative report in Time Magazine this March. Meanwhile, Congressman John Murtha appeared this Sunday on ABC’s “This Week, saying there was a “cover-up” and said the fallout could be “worse than Abu Ghraib.” So far, three commanders have been relieved of duty. A Senate panel will hold hearings to look into the …

Listen to this segment | the entire program

GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is on the Haditha Massacre.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

72% of US troops in Iraq think the US should exit the country within the next year, and over 25% think the US should exit immediately. French poet Paul Valery once defined war in this manner: “War: a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other”

Listen to this talk

GUEST: Stephen Kinzer, foreign correspondent for the New York Times, author of “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror,” and his latest: “Overthrow : America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.”

To commemorate Memorial Day, we’ll spend the hour with New York Times reporter, Stephen Kinzer on the topic of his latest book, “Overthrow : America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq.” Kinzer is best known for his book about the US backed coup in Iran, “All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.” In his latest book, Kinzer begins with the ouster of Hawaii’s monarchy in 1893, and runs through various foreign governments that the U.S. has had a hand in toppling. Kinzer makes the case that …

“Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, the mightiest of empires…. But what history really shows is that today’s empire is tomorrow’s ashes, that nothing lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and fight down the human spirit.” — Mumia Abu Jamal

Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

This week on Uprising —

* The new and frightening possibility of immigrants being tracked via embedded microchips
* A look at an on-going land occupation and blockade by Indigenous Tribes in Caledonia, Canada
* Burma’s military junta increases repression of the ethnic Karen people
* A radical Christian critiques the controversy over The Da Vinci Code
* This week’s Empire Notes on Haditha, and the Black Commentator on Venezuela’s Citgo Gas company.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Spychips in Immigrants?

GUEST: Liz McIntyre, co-author of “Spychips: …

Listen to this segment | the entire program

GUEST: Karen Orenstein, National Coordinator of the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network

Foreign troops in East Timor struggled today to stave off what media are calling a civil war in the South East Asian island nation. Soldiers gunned down unarmed police in the capital, Dili, and a mob torched houses in the past day. At least 20 people have been killed in four days of violence. The violence is an apparent response to the government’s decision earlier this year to fire 600 soldiers after they staged a month-long strike complaining of poor pay and discrimination. In the aftermath of a bloody occupation by neighboring Indonesia, the United Nations had spent millions of dollars after 1999 to train the Timorese army and set up an infrastructure …