“This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life.” — John Perkins

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Plunder: The Crime Of Our Time

Last week Senate Republicans killed a version of the jobs bill that had been significantly trimmed by Democrats in an effort to win bi-partisan support. The legislative package would have extended tax breaks for individuals and businesses, and allocated 24 billion dollars in aid to states struggling to close budget gaps. On Friday the Senate did pass a 6.5 billion dollar bill that would have forestalled deep cuts in fees from Medicare to doctors until December. This week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the House would not vote on the Senate’s Medicare legislation until the Senate moved to pass an adequate version of the jobs bill, which included money for Medicare. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Congress has failed to …

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The company that owned the Deepwater Horizon rig which exploded in April triggering the worst environmental disaster in US history, is criticizing the Obama Administration’s 6 month moratorium on offshore oil drilling in deep waters. Transocean owned the rig which was operated by the UK-based oil giant BP. Its attorneys complained that the moratorium was unprecedented and could be “economically devastating.” Meanwhile, President Obama has also pushed BP into creating a $20 billion escrow fund which the government will use to pay claims for damages from the oil spill. In last week’s hearing in the House on the spill, Republican congressman Joe Barton called the $20 billion a “shakedown” by the Obama administration and also characterized it as a “slush fund” and then went on to apologize to BP. The oil is still flowing underwater …

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“If each person were to sweep before his own house, the city would soon be clean.” — Polish Proverb

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In a new push by anti-immigrant advocates in Arizona, Senator Russell Pearce has proposed denying citizenship to children born in the United States to undocumented parents. Despite the fact that citizenship is a constitutional birthright protected by the fourteenth amendment, Pearce and his supporters argue that its time to amend the constitution to change that. Meanwhile a 19 year old undocumented student at Harvard University, who was facing deportation after attempting to fly using his student ID, has been granted so-called deferred action. The case of Eric Balderas attracted much attention in the context of an increased push by undocumented students for the DREAM Act, which is a federal bill that would allow them a path to citizenship through higher education or military service. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has decided not to pursue Balderas’ …

“Silence never won rights. They are not handed down from above; they are forced by pressures from below.” — Roger Nash Baldwin

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

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This week on Uprising:

* The Real Story Behind the News of Afghanistan’s Mineral Wealth
* A Critique of Media Coverage of the Federal Deficit
* Black Agenda Report about Obama’s Assault on Union Teachers
* Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chavez’s Venezuela

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The Real Story Behind the News of Afghanistan’s Mineral Wealth

The New York Times reported Monday that Afghanistan may contain mineral deposits worth approximately $1 Trillion. Although The Times announced the finds as “previously unknown deposits,” the U.S. Geological Survey has had this information posted on …

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Fresh! The Movie

A recent investigation by the US Center for Disease Control across 14 states has found salmonella contamination in Marie Callender’s brand Cheesy Chicken and Rice frozen meals, manufactured by the giant agribusiness, ConAgra. The frozen meals are being recalled from all over the country. Stories such as this do not seem to garner much attention these days, as we seem to have gotten used to routine contamination of our foods by dangerous bacteria and microorganisms like Salmonella and E-coli. But such outbreaks are clearly a symptom of our national food production system that rewards factory farming and vast monocultures, resulting in produce soaked in pesticides and chemical fertilizers over diverse, small-scale, pesticide-free farming that was a staple of decades past. Standard meat production relies on squeezing farm animals into such confined spaces that it is …

“The garden suggests there might be a place where we can meet nature halfway.” — Michael Pollan