Jul 30 2010
Weekly Digest – 07/30/10
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:
* Two Perspectives on the WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Diary: A Journalist and a Veteran
* Black Agenda Report on the WikiLeaks Controversy
* Judge Strikes Down Parts of SB 1070 on Eve of Implementation
* Congress Reduces Sentencing Disparity in Crack Cocaine; Bill Still Promotes Racial Inequality
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Two Perspectives on the WikiLeaks’ Afghan War Diary: A Journalist and a Veteran
The New York Times, the Guardian, and Der Spiegel simultaneously published on Sunday, an analysis of over 90,000 leaked, previously classified documents about …
Discussions have begun among US Senators on the US nuclear treaty with Russia known as START or the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The potential agreement between the two countries calls for the reduction of their respective stockpiles down to 1,550 strategic warheads within the next seven years. START has yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate and Russia’s government. In order to address concerns about the US’s missile defense systems, President Obama has assured the Senate that it would remain untouched. In fact Obama has gone as far as to budget $180 billion over the next ten years to maintain the US’s arsenal. Satisfied with the assured continuation of missile defense, the Joint Chiefs of staff and most of the commanders of the US’s various missile defense programs …
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a bill on Wednesday that would have made farmworkers eligible to receive overtime pay after 8 hours a day, or 40 hours a week. The bill would also have given farmworkers the right to take one day off a week. Since 1972 California farmworkers have been eligible for overtime pay after 10 hours a day, or 60 hours a week. While the current law is far more progressive than Federal law, which does not grant farmworkers any overtime, it is still derided by many as discriminatory. In response to the veto State Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez said the Governor was, “[continuing] the second class treatment of the men and women who toil in the fields, their backbreaking labor at the core of a …
The 2008 US Farm Bill is set to expire in two years, and the agricultural community has already started to mobilize for substantive changes to be made in the 2012 version of the bill. To date, the passage of the farm bill that occurs every four or five years has elicited little public attention, allowing farm-state legislators and corporate agribusinesses to dictate the writing and voting process. Now, farmers and food activists hope to see increasing public participation in the upcoming debate, as more and more people realize the consequences of poor food policy. Among those consequences are highly priced fresh and organic produce that is inaccessible to poor people, hormone and antibiotic-fed livestock, pesticide and waste runoff into drinking water sources, monopolization of market prices, and huge subsidies to …
Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of 
In response to a July 6th motion filed by the Department of Justice, a Federal judge yesterday blocked key provisions of Arizona’s controversial Immigration law, Senate Bill 1070, from going into effect today. Portions of the law still became enforceable law as of 12:01 am this morning, but the allowed provisions will not significantly change Arizona’s existing laws. The order for a partial injunction was celebrated both North and South of the Border, where attention has been focused on Arizona since April, when Arizona’s governor signed the hotly contested legislation into law. In explaining why she blocked parts of the S.B. 1070, Judge Bolton wrote that some sections warranted a preliminary injunction because they would cause “irreparable harm” to the United States, the plaintiff. In addition, she found that, “There is a …
