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Michelle Bachelet Wins Presidency in Chile!
GUEST: Margaret Power, Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and author of “Right Wing Women in Chile.”

Michelle Bachelet, a Socialist single mother, won 53 percent of last Sunday’s presidential election run off votes to become Chile’s first woman president. After leading conservative businessman Sebastian Pinera in all pre-run off polls, Bachelet became only the third woman in Latin America’s history to be directly elected president. A former political prisoner under Pinochet’s military government, President-elect Michelle Bachelet stated after her election victory that “Because I was a victim of hatred, I have dedicated my life to reverse the hatred and turn it into understanding, tolerance, and – why not say it —into love. “Bachelet promised to include a broader range of voices in her government. She vowed that half of her Cabinet will consist of women. Returning to Uprising to speak about the elections is Margaret Power She is a professor at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and author of “Right Wing Women in Chile.”

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

We go now to our weekly commentary Empire Notes by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about Iraq – a strategy for a new victory.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Devil’s Game: How the US Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam
GUEST: Robert Dreyfuss, writer for Rolling Stone, The Nation, The American Prospect, Mother Jones, and author of “Devil’s Game: How the US Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam”

Using an unmanned aerial vehicle called a Predator Drone, the US this weekend dropped a bomb on the Pakistani village of Damadola. The bomb was apparently aimed at who the Bush Administration claims is the the Number 2 man in Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. But Al Zawahiri was not present at the time of the bombing. 18 civilians were killed instead. In response, tens of thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets calling the US “a security threat to the area.” Meanwhile senator John McCain justified the attack saying, “We apologize, but I can’t tell you that we wouldn’t do the same thing again. We have to do what we think is necessary to take out al-Qaeda, particularly the top operatives.” These days the conversation on Al Qaeda revolves not on its origin, but on how the US is trying to destroy it. Robert Dreyfuss has written a new book looking into the origins of Fundamentalist Islam and the role the US played.

For more information, visit www.robertdreyfuss.com

Robert Dreyfuss will be speaking on Tuesday January 17th at 7 pm at Encino Women’s Center, 4924 Paso Robles Avenue, Encino, California. Click here for more information.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“Sixty years earlier, when the United States began its odessey in the Middle East, there were other voices who wanted conservative Islam, and early fundamentalist groups associated with the nascent Islamic right, to do battle with the secular left, with Nasser, with Arab communists and socialists. Now, six years later, the Bush administration is pursuing a strategy in the Middle East that seems calculated to boost the fortunes of the Islamic right. The United States is counting on Shiite fundamentalists in Iraq to save its failed policy in that country, and a major theoretician of that campaign explicitly calls for the United States to cast its lot with ayatollahs and the Muslim Brotherhood. The devil’s game continues.” – Robert Dreyfuss, author of “Devil’s Game: How the US Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam”