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This week on Uprising —

* Examining Michael Hayden’s Senate Confirmation Hearing and a look at one telephone company that actually fights for consumer privacy
* Empire Notes with Rahul Mahajan on the NSA’s telephone surveillance program.
* The island nation of Sri Lanka sees a resumption of civil war. We’ll speak with a pro-democracy activist.
* A realistic view of the Israel Lobby – Stephen Zunes responds to the controversial article by Mearsheimer and Walt.
* Plus the Black Commentator on the US in Somalia.

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Hayden’s Senate Confirmation Hearing

GUEST: Marjorie Cohn, Professor at the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and President-elect for National Lawyers Guild and regular columnist for truthout.org

On May 10th 2006, USA Today reported that “The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.” An anonymous source told the newspaper, “It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world.” President Bush defended the program saying, “We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.” Bush nominated General Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA, to head the CIA. Hayden, who has stated his belief that the NSA program is legal, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee ton May 18th. During a nearly eight-hour hearing Hayden appeared confident enough in his own confirmation to blast lawmakers who don’t publicly back controversial intelligence programs they agree with privately. In fact, few senators seemed very concerned about the surveillance program.

A Different Kind of Telephone Company

GUESTS: Becky Bond, political organizer at Working Assets, Maia Ettinger, Vice President of Legal and Customer Affairs at Working Assets.

Meanwhile the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit challenging the NSA surveillance program has now been joined by 72 Congressmembers, as well as the President and co-founder of Working Assets Funding Services. Working Assets is a long distance corporation that describes itself as “help[ing] busy people make a difference in the world through everyday activities like talking on the phone.” They oppose the disclosure of domestic calling records to the NSA.

For more information, visit www.actforchange.com, and www.workingassets.com/nsadatabase

Empire Notes on the NSA’s telephone surveillance 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 NSA’s telephone surveillance program.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Civil War Resurges in Sri Lanka

GUEST: Ahilan Kadirgamar, co-editor of Lines Magazine

A four year ceasefire in the South Asian island nation of Sri Lanka has recently ended, giving way to what monitors are calling “a low intensity war.” The LTTE, or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam launched a suicide attack on a Navy gunboat last week that killed its 18-man crew. But according to one member of the LTTE or “Tamil Tigers”, “the government has started an unofficial war with the LTTE and we want to face them.” More than 270 people have died since early April in naval battles, ambushes, murders and air strikes. The Sri Lanka Monitoring Mission has recorded at least seven attacks in rebel areas, including several on civilians. They believe government military patrols are working alongside anti-Tiger Tamil armed groups. The Tamil Tigers have fought for two decades for a separate Tamil homeland, evolving from a small group of young men to one of the world’s most feared and heavily armed guerrilla armies.

Lines Magazine is online at: www.lines-magazine.org

Sri Lanka Democracy Forum: www.lankademocracyforum.org

University Teachers for Human Rights, Jaffna: www.uthr.org

Black Commentator on US in Somalia

Glen Ford, co-publisher of The Black Commentator

The Black Commentator is an online political magazine bringing you commentary, analysis and investigation from a black perspective. Today’s commentary is about the US in Somalia.

The Black Commentator is online at www.blackcommentator.com.

A Realistic View of the Israel Lobby

GUEST: Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, and the Middle East editor for Foreign Policy in Focus. He is also the author of “Tinderbox: US Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism

On Monday May 15th week, Palestinians commemorated the 58th anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, which marks the founding of the state of Israel and the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their land between 1947 and 48. Meanwhile Israel celebrated its 58th independence day on Wednesday May 17th. Here in the US, many progressive supporters of Palestinian human rights have called attention routinely to the Israel lobby in the US as being responsible for US foreign policy in the Middle East. An article by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in the London Review of Books on the topic earlier this year, got a lot of attention. It’s called “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.” The article is lauded by some progressives as being courageous enough to finally take a stand on a taboo topic. It has been dismissed by people like Pro-Israel Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz as being anti-semitic. But my next guest, Stephen Zunes takes a nuanced view of the article. He has authored a special report entitled “The Israel Lobby: How Powerful is it Really?”

Read Stephen Zunes’ article.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“There is something quite convenient and discomfortingly familiar about the tendency to blame an allegedly powerful and wealthy group of Jews for the overall direction of an increasingly controversial U.S. policy. Indeed, like exaggerated claims of Jewish power at other times in history, such an explanation absolves the real powerbrokers and assigns blame to convenient scapegoats.” — Stephen Zunes