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This week on Uprising:

* Rafael Correa and the Political Crisis in Ecuador
* Black Agenda Report on Bush in Guatemala
* Mahmoud Mamdani: Comparing Iraq to Sudan
* Empire Notes on the 4th Anniversary of the Iraq War – Pt 1
* American Express Incorporates Spy-Chips

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Political Crisis in Ecuador

GUEST: Mateo Martinez, political analyst and philosopher, with the Center for the Study of Subaltern Thought, based in Ecuador

On Wednesday March 14th, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa announced that he may call a special session of Congress to end a political crisis that has prevented the legislature from meeting. Correa recently approached the nation’s Electoral Tribunal to determine the legality of holding a Constitutional referendum. The Electoral Tribunal approved it, only to have its President voted to be removed by 57 members of the Congress which is dominated by Correa’s opponents. The Tribunal turned around and voted to remove those 57 members for attempting an illegal action. Now Correa has said that he might use his constitutional powers to call a special Congressional session to replace the 57 lawmakers. Earlier this week, twenty of the 57 lawmakers barged their way past police to take their seats in Congress where they denounced the government as a dictatorship. Correa, with the support of the majority of the population, plans to go ahead with an April 15th Constitutional Assembly to re-write the constitution. Correa is Ecuador’s 8th President in the past 10 years.

Black Agenda Report on Bush in Guatemala

GUEST: Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report

This week’s commentary is about Bush in Guatemala. Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Mahmoud Mamdani: Comparing Iraq to Sudan

GUEST: Mahmoud Mamdani, the Herbert Lehman Professor of Government in the Departments of Anthropology and International Affairs, and Director of the Institute of African Studies at Columbia University

On Monday March 12th, a UN human rights mission accused the Sudanese government of atrocities and characterized the situation in Darfur as a “gross and systematic violation of human rights.” Human rights violations cited in an accompanying report include murder, torture, rape, arbitrary arrests and forced displacement. The Sudanese government has responded by dismissing the mission’s findings on several grounds and by attempting to block its consideration by the United Nations Human Rights Council. Now the US and other nations are considering imposing punitive measures against the Khartoum regime for what they have called “delay tactics.” To date the atrocities in Darfur have claimed the lives of an estimated 200,000 people while over two million have been displaced.

While many people the world over are calling the killings in Darfur a genocide, the same language has not been used in relation to Iraq, even though the numbers of deaths are comparable. My guest, Mahmoud Mamdani has just published an article in the London Review of Books comparing the two conflicts. His article is called, “The Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency.”

Mamdani’s article can be found online at: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n05/mamd01_.html

Empire Notes on the 4th Anniversary of the Iraq War – Part 1

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 4th Anniversary of Iraq War – Part 1.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

American Express Incorporates Spy-Chips

GUEST: Katherine Albrecht, Founder and Director of CASPIAN (Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering) , co-author of SPYCHIPS: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID

American Express has launched a new method of credit card payment using radio frequency identification technology. Their Express Pay card is called a “contactless payment option,” enabling consumers to wave the card in front of a reader to pay for items at a store. Recently American Express formed a joint venture with ShopRite supermarkets on the East Coast to use it’s Express Pay option. The tiny radio emitting chips in the cards are in wide use throughout European banks. In addition to ease of use, companies promoting the card claim that the storage of encrypted data in the chip makes it harder for thieves to use if the card is lost or stolen, compared with magnetic stripe cards. But the US-based consumer group, CASPIAN, has confronted American Express about what it calls “people-tracking plans.” In a patent application, titled “Method and System for Facilitating a Shopping Experience,” the company describes a blueprint for monitoring consumers through RFID-enabled objects, like the American Express Blue Card. RFID or Radio Frequency Identification is a controversial technology that uses tiny microchips to track items from a distance. Nicknamed “spychips” these microchips contain a unique identification number, like a Social Security number, for things that can be read silently and invisibly by radio waves.

For more information, visit www.spychips.com.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“No one can deny that much of our modern advertising is essentially dishonest; and it can be maintained that to lie freely and all the time for private profit is not to abuse the right of free speech, whether it is a violation of the law or not. But again the practical question is, how much lying for private profit is to be permitted by law?” — Carl L. Becker