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This week on Uprising:

* Pakistani Americans Discuss the Future of Pakistan
* Empire Notes on Barack Obama
* The Untold Story of Women in the Kenyan Elections
* Black Agenda Report on Violence in Kenya
* Chalmers Johnson: Don’t See Charlie Wilson’s War

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The Future of Pakistan

GUEST CO-HOST: Hamid Khan, Executive Director of the South Asian Network

GUESTS: Professor Tayyab Mahmud, Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development and Professor of Law Seattle University School of Law,

and Farhat Haq, teaches at Monmouth College and has written on issues of political Islam, women and Islam and contemporary Pakistani Politics

A suicide bomber blew himself up on Thursday January 10th outside a Lahore High Court in Pakistan, killing at least 22 people and wounding more than 70. The incident is the latest in a wave of violence to hit the country ahead of Parliamentary elections on February 18th. Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Benazir’s heir to the leadership of the Pakistan People’s Party, warned this past week that his country may fall apart if the upcoming Parliamentary elections were rigged. The 19 year old has conceded defacto leadership of the party to his father, Asif Zardari. Pakistan’s political future indeed appears extremely uncertain, with incumbent dictator, Pervez Musharraf being pressured by Washington as well as domestic religious fundamentalist forces. His government has rounded up thousands of people, particularly from the pro-Bhutto Sindh region, accusing them of arson, looting, and murder in the days following Bhutto’s December 27th assassination.

Pakistan has long been the US’s main Asian ally in the “war on terror.” Washington was fervently backing an alliance between Bhutto and Musharraf to lead the country. Earlier in the week, the New York Times reported that “a little-known, enigmatic Pakistani general” named Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has emerged as a viable future leader. Kayani, a “pro-Western moderate,” is Musharraf’s protégé and now commands the army after Musharraf resigned the post late last year. Sunday’s edition of the New York Times reported that advisors to President Bush are debating whether to increase CIA and military aggressive covert operations in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Today we open the show with a round-table discussion on Pakistan. We’ll speak with three experts. But first I’d like to introduce my guest co-host for this segment, Hamid Khan, the Executive Director of the South Asian Network.

Empire Notes on Barack Obama

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 commentary is about Barack Obama.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

The Untold Story of Women in the Kenyan Elections

GUESTS: Lorna Laboso, with the ODM Party, just elected to Kenya’s Parliament, Stella Nyawira, 17 year old student who was raped in the post-election violence

The man named the winner of Kenya’s recent presidential elections, Mwai Kibaki, appointed half his cabinet last week, despite on-going controversy over who won. His actions enraged the opposition, sparking angry protests in areas where hundreds of people have already been killed in weeks of horrific post-election violence. The story of how Africa’s strongest economy has been hit by violence has been widely reported in the international press. However, the angle that has gone almost completely un-reported has been the impact by and on women. For Kenya’s women, a majority of who backed opposition leader Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement, this election was a promise for change. Instead, when the incumbent Kibaki was declared the winner, young men, enraged by the results, and provoked by a whipping up of ethnic differences, went on a rampage killing, looting, and raping.

Today we’ll speak with one young woman, a 17 year old student named Stella Nyawira, who was raped the day Kibaki was declared president.

Another barely-reported aspect of the elections was the unprecedented number of women who ran for election to the Parliament and won seats. We’ll also speak today with one of those women, Lorna Laboso, with the ODM Party, who was elected.

Black Agenda Report on Violence in Kenya

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

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

Johnson: Don’t See Charlie Wilson’s War

GUEST: Chalmers Johnson, author of the Blowback Trilogy — Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic

In 2003, I interviewed 60 minutes Producer George Crile about his book, “Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History.” The book traced the US funding for what Crile called “the greatest Jihad in Modern History.” Crile ended our interview with the following words: “it’s really dangerous not to actually know your own history.” But in the December 2007 film adaptation of Charlie Wilson’s War, starring Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts, history is precisely what is sacrificed. The LA Times reports that “the final film was more affirmative than one earlier version, which concluded with the September 11th attack on the Pentagon.” Instead of a history lesson, the film, which has grossed more than $50 million in ticket sales, plays out as a “fun” film, a comedy, about a naive Texas Congressman and his socialite girlfriend who, along with a maverick CIA agent, push the US government into a fight of good versus evil. And the US, as always, is on the side of the good.

Read Chalmers Johnson’s essay about the film, Charlie Wilson’s War, “An Imperialist Comedy,” at www.tomdispatch.com/post/174877/
chalmers_johnson_an_imperialist_comedy

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“I think there has been no awareness in this country, no recognition that we were engaged in sponsoring a Jihad, the greatest of all Jihads in modern history, the only one that actually ended up in a victory. The truth is, and there’s no way to dispute it — militant Islam was our ally in the Cold War and it gave the United States its one clear-cut victory in this kind of covert warfare.” — in an interview I did with George Crile, author of Charlie Wilson’s War, in 2003.