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This week on Uprising

* No End in Sight for Gaza Siege
* Empire Notes on Muntadhar Al-Zaidi
* Dick Cheney Remains Unrepentant
* Black Agenda Report on Cheney’s Crimes and Obama
* International Energy Agency Sets Date for Peak Oil: 2020

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No End in Sight for Gaza Siege

Hamas observed an agreed upon 24-hour truce halting rocket fire against Israel in exchange for Egyptian aid to the Gaza strip. Under an ever tightening siege, the Palestinian territory planned to receive the aid convoy from its neighboring Arab country earlier in the week, bringing desperately needed rice, flour and medical supplies to its 1.5 million residents. In continued mediation, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak invited Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni to Cairo on Thursday for talks regarding Gaza and security. With the temporary 24-hour truce now expired, a Hamas senior official has said that his government would consider a lasting truce if and only if Israel agreed to lift the siege. Possible future actions in Gaza will most certainly be a political consideration for Israeli politicians such as Livni, Ehud Barak and Benjamin Netanyahu, seeking to become Prime Minister in the upcoming February 10th elections. Meanwhile, the Free Gaza Movement is continuing to break the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. An international boat named “the Dignity,” arrived in the Palestinian territory with members of the Eid Charity from Qatar interested in bringing supplies to the people. How long will the siege continue and is there an end in sight?

GUEST: Moinr Deeb, a Palestinian American born and raised in Gaza, one of the organizers of the free gaza movement. For more information, visit www.freegaza.org.

Empire Notes on Muntadhar Al-Zaidi

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about Muntadhar Al Zaidi.

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

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Dick Cheney Remains Unrepentant

This past weekend, Vice President Cheney, and Vice President elect Biden, criticized one another on the Sunday talk shows. Biden, who has accused Dick Cheney of being “the most dangerous Vice President we’ve had … in American history,” said he would work to “restore balance” to the office of the Vice President. Cheney, who has given few interviews during the past eight years, shot back, defending the vast expansion of executive power, and crediting it for “defending” America. Many have speculated that Dick Cheney has been Bush’s puppet master including my guest, John Nichols, a writer for the Nation Magazine, and author off “Dick: The Man Who is President.”

GUEST: John Nichols, political writer for the Nation Magazine, author of “Dick: The Man Who is President”

Black Agenda Report on Cheney’s Crimes and Obama

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Cheney’s Crimes and Obama

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

International Energy Agency Sets Date for Peak Oil: 2020

The chief economist at the International Energy Agency said recently that conventional oil production will peak in the year 2020. It’s an assessment that represents a sharp reversal for the IEA, which undertook a detailed study of oil production decline rates in 800 of the world’s largest oil fields. In an interview with George Monbiot of the Guardian newspaper, Fatih Birol of the IEA took a position based on the results of that study that contradict the agency’s previous position that oil supplies were abundant enough to transition the global economy into a future of sustainable energy sources. Energy analysts and environmentalists have for years been warning that global oil supplies will reach their peak sooner rather than later, and then start declining, setting off an economic disaster as prices of everything that depends on oil will soar. Oil prices have actually dipped by 75% in recent months, after a summer of record-breaking high prices. But, many economists warn that the next giant wave of high oil prices is around the corner. In the mean time, some scientists fear that peak oil may lead to a transition toward a coal-powered economy. Coal is even more detrimental to the earth’s environment than oil in terms of releasing green house gases into the atmosphere. And coal, like oil, is a finite energy source.

GUESTS: Robert Bryce, author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of Energy Independence, and Managing editor at Energy Tribune Magazine, Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist working for the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, recently named one of eight “Science Heros of 2008” by New Scientist magazine.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago… had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.” — Havelock Ellis