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This week on Uprising:

* Chris Hedges on the Economy: It’s Not Going to Be Okay
* Empire Notes on the Iraqi Elections
* Senate Committee Sneaks Funding for Nuclear Industry into Stimulus Package
* Black Agenda Report about the New Black GOP Chair
* The Garden: A look at the Oscar-nominated Film About LA’s Urban Eco-Experiment

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Chris Hedges on the Economy: It’s Not Going to Be Okay

The Labor Department announced an unexpected jump in first-time claims for jobless benefits at the end of January. Initial unemployment claims increased by 35,000, the highest level in 26 years. The total number of people collecting jobless benefits has climbed to a record 4.79 million. According to veteran journalist and frequent Uprising guest, Chris Hedges, “the daily bleeding of thousands of jobs will soon turn our economic crisis into a political crisis.” Companies are laying workers off faster than expected, in an attempt to survive the recession. But the growing controversy over excessive CEO pay and incentives, particularly those receiving government bailout money, has angered Americans. In response, President Barack Obama announced a salary cap for those companies yesterday as he struggles to make the case for his economic stimulus package. But, says Hedges, “There is nothing President Obama can do to stop” the downward economic decline as “it has been decades in the making.”

GUEST: Chris Hedges, Pulitzer prize winning reporter, Senior Fellow at the Nation Institute, author of several books including War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, I Don’t Believe in Atheists, and his latest, Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians

Read his article, “It’s Not Going to Be Okay,” online at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090202_its_not_going_to_be_ok/

Empire Notes on the Iraqi Elections

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is on the Iraqi Elections.

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

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Senate Committee Sneaks Funding for Nuclear Industry into Stimulus Package

As debate over President Obama’s economic stimulus package turns to the Senate, more than two hundred groups are calling for at least one provision in the bill to be removed. Last week, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved an amendment proposed by Republican Senator Robert F. Bennett calling for the allocation of fifty billion dollars in federal loan guarantees for nuclear and so-called clean coal projects. In a letter dated Tuesday, environmental groups, small businesses and concerned citizens urged Senators to reconsider saying that the inclusion of such a provision will prove to have no stimulative effect on the economy in the time frame set out by the plan. If kept, the fifty billion dollars would expand funding for technologies included in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. Detractors of the provision, which was not part of the House version of the economic stimulus package, say that most of the money will go to the construction of new nuclear and coal projects. Organizations such as the Natural Resources Defense Council, Friends of the Earth and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research cite estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office that say more than half of such loans would be at risk for default.

GUEST: Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of Nuclear Information and Resource Service

Black Agenda Report is about the New Black GOP Chair

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is about the New Black GOP Chair

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

The Garden: A look at the Oscar-nominated Film About LA’s Urban Eco-Experiment

The story of the struggle for the fourteen-acre community garden on the corner of 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is now an Oscar nominated documentary. Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy, “The Garden,” traces the fate of the South Central Garden when bulldozers razed the farming plots of immigrant families as the land was upheld by the city to be the property of developer Ralph Horowitz. The back story of how the community garden came to such an end is explored through questions of city politics, real estate development and community struggle. Protagonists highlighted in “The Garden,” include South Central Farm organizers Tezozomoc and Rufina Juarez as well as those who tilled its soil such as Eddie Luvianos Rumbos and Josefina Medina. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times called the film, “an excellent documentary!” whose “lessons about the levers of power and politics are relevant everywhere.” Uprising guest host Maria Armoudian spoke with Scott Hamilton Kennedy, the producer and director of The Garden, in studio.

GUEST: Scott Hamilton Kennedy, Producer, Director of “The Garden.”

Visit “The Garden” online at www.thegardenmovie.com

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect” – Aldo Leopold