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This week on Uprising:

* Obama Embraces War Presidency
* Empire Notes on Obama’s Afghanistan Speech
* Hopes Dim Over Copenhagen and Climate Bill
* Black Agenda Report on Haiti and Honduras
* Rev Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping

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Obama Embraces War Presidency

President Obama addressed the nation on Tuesday in a major speech explaining his policy on the Afghanistan war. As expected he laid out his case for 30,000 additional troops to the 68,000 already in Afghanistan, but also laid out a plan to withdraw troops within 18 months. Following his strong words for the corrupt Afghan government, and a pledge to bolster Pakistan’s fight against terrorism, Obama attempted to take on criticism that the Afghan war was like the Vietnam war. He also attempted to set the US apart from past empires by claiming that our wars were not occupations, or fights over resources. In response to the policy announcement, antiwar activists are gearing up for a major push back against the war. But Obama’s position should come as no surprise given that he ran his Presidential campaign foreign policy platform on drawing down the Iraq war and escalating the Afghan war.

GUESTS: Phyllis Bennis is the Director of the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, and co-author of the upcoming book, Ending the Us War in Afghanistan: A Primer,” Robert Naiman is Policy Director and National Coordinator at Just Foreign Policy

Empire Notes on Obama’s Afghanistan Speech

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by author and analyst Rahul Mahajan. Today’s commentary is on Obama’s Afghanistan Speech.

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

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Hopes Dim Over Copenhagen and Climate Bill

As droves of activists head to Copenhagen, Denmark, to pressure international leaders to take drastic measures on global warming, here in the US, nine Senate Democrats have decided what they would like President Obama to agree to. The Senators include Arlen Specter and other centrist Democrats who wrote a letter to the president suggesting that “all major economies should adopt ambitious, quantifiable, measurable, reportable and verifiable national actions.” A White House Spokesperson announced that the President agrees with most of what has been laid out in the Senators’ letter. But many key nations have already signaled that there will likely not be a legally binding treaty on global warming emissions until next year. Meanwhile, the Senate as a whole seems deeply divided over a global warming bill to cut emissions here in the US. Democratic Senator John Kerry has teamed up with Senator Lieberman and Republican Lindsey Graham to work out a compromise bill that they may unveil in the next several weeks. But the efforts in Washington DC and Copenhagen come at a time when the US public has sharply increased its skepticism over whether global warming is really a human-made phenomenon. A new Harris poll found a 20% drop in the percentage of Americans who believe that greenhouse gases are warming the earth. Today, just 51% of Americans have faith in what the vast majority of the scientific community has consensus on compared to 71% two years ago.

GUEST: Rick Piltz, Director of Climate Science Watch, a watchdog project of the Government Accountability Project

Black Agenda Report on Haiti and Honduras

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

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Rev Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping Liberate Christmas from the “Shopocalypse”

The day after Thanksgiving is considered the most important shopping day of the year. Retailers often pin their hopes of strong annual profit margins on the 24 hour consumerist spree. But this year in the context of a deepening recession, weaker sales showed that fewer people showed up on Black Friday, and those that did were bargain hunting more than ever and forgoing luxury items such as jewelry and high-end apparel. Electronics sales boomed however, particularly in the arena of video games. To make up for overall falling consumerism, retailers have invented a new day of designated shopping – the Monday after Thanksgiving, called Cyber Monday, which this year showed a 13.7 percent increase in online buying activity compared to last year. The statistics are endlessly analyzed in the business news. But what is not being discussed is how the American economy can continue to count on consumer spending to revive it, when record numbers of people are still jobless, dealing with cuts in services, and struggling to pay their mortgages. Moving away from mindless consumerism is still considered anathema by Wall Street and the White House. But not to Reverend Billy and his partner Savitri D of the Church of Life After Shopping. The New York-based duo have been spreading their anti-consumerist gospel for years and their message was captured in a recent film called What Would Jesus Buy about their crusade to save Christmas from the “Shopocalypse.”

GUESTS: Rev. Billy (Talen), and Savitri D, Director of the Church of Life After Shopping

For more information, visit www.revbilly.com.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“Who covets more, is evermore a slave.” — Robert Herrick