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This week on Uprising:

* Afghanistan’s Secret Prisons and Night Raids
* Empire Notes about American Missionaries in Haiti
* After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World
* Black Agenda Report on the Tea Party as a White Nationalist Phenomenon
* Harvey Wasserman: Keeping Howard Zinn’s Legacy Alive

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Afghanistan’s Secret Prisons and Night Raids

The US war in Afghanistan is ramping up under President Obama even as the Iraq war is winding down. An Associated Press report released on Friday describes how since taking office, Obama “widened the list of U.S. targets abroad and stepped up the pace of airstrikes.” An increasing reliance on drone attacks in Pakistan and the border region have killed untold numbers of people, including civilians. Greater troop numbers on the ground in Afghanistan have increased NATO’s boot print. Part of the troops’ mission is a vague and sometimes clumsy mandate to provide aid. Recently a number of prominent aid organizations active in Afghanistan released a report harshly criticizing the militarization of aid, asserting that it is unethical, often misplaced, wrongly used as a tool to glean intelligence, and endangers the lives of aid workers and ordinary Afghans. On the other hand, when US and NATO troops are not providing aid, they are carrying out disturbingly destructive night-time raids in villages, apparently arbitrarily executing civilians, sometimes youth, and detaining them in secret prisons. Afghanistan based reporter Anand Gopal has just completed a detailed investigative report of the raids and prisons.

GUEST: Afghanistan-based reporter Anand Gopal, writes for the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor and other publications.

Read Gopal’s investigative report here: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175197/tomgram%3A_anand_gopal%2C_afraid_of_the_dark_in_afghanistan/

Empire Notes about American Missionaries in Haiti

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by author and analyst Rahul Mahajan. Today’s commentary is about American Missionaries in Haiti.

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

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

After Empire: The Birth of a Multipolar World

As the UN Security Council gets ready to vote on new sanctions on Iran aimed at its nuclear program, Western governments are worried about China vetoing the move. China relies on Iran’s natural resources to fuel its growing economy and is hesitant to endanger that relationship. This diplomatic tug-of-war is one example of the rise of what my next guest describes in detail in his new book, After Empire, the Birth of a Multipolar World. Author and analyst Dilip Hiro examines the complex economic and political developments that have led to the end of a Superpower nation, and the rise of an international system with multiple powers. Hiro’s analysis is informed by an astute understanding of history, economies, and diplomacy. The book examines the ideologies, diplomatic relationships, and needs of major world players, including China, Venezuela, Iran, India, and the United States. Using history as a guide Hiro is able to draw logical conclusions about what this multipolar world will look like in the years to come. Hiro’s earlier books include Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyz, and Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World’s Vanishing Oil Resources.

GUEST: Dilip Hiro, author of After Empire: The Birth of A Multipolar World

Black Agenda Report on the Tea Party as a White Nationalist Phenomenon

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on the Tea Party as a White Nationalist Phenomenon.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Keeping Howard Zinn’s Legacy Alive

In the little mainstream media coverage of the death of legendary history Howard Zinn, there has been a debate over whether Zinn was a “radical anti-American troublemaker” or a pioneering people’s historian. The New York Times’ Bob Herbert put it well in his obituary of Zinn saying, “What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?… That [Zinn] was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him.”

Howard Zinn died more than two weeks ago on January 27th while traveling in Santa Monica here in Southern California where this program is recorded. He was 87 years old. His seminal book A People’s History of the United States, which sold well over a million copies, influenced countless people and spawned hundreds of historians to write similar “people’s histories.”

We turn now to journalist, author, activist, and historian Harvey Wasserman who personally knew Zinn for decades. Mr. Wasserman has written several books includng Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, and Harvey Wasserman’s History of the US which has an introduction by Howard Zinn.

Read Harvey Wasserman’s obituary online at http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2010/1803

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world.” — Howard Zinn, A Power Governments Cannot Supress