Our weekly edition is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

This week on Uprising:

* Explaining Obama’s Backflip on Karzai
* Mumia Abu Jamal on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law
* Progressives Shocked At Kagan’s Nomination, Urge Strong Opposition
* Black Agenda Report on NYPD’s Racism
* Senate Climate Bill Does More Harm Than Good

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Explaining Obama’s Backflip on Karzai

At least three hundred Afghans protested against civilian killings by US/NATO forces in Eastern Afghanistan on Friday. An overnight raid in Nangahar province apparently killed dozens of civilians. Agence-France Presse reported that the protesters chanted “Death to Shairzai (the provincial governor), (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and the Americans.” President Karzai spent the past week along with some of his ministers in the US on a diplomatic visit. In a sudden reversal, from the last few months, Mr. Karzai and his ministers have been feted by Obama and his cabinet in advance of the official start of the Kandahar Offensive. Just five weeks ago, the Obama administration cited Karzai’s lack of political and personal credibility in its efforts to bypass the embattled leader often referred to as “the mayor of Kabul.” After last year’s elections in Afghanistan, the Obama administration pressured Karzai to root out endemic corruption in his government. But Karzai responded by accusing the US, UK, and UN of committing fraud in those elections. He also called NATO troops an occupying army, and suggested that the people of Kandahar had veto power over the planned US/NATO offensive. Now, the administration is using an array of diplomatic back-flips to embrace the Afghan president. The new “charm offensive” as the New York Times has called it, may be the Obama administration’s acknowledgment that it is “stuck” with Karzai. Some speculate that it is a new effort to convey to the skeptical American public that Mr. Karzai and his cabinet ministers are reliable partners for the upcoming offensive in Kandahar province, as the war’s popularity continues to wane. Although the operation in the Taliban stronghold has yet to officially begin, General Stanley McChrystal is on record as saying the battle “had already begun.” U.S. Special Operations units have begun “shaping the battlefield” by picking up and picking off suspected insurgent leaders.

GUEST: Phyllis Bennis, directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the author of numerous books, her latest being Ending the War in Afghanistan: A Primer

Mumia Abu Jamal on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law

Mumia Abu Jamal is an award winning journalist and political prisoner. He filed a new commentary on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law.

Progressives Shocked At Kagan’s Nomination, Urge Strong Opposition

President Barack Obama formally announced the selection of Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his nominee for the United States Supreme Court this past week. From the East Room of the White House, Obama described his choice as “one of the nation’s foremost legal minds,” and an “acclaimed legal scholar with a rich understanding of constitutional law.” If confirmed to replace the seat held by retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, Kagan would become youngest serving member of the High Court and, for the first time in history, its third woman. Prior to her current responsibilities as the President’s Solicitor General, Kagan was a tenured Professor at the University of Chicago before going on to become the first woman to be Dean of the Harvard Law School. Unlike other nominees in recent history, she has had no previous judicial experience, a point conservative detractors are expected to criticize. Though Kagan has called the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” discriminatory policy on gays a “moral injustice,” her nomination is hardly seen by progressive analysts as a solidly liberal one balancing out a conservative court. Attention has been drawn to her Senate confirmation hearings for Solicitor General when she agreed with Senator Lindsay Graham on the controversial War on Terror power of the Presidency to indefinitely hold detainees as “enemy combatants.” Once a paid adviser for Goldman Sachs during the mortgage crisis, Kagan has also drawn progressive ire for hosting a dinner for Justice Antonin Scalia while introducing him on the occasion of his twentieth anniversary on the Supreme Court.

GUEST: Francis Boyle, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Author of “Tackling America’s Toughest Questions.”

Climate Bill Does More Harm Than Good

When Senator Lindsay Graham recently pulled his support for the much-anticipated Climate Change bill the move was expected to kill the legislation, and many environmentalists were not mourning its loss. Following Graham’s announcement Tyson Slocum of the Public Citizen’s Energy Program said the bill would have done more harm than good and he wasn’t alone in his criticism. But it appears that Graham’s support was not the lynch-pin holding the coalition together. On Wednesday Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced the American Power Act into the Senate. Explaining the legislation in an article on Grist,Org, Kerry speaks to environmentalists and says, “A comprehensive bill written purely for you and me – true believers – can’t pass the Senate no matter how passionately I fight on it.” So what did Senator Kerry fight for? The Power Act requires heavy investments in the coal, nuclear, and natural gas industries. If an international agreement on emissions caps is not reached, the bill punishes developing countries by taxing their imports. Big agri-business will be exempt from mandatory carbon reductions. And in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that has already pumped 3.5 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to devastate local economies and wildlife, the American Power Act not only allows new off-shore drilling but encourages it by offering States financial incentives for new drilling projects.

GUEST: Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth.

Find out more at www.foe.org.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“To cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.” — Wendell Berry