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This week on Uprising:

* The Impact of President Hu’s Visit to the U.S.
* Haiti’s Brutal Dictator Returns
* Black Agenda Report on Duvalier’s Return to Haiti
* What if Jared Loughner Were Muslim?

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The Impact of President Hu’s Visit to the U.S.

The Secretary General of China’s Communist Party, Hu Jin Tao, is visiting the US this week, meeting with President Obama, members of Congress, and business leaders. A number of issues regarding US-China relations have been raised by the press, lawmakers, and protesters. Among them are China’s economic ties to the US. China owns over a trillion dollars of US debt and members of Congress and economists have expressed concern that China’s currency, the Yuan, is undervalued, potentially destabilizing the American economy. But Mr. Hu countered that Congress needs to do more to lift a US embargo on high-tech exports to China. But some commentators also argue that the US is destabilizing its own economy by printing up billions of dollars which leads to depreciation. There was little mentioned in discussions between American officials and Mr. Hu about the vast amount of Chinese exports to the US and its effect on jobs here, or the fact that Chinese workers are hugely underpaid. China’s human rights record has also been a source of contention, and was raised multiple times during Mr. Hu’s visit. Protesters for a free Tibet held a noisy rally as Hu Jin Tao was greeted by the President and First Lady. Chants of “Hu Jin Tao, Failed Leader” were audible while photographers clicked their cameras. Mr. Hu admitted in a join press conference with President Obama that China needed to make more progress on human rights. Meanwhile right wing shock jocks, Bill O’Reilly and Dennis Miller covered the Chinese leader’s visit by making jokes about Chinese food, and Rush Limbaugh went even further by launching into a 30 second mocking of Mr. Hu speaking Chinese.

GUEST: Jianying Zha, contributor to the New Yorker, author of forthcoming book, “Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China.”

Haiti’s Brutal Dictator Returns

Former Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was charged with corruption, theft and misappropriation of funds by a judge in Port-au-Prince on Wednesday. After a fifteen-year reign of terror followed by a 25-year exile in Europe, ‘Baby Doc’ Duvalier returned to his home country late Sunday night without explanation, telling the press that he simply wanted to ‘help Haiti’. Duvalier’s true political ambitions are unknown. Human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, have encouraged Haitian leaders to charge Duvalier for the crimes against humanity committed during his administration. In fact, Amnesty International announced that Haitian authorities are now investigating those crimes. Like his father, Francois ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier, Baby Doc used the Tonton Macoutes, a secret police force, to imprison, torture and kill thousands of Haitian citizens. According to a confidential diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks, Lisa Kubiske, the US charge d’affairs in the neighboring Dominican Republic, warned Dominican foreign minister Carlos Morales Troncoso about Duvalier’s possible return to Haiti in 2006. Kubiske was concerned that the return of either Duvalier or former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide would send the country into a tailspin during its highly volatile elections. Former president Aristide, Haiti’s first democratically elected president, has also recently expressed a desire to return to Haiti to help rebuild the country. Aristide, who was ousted in 2004 and exiled to South Africa, still remains popular among Haitians. Aristide has repeatedly applied for a Haitian passport but still has not received a response from the Haitian government.

GUEST: Brian Concannon Jr., a human rights lawyer, is director of the Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti Shortly after I spoke with Brian, Duvalier moved out of his hotel and into a private residence.

Find out more at www.haitijustice.org.

Black Agenda Report on Duvalier’s Return to Haiti

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on Duvalier’s Return To Haiti.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

What if Jared Loughner Were Muslim?

The motives of Jared Lee Loughner, the Arizona shooter, remain unclear two weeks after the shooting. The Washington Post reported that 250 federal investigators and 130 local detectives are conducting interviews of anyone who knew Loughner. So far they have spoken to about 300 people, but have not indicated a breakthrough in the case. Loughner is in custody but not talking, so the speculation continues based on his incoherent internet postings and a few statements by people close to him. One question not being asked in the news media is, ‘What if Jared Loughner were a Muslim?’ Dean Obeidallah asks this question and predicts the way the media and the authorities would have interpreted the shooting if a Muslim-American had pulled the trigger. Obeidallah compares the reaction over the Arizona shooting to the reaction generated by the November 2009 Fort Hood shootings by Nidal Hasan, a Muslim-American military psychologist. Like Loughner, Nidal Hasan showed signs of mental instability preceding the shooting. But unlike Loughner, Hasan’s religion, more than his mental state, was what most people obsessed over. New York Representative Peter King lashed out at Muslims in an op-ed and called Hasan a “home grown terrorist.” Obeidallah says recognizing the differing reactions to violent people based on skin color and religion isn’t meant to divide the nation, but to help it heal productively when tragedy strikes.

GUEST: Dean Obeidallah, award winning Arab-American comedian

Read Dean Obeidallah’s Op-Ed on CNN.com here: http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-13/opinion
/obeidallah.loughner.muslims_1_muslims-arab-american-terrorist-label?_s=PM:OPINION

Find out more about Dean Obeidallah at www.deanofcomedy.com.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity.” — Andre Gide, French writer and Nobel Laureate