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This week on Uprising:

* Planet in Climate Chaos While Rich Nations Refuse to Sign Kyoto Protocol
* US-Pakistan Relations Hit Low Point After Fatal Air Strikes
* Black Agenda Report on President Obama and the Occupy Wall Street Movement
* Occupy LA Raided, Tent City Dismantled

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Planet in Climate Chaos While Rich Nations Refuse to Sign Kyoto Protocol

The 17th Conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change took place this week in Durban, South Africa, with 15,000 delegates from over 190 countries at the negotiating table. Earlier in the week, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization announced the 10 hottest years on record have occurred in the past 15 years. This year extreme weather has beset all areas of the globe, with floods and mass starvation due to drought leaving tens of thousands dead and many more displaced. The US was hit by a record number of tornadoes, harsh blizzards, killer heat waves and weeks-long forest fires. 2011 is currently on track to tie for the 10th hottest year, adding pressure on the international community to take action before an global rise in temperature reaches 2 degrees Celsius. According to the LA Times scientists have warned that if the average global temperature tops 2 degrees “mass extinctions and other catastrophic events” will follow. This week climate negotiators have so far been unable to resolve the same thorny issues that previous talks have been plagued by. A major point of contention is how to fund an independent pot of money designated to combat global warming. Another sticking point is whether the Kyoto Protocol will be adopted for a second term. The EU has already committed to signing again, urging the US and China to join after they refused during its first term. The US remains noncommittal but reportedly wants to see China on-board. China and the G77 nations are reportedly refusing to agree to anything without equal commitment from developed nations. The Kyoto treaty, the only international treaty to include legally-binding provisions on carbon reduction, is set to expire in 2012.

GUEST: Janet Redmon, Co-director of the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network at the Institute for Policy Studies

US-Pakistan Relations Hit Low Point After Fatal Air Strikes

The Pakistani government has decided to permanently cut off NATO’s supply route for its Afghanistan war effort after US air strikes killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers near the border over the weekend. It is not yet clear what the move will do to the American war effort – nearly half of all war supplies for the almost 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan go through Pakistan. The US’s South Asian ally has also given US troops a 2 week deadline to vacate a base used by the CIA to launch unmanned drone strikes in the North West Frontier Province. A third potential casualty of the attacks is Pakistan’s threat to suspend its role in talks between the US, Afghanistan, the Taliban, and Pakistani militant groups. The US strikes in question were aimed at two Pakistani observation posts in the Mohmand tribal area. NATO is claiming that the weekend’s fatalities were caused by a response to a shot from the Pakistani border bases. But Pakistani officials denied those claims saying that the US attack was unprovoked and that their military installations were clearly marked. The Los Angeles Times reported that “Pakistan’s army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the Pakistani military tried to alert coalition forces that their gunships were firing on Pakistani army posts, but the attack continued.” The deaths of the soldiers have touched off a nerve among the Pakistani public who have become increasingly skeptical of their nation’s relationship with the US. Pakistan’s leading English language newspaper The Daily Times editorialized that: “U.S. and NATO forces have routinely made it a matter of policy to do as they please and then apologize and move on.” Pakistani officials have tallied more than 70 Pakistani troop casualties as a result of US strikes over the past three years. Civilian casualties of the strikes are even greater in number. White House spokesman Jay Carney on Monday called the attacks a “tragedy” and pledged an investigation.

GUEST: Fred Branfman, independent journalist and author of over a dozen articles on the dangers to US security posed by the US’s actions in Pakistan. His work regularly appears in Alternet, Truthdig, and Salon. He joins us now from Budapest.

Black Agenda Report on President Obama and the Occupy Wall Street Movement

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on President Obama and the Occupy Wall Street Movement.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Occupy LA Raided, Tent City Dismantled

Occupy LA’s two month long tent city outside City Hall has been dismantled by LAPD after a raid that began on Tuesday night, a few minutes past midnight. About 1,400 police officers, some in riot gear, flooded the steps of City Hall and arrested about 200 protesters who were prepared to hold the camp, some of whom were new arrivals. However, the Associated Press is reporting that “[b]eanbags fired from shotguns were used to subdue the final three protesters in a makeshift tree house.” Accompanying the police was a bomb squad and a Hazmat team. However, no illegal substances, drugs, or weapons were found anywhere on the camp. Since the Occupy Los Angeles encampment began on October 1st it grew into, arguably, the biggest in the nation with nearly 500 tents occupying the space in front of City Hall at one point. However, more than a week after a majority of tent cities around the country were evicted – many of them violently – the LAPD gave local activists a deadline of one minute past midnight on Sunday night to remove their tents. The city distributed flyers in Spanish and English to inform activists of the deadline, and offered 50 shelter beds for homeless people among the campers. The uniquely cordial relationship between police and protesters in LA seemed to come to an end. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck told the press before the raid, “I have no illusions that everybody is going to leave. We anticipate that we will have to make arrests… [but my officers would] “not be the first ones to apply force.” Citing issues of public health and safety LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa urged campers to move on, saying “[i]t is time for Occupy LA to move from holding a particular patch of park land to spreading the message of economic justice and signing more people up for the push to restore the balance to American society.” Thousands of people gathered on Sunday night before the deadline but it was not until Tuesday night that the violent raid began. The park in front of City Hall, renamed Solidarity Park, is now empty. A shut down of West Coast ports is the next big action being planned by the Occupy movement on December 12th.

GUEST: KPFK’s Ernesto Arce was at the Occupy LA encampment since 9:30 pm last night and has been covering the movement on the ground intimately.

Find out more at www.occupylosangeles.org.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” — George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman