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This week on Uprising —

* Iran Hosts a Conference Denying the Holocaust
* A critique of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto
* New York Adopts a Ban on Transfats
* Death of a Dictator – a Conversation with poet, Francisco Letelier
* This week’s Black Agenda Report on Racial Profiling

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Iran Hosts a Conference Denying the Holocaust

GUEST: Dr. Trita Parsi, author of the forthcoming book “Treacherous Triangle – The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States.”

On December 11th and 12th, the Iranian capital of Tehran hosted a two day conference on the Holocaust, called “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust.” Conference participants included former Louisiana Ku Klux Klan leader, David Duke, and Robert Faurisson of France, a man who has devoted his life trying to prove that the Nazi gas chambers were a myth. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the conference, saying, “Just as the Soviet Union was wiped out and today does not exist, so will the Zionist regime soon be wiped out.” He added, “If the Holocaust’s truth is ruled out, root causes of problems and crimes in the Middle East will be terminated.” According to the San Francisco Chronicle, a small circle around the president have been building ties with neo-Nazi groups in Europe. Meanwhile, former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is launching an effort to get Ahmadinejad tried on a charge of genocide at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Dr. Trita Parsi has traveled both to Iran and Israel and interviewed top officials in these countries on the state of Israeli-Iranian relations. He has conducted more than 130 interviews with senior Israeli, Iranian and American officials in all three countries. He is the co-founder and current President of the National Iranian American Council.

For more information, visit www.tritaparsi.com.

A critique of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto

GUESTS: Charles C. Mann, Correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Julia Guernsey, Professor of Art & Art History at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerican Art

Mel Gibson’s latest film, ”Apocalypto” opened last weekend as the number 1 movie, making $14.2 million at the box office. It is an exceptionally violent film, focusing on the last days of the Mayan civilization, right before the appearance of the Spanish conquerors. The Central American indigenous characters speak entirely in various Mayan dialects and are alternately depicted as child-like buffoons with exaggerated mannerisms or bloodthirsty killers who violently prey on each other. For those whose only education about Maya cultures is Gibson’s film, the historical message is obvious: tribes spent most of their time attacking each other, raping their women, abandoning their children, tearing each others hearts out, and engaging in mass sacrifice. Gibson’s intent is quite clear – the film opens with a quote by Will Durant, “A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has conquered itself from within.”

Visit the Maya Education Foundation for more information at www.mayaedufound.org.

Black Agenda Report on Racial Profiling

GUEST: Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report

This week’s commentary is on Racial Profiling. Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

New York Adopts a Ban on Transfats

GUEST: Stephen Joseph, the CEO of BanTransfats.com

Earlier this month, the city of New York decided to ban all restaurants from using artificial trans fats. City health officials created the unprecedented new requirements which set a limit of a half-gram of artificial trans fats per serving of any menu item. Restaurants have until 2008 to comply. Meanwhile, Loews Hotels has announced a chain-wide ban of trans fats, including food served in its restaurants, meeting facilities and through room service. And chain restaurant operator Denny’s Corp. said Monday it will cut trans fats from its menu, changing its frying oil and replacing margarine products used in food preparation. Trans fats are created by the partial hydrogenation of vegetable oils. Partially hydrogenated oils are commonly found in processed foods like commercially baked products such as cookies, cakes, crackers, and even bread. They are also used as cooking oils for frying in restaurants. Nutritionists at Harvard University have estimated that replacing trans fats with natural unhydrogenated vegetable oils would prevent between 30,000 – 100,000 premature deaths annually.

For more information, visit www.BanTransFats.com.

Death of a Dictator – Conversation with Francisco Letelier

GUESTS: Francisco Letelier, an artist based in Venice, son of Orlando Letelier

A week after suffering a heart attack, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet died on Sunday December 10th at the age of 91. The funeral for the ex-dictator, complete with military honors, was held today in the capital city of Santiago. Current Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, herself a survivor of the dictatorship, denied Pinochet a state funeral on the grounds that he seized power by force and was under investigation for murder, torture and fraud at the time of his death. Bachelet’s government did, however, authorize the lowering of the Chilean flag to half mast at military barracks across the nation. Augusto Pinochet repressively ruled Chile for 17 years after rising to power in a 1973 U.S. backed military coup against the democratically elected Socialist government of Salvador Allende. Pinochet, whose crimes include the death and disappearance of more than three-thousand victims and the torture of tens of thousands more, never spent a day in jail. The news of his death was bittersweet for human rights activists who were working on bringing the ex-dictator to justice.

Francisco Letelier is the son of the late Orlando Letelier, Chile’s former defense minister who was assassinated in Washington, D.C. by a car bomb on September 21, 1976 by Chilean agents working for Augusto Pinochet, whose regime Letelier had opposed.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“I have faith in Chile and in her destiny. Others will surmount this gray, bitter moment in which treason seeks to impose itself. You must go on, knowing that sooner rather than later the grand avenues will open along which free people will pass to build a better society — Salvador Allende, last radio address, on September 11th 1973