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

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

Oil politics and poverty in the Niger Delta
GUEST: Rev. Nnmio Bassey, Director of Friends of the Earth based in Nigeria

Last week an oil pipeline in southern Nigeria was exploded by suspected saboteurs. The attack killed eight people and cut output from the world’s eighth largest exporter by seven percent. The pipeline operated by Royal Dutch Shell and also caused a major oil spill and fire. Four major oil pipelines in the Niger Delta have been attacked in the last two weeks. According to a spokesperson with the Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law in the Niger Delta, “This region is synonymous with oil, but also with unbelievable poverty. The world depends on their oil, but for the people of the Niger Delta oil is more of a curse than a blessing.” A local militant group, which wants autonomy for the Niger Delta, claimed responsibility for some of the attacks. Africa is expected to provide the United States with a quarter of its oil supply in the next decade, compared with about 15 percent now, and much of it will come from the Gulf of Guinea, where the Niger Delta sits.

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

We go now to our weekly commentary Empire Notes by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about imperatives for the new year.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Environmental Issues of 2005
GUEST: Jim Motavalli, Editor of E/The Environmental Magazine

In Geneva last week, the World Meteorological Organization reported that 2005 was the second warmest year on record. This stunning fact extended a trend that climatologists attribute, at least partly, to heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” accumulating in the atmosphere. In late 2005 the annual 189-nation U.N. climate conference took place in Montreal, Canada, failing once again to win U.S. commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions — as almost all other industrialized nations are committed to do by 2012 under the Kyoto Protocol. Meanwhile some geologists have asserted that oil production peaked in 2005 – this may be the beginning of a long decline.

For more information, visit www.emagazine.com.

Read Jim Motavalli’s article on peak oil production.

Black Commentator
GUEST: Glen Ford, co-publisher of The Black Commentator

The Black Commentator is an online political magazine bringing you commentary, analysis and investigation from a black perspective. Today’s commentary is about Samuel Alito.

The Black Commentator is online at www.blackcommentator.com.

Spielberg’s Munich: A Critique
GUEST: As’ad Abu Khalil, Professor of Political Science at California State University in Stanislaus and a Visiting Professor at UC, Berkeley, blogger at angryarab.blogspot.com

The 1972 Olympics in Munich, Germany, was marked by the kidnapping and murder of 11 Israeli athletes. The group splintered from the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Black September, took credit. Now, award winning film maker, Steven Spielberg has made a film about the Israeli response to the murders. It’s called simply, Munich, based on a novel entitled, ‘Vengeance’, by Canadian journalist George Jonas. Spielberg’s Munich depicts how Israeli intelligence agents hunted down and assassinated Palestinians supposedly connected to the murders, on the orders of Israel’s then-prime minster Golda Meir. On his blog, As’ad Abu Khalil has critiqued the film, as depicting “the humanization of Israeli killers, and the dehumanization of Palestinian civilians.”

Read Abu Khalil’s review of Munich.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people… It is not as if we came and threw them out and took their country. They didn’t exist.” – former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, whose character is featured