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This week on Uprising:

* Gordon Brown and the Future of British Politics
* Empire Notes on the Iraq Policy Failure
* Because I’m a Girl: New Study Shows Stark Global Gender Inequality
* Black Agenda Report on Chavez and Oil
* The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice

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Gordon Brown and the Future of British Politics

GUEST: Tony Benn, retired from the House of Commons in May 2001, after fifty years in Parliament, was the longest serving Labour MP in the history of the party, which he joined in 1942 – he is also the President of the Stop the War Coalition in Britain

Gordon Brown has been named the ruling Labor Party’s new leader in Britain. Winning the backing of 313 of the party’s 353 members, Brown is cleared to take over from Tony Blair as Prime Minister of Britain without challenge. In his latest remarks to the press, he promised to put health, education and housing policy at the center of his agenda to rebuild popularity with voters. Brown is seen as a centrist whose nomination ended an internal struggle within the waning Labor Party over issues such as the Iraq war, Britain’s nuclear arsenal, a higher minimum wage and re-nationalization of Britain’s railways. Current Prime Minister Tony Blair is expected to step down on June 27 after more than a decade as prime minister. Brown’s main challenge will be to rebuild the Labor Party’s popularity which sank to the lowest in two decades amid unease about the war in Iraq and slow delivery of improvements to schools and hospitals. He has no more than three years before the next election to reverse a lead in the polls held by Britain’s Conservative Party.

Empire Notes on “An Iraq Policy of Failure”

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

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is called “An Iraq Policy of Failure”.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Because I’m a Girl: New Study Shows Stark Global Gender Inequality

GUEST: Marie Staunton, Chief Executive at Plan International UK

Millions of girls and young women are victim to staggering gender inequalities across the world according to a new report from Plan International. Published in time for the United Nation’s International Day of the Family, the report, “Because I’m a Girl: The State of the World’s Girls,” compiles and analyzes global statistics that illustrate the prevalence of gender discrimination. Among the report’s findings is the fact that young women between the ages of 15 and 19 are the victims of half of all sexual assaults worldwide. Also, of the 1.5 billion people living on less than a dollar per day, 70 percent are female. 450 million women suffer stunted growth due to malnutrition. Plan International, a global child development agency, has launched a campaign to improve gender inequalities in conjunction with the release of the report. “Because I’m a Girl,” is just the first in a series of nine studies that will run until 2015. The report concludes by outlining an eight point action plan in order to change course on the reality of gender inequality in our world today. It cautions that if actions are not taken, the UN’s millennium development goals will be out of reach and the rights of girls and women will continue to be abused.

For more information and to download the report, visit www.becauseiamagirl.org.

Black Agenda Report on Chavez and Oil

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

This week’s commentary is on Chavez and Oil. Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice

GUEST: David Rose, is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and has worked for the Guardian, The Observer, and the BBC. He has written several books including Guantanamo, and his latest, “The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice.”

In the mid 1970s, in Columbus, Georgia, seven elderly white women, several of whom were prominent members of the white community, were found brutally raped and murdered in their homes over a number of months. They were strangled to death, often with their own stockings or other types of underwear. The hysteria and fear that ruled Columbus over the “Stocking Strangler” led to an intense manhunt by local police who assumed the suspect was a black man. Eight years after the last rape and murder, Carlton Gary, a black man who had been convicted of various robberies, was convicted and sentenced to death for several of the rapes and murders. Carlton Gary remains on death row today, at a time when investigative reporter David Rose has written a shocking account of the case, revealing serious questions about the evidence presented against Gary. His book is called “The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice.” The Big Eddy Club is the name of an exclusive all-white, members-only club in Columbus, Georgia, to which many of the murder victims belonged. But, Columbus’ most prominent judges and lawyers, also belonged to the club. Intertwined throughout the book is the ugly racist history of Columbus, rife with lynchings and racist hysteria. Given what has been revealed in David Rose’s book, plus new evidence that has just emerged, there may be hope on the horizon for a new trial for Carlton Gary, who remains on death row.

For more information about David Rose’s book, visit www.thenewpress.com.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“There is a special relationship between the death penalty and African Americans. A relationship going back to antebellum days, when the gallows was the principal means of punishing slaves, and on through the worst days of Jim Crow.” — Rev. Jesse Jackson