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This week on Uprising:

* No End in Sight for Guantanamo
* Black Agenda Report on the Jena Six
* Haiti: An Unbroken Agony
* Empire Notes on Protests in Burma
* Iraq’s Continuing Displacement Crises

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No End in Sight for Guantanamo

GUEST: Karen J. Greenberg, Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University, and editor of various books such “The Torture Papers”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said that he would like to see the closure of the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo. According to Secretary Gates, the Bush Administration and The Pentagon could not agree on where detainees would be held if not at the naval base in Cuba. Meanwhile, as the presidential campaigns heat up for 2008, the debate on Guantanamo has once again taken prominence. For many Republican candidates, supporting the detention center has become a way to demonstrate commitment to the so-called “war on terror.” GOP candidate Mitt Romney said in a presidential debate last May that he would like to see Guantanamo double in size. Presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has also come out against those suggesting calls to close the base.

Black Agenda Report on the Jena Six

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

This week’s commentary is about the Jena Six. Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Haiti: An Unbroken Agony

GUEST: Randall Robinson, author of “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.”

Following a recent one day visit to Haiti, Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim did not indicate a timetable for withdraw of his country’s U.N. forces from the Caribbean nation. U.N. officials have said that the nearly 9,000 strong multinational so-called peacekeeping force will be in Haiti until the end of current President Rene Preval’s term. Amorim did indicate, however that the troops will remain in the country through the next year. Under the pretense of bringing calm and reducing gang violence, the international U.N. force has maintained its presence in Haiti since 2004 in the wake of the coup that ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. The February 29, 2004 overthrow of President Aristide is the subject of a new book by TransAfrica founder Randall Robinson titled, “An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President.” As the title suggests, Robinson argues that President Aristide did not volunteer leave into exile as was widely reported, but rather was kidnapped and forced out. “An Unbroken Agony,” places this scenario in a larger overall historical context of outside intervention in Haiti.

Empire Notes on Protests in Burma

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 commentary is on Protests in Burma.

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

Iraq’s Continuing Displacement Crises

GUESTS: Raed Jarrar, Iraq, Consultant for the American Friend’s Service Committee, and Noah Merril, of the Electronic News and Analysis Website.

According to the American Friends Service Committee, the cost of the Iraq war is $720 million, daily. The figure, which can be broken down to half a million dollars spent per minute, was displayed on banners in cities nationwide last Thursday and Friday. Included in the banner campaign was where the money being spent on the Iraq War could have gone in terms of funding health care and schools. And while the American Friends Service Committee hopes that the monetary estimates will help people turn against the war, Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute deemed them “absurd,” and “irrelevant.” The Bush Administration is reportedly seeking to increase the war budget for Iraq and Afghanistan to nearly 200 billion dollars in the 2008 fiscal year. And as the costs of the Iraq war continue to rise, so too do the human costs. According to the U.N. High Commission for Refugees, Iraqis seeking asylum in industrialized countries have increased 100% in during the first half of 2007. The UNHCR estimates that 2.2 million Iraqi’s are outside of their homeland. The bulk of refugees have relocated to neighboring countries. U.N. statistics note a million and a half Iraqis are living in Syria – while another 750,000 are in Jordan. To compare: the United States, which has the most troops on the ground in Iraq, has accepted less than a thousand Iraqis seeking asylum this year.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” — Mahatma Ghandi