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

Audio Stream | Podcast | Mp3 Download

This week on Uprising:

* Analyzing Media Coverage of the Israeli Attack on Gaza
* Empire Notes on Understanding the Invasion of Gaza
* Could Leon Panetta Clean up the CIA?
* Black Agenda Report about Black Unions
* Guantanamo: A Working Class History Between Empire and Revolution

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Analyzing Media Coverage of the Israeli Attack on Gaza

More than two weeks into the Israeli offensive on Gaza, the Palestinian death toll continues to rise with no end in sight, even as pressure mounts internationally for a cease-fire. On Wednesday, Israel finally granted “permission” for a three-hour lull in attacks to allow for humanitarian aid and burials in Gaza. During that time, Red Cross representatives commented on the “shocking” scenes they encountered when entering Gaza: images of hungry, emaciated children mourning over the corpse of their mother. A day later, the UN suspended its food aid after one of its truck drivers was killed by an Israeli attack at a border crossing. In the context of the on-going humanitarian crisis, this suspension of food aid could be disastrous. Meanwhile, here in the US, the Senate voted on Thursday on a non-binding resolution to “strengthen our historic bond with the state of Israel, by reaffirming Israel’s inalienable right to defend against attacks from Gaza.” Accurate news coverage of the conflict is hard to find in the US mainstream media, and the watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, has accused papers like the New York Times of overt pro-Israeli bias.

GUESTS: Chris Hedges, journalist and author, senior fellow at The Nation Institute, former foreign correspondent for the New York Times in the Middle East, Peter Hart with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Empire Notes on Understanding the Invasion of Gaza

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is on Understanding the Invasion of Gaza.

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

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Could Leon Panetta Clean up the CIA?

President-elect Barack Obama has finally decided who is to lead the US Central Intelligence Agency. Leon Panetta, Co-Director of the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, is relatively unknown in intelligence circles and will head an agency with a sordid history of circumventing laws and human rights standards over the decades. Panetta served eight terms in the House of Representatives from 1976 to 1993, and, more recently has been a vocal critic of the interrogation and torture practices of the CIA. Under the Bush administration, the CIA sank to new depths over the Iraq war and it remains to be seen whether Panetta, known for having integrity and being a skilled manager, will reform the organization. Although Panetta’s pick has been welcomed by members of both major parties, some in the Senate have expressed disapproval about not being notified in advance of Obama’s choice. In attempting to pick an intelligence chief not tainted by involvement in the Bush CIA, Obama certainly had few options.

GUEST: Ray McGovern, retired CIA officer who worked under 7 US presidents, presenting morning intelligence briefings for many of them, currently an anti-war political activist

Black Agenda Report about Black Unions

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is about Black Unions.

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Guantanamo: A Working Class History Between Empire and Revolution

On New Years Day, Cuba marked the fiftieth anniversary of its watershed revolution. On January 1st 1959, Fidel Castro’s armed rebels triumphantly marched to the nation’s capital of Havana after having defeated the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. Current President Raul Castro declared at a celebration in the city of Santiago de Cuba that the revolution marked the most fruitful half century in Cuban history. Anniversary celebrations elsewhere in the island nation were marked with austerity after successive hurricanes devastated the region. Today we’ll hear from Jana K Lipman, author of Guantánamo: A Working Class History Between Empire and Revolution. Most of us think of orange-suit-clad Afghans and Iraqis imprisoned and tortured by US soldiers when we hear the word Guantanamo. But, how did Guantanamo come to become a US base despite being on Cuban land? And what is the history of the Cubans who worked on that base? In her book, Jana Lipman describes the timely story of how US empire transformed the lives of Cubans and how Guantanamo is a symbol of US-Cuba relations. Cynthia Enloe describes the book as “Engaging and eye-opening to anyone interested in Guantánamo’s current role, American imperialism, Caribbean history, working-class politics, or gender in international affairs.”

GUEST: Jana K Lipman, Assistant Professor of History at Tulane University in New Orleans, and author of Guantanamo: A Working Class History Between Empire and Revolution

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.” — Fidel Castro