{"id":13841,"date":"2010-05-14T13:15:57","date_gmt":"2010-05-14T20:15:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/?p=13841"},"modified":"2010-05-14T13:15:57","modified_gmt":"2010-05-14T20:15:57","slug":"weekly-digest-051410","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/2010\/05\/14\/weekly-digest-051410\/","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Digest – 05\/14\/10"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our weekly edition<\/a> is a nationally syndicated one-hour digest of the best of our daily coverage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Audio Stream<\/a> | Podcast<\/a> | Mp3 Download<\/a><\/p>\n

This week on Uprising: <\/p>\n

* Explaining Obama’s Backflip on Karzai
\n* Mumia Abu Jamal on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law
\n* Progressives Shocked At Kagan’s Nomination, Urge Strong Opposition
\n* Black Agenda Report on NYPD’s Racism
\n* Senate Climate Bill Does More Harm Than Good<\/p>\n

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *<\/p>\n

Explaining Obama’s Backflip on Karzai<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"karzai\"At least three hundred Afghans protested against civilian killings by US\/NATO forces in Eastern Afghanistan on Friday. An overnight raid in Nangahar province apparently killed dozens of civilians. Agence-France Presse reported that the protesters chanted “Death to Shairzai (the provincial governor), (Afghan President Hamid) Karzai and the Americans.” President Karzai spent the past week along with some of his ministers in the US on a diplomatic visit. In a sudden reversal, from the last few months, Mr. Karzai and his ministers have been feted by Obama and his cabinet in advance of the official start of the Kandahar Offensive. Just five weeks ago, the Obama administration cited Karzai\u2019s lack of political and personal credibility in its efforts to bypass the embattled leader often referred to as \u201cthe mayor of Kabul.\u201d After last year\u2019s elections in Afghanistan, the Obama administration pressured Karzai to root out endemic corruption in his government. But Karzai responded by accusing the US, UK, and UN of committing fraud in those elections. He also called NATO troops an occupying army, and suggested that the people of Kandahar had veto power over the planned US\/NATO offensive. Now, the administration is using an array of diplomatic back-flips to embrace the Afghan president. The new \u201ccharm offensive\u201d as the New York Times has called it, may be the Obama administration\u2019s acknowledgment that it is \u201cstuck\u201d with Karzai. Some speculate that it is a new effort to convey to the skeptical American public that Mr. Karzai and his cabinet ministers are reliable partners for the upcoming offensive in Kandahar province, as the war\u2019s popularity continues to wane. Although the operation in the Taliban stronghold has yet to officially begin, General Stanley McChrystal is on record as saying the battle \u201chad already begun.\u201d U.S. Special Operations units have begun \u201cshaping the battlefield\u201d by picking up and picking off suspected insurgent leaders. <\/p>\n

GUEST: Phyllis Bennis, directs the New Internationalism Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is the author of numerous books, her latest being Ending the War in Afghanistan: A Primer<\/em><\/p>\n

Mumia Abu Jamal on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mumia Abu Jamal is an award winning journalist and political prisoner. He filed a new commentary on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law. <\/p>\n

Progressives Shocked At Kagan’s Nomination, Urge Strong Opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"kagan\"President Barack Obama formally announced the selection of Solicitor General Elena Kagan as his nominee for the United States Supreme Court this past week. From the East Room of the White House, Obama described his choice as \u201cone of the nation\u2019s foremost legal minds,\u201d and an \u201cacclaimed legal scholar with a rich understanding of constitutional law.\u201d If confirmed to replace the seat held by retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, Kagan would become youngest serving member of the High Court and, for the first time in history, its third woman. Prior to her current responsibilities as the President\u2019s Solicitor General, Kagan was a tenured Professor at the University of Chicago before going on to become the first woman to be Dean of the Harvard Law School. Unlike other nominees in recent history, she has had no previous judicial experience, a point conservative detractors are expected to criticize. Though Kagan has called the military\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell\u201d discriminatory policy on gays a \u201cmoral injustice,\u201d her nomination is hardly seen by progressive analysts as a solidly liberal one balancing out a conservative court. Attention has been drawn to her Senate confirmation hearings for Solicitor General when she agreed with Senator Lindsay Graham on the controversial War on Terror power of the Presidency to indefinitely hold detainees as \u201cenemy combatants.\u201d Once a paid adviser for Goldman Sachs during the mortgage crisis, Kagan has also drawn progressive ire for hosting a dinner for Justice Antonin Scalia while introducing him on the occasion of his twentieth anniversary on the Supreme Court. <\/p>\n

GUEST: Francis Boyle, Professor of Law at the University of Illinois, Author of \u201cTackling America\u2019s Toughest Questions.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Climate Bill Does More Harm Than Good<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"climateWhen Senator Lindsay Graham recently pulled his support for the much-anticipated Climate Change bill the move was expected to kill the legislation, and many environmentalists were not mourning its loss. Following Graham\u2019s announcement Tyson Slocum of the Public Citizen\u2019s Energy Program said the bill would have done more harm than good and he wasn’t alone in his criticism. But it appears that Graham\u2019s support was not the lynch-pin holding the coalition together. On Wednesday Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman introduced the American Power Act into the Senate. Explaining the legislation in an article on Grist,Org, Kerry speaks to environmentalists and says, \u201cA comprehensive bill written purely for you and me \u2013 true believers \u2013 can\u2019t pass the Senate no matter how passionately I fight on it.\u201d So what did Senator Kerry fight for? The Power Act requires heavy investments in the coal, nuclear, and natural gas industries. If an international agreement on emissions caps is not reached, the bill punishes developing countries by taxing their imports. Big agri-business will be exempt from mandatory carbon reductions. And in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon explosion that has already pumped 3.5 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, threatening to devastate local economies and wildlife, the American Power Act not only allows new off-shore drilling but encourages it by offering States financial incentives for new drilling projects.<\/p>\n

GUEST: Erich Pica, President of Friends of the Earth. <\/em><\/p>\n

Find out more at www.foe.org<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTo cherish what remains of the Earth and to foster its renewal is our only legitimate hope of survival.\u201d \u2014 Wendell Berry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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: * Explaining Obama’s Backflip on Karzai * Mumia Abu Jamal on Arizona’s Anti-Immigrant Law * Progressives Shocked At Kagan’s Nomination, Urge Strong Opposition * Black Agenda Report on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-program-digest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uprisingradio.org\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}