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This week on Uprising:

* On 75th Anniversary of Social Security, Program Sound Despite Attacks
* Google-Verizon’s Vision of a Privatized Internet
* Bollywood Megastar’s New Film on Farmer Suicides in India

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On 75th Anniversary of Social Security, Program Sound Despite Attacks

Seventy-five years ago on August 14th, 1935, Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Social Security program. The nation was still recovering from the Great Depression and there was wide agreement that the elderly were entitled to financial assistance after aging out of the workforce. Since then Social Security has remained an immensely popular social safety net program, helping senior citizens avoid homelessness and live independently from their families. Despite its popularity the program is regularly targeted by politicians, economists, and pundits as being unsustainable and calls to drastically change it are common. In recent weeks alarmist messages about the imminent failure of social security have been spreading. House Minority Leader John Boehner announced his call to raise the retirement age, and Dick Armey penned an op-ed in USA Today openly calling for the privatization of Social Security. The media watchdog FAIR reports that on August 5th CNN’s Wolf Blitzer announced, “Social Security reaches the final tipping point”. Meanwhile, the Economic Policy Institute recently released its report entitled, “Social Security and the Federal Deficit: Not Cause and Effect”, finding that social security is financially sound and fully funded through 2036. It effectively de-bunks often repeated assertions that social security is running on borrowed money and driving up the federal deficit, and it recommends lifting the cap on taxable income for the program.

GUEST: Monique Morrisey, Economist at Economic Policy Institute

Find out more at www.epi.org.

Google-Verizon’s Vision of a Privatized Internet

Technology giants, Google and Verizon recently announced a joint plan to promote what’s called “net neutrality” – the principle that ensures internet service providers cannot discriminate between different kinds of online content and applications. But the “policy framework” that the two companies have publicly offered creates a distinction between wireless and wired networks, in effect exempting wireless networks from having to adhere to net neutrality principles. With the dramatic rise in numbers of people accessing the internet through wireless devices such as mobile phones, iPads, and other wireless devices, Google and Verizon hope to create a loophole to, in essence, privatize the internet. Critics – and there are plenty – predict the eventual rise of a private internet on wireless networks that resembles cable television where consumers pay for premium content. Additionally the proposed plan offers little protection for net neutrality principles even on wired networks, where file sharing technologies like Bit Torrent would be under attack. And, companies like Verizon would decide which online applications to show preference for instead of internet users, potentially blocking the kinds of innovation that has made the internet such a powerful tool. The Federal Communications Commission or FCC, under the Google-Verizon plan, would be left essentially toothless to ensure the openness and freedom of the internet.

GUEST: Craig Aaron, Managing Director of Free Press

Find out more at www.savetheinternet.org.

Bollywood Megastar’s New Film on Farmer Suicides in India

India’s Agricultural Minister informed his Parliament today that as many as 224 farmers in four Indian states have committed suicide this year. One study estimates that 150,000 farmers have killed themselves in the past ten years in India. Farmer suicides are a tangible consequence of India’s shift to a neo-liberal economic model. The vast majority of the world’s second most populated country still farms for a living, but are caught between deep debt and the erratic nature of seasonal change. Lured by the promise of greater production, farmers are pressured into mortgaging their farms to purchase genetically modified seeds, pesticides, and fertilizer from American companies like Monsanto. A new film set against the backdrop of this grim topic opens today. It’s called Peepli Live, written and directed by Anusha Rizwi and produced by India’s most popular movie star, Aamir Khan. Peepli Live is set in an Indian village named Peepli where a young debt-burdened farmer named Natha is talked into taking his own life after he learns that his family will be financially compensated through a government program created to alleviate the loss of farmers through suicides. What unfolds is a dark comedy of errors when a media circus descends on the tiny village, followed by corrupt politicians wanting to make use of the planned tragedy. I recently spoke with the producer of Peepli Live, Aamir Khan. Forty five year old Khan is an actor and producer known for his films like Lagaan, the 2001 Oscar nominated film about Indian resistance to the British occupation. His latest film 3 Idiots released last year became the highest grossing film in Indian film history. Peepli Live opens in select theaters across the country today.

GUEST: Aamir Khan, Indian actor and producer

Peepli Live opens on August 13th. Find out more at www.peeplilivethefilm.com

Read the transcript of the interview here: http://www.alternet.org/world/147825/bollywood_superstar_aamir_khan_shines_the_
spotlight_on_what%27s_caused_an_estimated_150%2C000_
farmer_suicides_in_india/

Watch a video of the interview here: http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=14766

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.” — Mohandas Gandhi