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 — a 9/11 anniversary special

* Barsamian interviews Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories
* South Asians, Muslims, speak out on post 9/11 racism, abuse
* Robert Scheer dissects Bush’s 9/11 anniversary speech
* Empire Notes on “War on Terror” – Part 2
* Black Agenda Radio’s Glen Ford on Walmart’s Siege of Chicago

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

Barsamian Interviews Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories

GUEST: Noam Chomsky, internationally renowned MIT professor, the leading critic of US foreign policy, author of scores of books; his latest are “Failed States” and the bestseller “Imperial Ambitions.” The New York Times calls him, “a global phenomenon, perhaps the most widely read voice on foreign policy on the planet.”

Five years ago, planes slammed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC killing about 3000 people. According to Agence France-Presse, editorials in newspapers around the world united last week in condemning the attacks and expressing revulsion for the Islamic extremists who carried out the atrocity, and agreed that the world had since become a more dangerous and uncertain place. The Bush administration wasted no time in using the tragedy of 9/11 to launch a so-called Global War on Terror first in Afghanistan in October 2001, and then in Iraq in March 2003. Much media criticism, especially in Europe and the Middle East, was reserved for Bush’s decision to invade Iraq under the banner of the “war on terror.” Lebanon’s Daily Star said, “Instead of isolating and wiping out Al-Qaeda, Bush has created a long list of new foes in his ever-broadening war on terror.” Egypt’s Al Ahram compared Bush to bin Laden. Iraq, meanwhile, ignored the anniversary altogether with not a single mention of it in the press.

Despite the glaring war crimes of the Bush administration in the post 9/11 world, many theories persist in the so-called “9/11 truth movement” that question bin Laden’s involvement in 9/11 and point the finger at Bush for orchestrating the tragedy. Today we’ll hear an excerpt of an interview with Professor Noam Chomsky conducted by Alternative Radio’s David Barsamian.

Find out about more Noam Chomsky interviews with David Barsamian at www.alternativeradio.org.

Empire Notes on “War on Terror” – Part 2

• Listen to this segment

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 part 2 of 2, on the “War on Terror.”

Empire Notes is online at www.empirenotes.org.

South Asians, Muslims, speak out on post 9/11 racism, abuse

GUESTS: Shahid Raja, taxi worker based in Southern California, Farhana Shahid, his wife, Imam Junaid, Imam of Inglewood Mosque

The Discrimination and National Security Initiative at Harvard University released a study earlier this week entitled, ‘We are Americans Too: A Comparative Study of the Effects of 9/11 on South Asian Communities.’ The report looked at the impact of and the responses to the discrimination that South Asians have faced since Sep 11, 2001. Pakistani Muslims in the Washington area were found to be the group most targeted by government policies after 9/11, while Sikhs were the greatest target of hate crimes. Here in Southern California, hate crimes and anti-Muslim abuse in general has been on-going. On the eve of the 5th anniversary of 9/11, a group of about 100 people, mostly from anti-immigrant vigilante groups, calling themselves the United American Committee, gathered outside a mosque in Culver City and hung an effigy of bin Laden, while shouting “Remember 9-11!” and “No more Jihad!” On Monday the South Asian Network held a press conference featuring people who have experienced hate crimes, FBI surveillance, and other post 9-11 related abuses.

The study, ‘We are Americans Too’ can be found online at http://www.geocities.com/dnsinitiative/911_Report.pdf

For more information, visit www.southasiannetwork.org.

Black Agenda Radio’s Glen Ford on Walmart’s Siege of Chicago

GUEST: Glen Ford, Black Agenda Radio (formerly with The Black Commentator)

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator, formerly with the Black Commentator. He is now affiliated with ‘The Black Agenda Report.’ This week’s commentary is about Walmart’s Siege of Chicago.

Wal-Mart’s Seige of Chicago

Wal-Mart, the meanest junkyard dog, and biggest employer, in the country, has bullied the proud city of Chicago into submission. In the process, Wal-Mart put together a virtual cartel of big box retail corporations to blackmail, extort and otherwise play super-gangster in ways that Al Capone would envy.

Read the entire commentary here:
http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=788

Robert Scheer dissects Bush’s 9/11 anniversary speech

GUEST: Robert Scheer, nationally syndicated columnist, author of seven books and a co-host of the political radio program “Left, Right and Center,” was a writer and columnist at the Los Angeles Times for many years, currently a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and editor in chief of Truthdig.com

Commemorating the fifth anniversary of 9/11, President Bush yesterday made a prime-time speech claiming that the battle against radical Islam “is a struggle for civilization” that will not end until “we or the extremists emerge victorious.” The speech was the latest in a series of speeches by Bush on national security and terrorism, a topic that has become the main White House talking point in the lead up to the upcoming mid-term Congressional election as support for the war in Iraq continues to wane. Bush’s approval rating were higher than 90 percent immediately after the 9/11 attacks. They remained high for more than two years, before concerns about the war on Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina and other issues dropped his poll numbers to as low as 30 percent. Recent polls put Bush’s popularity somewhere around 40 percent.

We spend the rest of the show with Robert Scheer, discussing his latest book, “Playing President: “My Close Encounters with Nixon, Carter, Bush I and Clinton–and How They Did Not Prepare Me for George W. Bush.”

Read Robert Scheer’s writings at www.truthdig.com.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“Within the first months after that terrorist attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor, he brought a formerly obscure word into common usage. He wanted to stir a “racial pride” among his countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation by its name, he began to refer to it as “The Homeland” … As hoped, people’s hearts swelled with pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them mentality was sewn. Our land was “the” homeland, citizens thought: all others were simply foreign lands. We are the “true people,” he suggested, the only ones worthy of our nation’s concern; if bombs fall on others, or human rights are violated in other nations and it makes our lives better, it’s of little concern to us.” — Excerpt from “When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History” by Thom Hartmann — Hartmann was of course talking about Adolph Hitler.