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This week on Uprising:

* Not Enough Achieved at AIDS Conference
* Black Agenda Report about the DC Greens and the Washington Post
* The Olympics Games or The Commercial Games?
* China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism

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Not Enough Achieved at AIDS Conference

The 17th International AIDS Conference is set to conclude today in Mexico City. The week-long gathering of scientists, government officials, and representatives from international agencies, focused on a discussion of the global AIDS crisis including treatment and prevention policies. The AIDS virus currently infects more than 33 million people worldwide and has already claimed 25 million lives. Even though more than 20,000 attended the international conference, many stayed home in protest. In an International Herald Tribune opinion piece, Laurie Garrett warned that the AIDS establishment is becoming too entrenched in a burgeoning treatment industry while calls for a cure have subsided. On the issue of treatment, protesters took to the streets of Mexico City on Sunday by the hundreds to demand greater access to anti-retroviral medication which is currently too expensive. A day before the International AIDS Conference began the US Center for Disease Control released a new study noting that new HIV infections in the United States were 40% higher than previously reported. African-Americans were found to comprise nearly half of all new infections despite being only 13% of the total population. Congresswoman Barbara Lee of Oakland attended the conference and called for a national strategy to deal with the reality of AIDS in the US.

GUESTS: Julie Davids, Executive Director, Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) Chris Collins of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition (ITPC)

Black Agenda Report about the DC Greens and the Washington Post

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

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

The Commercial Games?

The money in this year’s Beijing Olympics Games is unprecedented. At a tally of $43 billion dollars, the games are fifty percent more expensive than the previous five Olympics’ bills added together, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, “never in the history of sports has so much money been spent in 15 days.” And that’s just the official expenditure. With half a million visitors expected to attend the games, the Chinese government has built over 30 new stadiums, a brand new airport and added several metro lines. The official motto of the games, “One World, One Dream,” belies the fact that practically everything that can be commercially sponsored and auctioned off to the highest bidder, has been. Now, a new report called The Commercial Games, issued just yesterday by Multinational Monitor magazine and Commercial Alert, details the depth of the hypercommercialization of the Olympics Games. Companies like Coca-Cola, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Lenovo, Panasonic and Visa have paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the International Olympic Committee. On the US front, according to the report, “well over [a] 100 corporations are sponsoring the U.S. Olympic Committee or U.S. national teams.”

GUEST: Robert Weissman, editor of Multinational Monitor. Download the report entitled The Commercial Games here: http://www.multinationalmonitor.org/2008olympics/TheCommercialGames.pdf

China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism

In just two days, the 2008 Beijing Olympics will begin, symbolized by the lighting of the Olympic Flame. International media have brought China under unprecedented scrutiny this year, most notably with the Tibetan uprising and the Sichuan earthquake. With this coverage now peaking, many questions have been raised about the Chinese government’s control over public services, specifically the Chinese media. In her new book, China Ink: The Changing Face of Chinese Journalism, former journalist and current journalism professor Judy Polumbaum addresses how the Chinese media deal with controversial issues. Through interviews with 20 energetic journalists who carry a sense of social responsibility, Polumbaum presents the Chinese media’s struggle for respect, professionalism, and freedom of speech, to a Western readership.

GUEST: Judy Polumbaum, former newspaper reporter, professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and to shame the devil.” — Walter Lippman