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:

* U.S. Ranks Dismally Low in New Health Care Study
* Black Agenda Report about Fascism and the “War on Terror”
* In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives
* The US Social Forum Brings Together Tens of Thousands of Organizers

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

U.S. Ranks Dismally Low in New Health Care Study

The United States has once again ranked dead last overall in a recent comparative study of the health care systems of industrialized nations. Released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Fund, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall” found, among other things, that Americans continue on average to spend twice as much in health related expenditures as the residents of six other countries highlighted without getting much in return. Collecting data from patient and physician surveys conducted between 2007 and 2009, the study examined five key dimensions of care such as quality, access, efficiency, equity, and healthy lives. The highly privatized system in place in the U.S. ranked last or next to last in all of the categories listed when compared to the Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany and Britain. The dismal outcome of the study was the same result as it had been for the U.S. in previous editions of the Commonwealth Fund’s report in 2007, 2006, and 2004. Most notably, health care in the U.S. was the only non-universal system and as such failed poorly in the category of equity with forty-six million Americans going without coverage.

GUEST: Cathy Schoen M.S., Senior Vice President for Research and Evaluation of The Commonwealth Fund, Co-author of the report “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall:How the Performance of the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally, 2010 Update”

Black Agenda Report about Fascism and the “War on Terror”

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is about about Fascism and the “War on Terror.”

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives

Last week Senate Republicans killed a version of the jobs bill that had been significantly trimmed by Democrats in an effort to win bi-partisan support. The legislative package would have extended tax breaks for individuals and businesses, and allocated 24 billion dollars in aid to states struggling to close budget gaps. On Friday the Senate did pass a 6.5 billion dollar bill that would have forestalled deep cuts in fees from Medicare to doctors until December. This week, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the House would not vote on the Senate’s Medicare legislation until the Senate moved to pass an adequate version of the jobs bill, which included money for Medicare. In the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, Congress seems to have failed to rally together to offer Americans real solutions in favor of the conservatives status quo. But what about the left? Over the last quarter of a century, the American Left has been marginalized as a social force. Now, are two years into this Great Recession, and two months into British Petroleum’s Spill– the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. North Americans are looking beyond neoliberal ideology which sees unregulated free markets as a solution to everything. A new book, In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives, Explores the Left in its current diminished state, and maps out a blueprint for a Left resurgence in the wake of the neoliberal collapse. The authors Greg Albo, Sam Gindin, and Leo Panitch show how North Americans can re-democratize our economy, take financial and ecological control out of the hands of a tiny fraction of our population, and begin “to build a saner, egalitarian, sustainable, democratic, and richer life for all.”

GUEST: Leo Panitch, is a Distinguished Research Professor at York University, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register.

The US Social Forum Brings Together Tens of Thousands of Organizers

Tens of thousands of activists and organizers from across the nation converged in Detroit this week to participate in the second ever United States Social Forum. A three-mile march through the city, attended by more than 2,000 people, kicked off the event Tuesday morning. The first forum was held in Atlanta in 2007, after the World Social Forum International Council declared it imperative that the US hold its own national social forum. The US Social Forum is promoted as a space for activist organizations to network, discuss common problems facing their communities, strategize, and align with international activist movements. The forum places priority on groups that organize with working class people of color in the US. More than 20,000 people are estimated in attendance at this year’s forum whose theme is “Another World is Possible, Another US is Necessary, Another Detroit is Happening.” Over one-thousand plenaries, workshops, and social events were planned by local and national organizations to take place over the five-day period of the forum. Detroit’s poverty crisis has spurred a number of issues, such as human rights’ violations, lack of healthcare, substandard education, utility shut-offs and home foreclosures. Grassroots movements to counter these issues are headed by four main organizations based in Michigan, including Michigan Welfare Rights Organization, Centro Obrero de Detroit, Jobs with Justice and Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Coalition. These organizations led the planning process for the US Social Forum. Together they hope to provide an example of grassroots mobilization for communities across the US.

GUEST: Diana Copeland, Executive Director, Eastern Michigan Environmental Action Coalition

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” — Howard Zinn