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This week on Uprising:

* A Report from the Turkey-Syria Border with Veteran Foreign Correspondent Reese Erlich
* How South Asians are Responding to the Sikh Temple Shooting
* The Wit and Wisdom of the Late Gore Vidal from a 2008 Discussion with Sonali Kolhatkar about the Presidential Elections

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A Report from the Turkey-Syria Border with Veteran Foreign Correspondent Reese Erlich

Embattled Syrian President Bashar al Assad named a new Prime Minister on Thursday – the Deraa-based Wael al-Halki will be replacing Riyad Hijab who defected this past Monday to the Syrian opposition after his brief two-month stint. Hijab’s defection was the latest and most high-ranking during the 17 month long conflict, and comes at a time when fighting between government forces and opposition rebels is at its most intense, particularly in the two main cities of Aleppo and Damascus. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that more than 70 people were killed across the country on Thursday alone, and that 170 were killed on Wednesday.

While the violence in Syria continues to rage, neighboring nations like Turkey and Iran are getting increasingly involved in the conflict. Iran, which is supportive of the Al Assad regime, hosted a meeting on Thursday to discuss the Syrian conflict. Complicating matters is the capture of 48 Iranians by Syrian opposition forces who claim they are members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Turkey, whose government is ostensibly supporting the rebels, has allowed in more than 50,000 Syrian refugees fleeing the violence.

Meanwhile, US President Barack Obama has been increasingly pressured for his inaction on the Syrian conflict. Obama adviser John Brennan announced this week that the White House has not ruled out the possibility of a “no-fly zone” over Syria that would give the rebels air superiority.

GUEST: Reese Erlich, veteran freelance foreign correspondent who has traveled widely across the Middle East. He has written a number of books and his latest is, “Conversations with Terrorists: Middle East Leaders on Politics, Violence, and Empire.” Erlich is currently in Turkey near the border of Syria.

How South Asians are Responding to the Sikh Temple Shooting

Two weeks after the shooting of twelve people in a movie theater in Colorado, 40 year old army veteran Wade Michael Page walked into a Sikh Temple, called a Gurdwara, in Oak Creek, Wisconsin this past Sunday morning and opened fire. Using a 9mm semiautomatic handgun, Page killed five men and one woman and left three others in critical condition. Police officers who arrived at the Gurdwara, which is located in a suburb of Milwaukee, shot and killed Page during a shootout.

According to US Government records, Page was in the military for six years from 1992 to 1998 serving part of that time as an Army psychological operations specialist. The Southern Poverty Law Center had been tracking him for over ten years because of his involvement in the White Supremacist music scene. Page played in some of the most well known racist bands, and officials at the Southern Poverty Law Center called him a “frustrated Neo-Nazi.”

The Sikh Coalition has reported that there have been over 700 incidents of hate crimes against Sikhs following the 9/11 attacks where members of the Sikh religion have been mistaken for Muslims. The FBI has called the shooting an act of “domestic terrorism.” Manjit Singh, a member of the Sikh community in Wisconsin said, “Everyone here is thinking this is a hate crime for sure. People think we are Muslims.”

Jagjit Singh Kaleka the brother of the slain Gurdwara president said, “[W]e know the more assault weapons we distribute the more situations like this we will have.” Wisconsin has some of the weakest gun laws in the nation and in 2011 the state passed a law allowing people to carry concealed weapons. Remarking yesterday on the shooting, President Obama said the incident should prompt some soul searching among Americans given the increasing regularity of shooting incidents, but stopped short of calling for greater gun control.

GUESTS: Deepa Iyer, Executive Director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT)

Visit www.saalt.org for more information.

The Wit and Wisdom of the Late Gore Vidal from a 2008 Discussion with Sonali Kolhatkar about the Presidential Elections

Author and venerated political commentator, Gore Vidal, passed away on Tuesday, July 31st at the age of 86. Vidal wrote over 20 books in his lifetime, including The City and the Pillar which pushed social boundaries by depicting homosexuality in the late 1940s. Vidal’s work was characterized by an intellectual wit and vigor that he used to skewer the pretensions of the American political class. Throughout his career, Vidal courted controversy and challenged the American status quo, most memorably during a vitriolic debate about the Vietnam War against William F. Buckley Jr. during the historic 1968 Democratic Convention.

On April 2nd, 2008, I was invited by student groups at Los Angeles Valley College to interview Mr. Vidal on campus about the 2008 presidential election. In a conversation rife with his trade mark brand of dry humor and sharp political analysis, Vidal discussed the 2008 elections, government corruption, the Iraq War, and the U.S. education system.

In tribute to him we are sharing an excerpt of my interview with Gore Vidal, beginning with a question about the dominance of the corporate media and what citizens can do to counter it.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day:

“Half of the American people have never read a newspaper. Half never voted for President. One hopes it is the same half.” — Gore Vidal