• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

Uprising’s guest expert Rahul Mahajan sociologist and news analyst and author of Full Spectrum Dominance: US Power in Iraq and Beyond, analyzes today’s news headlines:

The US Senate attempts yet another bill to fund the government and raise the debt ceiling but will the Republicans bite? A day after a deal on government spending through mid January and an increase in the debt ceiling through mid-February fell through, Senators are working on a similar package with minor tweaks to the Affordable Care Act. A deal to raise the debt ceiling is particularly crucial as tomorrow is the deadline after which the US defaults on its loans. Meanwhile North Carolina has just stopped processing new applications for a welfare program that relies on federal government funding. If spending is not resumed by the end of the month, existing recipients will not receive checks in November. Senate staffers have worked through the night to present this new deal to House Republicans and John Boehner seems increasingly desperate. Even Paul Ryan is exhorting his fellow Republicans to pass the bill. Click here for a New York Times article about the story.

Investigative Journalist Glenn Greenwald who has become a household name for his work in helping to expose the NSA’s spying program spoke this week at a journalism conference in Brazil where he said, “the most shocking and significant stories are the ones we are still working on, and have yet to publish.” Greenwald also made the startling announcement yesterday that he will leave the Guardian newspaper to join a new media venture by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. Click here for a Reuters article about the story.

A new study on the number of deaths that occurred during the US war in Iraq has put the figure at close to 500,000. The study was based on a rigorous survey of households in Iraq and arrives at a smaller figure than the controversial 2006 study published in the Lancet which claimed more than 600,000 had died. Click here for an Al Jazeera article about the story.