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This week on Uprising:

* Why Should We Bail Out Wall Street?
* Empire Notes on the Financial Crisis
* Conversation with Tariq Ali: Pakistan on the Flight Path of US Power
* Black Agenda Report on American Racism Revealed in Polls
* Prescription for Survival: One Doctor’s Journey to End Nuclear Madness

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Why Should We Bail Out Wall Street?

Washington Mutual Incorporated collapsed on Friday, buckling under the weight of its bad investments in mortgage markets, making it the largest bank failure in US history. If JP Morgan Chase had not bought up the bank, the Federal Deposit Insurance Company or FDIC, according to some analysts, could have used up half its money to cover account holders. As the US economy flounders with crisis after crisis, the Bush administration has been working with Congress to pass a massive $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that sparked nation-wide protests yesterday. In a meeting at the White House last week, House Republicans proposed an alternative plan at the last-minute, stalling the talks. As of air-time, the plan still had not passed. If it, or some version of it, does pass over the weekend, it will be the largest financial bailout in US history. President Bush in a speech last Wednesday addressing the nation in a grave tone. Joining us to answer the questions of why the economy crashed, and whether the bailout plan is the right answer is Charlie Cray, Director of the Center for Corporate Policy. Part of the problem with the economy that’s becoming apparent even to lawmakers, are the ridiculously high salaries of CEOs. Sarah Anderson joins us to discuss the incentive structure for top corporate executives.

GUESTS: Charlie Cray, director of the Center for Corporate Policy, and Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies and is co-author of the book “Field Guide to the Global Economy.”

Empire Notes on the Financial Crisis

Empire Notes are weekly commentaries filed by Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade. Today’s commentary is about the current economic crisis.

GUEST: Rahul Mahajan, author of Full Spectrum Dominance and The New Crusade.

Visit www.empirenotes.org for more information.

Conversation with Tariq Ali: Pakistan on the Flight Path of US Power

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates last week praised the recent efforts of the Pakistani Army in bolstering a US military offensive into the semi-autonomous North West Frontier Province. The US wants to target militants who attack its occupation forces in neighboring Afghanistan and then flee into Pakistan to regroup and organize. Pakistan has a new civilian government, having replaced the long-time US ally, former General Pervez Musharraf. It faces a challenge that its predecessors have often grappled with: how to deal with the tensions between fundamentalist tribal militias including the Taliban, the Pakistani military that tacitly supports such militias, and the US government that finances the Army? Here in the United States, it has become a central foreign policy issue: what to do about Pakistan, simultaneously an ally in the “war on terror,” and a source of anti-US fundamentalism? To answer these questions is my guest, eminent Pakistani born intellectual, historian, political activist, novelist and writer, Tariq Ali. His books include Bush in Babylon, Clash of Fundamentalisms, Pirates of the Caribbean, and his most recent, The Duel: Pakistan in the Flight Path of US Power.

GUEST: Tariq Ali, author of The Duel: Pakistan in the Flight Path of US Power

Black Agenda Report on American Racism Revealed in Polls

Glen Ford is a writer and radio commentator and the Executive Editor of The Black Agenda Report. This week’s commentary is on American racism revealed in recent polls

Visit www.blackagendareport.com for more information.

Prescription for Survival: One Doctor’s Journey to End Nuclear Madness

The International Atomic Energy Agency last week announced that North Korea intended to restart its production of nuclear weapons grade materials. In June, North Korea publicly blew up one of its cooling towers at the Yongbyon Nuclear complex as an act of good faith after reaching an agreement last year within the framework of the so-called six party talks. Now, in an apparent about-turn, IAEA inspectors have been barred from the nuclear complex and all its seals and surveillance cameras removed. Meanwhile, the country occupying another arm of President Bush’s “Axis of Evil,” Iran, said it will limit future assistance with the IAEA over its probe into alleged nuclear weapons studies. The threat of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of “hostile” nations and terrorist organizations has fueled much of the impetus on US foreign policy in the last 8 years. Parallels with the Cold War threat of nuclear annihilation are obvious. We turn next to a man who was intimately involved in the struggle against nuclear proliferation during the Cold War. Dr. Bernard Lown is an internationally recognized cardiologist who invented the direct-current cardiac defibrillator. He is a professor emeritus in cardiology at Harvard University. Together with a high-level Russian cardiologist, Dr. Eugene Chazov, he co-founded the group International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. Dr. Lown is also the founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, and he has spent the last three years of his life writing the book, “Prescription for Survival: A Doctor’s Journey to End Nuclear Madness.” The book has a foreword by Howard Zinn.

GUEST: Dr. Bernard Lown, author of “Prescription for Survival: A Doctor’s Journey to End Nuclear Madness”. For more information, visit www.bernardlown.org.

Sonali’s Subversive Thought for the Day

“The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living.” — General Omar Bradley