In a span of 5 weeks and one day earthquakes, floods, mudslides, typhoons and tsunamis swept through 10 nations leaving thousands of people dead and rendering millions more homeless.

In Oceanside, Carlsbad, Del Mar and north San Diego County, immigrant day laborers wait by the side of the road, hoping a contractor will stop and offer them work.

Jerry Fodor, the American philosopher, has a review in the October 16, 2009 TLS entitled "The truth is not out there." This review is of Michael Tye's "CONSCIOUSNESS REVISITED: Materialism without phenomenal concepts" and Tye is a follower of Hilary Putnam a Harvard philosopher who defends a position called "externalism."

Today marks the 30th year since the 444 day Iran Hostage Crisis began in 1979. On this day the media traditionally offers us images of Iranians burning American flags and effigies of Uncle Sam. We are reminded of the great chasm of mistrust and misunderstanding that has marked the last three decades of US-Iranian relations.

When the first Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) was published in 2002, a star glistened in a vast, gloomy sky. The fact that a UN-sponsored report, authored by independent Arab scholars would receive so much attention in Arab media, was in itself a promising start.

Two recent police raids of gay bars in Atlanta, Georgia and Fort Worth, Texas have sparked mass protests in the two cities and led activists to question whether equality for persons of all sexual orientations in the U.S. has come as far as some would like to believe.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Japan to urge the new government led by the Democratic Party of Japan to implement the Japan-U.S. agreement on a new U.S. base in Okinawa.

When Rush Limbaugh was unceremoniously dumped in his efforts to secure a minority share of the St. Louis Rams, he may have been little more than collateral damage in a brewing collision between NFL owners and the NFL Players Association.

The thrift in me allowed me to wait until Michael Moore’s “Capitalism – A Love Story” came out on second run theaters – it was well worth the wait. The powerful effect that Moore has on his audience derives from the personal stories he relates combined with a sense of humour that highlights the bizarre nature of our capitalist society.

This past week the House released its version of the national health care legislation. It is no longer the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3200); it's now the Affordable Health Care Choices Act of 2009 (H.R. 3962). There are many changes, some of them are responses to the peoples' health movement.

Today we are faced with a major economic crisis, but along with it there is also a deepening moral crisis of US capitalism. However, the people who are always finding fault with poor people, from teen pregnancy to deadbeat dads, are not speaking out about the immorality of the sub-prime robbery that resulted in mass foreclosures, especially for Black and Latino families.

Through my work in numerous organizations which represent the interests of oppressed communities I have realized that, while many of my fellow activist's values are rooted in Marxism, they do not believe themselves to be Marxists.

This is an excellent graphic novel about the life and times of Bertrand Russell and his search for the foundations of mathematics. Believe it or not, this is a really good read and not a dry and esoteric exercise in the history of mathematics. Even activist and writer Howard Zinn calls it “extraordinary.”

Joel Emmanuel Haaglund (1878-1915), more commonly known as Joe Hill, was – and remains – the guiding force of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and stands as a vision of revolutionary arts for all of the labor movement.

A major gap in the radical history of the United States has at last been filled. Nunzio Pernicone’s Carlo Tresca: Portrait of a Rebel (New York, Palgrave, 2005) strongly argues for Carlo Tresca’s inclusion in the pantheon of the country’s venerable American revolutionaries.

It was an amazing continuation of where the AFL-CIO and the labor movement have been going in general. I think there was a fantastic amount of attention paid to questions of diversity, questions of opening up the ranks, and in particular real concern about how to bring young workers into the labor movement.

As the swastika flew over most of Europe and millions of German fascist troops drove toward Moscow in early 1941, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said, “we have put an end to 1776, 1789 and 1917,” referring to the American, French and Soviet revolutions.

On the front page of the New York Times (Sept. 28), Steven Erlanger, paraphrasing the words of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, announced that “the specter haunting Europe” is now the “specter of Socialism’s slow collapse.”

Our forefathers thought so much of these four basic rights that they made them the very first amendment to the Constitution of the US. So why have so many official authorities in this country, sworn to uphold that Constitution, spent so much; time, money, and energy to suppress them?