The Obama administration, as it seeks to withdraw from Iraq, finds itself in a far more difficult and complicated situation in Afghanistan. In February, the National Security Archive, a Washington-based institute that uncovers classified documents from the Cold War era, released a collection of fascinating documents from Soviet sources in the Gorbachev era.

Probably many of the scenarios presented in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) most recent reports on the natural and social impacts of global warming will take place not in the year 2100 or even 2050.

Taking the first bold steps to reverse the Bush administration's budget priorities, President Barack Obama – with the support of the labor movement and other progressive groups – is pushing hard for passage of his first budget for 2010.

“The embargo on Cuba has been in place for almost 50 years. Although it may have been an appropriate policy response to the Cuban Revolution in the milieu of the Cold War, the reality of the 21st century calls for its abolishment.”

Immigrants in the United States, as well as activists supporting immigrant workers’ rights, are wondering what the impact of the current national and world financial crisis will be on immigration, and on efforts to get a better deal for immigrant workers, with or without papers, under the new administration.

It was the passage of the landmark Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the same year that Medicare and Medicaid were enacted, that marked the birth of America's Community Health Centers (also known as Federally Qualified Health Centers).

Basically the labor movement supported it. The Buy American provision was changed a couple of times, but in its initial form it mandated that public projects in the stimulus package receiving tax dollars must have some domestic content.

Very briefly, the whole theory of cultural pluralism can be defined as a belief – a conviction – that the cultures of immigrants, particularly their languages, should be encouraged, sustained and developed, and not looked upon as something that should be erased and denigrated in any way, and that that would create a more varied and democratic culture.

Socialism can be defined as a phase of social-economic development during which ever-larger numbers of people in society are increasingly empowered to collectively control the direction of their lives through the process of incrementally crafting new democratic means of ownership and institutions for running the economy and other areas of social life.

The conception of art as a weapon has been promoted during various trying times in history of the American people. In the twentieth century, the period from the early 1900s to the end of the Great Depression is most often cited for its protest arts.

In dealing with the current financial crisis, the US government is acquiring shares of financial and other corporations to which it is providing bailout funds. The press has been raising the specter that these actions are moving the United States toward socialism.

Barack Obama's victory is indeed an historic breakthrough for US politics. In a country that enforced a system of legalized racism until just 40 years ago, and that was founded on white supremacy, Black slavery and Native genocide, the election of the first Black president is cause for jubilation.

Se preguntan a si mismos los inmigrantes en EEUU, así como activistas pro derechos de los trabajadores inmigrantes, sobre el impacto que tendrá la crisis financiera nacional e internacional sobre la inmigración y los esfuerzos por conseguir un mejor trato a los trabajadores inmigrantes, con o sin papeles, bajo la nueva administración.

The author is a professor of history and international relations at Boston University. A lifelong conservative with several other books to his credit, Bacevich is a retired military colonel who served in Viet Nam and taught at West Point and John Hopkins University.