Some genetically engineered chickens are coming home to roost for Major League Baseball. Grand Jury testimony from the Bay Area Lab Company (BALCO) investigation has been leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, and the clucking has begun. We now know that former MVP and Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi admitted under oath to using all kinds of steroids.

» Find more of the online edition.

There is no reason to "fix" Social Security any time soon. According to the numbers used by everyone, including the President's Commission, Social Security can pay all promised benefits for the next 38 years without any changes at all. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office just upped that estimate to 48 years.

» Find more of the online edition.

Bush's recent trip to South America provides a valuable foreign-policy lesson for Americans. The President was greeted in Santiago, Chile, by some 30,000 angry demonstrators. But it was not only Bush's invasion and war of aggression against Iraq that Chileans were angry about.

» Find more of the online edition.

What happens when two bubbles collide? Do they both burst, or do they coalesce and become an even bigger bubble - which will eventually burst even more spectacularly? That is the question posed by the growth figures from both the US and China, whose growth rates are tied in ways that neither seems to want to admit too loudly.

» Find more of the online edition.

It’s a late morning start today…as I’m waiting for Abu Talat, who calls to tell me he is snarled in traffic and will be late once again, huge explosions shake my hotel. Shortly thereafter mortars are exploding in the "green zone" as the loud warning sirens there begin to blare across Baghdad.

» Find more of the online edition.

If the left is to broaden its appeal to working people, it must begin to see them more holistically and appeal to them on issues of human rights. There is a long tradition in U.S. history upholding "human rights," the rights of labor and the whole people, as against "property rights," the rights in the 19th century of "the rich and the well-born" in the twentieth of corporations and investors.

» Find more of the online edition.

The American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) is a Quaker Organization and as such prepared a report for its Peace Education Division back in 1969. Although the book was written and published over 30 years ago it does a remarkable job in explaining why Communism is still mistrusted in the United States today.

» Find more of the online edition.

The life insurance industry in South Africa announced that it is scrapping HIV/AIDS exclusion clauses for new applicants for long-term insurance coverage. This decision means HIV/AIDS will be treated the same as other medical conditions like diabetes or cancer. As we mark World Aids Day today, we should celebrate this major victory for the SACP-led financial sector campaign.

» Find more of the online edition.

The story seems familiar. The son of a king, always feeling as though he hasn’t lived up to his father’s standards, drives his army across the world to Babylon (modern day Iraq) to conquer an empire. This empire (Persia) is commanded by a tyrant whose rule, or so goes the Macedonian propaganda machine, is based only on brutality and slavery.

» Find more of the online edition.

George W Bush has been re-elected president of the United States, and he has increased his margin of support in both houses of the Congress. What happens now – in the United States, in the world? We have to start any analysis with an appraisal of Bush. Bush is by far the most right-wing president the US has had since the Great Depression.

» Find more of the online edition.

It’s now the hottest commercial since Clara Peller looked beseechingly upon the world and asked us for the location of "the beef." Thanks to Budweiser, the buzz is all about "Leon." "Leon" is Bud’s big joke parody of the modern professional athlete. "Leon" won’t do interviews unless his special dimple is on display. "Leon" is far more concerned about looking "pretty" than playing well.

» Find more of the online edition.

The October jump in the producer price index and the consumer price index signals a new phase in the four-year trends in inflation and real wages. These trends now confirm a downward trend in the living standards for U.S. workers. From October 2003 to October 2004, real average weekly earnings fell by half a percentage point.

» Find more of the online edition.

"Thanksgiving" has come and gone. Let’s look at last week’s news and views, some of it at any rate, to see who should be thankful for what. David Brooks, the ultra right op-eder for the New York Times was thankful for "Globalization" which he thinks is reducing global poverty.

» Find more of the online edition.

U.S. forces in Iraq have to be rated as competent at what they are designed to accomplish: killing people, destroying things, and bringing chaos out of order. To date, efforts by the U.S. to recreate a stable, new order that meets the immediate needs of the population, have lagged significantly.

» Find more of the online edition.

One thing separates the two Ukraine candidates, and which explains the US determination to shoo in Yushchenko: NATO. Yanukovych is against Ukraine joining; Yushchenko is in favor. The US wants Ukraine in NATO to weaken Russia geopolitically and to have a new big client state for expensive Western weaponry, whose manufacturers fund so much of the US political process.

» Find more of the online edition.

With their websites and stickers, their pranks and slogans aimed at banishing widespread fear of a corrupt regime, the democracy guerrillas of the Ukrainian Pora youth movement have already notched up a famous victory – whatever the outcome of the dangerous stand-off in Kiev.

» Find more of the online edition.