Socialist Alternative representative Ramy Khalil debated Tea Party leader Keli Carender on the radio. Listen to the debate here from Pacifica-affiliated KBCS 91.3 FM Voices of Diversity on July 21, 2010.

In the elections of December 2009 and April 2010, once again the oppressed Bolivian masses showed their desire for fundamental change to eradicate the deep problems which continue to plague this country.

In May of this year the Nepali masses once again demonstrated their thirst for a revolutionary transformation of society, when they took to the streets in their tens of thousands. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) (UCPN (M)) called for a general strike and protests on 1 May to demand the resignation of the new Prime Minister, Madhav Kumar Nepal.

On Thursday 24 June, about two million workers took to the streets in about 200 cities and towns of France in a national day of action called by the main trade union organisations (CGT, CFDT, CFTC, UNSA, FSU and Solidaires) against the pension reforms. This is the centre-piece of the wave of attacks concocted by the Sarkozy-Fillon government, aimed at slashing up to €100 billion from public spending by 2013. Many capitalist voices, in France and internationally, are already pushing for ‘supplementary efforts’, arguing that such a move remains insufficient.

The idea that education is the great social leveler in US society is drummed into our heads since kindergarten. Peter Sacks’excellent book, which has just been published in paperback, exposes this myth through a mountain of facts and insightful analysis.

The G20 meeting in Toronto of the leaders of the main capitalist governments of the world demonstrated a complete incapacity to solve the huge problems that confront us, particularly those hardest-hit – the poor and the working class – by the economic crisis.

Being a supervisor for five years at a Fortune 500 company made me a socialist. When I first entered management I was a Republican and honestly believed that if you worked hard and the company prospered, you would prosper as well.

The 28-day strike of 1,500 nurses and professional/technical staff, represented by the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP), beat back a long list of concessionary demands at Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia. Significantly, the hospital backed off its proposed “gag” clause which threatened staff with discipline and fines for any negative public statement about Temple. Further, the administration was forced to reinstate a limited dependent tuition benefit after illegally eliminating it unilaterally in March 2009. (For details on the settlement, see my May 21 article in labornotes.org).

In the film Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore points out that the richest 1% of the American population owns more financial wealth (net worth minus net equity of a home) than the bottom 95% combined. A more recent study using data from 2007 shows the top 1% owning 48.4% of the non-home wealth, while the bottom 95% owned only 20% (politifact.com). There are different ways to crunch these numbers, but in any and every case it’s clear that the rich are getting richer while working people and the poor are left behind.

The conclusions drawn by the influential feminist, Natasha Walter, in her latest book, Living Dolls, may surprise readers of her earlier material. In an honest reappraisal of her position, Walter now accepts that sexism and discrimination against women are ever more widespread, and that it is not possible to separate the personal from the political in capitalist society. CHRISTINE THOMAS reviews this change.

On May 17 several undocumented immigrant youth staged a sit-in at Arizona Senator John McCain’s office demanding he support the DREAM Act (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin and Richard Lugar.

On March 30 of this year, the New York Times reported “the Obama administration is proposing to open vast expanses of water along the Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and the north coast of Alaska to oil and natural gas drilling, much of it for the first time.” Three weeks later, disaster hit Deepwater Horizon.

The neo-liberal transformation of New York City since the mid-1970s has meant increasing pain and social exclusion for working people, but especially for people of color.

Cindy Sheehan came to prominence in 2005 when she set up a protest camp outside of President Bush's ranch, waiting to ask him simply why he had to send her son to die in Iraq. In 2008 she ran for Congress as an Independent against the top Democrat Nancy Pelosi, winning an impressive 16% of the vote, beating the Republican, and coming in second place.

Europe is facing its biggest economic and political crisis in decades. Large state debts in a number of smaller European Union countries are undermining confidence in the euro, compounding the effects of the global downturn. To get out of this spiral of crisis, European ruling classes are demanding big cuts in living standards from workers. The danger they face is that the massive opposition to these cuts will grow over into open revolt.