Oct. 20, 2007

HAVANA — “Best decision I ever made,” said medical student Cori Marshall of Chicago characterizing her first year at Cuba’s Latin American School of Medicine (LASM). The school graduated its third class of new doctors on July 24. The 2,188 health professionals receiving diplomas at a graduation spectacular at Karl Marx Theater here included eight U.S. medical students who had finished six years of study.

The Bush administration was pressing phone-spying on Americans long before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a former phone company CEO has revealed.

It’s been said that Communists make the best fighters for social progress because they have the big picture of the struggle, the long view of the road towards a better society, and feel strongly about justice.

Watada’s leadership
SCHIP fight
Globalization tune
Victory
Bottom line
We want to hear from you!

Last week I read a report that U.S. guards employed by a private security company fired into a car carrying four Iraqi people in Baghdad. The driver and a woman in the front seat were killed, while another woman and a child in the back seat survived this unprovoked shooting. This latest incident is sure to raise to a higher pitch the public outcry in the US as well as Iraq against these unconscionable atrocities and private security firms.

Al Gore, former U.S. vice president and presidential candidate, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate on Climate Change, a UN-sponsored group of scientists, have jointly won this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for their work on global warming. Like most things in life, this is a mixture of good and bad, positive and negative.

2007 marks the 100th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s birth. And while the writer of “Silent Spring” and the woman credited with launching the modern environmental movement has been praised by many, some have used the anniversary to launch scathing and unfounded attacks. The wrangling over Carson’s legacy has even reached Congress.

Lorraine Vivian Hansberry was one of the most relevant playwrights of the 20th century. Her work highlights the struggle for equality and justice, as an African American woman who in her early years was also a leader of the Communist youth movement.

CHICAGO — Approaching half a decade now, the Chicago International Film Festival features movies from 44 countries, including some that produce very few movies like Puerto Rico, Bulgaria and Burkina Faso.