Oct. 27, 2007

LAS VEGAS — Some 800 women (and a few men) stomped and cheered as they passed a resolution demanding an end to the war and the occupation of Iraq. They were delegates to the 14th biennial national convention of the Coalition of Labor Union Women (CLUW), meeting here Oct. 10-13.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — “Our members are thrilled. For the first time in years we pulled off a victory.” Ray Milici, veteran of 40-plus years working at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), was reflecting on the significance of the August contract settlement between the hospital and the 150 dietary workers represented by 1199/SEIU.

The death of Veterans for Peace leader David Cline on Sept. 15 in Jersey City, N.J., touched off an outpouring of tributes from his fellow veterans that continues to this day.

The War Resisters League has put out a 2008 peace calendar titled “Salaam, Shalom, Solh: Nonviolence and Resistance in the Middle East and Beyond.” The slender volume, edited by Jim Haber, features heart-warming and heart-rending stories from movements bringing people together for peaceful change across dozens of political, religious and cultural divides.

SEATTLE — A traveling exhibit, “Journey for Justice: 223 Years of Asian Pacific American History in the Puget Sound,” opened at the Wing Luke Asian Museum here Sept. 27 with its bold message that Asian Pacific American workers have won victories over racism and exploitation, yet continue to struggle for equality today.

As we went to press, devastating wildfires sweeping southern California had forced at least half a million people to flee their homes, with close to 2,000 houses destroyed. Twenty-one firefighters and at least 24 others had been injured. Several deaths were reported.

Mean. Vicious. Those words describe the 154 Republicans and two Democrats in the House who voted Oct. 18 to sustain George W. Bush’s veto of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Wildfires, climate change and Iraq
Subprime corruption
Thanks from Albuquerque
Nobel Prize in economics
Dental decay on the rise

During World War I, the Turkish-controlled Ottoman Empire was crumbling. In the decades before the war, economic dislocation and political crisis intensified the long-standing oppression of the Armenian Christian minority. World War I (1914-1918) was a bloody war between rising and aging empires: the Ottoman Empire was allied with the German monarchy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the losing side, against an alliance of Czarist Russia, Britain, France, Japan and the United States.