Will California Legalize Pot? Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet Today, at least a third of Americans say they've tried smoking weed. Is it possible that after half a century of increasingly mainstreamed pot use the public is ready for marijuana to be legal? We may soon find out. California has long been on the front lines of marijuana policy. In 1996, it became the first state to legalize medical cannabis. This year, the Tax Cannabis initiative -- now officially baptized Proposition 19 -- may very well be the best chance any state has ever had at legalizing the consumption, possession and cultivation of marijuana for anyone over 21.

Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn Chris Hedges Today I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. We have spent five weeks reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” The class is taught in a small room in the basement of the prison. I pass through a metal detector, am patted down by a guard and walk through three pairs of iron gates to get to my students. We have covered Spain’s genocide of the native inhabitants in the Caribbean and the Americas, the war for independence in the United States and the disgraceful slaughter of Native Americans. We have examined slavery, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the occupations of Cuba and the Philippines, the New Deal, two world wars and the legacy of racism, capitalist exploitation and imperialism that continue to infect American society.

Wyclef Jean for President of Haiti? Look beyond the Hype Charlie Hinton and Kiilu Nyasha, Haiti Action Committee To cut to the chase, no election in Haiti, and no candidate in those elections, will be considered legitimate by the majority of Haiti's population, unless it includes the full and fair participation of the Fanmi Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Fanmi Lavalas is unquestionably the most popular party in the country, yet the "international community," led by the United States, France, and Canada, has done everything possible to undermine Aristide and Lavalas, overthrowing him twice by military coups in 1991 and 2004, and banishing Aristide, who now lives in South Africa with his family, from the Americas.

The “New Normal”: More than One in Five Americans at Risk of Destitution Barry Grey More than one in five Americans in 2009 suffered a household income loss of 25 percent or more over the previous year, according to a new report sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation and entitled “Economic Security at Risk.” The report documents a steady increase in economic insecurity since the 1960s, and concludes that annual income losses of 25 percent or greater increased by 49.9 percent between 1985 and 2009. “Putting this tend in terms of population,” the report states, “approximately 46 million Americans were counted as insecure in 2007, up from 28 million in 1985.” The head of the research team that prepared the report, Yale University Professor Jacob Hacker, told an interviewer, “What we’re seeing, basically, is what we’re calling ‘the new normal.’ We’re slowly ratcheting up this level of economic insecurity.”

Marx and Makhno Meet McDonald's Loren Goldner Over the last several years, a revolving network of militants in Paris, France, have developed a strategy and tactics for winning strikes by marginal, low-paid, outsourced and immigrant workers against international chains, in situations where the strikers are often ignored by unions to which they nominally belong, or are actually obstructed by them. While some of these methods benefit from aspects of French labour law that are more favourable to strikers than one finds in the backward U.S. of A, the overall strategy can certainly find its uses in other countries.

Football and Class Struggle In Italy, catenaccio was class struggle! In June of 2006, Negri talks with Renaud Dely and Rico Rizzitelli, journalists from Liberation. Football, Fordism and class struggle are some of the topics which come up throughout the interview. Q: How can it be that you, a Marxist philosopher, radical thinker and theorist of the alterglobalization movement, support AC Milan, club owned by Silvio Berlusconi? That is precisely why I cannot leave! I am a slave to my passion! It is like when you have a friend who is a prostitute: you love her no matter what! Before, people on the right and on the left would support Inter and Milan respectively. It was parallel to their political commitments. It is much more confused today. It is not necessary to take the economic organization of the club very seriously. I love AC Milan because it is my father’s club and of my children. I participated in the creation of the Brigate Rossonere,(1) which have nothing to do with the Brigate Rossi; it was before, in the 1960’s. We were followers of the left and we installed ourselves in the south end of the stadium. I have three children and they are all ‘Milanistas’. My daughter married a ‘Interista’, which caused a lot of problems. (jokingly) It made me happy when they separated. At any rate, football is nothing more than a game….

More Optimistic Today Than Ever: A Talk with Pete Seeger David Kupfer in conversation with Pete Seeger, Reality Sandwich "There is hardly anything bad in the world that doesn't have something good connected to it." Pete Seeger is one of the world's quintessential activists, having played such an important role in singing the songs and engaging in the struggles of the civil rights, free speech, human rights, anti-Vietnam War, environmental, peace, anti- nuclear, and social justice movements. He spans musical eras, from those who inspired him, Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly, to those he inspired, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bruce Springsteen, Dave Mathews, and Ani DiFranco.

Great Decoupling of Corporate Profits from Jobs Robert Reich Second-quarter earnings reports are coming in, and they're making Wall Street smile. Corporate profits are up. And big American companies are sitting on a gigantic pile of money. The 500 largest non-financial firms held almost a trillion dollars in the second quarter, and that money pile is growing larger this quarter. Profits that plummeted in the recession have bounced back. Big businesses have recovered almost 90 percent of what they lost. So with all this money and profit, they'll start hiring again, right? Wrong - for three reasons.

Jailbreaking Your iPhone: Now Perfectly Legal Josh Levy, FreePress.net The Library of Congress made a big, unexpected decision today, announcing that users who unlock or jailbreak their mobile phones are within the legal clear — they're not violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. It's a big win for openness. This decision is a first step toward opening up wireless networks and releasing the stranglehold that companies have on consumers who, until now, were legally restricted from doing whatever they want to their phones.

Militarization of Central America and the Caribbean: The U.S. Military Moves Into Costa Rica Mark Vorpahl Nestled between Panama to its south and Nicaragua to its north, Costa Rica is a Central American nation roughly the size of Rhode Island. If another nation were to send Rhode Island a force of 7,000 troops, 200 helicopters, and 46 warships in an effort to eradicate drug trafficking, it is doubtful that the residents of Rhode Island would consider this offer "on-the-level." Such a massive military force could hardly be efficiently used to combat drug cartels. The only logical conclusion is that the nation whose troops now are occupying this other country had another agenda in mind that it didn't want to share.