Both Abe Proctor and Joe Uris are on vacation this week.

Today, Peter Shapiro and Kevin Card tell us some horror stories about the current Health Care Crisis, and listeners are encouraged to call in and share theirs.  It seems as tho everyone has been touched by the health care crisis lately. If you haven't been personally burned by our profit-driven, insurance based health care system, you probably have a friend or loved one who has been.

This edition of the Old Mole is hosted by Tom Becker (pictured here), and its topics include the global politics of climate change, the history and role of Bitch Magazine, the right to be irate when being arrested, healthcare workers' fight for their own union, and a set of short stories about women, men, and cats.

Do we or don't we have the right to talk back--even to be irate--to an officer of the law?  Bill Resnick comments on this un-remarked issue in the case of  Henry Louis  Gates's arrest in his own home in Cambridge.  

Seven months into a new administration and the nation still finds itself embroiled in two Asian wars. Many Americans would have difficulty explaining how the Obama administration's conduct of these wars differs from the last administration's. They're certainly not being helped by policymakers and pundits who are working overtime to marginalize arguments for American withdrawal from the region. With the economy now people's foremost concern, how does the peace movement change the national conversation about war and peace?

As recent events in Iran have shown, technology has given ordinary people the power to inform neighbors down the street and strangers halfway around the world about important events regardless of government censorship or corporate media indifference. "Community media" - citizen-operated print, broadcast and digital technologies - is filling the information needs of a growing number of Americans. The Alliance for Community Media's 2009 international conference recently took place in Portland, where hundreds of media activists discussed new concepts in community media and challenge old ones.