"This way to better media," read the floor sign directing people through a skyway to the Minneapolis Convention Center. Thousands of people gathered there for the fourth National Conference for Media Reform, hosted by freepress.net. They came from all walks of life and all ages to address a central crisis in our society: our broken media system. I was one of the invited speakers.

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"Utah" Phillips died this week at the age of 73. He was a musician, labor organizer, peace activist and co-founder of his local homeless shelter. He also was an archivist, a historian and a traveler; playing guitar and singing almost forgotten songs of the dispossessed and the downtrodden, and keeping alive the memory of labor heroes like Emma Goldman, Joe Hill and the Industrial Workers of the World, "the Wobblies," in a society that too soon forgets.

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Food riots are erupting around the world. Protests have occurred in Egypt, Cameroon, the Philippines, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Senegal. Sarata Guisse, a Senegalese demonstrator, told Reuters: "We are holding this demonstration because we are hungry. We need to eat, we need to work, we are hungry. That's all. We are hungry." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has convened a task force to confront the problem, which threatens, he said, "the specter of widespread hunger, malnutrition and social unrest on an unprecedented scale." The World Food Program has called the food crisis the worst in 45 years, dubbing it a "silent tsunami" that will plunge 100 million more people into hunger.

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Imagine, a candidate for president who, a year or so ago, no one would have considered electable. Now the person is the front-runner, with a groundswell of grass-roots support, threatening the sense of inevitability of the establishment candidates. No, I'm not talking about the American presidential race, but the race for president of the largest association of psychologists in the world, the American Psychological Association. At the heart of the election is a raging debate over torture and interrogations. While the other healing professions, including the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, bar their members from participating in interrogations, the APA leadership has fought against such a restriction.

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We just passed the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq since the invasion five years ago. Still, the death toll climbs.

Typically unmentioned alongside the count of American war dead are the tens of thousands of wounded (not to mention the Iraqi dead). The Pentagon doesn't tout the number of Americans injured, but the Web site icasualties.org reports an official number of more than 40,000 soldiers requiring medical airlifts out of Iraq, a good indicator of the scale of major injuries. That doesn't include many others. Dr. Arthur Blank, an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), estimates that 30 percent of Iraq veterans will suffer from PTSD.

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Last weekend, in the lead up to the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, a remarkable gathering occurred just outside Washington, D.C., called Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations. Hundreds of veterans of these two wars, along with active-duty soldiers, came together to offer testimony about the horrors of war, including atrocities they witnessed or committed themselves.

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While the Iraq War is off the front pages, and Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama embark on what may well be a scorched-earth primary battle against each other, let's keep our eye on where the real scorched earth lies: who profits and who dies.

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On the Sunday following Sept. 11, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney told the truth. On NBC's Meet the Press, he said regarding plans to pursue the perpetrators of that attack: "We have to work the dark side, if you will. We're going to spend time in the shadows." The grim, deadly consequences of his promise have, in the intervening six years, become the shame of our nation and have outraged millions around the world. President George Bush and Cheney, many argue, have overseen a massive global campaign of kidnapping, illegal detentions, harsh interrogations, torture and kangaroo courts where the accused face the death penalty, confronted by secret evidence obtained by torture, without legal representation.

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Nearing 87 years old, Yuri Kochiyama lives in a small room in an Oakland, Calif., senior living facility. Her walls are adorned with photos, posters, postcards and mementos detailing a living history of the revolutionary struggles of the 20th century. She is quiet, humble and small, and has trouble at times retrieving the right word. Yet, with a sparkle in her eyes, she has no trouble recalling the incredible history of the struggle for social justice in the 20th century. She recalls the history not from books, not from documentaries, but from living it, on the front lines.

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Attorney General Michael Mukasey sipped his water nervously. It was the first time he was testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee since his controversial confirmation. At issue then and now: torture. Does he consider waterboarding torture? Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., made it personal: "Would waterboarding be torture if it was done to you?" "I would feel that it was," Mukasey responded. Though he deflected questions, before and after Kennedy's, his personal answer rang true.

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LISTEN: Amy Goodman reads this week's column - [mp3]