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April 19, 2002 | Issue 403
FRONT AND BACK PAGES
Bush's hit list: Afghans, Palestinians, Iraqis…
Stop Bush's war machine
"Sometimes brute force can be useful," said Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish, explaining why his bosses in the Bush administration want to add nuclear weapons to their insane Star Wars missile defense scheme. But Kadish's words could just as easily be the motto for the Bush gang's drive to war around the globe.
The massacre Israel denies
Slaughter in Jenin
"It is the end of life." That's how one dazed man described the carnage and destruction as he fled from the Jenin refugee camp that Israel Defense Forces soldiers turned into a slaughterhouse.
WHAT WE THINK
WHAT WE THINK
Washington politicians line up to justify Sharon's slaughter
Cheering on Israel's war
When Lebanese fascist militias massacred up to 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in 1982, an Israeli inquiry found Ariel Sharon to be "indirectly responsible." Twenty years later, Sharon is directly responsible for another massacre of Palestinians--this time in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
WHAT WE THINK
A U.S.-backed coup that backfired
"When is a coup not a coup?" asked the New York Times' Tim Weiner. "When the United States says so, it seems." Weiner perfectly captured the lying-through-their-teeth hypocrisy of the Bush gang and their support for the would-be dictators who briefly seized power in Venezuela last week.
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STAND UP AGAINST ISRAEL'S WAR
Naseer Aruri on why Oslo was doomed to fail
"Israel's recipe for perpetual conflict"
No Israeli defense of its war on Palestinians would be complete without a reference to Yasser Arafat's supposed rejection of "peace" at the Camp David summit hosted by Bill Clinton. But the facts are very different, as Naseer Aruri, author of The Obstruction of Peace, explains.
Resisting Israel's iron fist
Israeli civilians are "murdered." Palestinian civilians are "caught in the crossfire." This is the double standard of the U.S. mainstream media.
How can Palestine be liberated?
The only just solution is a democratic and secular Palestine, with equal rights for all. Achieving this will mean confronting Israel; its backer, U.S. imperialism; and the corrupt and dictatorial Arab states that collaborate with the U.S.
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
The real source of violence in the Middle East
Countering their lies
For most people in the U.S., who rely exclusively on the mass media for news, the crisis in the Middle East appears remote--a tragic "cycle of violence" that U.S. leaders have repeatedly tried to stop without success. But the mainstream news media has withheld the information most crucial to understanding the conflict.
Protesters across U.S. say:
Stop Israel's terror!
Even as U.S. politicians declared their bipartisan support for Israel, thousands of people took to the streets across the country to show their solidarity with Palestinians.
How Washington created a monster
No other country in the world has received as much aid or support from the U.S. government as Israel.
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THE REAL FACE OF THE "WAR AGAINST TERROR"
World's cop
Anyone who still believes that George W. Bush's "war against terrorism" is about justice for the victims of September 11 should listen to Bush's foreign policy advisers--who are asking how "you capitalize on these opportunities" from September 11.
Sami Al-Arian on the witch-hunt against him.
"This is like fighting ghosts"
Dr. Sami Al-Arian is a computer science professor at the University of South Florida who became the target of a witch-hunt after Fox News' right-wing talk show host Bill O'Reilly branded him a "terrorist." Here, he speaks with Socialist Worker about the struggle against George W. Bush's war at home.
Disaster in the "new" Afghanistan
Every day brings more evidence that the new "liberated" Afghanistan looks like the old one.
King's stand against a U.S. war
The Washington Post declared that he had "diminished his usefulness to his cause, his country, his people." Time magazine called his words "demagogic slander." The object of this abuse was a man who is celebrated today as a hero--Martin Luther King.
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SW SPECIAL FEATURE
One child dies of hunger every seven seconds
Poverty in a world of plenty
In the few seconds that it takes to read this paragraph, another child somewhere in the world will die from hunger or a disease related to hunger. That's the scale of malnutrition and its devastating consequences in the world today, according to the United Nations (UN) World Food Program.
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NATIONAL NEWS
Why didn't Illinois report recommend abolition?
A broken system that can't be fixed
After two years of research, the Illinois commission assigned to study the state's broken death penalty system released its findings. But the commission refused to call for abolition of the death penalty, even though a majority of members voted in support of this earlier in their deliberations.
Milestone for innocent on death row
Last week, Ray Krone became the 100th innocent person in the country to be exonerated and released from death row since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976.
Justice Department targets attorney
Ashcroft's witch-hunt
The U.S. government opened a new front last week in its war at home. Federal prosecutors charged New York defense lawyer Lynne Stewart, along with three other people, with "unlawful communications" with Stewart's client, Egyptian Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman.
Bush blames global warming messenger
George W. Bush and Dick Cheney swear up and down that oil companies aren't running White House energy policy from behind the scenes. And it's true. They're running it openly.
Bailout for the insurance bosses
You certainly can't accuse George W. Bush of letting his never-ending "war on terror" get in the way of his never-ending quest to line the pockets of Corporate America.
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INTERNATIONAL NEWS
VENEZUELA
Washington-backed bosses' bid for power defeated by mass protests
The coup that failed
A mobilization by Venezuela's poor defeated a U.S.-backed coup and returned populist leader Hugo Chávez Frias to power.
FRANCE
Revolutionary shakes up French vote
A revolutionary socialist candidate is shaking up France's presidential election by gaining 10 percent support in opinion polls ahead of the national vote on April 21.
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COLUMNS
THE MEANING OF MARXISM
Anarchy of the capitalist system
We are told that capitalism and the market are the most efficient ways to distribute goods and services. State planning--as shown by the experiment in Russia--was an abject failure. But the question is, who's doing the planning and why?
INSIDE THE SYSTEM
Everywhere you want to pay interest
Pity the poor credit card companies. Having issued five cards for every man, woman and child in the United States, the credit bosses think that the market may be a bit "oversaturated." That's why Visa is finding new ways for people to use cards that they already have.
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ON THE PICKET LINE
New York City teachers prepare to vote on contract
Raises, not concessions!
A state fact-finding panel released its nonbinding recommendations for a contract settlement for New York City teachers April 10. While the panel recommended that teachers be given a raise, it would fall well below what the union requested.
HERE targets Claremont hotel spa
Workers at the Claremont Resorts and Spa are united in a fight for union rights and justice on the job. Although the majority of the hotel's employees are unionized with HERE Local 2850, about 140 employees who work in the spa and salon are not.
Labor in brief
Lockheed Martin; Pacific Maritime Association; University of Illinois--Chicago; Stanford University living wage
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REPORTS FROM THE STRUGGLE
Demand justice for the Hamoui family
Activists are holding weekly protests at the Immigration and Naturalization Service jail in Seattle to demand freedom for the Hamoui family. Safouh, Hanan Ismail and their 19-year-old daughter have been locked up for almost two months under Attorney General John Ashcroft's "Absconder Apprehension Initiative."
End the death penalty
Forty people picketed at San Quentin State Prison to build support for the California moratorium on the death penalty.
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SW READERS SPEAK OUT
Mass demonstrations in defense of the Intifada
The upheaval in Egypt
On April 8, at Alexandria University in Egypt, security forces killed a student demonstrator and injured dozens in a crackdown on one of the many massive protests that have swept the country in solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada.
We took a stand for justice for Palestinians
Since September 11, many international students now have to worry about whether they'll be deported for speaking their minds. But not even these attacks can drown out the cries for justice in occupied Palestine that have swept the world in the past few weeks. April 11 saw the emergence of those cries on my campus.
You can't compare Israelis and Nazis
In a recent editorial, you compared Palestinian suicide bombers to Jews who resisted the Nazis during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Your comparison can only fuel anti-Jewish feelings--which here in France have led manipulated individuals to burn synagogues and beat up Jews in the street.
Other letters
Don't mourn the death of a parasite; Phil Hellesto fought for a better society; Kudos to SW for the good work; Correction
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REVIEWS
Overcoming the walls that divide us
In Operation Gatekeeper, journalist Joseph Nevins traces the development of the U.S.-Mexico border and the evolution of U.S. policy that has led to the border crackdown and the classification of Mexican workers as "illegals."
A view of the Iranian Revolution
Maryam tells the story of an Iranian teenager living in suburban New Jersey during the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
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