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August 9, 2002 | Issue 417

FRONT AND BACK PAGES

Corporate criminals cash in
The new robber barons
At the end of the 19th century, the robber barons owned the corporations and banks and the politicians and police. They made their own rules--and accumulated huge fortunes. Meet the new robber barons. They refused to be bound by rules, too--and profited handsomely from their corporate crimes.

End U.S. support for Israel's terror
Stop the war on Palestinians
George W. Bush told reporters that he was "furious" about recent Palestinian attacks in Israel. But when Israeli forces used U.S.-supplied F-16 jets to drop a one-ton bomb on a Gaza apartment building, killing 15 people and injuring more than 100, Bush couldn't muster any fury at all.

SPECIAL FEATURES

How Corporate America is stealing our future
The great retirement robbery
Corporate America is stealing workers' futures. Sometimes it's the smash-and-grab, like at Enron. But for millions of others, it's a slow bleed. Socialist Worker takes a closer look at what it means to retire.

A new book that explains the roots of Israel's bloody war
How will Palestine be freed?
SW reviews Haymarket Books' The Struggle for Palestine, which explains the roots of Israel's war on Palestinians and makes the case for a secular, democratic state in all of Palestine.

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WHAT WE THINK

Washington debates plans for a new war on Iraq
The horrors they're ready to commit
Not if but when. That's the consensus of the Washington establishment about a barbaric new war on Iraq.

Will the recovery give out?
Stock-market meltdowns and sleazy CEOs are only the symptoms. The ills plaguing the U.S. economy run much deeper. That's the inescapable conclusion from new government statistics showing that the weak recovery this year might give way to a new slump.

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NATIONAL NEWS

Scandals engulf Corporate America's biggest names
A barrel full of rotten apples
The Bush administration has been parading handcuffed felons from WorldCom, ImClone and Adelphia in front of the TV cameras. But it's getting harder by the day to sell the story that the collapse of corporate giants like Enron is just a matter of a few bad apples.

More police won't stop inner-city violence
Cops aren't the answer
"One hundred more cops don't make me feel safer." That was the message on the signs of demonstrators at the Oakland City Council meeting who came to protest Mayor Jerry Brown's answer to violent crime--a plan to spend $65 million to hire 100 new cops.

Bush's fast-track fraud
Congress handed George W. Bush a major victory when it approved "fast-track" trade authority as Socialist Worker went to press.

Kept out of college because of poverty
Hundreds of thousands of high school seniors won't be going to college this fall--not because they aren't smart enough or didn't work hard, but because they can't afford to.

U.S. gets human rights chief booted
Mary Robinson, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, is losing her job--because the U.S. government wants her out.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

AFGHANISTAN
UN buries a report exposing U.S. cover-up of bombing atrocity
Victims of another Pentagon blunder
"Less than perfect intelligence." That's the excuse that the U.S. military is using to explain its slaughter of dozens of innocent Afghans last month.

LATIN AMERICA
The misery of the free market
Economic crisis and mass protests are spreading like wildfire across South America--from the continent's biggest power, Brazil, to smaller countries like Peru and Uruguay.

SOUTHERN AFRICA
West won't aid Africa
The famine they want to ignore
Countries across Southern Africa are facing widespread famine--and the leaders of the West are doing nothing.

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COLUMNS

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
The working-class majority in the U.S.
The phrase most associated with Karl Marx is, "Workers of the world unite--you have nothing to lose but your chains." For many people, that phrase alone relegates Marxism to irrelevance in the modern world. But the vast majority of people in the U.S. today are part of the working class.

THE MEANING OF MARXISM
How Lincoln came to be an abolitionist
"Just as one does not judge an individual by what he thinks about himself, so one cannot judge such a period of transformation by its consciousness, but, on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained from the contradictions of material life." So wrote Karl Marx in his "Preface to a Critique of Political Economy." The American Civil War fits this description well.

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ON THE PICKET LINE

Deal falls short on wages, full-time jobs and more
Vote no on UPS contract
The media have praised the United Parcel Service proposed contract with the Teamsters as a "win-win" deal for management and union members. But this deal is bad for Teamsters--and should be voted down.

Queens bus drivers vote on deal
Striking workers at private bus lines in Queens were set to vote on a contract offer as Socialist Worker went to press.

Dominion Virginia Power
Some 3,500 workers from Dominion Virginia Power went on strike for the first time in 38 years to defend their retirement and health care benefits from the corporate ax.

Labor in brief
West Coast longshore workers; Raytheon; East Bay hotel workers; University of Massachusetts-Amherst; AFL-CIO rallies

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REPORTS FROM THE STRUGGLE

Stop the Nazis in D.C.
The neo-Nazi National Alliance is planning a major mobilization for an August 24 rally at the U.S. Capitol.

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SW READERS SPEAK OUT

Miners' lives are worth nothing to the bosses
An unnatural disaster
I'm from western Pennsylvania, where coal mining has been a way of life for more than 200 years. I cried with relief when the nine miners trapped in the Quecreek Mine were rescued. But now that they're safe, it's time to ask: Who's to blame for putting these workers' lives at risk?

Abandoned by the U.S. to justify a war
A lot of folks find it beyond belief to think that the U.S. government might sacrifice thousands of American citizens to get an excuse to go to war. But a recent lawsuit filed by Northwestern University law professor Marcia Fee Achenbach and 500 other plaintiffs begs to differ.

Other letters
Nothing free about Kashmir elections; Farmers' revolt in Mexico; Sharon is the real terrorist; "Hate speech" laws don't take on racism

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REVIEWS

A PEOPLE'S VACATION GUIDE
Visiting Leon Trotsky's last home in exile
A rare glimpse into a revolutionary's life
Mexico City is a favorite vacation destination for U.S. travelers abroad. If you're there, a subway ride will take you to Coyoacan, the last home in exile of Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Songs to stop the executioner in his tracks
"The Pine Valley Cosmonauts consign songs of Murder, Mob-Law & Cruel, Cruel Punishment to the realm of Myth, Memory and History." So reads the title of the liner notes of The Executioner's Last Songs, a benefit CD for the Illinois Death Penalty Moratorium Project.

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