The world’s working class and people had no side in the war in Iraq and nothing to gain. George Bush, with his narrow band of extreme right-wing ideologues, corporate interests, military fanatics and racists, was willing to spill gallons of other people’s blood for economic and political domination. The corrupt, dictatorial regime in Baghdad, while really powerless in this situation, was willing to sacrifice its people in hope of preserving its rule. In response to the slaughter, the world’s overwhelming majority, the working people, demand an immediate end to the war and the complete withdrawal of all US, British and other forces from Iraq and the region.

Almost 4 million new cars sit unsold in car dealers’ lots. A credit analyst who predicted Enron’s downfall now believes that Ford may go bankrupt. Hundreds of surplus airplanes sit parked. Bond markets’ near-zero valuation of US airline debt points to a belief that the industry could collapse.

After attempting to turn around the economic crisis that the neoliberal globalized economy is experiencing, the world’s greatest imperial power, the United States, is leaving a trail of new contradictions that affect humanity not only in the economic area, but also at social, political, cultural and personal levels.

Editors note: PA science editor Prasad Venugopal interviewed members of the International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal last April. Bhopal, India is the site of one of the worst industrial disasters in history. Over 18 years later the people of Bhopal are still demanding justice. Venugopal spoke with Krishnaveni Gundu and Nityanand Jayaraman. Readers can find out more at the ICJB website: www.bhopal.net.

There has been an alarming trend developing over the past 20 years in regards to the skyrocketing prison populations. Prisons have been transformed from tools of the criminal justice system to segregate the most dangerous and offensive criminals from society at large, to large-scale detention centers aimed at controlling massive numbers of working class youth. We are called by some “the home of the free,” but a more accurate description is “the home of the incarcerated.”

As a few corporate criminals are paraded before the press to show government concern for the kinds of deception practiced by some Enron officials, Vijay Prashad’s book, Fat Cats and Running Dogs, delves more deeply to reveal the true extent of their crimes.

Meghnad Desai is the director of the Centre for the study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics, and Marx’s Revenge is his analysis of the glories of globalization, free trade and the everlastingness of capitalism.

Joseph Stiglitz is no radical. He is a mainstream “free market” economist who won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics. He served as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers for President Bill Clinton, starting in 1993. Globalization and Its Discontents is a fascinating insider’s look at the process of capitalist globalization.