Tom Chalkley talks with expatriate Iraqis about life under--and after--Saddam Hussein, the three Iraq wars, and the role of the United States.

The drive of the Bush administration for US empire building is questioned by some major capitalists. Immanuel Wallerstein argues that "Seen in longer historical perspective, what we are seeing here is the 500-year-old tension in the modern world-system between those who wish to protect the interests of the capitalist strata by ensuring a well-functioning world-economy, with a hegemonic but non-imperial power to guarantee its political underpinnings, and those who wish to transform the world-system into a world-empire."

The question of anti-Semitism within the US Left was highlighted in February during controversy between Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun, and the Marxist-Leninist anti-war group, Act Now to Stop War and End Racism. Joel Kovel questions Lerner's political analysis, revealed by his use of the notion of anti-Semitism during February's controversy.

On May 4, several organizations and individuals came together to protest the occupation of Iraq.

The U.S. economy continues to hemorrhage manufacturing jobs- 95,000 in April, 2003, alone. The middle class is evaporating, too. No middle class, no democracy! The decline of the once-mighty Bethlehem Steel, and its sprawling Sparrows Point plant, are harbingers of the grim future awaiting America’s workers. Who’s behind this de-industrialization policy? What, if anything, can be done about it?

US imperialism revives the Roman concept of moral domination, based on the claim that free trade, globalisation and the diffusion of Western civilisation are good for the world. It is also, Ignacio Ramonet argues, a military and media domination exercised over peoples the ruling elites consider inferior.

Development financing, which had been influenced by the theories of John Maynard Keynes after World War II, has been returned to the commercial bankers in the past 20 years. James K. Galbraith looks at the role of the United States in furthering this disasterous policy.

Israeli military now obliges foreigners entering the Gaza Strip to sign waivers absolving the army from responsibility if it shoots them. Visitors must also declare that they are not peace activists. Chris McGreal reports.