Stanley Aronowitz, a long time activist in radical and labor movements, was the 2002 Green Party candidate for governor of New York State. Some commentators see his campaign as a model for leftists running an independent campaign for public office. These are Aronowitz's reflections on the campaign, relevant for assessment of future independent campaign's opportunities and challenges.

Jay Garner, the man in charge of rebuilding Iraq, was quoted in the New York Times on Thursday saying, "We ought to look in the mirror and get proud, and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say, 'Damn, we're Americans.'" Frida Berrigan disagrees when US soldiers shoot unarmed Iraqi demonstrators, killing at least 17, when US police officers fire wooden bullets at unarmed American protesters, when thousands of Iraqi civilians were killed in a war for their liberation.

The disintegration of the Soviet bloc permitted American unilateralism on a scale the modern world has never seen. With its war against Iraq the U.S. for the first time openly massed its military power and then invaded, justifying the war in the name of the elimination of weapons of mass destruction and "regime change." Historian Gabriel Kolko discusses this new, dangerous international situation.

Dowd strikes again. Maureen Dowd is a NY Times columnist.

Environmentalists face the most opposition from the Club for Growth, which picks candidates based solely on "tax cuts and growth." Founded by the presidents of the libertarian Cato Institute and the conservative magazine National Review, they have won 17 of 19 House and Senate races since 1999 and raised more than $10 million in 2002 alone. Excerpt of longer article published in E.

Jason Halperin reports on a terrifying story of the experience of South Asians in New York City. Halperin asks if a police state emerging under cloak of the USA Patriot Act?

Go back 33 years and look at the pretexts given for the US war in Indochina. See how hollow they look today? In far less than 33 years, Rashid Khalidi argues, the pretexts for the war in Iraq, which now appears to have ended, will be revealed as being equally hollow, shortsighted and mendacious.

While the US government focuses attention on external threats, homegrown forces that imperil domestic security much more profoundly than suicidal Islamic cults are ignored. These forces are being generated by an incarceration epidemic that has earned this country the dubious title of the world's largest jailer. Salim Muwakkil reports.