public.
This is a typical example, one of thousands, from a local paper in Fallbrook, California:
"So the son dies in Iraq and then Cindy shows up to make a stink. She gets an audience with Bush. That was not enough. She goes to Crawford and demands another audience.
"How many news stations carry the ongoing saga of Cindy? Practically all of them. Cindy didn't care about her son. She another woman raise him. Cindy doesn't care about the other soldiers in Iraq. Cindy cares about her liberal, feminist agenda and about using the death of her SOlI to lobby against Republicans and Bush."
Hitchens' accusations
George Galloway and the anti-war movement are part of an offensive around one key point: those who support the anti-war unconscious apologists for LOLLULISIL, all accusation alas repeated by one of Hitchens' new and effusive fans, ex-Marxist Norman Geras ("There are apologists amongst us", Guardian 21 July).
Polemical desperation shows that the ideological punch of the 'war on terror' is failing.
In the 45 years from the end of the second world war to fall of communism in 1989-90, defense of the Free against Communism provided the ideological glue which held together the US-led alliance of major capitalist countries Cindy Sheehan with Jesse Jackson at the centre of the biggest anti-war mobilisation in the USA since the war started. 100,000 marched in Washington on September 24, with big marches in a number of other cities crystallised by NATO, and the common ground which defined the mainstream of US politics. No one serious about getting into governThree after 9/11, summed global ICoDOlSC.
But more than that, cliWlalc change, economic insecurity and the looming energy crisis, create a completely different from the cold war era.
In that era, the US and
capitalist Halluls oozed stability and self-confidence.
In the era of the war on terror (and partially because of the war on terror) the sense of things being out of control is everywhere.
And the absence of serious answers in Washington is obvious as well. Phil Hearse Divide and rule has long been a watchword of imperialism. European colonialists were past masters at it; the Belgians promoted Tutsis versus Hutus in Rawanda by favouring the latter.
The British played on Muslim/Hindu rivalry in India and resentments against ethnic Chinese during the Communist insurgency in Malaya. Interethnic conflict in Iraq is a major plus for the colonial occupiers.
During the first (defeated) attack on Fallujah in April 2003, thousands of Shi'ites in Baghdad and elsewhere rallied to the support of the beleaguered, mainly Sunni, population and queued to give blood.
Such was the degree of solidarity that people talked of an emerging anti-occupation national resistance uniting people from all ethnic backgrounds. Global justice campaigner Walden Bello said, "Fallujah is the making of a that way. by the wave of attacks? mentalist those grouped
However, Paul Coalition Provisional crawled with scores of assassination squads.
Among the most notorious were units drawn from the Badr Brigade, the armed militia of the Shia Supreme The sectarian divide has been deepened by the new constitution, and will be further by the October 15 referendum on the Issue. Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq. It is widely suspected that these units operated with either the toleration or active collaboration of CIA operatives in Iraq. The objective was to assassinate in particular former Ba'ath party members. Today there are still dozens of bodies of people assassinated with a bullet in the head being found In Baghdad and other cities.
A blogger on the Baghdad Dweller site recently claimed there are more victims of assassinations and drive-by shootings than of car bombs and suicide bombers, although this is hard to verify.
Once sectarian assassination becomes commonplace, reactionary forces can engage in it anonymously without taking the blame.
At the beginning of this year the United States was more or less openly discussing what it called the 'Salvador option' - a secret assassination force to hunt out and kill 'the terrorists'. Was this plan put into effect? Are US or British operatives involved in it?
In this context it is worth asking, in the light of the recent events in Basra which saw British tanks attack an Iraqi police station to free two soldiers, what exactly were two SAS men doing driving around dressed as Arabs, and with assault rifles, a heavy machine gun, a bazooka and bomb-making
Exactly what 'low intensity operation' were they engaged in? John Pilger described their exploits as "sinister events in a cynical war."
The overwhelming chances are that the occupation forces are involved at some level in the assassination campaigns, which have driven such a wedge between Sunni and Shi'ite communities.
However it is not as simple as saying the occupation forces have favoured the Shiites and Kurds at the expense of Sunnis. They only favoured those forces inside the Shiite community prepared to play the constitutional game and work with occupation forces.
This brought US troops several times into conflict with the Mahdi army, the militia controlled by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada alSadr.
The sectarian divide has been deepened by the new constitution, and will be further by the October 15 referendum on the issue.
As Tariq Ali recently put it: "Divide and rule is the deadly logic of colonial rule -and signs that the US is planning an exit strategy coupled with a long-term presence is evident in the new Iraqi constitution, pushed through by US proconsul Zalmay Khalilzad.
"This document is a de facto division of Iraq into Kurdistan (a US-Israeli protectorate), Southern (dominated by Iran) and the Sunni badlands (policed by semi-reliable ex-Baptists under state department and Foreign Office tutelage).
"What is this if not an invitation to civil war? The occupation has also created a geopolitical mess. Recent events in Basra are linked to a western fear of Iranian domination. "Having encouraged Muqtada al-Sadr's militias to resist the slavishly proIranian faction, why are the British surprised when they demand real independence?"
The hypocrisy of Western claims that there will be civil war if troops leave is simply that the occupation forces have done everything they can to promote and deepen the sectarian divides.
The exact steps towards rebuilding inter-ethnic solidarity cannot be easily seen at this stage (although let us not forget that before the invasion there were hundreds of thousands of mixed Sunni-Shia marriages and families).
But such inter-ethnic solidarity is impossible while the occupation persists.
page 14 of the scan
Global warming is now a global emergency. The two category 3-5 hurricanes which ravaged America's gulf coast within four weeks are a cruel and ominous sign of things to come. SHEILA MALONE reports. Reporting of hurricane Katrina last month rightly focussed on its tragic human cost and the Bush regime's callous response. Now it's time to look at the real causes of both hurricanes
No wonder that, despite Blair's blatherings about making reduction of greenhouse gas emissions a priority, these have actually increased under New Labour - up by 2.5 per cent in just the last six months of this year. This means there is now absolutely no chance of the UK meeting even its meagre Kyoto reduction target of 12.5 per cent by
The second, no less alarming study is from the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre at Colorado University. Records show the Artic polar ice cap has shrunk by 30 per cent since 1978. This summer showed a record loss.
Previously the ice has acted as a mirror reflecting heat and preventing excessive cooling. Now global