James van Luik

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One of the most moving poems written about partition [India-Pakistan] was by an eighteen-year-old Sikh girl who had to leave Lahore because it was now being partitioned. She saw the killings and burnings. And she wrote this great poem that evokes the memory of the great Sufi poet Waris Shah, who wrote the epic Heer and Ranjha, which is still sung all over the Punjab in India and in Pakistan. Shah, a seventeenth–century mystic poet, wrote about the love of a woman for a man and described the scream of the woman, Heer, forced into a marriage against her will—the first line of Waris Shah's poem is, "As he mounted the wedding palanquin, she screamed." That scream dominates Punjabi culture. This eighteen-year-old girl refers to that poem, and she says, "Waris Shah, when one woman screamed, you wrote hundreds of verses to commemorate her. Today, thousands and thousands of women are dying, corpses are floating down our rivers. Can't we open a new book from your page to commemorate this and open the eyes of the people? Blood flows down the Chenab—one of the great rivers of the Punjab.")

In his speeches, notably during his election campaigns, President Reagan has described America as 'that God-given place between two oceans . . . a shining house on the hill . . . a beacon to all the world'. America is the only nation 'to have a government, not the other way around' and 'the only place on earth where freedom and dignity of the individual have been available and assured'. In his inauguration speech of 1981, Reagan went further. 'We are unique,' he said. 'This transition of power [from President Carter to himself] is a miracle!'

This kind of rhetoric might well have come from B-movie Hollywood, which spawned Ronald Reagan and that other celebrated symbol of American idealism, the late John Wayne. Just as Reagan has exhorted Americans to 'stand tall' against malevolent forces, so Wayne's celluloid heroism inspired many of a generation's young men to go willingly to a war they did not understand. His example on the screen, always tough, vigilant and moral, provided a simplistic model to which many aspired.

What Reagan and Wayne also had in common was that neither man ever had to 'stand tall' in defence of his country. Both remained in Hollywood during the Second World War. Indeed, Reagan was then busy halting the premature decline in his acting career by informing on 'communists' for the studio bosses Jack Warner and Louis B. Mayer, and went to considerable lengths not to put on a uniform, devoting himself instead to making wartime propaganda films. And that alone might help to explain the manufactured nature of the idealism which, packaged and promoted for television, has become the almost uninterrupted voice of America. Having lived and worked in America, and admiring much about American life, I find myself resentful of such a distortion. It is as if genuine, popular response to idealism has been manipulated by a powerful group whose belligerent sense of moral superiority, not to mention paranoia, actually runs against the grain of ordinary, unwarlike American decency.

I traveled a great deal in America during the 1960s and 1970s, a period of upheaval but also of hope. Black people in the old southern confederacy had begun to demand their civil rights, the ghettoes of Los Angeles, Detroit and Washington erupted, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy were assassinated, the Vietnam war was executed to disaster and a visible and active movement, whose roots were idealistic, held the imagination of millions of Americans. Martha Gellhorn the war correspondent, described them as

… that life-saving minority of Americans who judge their government in moral terms. They are the people with a wakeful conscience the best of America's citizens . . . they can be counted on, they are always there. Though the government tried viciously, it could not silence them.

To many of them, the notion of conscience itself was not exotic, as it sometimes seems today; and moral concerns had not become so rare that they seemed eccentric. They understood the nature of their country's longest war and they rejected 'manifest destiny': Their government's self-given right to coerce and assault small nations. They believed that America ought to behave abroad according to the democracy its leaders claimed for it at home. They resisted what they saw as the one-dimensional, often venal politics of those who possessed so much of their country's public life and whose propaganda frequently claimed to express its patriotism. At times their own political aims and energy seemed fatuous and ephemeral, yet their movement was briefly powerful enough to influence, marginally, the American media, political process and scholarship and to reach beyond the limits of American liberalism, making radical change seem possible.

Matt and Jeannine Herron were two such Americans. Jeannine's family were Quakers, originally from Kansas where her father had attracted the disapproval of their small community by registering as a conscientious objector during the First World War. In 1962 Jeannine had helped to found 'Women's Strike for Peace' which, although it had no organized political base, had a powerful and spontaneous effect on women all over the US. 'On the day the call went out across the country', said Jeannine, 'thousands of women in their home towns refused to go to work and stood in public in protest against nuclear testing. We collected baby teeth and had them analysed for Strontium 90 and we decided to send a delegation to Geneva to lobby at the arms control talks. None of us had done anything like this before.'

Jeannine was one of those who went to Geneva. On her return she and hundreds of other women traveled to Washington in support of Dagmar Wilson one of the Strike leaders, who had been called to testify before the House of Representatives Un-American Activities Committee, once the inquisition of Senator Joe McCarthy into communist influence in American public life. Jeannine said, 'The hearing room was jammed with us women and children – lots of babies–in-arms, diaper bags and flowers. We stood and cheered every time Dagmar politely refused to answer a question. And when she was asked who the officers of the organisation were, she replied that they had not had time to elect anybody. "we're not very well organized," she said as babies were crying and everybody was laughing.'

The American public believes by a two to one margin that the veterans of the Vietnam war 'were made suckers of, having to risk their lives in the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time'. (Harris opinion poll, November 1979)

On patrol, in the drumming rain with each step requiring a superhuman effort to reclaim a boot from the sucking mud, a hand would reach back to beckon or drag me forward, followed by a reassuring voice: 'C'mon man, let's go.' The voice would come from a street corner in the Bronx, a rural town in the Confederacy, a steel mill in Pennsylvania: little America.

The only drinking water would be brackish and polluted, which meant that you got sick and slept in it. Leeches were ritually pulled from each other's arms and backs in the dark: 'jungle rot' it was called, and it served to relive the hours of waiting for seconds of terror.

Then, in a field suddenly ablaze, a stunned face lay with someone trying to stem a crescendo of screams. Confusion; panic; timidity; bravery; stoicism; and more waiting until the burst of a flare and the swishing of rotors as a ruined nineteen-year-old was delivered to the medevac helicopter.

Bob Muller endured all that. For him, the price was a shattered spinal column and two useless legs.

I never met Bob Muller in Vietnam, which is not surprising as 3,700,000 Americans served there. When I did meet him I realized I had seen him at the Republican Party's convention at Miami Beach in 1972, booing the candidate for President, Richard Nixon. He and other protesting Vietnam veterans had been thrown out, in their wheelchairs.

Five years later I saw him again, out in the sun on the steps of City Hall, New York. It was Memorial Day, the day America remembers its 'foreign wars'. There were medals and salutes and dignitaries, then former Lieutenant Robert O. Muller of the United States marines, a much decorated American hero of the kind John Wayne never was took the microphone and from his wheelchair brought even the construction site beyond the crowd to an attentive silence. He said:There are 280,000 veterans of Vietnam in New York alone and a third of them can't find jobs. Throughout America sixty per cent of all black veterans are unemployed. Almost half of all Vietnam veterans have problems with alcohol and drugs, and just as many are probably dying now from the effects of poisons we dumped over there as died on the battlefield.

You people out there, who didn't go, ran a number on us, right? Your guilt, your hang-ups made it socially unacceptable to mention the fact that we fought in Vietnam. We wear artificial limbs so you won't know we're disabled veterans.

Why do we feel like we just held up a bank when someone asks about our wounds? Why do we feel that we must be guilty for letting America down or, if we're critical of America, we can't explain even to ourselves why we went over there and needlessly killed civilians?

Eight of my friends, with dead legs like these, killed themselves when they got home; we've got the highest suicide rate in America . . . that's all I want to say to you today.

(Editor's note: I want to highly recommend John Pilger's book Heroes. Cambridge, South End Press, 2001. 633 pages)

3. ADMINISTRATION KEPT MUM ABOUT UNAPPROVED MODIFIED CORN SOLD

SETH BORENSTEIN

WASHINGTON -- The federal government kept it secret for three months that genetically modified corn seed was sold accidentally to some U.S. farms for four years and may have gotten into the American food supply.

The accidental use of unapproved seed became public when the scientific journal Nature published a story about it Tuesday.

The corn seed was probably safe. America's food supply and plant and animal stocks weren't harmed and remain safe to eat, according to officials of the seed company and the federal government.

But the government's secrecy about the mistake - one affecting the public food supply - raises serious concerns, according to independent experts.

Spokesmen for the Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency said there was no need to notify the public because the government had determined that Bt 10 was safe. In addition, the USDA is investigating the whole incident involving the seed company, which faces up to $500,000 in fines, Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Rogers said.

"We're gathering evidence that we may need in front of a judge," Rogers said. "If there was a health risk, you would have heard about it and there would have been a recall."

Syngenta, a Swiss-based company, distributed the unapproved genetically altered corn seed, called Bt 10. It mixed the Bt 10 with a near-identical and approved corn seed called Bt 11, company officials said Tuesday afternoon in a hastily called news conference. The Bt 10 was modified with a gene from the pesticide-like bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis.

"Most of the corn is used for industrial and animal use," Syngenta spokeswoman Sarah Hull said. "It may have gotten into the food supply, but regardless, the proteins are deemed safe and there's no food concern."

Remaining seeds have been destroyed or isolated, Hull said.

The unapproved seeds grew into 37,000 U.S. acres of corn over four years. That involves one-one-hundredth of 1 percent of the corn acreage in America, Hull said.

Sygenta's U.S. headquarters is in Greensboro, N.C. It runs its seed operation out of Golden Valley, Minn.

"I personally don't see it would be a major issue," said Kendall Lamkey, the head of Iowa State University's plant-breeding center.

But the way the federal government kept the mistake secret is alarming, Lamkey said, and may undermine public confidence in the growing field of genetically modified crops.

"The whole GMO (genetically modified organism) controversy surrounds a lack of transparency on both (the part of) the companies and regulatory agencies," said Lamkey, who served on a National Academy of Sciences panel in 2002 on the environmental impact of genetically modified crops. "There's too much secrecy."

In mid-December, Syngenta told the EPA, the Agriculture Department and the Food and Drug Administration about the mistake, Hull said.

EPA scientists reviewed seven packets of information from Syngenta from Jan. 7 to March 10, and "as more data came in, the confidence of our scientific determination (of no risk) increased," EPA spokeswoman Cynthia Bergman said in an e-mail. "Had there been a human health concern, we would have alerted the public immediately."

That's not acceptable, said Sheldon Krimsky, a Tufts University environmental-policy professor who's a longtime foe of genetically modified crops.

"They have both a moral and legal obligation to reveal violations," Krimsky said. "This is a government that's operating in a stealth manner that wants to keep bad news from the public."

4. SLEEPWALKING TO DISASTER IN IRAN

SCOTT RITTER

Late last year, in the aftermath of the 2004 Presidential election, I was contacted by someone close to the Bush administration about the situation in Iraq. There was a growing concern inside the Bush administration, this source said, about the direction the occupation was going. The Bush administration was keen on achieving some semblance of stability in Iraq before June 2005, I was told.

When I asked why that date, the source dropped the bombshell: because that was when the Pentagon was told to be prepared to launch a massive aerial attack against Iran, Iraq's neighbor to the east, in order to destroy the Iranian nuclear programme.

Why June 2005?, I asked. 'The Israelis are concerned that if the Iranians get their nuclear enrichment programme up and running, then there will be no way to stop the Iranians from getting a nuclear weapon. June 2005 is seen as the decisive date.'

To be clear, the source did not say that President Bush had approved plans to bomb Iran in June 2005, as has been widely reported. The President had reviewed plans being prepared by the Pentagon to have the military capability in place by June 2005 for such an attack, if the President ordered.

But when Secretary of State Condi Rice told America's European allies in February 2005, in response to press reports about a pending June 2005 American attack against Iran, she said that 'the question [of a military strike] is simply not on the agenda at this point -- we have diplomatic means to do this.'

President Bush himself followed up on Rice's statement by stating that 'This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous.' He quickly added, 'Having said that, all options are on the table.' In short, both the President and the Secretary of State were being honest, and disingenuous, at the same time.

Truth to be told, there is no American military strike on the agenda; that is, until June 2005.

It was curious that no one in the American media took it upon themselves to confront the President or his Secretary of State about the June 2005 date, or for that matter the October 2004 review by the President of military plans to attack Iran in June 2005.

The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran with all of the incompetence and lack of integrity that it displayed during a similar path trodden during the buildup to our current war with Iraq.

On the surface, there is nothing extraordinary about the news that the President of the United States would order the Pentagon to be prepared to launch military strikes on Iran in June 2005 . That Iran has been a target of the Bush administration's ideologues is no secret: the President himself placed Iran in the 'axis of evil' back in 2002, and has said that the world would be a better place with the current Iranian government relegated to the trash bin of history.

The Bush administration has also expressed its concern about Iran's nuclear programmes - concerns shared by Israel and the European Union, although to different degrees.

In September 2004, Iran rejected the International Atomic Energy Agency's call for closing down its nuclear fuel production programme (which many in the United States and Israel believe to be linked to a covert nuclear weapons programme).

Iran then test fired a ballistic missile with sufficient range to hit targets in Israel as well as US military installations in Iraq and throughout the Middle East.

The Iranian response triggered a serious re-examination of policy by both Israel and the United States.

The Israeli policy review was driven in part by the Iranian actions, and in part by Israel's own intelligence assessment regarding the Iranian nuclear programme, made in August 2004 .

This assessment held that Iran was 'less than a year' away from completing its uranium enrichment programme. If Iran was allowed to reach this benchmark, the assessment went on to say, then it had reached the 'point of no return' for a nuclear weapons programme. The date set for this 'point of no return' was June 2005.

Israel's Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, declared that 'under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession'.

Since October 2003 Israel had a plan in place for a pre-emptive strike against Iran's major nuclear facilities, including the nuclear reactor facility in Busher (scheduled to become active in 2005).

These plans were constantly being updated, something that did not escape the attention of the Bush White House.

The Israeli policy toward Iran, when it comes to stopping the Iranian nuclear programme, has always been for the US to lead the way.

'The way to stop Iran', a senior Israeli official has said, 'is by the leadership of the US, supported by European countries and taking this issue to the UN, and using the diplomatic channel with sanctions as a tool and a very deep inspection regime and full transparency.'

It seems that Tel Aviv and Washington, DC aren't too far removed on their Iranian policy objectives, except that there is always the unspoken 'twist': what if the United States does not fully support European diplomatic initiatives, has no interest in letting IAEA inspections work, and envisions UN sanctions as a permanent means of containment until regime change is accomplished in Tehran, as opposed to a tool designed to compel Iran to cooperate on eliminating its nuclear programme?

Because the fact is, despite recent warm remarks by President Bush and Condi Rice, the US does not fully embrace the EU's Iran diplomacy, viewing it as a programme 'doomed to fail'.

The IAEA has come out with an official report, after extensive inspections of declared Iranian nuclear facilities in November 2004, that says there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear weapons programme; the Bush administration responded by trying to oust the IAEA's lead inspector, Mohammed al-Baridi

And the Bush administration's push for UN sanctions shows every intention of making such sanctions deep, painful and long-lasting.

Curiously, the date for the Bush administration's move to call for UN sanctions against Iran is June 2005.

According to a US position paper circulated in Vienna at the end of last month, the US will give the EU-Iran discussions until June 2005 to resolve the Iranian standoff.

'Ultimately only the full cessation and dismantling of Iran's fissile material production efforts can give us any confidence that Iran has abandoned its nuclear weapons ambitions,' the US draft position paper said.

Iran has called such thinking 'hallucinations' on the part of the Bush administration.

The American media today is sleepwalking towards an American war with Iran. Economic sanctions and military attacks are not one and the same. Unless, of course, the architect of America's Iran policy never intends to give sanctions a chance.

Enter John Bolton, who, as the former US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security for the Bush administration, is responsible for drafting the current US policy towards Iran.

In February 2004, Bolton threw down the gauntlet by stating that Iran had a 'secret nuclear weapons programme' that was unknown to the IAEA. 'There is no doubt that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons production programme', Bolton said, without providing any source to back up his assertions.

This is the same John Bolton who had in the past accused Cuba of having an offensive biological weapons programme, a claim even Bush administration hardliners had to distance themselves from.

John Bolton is the Bush official who declared the European Union's engagement with Iran 'doomed to fail'. He is the Bush administration official who led the charge to remove Muhammad al-Baridi from the IAEA.

And he is the one who, in drafting the US strategy to get the UN Security Council to impose economic sanctions against Iran, asked the Pentagon to be prepared to launch 'robust' military attacks against Iran should the UN fail to agree on sanctions.

Bolton understands better than most the slim chances any US-brokered sanctions regime against Iran has in getting through the Security Council.

The main obstacle is Russia, a permanent member of the Security Council who not only possesses a veto, but also is Iran's main supporter (and supplier) when it comes to its nuclear power programme.

Since October 2003 Israel had a plan in place for a pre-emptive strike against Iran's major nuclear facilities

John Bolton has made a career out of alienating the Russians. Bolton was one of the key figures who helped negotiate a May 2002 arms reduction treaty signed by Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

This treaty was designed to reduce the nuclear arsenals of both America and Russia by two thirds over a 10 year period.

But that treaty - to Russia's immense displeasure - now appears to have been made mute thanks to a Bolton-inspired legal loophole that the Bush administration had built into the treaty language.

John Bolton knows Russia will not go along with UN sanctions against Iran, which makes the military planning being conducted by the Pentagon all the more relevant.

John Bolton's nomination as the next US Ambassador to the United Nations is as curious as it is worrying. This is the man who, before a panel discussion sponsored by the World Federalist Association in 1994, said 'There is no such thing as the United Nations.'

For the United States to submit to the will of the Security Council, Bolton wrote in a 1999 Weekly Standard article, would mean that 'its discretion in using force to advance its national interests is likely to be inhibited in the future.'

But John Bolton doesn't let treaty obligations, such as those incurred by the United States when it signed and ratified the UN Charter, get in the way. 'Treaties are law only for US domestic purposes', he wrote in a 17 November 1997 Wall Street Journal Op Ed. 'In their international operation, treaties are simply political obligations.'

John Bolton believes that Iran should be isolated by United Nations sanctions and, if Iran will not back down from its nuclear programme, confronted with the threat of military action.

And as the Bush administration has noted in the past, particularly in the case of Iraq, such threat must be real and meaningful, and backed by the will and determination to use it.

And the Bush administration's push for UN sanctions shows every intention of making such sanctions deep, painful and long-lasting. John Bolton and others in the Bush administration contend that, despite the lack of proof, Iran's nuclear intentions are obvious.

In response, the IAEA's Muhammad al-Baridi has pointed out the lack of a 'smoking gun' which would prove Iran's involvement in a nuclear weapons programme. 'We are not God', he said. 'We cannot read intentions.'

But, based upon history, precedent, and personalities, the intent of the United States regarding Iran is crystal clear: the Bush administration intends to bomb Iran.

Whether this attack takes place in June 2005, when the Pentagon has been instructed to be ready, or at a later date, once all other preparations have been made, is really the only question that remains to be answered.

That, and whether the journalists who populate the mainstream American media will continue to sleepwalk on their way to facilitating yet another disaster in the Middle East.

5. UNSPEAKABLES

JOHN PILGER

'Unspeakables', such as compromise, were and are uttered in Israel by some of the most remarkable people I have met. Compromise has a very different meaning in Israel from that understood in much of Europe, because it dares to question Jewish exclusiveness. Israel Shahak is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and an unofficial leader of the peace movement. Oded Pilavsky, a member of Matzpen, had said of him, 'Dr. Shahak has seen true suffering. He was in the Warsaw ghetto and Bergen-Belsen and somehow managed to survive. Unlike most people who have suffered, his attitude is not "I've suffered enough, now it's their [the Palestinians'] turn". Rather, he decided that he himself would never be responsible for the type of suffering he underwent.'

I had several meetings with Israel Shahak in the clutter of his small flat in Tel Aviv. I sat on a chair; he sat on a pile of books. His face was terribly scarred by Nazi tortures. When his emotions rose I was transfixed by his eloquence. 'Peace,' he said, rolling it around his tongue, 'peace will come only when Jewish rights are no longer placed above human rights. Jewish culture has never been touched by the Enlightenment and is still ethically primitive. We never had a Martin Luther or a Calvin who said, "Wait a minute, we've been wrong about some basic principles for thousands of years." If Israel is a democracy … why are we so afraid to reform? Has Britain crumbled because it is no longer run by people beholden to the Church of England? France, until the Revolution, was built on the principle that only those who took the Catholic sacrament could be admitted to positions of power. This has changed. Has France left the map of Europe? The paradox of Israel is that her greatest weakness is the blinding force of Judaism, which has never been able to hear other opinions, criticisms. When people speak out for Jewish interests, they are regarded as people who have seen the light. When Zola defended Dreyfus he was not regarded by Jews as a man who loved justice but as a Jew-lover! Today, you only have to look in the Yearbook of Israeli Statistics, and you can see that everything in Israel is classified in Jewish and non-Jewish categories …vegetables! melons! babies! … and this means than non-Jews who now happen to be the majority here, the Palestinians, are not regarded in this country as human beings.'

I asked Israel Shahak if he believed Jews and Arabs would ever live together again in peace. 'Yes!' he replied. 'But only if there is security for both of us. I am working in Jerusalem. Two miles away a Palestinian lawyer was taken the other night and expelled, exactly like Solzhenitsyn from Moscow. It is not inconceivable that his house will be give to a Dutchman who has converted to Judaism, who will have all the rights the Palestinian never had in his homeland. We will never have security while we think only about Jews.'

6. THE GATES OF HELL ARE OPENING IN IRAQ

JAWAD-AL KAHLISI

The US-British occupation of Iraq is poisoning all political processes in my country and across the Middle East. The elections held under the control of the occupying forces in January were neither free nor fair. Instead of being a step towards solving Iraq's problems, they have been used to prolong foreign rule over the Iraqi people.

Only when the occupiers withdraw from the country can Iraq take the first secure steps towards peace and stability. Once a strict timetable for withdrawal is set, Iraq's political forces could freely agree and set in motion a process of genuinely free and fair democratic elections, a permanent constitution, and a program that meets the demands of all the Iraqi people.

The occupying powers are now following a policy of divide and rule, encouraging sectarian and ethnic divisions and imposing them on all the institutions they have created.

Incidents such as the recent kidnapping of an Italian journalist, released only to be received by a hail of bullets from the US liberators, have fueled widespread suspicions in Iraq as to who is in fact responsible for many of the terrorist acts - kidnappings, assassinations, and indiscriminate bombing and killing -that are engulfing the whole of Iraq. These have coincided with a cover-up of significant military operations being conducted against the occupation forces across the country.

Not one of the terrorist crimes has been solved and not a single perpetrator put on trial. After each major terrorist crime, the arrest of perpetrators is proclaimed, using names and personalities spread by the US-controlled media. This media effort - which also seeks to bury the news of the destruction of entire towns, brutal night raids, kidnappings, curfews, and the detention and torture of thousands of prisoners - is overseen by the information department of the US forces, who earned the US defense secretary's special thanks during his visit to Iraq.

These crimes are a taste of the hell created by the US project in the Middle East. And now this hell is beginning to be visited on Lebanon, opening the prospect of endless wars of unimaginable consequences.

Syria is now withdrawing its forces from Lebanon and laying the responsibility of what happens next squarely on the other side. But what will happen next? Will the Lebanese resistance (led by Hizbullah) be disarmed? And if it refuses to surrender its weapons, how will it be disarmed? Will it be by landing new occupation forces in the country?

This was tried in the early 80s and led to the defeat of the US and the Israeli occupation of Lebanon. This could occur again, but on a wider scale across the whole region, which can no longer tolerate this endless US pressure, regarded by the peoples of the area as the implementation of Israeli demands.

Efforts must be directed at resolving the problems of the Palestinian people, who Israel refuses to allow to return to their lands, despite UN resolutions and all precepts of right and justice. The Palestinian problem cannot be resolved with exhibitionist gatherings such as Tony Blair's recent London conference. The big powers - particularly Britain, which helped create the problem in the first place - have a moral responsibility to resolve it.

In the same way, the Iraq crisis cannot be resolved by patching up a detested occupation with fraudulent elections and sectarian and ethnic caucuses supported by the occupiers. The only solution is the immediate withdrawal of occupation forces - or as a minimum, a strict internationally guaranteed timetable for withdrawal. Talk about freedom and democracy is seen as an endlessly repeated sham by our peoples because these words are being uttered by the very powers that have stood behind the corrupt dictatorial regimes. The US today is still the ally and backer of many such tyrannical regimes in our region and elsewhere.

We do not believe that the aggressive US stance towards Syria and Iran is intended to uphold freedom and democracy either, but to get rid of states that are refusing to go along with US and Israeli plans for the region. Today, Syria is being held to account in Lebanon because it is refusing to back the occupation of Iraq, and Iran is facing threats over its nuclear program because the US is worried about its role in relation to Iraq and its rejection of the status quo in Palestine.

Public opinion in the occupying countries, such as the US and Britain, needs to understand that the continuation of this unjust and dangerous situation will create the conditions for a new and more general uprising which threatens truly to open the gates of hell in the region and beyond.