As Americans go to the polls in two months, they should have one thought fixed in their minds: they will be voting on whether to commit the nation to fighting World War III against large segments of the world’s one billion Muslims.

Beyond the cost in blood and treasure, this war will mean the end of the United States as a democratic Republic.

Those are the stakes that were made clear by George W. Bush in an alarmist speech to an association of U.S. military officers on Sept. 5.

He declared that the United States must battle not only likely or even possible threats from terrorists, but the most fantastical dreams of Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda about a mystical global “caliphate.”   more »

Tony Blair’s crisis is the result of a revolt that has been gathering for five years. At the heart of it is opposition to imperialist wars and New Labour’s murderous alliance with George Bush.

The resistance to imperialism, the global anti-war movement and in particular the British Stop the War Coalition have brought Blair to his present humiliating position.

He is no longer in control of when he leaves, no longer able to control the succession, no longer in control of his ministers and no longer able to make the barest claim to represent a majority in Britain.

The Lebanon war, which saw Blair’s utterly single-minded devotion to Bush and to Israel, was the final straw for many Labour MPs.   more »

THE CHIEFTAINS of the never-ending “war on terror” are peddling a newly updated enemy: “Islamic fascism.”

After British officials claimed in August to have foiled an al-Qaeda plot to blow up transatlantic air flights, George Bush said the arrests were “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld went a step further, citing Adolph Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s and accusing administration critics of appeasing “a new type of fascism.”

Likewise, Bush’s loyal British ally Tony Blair talked about an “arc of extremism”--in a “specifically Muslim version”--stretching across the Middle East.   more »

The good news, for recreational drug users everywhere, is that Afghanistan has just harvested its biggest opium crop ever, up a whopping 59% from last year and big enough to cover 130% of the entire world market.

The street price for illegal heroin, 92% of which now comes from Afghanistan, should be way down from Bangkok to London, and for those shooting up in the back alleys of Chicago.

The bad news, for the rest of us, is that in Bush-liberated Afghanistan, billions in drug profits are financing the Taliban.

Remember them, the guys who harbored the Al Qaeda terrorists, who gifted us with the 9/11 attacks five years ago, that President Bush promised to eliminate?   more »

8 SEPTEMBER

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