"THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; ...and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated."

Thomas Paine, later convicted in absentia of treason against England, wrote the words above in late 1776, at the dawn of the American Revolution. Paine was an unpolished member of the lower middle-class, a maker of corsets by profession who later earned his living as an exciseman (customs officer).

Paine is rightly regarded as one of the fathers of modern democracy. He was a pamphleteer, a propagandist, whose works inspired the American fight for Liberty and have become classics in the evolution of modern thought.

For Paine, Freedom was not an abstraction; it was the highest expression of the soul of mankind, and in reference to the king of England and of America at that time, he said:

"If a thief breaks into my house, burns and destroys my property, and kills or threatens to kill me, or those that are in it, and to "bind me in all cases whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to suffer it? What signifies it to me, whether he who does it is a king or a common man... If we reason to the root of things we shall find no difference; neither can any just cause be assigned why we should punish in the one case and pardon in the other. Let them call me rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul by swearing allegiance to one whose character is that of a sottish, stupid, stubborn, worthless, brutish man. I conceive likewise a horrid idea in receiving mercy from a being, who at the last day shall be ... fleeing with terror from the orphan, the widow, and the slain of America."

Paine was speaking of British tyranny over its American colonies. But he is doing more than that: he is speaking for the oppressed, the orphans, the widows and the slain of all the world in all ages.

Liberty is indivisible. As Abraham Lincoln said, "A nation cannot be half slave and half free".

The Conquistador

The prime minister of Italy, a billionaire and suspected racketeer named Silvio Berlusconi, last week delivered himself of statements which reinforce the feeling among many Third World peoples that the United States and its allies see the rest of us simply as serfs, unworthy of Freedom.

"We must be aware of the superiority of our civilization, a system that has guaranteed well-being, respect for human rights and -- in contrast with Islamic countries -- respect for religious and political rights, a system that has as its values understandings of

diversity and tolerance, and...freedom which is not the heritage of Islamic culture."

Berlusconi expects that "the West will continue to conquer peoples, like it

conquered Communism," even if it means a confrontation with "another civilization, the Islamic one, stuck where it was 1,400 years ago".

Berlusconi's racist response is the exact equivalent of the European decision 500 years ago when it petitioned the church to withdraw recognition of Africans as human beings. Until then, the church forbade human slavery. Afterwards, blacks could be enslaved because they were not entirely human -- they had no souls. It escapes this ignoramus' comprehension that medicine, mathematics and the alphabet which allows him to pretend to civilisation, were all invented by non-Europeans, by Africans, however described.

'Vengeance is mine...'

Many of the relatives of those who died in the horrific slaughter on September 11 have spoken out against revenge; they do not want to have the killing of more innocents done in the names of their loved ones.

In any case, no matter how much one grieves for and sympathises with the US, it is clear that the balance of terror has for at least the last century, been on the side of the United States. As John Pilger says in the Guardian, the list is long.

"Remember, if you can, the 'free fire zones', including the use of chemical weapons, that killed as many as 50,000 civilians every year in Vietnam; the bombing of Cambodia that killed 600,000 people; the unnecessary slaughter of tens of thousands of Iraqis during the 1991 Gulf War, the beginning of a silent holocaust that has since claimed half a million children, according to the UN. For Blair and Bush to say that war has been declared upon America is rich."

"During my lifetime," says Pilger, "America has been constantly waging war against much of humanity: impoverished people mostly, in stricken places. Moreover, far from being the main perpetrators of terrorism, Islamic peoples have been its victims -- more often than not of an American fundamentalism and its proxies."

In Latin America, the history of American intervention is similar. To this day, while we know how many Americans were killed in the attack on Panama to capture Noriega, we do not know how many Panamanians were killed.

The end of impunity?

Latin America's most notorious serial killer, Augusto Pinochet is still at large; so is Luis Posada Carriles, who bombed the Cubana plane en route to Jamaica in 1976 and was captured in Panama two years ago on a mission to murder Fidel Castro. If Justice and Freedom are indivisible, these men should be turned over to the courts for justice to be done. But is this likely?

In 1985, the World Court found against the United States in a case brought by Nicaragua. Nicaragua claimed the US had broken international law by planting mines in Nicaragua's harbours to blow up ships indiscriminately, and training and supporting the Contra mercenaries. Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, no socialist, declared the mining a breach of international law. Pope John Paul, also not a socialist, was forced to rebuke the US for its behaviour in that case. The American Ambassador to the UN Jeanne Kirkpatrick, had dismissed the World Court as not a World Court at all, but "a semi-legal, semi-juridical, semi-political body which nations sometimes accept and sometimes don't".

The US asked the Court to dismiss the case, and when it didn't, declared that the Court had no jurisdiction. When that failed and the Court ruled against the US, awarding damages to Nicaragua, the US refused to pay, reneging on an undertaking given four decades earlier by President Harry Truman.

Pope John Paul told the court it should become a "totally effective judicial authority in a peaceful world", and condemned the attempt to evade compulsory jurisdiction: "Even the International Court of Justice comes under pressure designed to prevent it from transcending ideologies and interests. ... They must resist such pressures and must be assisted in their efforts to do so."

On Friday, the United Nations unanimously approved a resolution binding all states to fight terrorism: "Acting with unusual speed, the UN security council has approved a sweeping resolution sponsored by the United States requiring all 189 UN-member nations to deny money, support and sanctuary to terrorists" -- AP.

'Why do they hate us so?'

American government officials do not necessarily represent the views of the American people and while any public may be roused to jingoistic fervour, it is clear that panic is not a good basis for judgment. It was Lord Palmerston, I believe, who said of his people, then clamouring for war: "They are ringing their bells now, soon they will be wringing their hands."

Tom Paine also spoke of the uses of panic: "'Tis surprising to see how rapidly a panic will sometimes run through a country. All nations and ages have been subject to them. ... panics, in some cases, have their uses; they produce as much good as hurt. Their duration is always short; the mind soon grows through them, and acquires a firmer habit than before. But their peculiar advantage is, that they are the touchstones of sincerity and hypocrisy, and bring things and men to light, which might otherwise have lain forever undiscovered. In fact, they have the same effect on secret traitors, which an imaginary apparition would have upon a private murderer. They sift out the hidden thoughts of man, and hold them up in public to the world."

Apologists for American official hypocrisy (and for the ignorance of the American public) keep protesting that "They" hate America because of its wealth, its freedom, its lifestyles. President Bush himself said as much in the very first hours after the attack. But history, current history, suggests there is more.

A country which can take seriously the fascistic, racist prescriptions of books such as The Bell Curve and the vapourings of those who speak of the "End of History", may take comfort in myths, but myths offer no protection to them or to the Wretched of the Earth, who see in the US the author of their miseries. A country which can tolerate the fact that black people in the Bronx have the same survival rate as peasants in Bangladesh, cannot speak about Freedom and Justice as being indivisible. A country whose elite members can earn as much as the Gross National Product of Barbados, cannot export any real idea of democracy to the world. It cannot export Tom Paine.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World