The Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill is hardly an aerodynamic title; it doesn't fly from the lips. People have difficulty remembering the order of the words and what exactly will be the effect of this apparently dull piece of lawmaking.

But in the dusty cradle of Committee A, a monster has been stirring and will, in due course, take flight to join the other measures in the government's attack on parliamentary democracy and the rights of the people. The 'reform' in the title allows ministers to make laws without the scrutiny of parliament and, in some cases, to delegate that power to unelected officials. In every word, dot and comma, it bears the imprint of New Labour's authoritarian paternity.

Like all Labour's anti-libertarian bills, it appears in relatively innocuous guise. The bill was presented last year as a way of improving a previous Labour act and is purportedly designed to remove some of the burden of regulation that weighs on British business and costs billions of pounds every year. Labour says it will enable ministers to cut regulation without needing to refer to parliament and so simplify and speed things up.

The reality is that the beneficiaries of this bill will not be industry and business, but ministers and the executive, who will enjoy a huge increase in their unscrutinised power. As with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which was presented as modernising local and national emergency measures but which went much further to give ministers arbitrary powers, this bill takes another chunk out of our centuries- old democracy.

The really frightening thing about last week's proceedings is that there were just two journalists watching as the minister piloting the legislation, Jim Murphy, refused to debate constitutional implications. Instead, he intoned replies drafted in advance by himself and, presumably, his civil servants. Disgracefully, he dismissed as 'debating points' considered objections from Tories Christopher Chope and Oliver Heald and Liberal Democrats David Heath and David Howarth. All raised the Kafkaesque possibility that this bill was so demonically drafted that an unscrupulous government could use it to modify the bill itself and so extend its powers even further.

Watching, I reflected that this was truly how democracy is extinguished. Not with guns and bombs, but from the inside by officials and politicians who deceive with guile and who no longer pretend to countenance the higher interests of the constitution.

The 'debating points' were rather more than that. They concern the powers that may be granted to ministers that could further damage the concept of habeas corpus, alter the law on Britain's relationship with the Commonwealth, on the relationship with the EU, on extradition, the appropriation of property and the criminal law. In theory, even the monarchy could be affected.

This is to say little about common law, the centuries of precedents and rulings which contain so many of the historic rights of British culture. 'Oh no,' said the minister, as if talking to a child, 'ministers will give assurances; they will confine themselves to the regulations that concern business.'

If that is the case, why does the bill not say so? Why is it drafted so loosely? Why is Jim Murphy doing so much to protect its versatility? Why won't he put the safeguards in the bill from the start? There can be only one answer: ministers want to bypass parliament and transfer authority to themselves and their officials under the cover of helping business.

Mr Murphy has let it be known that the government might concede powers for select committees to veto use of the fast-track process for issues they consider controversial. But it is worth remembering that membership of select committees is controlled by the whips and that the chairmen are generally biddable. We should also wonder why Mr Murphy has not already drafted this veto, if he genuinely wants to protect and reassure parliament.

The essential point, however, is that the individual decisions taken by ministers as a result of this new law will not be scrutinised in the chamber of the House of Commons.

Sometimes, I wonder if those of us worried about the attacks on British democracy by Tony Blair's government are getting things out of proportion or misunderstanding the Prime Minister's mission, as he described it in last week's Observer

I certainly understand that the capillaries of a society run from bottom to top, bearing all the bad news, intractable problems, mood swings and crises; that it is all ceaselessly pumped upwards in the direction of the Prime Minister; and that the view afforded in Downing Street must sometimes be truly extraordinary, a seething, organic, Hogarthian panorama of delinquency and unreason.

A Prime Minister must try to reach beyond the day-to-day business of government, frantic though it is, and make sense of what he sees below, seek the connecting threads, order up the policies and implement them so that improvement becomes possible. Few will disagree that this is the chief impulse of Tony Blair's premiership. As he told us long ago, he is a moderniser. Modernising is still the closest thing he has to a political ideology and it was significant how many times the words modern and modernity appeared in last week's article. At one point, he declared: 'For me, this is not an issue of liberty but of modernity', as if liberty and modernity were somehow at odds.

Because he is by his own account well-intentioned, he believes that nothing should get in the way of this modernising purpose, the exercise of his benevolent reason on the turbulent society below. Like Mrs Thatcher, he has become almost mystically responsible for the state of the nation. And like Mrs Thatcher, he finds that after a long period in Number 10, he is still surrounded by sluggishness and resistance. Public services are slow to reform; the judiciary obstructs ministerial action with footling concerns about individual rights; and parliament is agonisingly slow to produce the fast-acting laws he craves.

You can see why, as time runs out, he has the need to cut through it all to achieve the things that he so dearly believes are right for our society. That is the way a moderniser works, because it is the only measure of success.

Yet this addiction to the idea of modernity is also a kind of arrogance about the times we live in, a sense that no Prime Minister has ever faced the problems coming across his desk. It indicates a common condition in modernisers and modernists of all hues and that is an almost complete lack of a grounding in history. If Blair was more interested in British history, he would understand that the present, while certainly unique, is not uniquely awful.

But more important, he would see the great damage his laws are doing to the institutions we have inherited - to the constitution, to the tradition of parliamentary sovereignty, to the independence of the judiciary, to individual rights and to the delicate relationship between the individual and the state. All of them are products of British history. They are not perfect, but they make up a fairly large part of the body politic. This is who we are.

This rush of laws presented to parliament in disguise, with their hidden sleeper clauses, are a disaster for our democracy. They are changing our country rapidly and profoundly. What I saw in Committee A was the triumph of Tony Blair's modernity over liberty.

Since the 1960s Chomsky, a widely acclaimed professor of linguistics, has crusaded against political contradiction, nuclear proliferation and Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Regarded by many as the greatest intellectual alive today and dismissed by others as a radical, Chomsky has voiced harsh criticism against the foreign policy of the United States since World War II.

About 1,500 people crammed into the main theater, while a television broadcast the speech to a room of about 500 next door. Ushers were forced to turn hundreds of people away as the building filled beyond its capacity.

Asked whether he had anticipated the number of people, the building's operations director, Darryl Wood, responded, "Not this many, no."

Inside the theater, Chomsky delivered an account of the world's ills. He addressed the history of the Iraq conflict, the unrest it has fostered, and Iran's intentions for nuclear armament - a path, he said, that is directly tied to U.S. aggression in the Middle East. Chomsky outlined a course of action. "All of this is under our control if we're not willing to observe passively and obediently," he said. "Take democracy seriously."

Peter Klotz drove two hours from Siena College in Loudonville to see the professor. "He knows what he's talking about," Klotz said. "His ideas are certainly not new, but he presents things in a very concise manner."

John Hamilton, who drove from Ithaca to see Chomsky, stood up to ask a question during the question-and-answer period following Chomsky's speech. "My question is, what do you find hopeful?" Hamilton said.

"I think one should be very optimistic for the reasons I just mentioned," Chomsky said. "The large majority of the population already agrees with the things activists are committed to. All we have to do is organize people who are convinced."

I've never thought that terrorists posed much of a weapons of mass destruction threat, and I've always thought that the specter of "nuclear terrorism" was promiscuous and politically motivated, both to undermine disarmament and to bolster U.S. WMD programs.

The image of a terrorist attack with weapons of mass destruction is certainly a powerful one, and the threat is so catastrophic, the Bush administration has made it a priority in fighting the war against terrorism.

It shouldn't be. What is more, there is also enormous cost in continuing to let the WMD nightmare rule: It was responsible for the war with Iraq; it was at the root of the failure of the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA to deal with hurricane Katrina; it is central to the current debate over the security of American ports.

Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte and Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Lt. Gen. Michael Maples testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday on the worldwide threats to the United States.

Their testimony was the usual combination of optimism about U.S. progress in the war on terrorism and happy talk about "encouraging developments in Iraq" together with dire talk about a dangerous and nightmarish world.

The "global jihadist threat," Negroponte said, is the "preeminent threat" to U. S. national security and interests abroad.

"The ongoing development of dangerous weapons and delivery systems constitutes the second major threat to the safety of our nation, our deployed troops, and our allies," Negroponte also said.

"We are most concerned about the threat and destabilizing effect of nuclear proliferation," Negroponte said, and "WMD-related proliferation and two states of particular concern, Iran and North Korea," is the central concern.

But it is the terrorist threat with weapons of mass destruction that continue to get the administration excited.

Noting a time long ago "when a few states had monopolies over the most dangerous technologies," Negroponte said "al Qaeda remains interested in acquiring chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear materials or weapons to attack the United States, US troops, and US interests worldwide."

"Indeed, today," Negroponte said,

"we are more likely to see an attack from terrorists using weapons or agents of mass destruction than states, although terrorists' capabilities would be much more limited. In fact, intelligence reporting indicates that nearly 40 terrorist organizations, insurgencies, or cults have used, possessed, or expressed an interest in chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear agents or weapons. Many are capable of conducting simple, small-scale attacks, such as poisonings, or using improvised chemical devices."

That's quite the arsenal. I guess in order to understand why U.S. officials would focus on terrorist weapons of mass destruction while IEDs and suicide bombers and civilian airliners seem quite effective, you'd have to understand the U.S. government's definition: Everything is a weapon of mass destruction.

And then there is the issue of proportion. North Korea's existing nuclear weapons, heck Russia's thousands of precariously controlled and maintained nuclear weapons, are less threatening than poisons or "improvised chemical devices" wielded by terrorists?

Neither Negroponte nor Maples offered any current intelligence indicating trends towards terrorists acquiring any of these capabilities.

"Several terrorist groups, particularly al Qaeda, remain interested in Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) weapons," Maples said. "Al Qaeda's stated intention to conduct an attack exceeding the destruction of 9/11 raises the possibility that future attacks may involve unconventional weapons."

Saying that nation-states were still "constrained by the logic of deterrence," Negroponte noted that such "constraints may be of little utility in preventing the use of mass effect weapons by rogue regimes or terrorist groups."

The truth is that the United States government has a gigantic weapons of mass destruction bureaucracy, from intelligence collectors and targeters to WMD scientists to the world's premier underground bunker physicists to "counter-proliferation" and "global strike" warriors to technology interdictors to effects analysts and disaster response cadres. There is no getting around the fact that that apparatus has both an appetite and an interest in characterizing the threat as worthy of enormous investment.

WMD are such an emotional threat that no one really asks whether the investment equals the threat or is focused on the right problem. U.S.-Russian nuclear disarmament is stalled and programs to safeguard existing WMD technologies and materials are starved in comparison with new programs to stop "proliferation" (read terrorist proliferation).

All based on bureaucratic self-justification and someone's unsubstantiated nightmare?

In other words, more than eight in 10 of the U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq think they are there avenging the 3,000 people killed on Sept. 11, even though the U.S. government lacks evidence of the connection.

The poll also found that 77 percent think that a major reason for the war was "to stop Saddam from protecting al-Qaeda in Iraq" – another myth nurtured by the Bush administration even though Hussein's secular government was a bitter enemy of al-Qaeda's Islamic fundamentalists.

Traitorous Troops?

Despite this confusion over the reasons for the war, the poll exploded another myth promoted by the administration and its media allies – that Americans are unpatriotic if they criticize Bush's policies, because to do so would damage troop morale.

It turns out the troops want the war brought to a quick end because they have concluded it's unwinnable based on their own experiences, not from the carping of home-side naysayers, often denounced as "traitors" by Bush's supporters.

It seems somehow that 72 percent of the U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq have become "traitors," too.

But what's going on? How can the Bush administration and its supporters get away with spreading so much confusion about the reasons for invading Iraq? How can they justify demonizing so many Americans who disagree with the war policy?

The answer seems to be that the relentless application of propaganda was always part of the administration's strategy for herding the American public in the direction favored by Bush and his neoconservative advisers.

Remember Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's Office of Strategic Influence, the secretive project designed to manipulate international opinion but which was expected to "blow back" some of its propaganda onto the American people.

On Feb. 19, 2002, five months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and 13 months before the invasion of Iraq, the New York Times reported that this Pentagon office was "developing plans to provide news items, possibly even false ones, to foreign media organizations" in order "to influence public sentiment and policy makers in both friendly and unfriendly countries."

News of this disinformation program caused outrage and led to a Pentagon announcement that the office had been shut down. But Rumsfeld later explained that the concept was kept alive even though the office was closed.

"There was the Office of Strategic Influence," Rumsfeld said. "You may recall that. And 'Oh, my goodness gracious, isn't that terrible; Henny Penny, the sky is going to fall.' I went down that next day and said, 'Fine, if you want to savage this thing, fine, I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done' and I have." [See Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting press release, Nov. 27, 2002]

So the Pentagon continued its propaganda project of placing stories, possibly false, in the foreign media, with some of them surely feeding back into the U.S. political debate though the U.S. government is barred from disseminating propaganda at home.

In 2003, the Pentagon produced another propaganda program described in a document called "Information Operations Roadmap," which describes the need for influencing journalists, enemies and the public.

The document recognizes that Americans consume propaganda – on TV and through the Internet – that is intended for foreign audiences. [BBC, Jan. 28, 2006]

Propaganda Abroad

While the Pentagon insists that its public information is accurate, albeit promoting images favorable to the United States, the BBC registered a different opinion about the stories circulated by the U.S. military during the Iraq invasion.

"We're absolutely sick and tired of putting things out and finding they're not true," a senior BBC journalist told the Guardian. "The misinformation in this war is far and away worse than any conflict I've covered, including the first Gulf War and Kosovo. …

"I don't know whether they (Pentagon officials) are putting out flyers in the hope that we'll run them first and ask questions later or whether they genuinely don't know what's going on – I rather suspect the latter." [The Guardian, UK, March 28, 2003]

Military analysts also shake their heads at how reliant the administration has become on propaganda for promoting its goals. Sam Gardiner, an instructor in strategy at the National War College, said the Bush administration has waged a systematic P.R. campaign to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American public.

"There is absolutely no question that the White House and the Pentagon participated in an effort to market the military option," Gardiner said. "The truth did not make any difference to that campaign. To call it fixing is to miss the more profound point.

"It was a campaign to influence. It involved creating false stories; it involved exaggerating; it involved manipulating the numbers of stories that were released; it involved a major campaign to attack those who disagreed with the military option; it included all the techniques those who ran the marketing effort had learned in political campaign." [Kevin Zeese, Democracy Rising, June 23, 2005]

Government Propaganda

So, there was the tale about Pfc. Jessica Lynch, both her fierce resistance under fire and her daring rescue from a hostile Iraqi hospital – when the reality was that she never fired a shot and the hospital staff presented no opposition to her rescue. [AP, Nov. 11, 2003]

Then, there was ex-football player Pat Tillman, who died in Afghanistan. Contrary to official reports of his death in a firefight while on patrol, he actually was killed by friendly fire, a reality that was suppressed for five weeks while the Bush administration milked the propaganda advantage of Tillman's death.

"I'm disgusted by things that have happened with the Pentagon since my son's death," his mother, Mary, told the Los Angeles Times. "I don't trust them one bit."

The truth was stretched, too, when it came to containing negative stories, like the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. Bush said the problem was limited to a few guards on the night shift and that the United States doesn't engage in torture.

The reality has turned out to be much worse. Torture and other abuse of prisoners have reached from Guantanamo Bay to Iraq and Afghanistan – finally overwhelming official denials.

The Bush administration has practiced propaganda on domestic issues as well. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office objected to the broadcasting of fake "news videos" that were designed to look like independent news stories. The GAO said the stories appeared to violate federal rules against propaganda. [AP, Feb. 19, 2005]

The GAO also reported that the administration spent more than $1.6 billion on public relations and media contracts in a 2 ½ year span, including hiring advertising firms to sell its policies to the America public. [www.democrats.reform.house.gov]

Beyond this expensive outreach, the Bush administration has succeeded in gaining cooperation from U.S. news organizations in its news management. Bowing to the administration's national security claims, New York Times executives held the story of warrantless wiretaps for more than a year, possibly altering the outcome of 2004 election.

Violence in Iraq

And what has happened to journalists who act independently and write what they observe in war zones like Iraq?

In 2005, they were killed at a record rate, including a growing number of them becoming the victims of "targeted" killings, according to the International Federation of Journalists. At least 89 journalists were murdered because of their professional work out of a total of 150 media deaths, IFJ said.

"The numbers are staggering," IFJ general secretary Aidan White said.

IFJ listed 38 deliberate killings in the Middle East in 2005, with 35 occurring in Iraq. Five other media workers in Iraq were killed by U.S. troops, bringing the total killed by coalition forces to 18 since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003. [Reuters, Jan. 23, 2006]

In April 2003, as U.S. forces were moving into the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, a U.S. tank fired on the Palestine Hotel, which housed foreign journalists, purportedly in "response to hostile fire." Two journalists were killed, but other reporters monitoring the fighting from their balconies denied that there had been any shooting from the hotel.

"There is simply no evidence to support the official U.S. position that U.S. forces were returning hostile fire from the Palestine Hotel," said a report by the Committee to Protect Journalists. [CBS, May 28, 2003]

U.S. news executives also have complained about strong-arm tactics used to prevent journalists from reporting on incidents that might undermine support for the war back in the United States.

"Our journalists in Iraq have been shoved to the ground, pushed out of the way, told to leave the scene of explosions; we've had camera disks and videotapes confiscated, reporters detained," said Associated Press Washington bureau chief Sandy Johnson. [Nation, Dec. 25, 2003]

As the Iraqi insurgency grew in 2004, so did the heavy-handed tactics against journalists. In May, three Reuters journalists and one working for NBC said U.S. forces subjected them to beatings and other abuse similar to what was later revealed at Abu Ghraib prison.

"Two of the three Reuters staff said they had been forced to insert a finger into their anuses and then lick it, and were forced to put shoes in their mouths, particularly humiliating in Arab culture," Reuters reported.

"The soldiers told them they would be taken to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, deprived them of sleep, placed bags over their heads, kicked and hit them and forced them to remain in stress positions for long periods." [Reuters, Oct, 14, 2004]

The British newspaper, The Guardian, described Iraqi police following the American lead in adopting their own harsh tactics toward journalists in 2004:

"Dozens of journalists in Najaf, including the entire BBC team, were forced from their hotel at gunpoint and detained by local police. Around 60 journalists from local and foreign news organisations including the Guardian, the Telegraph and the Independent as well as the BBC, were held for almost an hour while police officers delivered what one correspondent described as an 'unexpected press conference at gunpoint.' …

"Correspondents in the Najaf Sea hotel said around a dozen policemen, some masked, stormed into the rooms of journalists and forced them into vans and a truck. The Independent's Donald Macintyre reported that the police, some masked, 'shouted threats and abuse at the reporters, along with their Iraqi drivers and translators, and fired about a dozen shots inside and outside the hotel before taking them before the police chief, Major-General Ghaleb al-Jazaari, to hear his emotional complaints about media coverage and the sufferings of police officers during the present crisis'." [Guardian, Aug., 26, 2004]

One of the lessons of "democracy" apparently being taught to the Iraqi government is the need to control the information reaching the public, at almost any cost. What American spin doctors call "spreading our values" has become the tireless manipulation of public perceptions within an endless "information war."

Media stories are planted; public relations firms are hired to shape the opinions of an unsuspecting public; reporters who document contrary facts are deemed the enemy and are subject to bullying or worse.

Rumsfeld's dictums about the need to wage "strategic" media campaigns may be right in a way that his words didn't fully articulate. The truth must be managed lest the American people learn what the administration is actually doing.

Author Alex Sabbeth acts as an informal researcher and organizer for several retired intelligence officers who share his concerns about America's future.

On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.

A month after the bombings, two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.

Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly - people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."

He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."

Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.

So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."

Recently, Mr. Weller's son, Anthony, discovered a carbon copy of the suppressed dispatches among his father's papers (George Weller died in 2002). Unable to find an interested American publisher, Anthony Weller sold the account to Mainichi Shimbun, a big Japanese newspaper. Now, on the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombings, Mr. Weller's account can finally be read.

"In swaybacked or flattened skeletons of the Mitsubishi arms plants is revealed what the atomic bomb can do to steel and stone, but what the riven atom can do against human flesh and bone lies hidden in two hospitals of downtown Nagasaki," wrote Mr. Weller. A month after the bombs fell, he observed, "The atomic bomb's peculiar 'disease,' uncured because it is untreated and untreated because it is not diagnosed, is still snatching away lives here."

After killing Mr. Weller's reports, U.S. authorities tried to counter Mr. Burchett's articles by attacking the messenger. General MacArthur ordered Mr. Burchett expelled from Japan (the order was later rescinded), his camera mysteriously vanished while he was in a Tokyo hospital and U.S. officials accused him of being influenced by Japanese propaganda.

Then the U.S. military unleashed a secret propaganda weapon: It deployed its own Times man. It turns out that William L. Laurence, the science reporter for The New York Times, was also on the payroll of the War Department.

For four months, while still reporting for the Times, Mr. Laurence had been writing press releases for the military explaining the atomic weapons program; he also wrote statements for President Harry Truman and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson. He was rewarded by being given a seat on the plane that dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, an experience that he described in the Times with religious awe.

Three days after publication of Mr. Burchett's shocking dispatch, Mr. Laurence had a front-page story in the Times disputing the notion that radiation sickness was killing people. His news story included this remarkable commentary: "The Japanese are still continuing their propaganda aimed at creating the impression that we won the war unfairly, and thus attempting to create sympathy for themselves and milder terms. ... Thus, at the beginning, the Japanese described 'symptoms' that did not ring true."

Mr. Laurence won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the atomic bomb, and his faithful parroting of the government line was crucial in launching a half-century of silence about the deadly lingering effects of the bomb. It is time for the Pulitzer board to strip Hiroshima's apologist and his newspaper of this undeserved prize.

Sixty years late, Mr. Weller's censored account stands as a searing indictment not only of the inhumanity of the atomic bomb but also of the danger of journalists embedding with the government to deceive the world.

Amy Goodman, host of Democracy Now!, and David Goodman, a contributing writer for Mother Jones, are co-authors of The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.

Events seem to be unfolding with a vengeance. Since her access to government power through the flawed 2004 electoral exercise, Gloria Arroyo has turned out to be a huge disappointment to those who supported her in People Power II as an alternative to Estrada. Arroyo was definitely not a Cory Aquino with the charisma of the martyred Ninoy. Arroyo's experience in politics conformed to the routine career of a member of local oligarchic dynasties; but her clan grew rich primarily from bureaucratic and business manipulation, not landlord exploitation. Today, criminal linkages surround her family and cronies. She might appear for some to resemble Ferdinand Marcos-without the savvy and pretense to intellectual substance of the latter. Despite U.S. tutelage, Arroyo's managerial mode and policies demonstrate an essentially autocratic style of governance wholly subservient to the dictates of the World Bank, IMF, WTO, and the Washington Consensus.

Right from the beginning, Arroyo's ascendancy was characterized by rampant human rights violations. She presided over an unprecedented series of political assassinations of journalists, lawyers, church people, peasant leaders, women activists, and workers. The human rights group KARAPATAN has documented the brutalization of 169,530 individual victims, 18,515 families, 71 communities and 196 households. Arroyo has been tellingly silent over the killing and abduction of countless members of opposition parties and popular organizations. Most of those killed or "disappeared" belong to progressive groups such as Bayan Muna, Anakpawis, Gabriela, Anakbayan, Karapatan, KMU, and others. They were protesting Arroyo's repressive taxation, collusion with foreign capital tied to oil and mining companies that destroy people's livelihood and environment, fraudulent use of public funds , and other anti-people measures. Such groups and individuals have been tagged as "communist fronts" by Arroyo's National Security Advisers, the military and police; the latter agencies have been implicated in these ruthless atrocities. Just as what happened to the torturers of the Marcos regime, no one has been brought to trial and found responsible for any of the killings and other outrageous brutalities.

Meanwhile, Arroyo has hired a U.S. lobbying firm, Venable, for national governance. The US firm will ostensibly raise money for the modernization of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines). It will also propose crucial amendments to the Constitution so as to allow foreign ownership of land, public utilities, and the mass media. Charter change will be pushed through to permit Arroyo to retain power even under a new parliamentary set-up. To conciliate Washington, Arroyo is heeding the Bush administration's strategy of devising Anti-Terrorism Laws and National ID Systems to suppress the articulation of grievances by the poor, deprived majority. Because of severe unemployment, soaring prices of oil products and basic commodities, unjust salaries and wages, increased tax burdens, chronic corruption in government, insufficient and costly social services, lack of genuine land reform, alarming proliferation of gambling, drugs, and State violence against ordinary citizens, millions of Filipinos, including landed elite, businessmen and professionals, have called for Arroyo's resignation (see March 2005 survey of Pulse Asia; Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 4, 2005).

Since 2004, Arroyo's administration suffered a stunningly rapid erosion of support from the traditional comprador and oligarchic segments of the ruling bloc. On one hand, the ousted Estrada camp has really never reconciled itself to its loss of power, given its populist tendencies and residual nationalist leaning. On the other hand, the Arroyo clique failed to offer a viable compromise to those excluded, given its dependence on bureaucratic corruption, extortions from business and other criminal activities. Never really interested in popular mobilization, the Arroyo clique has relied on bribery and other mendacious machinations. It operates with a narrow circle of parasitic generals, "trapos" (traditional politicians), and mediocre hirelings from media and academy. Its popular base is non-existent. Its influence on landlord oligarchs and the Makati elite has always been superficial and precarious, mediated by brokers like Fidel Ramos, De Venecia, and assorted confidence tricksters. In short, Arroyo's mode of governance has always been fundamentally unstable, unconsolidated, and opportunistic.

One of the first signs of the vulnerability of Arroyo's position may be found in her yielding to the massive popular demand for withdrawal of Filipino troops in Iraq following the Angelo de la Cruz kidnapping. Of course, she tried to exploit its "nationalist" potential. But her continuing servility to Bush's imperialist aggression in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, together with her obedience to the WTO neoliberal program of privatization and deregulation, reinforced her utter dependency on global forces that only served to undermine her authority, her claim to represent the Filipino nation. Arroyo followed Fidel Ramos in implementing the Visiting Forces Agreement, together with other onerous treaties, thus maintaining U.S. control of the Philippine military via training of officers, logistics, and dictation of policies toward the Moro insurgents as well as to the New People's Army guerillas. This is the profound legacy of the persisting colonial subjugation of the Philippines and the instrumentalization of the local bureaucracy and military to carry out U.S. imperial strategy in the first half of the twentieth-century up to Cold War anti-communist policies and the current "war against global terrorism." Without US support, the Filipino elite cannot sustain the oppression and exploitation of the propertyless workers, peasants, and middle strata now driven to flee and settle in other lands.

This explains why the AFP continues to pursue a fanatical anti-communist program today even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the capitalist reversal in China and in Eastern Europe. Its Christian chauvinist orientation militates against any pluralist outlook or even multiculturalist sympathy for the plight of the Bangsa Moro people and other indigenous communities (Igorots, Lumad) who have organized and armed themselves to fight for justice and dignity, for regaining their ancestral habitats.

But this AFP subservience to Washington does not insure the absence of internal rifts and breakdown of "professionalism" due to abuses and corruption of the politicized officer ranks (see Alfred McCoy's book, Closer Than Brothers, Yale University Press, 2000). This is a pattern which has almost become institutionalized for lack of any genuine democratic, nationalist ethos, given the function of this organ of government (established by the U.S. colonial authority) to suppress the revolutionary forces of the first Philippine Republic, the Moro Sultanate resistance, and numerous peasant insurrections (including the Huk uprising) constantly reproduced by the fierce class divisions in a semi-feudal and neocolonized formation. It is doubtful if a Hugo Chavez, or even a clone, can germinate from this Pentagon-supervised organ of repression.

We can thus understand the "Hello Garci" episode, following the Oakwood "Mutiny," as a symptom of the internal divisions in the AFP and the loss of Arroyo's full control. Whatever sliver of moral legitimacy Arroyo's administration still possessed then, gradually dissolved in the AFP squabbles caused by this exposure. Not even her successful attempt to stop impeachment proceedings in Congress could really repair the rupture of political legitimacy dating back to the May 2004 elections. The "Hello Garci" scandal may be read as a symptom of the advanced disintegration of the comprador-landlord hegemony eviscerated by the Marcos dictatorship, temporarily revived by Cory Aquino, and given extension by Fidel Ramos' mock-utopian resuscitation of Marcosian rhetoric.

Circumstance more than personality functions as the key determinant. Arroyo cannot rescue this coalition of conflicting political forces because of lack of the abundant foreign subsidies that Ferdinand Marcos then enjoyed. This is worsened by the depletion of natural resources and educated social capital (due to emigration, breakdown of schooling, etc.) and the strict limits of local capital accumulation (no independent industrial ventures) due to the pressures of globalization and the US "war" to re-establish its global hegemony by systematic torture and unrelenting bombing.

Arroyo has no other way out. The Economic Crisis of 1997-1998 destroyed any illusions of the Philippines becoming a new Asian Tiger. While Ramos and Estrada offered compromises to the working people and the intelligentsia, they failed to halt the advance of the armed struggle in the countryside and the national-democratic social movements in the cities. Civil society continues its resurgence despite State/military repression. With a profit-centered neoliberal hegemony in control, the unimpeded impoverishment of the countryside has resulted in mass exodus to the cities and outward, hence a million Filipinos leave every year for jobs abroad.

The failure of the inept corrupt regimes of Ramos, Estrada and Arroyo is also evidenced by the continuing Bangsa Moro insurgency led by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. In this context, the breakdown of the MNLF-Misuari accommodation also proves how fragile is the peace won by Malacanang bribery, coercion, and promises. Hence the need of the U.S. after the 9/11 attack to stigmatize the New People's Army and the Communist Party of the Philippines as terrorist organizations, capitalizing on the repulsive acts of the Abu Sayyaf and the pervasive climate of fear following the bombings in Bali, Indonesia, and elsewhere. This will not stop the disintegration of the neocolonial order and the defeat of U.S. interventionary salvaging of its Frankenstein monster.

Meanwhile, structural conditionalities continue to extract enormous debt payments to the World Bank and other financial consortiums, draining two-thirds of the social wealth of the Philippines and depriving education and other social services of sorely needed funds. Neoliberalizing schemes enforced by U.S.-dominated agencies (WTO, IMF) continue to inflict havoc and misery on the majority of 86 million Filipinos. It has bred criminality, worsened corruption, inflamed reactionary Christian fundamentalism, and exposed everyone to the wrath of natural disasters (witness the Leyte flood, a repeat of previous devastating calamities in Luzon and elsewhere). It has contributed to the staging of the Wowowee tragedy, a glaring symptom of how the iniquitous system gambles the dreams of the desperate millions.

Marcos' institutionalization of "the warm body export" in 1974 to tax the poor and relieve labor-peasant unrest has structured the economy to be wholly dependent on regular remittances of Overseas Filipino Workers, the main source of dollar earnings required to pay the foreign debt. The remittance topped $18 billion last year, giving the impression that the country was becoming prosperous. Arroyo prematurely celebrated this index of an economic recovery entirely contingent on the unpredictable fluctuation of the global labor market.

This infamous "warm body export" has led to nearly ten million Filipinos displaced to 140 countries, chiefly as OCWs (Overseas Contract Workers) in poorly paid jobs (mainly as domestics, caregivers, and semi-skilled labor), often victimized by unscrupulous racist employers, abandoned by their own government to fend for themselves-an average of five OCW corpses arrive each day at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. These "New Heroes" ("mga bagong bayani" to Cory Aquino) are now clamoring for Arroyo's ouster.

Relentless corruption, cynical manipulation, and the outright lack of any concern for the people's welfare have distinguished Arroyo's unconscionable rule from its inception. Faced with the loss of moral and political legitimacy, Arroyo has institutionalized a pattern of terror throughout the country since taking the reins of government. Particularly with the election of party-list representatives from BayanMuna, killings, abductions and outright harassment of anyone criticizing the government have intensified.

The Ecumenical Movement for Justice and Peace has confirmed that the majority of human rights violations have been committed by the AFP, the Philippine National Police, and the CAFGU (Civilian Armed Forces Government Units). And this could not have occurred without the tacit or covert approval of Arroyo and her advisers. As the Promotion of Church People's Response put it in their Feb. 24 Statement: "GMA cheated her way to victory in the May 2004 elections, using public funds to secure votes in her favor and rig the election results….GMA's record of political killings and violations of civil liberties, especially with her Calibrated Preemptive Response scheme, is now the worst since the downfall of Marcos."

Having reviewed the history of this current conjuncture, we take the position of denouncing President Arroyo's flagrant violation of the Philippine Constitution via the pretext of a "National Emergency." In truth, it is Arroyo's emergency. This has been convincingly demonstrated by the lawyers of CODAL (Counsels for the Defense of Liberties) and the Catholic Bishops. Arroyo's suppression of civil liberties and democratic freedoms imposed by Proclamation 1017, carried out by the military and police, opens the way to militarist brutal dictatorship similar to Ferdinand Marcos' authoritarian rule. Unlike Marcos, however, Arroyo does not have the full support of the comprador and landlord oligarchy; Ramos, Estrada, Aquino and other factions of the ruling class that they represent have demanded her resignation. Clearly these groups, with obvious support from the U.S., would prefer "business as usual"-a managed transition to a legitimate administration elected by the majority, with a program of economic and political reforms to solve rampant graft and corruption, endemic unemployment, deepening poverty and hopelessness of the masses. Can such a transition be peacefully administered by the traditional politicians (such as De Venecia) with U.S. patronage?

Utilizing the pretext of a coup by right, left and other anti-Arroyo forces, Arroyo issued Proclamation 1017 chiefly to intimidate, harass and selectively punish her critics. With her emergency powers, she has arrested all the duly-elected representatives of BAYAN MUNA, thus intimidating others who might voice criticism and protest. Her police and military have suppressed street demonstrations and public rallies, raided the offices of newspapers and other media, and threatened the arrest of hundreds, including such prestigious members of political dynasties such as Jose "Peping" Cojuangco. It appears, however, that Arroyo is using the usual "divide-and-rule" tactic, isolating the "communist" elements, frightening their allies, and threatening others with "warrantless arrests." Arroyo and her advisers believe that we are still engaged in the Cold War, fighting agents of the Soviet Union and Communist China. However, this bogey of a "coup" conspiracy fails to convince people because those arrested do not include the military officials that the regime has named as complicit in the plot to overthrow the Arroyo clique. Arroyo surely cannot afford to alienate the military hierarchy she depends on; but can she fool all the honest nationalist officers whose sympathies are with the people?

Arroyo's "National Emergency" decree arrogates to a clique or fraction of the ruling class the use of the coercive State apparatus (courts, police, all public offices and funds) to promote the interest of a few families and their extended retinues. It is foolish to say that Arroyo should be given a chance to explain. Since taking power in 2001, Arroyo has never explained the role of the AFP and PNP (Philippine National Police) in the killing or brutalization of thousands of peasants, workers, women, professionals, Moros, Lumads, and youth. No explanation has been given for the lack of decent jobs for thousands who leave everyday-over 100,000 nurses and doctors left in the last decade. No explanation for the collapse of the nation's health care system. No explanation for the violence against women, for the pollution of habitats, the neglect of OCWs raped and beaten and killed. No explanation for the hunger, diseases, and misery afflicting millions of Filipinos.

Devoid of any "check-and-balance' restraint from Congress or Court, Arroyo's martial-law terror has been unleashed chiefly on the progressive and nationalist sectors of the citizenry. Should we expect a massacre of Indonesian or Chilean proportions? Marcos tried to do it, but he had to compromise in the end. Clearly, today, the hand of the U.S. and its agents has been exposed in directing this selective dragnet, even as the US Embassy continues to refuse to surrender four American soldiers charged by the Philippine Court with rape. Meanwhile, thousands of U.S. Special Forces and their mighty warships are standing by, just in case….

We join a multitude of people's organizations at home and abroad in this project of affirming popular democracy, social justice, and national sovereignty. Exposed for cheating, lying, and stealing the people's money, Arroyo's fascist rule can no longer claim even a semblance of legitimacy. Nor can the State apparatus controlled by Arroyo claim the authority that solely emanates from the Filipino people, assuming that a constitutional democratic republic is still the framework of order and security. The Arroyo regime's moral rottenness and political decay have precipitated its total repudiation and condemnation by the Filipino masses.

We call on all conscienticized Filipinos, democrats and nationalists to unite and rally against the Arroyo fascist group imposing terror on the whole country. Civil liberties promulgated in the 1987 Constitution and by the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights can only be guaranteed by public demonstrations, street rallies, strikes, and other visible manifestations of the exercise of social and civic rights. We call on all peoples around the world concerned with justice, democracy, and human dignity to express solidarity with the Filipino people in overthrowing the Arroyo regime, releasing all political prisoners, and restoring full and genuine sovereignty to the Filipino people.

E. San Juan, Jr. is the Director, Philippines Cultural Studies Center Storrs, CT 06268, USA

Following this, the opposition planned to declare the election results false, seize administrative buildings and railway stations, and block railroads, the security chief said.

Sukhorenko said that representatives of some Belarusian NGOs, as well as militants from Ukraine, Georgia, and former Yugoslavia could have been brought into the coup.

"The unregistered non-governmental organizations have gone underground, and are acting with a strong level of professionalism, as most of their members have been trained abroad."

Around 100 mobile phones with Lithuanian SIM-cards and several tens of thousand dollars had been seized from one of these organizations, Partnership.

He said the organization was financed by a regional branch of the National Democratic Institute, and U.S. citizen David Hamilton. The KGB chief said the United States had allegedly allocated $12 million to support these activities in 2006.

The official said the plotters would be unlikely to implement their plans now that they have been made public.

"However, we will monitor the situation, and if they risk doing this, we will find the explosive devices."

"We know both the organizers and perpetrators," he said, adding that they would be detained if they attempted to carry out their plan.

Alexander Milinkevich, the democratic opposition presidential candidate, said earlier that it would be announced that incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko had gained at least 75% of the vote in the elections.

He said Belarusians wanted change, and wanted to live in a different country.

"If we get rid of the information vacuum, the existing Belarusian regime will fall," he said.

He also said the opposition would not hold any rallies, even if they lose the elections.

According to Milinkevich, the situation in Belarus was alarming, as "the elections can already be considered non-democratic."

"The elections are being held under total falsification and persecution of the opposition. We are taking part in this political campaign in order to destroy the fear that reigns in our society."

The incumbent president, Alexander Lukashenko, dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by the Western media, has ruled Belarus since 1994.

The huge recruitment drive is part of President Hugo Chávez's plan to create a people's army that would answer directly to him in the event of civil unrest or an armed conflict.

General Alberto Muller Rojas, one of the members of the army high command who helped to devise the new thinking in military strategy being adopted by Venezuela's leftwing government, said: "If for example the United States were to invade Venezuela one day, and that's what many people are expecting, the only way we could repel such an attack would be a full scale guerrilla war against the foreign aggressors.

"Our professional army only numbers 80,000 soldiers, so we would need to use civilians like in Iraq to fight the Yankee forces."

Top military officials are confident that a reserve force of 2m, or one in five adults, would be sufficient to dissuade any country from invading Venezuela, the world's fifth biggest oil exporter and fifth biggest supplier of crude oil to the US.

Many of Venezuela's state-owned companies, such as the oil giant PDVSA, have started their own territorial guard units. However, they are being asked to join the formal training programme offered by the armed forces.

Richard Arrais, 40, a marketing executive who works at PDVSA's headquarters in Caracas, has his own office and works in a nine-to-five job Mondays to Fridays. But once a week he and his friends meet up as reservists.

He said: "Since January we've been holding informal meetings to discuss military tactics and to receive courses such as first aid.

"But the training starting this Saturday will be tougher. There will be drill, weapons training and assault courses, as well as a military exercise in the countryside."

Mr Arrais and others like him say they are happy to give up every Saturday in defence of their fatherland and the values of President Chávez's socialist revolution. They believe internal opposition forces and the United States could strike at any moment.

So far service in the territorial guard is voluntary. But the Venezuelan parliament is studying proposals to make it obligatory for all Venezuelan adults to join the territorial guard.

Mr Chávez has sought to position himself at the vanguard of a bloc of Latin American leftist leaders acting as a counterpoint to US hegemony in the region.

Tensions between Caracas and Washington have simmered in recent weeks with an espionage row that has resulted in a US naval attache being expelled and disputes on a range of issues from the war on drugs to aviation safety restrictions.

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006