He had even told his parents that he had been warned by his commanders that he could be ordered to fire on child suicide bombers.

It was a fear that he never confronted. Within 48 hours of confessing his concerns to his family, Pte Chelsea was dead after taking an overdose of painkillers and slashing his wrists.

On his death bed, he told his mother, Kerry: "I can't go out there and shoot at young children. I just can't go to Iraq. I don't care what side they are on. I can't do it."

Today, mourners including comrades from his unit will attend Pte Chelsea's funeral, wearing the colours of his two favourite football teams, Chelsea and Wigan. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is to begin an investigation into his death, including allegations that the teenager was bullied. In a suicide note, the young soldier had said that he was "just a waste".

His parents said yesterday that their son's ordeal had convinced them of the need for an urgent review of the pre-deployment training given to British soldiers bound for Iraq.

Tony Chelsea, 58, a factory production supervisor, said: "My son was made very, very lonely by what was happening to him. He was very sad inside and he bottled up what was causing it. It was only after the overdose that he told us about his fears over what might happen in Iraq.

"In training, they were made to wrestle with dummies. Jason said they were also told they might have to fight kids and that they might have to shoot them because they were carrying suicide bombs. He said the policy [where there was a suspected suicide bomber] was to shoot first and ask questions later."

His mother added: "Jason said that during the training for Iraq he had been told that children as young as two carry bombs and the time may come when he would have to shoot one to save himself and his friends. I think they need to think again about the training they give to young soldiers before Iraq."

It is understood guidelines on training for British troops heading for Iraq offer no warning on child suicide bombers. But defence sources confirmed that the details of the advice given to soldiers are decided by each regiment. There have been no known cases of suicide attacks in Iraq committed by young children.

The death of Pte Chelsea, who had served in Germany and Cyprus, will renew concern about the psychological pressures faced by British troops as they deal with deployment to Iraq. Four days before the infantryman attempted to take his life, the MoD released figures showing that 1,541 soldiers who served in Iraq are suffering from psychiatric illness. Last year, 727 cases were recorded, amounting to nearly 10 per cent of the British deployment. Special units have now been set up in the country to help soldiers deal with combat stress. While services were also available in Britain to Pte Chelsea to discuss his concerns within the Army, it seems he felt unable to disclose them.

He had joined the Army at 16 after a visit to his school, St Augustine's, telling his family the Army was to be his life. He was at home on leave when his fears came to a head this month.

After watching a football match on the night of 10 August, he calmly wrote the suicide note, telling his father it was a letter to a relative, took 60 painkillers then slashed his wrists. As he lay bleeding, the soldier dialled 999, telling the operator: "I have done something stupid."

In normal circumstances, Pte Chelsea, who suffered from dyslexia, may have recovered from his injuries. But when doctors began tests to assess the damage caused to his liver by the drugs, it was found that the organ had been irreparably damaged by alcohol. His family were told his liver was similar to that of someone who had been an alcoholic for 20 years and he would not survive a transplant. He died on 14 August at St James's Hospital in Leeds after his family gave consent for his other organs to be used for transplants.

His father said he believed t he reasons behind his son's drinking had provoked a previous suicide attempt in 2004, when he cut his wrists in his barracks. After this incident, Pte Chelsea was treated by an Army psychiatrist which the family said had restored his confidence.

Mr Chelsea said: "My son started drinking 18 months ago. He destroyed his liver in less than a year and a half. I believe that is because he was being bullied again. He did not want to make anything of it. He was in the Army, he knew he had to be tough. But it only takes a few words. He said he would hear comments aimed at him because of his dyslexia. He was told he would get his colleagues killed because he was stupid.

"I support the British Army and what it does. But I would like to stand before my son's unit with a picture of him in uniform and ask those who made these comments to him time after time to think about the effect they had."

The young soldier's despair was displayed in the note he wrote to his parents before his overdose. He said: "Really sorry, mum and dad. I'm just no good for you. I have got to finish it. I am just a waste."

The MoD said it was "greatly saddened" by the death but the details of his treatment remained the subject of an inquiry. A spokesman said: "We send our heartfelt sympathies to the family of Pte Chelsea. It is our intention to convene a board of inquiry which will examine the circumstances around his death."

Five other suicides since Iraq invasion

* JULY 2004

Pte Gary Boswell, 20, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers, hanged himselfnear his home in Milford Haven. He was on leave from Iraq

* 31 OCTOBER 2004

Staff Sgt Denise Rose, 34, who served in the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, was found dead from a gunshot wound at a British Army base in Basra

* 26 DECEMBER 2004

Sgt Paul Connolly, 33, of the 21st Engineer Regiment of the Royal Engineers was found dead from a gunshot wound at Shaibah Logistic Base, south-west of Basra

* 15 OCTOBER 2005

Capt Ken Masters, 40, of the Special Investigation Branch of the Royal Military Police, hanged himself in his office in Basra, just five days before the end of a tour

* 22 MARCH 2006

Cpl Mark Cridge, 25, of 7 Signal Regiment, shot himself at Camp Bastion in the Helmand province of Afghanistan.

"Our forces arrived in the area and were immediately fired on. We returned fire, killing seven Al-Qaeda fighters," spokesman Colonel Thomas Collins told AFP.

A child aged between 10 and 12 years old was also killed and a woman wounded, he said. "We are trying to determine who they were and what they were doing there."

The woman was taken to a coalition medical facility for treatment. Four men were also arrested, a coalition statement said.

Coalition warplanes were called to the battle as the departing troops came under attack, a coalition spokeswoman told AFP. They fired warning shots which did not cause casualties, Lieutenant Tamara Lawrence told AFP.

Reports from the district said the seven dead men were civilians who had gathered to settle a dispute between two families, deputy provincial police chief Abdul Sabor Allah-Yar said.

"We're not sure if they were Al-Qaeda or Taliban," he said.

"According to our reports from the district chief and district authorities, the men were civilian elders who had gathered for a shura (tribal council) to settle a dispute," Allah-Yar said.

A government delegation was sent to investigate.

Lawrence said the coalition had operated on "very reliable, very credible intelligence".

"We understand the sensitivities to civilian casualties and that is why we take precautions and make sure our intelligence is correct before we operate," she said.

The coalition, which has unintentionally killed dozens of civilians in its operations in Afghanistan, has conducted several raids in the past weeks on suspected Al-Qaeda members in the east of the country.

Last week Pakistani officials said they had informed US-led coalition forces that a Middle Eastern Al-Qaeda kingpin linked to an alleged plot to blow up airliners flying from Britain to the United States was based in Kunar.

Escalating violence in Afghanistan has been blamed on remnants of the Taliban, which was ousted in 2001, and their allies from Al-Qaeda, the network of Osama bin Laden who found shelter with the hardline Afghan regime.

The child was the third to be killed in insurgency-linked violence -- and the second by Western soldiers -- in three days.

Canadian troops shot and killed a 10-year-old boy who was on a motorbike that broke through a security cordon around the site of a suicide attack in the southern city of Kandahar on Tuesday, a spokeswoman said.

The driver of the motorbike was still in hospital, Lieutenant Sue Stefko told AFP.

The troops had opened fire fearing a "follow-on" attack after the blast, which killed a Canadian soldier and another Afghan child.

The Canadian troops are serving with NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) which includes 21,000 troops from 37 countries.

Dutch Defence Minister Cees van der Knaap was in Afghanistan Thursday for a visit to meet Dutch troops and officials, including President Hamid Karzai.

ISAF forces were meanwhile conducting operations in militant strongholds in Helmand and Kandahar provinces but could not release details, a spokesman said.

Even if people are not sure what a fascist is, most know that it is not a positive term, and for many in this administration and those who support them this is sufficient justification to use it. Calling one's opponents unpleasant names is known in philosophy as an ad hominem argument, and it is recognized as a logical fallacy. Sound logic requires us to understand that bad people and bad ideas are not synonymous, and in the same way, good people do not always have sound ideas. But, bad logic often makes for good propaganda.

Politicians, as George Orwell pointed out to us, are particularly adept at draining meaning from language and refilling words with emotional rather than cognitive content. Careful writers of all political persuasions, perhaps especially conservatives, protest the debasement of language by our leaders and public figures. The process has become so ubiquitous that many, if not most, people do not notice that the words they hear or read mean something other than what the dictionary informs us. Therefore, President Bush can call members of Islamic terrorist organizations fascists, and neither he nor most of his listeners recognize any irony in his name-calling. Fortunately, President Bush's misuse of language in referring to Islamic fascists has not escaped attention by some in the popular press. See Georgie Ann Geyer's August 16, 2006 column,
"With Twist of Words Bush Gets It Wrong Again." It is a service to the reading public for journalists such as Ms. Geyer to call attention to the debasement of political terms by leaders who should, but who may not, know better.

Perhaps more than most political terms, the word fascist lends itself to imprecise use. This is because -- unlike most modern ideologies such as communism, socialism, or laissez faire capitalism which have a recognizable set of intellectual constructs that define their core beliefs and to some extent direct or predict their economic or political behaviors - fascism at its core substitutes emotional beliefs for intellectual principles. Whereas communism or capitalism have universally applicable principles, such as public ownership of the means of production or a reliance upon the power of private property within a free market economy as the means to a well ordered polity, fascism takes a form that varies according nature and history of the national culture in which it arises. In the 20th Century, nations with widely differing cultures and political structures have been subject to fascist governments. Germany, Italy, Spain, Argentina, Portugal, Croatia and a few other nations have each had a version of fascist government, but the commonalities that make them fascist are not immediately apparent in a survey of their cultural, economic, or institutional structures under fascist regimes. Reading books by German fascists (Hitler, Rosenberg) or by Italian fascists (Mussolini, Gentile), or reading the speeches of Franco, Salazar, or Peron will not immediately provide one with an understanding of fascism as an ideology, or even suggest that there are enough common elements among these national movements to categorize them together on any basis at all.

A number of scholars have addressed the problems of defining fascism as a political theory and have achieved some success, albeit at a rather abstract level. For instance, Umberto Eco, the prolific Italian jack-of-all-trades intellectual, identified 14 points that mark fascism in a 1995 article entitled, "Eternal Fascism: Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt" (New York Review of Books, 22 June 1995). Additionally, in 2002, political scientist Laurence Britt outlined the essentials of fascism in "14 Points of Fascism," for the Project for the Old American Century (http://www.oldamericancentury.org/14pts.htm). Despite the coincidence of finding 14 points of commonality that define fascism, the two articles do not completely catalog the same traits. Nevertheless, taken together they bring a great deal of coherence to the study of fascism as a political movement, if not a coherent ideology.

Eco, writing before the advent of the Bush Administration, may be considered without reference to the Republican administration of George W. Bush, but it still provides a very interesting yardstick against which to measure Islamic militancy as well as recent American activities and policies. Eco's fourteen points may be briefly paraphrased in summary as follows:

1) A cult of tradition marks fascist governments. National history is selectively presented to emphasize traits that support the myth of a nation's superiority or special status in history.

2) Fascist governments reject modernism and rationality, although they embrace the instrumentality of technology. Fascist regimes are marked by irrationality, anti-intellectualism, and emotion.

3) Fascist governments value action for action's sake. Another manifestation of irrationality and emotion over reason, fascist behavior often favors unilateral action (often violent) over diplomacy or consensus.

4) Dissent or disagreement is usually interpreted by fascist governments as treason. The government exploits fear of difference

5) A fear of diversity or difference within the nation is created and exploited by fascist regimes.

6) Fascist governments usually draw on social frustration of groups or classes of citizens that feel themselves to be politically humiliated or threatened by internal social groups above or below their class, or by external forces.

7) Hyper- nationalism marks the fascist state. Often this is reinforced by government propaganda which makes the populace feel beleaguered or the intended victims of international plots.

8) Fascist governments often appear humiliated by the wealth, force, power or prestige of their enemies.

9) Fascists present a world view that individual and national life is a permanent struggle, and that war is the only acceptable means of asserting, establishing, and preserving the superiority of the fascist state.

10) Fascism relies on a form of elitism, which is a hallmark of reactionary societies, that hold the weak in contempt.

11) Fascist regimes celebrate the Hero. Everyone is trained to be a hero, and to lead a heroic life, the culmination of which is a heroic death. Heroic death becomes something of a cult, tied to militarism, nationalism, struggle, and an irrational will to power.

12) The will-to-power which is a hallmark of fascism leads to an exaggerated masculinity or machismo which is marked by a disdain for women, intolerance and condemnation of non-standard sexual habits. Homosexuality, chastity, abortion, promiscuity, sex outside of heterosexual marriage, and so on are suppressed as crimes against the state or as crimes against nature.


13) Fascist governments usually are marked by a selective, quantitative populism. "The people" is conceived as a monolithic entity expressing the common will which is embodied by policies adopted by the elite, or more usually, The Leader.

14) Orwellian Newspeak marks fascist rhetoric. The perversion and misdirection of language is used as a means of social control and a necessary tool of national propaganda.

Islamic extremists, when compared to Eco's list of fascist characteristics, fail the test although there are some that strike fairly close to certain militant Islamic groups. However, hyper-nationalism is a sine qua non for fascism, but is not a characteristic of militant Islam. Perhaps the nearest one can come to finding an Islamic nationalism is the phenomenon of the "Umma," which was the notion of religious unity supported by the caliphate prior to the fall of the Ottoman empire and the secularization of Turkey. The Umma is not a synonym for pan-Arabism, the doctrine that underlay the attempted union of Egypt, Syria, and some other ethnic Arab tribes or quasi-political entities back in the days of Gamel Nasser. Rather, the Umma was more like the philosophical universality of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, from which European nation-states emerged based upon shared language, history, culture, and geography.

If there is such a thing as Islamic nationalism, it would appear to be in approximately the same inchoate state as were the small Germanic principalities of the Holy Roman Empire prior to Bismarck, or the scramble of Italian states prior to the Garibaldi union. Nationalism is an important concept primarily to secularists, currently a small minority in the Middle East. Nationalism in the Islamic states of the Middle East, if present at all, is a very tenuous concept which was unknown before the artificial national boundaries that the former colonial powers imposed following each of the two global wars of the 20th Century. There may be some in the region for whom nationalism in its fully developed form is a deeply felt, psychologically binding force (Iran is a case in point as it has inherited the ancient Persian national identity). However, it seems demonstrable that tribalism (Bedouin, Saudi, Berber, etc.) or denominationalism (Sunni, Shi'a, Wahabi) create a more deeply unifying psychological identity for most of the sub-elites of the region. Perhaps the most telling demonstrations of this assertion is the reversion in Afghanistan to tribal domination following the arranged election of a western surrogate, and the civil war currently rending Iraq into regional fragments dominated by Sunnis, Shi'as or Kurds.

It must be emphasized, however, that external threats or attacks upon these fragile artificial nations can create and intensify a sense of nationalism where historically it has been very weak. The Russian wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya, et al, or the unilateral attacks by Israel or the USA against Muslim countries illustrate this point. The issue here is not simply a reaction against western aggression; rather it is the emotional effect upon the populace of a national war. Nationalism in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories have all been stimulated by war, even by wars waged between predominately Muslim countries. So, to the extent that nationalism is growing in places such as those mentioned here, the potential for fascist nationalism is growing as well. One day, perhaps relatively soon, there will be a sufficiently strong nationalism in some countries of the Middle East to support a true fascism. And, if it happens, it will partly be the result of western preemptive aggression. The irony of this is striking, and is apparently unappreciated by those who continue to advocate a Middle East policy of military intimidation backed by a stated policy of preemptive war. Those who are accusing Muslim extremists of Islamic Fascism are to some extent engaging in a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Humiliation of the Arab peoples and a perceived disrespect by the west for their religion certainly is a lingering source of resentment toward the European colonial powers and the USA. And, the notion of the heroic martyr is part of the mind-set of the Islamic fanatics. Indeed, the vision of martyrdom appears to be the inspiration of young Islamic fundamentalists to sacrifice themselves for the destruction of those they consider enemies of their religion. These characteristics by themselves, of course, are insufficient as markers of fascism. The two hallmarks of fascism, in its 20th Century manifestations are nationalism and corporatism, which both appear in virtually every fascist governmental structure in Europe, Latin America, and Japan (for those who classify pre-war Japan as fascist). An examination of every government that has ever considered itself fascist discloses a deep inter-penetration between government and corporate interests. Corporatism, for Mussolini, was a synonym for fascism. The political history of Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and virtually every other fascist regime discloses a close identity between the interests of the state and the corporate interests which financed and supported it.

For those whose sensibilities permit a simpler conception of fascism than either the Eco or the Britt models provide, probably Benito Mussolini himself best defined the distilled essence of fascism. Trained as a journalist, he could be direct and explicit when the occasion required. In the Encyclopedia Italiano, Mussolini wrote that, "Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power." Certainly the same attitude was displayed in Germany under National Socialism; Hitler's financial and political machine was dependent upon the close support of German corporations and business interests. The same was true of Spain, Portugal, and Argentina. If the merger of corporate and governmental power is the primary mark of fascism, then the Bush Republican administration certainly meets the measure. Bush and Republican deregulation of markets, approval of corporate mergers in that come close to creating monopolies in certain industries (banking, communications, oil, pharmaceuticals), massive cuts in corporate taxes, abolition of estate taxes, hugely profitable no-bid contracts for favored companies (Haliburton, Bechtel in Iraq and New Orleans), huge increases in contracts for defense contractors (Boeing, General Electric), along with a plethora of other examples that might be listed, fulfill Mussolini's definition of fascism.

In light of the above, for radical Islam not only is the lack of strong national identification a disqualifier for a fascist label, the lack of political integration with corporate or business interests is even more fatal. The Islam which is in jihad against Bush and America does not have the economic interests of Western nations, nor has it developed the pervasive corporate infrastructure that marks western economies. The notion of corporatism has not yet come to the Middle East, at least in its westernized form. There is no understanding in any of the Muslim regional nations of corporations as "artificial persons" which is central to the functioning of a capitalist economy. It is true that corporations do business in most of the oil rich states, but the governments themselves retain an independence from the corporate entities. For most Middle Eastern governments, the distinction between a multi-national corporation and a foreign government is irrelevant. The elites of these Middle Eastern mineral-rich nations do not concern themselves with the problems of labor, of capital distribution, or domestic regulation required in a functioning capitalist economy. The reason is simple. There are no (or very few) domestic corporations; the issues created by domestic corporations do not present themselves. These governments simply contract with foreign oil extracting companies, pocket the profits, and do not concern themselves further because there is no (or very little) political penetration into the governmental structure by the corporate organizations with which they do business. Therefore, at this stage in their economic development, most of the Middle Eastern countries are incapable of corporatism, which as Mussolini says, is at the heart of fascism.

A caveat: this observation does not hold for Islamic countries of east Asia such as Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and some other Muslim countries of the far east. Their embrace of capitalism is so thorough as to admit all of the corrupting domestic influences of corporatism, and thus they are fully liable to the development of a national fascist movement.

Using Eco's definition outlined in the fourteen characteristics of fascism, it might be more than the evidence will bear to brand the Republican Administration of George W. Bush as fascist. Without question, however, the Bush Republican administration bears more markers, and more significant ones, than the Islamic extremists. In an insightful essay entitled "The Rise of Pseudo Fascism", (http://www.dneiwert.blogsot.com, February 25, 2005) David Neiwert carefully and convincingly identifies those few elements which are yet lacking to make the Bush Administration fully fascist. He makes clear, however, that it is perhaps only a matter of time and degree before the final markers can be affixed to this administration. Essentially, he says, America is not yet in the hands of a fascist government because, at least thus far, the executive is not a dictator. Given the extravagant claims being made for the nearly unlimited constitutional power of the President as Commander in Chief, this may be only a temporary deficiency. Because most, but not all, of the hallmarks of fascism are evident in Bush's leadership since 9/11/01, Neiwert chooses to characterize the present cast of our government as Pseudo Fascist: not quite the real thing, but close enough to see dramatic parallels fraught with dangerous potential. So far, Bush has not adopted the title of "Leader," although there is much talk of Leadership as the defining quality of the President. For now, Bush seems content to be known more modestly as "the Decider." It is impossible to fit the Islamic terrorists even into the Pseudo Fascist category as Neiwert defines it, although that is a closer descriptor than the one used for them by George W. Bush.

Of the two fourteen point lists, Britt's catalogue must be considered polemical. In his view, there is nothing "pseudo" about the fascism of the Republican administration of George W. Bush. Each of the fourteen points he lists is annotated in the original article with illustrations of how the Bush Administration has behaved to merit the designation of fascist. Supplying instances of Bush Administration actions that certify their tendency toward fascist behavior may suggest that the fourteen points were selected because they fit Bush's observed behavior and attitudes. Nevertheless, in its own terms, Britt's argument should be examined carefully by any who doubt the fascist implications of some of the Administration's actions. Briefly, Brett characterizes fascist regimes as

1) Projecting a powerful and continuing nationalism: Fascism is marked by a tendency to make constant use of patriotic symbols, slogans, mottoes, symbols and songs. Flags are seen everywhere and flag symbols appear on clothing and in public displays.

2) Disdain for human rights: Emphasis on fear of enemies and the need for security leaves people convinced that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of 'need'. The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations without benefit of due process.

3) Identification of enemies or scapegoats as a unifying cause: The people are whipped into a patriotic fervor over the need to eliminate a common threat or foe such as racial, religious, or ethnic minorities or adherents of some threatening political ideology, such as communists, socialists, liberals, etc.

4) Supremacy of the military: Regardless of important domestic problems, fascist governments give the military a disproportionate share of national resources, and the domestic agenda is relegated to a secondary position. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

5) Rampant Sexism: fascist governments tend to exaggerate masculinity. Traditional gender roles are made more rigid, opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia.

6) Mass media is subject to government control: fear is used as a motivational tool by the government, but in some cases, the media are controlled indirectly by governmental regulation or through media spokespersons who are sympathetic to the government. Censorship, especially in wartime, is common.

7) Obsession with National Security: Fear is used by government to justify government secrecy and obscure governmental actions that might be of questionable legality or constitutionality.

8) Religion and government are intertwined: Governments of fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology are common from government leaders, even when the major tenents of the religion are directly opposed to government policies.

9) Corporate power is protected: The industrial and business leadership of a fascist nation are often the ones who put government leaders into powers, creating a mutually beneficial government/business relationship with the power elite.

10) Organized labor is suppressed: Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, and is often in opposition to corporate domination, labor unions are eliminated, co-opted, or severely repressed.

11) Disdain for intellectuals and the arts: Fascist governments tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, academia and intellectual professions. It is not unusual for professors, journalists, and other intellectuals to be censored or arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked and government often refuses to fund the arts, or reserve government funding to ideologically approved works. Science, when not in agreement with the government's projected myth, is disregarded and belittled.

12) Obsession with crime and punishment: The police are usually given almost limitless power to enforce criminal laws. People are often willing to overlook police abuses and to agree to limit civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with extensive powers, sometimes with special protections from judicial jurisdiction.

13) Rampant cronyism and corruption: Fascist nations are almost always governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use government power to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon for national resources and treasures to be appropriated or stolen by government leaders.

14) Fraudulent elections: Sometimes elections in fascist countries are a complete sham. Often elections are manipulated by smear campaigns involving patent untruths (or even assassinations) of potentially threatening opposition candidates. Legislation is used to control the numbers of voters, or political boundaries are manipulated to the advantage of the ruling party. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to shape or control elections.

Recognizing that Britt was writing with the Bush presidency in mind, it is worth pointing out that radical Islam fails to fall within his definition of fascism, although other national governments of the 20th and 21st centuries qualify. Without resorting to the illustrations provided by Britt in his essay, it is possible for any reasonably well informed observer of the contemporary political scene in America to recall a number of governmental actions fitting under Britt's list which unquestionably fall within the recent history of the Bush administration. The exercise of listing examples of fascist behavior is a good parlor game for objective students of politics as well as partisan critics of Bush and his Republican administration.

The use of pejorative terms to demonize political opponents is too well established as an effective propaganda tool to expect that the President will cease to use it. However, the Islamic extremists he wishes to vilify do not technically merit the appellation of fascist. It is important to use words carefully and accurately if we are to retain the possibility of political discourse. The President and his enablers among journalists and commentators should be called to account for demonstrably inaccurate and inappropriate characterizations. This is particularly true in cases where the pejorative term is demonstrably more applicable to Bush than to the Islamic terrorists, reprehensible as they unquestionably are.

Ph.D. University of Oklahoma 1971. Retired, emeritus status since 2004. Senior administrative positions in academic affairs at State University of New York, University of Evansville, Oklahoma State University, Eastern Illinois University. Held faculty rank and taught political science at SUNY Plattsburgh, University of Evansville, Oklahoma State University, and Eastern Illinois Universitiy. Academic specialization, political theory, public law, American political institutioins.

The British government vehemently repudiates the suggestion that its foreign policy in Iraq and Afghanistan, its slothful devotion to the fate of the Palestinians and its urgent inactivity in the Israel/ Hizbullah conflict have contributed towards the making of fanatics. The motivating factor of choice in the official view is that some suggestible young Muslims have fallen under the sway of powerful preachers of hate, brainwashed and promised a lurid caricature of paradise as a reward for the cult of death.

Part of the problem with home-grown alienation, of course, is that globalisation has a profound impact on local lives, not just economically but socially, culturally and spiritually. Kelly recognised this when she acknowledged that "global tensions are reflected on the streets of local communities". National borders are increasingly fragile defences against the influence of events that seep through barriers erected to contain them.

That many actual and potential terrorists are not from the most deprived backgrounds, but have often received a good education and have promising prospects, has puzzled observers. This reckons without the widespread psychic disturbance that always accompanies social dislocation, particularly mass migration, which brings contradictory belief systems into stark and sudden proximity - a shock exacerbated for people who, detached from majority status in their place of origin, become a stigmatised minority at their destination. The resulting cultural mix is bound to be volatile and unpredictable, as suggested by the approval of extremists by the 13% of Muslims in Britain who thought the July 7 bombings justified. It should also be remembered, however, that the self-immolation of others is sometimes not unappealing to those who would not dream of imitating them.

The home-growing of alienated people is a complex process to which a significant contributor is poverty and discrimination - the very exclusion that the government has proclaimed its desire to remedy. For too many young Muslims integration means the emergence into a subculture of gangs, crime, drugs and alcohol. If Islam offers redemption from this ugly version of social absorption, we should rejoice that some young men escape the embrace of the prison system. Those who speak glowingly of "our way of life" rarely have any great insight into how poor and marginalised people actually live.

Many people - Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and those of no religion - have expressed repugnance at the distortions of human purposes both in the excesses of globalism and in the reactions against it. But since all secular alternatives have been annulled - thanks, in large measure, to the triumph of the west over communism, and its encouragement of Islamist fighters in Afghanistan and elsewhere - it is inevitable that people should now seek divine succour in their otherwise hopeless predicament.

You don't have to be young or Muslim to be alienated by a society that spreads its rewards with promiscuous and random detachment from anything recognisable as worth or merit. The intemperance of that society is mirrored in its impact on the Earth. Alienation from a way of living that requires using up the Earth's treasures with increasing speed might be considered a rational, humane response. But alienation can become a force for creative change and renewal.

What kind of anger and despair makes some people believe that only ideologies of transcendence can alleviate the wrongs and evils of this life? It is not only the tragic delusion of today's "radicals" that they are moved by ideologies of otherworldly emancipation, it is also a consequence of the destruction of alternative ideologies of social hope.

In the light of this, it becomes slightly more explicable why many opponents of these developments can think only of surpassing the brutality inherent in the dominant global ideology. Who needs even more cruel acts of violence than those wrought by unsustainable developmentalism? If today's "radicals" were indeed animated by spiritual motives, they would be seeking not to add to death and dispossession but to redeem creation from the ruinous fate written into the profane pursuit of endless economic expansion in a limited world.

Unfortunately, the powerful are unlikely to engage with such complex questions. The demand that Muslims police themselves, that "moderates" restrain "extremists", that "true" representatives and "real" community leaders present themselves to authority, suggests not a strategy for integration but reversion to anachronistic imperial attitudes.

- Jeremy Seabrook is the author of The No Nonsense Guide to World Poverty

Investigators examined the men's mobile phones in case they had been manipulated to cause an explosion and searched for explosives on the plane, but found none, Hartjes said.

"Since 9/11 and the terror threats in Great Britain both cabin crew and police authorities are very alert to possible attacks. Threats are taken very seriously," he said.

Security has been increased at airports worldwide in the past two weeks after British police said they had foiled a plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic using liquid explosives.

Mumbai has been on high alert since commuter train bombings on July 11 that killed 186 people.

Two Dutch fighter planes escorted Northwest Airlines flight 42 back to Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday after the pilot reported passengers behaving suspiciously.

Passengers on the plane said air marshals intervened after the men began fidgeting with mobile phones and plastic bags.

"I thought that the men were celebrating a stag party," Simon Balakrishwan, a 43-year-old passenger from India, told the NRC Handelsblad daily.

"After the plane took off a mobile phone rang and the men started cheering," he said. "They kept exchanging plastic bags and looking in them and laughing. Irritating passengers."

Indian junior foreign minister Anand Sharma told reporters all 12 were born in Mumbai.

An Indian Foreign Ministry official said all were of Indian origin, although some apparently held other passports. Dutch authorities granted consular access to the Indian nationals.

The Northwest flight departed for Mumbai, India's financial hub, on Thursday morning after the rest of the passengers spent the night in hotels.

The return of the Northwest plane to Amsterdam did not lead to heightened security and did not affect other flights at Schiphol, Europe's third largest cargo airport and fourth biggest passenger hub, an airport spokeswoman said.

The Dutch ambassador Eric Niehe delivered the apology after being summoned by India's foreign ministry in New Delhi, junior foreign minister Anand Sharma told reporters in New Delhi.

"Their ambassador has apologised. Our ministry had summoned him," he said.

The Indian nationals were suspected of attempting an act of violence during the US Northwest Airlines flight bound for the Indian western city of Mumbai, but were cleared of suspicion on Thursday by the Dutch authorities and released.

The Dutch embassy in New Delhi could not be contacted for comment.

Pratt said security officials decided to remove all baggage from the flight to be screened again.

The Dublin-bound passengers were all being accommodated on another flight, Pratt said.

"It wasn't an emergency landing. It wasn't a red alert. The flight was coming here anyway," Pratt said. The aircraft was parked at a remote stand as a precaution, he said.

Police were granted warrants by a court to quiz the remaining eight until next Wednesday. Under British anti-terror laws, suspects can be detained for up to 28 days without being charged, subject to regular court approval.

Hussain was charged under anti-terror legislation for failing to disclose information about his brother, Nabeel Hussain, who is believed to be one of the eight still in custody.

Umair Hussain will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates Court on Friday.

"Officers from the Metropolitan Police Anti-Terrorist Branch have this evening charged a man under the Terrorism Act 2000 following the anti-terrorist operation overnight on 9/10 August 2006," a police spokesman said.

Hussain "had information which he knew or believed might be of material assistance in preventing the commission of another person, namely Nabeel Hussain, of an act of terrorism and failed to disclose it as soon as reasonably practicable."

Of the 11 others facing charges, eight are facing the most serious charges of conspiracy to murder and preparing acts of terrorism, and were told to return to court on September 4 to appear before the Old Bailey criminal court in central London -- the traditional venue for Britain's biggest criminal trials.

The three others are to return to the magistrates' court on Tuesday.

Of the three, two were charged with withholding information about an impending terrorist attack.

The third, a 17-year-old youth who cannot be named because he is a minor, was accused of possessing a book about bomb-making, suicide notes and wills, and a map of
Afghanistan with information "likely to be useful" to someone planning an attack.

Meanwhile, Britain's charity watchdog said Thursday it has frozen the bank accounts of the aid group Crescent Relief, which raised funds for earthquake relief in Pakistan, as part of a probe into whether money was diverted to the alleged terror plot.

"The inquiry will focus on whether or not the charity's funds, or funds raised on its behalf, were used unlawfully. It will also consider the financial policies and practices of the charity," the commission said in a statement, adding that the charity would have to obtain its permission to use any funds.

The Times newspaper said Saturday that Crescent Relief, which mobilized for the October 8 earthquake in Pakistan, was founded in 2000 by Abdul Rauf, the father of Rashid Rauf, who is being held in Pakistan over the plot.

Rashid Rauf is one of two Britons being held along with five others in Pakistan in connection with the terror plot.

Pakistan's foreign ministry has said that Rashid Rauf was unconnected with any charities involved with the earthquake, while denying a separate report that a Pakistani charity had diverted quake relief to the plot.

The commission could not say how long the inquiry would take, but promised a full report of its findings.

Phone calls to Crescent Relief went unanswered Thursday.

London's Metropolitan Police, which is leading the probe into the alleged airliner conspiracy, declined to comment on the statement.

On Friday a poll published in The Daily Telegraph showed that more than half of all Britons think Islam poses a threat to the West, up from a third five years ago.

Some 53 percent of the 1,757 people surveyed by YouGov said Islam, as separate from fundamentalist Islamic groups, posed a threat to Western liberal democracy, compared to 32 percent in a similar YouGov survey following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

The proportion of respondents who believe that "a large proportion of British Muslims feel no sense of loyalty to this country and are prepared to condone or even carry out acts of terrorism" rose to 18 percent, from 10 percent in the wake of the July 7, 2005 attacks on London's transport network.

Of those surveyed, 16 percent said they agreed with the statement that "practically all British Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding citizens who deplore terrorist attacks as much as any one else", down from 23 percent last July.

Some 65 percent said Britain's security services should focus their intelligence-gathering and anti-terrorism efforts on Muslims, up from 60 percent a year ago.

But Lord Carlile, the independent watchdog on the anti-terror laws, accused Amnesty of being "thoroughly naive". He argued that acquittal in a criminal trial did not mean it was in the national interest for that person to remain in Britain.

The ruling by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, chaired by Mr Justice Ouseley, means that the "no torture, no ill-treatment" assurances given by the Algerian government to Mr Blair in December have unexpectedly passed their first major legal test.

It clears the way for the removal of a further 15 Algerian terror suspects - the bulk of them among those originally detained in Belmarsh prison in the wake of 9/11 - and follows Mr Blair's warning 12 months ago that he was prepared to change the law if the judges put legal obstacles in the way of such deportations.

Mr Justice Ouseley said the SIAC was convinced that the changing political situation in Algeria and the high-profile nature of the case meant it was inconceivable that assurances given to Mr Blair would prove to be unreliable or given in bad faith.

"The level of allegations of torture has declined significantly recently and that is not to be seen as a temporary or happenstance state of affairs. That decline reflects the changing and stabilising political situation in Algeria," said the judges.

The home secretary, John Reid, welcomed the ruling saying it had confirmed that the man, who can only be identified as Y, was a danger to national security and could be deported.

"The court also recognised that Algeria has changed - so as to allow us to deport this individual without jeopardising his human rights thanks to the Algerian Charter on Peace and National Reconciliation and the assurances we have received from the Algerian government," said Mr Reid. An amnesty means that a death sentence and two life sentences passed on Y for terrorist activity will now be extinguished on his return.

The decision is a major step forward for the government's attempts to deport foreign terror suspects back to countries where they fear there is a risk of torture or ill-treatment.

More than a year of intensive diplomatic activity have only produced three "memorandums of understanding" - formal legal documents - with Jordan, Libya and Lebanon. An agreement with Algeria has proved impossible to secure.

The Algerians were reluctant to formally admit that torture had been practised in the past and the British government has had to fall back on assurances given in December 2005 based on an unpublished exchange of letters between prime ministers.

Y's solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said that she was profoundly disturbed by yesterday's ruling. "A year ago Tony Blair said the rules of the game had changed and they would deport refugees to countries that they knew used torture, but they would not do it unless we have a memorandum of understanding and an independent monitoring group," she said.

"Now one year later, there is no memorandum of understanding and no monitoring group in place. The government are saying they are not necessary and today the court has endorsed that."

Passengers will be ban-ned from taking liquids bought outside the security screening zone on an "enduring basis", security experts at the Department for Transport (DfT) said.

The officials indicated that any relaxation of the rules would depend on the development of technology able to detect all potentially explosive liquids, the perceived level of threat and the experience gained from operating the procedures.

At present, the equipment was only partly successful. "It is a big step to go from a concept that works in the lab to one that works in a complex airport environment," the experts said.

The threat of liquid explosives would remain. It was not possible to "uninvent" a threat. Passengers were also warned that the rules restricting them to one laptop-size piece of hand luggage was likely to remain because it was far easier and more efficient to screen smaller bags.

In a briefing at the DfT, officials compared an X-ray picture of a large bag with that of a smaller one. Under the present security regime, the larger bag, which contained difficult-to-see hand cream, after-shave and shower gel, would have been rejected and a time-consuming hand search would have been made. The officials said separate screening would continue for electronic equipment to simplify scrutiny of hand luggage.

Passengers are becoming increasingly impatient about the level of security and the varying ways it is applied. The department's ban on liquids in hand luggage, will remain except for those bought in departure lounges.

Despite concerns about airport contract staff, officials say employees are vetted and screened, and some are body-searched before their shifts. The officials expressed confidence in screening methods used on all goods on sale inside the security zone.

One senior civil servant differed with a colleague, saying measures banning liquids were "not necessarily permanent" because the methods of detection would evolve. At present, passengers will be able to take on board only baby food and prescribed medicines.

The DfT said the recent threat from liquid explosives formed a "step change" in the threats faced by airline passengers. Terrorists were becoming increasingly "innovative and ingenious" in concealing and disguising the components of bombs.

But terrorists first attempted to use liquid explosive to blow up aircraft in the so-called "Bojinka" plot 11 years ago in Manila.

One technology expert at the DfT said: "We are not trying to prevent people taking Coca-Cola on board, but some potentially dangerous liquids are very difficult to distinguish from ordinary liquids. It remains a challenge. Screening bottles individually is not practical."

Officials told journalists: "There is a continuing level of severe risk. The threat is real, deadly and enduring." There was a balance to be struck, they said, between the convenience of passengers, the continuing development of the industry and the safety of both passengers and of employees.

Although a tougher regime would remain, adjustments to security would be made in due course without compromising safety.

Representatives of European Union countries and the US would be trying to develop "effective, realistic and achievable" common standards.

A 12th person has been charged over the alleged airliner bomb plot. Umair Hussain was charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 with failing to disclose information about his brother Nabeel Hussain. On Tuesday, a total of 11 people were remanded in custody over the alleged plot at City of Westminster magistrates' court. Umair Hussain will appear at the same court today.

Studies have shown that chimpanzees kiss and hug after a dispute, and other primates such as bonobos resort to sexual activity to resolve conflicts. Until now, reconciliatory behavior had not been shown in any marine mammal.

For the past five years, Michael Noonan, a psychologist and specialist in animal behavior at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, has been studying the captive killer whales at the theme park Marineland of Canada in Niagara Falls, Ontario. To learn more about orca social behavior, Noonan videotaped a group of captive killer whales for a total of 2,800 hours.

"Nearly all social animals occasionally squabble," Noonan said.

He noted 21 disagreements, many of which involved complicated interactions between several whales. Most notably, the video revealed eight unambiguous quarrels between one pair-a mother and a father. The disputes entailed aggressive chasing, Noonan said.

Orcas, the largest members of the dolphin family, can reach swimming speeds at sea of 30 miles per hour (50 kilometers per hour) for short stints.

After the mother chased the father for several minutes, each zipped away to separate aquatic quarters to cool off for about 10 minutes. Then, the mates smoothed over their clash with side-by-side swimming, called echelon swimming [image].

"In eight out of eight instances, the animals engaged in a pro-social, affiliative behavior shortly after the period of tension," Noonan told LiveScience. "The pro-social behavior was echelon swimming."

Animal behavior scientists have known that orcas take part in echelon swimming as a form of routine social bonding. "That these two [killer whales] did it so consistently after periods of tension is the new discovery," Noonan said.

The research was presented at the Animal Behavior Society conference earlier this month in Salt Lake City.

"It shows yet another way in which cetaceans have converged with primates, Noonan said. Other similarities: large brains, long lives and social complexity.

But Noonan is still trying to elucidate some secrets held by these black-and-white mammals. For instance, what triggered the domestic squabbles? "We are working on that," he said.