Tuesday morning, 20th of November 2001. The front page of the Globe and Mail lies on our breakfast table. I am greeted by the headline "U.S. Shifts its Sight to Iraq." The next target. The Country that refused to sign the latest agreement on germ-warfare research, that refused to ban landmines, refused participation in the International Court, has the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, has again turned its attention to a country where millions have either died or suffer the consequences of its war ravages and blockade. Approximately sixty countries are on the current hit list of the U.S. backed by U.K. and Canada. The U.S. has put the U.N. Security Council on notice. It proposes a moving war, moving through these countries that it has designated as rogue, terrorist, havens for terrorists. An unending war interrupts. The U.N. is compliant and the European Community is more than content to let the U.S. continue these bombings - at will, at large, the U.S. and its junior partners' quest for "security" has plunged the world into a vortex of insecurity, death and destruction.

In a crazy and sadistic resonance the front page of the Globe has other news. The people of Kabul, we are told, can now go to the movies to take their minds off their problems - which consist not only of their horrific experiences of the Taliban, the terrors of the incoming Northern Alliance, but also uncounted, unreported deaths from U.S. bombs - the "collateral damages" of the U.S. project of "freedom" for Afghanistan. In the U.S., itself reeling under patriotic laws, 41 per cent of its doctors declare their willingness to "aid executions" despite the violation of their medical ethics and oaths. One is stunned by the brave "free" nation of the new world that brings so much "freedom" to their own population and elsewhere.

Inside the same issue of the Globe there is "security" news of Canada - a chorus of support for Bill C-36 and its related extensions. A law professor from McGill University, Irvin Cottler, the director of McGill's Human Rights programme, pushes for this mother of all laws to end all rule of law in Canada. He reminds us that "we are not dealing with your domestic criminals, but with transnational terrorists." The Somali taxi-driver tells me, "it's for us. This bill is for making terror for immigrants and refugees." He sees through the rhetoric of security into the core of this bill with boundless power to prosecute and persecute racially- and politically-profiled targets. It can legally compel any one to give testimony at an investigative hearing where the issues are still to be determined. Even conservative Canadian lawyers are alarmed. Terrorist activities encompass protests against capitalism, globalization, poverty and environmental destruction - all parts of Bush's agenda of "hunting down" or "smoking out" of terrorists.

So this is the nature of the "freedom" we must endure for an indefinite period for the crime of living in fortress America. It is of no importance that Canada has a nominal sovereignty. Everywhere there are echoes of the "infinity" of G.W. Bush's initial fatwa proclaimed in the flush of Christian fundamentalist crusading zeal. We have long known of the U.S. penchant for forcing "freedom and democracy" down the throat of the Third World. Now the chickens have come home to roost and the shade of Senator McCarthy haunts our lives. The Rosenbergs from their cold war electric chairs look on at us.

As the rule of "order" shakes off the inconvenience of rights, we are trapped in the prison house of security laws. It is cold comfort to us that lawmakers of these imperialist, racist states have made a fine distinction between "freedom" and "liberty" alluding to John Stuart Mill on civil liberty. Unusual times call for unusual measures, and we much, it seems, give up our "liberties" to protect our "freedom." It's for the good of the people in the U.S. and Canada and, of course, for the world whose unsolicited guardian the U.S. has become. Its own motives are, of course, altruistic, wholly honourable, and besides it's the moment of "America Under Attack." In the meanwhile citizens and residents languish in detention, caught in a police state and "aliens" face trials in military courts. Terror of secret trials looms everywhere, along with all of the other terrors of a police state. Does it remind us of Germany, the leaping to power of Hitler after the Reichstag fire?

The other side of this democratically organized fascism covers itself by manufacturing consent, not just a frightened silence. It gives endless power to people to terrorize non-white, especially Central, Eastern and South Asian peoples in these countries. Soon the house painter will come at night to mark our houses with chalk. A poisonous discourse of patriots and traitors has haunted us for the last two months. In this, Bush and Bin Laden have been at one in putting out the slogan of "either you are with U.S./us or them." A propaganda of islamicization conducted by both has eclipsed the fact that for decades secular, critical, democratic, socialist and communist forces have struggled against imperialism, religious fundamentalism and theocracies usually backed by the U.S. They have called for "peace" - not the peace of the graveyard ushered in by U.S. aggression and fraticidal ventures of endless bloodletting - but an actual and lasting peace rooted in social justice.

We have to protect these ideas and actions for a just society from the discourse of freedom and patriotism that threatens to engulf us. We have no need for patriots or martyrs but of more and more organizations which are the work of perfectly ordinary everyday people. We have to watch out for the vicious manipulation of decent popular sentiments in order to legitimate the political and economic ambitions of the U.S. and its allies. It is indeed an action tantamount to desecration of graves to use the tragedy of September 11th to kill, maim, displace, silence, torture, execute and imprison people here and everywhere else.

Finally, I must conclude by speaking of racism's role in manufacturing consent. Racism lies deep within the histories, cultures and states of white settler colonies, such as the U.S. and Canada. It's visible and blatant, but also subtle and pervasive. It's always close to the surface waiting to be called into action - it's genuinely popular as well as structural. It does not take much to harness it in order to justify putting 1100 alleged terrorists in undisclosed detention in the U.S. The Air Canada passengers who demanded the removal of a Sikh businessman from the plane because he looked at them "strangely," the airline authorities that obliged them, the state that insists on racial profiling, reviewing refugee programmes, are all a part and parcel of the same racist culture and common sense. Sometimes even the left takes part in racist discourse when it homogenizes all "Eastern" societies as traditional and religious, takes part in a Samuel Huntington like discourse of "civilization." Even the left in Canada can forget that some of the greatest secular socialist and communist struggles of the last century were waged in Asia, the "East." It shows how deep the common sense of racism is in Canada. We have to examine, criticize and change all that.

I want to end by adopting an enduring text by a 19th century revolutionary who need not be named:

"A spectre is haunting fortress America and Europe. A spectre of fascism. The U.S., Britain, Canada and the Western Europe have entered into a holy alliance to produce, promote and protect this spectre."

We must fight this spectre before it becomes fully flesh and blood. To do this people must be united in a grand refusal of war, terror and racism.