Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down -- the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

"IT IS CLEAR, IF YOU ARE WILLING TO LOOK, THAT EACH OF THESE 10 STEPS HAS ALREADY BEEN INITIATED IN THE UNITED STATES BY THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION."

1. INVOKE A TERRIFYING INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL ENEMY. After we were hit on Sept. 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on Oct. 26, 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilization.

2. CREATE A GULAG. Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space" -- where torture can take place.

3. DEVELOP A THUG CASTE. The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the U.S. military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians.

4. SET UP AN INTERNAL SURVEILLANCE SYSTEM. In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5. HARASS CITIZENS' GROUPS. You infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favor of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under U.S. tax law, have been left alone.

6. ENGAGE IN ARBITRARY DETENTION AND RELEASE. This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: You are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

7. TARGET KEY INDIVIDUALS. Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line.

8. CONTROL THE PRESS. Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America -- it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well.

9. DISSENT EQUALS TREASON. Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage." Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor."

10. SUSPEND THE RULE OF LAW. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. THIS MEANS THAT IN A NATIONAL EMERGENCY -- WHICH THE PRESIDENT NOW HAS ENHANCED POWERS TO DECLARE -- HE CAN SEND MICHIGAN'S MILITIA TO ENFORCE A STATE OF EMERGENCY THAT HE HAS DECLARED IN OREGON, OVER THE OBJECTIONS OF THE STATE'S GOVERNOR AND ITS CITIZENS.

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison.

As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to Internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded."

The movie that has been astounding audiences in theaters around the world. In this provocative, critically acclaimed documentary, you will discover :-

- The early founders of Christianity seem wholly unaware of the idea of a human Jesus

- The Jesus of the Gospels bears a striking resemblance to other ancient heroes and the figureheads of pagan savior cults

- Contemporary Christians are largely ignorant of the origins of their religion

- Fundamentalism is as strong today as it ever has been, with an alarming 44% of Americans believing Jesus will return to earth in their lifetimes

- And God simply isn't there.

Dazzling motion graphics and a sweeping soundtrack propel this uncompromising and taboo-shattering documentary that Newsweek says "irreverently lays out the case that Jesus Christ never existed."

Following are excerpts from the sermon that took place last month, courtesy of MEMRI.

Ahmad Bahr began: "'You will be victorious' on the face of this planet. You are the masters of the world on the face of this planet. Yes, [the Koran says that] 'you will be victorious,' but only 'if you are believers.' Allah willing, 'you will be victorious,' while America and Israel will be annihilated. I guarantee you that the power of belief and faith is greater than the power of America and Israel. They are cowards who are eager for life, while we are eager for death for the sake of Allah. That is why America's nose was rubbed in the mud in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, and everywhere."

Bahr continued and said that America will be annihilated, while Islam will remain. The Muslims "'will be victorious, if you are believers.' Oh Muslims, I guarantee you that the power of Allah is greater than America, by whom many are blinded today. Some people are blinded by the power of America. We say to them that with the might of Allah, with the might of His Messenger, and with the power of Allah, we are stronger than America and Israel."

The Hamas spokesperson concluded with a prayer, saying: "Oh Allah, vanquish the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, count their numbers, and kill them all, down to the very last one. Oh Allah, show them a day of darkness. Oh Allah, who sent down His Book, the mover of the clouds, who defeated the enemies of the Prophet, defeat the Jews and the Americans, and bring us victory over them."

Yet, tomorrow, elections in Scotland could lead to the very same union's destruction. Polls have repeatedly shown that the Scottish National Party - which has promised a referendum on independence - is likely to beat Labour in Scotland. They have also shown that a majority of Scots and a clear majority of the English favour an independent Scotland.

British ministers are clearly deeply worried about the threat to the United Kingdom - none more so than Gordon Brown, who was telling a Scottish TV station only this week: 'I will fight against a policy that will break up Britain.'
Yet the sad reality is that Mr Brown and his fellow ministers have come round to the importance of the Union far too late in the day.

For it is his own New Labour party - governed by an obsession with multiculturalism, constitutional tinkering, short-term political expediency and an utter disregard for history - that has in a few short years created precisely the conditions for the dissolution of this union. Any basic understanding of history will show you that the Treaty of Union turned out to be the most successful offensive and defensive alliance in modern history.

It was as a united state after 1707 that England, Scotland and Wales succeeded in building the greatest territorial empire ever - one that fought successfully against the totalitarian threats of Prussian militarism, Hitler's fascism and Soviet communism in turn.

The Great British union has shown that separate nations can work together for three centuries for their mutual advantage and - ultimately - for that of mankind. Our 1.3 per cent of the world's population is small enough as it is, yet we have the world's fifthlargest economy, a permanent seat on the Security Council of the United Nations, an independent currency (the creation of the 1707 Union), the best Armed Forces in the world (one-third of which is Scottish), an independent nuclear deterrent (largely based north of the border), and respected voices in Nato and the EU. Sever our union and all of these would be put at immediate risk.

Union was the root cause of British greatness; dissolution means the end of Britishness itself, with all the disastrous consequences that would flow from that for the two countries and the rest of the world.

Scotland Yard said that asylum seekers and other migrants who had witnessed violence in their home countries were having a "disproportionate negative impact" on other youngsters here. The report is the first official acknowledgment that refugees from war-torn and often lawless countries are at least partly responsible for an upsurge in gang violence. Police have identified at least 171 gangs operating in London alone.

David Green, director of the Civitas thinktank, said: "We are importing 15, 16, 17 and 18-year-olds brought up in countries with an anarchistic warlord culture in which carrying knives and guns is routine. "That is no exaggeration. We are asking for trouble if we do not confront this issue, and co-ordinate Government policy properly." He claimed "squeamishness" was preventing the Government or the police tackling the issue.

"If people come from a culture which is anarchistic, they are more likely to be violent, but the police will be frightened to target these people. "The fear is that it would be called stereotyping. Actually, it is a valid group generalisation."

Although 90 per cent of gang participants are male, there are believed to be three female gangs and women are often used "to mind weapons" for brothers and partners. The document states that half of gangs are based in the African-Caribbean community. However, it warns that gangs are emerging from other communities "where there is reluctance for victims and witnesses to engage with the criminal justice system partly due to their immigration status".

The association found that the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Riverside metropolitan area had the worst air based on 2003 through 2005 figures.The Pittsburgh area was ranked as the nation's second most polluted metropolitan area followed by Bakersfield, Calif., Birmingham, Ala., Detroit and Cleveland. Visalia, Calif., Cincinnati, Indianapolis and St. Louis rounded out the top 10.

The news wasn't all bad for Los Angeles. Despite the dubious distinction, the number of days residents breathed the nation's worst ozone levels was fewer than in previous years.

"Nobody is surprised that LA has an air pollution problem," said Janice Nolen, the association's assistant vice president for national policy and advocacy. "The problems there are one of the reasons we have the Clean Air Act. But it is important for folks to know that there has been some improvement."

Nearly half of the U.S. population lives in counties that still have unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution, even though there appeared to be less ozone in many counties than previous years, the study found.

The only candidate, Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul, failed to win the required majority after a boycott by secularist opposition parties. The parties, which accuse Mr Gul of a hidden Islamist agenda, asked the court to rule that there was no quorum.

The government vowed to restart the election process on Wednesday but it was unclear what form that would take.Mr Gul and Mr Erdogan are both from AK, which has Islamist roots and an overwhelming majority in parliament. They deny there is any hidden agenda.

But the BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul says the army had made it clear it would not tolerate Mr Gul as president. It warned it would defend the separation of state and religion, the legacy of the state's founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Our correspondent says the court is officially independent but had been under immense pressure to reach precisely this verdict. It is one that is likely to divide Turkey further, she says.

The prince - a 2nd Lieutenant in the Blues & Royals - will be the first royal in a war zone since his uncle, Prince Andrew, served as a helicopter pilot in the 1982 Falklands War.

Army Chief of Staff Sir Richard Dannatt said he had personally taken the decision to allow Prince Harry, known as 2nd Lt Wales, to serve in Iraq. But Sir Richard stressed the decision would be kept under review. He said he hoped his statement would end the media speculation surrounding the prince's deployment.

Sir Richard added: "I would urge that the somewhat frenzied media activity surrounding this particular story should cease in the interests of the overall security of all our people deployed in Iraq." Prince Harry has been trained as a tank commander and would head a 12-man team in four armoured reconnaissance vehicles.

The decision to send the prince to Iraq came despite fears that both he and his troops would be exposed to added risk because of his high profile. It had been hoped he would be able to perform his duties under the "anonymity" of being just another officer.

But a Shia commander in Iraq has already warned that spies from the Mahdi army had infiltrated British bases and that news of the prince's arrival would be leaked to insurgents. Abu Mujtabi, a senior figure in the Mahdi army, the Shia militia loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, warned: "One of our aims is to capture Harry - we have people inside the British bases to inform us when he will arrive.

"It is not only us, the Mahdi army, that will try to capture him, but every person who hates the British and the Americans will try to get him, all the mujahideens in Iraq, the al-Qaeda, the Iranians all will try to get him."

The Vatican statement said that the Pontiff encouraged the two sides in the dispute must respect human rights, promote dialogue and return to the negotiating table as "the only path" to ending two decades of conflict."The Catholic Church, which offers a significant contribution to the life of the country, will intensify the delicate work of educating consciences with the sole goal of promoting the common good, reconciliation and peace," the statement said.

While the Pope and President spent 20 minutes speaking privately, Rajapaksa's spokesman, Lucien Rajakarunanayake, told reporters the president was hoping that "the pope will better appreciate the efforts of the Sri Lankan government to resolve the conflict."

"There are shortcomings and human rights violations, as in any conflict, but the president wants peace and is open to any help to get the peace process going from its present logjam," the spokesman said. "The need to respect human rights and resume the path of dialogue and negotiations (was confirmed in talks) as the only road to end violence bloodying the island," the Vatican said.

During the meeting with the Pontiff Sri Lanka President explained that the Government was fully committed to a negotiated settlement to the matters regarding the rights of the minorities and that the Government did not believe in any military solution to the issue.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam the Tamil separatist outfit of Sri Lanka have vowed to fight on for an independent state for minority Tamils in the north and east. Nearly 70,000 people have been killed since 1983, and more than 4,000 have died since 2005 when a ceasefire began to unravel.

Back in 1966, the most esteemed Alan Greenspan himself wrote the following in an essay entitled "Gold and Economic Freedom":

"When business in the United States underwent a mild contraction in 1927, the Federal Reserve created more paper reserves in the hope of forestalling any possible bank reserve shortage. More disastrous, however, was the Federal Reserve's attempt to assist Great Britain who had been losing gold to us because the Bank of England refused to allow interest rates to rise when market forces dictated (it was politically unpalatable). "

"The reasoning of the authorities involved was as follows: if the Federal Reserve pumped excessive paper reserves into American banks, interest rates in the United States would fall to a level comparable with those in Great Britain; this would act to stop Britain's gold loss and avoid the political embarrassment of having to raise interest rates. "

The "Fed" succeeded; it stopped the gold loss, but it nearly destroyed the economies of the world, in the process. The excess credit which the Fed pumped into the economy spilled over into the stock market-triggering a fantastic speculative boom. Belatedly, Federal Reserve officials attempted to sop up the excess reserves and finally succeeded in braking the boom. But it was too late: by 1929 the speculative imbalances had become so overwhelming that the attempt precipitated a sharp retrenching and a consequent demoralizing of business confidence. As a result, the American economy collapsed. Great Britain fared even worse, and rather than absorb the full consequences of her previous folly, she abandoned the gold standard completely in 1931, tearing asunder what remained of the fabric of confidence and inducing a world-wide series of bank failures. The world economies plunged into the Great Depression of the 1930's."

The two major players in the world financial system at that time were the United States and Great Britain. The United States was the emerging industrial power, whereas Great Britain was the mature and stagnating industrial power. The central bank of the emerging industrial power (the US) printed money in an effort to prop up the economy of the mature industrial power (Great Britain). The inflation of the money supply resulted in the overheating of the economy and the stock market of the emerging industrial power. It was the crash in the stock market of the emerging industrial power (the US) that brought about the crash in all the world's stock markets and the Great Depression followed later.

Now fast forward to today, and what you see is China as the emerging industrial power and the United States as the mature and stagnating industrial power. China is printing money in an effort to prop up the economy of the mature industrial power (the US). The inflation of the money supply is resulting in the overheating of the Chinese economy and stock market. Very interestingly, on February 27, 2007, it was the sharp 9% one-day drop in the Chinese stock market that led to the sharp drop in stock markets worldwide, including the US. People may be conditioned to think that economic events in developing countries pale in significance to economic events in the US, and may fail to see how what happens "way over there" in China would have any significant impact on their economic well-being.

But how different the truth really is. I think most people even now after the February 27th turn of events, fail to grasp why the US stock market sold off so sharply after the Chinese stock market sell off occurred first. The idea that a foreign stock market could dictate what happens in the US stock market almost offends the American sense of national pride (so the event is casually dismissed as "market irrationality"). A word of advice: you better get used to it, as there is much more of that to come.

The crash is coming.

Turkey came under mounting pressure from the European Union last night to rein in the influence of its generals, after the country's powerful pro-secular military threatened to intervene in the Islamic-oriented government amid growing turmoil over the election of a new President.

Olli Rehn, the European Union enlargement commissioner, who has been a keen supporter of Ankara's eventual accession to the bloc, warned the military to stay out of politics, saying the election was a 'test case' for the Turkish military's respect for democracy.

Rehn issued the salvo after Turkey's general staff weighed in on the dispute, saying they would not flinch at intervention if it meant upholding the Muslim state's cherished secular values. The country's secular elite has voiced grave concerns over the government's choice of Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul as a presidential candidate, given the politician's Islamist beliefs - his wife and daughter wear the headscarf.

'The Chief of the General Staff is answerable to the Prime Minister,' declared Cemil Cicek, justice Minister in the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is a former Islamist but has pledged his commitment to Turkey's secular political system. Military intervention would be 'inconceivable in a democratic state,' Cicek said.

Within hours of Gul's failure to win enough votes in a first round of balloting on Friday, the military, which has staged four coups in the past 50 years, posted a statement on its website invoking its role as defender of the country's secular traditions as laid out by Turkey's modern soldier-statesman founder, Mustafa Ataturk.

'In recent days, the problem during the presidential election has focused on secularism discussions,' the statement said. 'This situation has been anxiously followed by the Turkish armed forces. The Turkish armed forces maintains its firm determination to carry out its clearly specified duties to protect these principles and has absolute loyalty and belief in this determination.'

The military made the announcement after the secular opposition appealed to the state's constitutional court to cancel the election. Many fear that if elected, Gul would be in a position to do away with the checks and balances built into system by eroding the secular nature of the courts and other autonomous bodies and appointing Islamic-oriented candidates to powerful civil service positions.

That's about ten times more than the Bush administration anticipated before the war started four years ago, and no one can predict how high the tab will go. The $124 billion spending bill that President Bush plans to veto this week includes about $78 billion for Iraq, with the rest earmarked for the war in Afghanistan, veterans' health care and other government programs.

Congressional Democrats and Bush agree that they cannot let their dispute over a withdrawal timetable block the latest cash installment for Iraq. Once that political fight is resolved, Congress can focus on the president's request for $116 billion more for the war in the fiscal year that starts on Sept. 1. The combined spending requests would push the total for Iraq to $564 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.

Before the war, administration officials confidently predicted that the conflict would cost about $50 billion. White House economic adviser Lawrence Lindsey lost his job after he offered a $200 billion estimate - a prediction that drew scorn from his administration colleagues.

"They had no concept of what they were getting into in terms of lives or cost," said Winslow Wheeler, who monitors defense spending for the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan research institute. Bush and his economic advisers defend the growing cost as the price of national security.

The preoccupation of the left with the alleged wrongness of the war and the alleged deceit of President Bush is another example of passion rather than reason determining a leftist position on a major issue.

F we leave Iraq, it will be a great victory for the most dangerous ideology on earth today. The people running North Korea are presumably as evil as the Islamists. But there is no ideology emanating from North Korea that threatens mankind. We are fighting an ideology, supported by millions of people, that wishes to conquer the world and routinely engages in mass murder of the innocent, especially the innocent, to achieve its totalitarian goals.

No one will trust America's commitment for the foreseeable future. Nations and forces aligned with America against freedom-hating enemies will conclude that it is actually quite easy to defeat the United States of America. Just kill relatively few of that country's soldiers, and the USA will soon abandon you.

The very best Iraqis and members of their families will be slaughtered like animals. It will mean the end of the possibility of the rise of a moderate form of Islam for the foreseeable future, perhaps generations. In the Arab/Muslim world, might is revered, and the victorious Islamists will therefore be revered. Moreover, they will have earned the right to claim that they constitute an unstoppable force. If America, the most powerful country in the world, surrenders to them because the Islamists murder fellow Muslims and killed the indescribably tragic but militarily small total of 3,000 soldiers in four years, who in the Muslim world will stand up to them?

Iraq will turn into a far more potent terror base than Afghanistan could ever be. One of the major powers of the Arab world, one of the most oil-rich countries in the world, may well be ruled by jihadists.

Moderate Arab regimes will likely be overthrown by a combination of an emboldened Iran and an Islamist Iraq that regards moderate Arabs and Muslims as loathsome as, if not more so than, Americans and Jews. It is almost inconceivable, for example, that the Jordanian monarchy would long survive an American defeat in Iraq.

The American military will suffer a crisis of morale that it will not soon overcome. Though defeated, not by the Islamist enemy, but by the American left, most particularly the Democratic Party and the mainstream news media, it will be hard to convince many people to join or stay in the U.S. military. Why bother? Even if you do a great job, if you haven't done it all whatever "all" means in a place like Iraq, you will be told that you lost the war.

And those who have heretofore murdered fellow Muslims will focus their attention on murdering us. The left dismisses the argument that it is far better to fight them in Iraq than in Europe and America. But the dismissal is simply irrational. The people we are fighting, including Osama bin Laden and all the variations on al-Qaida, know that the battle for Iraq is the battle for their future, that if they win in Iraq, they win all over the Middle East and beyond; that if they lose there, America and the West win.

But none of this matters to the left because Democrats and others on the left do not ask what will happen if America leaves Iraq. They are certain that the war was wrong, and that, in addition to handing George W. Bush and the Republicans a defeat, is what they seem to care about.

In a speech to mark 1 May, Mr Chavez said he wanted the move to take effect as soon as possible. President Chavez also announced an almost 20% increase in the minimum monthly wage. "We don't need to be going up to Washington? we are going to get out," Mr Chavez said.

The president said he had ordered Finance Minister Rodrigo Cabezas to begin formal proceedings to withdraw from the two international bodies. President Chavez has spoken of his ambition to set up what he calls a Bank of the South, backed by Venezuelan oil revenues, which would finance projects in South America.

Ecuador, led by another left-wing president, Rafael Correa, has also spoken of leaving the IMF, and recently expelled World Bank representatives from the country.

Planned Parenthood is claiming another victory today in its decade-long war with Wal-Mart saying the retail giant will revise its policy over emergency contraception and mandate that its pharmacists distribute Plan-B without delay, and without judgment.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America claims to have received today a survey from Wal-Mart that guarantees customers will now receive their prescriptions or over-the-counter products in store without discrimination (no harassment or lectures).

Wal-Mart had announced previously in March 2006 that its pharmacies would stock the emergency contraceptive Plan-B, but back then allowed its pharmacists the right to conscientious objection and to refer customers to other pharmacies that would fill prescriptions for Plan-B.

The new policy revision means pharmacists will all be forced to provide emergency contraception (EC), whose high hormone doses act as an abortifacient by making the womb inhospitable to an embryo before implantation.

This is a huge victory for women's health and for Planned Parenthood's campaign for accessible birth control, PPFA President Cecile Richards said in a press statement. We're pleased that Wal-Mart has changed its policy to meet the real-life health care needs of women and families.

While Wal-Mart may be making a business decision to cut its losses with Planned Parenthood, it marks a radical departure from its pro-life founder Sam Walton, who said, Each Wal-Mart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community.