The role of Israel needs to clearly acknowledged, for Israel has always predicated it value to the West on the premise that there is an unresolvabe conflict between the West and the Muslim hordes. Today, allied to the American Christain Right, its role is to exaggerate and excalate the conflict.

Imagine a new atrocity taking place in the US.  General Tommy Franks has said if that happens he can envisage th US being put under military law. All American dissidence will be suppressed; the administration will not evern need to talk about democracy and freedom and beacons of light. And in response to America's deadly activities across the world will come a continouous asymmetrical terror.

Now imagine that this scenario is actually desired by the Christian Zionists who have allied themselves to Israel and who believe literally in Armageddon and cannot wait for "the Rapture," the moment when they, as good pious Christians will be - in George Monbiot's phrase - "wafted out of the pyjamas" and seated at the right hand to watch what befalls us sinners. Among those people are some powerful officers of the American state, and they are interested in fomenting conflict, not resolving it. It sounds like  science fiction but it isn't.

A bleak, bleak picture. And yet there is stiil hope. Hope lies in a unity of conscience between the people of the world for whom this phrase itself carries any meaning. We have seen the conscience in action in the demonstrations that swept the planet before the invasion of Iraq, in the anger of Americans and Europeans at the pictures coming out of Abu Gharib prison, in the brave stand of the Israelis refusing to serve the Occupation and private citizens from every part of the world who have tried - and some paid with their lives - to stands between the Palestines and their destruction. It expresses itself in a myriad grass-roots movents that try to influence and modify the course of global capitalism.

Globalization is happening, It is driven by economics, economic ideology, and communication. But does this have to entail the economic, political and cultural annexation of chunks of the world by whoever is the most powerful at any given moment? Surely that is the path to constant conflict, to grief and misery.