This is something I wrote for the Newsletter... I'm putting it up here to give you a chance to reply to it (yes, it's open for discuccion...).

The New World-Order.
Terror and its impact on society.

The three terror-waves of our times.

Terror-waves are not new. Everytime when our society evolves fast and becomes complex, and civil groups have the feeling they are being marginalized, a terror-wave comes up. We had one at the end of the 19th century when anarchists terrorized Europe (the cause: the industrialization), we had one in the 1930's when extreme-right terrorized the world, and now we have Al-Qaeda.

Just like the anarchists in the 19th century, Al-Qaeda won't stop untill the cause goes away. They will continue to attack the symbols of the arrogance of power. And those symbols happen to be American.

Al-Qaeda after Sept. 11.

It's been relatively quiet for about a year after September 11, 2001. That year is what Al-Qaeda needed to integrate in local terrorist groups. There's no coherence between their actions anymore. The fact that the recent attacks (attacks in Tunesia and Pakistan, attacks on American soldiers in Kuwait, attack on the French-Belgian oil tanker 'De Limburg') fall together gives the impression that they are being centrally organized. That's not the case though. The recent uprise has everything to do with the local situation in Kuwait and Bali. Those attacks didn't require techonological means. They didn't require planning. Al-Qaeda is not able anymore to do something like the WTC-attack.
That doesn't mean Al-Qaeda ain't dangerous anymore. The recent terrorism is harder to fight than the one from before Sept. 11, just because of the fact that it isn't centralized anymore.

Terror and Islam.

It is tempting to blame the Islam for what's been happening. It also is wrong.
The recent anti-terrorism campaign are pretty effective. More effective than the ones in the past. It's easy - and dangerous! - to think that we're on the eve of WW III. Panick is a bad advisor: if you panick, you'll start looking for an enemy, and you'll use violence on that enemy.
That's what's happening now, and that's only going to make things worse. Thinking about nothing but military counter-measures will make things worse, because it gives the impression that an arrogant Western 'union' thinks about nothing but their own safety, and doesn't care about the rest of the world. It is dangerous to not think about the real cause of the terrorism. It is dangerous to blame Islam, because Islam has nothing to do with the real cause.
Bin Laden though does everything to make us believe it IS related to Islam. Bin Laden's ambitions are the ones of every messiah: he wants to become the khalif of the Muslim-world. That's why he tries to involve Islam. That's not as dumb as it sounds: every religion once started as a sect that got lucky. Bin Laden uses the humiliation of the Middle-East, with the Palestinian cause as his best weapon. That explains why he's so popular in the Muslim-community... to them, Bin Laden is a modern Robin Hood.

Comparison with the 'older' terror-waves.

The terror-wave of the 1900's is the only terror-wave that was reacted upon correctly. Don't be mistaken: that terror-wave was a lot worse than what's happening now: presidents were murdered, government-buildings were bombed,... The reaction? The bourgeois-state was reformed in a state where workers got a chance, thereby taking away the source of the anarchism.

The 1930's terror-wave (fascism) was reacted upon wrong, and finally led to WW II.

The conclusion is simple: do we really want WW III? Do we really want a replay of what happened in the 1930's? We're going in that direction...

The current situation is perfectly comparable with the one at the end of the 1900's: a globalizing world, an industrial revolution, a rift between the rich and the poor. That rift is only growing, and our nonchalance towards that rift is frigtening.
We should have learned a lesson from that first terror-wave. But no, Mr. Bush doesn't like to learn.

The US.

American neo-conservatives see the recent terror-waves as a gift. A gift that will finally allow them to establish the foreign policy they've been wanting to establish since the 90's.
They see America as the only light in this dark world. They are convinced that America should use its military supremacy to offer the world stability.
They use 11/9 as an alibi to vote new laws. New laws that are nothing less than freedom-threatening.
The neo-conservatives don't care about the terrorism: Clinton made a plan to capture Bin Laden from Tadzjikistan. The neo-conservatives made sure that plan didn't work out. Bin Laden fitted perfectly in their plans. And so does Saddam.
The - unavoidable - upcoming war in Iraq will be a test. A test to prove that the States have entered a new era.

The real problem?

Nuclear weapons are NOT the problem: Iraq needs at least two more years to manufacture a nuclear weapon IF they can get their hands on enriched uranium (they never succeeded to get that stuff in the past).
CIA-officials have confirmed last week that it is highly unlikely that Saddam will ever use nuclear weapons. Using them would be suicide, and he knows that. The only case where he will use mass-destruction weapons is when he feels trapped. And that's just what might happen.

The States keep pushing on the fact that it is all about nukes. A leaked Pentagon-document showed a couple of weeks ago that the States themselves are willing to use nuclear weapons THEMSELVES against China, Syria, Russia, Iran, Iraq and North-Korea.
If it really was about nuclear weapons, the States should go after North-Korea. That country DOES have nuclear weapons.

It's all about nukes? Yeah right...

Europe.

Where does this all leave Europe? Europe is the only power able to stand up against America, IF the Europeans unite. And that's not happening right now: Spain (with Aznar), Italy (Berlusconi), The Netherlands (Balkenende) are on America's side. Is it really a coincidence that those countries are right-wing?
Still, Europe is the only alternative for the new American world order.
Newsweek made a prediction a while ago: within ten years, America will lose its world-power to Europe, possibly with Blair as its leader.
That's not as crazy as it sounds: the States are not as powerfull anymore as they used to be after WW II: Europe is more important when it comes to the world-economy than the States. It's unimaginable that the greatest economical world-power (Europe, that is) plays the second fiddle when it comes to politics. The only conditions for that Newsweek-prediction are ambition (a united, ambitious Europe), and a continuing American recession.