As he signed the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which for the first time, fully enfranchised African-Americans, President Lyndon Johnson remarked that what he was doing would cost the Democratic Party any hope of national control for at least a generation.

He was right as far as he went. But due to the alliance of the corporate state with racism, it is more likely to be two generations.

A glance at the electoral map for the last elections, broken down by counties, rather than states will show us that the Republican domination of the US polity is assured by an alliance of the racist South with the racist suburbs.

Many might think that, however unfortunate, this is merely a domestic matter. Unfortunately the alliance between corporatism and this racist neo-conservatism means that US power will be projected internationally in the service of the most narrow, corrupt and self serving commerical interests.

The net result has been a smoothed-out, somewhat understated Fascism. which demands alike the suppression of working people and racial minorities at home and the conquest of those who posess resources valued by corportate America abroad.

Hence war in Iraq, the suppression of African Americans -- one third of whose male population is now criminalised, the abandonment of trades unionism (only 13% of US workers are now afforded the protection of unionisation), and the militarisation of our society in order to accomplish not only the conquest of middle East oil, but of South America as well.

It is with this that your member for North Texas, Mr Blair, has aligned himself.

To me, an American, his role is not that of Churchill, but of Chamberlain.

Chris Herz