'Anti-Americanism' simmers on liberal US West Coast

These are just some of the provocative -- some would say anti-American -- items for sale at Left Bank Books Collective, in the liberal and frequently outspoken US West Coast city of Seattle.

While a lot has been said and written about anti-Americanism around the world following the US invasion of Iraq, little has been said about a vein of the same sentiment that exists in the United States.

If home-grown "anti-Ameri-canism" has a region it calls home, it might well be the left-leaning West Coast, where vehement opposition to Bush and his policies is overt.

If it has a capital, it could be Seattle, site of the explosive anti-World Trade Organisation demonstrations in 1999 and a politics so left-leaning that just two voting precincts went for Bush last year.

Left Bank Books Collective has dedicated to spread radical ideas from its spot in one of the prime tourist attractions, Pike Place Market, since 1973.

Collin Coyne, 33, has been a member of the bookstore collective for a year. He quit his job writing marketing copy when his company would not give him time off to attend an activist training camp.

He dislikes the term "anti-Americanism," citing one of his heroes, the radical intellectual Noam Chomsky, who argues the very term "anti-Americanism" is a totalitarian propaganda tool used to stifle dissent.

He may not embrace the label "anti-American," but Coyne, whose hat is emblazoned with "Solidarity Forever," opposes what he believes is the country's militaristic foreign policy and abusive capitalist system.

Coyne and Americans like him also don't share their fellow citizens' romantic notions of US history.