Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. V.I.Lenin
Economic and Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions (£25 p.a.) and circulation P&P Bulletin Publications. PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL [Post Office Registered.] Phone 0771 2639934    www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk   or www.epsr.org   (alternative site)
No 1275 August 6th  2005                                                                                                  25p Weekly

Next discussion agreed for 24th September— western venue. Please accumulate receipts.

Under "treason" laws support for the Vietnamese struggle would have been illegal; for the bomb-using anti-apartheid ANC; and for the Palestinians. No matter what British troops do — bombing tiny Serbia, beating prisoners in Basra, death squad shootings in Gibraltar, suppression and torture of the Irish, — or strike breaking — you must support them, or else. Such Nazi thought policing exposes the big lie of capitalist "free speech" — "democracy" is dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and forceful suppression of all objection, resistance and organisation. But the denial of the "oxygen of publicity" did not work in occupied Ireland, where the IRA disarmament now follows its victory, and now it demonstrates only the weakness and panic of a ruling class facing defeat and humiliation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its biggest world crisis ever. Draconian censorship will feed revolutionary understanding. How Britain supported Zionism for decades secretly giving it the atomic bomb despite "non-proliferation" lies, now used against Iran.

Blair's rushed and populist fascist "crackdown" on supposed "hatemongers" and "violence inciters" is the strongest signal yet of the desperate panic and despair through the entire imperialist ruling class as its 800 year old system of worldwide violence-backed exploitation and plundering runs into the historical buffers, and as the defeats inflicted on imperialism's world bombing and blitzkrieging in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine grow ever more festeringly insoluble.

This domestic echo of Bush's NAZI style "if you are not with us you are against us" bullying threat to all doubt and opposition voiced in the world, and its lining up with the most reactionary racist Telegraph Toryism to impose "Britishness" and "positive support for the system's values" on all and sundry by law and force, like finger-pointing German Hitlerism ("we did not see you doing the Heil salute with enough enthusiasm this morning, colleague - take him away"), will only rapidly escalate and broaden the already profound alienation of the millions within British capitalism, and the billions throughout the world.

The arrival in Britain of the suicide bombing, already rampant through the US led imperialist invasion of the Middle East, has far deeper causes than the preaching of any number of clerics, however "mad", "boggle-eyed" "brainwashing" or "hate filled" they are purported to be by capitalism's better-than-Goebbels propaganda machine.

Despite its confusion and desperation, the relative insignificance of the attacks compared to the great sweep of struggle and chaos throughout the world, and ultimate inability of such methods and their unscientific ideology to end the imperialist system which causes all the mayhem in the world — this new militancy reflects the disintegration and degeneration of the entire worldwide capitalist order.

Imperialism is now falling apart, riven by the deepest antagonistic contradictions which are built into the fundamental structure of production for profit and the imperialist domination of the planet (see Marx and Lenin quotes on page 6) and hammered by the rising tide of struggles against it not only in the Middle East but across the planet from Nepal to Bolivia.

The supposedly inexplicable militancy in "prosperous" Britain (no such thing in fact but up to the neck in debt and intractable economic problems) is thrown up by the most profound material conditions and intensifying contradictions, creating the massive hostility and opposition to imperialism that now keeps more and more of the Third World in a steadily increasing ferment of hatred for the corrupt and decadent "western way of life".

The contradictions and tensions are as globalised as the imperialist system itself.

The underlying debt-fuelled crisis collapse of the entire US dollar backed world system — teetering on the edge of the biggest economic disaster in history (far beyond even the massive crises leading to enormous world shattering devastation of World War One and World War Two) will only magnify these hatreds ten thousandfold as real slump and unemployment conditions bite across the planet.

Imperialism's grotesque greed, hypocrisy and decadence — even last week in the UK revealing ever more astonishing and outrageous "awards", "rewards" and "emoluments" for its company directors, owners and hangers-on, now routinely paid in the £millions and tens of millions each year, — is no longer tolerable to the billions strong poverty stricken masses of the planet.

If the deliberately obtuse and disingenuous ruling class reactionaries pretend to see no connections between the internal mayhem in the UK and imperialism's worldwide monopoly bullying and blitzkrieging, then the millions of stick-thin Africans suffering yet another devastating wave of famine in Niger, one of dozens of routine bouts of starvation, disease and deprivation imposed on millions at a time in this desperate continent by endless imperialist colonial and neo-colonial plundering, will have no trouble grasping it. And neither will the oppressed billions in Asia, the Middle East and South America.

And neither ultimately will the unemployed throughout Germany and France, Japan and America, the redundant workers in Rover, the millions with their pensions and life savings ripped off, the bankrupt and debt ridden, and the millions more who will face penury once the crisis breaks in full.

As dozens of fearful liberals, lawyers, writers, professors have already begun expressing, tearing up the carefully created façade of "parliament", "free-speech", "human rights" and "democracy" created by capitalism over the last 400 years to shield and hide the dictatorship of capital, is potentially the greatest disaster of all for the system, rapidly teaching the reality of its big lie of "freedom and prosperity for all".

The illusions of free speech, "peaceful" demonstrations, the right to an "opposition voice" and all the baggage of bourgeois democracy — including the bolstering by endless onion layers of ever more "radical" fake-"lefts" promising socialist unexploitative jam tomorrow "if we just keep using the system and win over the majority" etc, — have been capitalism's most powerful weapon in its worldwide ascendancy, leading even the most militant challenges to the dictatorship of big money and the imperialist order (like the heroic 1984 miners' strike) into endless futile blind alleys.

Repressive laws and bans on the eruption of political and philosophical discussion throughout society will be the biggest recruiter and stimulant for numerous opposition groups — Muslim and otherwise —they correctly understand, not out of sympathy for the ending of imperialism which has always kept them very comfortably, but fear that the whole system could be turned over.

So thin and untenable are these ruling class nonsensical accusations of "brainwashing" and misguided "cultism" as the cause of problems — one ludicrous accusation from a shallow Blairite minister even trying to tap into reactionary feminist nonsense by putting the origins of such profoundly desperate self-destructive violence down to "machismo" (!!) (as if the entire gang of opportunist "Blair babe" Labourite female MPs and responsible women careerist cabinet ministers had not just backed to the hilt the big lie-justified, internationally-illegal warcrime blitzkrieging of Iraq and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians) — that even leading Tories have had to speak out.

And if a senior Conservative like Dominic Grieve is obliged to say (on the Radio 4 Today programme) that the London attacks were "explicable" in terms of the anger felt by UK Muslims, despite the outrage of the more establishment sections, then it is clear that the defeat-driven intellectual and philosophical ferment is running very deep. It has always been the case the the ruling class should stick together to utterly "condemn" militancy and struggle and continue to dupe the world that the giant fraud of "democracy" had some meaning.

But the overwhelming mass of the population is aware that it is imperialism itself and its utterly lying warmongering that is to blame as even some of the most opportunist elements of the Blairite tradition are breaking away to say:

When Tony Blair says we should not "give one inch" to the terrorists, what he really means is that he isn't prepared to give one inch to those who say he blundered by invading Iraq. It's difficult to respect a prime minister who is prepared to put his own hunger for vindication before a serious attempt to understand where the war on terror is going wrong, but it's hard to see what else he could do. To admit an error of such magnitude would leave him in an untenable position. If we are stuck with Blair we are stuck with his policies, however detrimental they may be to our security.

Revulsion at the London bombings has produced a rallying effect that has insulated him from criticism, but this may prove to be short-lived. It is surely only a matter of time before admiration for Blair's presentational skills in moments of crisis gives way to sober reflection on the rather more weighty matter of how we got into this crisis in the first place. Iraq is not going away. If anything there are valid grounds for believing that the worst is yet to come.

The first of these is the escalating violence in Iraq itself. It didn't take long for the bubble of euphoria that accompanied the Iraqi elections in January to burst and make a mockery of Dick Cheney's claim that the insurgency was "in its last throes". In the first half of July alone there were more than 40 suicide bombings in Iraq. This suggests a campaign of extraordinary regenerative force. Whereas most terrorist organisations view the loss of members as an occupational hazard, those driving the violence in Iraq embrace it willingly in the knowledge that more volunteers will always be available. It also suggests that leadership of the insurgency has passed from disaffected Ba'athists to the most extreme Sunni Islamists led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

There is strong evidence that the Bush administration realises the seriousness of its predicament and is lowering its ambitions accordingly. Gone is the tough-guy "bring 'em on" rhetoric. Instead Donald Rumsfeld now talks about a 12-year campaign in which the insurgency is defeated by Iraqi forces long after coalition troops have departed. The architects of the Iraq war are looking for a way out, but that is unlikely to be the end of the matter. We face years of "blowback" for gifting al-Qaida an active theatre of operations to recruit and train a new generation of jihadists. Our leaders cleared out one hornet's nest of international terrorists in Afghanistan only to create another one in Iraq.

Potentially more worrying still is the emerging politics of post-Saddam Iraq. This has gone through three phases, each corresponding with the declining fortunes of the occupation. The first was an attempt to install a government of hand-picked émigrés led by the one-time neoconservative favourite Ahmad Chalabi. This plan was dumped when it became apparent that Chalabi enjoyed almost no domestic support. The second was the "Ba'athism lite" option under Ayad Allawi, the Shia strongman and ex-Ba'athist thought capable of reaching out to former Saddam loyalists. This failed when Allawi polled a disappointing 14% in January's election.

The third phase, and likely shape of things to come, has been the rise of the Shia Islamist bloc that now controls a majority in the Iraqi parliament. Coalition strategists are putting a brave face on this by stressing the supposedly moderate and democratic credentials of these "new Islamists". But you do not need to look very far into the past to see how unlikely this is. The new prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, was fêted on a recent trip to the White House, but his hosts conveniently chose to forget that fact that his DawaDawa party was suspected of involvement in a string of terrorist attacks against western interests, including the 1983 bombings of the US embassy in Kuwait and the US marine barracks in Beirut. The latter, the worst act of terrorism against the US prior to 9/11, killed 241 American peacekeepers. In those days Dawa acted under the guidance of the Iranian intelligence services.

Of course, times change. Al-Jafaari has renounced terrorism and embraced electoral politics. Today both he and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the spiritual leader of the main Shia party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), make all the right noises about pluralism and national unity. But this is so out of step with their ideology and backgrounds that it is hard to see it as a sincere account of their plans for Iraq.

It is also demonstrably out of step with the reality on the ground. Where they are already in control, the Shia parties are enforcing an increasingly repressive religious code. In Basra, formerly one of the most liberal cities in Iraq, there has been a clampdown on the sale of alcohol, singing in public, short haircuts and women without headscarves. Beatings have been administered to male doctors who treat female patients and students attending a mixed-sex picnic. These measures are enforced by militias such as the Badr Brigade, affiliated to Sciri, which also controls the local police.

The encroachment of Iranian-style theocratic rule has been paralleled by a growing alliance with Tehran in areas such as energy and defence. It would be wrong to see Iraq's Shia parties simply as instruments of Iran. But it would also be foolish to ignore the very strong gravitational pull Tehran is likely to exert, for both ideological and strategic reasons, on the fledgling Islamic state to its west. As the Sciri leader Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim said on a recent visit to Basra: "The great Islamic republic has a very formidable government. It can be very useful to us, and it has an honourable attitude toward Iraq." Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab countries remain hostile to Shia rule in Iraq, so it is perhaps inevitable that they will be drawn to the protective embrace of their co-religionists.

All of this presents a grave problem for Bush and Blair. According the Bush doctrine they intervened in order to "create a balance of power that favours human freedom". Instead they are in danger of creating a balance of power that favours Iran, a country still deemed to form part of the "axis of evil". The recent victory for the hardline candidate in Iran's presidential elections and the regime's apparent determination to acquire nuclear weapons compounds the problem. Bogged down in Iraq and now entirely dependent on the goodwill of its Shia majority to make the place governable, America and Britain have left themselves with few credible options for containing Iran or even influencing its behaviour.

The invasion of Iraq has frequently been described as the biggest diplomatic blunder since Suez, This already looks like a considerable understatement. On a worst-case scenario that now seems possible, it could very well come to be seen as one of the greatest foreign-policy own goals of all time.

• David Clark is a former Labour government adviser

He would not be saying this if it was not for the profound defeat being suffered by imperialism in the Middle East at the hands of the Iraqi, Aghanistani and Palestinian struggles, which is stirring the massive disquiet among intellectuals of all shades, including the rare few who are not saturated in opportunism.

It is fear of the difficulties facing imperialism and the oncoming war and revolutionary turmoil which troubles them, rather than any wish to see the world resistance to exploitation actually defeat and overturn this barbaric and monstrous system. If imperialism had swept into Iraq and successfully set up another reactionary stooge to replace Saddam — as it tried to do — the whole issue would have faded away.

But it is not getting any better:

Juba is the nickname given by American forces to an insurgent sniper operating in southern Baghdad. They do not know his appearance, nationality or real name, but they know and fear his skill.

Since February, the killing of at least two members of the battalion and the wounding of six more have been attributed to Juba. Some think it is also he that has picked off up to a dozen other soldiers.

In a war marked by sectarian bombings and civilian casualties, Juba is unusual in targeting only coalition troops, a difficult quarry protected by armoured vehicles, body armour and helmets.

He waits for soldiers to dismount, or stand up in a Humvee turret, and aims for gaps in their body armour, the lower spine, ribs or above the chest. He has killed from 200 metres away.

Sniper fire is only one of the threats for an American military that has suffered heavy losses this week.

Yesterday another soldier was killed in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, adding to the 21 who died in attacks on Monday and Wednesday.

Roadside bombs account for most of the lives lost, and the size and design of the explosions has led investigators to conclude that the insurgents are learning bombmaking methods from other terrorist organisations.

Yesterday's New York Times reported that the techniques used by Hezbollah in Lebanon were increasingly being seen in roadside bombs in Iraq.

An unnamed senior American commander quoted by the paper said bombs using shaped charges closely matched the bombs that Hezbollah used against Israel.

"Our assessment is that they are probably going off to 'school' to learn how to make bombs that can destroy armoured vehicles," he said.

America yesterday faced one of its most deadly days in Iraq since the start of the war when a massive roadside bomb killed 14 marines in an insurgent stronghold close to the Syrian border and news emerged of the murder of a US journalist in Basra.

The dead soldiers were members of the 3rd battalion, 25th marines based in Cleveland, Ohio, who were travelling on a road south of Haditha when the device was detonated. Their civilian translator was also killed.

It was the second deadly attack on the battalion in the space of three days after six Ohio reservists on sniper duty were killed in a gun battle with insurgents near the same town on Monday. The latest casualties mean 43 US soldiers have been killed in Iraq in the last 10 days.

Following Monday's attack, residents of Haditha said several masked gunmen identifying themselves as the Army of Ansar al-Sunna appeared in the public market carrying helmets, flak jackets and automatic rifles they said belonged to US troops.

They distributed flyers claiming to have killed 10 American service members. "They were on a mountain near the town so we went up, surrounded them and asked them to surrender," the statement said. "They did not surrender so we killed them."

US forces have launched two big offensives around Haditha since May to try to crush insurgents and stem the flow of foreign fighters believed to be crossing the border from Syria.

Yesterday's attack was the deadliest roadside bombing against US forces since the start of the war.

Senior commanders in Iraq have expressed concern in recent months that insurgents have been making deadlier bombs, including "shaped charges" - explosives which direct the force of their blast in a concentrated direction to penetrate armour. On several occasions this year, entire crews of armoured vehicles have been killed by roadside bombs, concealed in everything from drinks cans to dead animals.

Meanwhile, US embassy officials were still trying to piece together the events surrounding the murder of Steven Vincent, a freelance journalist and art critic from New York, in Basra on Tuesday.

Basra is regarded by reporters as one of the safer places to work. However, Mr Vincent apparently eschewed the normal security precautions and would ride around in a taxi or go on foot.

At least 49 journalists have been killed since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

These blows against imperialism are to be welcomed, as is anything that weakens and diminishes its warmongering dominance.

Condemning Iraqi attacks or any arising against imperialism as "outrageous" or " reprehensible" or "reflection of reactionary imperialism" because they are "the wrong kind of fighting" as the fake-"left" Trotskyists have done across the board is both completely misleading and playing into the hands of reactionary imperialism and its increasingly fascist repression. As the EPSR has repeatedly said:

'From a revolutionary anti-imperialist point of view, it has always been not only pointless but self-damaging for serious socialists to get diverted by lurid speculation about the "inhuman barbarity" of the terrorism or its alleged "sick motivation".

Marxist philosophy proceeds from the notion that the world is what it is, — including every political, social, and psychological phenomenon within it,— ENTIRELY due to its TOTAL domination by the bourgeois-imperialist class system.

Independent struggle and thought never ceases, it can only thrive on correcting its own mistakes, and eventually it will completely dominate the Earth as the international socialist revolution.

But beyond conscious, detailed, and genuinely Marxist-Leninist polemics, every other phenomenon is first of all a responsibility of the crisis-ridden imperialist system, and invariably a damning black mark against  it.

The fact of "terrorism" illustrates this materialist philosophical reality exactly.

Why does it exist at all?? Why is it now such a frequent and widespread occurrence, especially "suicide terrorism"???

Why is 99% of it historically associated with desperate injustices or desperately unequal struggles???

Why does it seem to be building up towards a crescendo at this moment in time???

Either the answer is the crisis of the imperialist system, dominating the lives of everyone on Earth. Or evolution has taken a wrong turn and set mankind back, especially the vast majority of mankind in the poorest or most frustratingly disadvantaged and benighted areas of the world, to suffer a repeat of a lemming self-destruct phase of development regression.

But having established that fundamentally, the reality of imperialist tyranny ALONE is the background for the existence of the now widespread phenomenon and regular historical routine of terrorism, then certain unavoidable implications follow from this.

It makes no sense whatever to BLAME the terrorists for ending up in this desperate, hate-filled, and frequently suicidal frame of mind. (The argument about whether the conscious perspective for the socialist revolution should engage in or "approve of" acts of terrorism IS A DIFFERENT QUESTION ENTIRELY — see Lenin quotes[in original No l248]).

It makes even less sense to "condemn" the phenomenon of terrorism taking place.

Society is heading for TOTAL CIVIL WAR. Vastly more elements will be caught up in or actively engaged in this civil war than just the Marxist-Leninist party of revolutionary theory.

Indeed, it is most likely to be the case, as it has been in history so far, that whenever the civil war has finally spontaneously broken out, the serious revolutionary party has at that point no more than the tiniest of tiny minorities among the huge social forces initially spontaneously going into battle. But as Lenin makes crystal clear in his remarkable 1906 article on Guerrilla Warfare, the Marxist revolutionary spirit ALWAYS is in sympathy with any civil war activity, and ALWAYS hostile to all "condemnation" of acts of civil war, however anarchic the terrorism.

To those so-called "communists" and "revolutionaries" and "socialists" who capitulate to the immense social-conformity pressure of a modern bourgeois state to "condemn terrorism", Lenin says: "I am hurt by this degradation of the most revolutionary doctrine in the world." [EPSR  No  l248 14 Sept 2004].  ' 

Ultimately, whatever episodic and spontaneous terrorism or isolated symbolic struggle may yet erupt, there is going to be growing support for mass revolutionary struggle to finally end this monstrous system for good and build a planned socialist world in the only way possible — under the strict control of the dictatorship of the working class and guided in the only way possible to take mankind forwards, the scientific socialist science of Marxism and Leninism, which must urgently be fought for.

It is the revolutionary momentum of raw class struggle only which has ever produced any of the concessions, reforms and gains in history from the ruling class anyway, "democracy" in the richest and most powerful of the imperialist countries where such democratic concessions and improved living standards have been allowed, or national liberation in the dozens of anti-imperialist colonial struggles which followed the First and Second World War crisis upheavals.

Few places illustrate it better at present than the remaining occupied six counties of Ireland which are the remnants of the oldest and longest running British colonial invasion, stretching back 800 years and therefore with the deepest impact of all on the British working class.

Latest stage in the struggle there has been painted with yet another big lie turning history upside down and inside out — aided and abetted by the cowardly and hostile fake-"left" — to suggest the latest titanic victory for the Sinn Fein/IRA republican struggle — now the dominant political voice in the occupied north of Ireland — is a defeat and capitulation.

But as the EPSR alone, has analysed for the last 25 years, against the monstrous misrepresentations and cowardly defeatism of the fake-"left", it is the armed nationalist struggle of the IRA (labelled "terrorism" and "criminality") over more than 30 years which has driven the British into retreat, beginning in the 1970s when the establishment decision was taken that there was no means to defeat the Irish willingness to fight and die to push out imperialism from their country.

From Thatcherism's post-hunger-strike Anglo-Irish Agreement onwards the process of withdrawal has been underway, deliberately kept imperceptibly slow (snail's pace retreat as the EPSR labelled it) and with endless concessions to the backward looking reactionary Orange colonialist forces, (and collusion with their continuing fascist provocations and sectarian anti-republican violence and killings) to confuse and muddy the waters and hide the underlying successful revolutionary nationalist struggle.

But despite the continuous provocations and stop-start processes of Stormont government, the demonisation, oppression and criminalisation of the republicans, once totally censored from press and TV, interned without trial, stitched up by Diplock courts, tortured and hunted down by shoot-to-kill no-trial death squads, the republican struggle is achieving its aims.

Whatever formal declarations about Irish Unity are made or not, the momentum towards full and clear rights for the Irish nationals within the occupied north —and the eventual unification of Ireland — is now clearly unstoppable, despite the best conspiratorial reactionary efforts of the BBC and British press to present the move as a "capitulation" and despite yet more obfuscation, prevarication and reactionary racist violence almost certainly to come from the diehard colonialist elements.

But the latest stunningly bold and mature decision by the IRA to announce and carry out a complete renunciation of armed struggle is a recognition by the republicans not of defeat and the impossibility of the own struggle, but the exact opposite, that they have won the battle and no longer need those methods.
That they now play the diplomatic game within the boundaries of bourgeois politics is part of the negotiation strategy and entirely valid if it reflects a victory, even one with a yet a long way to go within the "democratic" framework.

The immediate and well publicised moves last week moves by the British to accelerate the the pullout of the army from Ireland; the showpiece dismantling of the long-hated army watchtowers; the Irish prime minister Bertie Ahern's reluctance to agree with BBC questions that "unification is now off the agenda" — replying instead that the steady work of the north-south committee in health, tourism and other areas was underway — and the expectation of all the bourgeois analysts that majorities for Sinn Fein can be expected sometime simultaneously in both Stormont and Dublin, all underline the practical effect of the move on Irish unity.

So too in a negative way does the now isolated and exposed continuing reactionary racist violence of the "loyalist" armed organisations, with the internecine squabbling, splits, recrimination and criminality a classic signal of the bitter infighting and despair created by defeat.

Only the incompetence and foot dragging of British imperialism — failing to take a firm hand to finally deal with this historically outmoded backwardness, firmly imposing its supposed neutral rule of law, allows this vicious criminal nonsense to continue. But letters in the bourgeois press hint that even this might now happen:

The ending of the IRA campaign presents a historic opportunity to the British government (Report, July 29). For the first time since 1921, governments in London and Dublin are free of the perceived threat of an IRA campaign.

The British government should move as quickly as possible to pressure the Democratic Unionist party to help restore the institutions of the Good Friday agreement. After the Irish general election, the British government will face a united Irish demand to restore the institutions or move ahead without the unionists, if it has not already done so. If we arrive at that point, it should not again make the mistake of 1921 and give the unionists a veto. No one should mistake the standing down of the IRA for the standing down of Irish support for reunification.

Joe Murphy
Skerries, Ireland

Without overdoing future prediction, or denying that complexities in the overall balance of forces within the world imperialist system may yet further complicate, or at least delay the resolution of the nationalist stage of the Irish struggle, it is even looking as if the Stentorian Paisleyite "No Surrender" assertion of eternal colonialist arrogant domination will eventually give way, after suitably drawn-out further posturing but pointless demands for yet more "proof" of disarmament, and agree to a resumption of power sharing (not least out of ego).

The turning on its head of the truth of revolutionary victory is par for the course for the British ruling class and the sole strategy in a long and humiliating post-war retreat from empire — once the most arrogant, brutal and domineering powers ever seen in history, now reduced to a sad has-been role as sidekick to US imperialism, which seized its leading role after the massive inter-imperialist sort-out of the two World Wars when the tearing contradictions of the early twentieth century capitalist uneven development, had been driven to breaking point by the universal "over production" crisis of the system.

But that same now dominant US imperialism, once more facing the desperate difficulties of a completely saturated "over-produced" capitalist world market, is itself being hammered across the planet temporarily setting back its renewed warmongering plans.

But as the EPSR has also understood the defeats in Iraq, while profoundly unnerving and shattering for imperialism, cannot stop its plunge to war.

Imperialism's crisis deepens daily; and the daily stories about falling house prices, manufacturing collapse, declining retail sales, rising bankruptcy and the massively increasing tide of personal debt will sooner or later turn into a flood of disastrous economic and trade war news as another big lie of capitalism is exposed — that Britain (or any of the rest of imperialism) is somehow living in a period of stability and prosperity.
Exactly the opposite.

The greatest economic and political crisis disaster for the entire system is unfolding — the driving force for the warmongering mayhem which imperialism is already making routine (and which is the normality of the system anyway).

Blair's insane insistence on "everything being changed" for past human rights and freedoms is driven by this massive historical crisis of the whole capitalist system, not the lying and fraudulent "war on terror" — a minor problem inflated into a major distraction for the masses from the real issues.

Imperialism not only cannot stop the continuing plunge to war but (despite the current setbacks) wants and needs further warmongering to get out of its desperate difficulties.

The endless provocations against "axis of evil" Iran over its nuclear power programme (combined with the increasing fascist demonisation of Islam) gives strong signals as to at least one of its victims.

But the campaign of arrogant hypocritical bullying about "non-proliferation" and "nuclear dangers to the world" has already been exposed as an even bigger lie than the lying and criminal "weapons of mass destruction" charade by which the west was bullied and corralled into the blitzkrieg on Iraq.

Let this be placed very firmly on the record:

Britain secretly supplied the 20 tons of heavy water to Israel nearly half a century ago which enabled it to make nuclear weapons, according to Whitehall documents which have been discovered at the Public Records Office.

Officials in the Macmillan government deliberately concealed the deal from the US, according to the files, which were discovered by BBC Newsnight and broadcast last night.

Historians and politicians have been startled by the discovery, which sheds new light on the process by which Israel was able to circumvent attempts to restrict membership of the "nuclear club" to the great powers.

Most of those involved are now dead, but Lord (Ian) Gilmour, said he did not believe Harold Macmillan or his ministers knew anything about the sale, which Britain permitted without demanding safeguards against military use.

A nuclear specialist, Frank Barnaby, said: "I had no idea at all the British were involved."

The sale, in two successive 10-ton shipments to Israel from a British port, went to Israel's secret underground reactor at Dimona in the Negev desert.

The primary motive for the sale, according to the documents, appeared to be commercial. The British atomic energy authority was able to get rid of a consignment of heavy water worth £1.5M, or £20M in today's prices, which it had bought from Norway but no longer had a use for.

The deal was structured as a resale to Norway, which then traded the consignment on to Israel. This enabled British officials to say they had no responsibility themselves for imposing safeguards.

But, according to the documents, the deal was concealed from the US, which was hostile to proliferation, because the Eisenhower administration might have insisted on unacceptable conditions which would have scuppered the sale.

When Robert McNamara became the US defence secretary in 1961, he and President Kennedy strived to stop Israel from going on to build nuclear weapons. He told Newsnight last night that he had never known of Britain's behaviour at the time."The fact Israel was trying to develop a nuclear bomb should not have come as a surprise but that Britain should have supplied it with heavy water was indeed a surprise to me," he said.

"It's very surprising to me that we weren't told because we shared information about the nuclear bomb very closely with the British."
The origins of the heavy water used in the Dimona reactor remained almost entirely unknown until the revelations of Mordechai Vanunu, a disaffected Dimona technician, in the 1980s.

It was disclosed then that the 20 tons originated from Norway. But Norway itself continued to remain silent about the the deal.

Heavy water, was a crucial element of the kind of basic nuclear reactor then being built by Israel with French help, which used natural uranium rather than the more advanced technology involving enriched uranium fuel.

The butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth denials that any one actually knew what was going on are simply more of the big lies of imperialism which has overtly supported and funded the Zionist enclave for the entire period of its existence, turning a blind eye to every blitzkrieging monstrosity it has carried out (or helping and aiding it) if not at the time then in subsequent years.

British collusion with Zionism during the 1956 Suez debacle was disowned by US imperialism for its own purposes as it edged the moribund British empire out of the juicier parts of the oil-rich Middle East but the US Empire has bolstered and backed the Zionist colonialist intrusion ever since, funding it, arming it, and heading off all international resistance, by blocking or ignoring every United Nations resolution against it for decades (in complete distinction to its posturing moralising about UN resolutions for attacking Iraq and so forth).

This secret nuclear arming of the Zionist occupation of Palestine is yet another revelation in the monstrous story of imperialism's deliberate creation of this neo-colonial intrusion in the Middle East (see EPSR 1259 30 November 2004 for craven British conspiracy to capitulate to Zionist ethnic cleansing terrorising of the 1500 year long Palestinian nation) to act as guard-dog for imperialism against the entire oil-rich region, holding down all Arab and Iranian rebellion and nationalist resistance at permanently keeping a jackboot on the neck of the Palestinian nation held in concentration camp conditions and endlessly threatened with genocidal violence.

So much for the posturing about world peace, non-proliferation and freedom from nuclear tyranny which is about to be used a justification for stepping up bullying warmongering pressure on Tehran.

And Blair wants to blame a few loopy clerics for the massive tide of hatred and hostility facing imperialism throughout the planet??!

This deadly and destructive capitalist system must be ended. Build Leninist science and understanding. Don Hoskins

E P S R   BOX

Leaving the world to be run by the greed of the capitalist monopolies can never stop resulting in periodic crises where trade-war destruction MUST rule, and to which the only antidote is Revolution and a strong workers state, --- as these essentials of Marxist-Leninist SCIENCE explain.

Only the crisis events of collapsing imperialist rule interpreted in this Marxist-Leninist light will educate a mass workers party of leadership to do the necessary tasks.

The Revisionist retreat from the Soviet workers state because of crawling to shallow Western glitz and shame at their own past bureaucratic mistakes has only proved the soundness of Lenin's 'State & Revolution' science about a very long period of proletarian dictatorship being the only way for the world to see-off monopoly imperialist warmongering, now back with a vengeance.

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It is often said and written that the main point in Marx's teachings is the class struggle; but this is not true. And  from this untruth very often springs the opportunist distortion of Marxism, its falsification in such a way as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the doctrine of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and generally speaking it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognise only the class struggle are not yet Marxists;  they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a practical issue, not only all the opportunists and reformists, but all the "Kautskyites" (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgeois democrats who repudiate the dictatorship of the proletariat. V.I.Lenin

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"The last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit." (Capital. Vol III. P568.)

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" For many a decade past", wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, "the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crisis a great part, not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary...they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them."

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World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles

Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, comments on the decision by the IRA to disarm after four decades of struggle

"Today's decision by the IRA to move into a new peaceful mode is historic and represents a courageous and confident initiative. It is a truly momentous and defining point in the search for a lasting peace with justice. I commend the commitment of those who have taken this decision and I appeal for unity and solidarity among all Irish republicans on the island of Ireland and beyond and for the struggle to be carried forward with new energy and enthusiasm.
The IRA decision presents an unparalleled challenge and opportunity for every nationalist and republican.

"There is an enormous responsibility on us to seize this moment and to make Irish freedom a reality. I would urge all Irish nationalists and republicans, including those who have shown such commitment over the years as Volunteers of the IRA to put their undoubted talents and energy into building a new Ireland.

"Today's IRA initiative also presents challenges for others.

"It places a clear onus on the British and Irish Governments to fully and faithfully implement the Good Friday Agreement.

"In particular this means an end to pandering to those unionists who are rejectionist and the British Government must urgently address the demilitarisation, equality and human rights agendas.

"It means the Irish Government actively promoting the rights and entitlements of all of its citizens, including those in the North.

"It means that unionists who are for the Good Friday Agreement must end their ambivalence. And it is a direct challenge to the DUP to decide if they want to put the past behind them, and make peace with the rest of the people of this island.

'Today's IRA statement can help revive the Peace Process; it deals with genuine unionist concerns and removes from the leadership of unionism its excuse for non-engagement.

"Republicans will not be surprised that our opponents will continue to try to defeat us. Initiatives by the IRA are unlikely to change, in the short-term, the attitude of those who oppose us whether in London or Dublin or within unionism. We can expect this to continue until we succeed in our endeavours.

"Today's statement by the IRA is clear evidence of the commitment of republicans to the Peace Process. The question now is whether the two governments and the unionists are prepared to take up the challenge of building the necessary next steps to a just and peaceful future.

I am very mindful that today will be an emotional one for many republicans. I am particularly conscious of all those who have suffered in the conflict. I want to extend my solidarity to the families of our patriot dead and to commit myself and our leadership to continue our efforts to win Irish freedom.

'The road map is clear. Sinn Fein is a party looking forward. We have a vision of a new future, a better future, and we have the spirit and the confidence to work with others to achieve this. Irish republicans and nationalists are now in a new area of struggle. There is a role for everyone in this new situation. Let us move forward together to re-build the Peace Process and deliver Irish unity and independence."

Commenting on the release of Sean Kelly, Gerry Adams said: "I welcome the release of Sean Kelly. There are other prisoners who continue to be held, including those qualifying prisoners held in Castlerea. Sinn Fein will continue to campaign for their speedy release."

The IRA's statement
The following historic statement was issued by Oglaigh na hEireann, the Irish Republican Army, Thursday 28 July 2005.

"The leadership of Oglaigh na hEireann has formally ordered an end to the armed campaign. This will take effect from 4pm this afternoon. All IRA units have been ordered to dump arms.

All Volunteers have been instructed to assist the development of purely political and democratic programmes through exclusively peaceful means. Volunteers must not engage in any other activities whatsoever.

The IRA leadership has also authorised our representative to engage with the IICD to complete the process to verifiably put its arms beyond use in a way which will further enhance public confidence and to conclude this as quickly as possible. We have incited two independent witnesses, from the Protestant and Catholic churches, to testify to this.

The Army Council took these decisions following an unprecedented internal discussion and consultation process with IRA units and Volunteers.

We appreciate the honest and forthright way in which the consultation process was carried out and the depth and content of the submissions. We are proud of the comradely way in which this truly historic discussion was conducted.

The outcome of our consultations show very strong support among IRA Volunteers for the Sinn Fein peace strategy. There is also widespread concern about the failure of the two governments and the unionists to fully engage in the peace process. This has created real difficulties. The overwhelming majority of people in Ireland fully support this process. They and friends of Irish unity throughout the world want to see the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.

Notwithstanding these difficulties our decisions have been taken to advance our republican and democratic objectives, including our goal of a united Ireland. We believe there is now an alternative way to achieve this and to end British rule in our country.

It is the responsibility of all Volunteers to show leadership, determination and courage. We are very mindful of the sacrifices of our patriot dead, those who went to jail, Volunteers, their families and the wider republican base. We reiterate our view that the armed struggle was entirely legitimate.

We are conscious that many people suffered in the conflict. There is a compelling imperative on all sides to build a just and lasting peace.

The issue of the defence of nationalist and republican communities has been raised with us. There is a responsibility on society to ensure that there is no re-occurrence of the pogroms of 1969 and the early 1970s. There is also a universal responsibility to tackle sectarianism in all its forms.
The IRA is fully committed to the goals of Irish unity and independence and to building the Republic outlined in the 1916 Proclamation.

We call for maximum unity and effort by Irish republicans everywhere. We are confident that by working together Irish republicans can achieve our objectives. Every Volunteer is aware of the import of the decisions we have taken and all Oglaigh are compelled to fully comply with these orders.

There is now an unprecedented opportunity to utilise the considerable energy and goodwill which there is for the peace process. This comprehensive series of unparalleled initiatives is our contribution to this and to the continued endeavours to bring about independence and unity for the people of Ireland.

Seanna Walsh, a republican prisoner for 21 years, reads the statement for the IRA

World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles

Imperialism's losses mount in Afghanistan as well as Iraq
A forgotten war, and a lost one

by Juana Carrasco Martin for Granma International

...it is appropriate to recall with...the first war used to launch the anything-but-peaceful Bush regime's crusade—that of Afghanistan. Above all because the most recent events confirm that the constant flow of bad news is not emanating solely from Iraq.

In that Mesopotamian country, more than 1,750 dead US soldiers indicates that the resistance, instead of "weakening," as is proclaimed in Washington, is spiralling upward, and that is not due to foreign calls to combat or international terrorism, blamed by the Pentagon and the White House team for all of those actions.

In Afghanistan, the insurgency is being linked by the Pentagon and the US media to the former Taliban government, and that is effectively one of the sources of the current explosion of violence, and to the remnants of the terrorist organization Al Qaeda, although the complexity of that society, which has been in a permanent state of war for more than 24 years, would make it prudent to leave the door open to the possibility that other are also responsible, not to omit the warlords and the big drug trade...

The most recent weeks bear witness to daily combat, helicopters being shot down or crashing in "accidents," lost units of US troops, bomb explosions, and attacks on members of the government established under the patronage and disposition of the invaders. The most immediate and palpable result in more than a few towns and cities in the U.S. is mourning over their dead in Afghanistan, as well as among the families of Afghan military personnel and the ranks of the combatants who are resisting.

Reality clouds the optimism of last April, when Lieutenant General David Barno, the highest official of the US command in that Central Asian country, envisioned: "...The majority (of the Taliban) will be collapsing and joining in Afghanistan's
political and economic processes" within a year.

However, 2005 is turning out to be the most dangerous and lethal year for US troops in Afghanistan since 2001, to the extent that 54 have died in the first part, taking the death toll at the beginning of June to 208.

In the last few days, the situation has grown more tense, with the shooting down by rocket launcher of an MH-47 US military helicopter in the mountainous region bordering Pakistan; leaving 16 Special Forces troops dead, and the disappearance of a reconnaissance team made up of Navy seals and Army Special Forces who were participating in Operation Red Wing, an unsuccessful attempt to crush the combatants in the province of Kunar.

And that was complicated with the death of another six US troops in June due to roadside bombs, a weapon utilized effectively by the Iraqi insurgency and now in use in Afghanistan.

For those who persist in maintaining a US presence outside of its border under the pretext of combating terrorism, the statistics should be seen as a sign that the Afghan government is threatened and that it will require the support of 18,000 US soldiers for a number of years; during the first year of this war, they numbered only 8,000.

That was the prediction by the Rand Corp's International Security and Defense Policy Center.

The situation is complicating the road to national elections planned for September, and there is already talk among Pentagon officials about using the same tactics as in Iraq: "temporarily" increasing their forces in Afghanistan to respond to attacks, even though the Central Command there has not made such a request.

Hundreds of US troops are now combing the country and claim to have killed Taliban combatants in the province of Uruzgan, although press reports speak of civilian victims from bombing by the occupiers.

Nevertheless, there are more attacks, which are better-organized, deadlier, and spread throughout several Afghan regions, as some experts have noted. For that reason, it is not just the United States that is considering increasing its forces; NATO

 In any analysis - however superficial — of the reality in Afghanistan, it should not be forgotten that the United States and its allies are trying to bring about by force a Western-style "democracy" and culture, totally alien to a distinct culture and society, rooted in a country that is extremely poor but — nobody should doubt this — proud of its Islamic traditions, even though they might be too strict for the eyes of the conceited West...*

World Socialist Review
edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles

The Irish republican special memories of Ted Heath

Sinn Fein General Secretary, Mitchel McLaughlin has said that Ted Heath will always be remembered as "the British Prime Minister who oversaw the events that led to the massacre of innocent civilians on the streets of Derry."

McLaughlin said: "It is ironic that Ted Heath should die on the same weekend as the last of the Mothers of the Bloody Sunday victims. Nancy McKinney, the mother of Willie McKinney, passed away yesterday and I extend my condolences and those of my party to the McKinney family.

"Whilst Mrs McKinney will be remembered by all with pride for the dignity with which she and all the other mothers and families displayed over the years since Bloody Sunday, Ted Heath will be remembered by the people of Ireland for the contempt with which he treated the families of the Bloody Sunday massacre and the people of Derry.

"It was Ted Heath who set the parameters for the Widgery Tribunal when he instructed the British Chief Justice when he appointed him to carry out an Inquiry to remember that they were fighting a 'propaganda war' as well as a military one. There never was any intention on the part of the Heath government to disclose the truth of what happened on Bloody Sunday.

"Right up until the end Heath showed nothing but contempt for the search for the truth. Even his appearances at the Saville Inquiry were contemptuous.

Unfortunately, Heath's contempt denied all of the mothers of the victims the dignity of knowing the truth had finally been told before their deaths."