Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.  V. I. Lenin
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions (££25 p a.) & circulation: 078679 96074  [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Registered.] www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk
No 1120 Jan 22 2002                                                                                                              25p
Fake 'concern' over tortured prisoner, and deliberately misleading guides to 'new left' dangers, indicate the ill-disguised real worries of the ruling class as imperialism's economic crisis and 'war on terrorism' plummet together. But regardless of all the propaganda disinformation, the events themselves of continuing monopoly-capitalist slump and trade-war disasters, and the relentlessly growing revolutionary content of the anti-imperialist struggle, will make any long-term resurrection of the class collaborating fake-'left' impossible, – all stuck permanently on the wrong side of the Sept 11 anti-imperialist barricades. Straining to 'expose' huge imperialist conspiracies misses the far more crucial point that imperialist behaviour is crisis-driven, and never is toppled by reformist 'alternative strategies' but only by revolutionary developments which often start with quite spontaneous, and sometimes totally unexpected events. Is imperialist blitzkrieg even 'winning' anything in Afghanistan? As well as things going badly wrong on the ground, the growing western unease over the whole fascist-aggressive US stance indicates that all confidence in long-term economic crisis-solutions and related 'war on terrorism' intimidation is draining fast.

Taking at face value the new capitalist press concern that "real socialism" is making a comeback, (regardless of the complete anti-communism and total uselessness of all the names & groups given massive free publicity in the Times and Guardian), it is first of all very interesting that the cleverest organs of bourgeois propaganda in the British capitalist establishment should feel the need to start re-publishing such disinformation-rubbish about the 'left'.

Sept 11 and the Trot and Revisionist rush to 'condemn' it as 'reactionary' was supposed to be the icing on the cake of transforming the entire fake-'left' into the abject stooges of imperialist world domination and crisis-driven aggression; all of the 57 varieties effectively repeating the 1914 eternal shame of the 'Marxist' Second International leaders who all voted for war credits by their 'own' governments (with the glorious exception of the Bolsheviks and Leninism, followed by some Serbs and some Bulgarians).

But only weeks later, the imperialist system’s chief propagandists feel the need to (a) warn the bourgeoisie that feelings of socialist opposition to capitalist world rule are far from dead; (b) and simultaneously to deliberately confuse sympathetic readers about what is the essence of serious anti-imperialist understanding, and where can such a scientific analysis of the revolutionary socialist future of the world be found.

The obvious anti-Marxist nonsense of the entire fake-'left' in being swept along by the bourgeois hysteria, (making all these weak 'anti-imperialists' feel obliged to 'condemn' Sept 11 as a 'terrorist atrocity' and 'fascist barbarism', etc), is one glaring contradiction in this treacherous capitalist press propaganda about a "new socialist movement to oppose capitalism". But it will be the new facts on the ground which alone will undermine this publicity for a bogus 'new left'.

This attempted new lease of life for 'left' anti-communism can be exposed here, but no small scale alternative publication can ever undo the damage of the multimillion press and TV outlets of officialdom disinformation.

Events can, however.

Most humiliatingly, the idiot 'war against terrorism' is unravelling fast.

The EPSR did not waste much time or space on uselessly speculating whether or not imperialist military might could bomb Taleban-ruled Afghanistan to a standstill, or kill and torture captured 'terrorists'.

The doubt raised was over the notion of "occupying" Afghanistan, "pacifying" it and "rebuilding" it, - tasks which the reformists of 'humanitarian' New Labour pretended was the aim of the imperialist blitzkrieg, and which the reformists of the fake 'new left' middle class defeatism arrogantly claimed could be effortlessly imposed by the "US new world order".

As the EPSR has consistently explained, this straight-line logic of fake-'left' philosophy has never grasped the dialectically revolutionary nature of the class-war world under capitalism.

Every Trot and Revisionist group is still pouring out their 'devastating' interpretations of the 'wicked imperialist plans' in the Middle East, e.g. the USA simply 'exploiting' the trouble with terrorists in order to effectively colonise the whole Central Asian region to take total control of its vast untapped oil wealth, etc, etc, - spreading military bases in Afghanistan and the countries all around, etc, etc, etc.

Undoubtedly, such plans exist. And failing with them, or not sticking to them, or getting into conflict with rival imperialist interests over them, etc, etc, is not the problem either.

The hopelessness of this fake-'left' so-called 'anti-imperialism' lies in the CLASS assumptions which these anti-communists start out with, - accepting that the outline for world development, which monopoly capitalism has set itself, is by-and-large achievable and will only be stopped by energetically winning more electoral support for the Socialist Alliance, or the CPB, or the SLP, or the SSP, etc, etc, and getting people to agree with their "alternative economic strategies", etc.'

But history simply isn't made like that, and despite 150 revolution-packed years to the contrary, these bogus 'socialists' still prefer their own 'left reformist' protest-politics to the building of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory, the only actual 'socialist' activity that exists.

All the rest is effectively support for continuing the existing 'democracy' system (i.e. capitalism) because it only reinforces straight-line 'logical' thinking, literally presenting the world as imperialism's plans versus the 'alternative socialist' plans.

The fake-'left' will talk about capitalist crisis when they have to, but they dismiss revolutionary perspectives based on capitalist crisis as 'crisisism', - "we've heard it all before", etc, etc.

It is this pragmatic petty-bourgeois refusal or inability to even begin to grasp the heart of Marxist philosophy, - that the key moment of all development is essentially revolutionary, - which has universally wrong-footed the entire fake-'left' over Sept 11, - variously 'condemning' it as an 'unacceptable tactic'; or dismissing it as the 'wrong struggle'; or even welcoming the blitzkrieg destruction of Afghanistan as a 'progressive' elimination of 'reactionary fascists'.

Moreover, there is no rowing back from this doomed position. Subsequent protesting against the warmongering massacres of innocent Afghani villagers and the torture of prisoners-of-war, misses the point entirely. Leave that to the Red Cross and the Mail on Sunday.

How is history to be understood, is the question.

And all the fake-'lefts' have placed themselves firmly and irrevocably in the imperialist camp: "Sept 11 is a reactionary barbaric atrocity".

Marxist science and real live anti-imperialist struggle and understanding are in the totally opposite camp, and all-out class war between the two positions is the only way that civilisation can now proceed.

Sept 11 was indeed tragically cruel and murderously crude, and carried out under much influence from an undoubtedly reactionary ideology, but the historical role it has played is sensationally progressive.

Not only is it a crucially enlightening dramatic symbol of how hated Western imperialist world domination is rapidly becoming, and how competently organised and ruthlessly determined has grown the resistance to this US colonial rule. 

Sept 11 is also the most unforgettable reminder that class-war and national-war VIOLENCE has always been, - and always will be for as long as the capitalist-bourgeois system rules the earth, - the final and only decisive force in deciding society's future.

Nor is Sept 11, for all its Islamic ideological backwardness, at all an insurmountable obstacle, necessarily, towards developing real communist revolutionary understanding which can eventually inspire and organise the international proletariat to overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie and feudal landowners with planned-economy workers states everywhere.

And for Marxist-Leninist revolution, so-called 'terrorism' itself can never be an issue. It is never more than a tactic, either good or bad depending on the circumstances, - exactly as the bourgeois-imperialist enemy in fact plays it, of course, or any serious class-war participant. (See EPSR 1106).

To not want to see any of this, or not be able to see any of this, is not a 'mistake' by the fake-'left'. It is a confession of their unchanging, unalterable petty-bourgeois CLASS mentality, the ideology of the incurable 'reformist' way of thinking, which in real history has never meant anything other than PERMANENT unending class-collaboration and class-compromise, and can NEVER mean anything different.

But it is the facts on the ground that will have to change things towards the final rout of fake-'leftism' and the universal re-establishment of Marxist-Leninist science as the only workable philosophy.

So far, there is mostly circumstantial evidence (but massive and fascinating) that the whole bourgeois world 'condemn-Sept 11' project is going disastrously wrong from the West's point of view.

The widespread alarm over the torture of prisoners at Camp X-ray is, at one obvious level, an unsurprising British middle-class hypocrisy expressing squeamish distaste at the crude brutalities demanded by Western world rule, which they still fully support, of course.

At the same level, it is a slightly more surprising breakdown of synchronisation between British propaganda hypocrisy, and the version put out by 'those awful Americans', etc.

But is there more to it than that?

It is totally out-of-character for Daily Mail imperialism to lose sleep over colonial domination's own acts of global terrorism. This Rule Britannia mentality lives and profits by such terror.

Is the problem, perhaps, that the international blitzkrieg on the 'sources' of anti-imperialist terrorism is starting to go disastrously wrong?

And is this possibly linked to the fact that the far more serious underlying problem facing the West, that of the uncontrollable global economic crisis of the 'free-market' system, is going catastrophically wrong indeed, and that the US imperialist bloodlust to blitzkrieg virtually everywhere as a result of this crisis is alarming its 'Western allies' even more???

If there is truth in all this, - and there is a lot of evidence from capitalism's own press to back it up, - then the consequences and implications are hair-raising.
Past historical patterns suggest that at this stage of capitalist crisis, the major imperialist powers need to start cultivating some consciously fascist-aggressive warmongering.

Colonial routine brutality, empire cockiness, and xenophobic chauvinism almost effortlessly got the Western world out of its pre-1914 economic crisis via the First World War destructiveness and savage reparations which it was hoped would cure the imperialist system's inevitable chronic 'over-production' problem (monopoly imbalances always eventually leading to trade war and then slump).

When the Second World War became necessary, the 'fascist menace' had to be invented (routine Western colonial imperialism but with swastika armbands and a stiff-arm salute) as a 'reason' for dragging a reluctant world again through the horrors of war so soon after the indescribably appalling 'war to end all wars' had collapsed in universal shame only 20 years earlier.

The problem the Western warmongering system now faces is that after 57 years of non-stop anti-communist propaganda (which painted imperialism as the 'free world' where only 'democracy' and 'humanitarian values' prevailed, backed by a never-ending arms race "purely for peaceful purposes" against the 'military threats (nonexistent) of "communism's plans to conquer by force" (nonexistent)), - public opinion has now been brainwashed some distance away from the "might is right" arse-kicking xenophobia (of the various smug 'master-race' delusions all round the affluent West) which capitalist 'over-production' crisis now needs to get vital warmongering destructiveness going again.

Hence, possibly, the growing awkwardness over Washington's increasingly fascist-sounding belligerence.

Historically, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Worse still, the whole warmongering project (to save imperialism from crisis via massive destruction of 'surplus' capacity) is so historically out of date from every angle that it looks like a failure before it starts anyway.

Occupy Afghanistan??? As the EPSR said at the outset of this idiot 'war on terrorism', the whole of 20th century history witnessed the COLLAPSE of any remaining ability by the imperialist powers to carry on any direct colonial rule of the world.
Generally speaking, history does not go backwards.

And as the EPSR added, even if Afghanistan could be occupied and tamed with great difficulty, what would the West then do about the next 100 Third world countries, most of them with far vaster populations than Afghanistan and many of them far bigger and with just-as-difficult or even more difficult terrain??

The West's whole re-colonisation project is total nonsense. And 'destroying terrorism' means nothing less than total recolonisation, as the toughest arm of the whole colonial-imperialist warmongering mentality, the Zionists, are steadily discovering, yet still failing to achieve, of course. What history is telling the world, via Sept 11, is that colonial domination and the imperialist economic system are out of date and finished. The world's masses will not accept the injustice and unfairness of such crisis-ridden brutality any longer.

The international market domination by the Western monopolists sinks deeper into crisis every day, with not even any suggestion of any 'solution' any more. Slump and trade-war is the only message, from capitalism's own propagandists:

The Federal Reserve, America's central bank, dashed hopes of an early recovery in the world's biggest economy when it warned yesterday that the US remained "weak" as it entered 2002 despite 11 cuts in interest rates last year.

Share prices fell sharply on Wall Street as dealers took fright at official figures showing American manufacturing contracted by 3.9% last year, its worst performance since 1982. Fed data showed a 0.1% fall in December, the 11th drop in the past 12 months, and more capacity than at any time for almost 20 years.

With consumer prices falling in December as retailers sought to compensate for weak demand in the shops, analysts believe that a further cut in borrowing costs is all but inevitable when the Fed's open market committee meets at the end of this month.

The continuing problems of the US economy were underlined when General Motors, the world's largest carmaker, reported d dramatic fall in full year profits to $1.5bn (£1bn), down from $5bn in the previous year -illustrating the intensely difficult conditions facing the industry.

GM is the only one of the big three carmakers in the US, the others being Ford and DaimlerChrysler, expected to have made a profit at all this year in the face of increasing competition from Asia and Europe, and the tough economic climate.

GM, which precipitated the zero-finance initiative subsequently adopted by Ford and DaimlerChrysler, launched a follow-up offer last week: a cash rebate of $2,002 on new cars and trucks.

A return to greater product innovation was the central message delivered by Ford last week as it detailed the sweeping changes at the company, including 35,000 job losses.

The weaker results from GM mean that executives will forgo bonuses under the company's annual incentive award and workers will not take anything from the company's profit-sharing scheme.

The picture for GM in Europe was worse, with the combined operations including Opel in Germany recording a loss.

GM said it would place continued emphasis on reducing costs to help push the revenue performance through to improving profits.

America's system of tax breaks for global companies such as Microsoft and Boeing violates international trade agreements.

EU trade commissioner, Pascal Larry, has sought $4bn (££2.7bn) in compensation from the US, comfortably the largest sanctions bill in the short history of the World Trade Organisation.

Robert Zoellick, Mr Larry's opposite number in Washington, has warned the EU that imposing the sanctions would be 'the equivalent of pressing the nuclear button in the cold war. If its own firms were harmed at a time when the US was still struggling to emerge from recession, America would respond with tit-for-tat measures that would push the already fragile global economy into a full-scale trade war.

Both sides appear to realise that this would be the equivalent of mutually assured destruction, and the next few weeks will see intensive private negotiations between Mr Zoellick and Mr Larry to settle the dispute. But the two old friends face, strong external pressures that limit their ability to solve the matter amicably. Trade raises strong passions and on both sides of the Atlantic; the Dr Strangelove tendency is alive and well.

Like nearly all of the 240 disputes considered by the WTO since its creation in 1995, the issues at stake in the case of America's Foreign Sales Corporations Act are complex. Until now, Washington has provided tax breaks for its corporations that operate overseas, allowing them to shelter some of their earnings abroad from the taxman. The US argues that the law  - now called the Extraterritorial Income Act  - merely compensates its exporters for the fact that, unlike other countries, America taxes companies on their earnings worldwide, not just at home. Far from providing a massive subsidy to some of the world's largest companies, it simply levels the playing field.

The WTO did not see it in this light, however. Having already forced the US to change the laws once, the appeals panel ruled that the amended system was still an illegal subsidy, contravening basic international trade principles by discriminating in favour 'of US goods. A two month arbitration period will begin later this month, which will decide by March 28 the size of the EU's damages. Put simply, the WTO has provided Brussels with, a gun and will shortly decide on the number of bullets. The EU will then have to choose whether to take aim and fire.

"This dispute interacts with other disputes and negotiations, which makes it very tricky. It has stumbled from place to place, becoming ever more serious. People haven't been able to stop it in the past, and it is worrying that it might go to another stage without people being able to stop it now."

Good relations between Mr Lamy and Mr Zoellick may not be enough to prevent the dispute souring relations between the world's two largest trading blocs. "Everybody is being rather careful about not exploding too many bombs too quickly. But it is serious. Both sides are to some extent captured by a variety of political interests which don't give them as much room for manoeuvre as they might want. If the other side [the US] decided to drop a few bombs of its own that would be bad news," Mr Woods added.

'Serious end'

Some EU members rank revenge as a more important objective than keeping the arteries of world trade flowing. They see victory in the foreign sales corporations case as a chance to rub Washington's nose in the dirt. On Capitol Hill, protectionist pressures are rising as American companies cut jobs and investment. Mr Zoellick may find it difficult to cut a deal which makes life harder for some of America's biggest companies and easier for EU firms selling goods into the US.

Rachel Thompson, trade analyst with the public affairs consultancy Apco, said: "It is now at the serious end of a long-running process. Presidents and prime ministers are going to start paying attention. It's got to be managed seriously. There are people in governments in European countries who see this as a way of gaining leverage on other issues, such as steel and beef. And there are people in Washington determined to resist that. It's going to be very tricky for Lamy and Zoellick to steer their way through this."

But with George Bush paying attention to the home front after the military campaign in Afghanistan, there is a risk that the US will adopt a hawkish and isolationist approach to trade. Mr Woods said that the EU could now find the tax regimes operating in its member countries coming under scrutiny at the WTO. As far as Mike Moore, the director general of the WTO is concerned, the dispute could not come at a worse time.

Mr Moore has already warned that the next few months are critical, and the WTO could help to defuse the row by scaling back the amount of the sanctions bill from the $4bn being asked for by the EU.

But Ms Thompson says that the WTO is being expected to do much. Although it has been demonised by the anti-globalisation movement as an all-powerful world government in waiting, the WTO is actually a small organisation by international standards. It is being stretched to the limit by the large number of disputes being brought by its 143, largely litigious members, and is about to embark on a lengthy, ambitious and almost certainly controversial round of talks. Attempting to interfere with the tax regimes of nation states may be a bridge too far.

To add to Mr Moore's headaches, a new EU-US dispute is looming. Against a background of a global glut of steel, the US has threatened to slap curbs on imports of the material: The EU has said it would be willing to support global cuts in steel production as a way of limiting over-supply, but only if Washington backs down. Backing down is not something that the US, particularly under the leadership of Mr Bush, is keen on.

For the hideous wound of total social crisis in Argentina where the underlying Western monopoly-dominated mayhem has currently scorched through most damagingly onto the captive Third World below, hinting at the global rash of total class revolution to come, the scared bourgeois authorities have drummed up their own xenophobic tradewar hysteria as a last-ditch desperate self-protective measure:

The international banks believe they are regarded as an easy target for the authorities which are looking for scapegoats for the economic crisis. Several took out full-page advertisements in local newspapers yesterday blaming the government for the disintegration of Latin America's third-largest economy.

The Merval index of leading shares dropped by almost 6% when the Argentine stockmarket opened yesterday after being closed for much of the past month. The peso, which the government released last week from its 10-year peg against the US dollar weakened to $1.9-$2 yesterday, a 50% fall.

The fresh turbulence on the markets coincided with the resignation of Roque Maccarone, severely criticised for his handling of the introduction of new banking regulations, and his replacement as central bank governor by his deputy and former IMF economist, Mario Blejer.

The lower house of congress was expected last night to approve the creation of a special committee to investigate the allegations of capital flight, which have served to further inflame an already angry Argentine public.

There were renewed violent protests across Argentina yesterday, with the government announcing that it will take police off border duty to patrol the increasingly lawless streets.

Western monopoly investment is undoubtedly pulling exploitation stunts in various ways to get Argentinians to bear all the burdens of the imperialist system's crisis.

Basically, Western monopoly investment never stops exploiting, even in good times.
What are the chances of revolutionary disorder in Argentina being declared a 'terrorist threat' at some stage, and a CIA-led military blitzkrieg being prepared, as brought down a populist 'left' government in Chile in 1973???

But how successful would it be this time round??

And even if successful this time, what about the next 99 Third World countries heading for revolution as the global economic crisis deepens?

And what 'cure' in Argentina anyway???

Japan has been in economic turmoil for the past 11 years and is facing state bankruptcy on a scale which would make Argentina's upheaval look like the mildest vicarage tea party. And revealing of what is really undermining Western confidence is the chance connection between Japan and the chaos-threatening debacle from blitzkrieging Afghanistan. Japan is hosting the current donor conference to 'rebuild Afghanistan' (presumably along as-yet-to-be-explained 'terrorist free' lines).
But instead of complimenting or sneering at Japan for its attempt to earn revived imperialist Brownie points, the Times editorial mysteriously only warns alarmingly that imminent Japanese state bankruptcy is the real issue in Tokyo, not trivial hand-outs to doomed and beyond-repair Afghanistan.

How worried a sign of Western crisis fears is that?

No surprise therefore, that capitalism's own sources are admitting increasing concern from the front line of the idiot 'war on terrorism'.

After destroying Afghanistan at enormous cost, - and now requiring even more enormous cost to try to put it back together again, what exactly has been 'won' there??

OSAMA BIN LADEN is back in fashion in the bazaars of Kandahar. They are doing a roaring trade in bin Laden memorabilia, including turbans, sports bags and children's sweets.

The al-Qaida leader is, however, much more than a cult figure in the former Taleban stronghold: he is revered as a god, particularly by the young.

Among the bin Laden merchandise on sale yesterday was a fake Nike sports bag inscribed on one side with the year, 2002, and on each end: "Well Done Usama Bin Laddan" (sic). Openly on sale in shops along the busy, dusty streets are boxes of "Super Osama Bin Laden Kulfa Balls", chewy coconut sweets. The box is decorated with a portrait of bin Laden. He is surrounded by missiles, holy warriors, jet aircraft' and tanks.

Also freely available, despite increasingly frequent patrols by American special forces and anti-Taleban soldiers, are pure silk turbans, inside a package with a picture of bin Laden standing in front of a library of Islamic scriptures and embossed with the slogan: "Mujahedd [holy warrior] of the Islamic World: Osama bin Laden." Many of the guns on sale, mostly Russian AK47 automatic rifles, are decorated with bin Laden stickers.

"Many people here worship Osama," Ali Ahmed, a 27-year-old shopkeeper said. "He is a god, especially to the young men. The Americans believe that we would betray him, because there is so much bounty on his head. We would never do that. Never.

"You must understand, the way he has stood up to the Americans, the way he has made them suffer and the way he has managed to escape them, despite all their guns and men, only increases the worship. You must understand this also: the huge money Bush is offering for Osama, that means nothing to an Afghan. What could an Afghan do with millions of dollars?"

One officer in the new anti-Taleban force now running the city, which is riddled with bin Laden sympathisers, said: "We are trying to stop people selling these things. But it is almost impossible. You cannot stop them loving Osama."

Such passion causes deep concern to Gul Agha Sherzai, Kandahar's Governor, and the 3,000 American and coalition forces stationed' at the city's airport. Last week two "probing" assaults were launched by gunmen on American marines at the airport.

At Kandahar's Mirwais hospital, six Arab al-Qaeda fighters holed up in a ward with guns and grenades for over seven weeks are being starved out by soldiers ostensibly loyal to Mr Sherzai.' But there is evidence that food and water has been smuggled to them by their Afghan guards. When one of the Arabs blew himself up with a grenade last week, three Taleban soldiers crept into the hospital compound at night and made a mound of soil on the spot where he died, pointing it towards Mecca.

Two hours from Kandahar, at the foot of the Rod Para mountains, lies a huge, abandoned al-Qaeda training camp, once home to at least 600 Arab fighters. Inside a cave lie the remnants of the camp "library": copies of the Koran, terrorist training manuals and religious pamphlets.

Javed, a 21-year-old Afghan translator, carefully wrapped up the religious texts in a shawl to give to holy school in Pakistan. "There these books will get the respect they deserve. This is a shrine for me. This is the work of Osama bin Laden. Yes, to me, he is a god."

A bomb exploded outside the newly reopened US embassy in Kabul in the first reported attack on the growing international presence in the city. When US guards went to inspect the damage outside the embassy the following morning, they discovered the area was booby-trapped with several more bombs.

Trip wires were connected to more anti-personnel mines around the American embassy and the headquarters for the British-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), which is situated nearby.

The bomb was the first known targeting of Americans or international forces establishing a growing presence in Kabul. But German troops newly arrived to join Isaf spent yesterday digging ditches around their encampment after Berlin received intelligence warnings that they could be attacked by a suicide bomber driving a car packed with explosives.

Two US marines died yesterday and five more were injured, two critically, when their helicopter crashed southeast of Kabul after taking off from Bagram airbase.
But witnesses at the airport last night reported that helicopters and aircraft were now taking off using flares, the heat from which deflects heat-seeking missiles targeting the aircraft.

The flurry of warnings, the embassy bomb and the helicopter crash have all contributed to an air of menace and insecurity in Kabul and beyond.
UN sources said that the security situation in the country had deteriorated in the past week. The Isaf patrols in the city, intended to boost security and confidence, are few and far between, barely visible on the streets.

It was not clear who was responsible for the embassy bomb. It was not necessarily being blamed on Taliban recalcitrants who would find it easy to infiltrate Kabul, although city police said last night that they had arrested five Taliban entering Kabul from the north.

Powerful anti-Taliban warlords outside Kabul who feel they are being cut out of the western-supported post-Taliban dispensation also have scores to settle.

The Americans are currently singling out Ismail Khan, the pro-Iranian fighter who runs western Afghanistan from his power base in Herat, for particular criticism.
UN sources said Iran was flying in arms and supplies to Mr Khan, who has yet to declare his loyalty to the interim government headed by the pro-American Hamid Karzai.

US aircraft have been bombing the Herat region over the past couple of weeks, ostensibly hitting targets staked out by Taliban or al-Qaida remnants. But Afghan government sources indicate the attacks are punitive strikes on Mr Khan's forces because the warlord is refusing to follow orders from Kabul and will not disarm his forces.

An internal document from the medical charity Medécins Sans Frontières, written last week and obtained by the Guardian, says that "a large number of civilian deaths and casualties" have been caused by recent US cluster bomb attacks on the Herat region.

It reports local United Nations de-mining experts in Herat as saying that a "vast amount" of unexploded cluster bombs are lying around, not because they have failed to explode but because they have been designed not to explode, and to be used instead as anti-personnel mines. The bombs are particularly lethal to children.

A SENIOR MI6 officer and a group of British aid officials were forced to flee after they were held up at gunpoint by bandits in Afghanistan.

The incident is one of a series in recent weeks that coalition commanders fear are making work in the ravaged country increasingly difficult.

In a separate attack, a group of US Marines came under fire from what is thought to have been the same bandit group about 30 miles from Kabul on the road to Jalalabad.

Fears for the security of coalition aid workers are now so great that SAS, Special Boat Squadron (SBS) and American special forces are to be used as helicopter borne rescue troops.

The American soldiers were fired on with AK-47 derivative rifles as they patrolled. They returned fire with M-16 assault rifles and handguns, and managed to reverse away at speed. None of the soldiers was hurt.

A Pentagon spokesman said security issues in Afghanistan were "shifting". "We still face the obvious threats from terrorism and politically. motivated attacks," he said. 'But clearly when you bring people and kit into a very poor region, it's attractive to some people who want to steal.

The principal targets of the war, Bin Laden and his key associates, remain uncaptured and unslain. Even Mullah Omar, the one-eyed obscurantist and erstwhile emir, seems to have been mislaid. By carefully honing down the war aims to little more than better gender-balanced government in Afghanistan (not something the government is crusading for everywhere in the Islamic world), No.10's war-room spinners claim the victor's spoils.

But even in Afghanistan, the last shot is a long way from being fired. Since the 100-days euphoria, hundreds have been killed by maladroit US bombing or maliciously misguided targeting. And having achieved the leadership of the multinational force, British soldiers pack their kitbags for another expedition through the Khyber Pass and our own thin red line is string out still farther.

The Queen scarcely has enough soldiers to fill the foxholes we are in already in Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia, the Falklands, Northern Ireland, Sierra Leone, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Oman and Kuwait  - so much for the 1960s withdrawal east of Suez  - yet the New Labour army marches on.

Their arrival is unlikely to remain uncontested. As one Pashtun warlord put it: "To kill occupation soldiers will be a duty for all Afghans; to kill British soldiers will be a pleasure." But the most dangerous hostage to fortune is the government's claim that, as a result of the war, "you and your family live in a safer world".

Come and have a go if you think you're hard enough" is always a dangerous chant, whether on the terraces at Millwall or aimed at the people "in 50 countries" who, according to Colin Powell, have made a strategic turn to suicide. Running through government propaganda is the taunt that those who saw Armageddon in the mounting rage of Muslims over Palestine, Iraq and the west's bottomless succour for the tyrannies which rule them  - were crying wolf.

But what was September 11 if not a taste of apocalypse? And why should we conclude that daisy-cutting Kandahar caves has made "you and your family" safer? There is scant evidence that the terrorists who hijacked those planes and flew them to destruction went to Afghanistan, far less depended on it. What is certainly true is that their cells were formed in Europe and their crucial training in flying and martial arts took place in the sunkissed Florida glades.

These were men more at home in hotel lobbies and internet cafés than the boltholes of Tora Bora. While no doubt useful, a state-sponsored base camp is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for a successful terrorist campaign, as decades of IRA activity in the UK proved.

And what of the well of hatred from which the Bin Laden phenomenon draws its power? Do we take the hundred days of coup-less quiescence as dissipated rage? Does every bomb and convoy-strafing rally the world's Muslims to our side? As the Palestinian Authority lies comatose on life support, do we take the silence as a cry of surrender? Or are the Muslims merely nursing their wrath to keep it warm?

On New Year's Day in a top Cairo hotel, I watched a cabaret act go into a kind of rap routine. The audience roared with delight as the vocalist improvised on current events. But they saved their loudest applause for his paean of praise for Bin Laden. Today the Muslim world is stretched taut, waiting for the storm to break.

The Wall Street Journal calls the British prime minister "America's newest and brightest ambassador": Despite their widely trailed objections to a widening of the war, the British are about to learn that ambassadors  - whether sent abroad to lie for their country or someone else's  - don't make decisions, but merely carry them out.

Puffed up and pumping "let's kick ass" braggadocio, the Nixon-Reagan-Bush apparatchiks now proliferating in the treaty-busting White House are buckling up for the next assault. I wonder how safe the government feels "you and your family" will be once these tough guys get going  - and the going gets even tougher.

This last New Labour parliamentary view is not alone.

The most astonishing new development of all still remains very vague, and subject to an endless variety of different interpretations.

But just the very fact that the question is posed at all is truly startling: "Saudis tell US forces to get out" screamed the capitalist press headlines:

Saudi Arabia's rulers are poised to throw US strategy in the Middle East into disarray by asking Washington to pull its forces out of the kingdom because they have become a "political liability'.

Senior Saudi officials have privately complained that the US has "outstayed its welcome" and that the kingdom may soon request that the US presence  - a product of the Gulf war  - is brought to an end.

Both the White House and the state department insisted yesterday that the military arrangement between the two countries was still working. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said the president, George Bush, "believes that our presence in the region has a stabilising effect in a dangerous region".

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally, have been severely strained since September 11. Both sides have been desperately denying for months that there is a rift.

The US is reluctant to withdraw its 4,500 troops from the Prince Sultan airbase, south of Saudi's capital Riyadh, because it could be perceived as a propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden, who frequently protested at the presence of non-believers so close to the main Muslim holy sites.

But the increasingly brittle and vulnerable ruling House of Saudi is nervous about an internal revolt by Bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network and other extremist militants, and has been publicly loosening its links with Washington.

The huge Prince Sultan base played a crucial logistical role in the bombing of Afghanistan. Withdrawal would upset the military balance in the Middle East by providing a boost to the Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein. US planes based in Saudi regularly bomb along the Iraqi border as part of its policy of containment of Saddam.

Britain, which jointly patrols the Iraqi no-fly zone with the US, has planes based both in Saudi and Kuwait. A pullout by Washington would switch the focus to the British air base in Kuwait, whose leaders try to avoid drawing attention to the British presence.

Many in the US have been upset with Saudi Arabia because not only is it Bin Laden's native country but 15 of the 19 terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks were from the kingdom. The Saudi media have reported that about 200 Saudis have been captured in Afghanistan fighting with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

The kingdom is volatile, with a stagnant economy, high unemployment, no democratic outlets and King Fahd unable to crack down on militants.

There is a huge well of resentment in the US that, having fought to push back Iraq in 1991 and having protected Saudi since, Riyadh refused to provide military help during the Afghan campaign.

Reflecting this, Carl Levin, head of the Senate's armed services committee, said: "We need a base in that region, but it seems to me we should find a place that is more hospitable." .

Bin Laden listed as the main justifications for the attacks on New York and Washington the presence of the US soldiers in the kingdom, US support for Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians, and the US campaign against Iraq. He said six years ago: "There is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land [of Arabia]:'

Nawaf Obeid, an oil and security analyst, said that Crown Prince Abdullah would oversee the US withdrawal slowly and carefully over an extended period. "From his and a logical national security perspective, it is clear that the American military presence in Saudi Arabia is no longer a viable option," he told The Washington Post.

The same conclusion is being reached on Capitol Hill, where influential congressmen are voicing disenchantment with the arrangement.

Given this disastrous turn of events, no wonder capitalist propaganda everywhere is taking the next step of disarming a potential socialist revival by such collective Times and Guardian promotions of fake-'lefts'.

But it is the hopeless contradictions which continue to loom large, even in such totally manipulated advertising pieces.

A star Global Resistance organiser, e.g., (ex SWP) wears a 'TERRORIST' T-shirt prior to Sept 11. Gosh how challenging. Gosh what fun. It disappears after Sept 11. "I just thought I should be a bit more careful" is the profound save-the-world comment.

"From every progressive point of view, Sept 11 has been a disaster" 

Tariq Ali declares. The intellectual quality of anti-communist opportunism has hardly improved with the years:

"The daily news make you want to retreat back under the sheets" 

adds a Red Pepper editorial, hinting at where it routinely seeks enlightenment.

Noam Chomsky contributes a totally defeatist view that Sept 11 has played completely into the hands of imperialist reaction, in yet another total retreat from dialectical materialist science into subjective idealist reformism. This publicity for 'revived' fake-'leftism' throughout reveals that ordinary people's anti-imperialist confidence remains constant.

Only star opportunist 'leaders' keep acting like weather vanes, bending whichever way hysterical bourgeois disinformation campaigns take them.

The grotesque anti-communist simplifications of George Orwell are then supported enthusiastically on behalf of the entire fake-'left'.

And all such speculation about a 'socialist revival' never can proceed beyond this make-or-break point.

Either the world will again learn to live with the dictatorship of the proletariat, warts and all in practice, and work ceaselessly at correcting those faults, both in the ongoing few workers states remaining and in retrospective theory as far as former workers states are concerned; or else all dreams of socialism will remain mired in the compromised, effectively permanent, 'democratic' support of the capitalist state by 'reformism'.

Oddly, the backward religious content of Sept 11 contains that message too: This is class war for world domination between the haves and the have-nots.

There never has been compromise, other than the temporary 'reforms' forced out of the ruling class by fear of revolution.

And there never will be compromise because of the very unchangeable monopoly-accumulation nature of the 'free market' capitalist system, - as once again the capitalist press itself gives regular evidence of:

The world's richest 50m people earn as much as the poorest 2.7bn and may soon be forced to live in heavily protected gated communities to escape the resentment of the billions living below the poverty line, a senior World Bank economist warns today.

Research from Branko Milanovic, published today in the Economic Journal, shows a staggering increase in global inequality, which has been rising as rapidly internationally as in Britain under Mrs Thatcher.

In a wide ranging study covering 85% of the world's population from 91 countries, Mr Milanovic has found that the richest 1% of the world have income equivalent to the poorest 57%.

Four fifths of the world's population live below what countries in North America and Europe consider the poverty line. The poorest 10% of Americans are still better off than two-thirds of the world population.

"We can wonder how long such huge inequalities may persist in the face of ever closer contacts, not least through television and movies, where opulent lifestyles of the rich influence expectations and often breed resentment among the poor," said Mr Milanovic.

"Should it be of concern to the rich? Perhaps, if we believe that wide income gaps lead to immigration and resentment breeds terrorism.  For ultimately, the rich may have to live in gated communities while the poor roam the world outside those few enclaves."

The entire bourgeois class feels born to rule, even its petty bourgeois managerial class, and nothing will ever persuade it to voluntarily give up fighting to maintain for ever that sweet lucrative ruling racket by hook or by crook.

More than 99% of the mental fight for socialism remains in staying clear that power must be taken and never given back, and that the bourgeois class must be eliminated as a class.

Via the barminess of Bin Laden, the stark reality of class war has been restated. The dictatorship of the proletariat alone gives continuous necessary assertion to that point in history, in spite of all the degenerate mistakes, and in spite of all the even more criminal theoretical nonsense which Stalinism (and its equally-manipulative anti-communist counterpart, Trotskyism) inflicted on international working-class understanding.

The current fake-'left' fashion to now just ignore all the colossal constructive achievements of the workers states and the better parts of their outstanding anti-imperialist historical stance, cannot last.

Clever and relentless bourgeois propaganda against communism's achievements can temporarily make any revival of revolutionary socialist struggle in East Europe seem further away than ever, but the dialectical logic of imperialist crisis says otherwise.

Reactionary imperialist triumph and all its colossal bourgeois propaganda influence has obviously just enjoyed a golden decade.

Sept 11 not only did not end it, but even obscured what will eventually end it, - conscious international Marxist revolution.

But Sept 11 in its extraordinarily weird way did indeed SIGNAL the coming end of this golden twilight of world domination by the West's monopoly-imperialist system. Build Leninism. EPSR
World Socialist Review
(Edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Westminster facilities is only one element of the battle to secure full democratic rights and entitlements for our members and electorate

SINN Féin's position in respect of attendance at Westminster is an established and well-known policy position. This is the basis on which the electorate voted for the four Sinn Féin MP's in the last election of June 2001.

Also, prior to the 1997 Westminster election Sinn Féin made it very clear that any members elected would begin to use the facilities at Westminster available to all other MPs. This is a democratic entitlement of our electorate.

But when Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were elected, Betty Boothroyd the then speaker of the British parliament changed the rules so as to prevent Sinn Féin members from using the facilities in Westminster.

Since then we have consistently raised this issue with the British Government in a bid to secure the full rights and entitlements for our electorate and to provide Sinn Féin MPs with all available resources to represent our voters interests.

The recent decision by the British parliament. to restore these rights to Sinn Féin members and to revert to the situation which obtained prior to the Boothroyd dictat, was a belated recognition that this decision was discriminatory and wrong.

In the most recent Westminster election in June last year the majority of the nationalist population endorsed the Sinn Féin position of abstentionism from the British parliament while at the same time working to ensure our full democratic rights and entitlements.

Sinn Féin has long argued that effective representation amounts to much more than parliamentary activity. We are a campaigning party who have consistently brought the republican analysis to an international stage. We opened an office in Washington in 1994 and set up a political lobbying facility in London headed by Michelle Gildernew in 1997.

Sinn Féin will use the resources now restored to us to expand this operation and to lobby for support for a democratic British policy in respect of Irish national self-determination and unification.

This is a crucial area of work for republicans. An expanded Sinn Féin presence in London will be to the benefit of our electorate, our constituents and those of us who wish to see the Peace Process consolidated.

But Westminster facilities is only one element of the battle to secure full democratic rights and entitlements for our members and electorate. This does not stop with the decision to grant Westminster facilities. The Irish constitution recognises that it is the entitlement of every person born on the island of Ireland to be part of the Irish nation. This however does not obtain at the moment in terms of democratic participation in the life of the nation.

For instance, Sinn Féin has consistently argued for representation for Irish citizens living in the North in the political institutions in Dublin.

Scores of thousands of electors living in the North wish to be effectively represented as Irish citizens in their national assembly. For one thing it is an equality issue. Unionists can go to Westminster but nationalists in the North, at present, cannot as of democratic and national right be represented in the institutions of the 26 Counties. We have worked long and hard to reverse this inequality and hope that this will come to fruition in the course of this year. It is a sensible and democratic development of the new dispensation we are all seeking to elaborate and develop.

Irish citizens across the island should also be given the right to vote in certain referenda. These should include matters relevant to issues affecting all citizens on the island.

Another straight forward constitutional amendment would be to allow Irish citizens in the North to vote in Presidential elections.

Clearly, the provision of a facility to Irish citizens living in the North to secure as entitled an Irish passport in the same way as other Irish citizens would be a useful development of political, symbolic and practical importance. Sinn Féin has also lobbied hard on this issue for some years now. Again, we would hope to see this develop positively and speedily.

For the Peace Process to be consolidated and bedded down, the rights and entitlements of all citizens must be respected. This is the responsibility of the two governments.

Sinn Féin for our part will not accept less than full rights for our members and our voters. The decision by the British Government to remove the bar on our MPs availing of Westminster facilities is a small but welcome step along this road.
SPEAKING to an elected representatives conference in Belfast on Saturday, the Sinn Féin Chairperson and Foyle Assembly member, Mitchel McLaughlin said that the major political topic for debate still outstanding is the issue of Irish. unity. McLaughlin told the conference:

"Republicans, at every opportunity must begin discussions with unionists and other political opponents on the benefits of Irish unity. We cannot afford to wait for anyone else to initiate these discussions because who else other than republicans have the motivation to do so.

As our electoral strength continues to grow across the 32 counties of Ireland we need to use that strength to bring about a United Ireland which wilt accommodate unionist concerns. With the increase of political strength comes the responsibility for advancing the type of United Ireland that can accommodate all.

We will have to begin discussions that will bring that about by engaging with our political opponents –– unionists, nationalists and others.

Coming from a strong constituency of nationalism and Republicanism, one that is getting stronger, we need to address the fears of those concerned about future constitutional change.

The core outstanding issue of political debate in Ireland at present is that of constitutional change leading to the dismantling of partition. It can no longer be ignored.

The advances made by Sinn Féin in last years Westminster and Local Government elections in the North will be replicated in the forthcoming general election in the 26 Counties. But we should not allow ourselves to become complacent by listening to predictions in the media of an increase of as many as eight Dail seats.
 
These wild predictions are being made by political pundits that have no love of republicans  - so that if they do not transpire then it can be claimed that Sinn Féin did not do as well as expected.

We will do very well but this is not a short-term project; it needs long-term commitment to build the strength required to complete our political project.

Our success in acquiring Westminster facilities as of right will also assist us in this project. I believe that it will be as significant and as successful as our Washington Bureau since its opening a number of years ago.

I also expect progress in the coming months on northern representation in the Irish political system. This will be highly significant as it will for the first time since partition give Irish citizens in the North a voice albeit one limited, to those issues not explicit to the 26 Counties - in the affairs of the 'Nation'.

World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Noose tightens on British colonialism's pacesetting state-terrorist history in Ireland, fought back against by the Irish national-liberation struggle in the only real 'war-on-terrorism'.

THOSE who killed RUC agent and UDA quartermaster William Stobie may be the same people who killed defence lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989. The investigation into the killing should be carried out independently of the RUC/PSNI and Special Branch, the United Nations Special Rapporteur, Dato Param Cumaraswamy, has said.

Cumaraswamy's comments came as it was revealed that another leading loyalist, Ken Barrett, also questioned by the Stevens Inquiry team investigating the Finucane case, has disappeared from his North Belfast home.

KEY WITNESS GONE

Barrett allegedly disappeared at the weekend, but news of this only emerged on Tuesday. There are also reports that he has not sought protection from the RUC/PSNI, despite believing that his life is in danger.

Barrett may have intimate knowledge of the Finucane murder that could profoundly compromise the Special Branch.

William Stobie was shot dead days after a court case against him collapsed. The Red Hand Defenders, a cover name for the UDA, claimed responsibility. Barrett may have feared a similar attack on himself was imminent.

SPECIAL BRANCH COLLUSION

Earlier this year, a retired RUC CID detective, Jonty Brown, told the UTV Insight programme that a leading loyalist had described, in intimate detail, the shooting of Pat Finucane. An RUC Special Branch officer was present when these admissions were made, but Special Branch withheld the audio tape of the admissions from the Stevens team. Graffiti 8reading 'Ken Barrett loves Jonty Brown' has been painted on the wall of the former Crumlin Road Jail in Belfast.

If the reports prove accurate  - that Barrett has disappeared, and is not under RUC/PSNI protection  - this will feed speculation that some loyalists believe that Special Branch is working hand-in-hand with the present UDA leadership to assassinate former agents, who have incriminating evidence regarding the murders of Pat Finucane and other killings involving collusion by official state forces.

Following Stobie's murder, it emerged that he had received a warning from the RUC/PSNI that his life was in danger from former associates. One looming question is that if Special Branch had insider information that Stobie's life , was in danger, were they not aware of more accurate details that could have saved his life?

Writing in the Sunday Tribune Ed Moloney revealed that Stobie had recently applied twice to be put on the Key Persons Protection Scheme, but the NIO had not bothered to even reply.

Stobie supplied and disposed of the weapons used to kill Pat Finucane 12 years ago. The trial collapsed after the DPP accepted the chief prosecution witness's claim that he could not appear in court on grounds of ill health.

Stobie's death removed a potential key witness into any subsequent inquiry into the Finucane killing and the allegation of crown forces' collusion in the murder.

UN TURN UP HEAT

Cumaraswamy, the UN Special Rapporteur, said that Stobie may have been deliberately killed by the same people who murdered Pat Finucane.

"Since 1991 Mr Stobie was charged twice before the court in Belfast for offences related to Patrick Finucane's murder," he said. "On both occasions he was found not guilty, as the Director of Public Prosecutions did not proceed with the prosecutions.

"It now appears that those responsible for the murder of William Stobie may have connections with the Patrick Finucane murder and the motive for the present murder may be to prevent him from assisting any eventual independent inquiry."
The UN official reiterated his call for an independent international inquiry into the Finucane killing.

Sinn Féin's spokesperson on Human Rights, Pat McNamee, described the Special Rapporteur's comments, about the motive behind Stobie's killing, as "particularly damning".

"This would not be the first time that British military and paramilitary agencies have acted illegally in order to hide their involvement in the war in this country," he said.