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 

No 1121  Jan 29 2002

Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074  
[P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]                    25p

www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk

With US imperialism now hopelessly bogged -down in Afghanistan; and with its insane crisis driven pipe-dream of "occupying and,pacifying" every troublespot on earth already in tatters, only the middle-class defeatism of the fake lefts remains in awe of the monopoly-capitalist system's fascist thuggery. The crooked Bush regime is the one facing collapse, not the Third World determination to fight back against Zionist-imperialist tyranny with every weapon available. It is Trot fears of the  historical re-establishment of workers-state paths to development which line them up with the demented imperialist propaganda blitzkrieg against the Mugabe regime. But Western 'democracy' hypocrisy keeps quiet about the imperialist state-terror silencing of Hobeika to stop him indicting Zionism's genocide plans, a death as convenient to monopoly-bourgeois Mafia circles as Cliff Baxter's. But all projects for colonial exploitation tyranny are now doomed by imperialism's insoluble economic crisis and Third World revolt. New Labour's deep involvement with Enron's global corruption and colonial bullying (see next EPSR) drags Blair down with Bush.

Despite all the evidence, the defeatist fake-'left' view of the world still insists that imperialist fascist aggression (the only consistent historical definition of US and Zionist colonial-imperialist blitzkrieg and genocide) is sweeping all-before it.

A weekly mouthpiece of the Socialist Alliance is currently declaring:

Flushed from its victory against the counter-revolutionary Taliban regime, the United States administration is now in the mood to teach the world a few home truths about the post-September 11 new world order. What better place to start than the US military base in Guantanamo Bay - perched as it is on the soil of Cuba, the old 'communist' foe?

In many respects, the sudden enthusiasm for torture is a natural extension of George Bush's belligerent message delivered right at the beginning of the 'war against terrorism' - you are either with us or against us. Screw the middle ground.  Bush was out to intimidate the 'international community' and any (potential) internal dissent. 'Who wants to be branded a 'terrorist' or 'terrorist sympathiser'? Given the current balance of world forces, this has up to now proved to be an easy and effective strategy for US imperialism.

There is no doubt that the Israeli government could; if it chose, move decisively against Arafat. It could topple his administration or even re-annex the Gaza and the West Bank:

Despite all their heroic endeavour, the plain fact is that the Palestinians' second intifada is 'doomed to failure unless it can win the Israeli working class to its side.

Such pretend 'anti-imperialism' is just a joke. It might as well spell-out clearly to anti-imperialist struggles everywhere the real message of this defeatist drivel: "Give up now".

And this is confirmed by the only 'positive' reason this SA mouthpiece comes up with for continuing to pretend to hold an anti-imperialist position on these issues:

Communists denounce Camp X-Ray and the 'war against terrorism' that spawned it. It is in our interests to do so. The state could one day put us in such a camp . . . or at least in a Belmarsh.

Never mind the Third World being relentlessly butchered to death wherever imperialism. can get away with it, the fake 'lefts' declare. The open turn to fascist aggression by Washington is nasty, they admit, because the West might start using it on those nice people from the Socialist-Alliance.

Could degenerate anti-communist kow-towing sink any lower?

The whole Third World anti-imperialist struggle can be subjected to concentration-camp torture, as far as this Alliance thinking, is concerned, - - -just so long as monopoly-capitalist tyranny does not start planning to lock-up fake 'lefts' as well.

This treacherous anti-communist renegacy then turns open police-informer to try to secure what it sees as 'safety' through class solidarity with Western imperialism.

The entire fake-'left' having joined up with bourgeois hypocrisy to 'condemn' the terrorism of Sept 11, the boot is now put into another Third World target which is resisting Western imperialist domination, - Zimbabwe.
Sounding even more CIAcoached than the Daily Telegraph or the Wall Street Journal, these Socialist Alliance pacesetters begin their backstabbing in the gravest tone of denunciation so loved by Western 'democratic' hypocrisy:

The stakes are being raised almost by the hour in Zimbabwe. As the March presidential elections draw near, Robert Mugabe will clearly stop at nothing to cling to power.

While his Zanu-PF thugs rampage, beating up opposition politicians and intimidating thousands of ordinary Zimbabweans in the township and countryside, in recent weeks Mugabe has shown that he has another string to his bow. Already able to push through legal changes using his presidential powers, he is attempting to force even more draconian measures onto the statute book. The combined effect of the various bills that have been or are being put before parliament will be to outlaw all effective opposition.

But on exactly the same publication day, what admissions of CIA subversive filth can be read in the capitalist press itself, confirming that colonial
bullying backed by military threats remains the 'New World Order exactly as before???

The United States is secretly funding a radio station in London which has infuriated Robert Mugabe with its nightly broadcasts to Zimbabwe and led his government in Harare to blame the BBC.

SW Radio Africa, which broadcasts three hours a night on short wave from clandestine studios in Borehamwood, receives millions of dollars from a department of the US international development agency, the office of transition initiatives (OTI).

The Zimbabwean exiles running the station say the money comes from "human rights and media freedom groups" but decline to name them.

SWRA, which has been on the air for a month, has angered the Zimbabwean ruling party.

It has embarrassed and irritated British officials, who have publicly denied that Britain plays any role in it.

The Zimbabwean information minister, Jonathan Moyo, has accused the BBC of providing it with studios, transmitters and frequencies but the BBC World Service director, Mark Byford, says the BBC has no connection with it.

Diplomatic sources say OTI pays for the studios, equipment-and airtime on the transmitters of what SWRA calls a "global communications provider" but declines to name.

The Voice of America, which is owned by the US government, has transmitters. in a number of southern and central African states.
The US embassy in Harare said it could not confirm or deny Washington's involvement. SWRA's spokeswoman, Georgina Godwin, said by e-mail that the funding came from "human rights/media freedom groups"; but would answer no further questions.

SW Radio Africa is headed by Gerry Jackson, who was sacked by the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation five years ago

Would Zimbabwe be allowed to bombard Britain or the USA with nonstop propaganda. broadcasts on behalf of an antigovernment 'opposition' linked to foreign interests???

And also on exactly the same day, the 'liberal' pretence of Western 'democracy' allowed the following admissions to be printed in the capitalist press as a joke 'balance' to the relentless vilification of the Mugabe regime which the whole of bourgeois ideology is pumping out 24 hours a day via press, radio and television, including the rags of the petty-bourgeois fake-'lefts' like the Socialist Alliance:

The crisis currently gripping Zimbabwe has its roots in Britain's racist colonial policies, the refusal of a previous Labour government to act against the dictatorship of the white minority and the failure of Britain to stick to its promises after my people finally won independence 20 years ago. But instead of acknowledging their own responsibilities and helping overcome the legacy of the past, the British government and media - and their friends in the white Commonwealth - are fostering a flagrantly partisan mythology about the conflict in the country, while intervening in support of a privileged white minority and international commercial interests.

Take the continued white monopolisation of Zimbabwe's best land, which is at the heart of the upheavals and is routinely presented in Britain as a spurious pretext got up to keep a despot in power. In reality, the unequal distribution of land in Zimbabwe was one of the major factors that inspired the rural-based liberation war against white rule and has been a source of continual popular agitation ever since, as the government struggled to find a consensual way to transfer land. 

My grandfather, Mhepo Mavakire, used to farm land in Zimbabwe which is now owned by a commercial farmer. It was forcibly taken from the family after the second world war and handed to a white man, because he had fought for king and country. Many of my relatives died during the Zimbabwean liberation war, trying to reclaim this land. I joined Zanu, which played the central role in the war, in the late 60s and there was never any doubt in my mind that it was both a duty and an honour to fight for that land.

Land reform is now a socioeconomic and political imperative in Zimbabwe. The land distribution programme of Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF government is aimed at redressing gross inequalities to meet the needs of the landless, the smallholders who want to venture into small-scale commercial farming and indigenous citizens who have the resources to go into large-scale commercial agriculture. These are modest, but worthwhile, objectives. The western-backed Movement for Democratic Change opposition, by contrast, is very reluctant to be drawn do how it would resolve the land question. 

And although middle England continues to be fed the tale that nothing was done about land until the MDC began to challenge Zanu-PF's power base, the truth is that the white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union has fought the government's strategy for land distribution at every stage since the 80s. The Farmers Union and members of the defunct Rhodesia Front, strongly represented in the MDC, could not care less who governs Zimbabwe as long as they can keep the land and continue to live in the style to which they have become accustomed. 

The lack of money for land acquisition, cumbersome legal procedures required by Britain in the independence negotiations and the withdrawal of international donors in recent years - as well as the explosive political restiveness and farm occupations - have all combined to force the Zimbabwean government to speed up resettlement.

But of course a process of land acquisition and resettlement of indigenous landless people cuts across the networks that link the farmers, the producers of agricultural inputs, the banks and insurance houses, all dominated by the white minority. And this network also spreads into the international capital arena Many poor Zimbabweans believe that the interests of this white network have been allowed to overshadow the morally legitimate cry of the impoverished and landless majority in post-colonial Zimbabwe.

In the last couple of weeks alone three people have been killed by MDC supporters, who also went on a rampage in Harare, petrol-bombing shops belonging to Zanu-PF supporters. Senior MDC figures have been implicated in the murder of a Zanu-PF official, Gibson Masarira, who was hacked to death in front of his family. And in Kwekwe, suspected MDC supporters burnt three Zanu-PF officials' houses. None of these events has been reported in the British media. Such MDC violence echoes the activities of the Rhodesian police and notorious Selous Scouts in the late 70s - which is perhaps hardly surprising since several are now leading lights in the MDC.

It was the Selous Scouts who killed refugees, men, women and children, at Nyadzonia, Chimoio, Tembue, Mkushi, Luangwa, and Solwezi, where they still lie buried in mass graves. David Coltart, an MDC MP for Bulawayo South, was a prominent member of the Rhodesian police and he and his bodyguard Simon Spooner - recently charged with the murder of Cain Nkala, leader of the war veterans in Matabeleland - were attached to the Selous Scouts. The deputy national security adviser for the MDC, who rose to the rank of sergeant in the Rhodesian police, was likewise a handler of Selous Scouts operatives while based in Bulawayo. Mike Orret, another MDC MP, was also a senior police officer. You would never know from the way Zimbabwean politics is usually reported in Britain that ZanuPF supports a broadly social democratic programme, focused on the empowerment of the landless and poor, and is opposed by supporters of neo-liberal economic policies. Among ZanuPF's often overlooked achievements is a massive expansion in education in the past 20 years - from one university to 14, and from a handful of secondary schools to hundreds of sixth-form colleges.

Sadly, the enormous progress that had been made in public health has been reversed by the HIV/Aids pandemic, which is reducing life expectancy. Nevertheless the Zimbabwean government has constructed 456 health centres, 612 rural hospitals, and 25 district hospitals, as well as providing one provincial hospital in each of the country's eight provinces. Eighty-five percent of Zimbabwe's population are now within eight kilometres of a health facility. The 25% coverage of immunisation at independence has now been boosted to 92%, while antenatal coverage has risen from 20% at independence to the present 89%. 

The MDC has no corresponding programme for mass public health or education, or rural electrification, or the economic empowerment of indigenous people. 

The MDC remains silent when asked about what it will do with the more than 130,000 families who have been allocated land through the fasttrack process if it wins the presidency. (Incidentally, beneficiaries of this process include known members of MDC, not just "friends and cronies" of Robert Mugabe.) 

Contrary to the received wisdom in Britain, the best chance of completing the unfinished business of land reform, and for improvements in public services, housing, education, clean water, support for people living with illness and dying of Aids, lies with a Mugabe victory in the presidential elections. The past few days of vigourous cross-party debate about the freedom of the press in Zimbabwe's parliament have shown what a vibrant . democracy the country in fact has, with Zanu-PF itself reflecting a broad range of political allegiances.

And only a week earlier, a viciously anti-Mugabe piece from the Guardian's own stable of Trotskyite anti-communists at least had the conscience to make the following admissions about Western propaganda hypocrisy and CIA subversive methods as well:

It was a disgraceful election which European Union observers and local monitors severely censured. The media were controlled. Criticising the president risked criminal charges. The police regularly moved in to prevent opposition candidates campaigning and the vote-count was marked by irregularities. This sorry spectacle happened three weeks ago in a former British colony in southern Africa.

Statements of indignation from Jack Straw? Not a murmur. Furious coverage in Fleet Street? A few column inches on inside pages. Talk of "smart" sanctions to punish the men who stole the election? You must be joking.
So what is it that keeps Zambia, where this travesty of a poll was conducted, safe from the west's outrage-stirrers, unlike Zimbabwe? Is Zambia (known in colonial times as Northern Rhodesia) richer than Zimbabwe (once known as Southern Rhodesia) so that the west can turn a blind eye to a few electoral peccadilloes since Zambians are at least prospering economically? Unfortunately not. Zambia has seen a catastrophic decline in living standards in recent years with life expectancy down to 43. It has the distinction of being the only country where the mortality rate for the under-fives has gone up.

Is Zambia off Africa's tourist map and therefore of minimal interest to the European and American public? No. It shares the magnificent Victoria Falls with Zimbabwe and its game parks rival those of its neighbour. Well then, is it that Zambia is no longer run by the quasi-socialist elite which took the colony to independence, so that Britain's post-imperial resentment has dissipated and the neo-liberal enforcers in the big international financial institutions find the new rulers acceptably pliant?

Now you're getting warmer. Kenneth Kaunda, who ruled Zambia for 27 years, lost power a decade ago and his successor, Frederick Chiluba, has gone along with World Bank demands to privatise the copper mines which used to be the main source of budget revenue and foreign exchange. In Zimbabwe, by contrast, Robert Mugabe, who shocked Whitehall by winning the first majority rule election in 1980, is still in power. But is that enough to justify the astonishing difference in the attention which Zambia and Zimbabwe get in Britain?

All right, one last guess.

White settlers? Is there still a large number of white landowners in Zimbabwe, unlike Zambia which never had many and the few who were there left long ago?

Bingo. You've got it. The issue is racism.  Zimbabwe's best land is still in white hands, and this provokes inordinate interest in Britain. Mugabe's approach to land reform has been inconsistent and volatile. His methods have often been violent and unlawful. But for largely racist reasons he had
very little support from successive British governments.

They put a 10-year block on changes in the land tenure system in the constitution drawn up at independence, and have failed to provide much cash for the international fund which they promised to set up to buy the settlers out. 

In Zambia post-independence political change came to a head 10 years ago when a disparate coalition led by Chiluba, a former union leader, won the elections. His Movement for Multi-Party Democracy has many echoes in Zimbabwe's main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, and the fact that the MMD in Zambia took a rightward turn after gaining power, developed ideological splits, and disappointed its grassroots supporters by launching welfare and job cuts should be a warning to those who expect great things from the MDC in Zimbabwe.

The overall effect of this piece (more anti-Mugabe viciousness) takes its 'security' stance (not to get sacked by the capitalist press and not to suffer relentless anti-communist vilification throughout the West) on the same tired old garbage that Trotskyism has always relied on, the pretence that there is a 'democracy' way of overthrowing capitalism, and a 'democracy' way of defending workers states from imperialist counter-revolutionary conspiracy. Tell that to the fake-'left' duffer Allende and the millions of Chilean workers who suffered 20 years of CIA-imposed fascist dictatorship and death as a result of this Trotskyite class-collaborative 'defend democracy' cretinism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is the essence of Marxist scientific understanding of world development, and the only way that socialist society,is going to be built and survive imperialist counter-revolution.

The point is NOT that workers-state regimes never commit appalling mistakes or crimes,.or can never be subject to criticism.

They cannot possibly flourish WITHOUT constant polemical struggle, - as the wretched self-destruction by the theoretically ignorant Moscow Revisionist bureaucracy, paralysed by the absence of open polemics, ultimately demonstrated.

But rowing-in with Western propaganda's vilification and disinformation about the Mugabe regime, just at the moment when the CIA-organised plans are about to try to topple him in a pro-imperialist counter-revolution, is not ,criticism but the most infamous and stupid treachery and class-betrayal.

This 'democracy' gibberish is at the heart of the back-stabbing on the major current international class-struggle issues raised at the beginning.

Because the whole of the West wants it, the Trots want 'democracy' for the Zionist armed colonisation of Palestine too.

Because the 'democratic' bourgeois powers everywhere all submit to the unchallengeable 'leadership' by the 'might is right' American monopolycapitalists and their super-power military technology,then the petty-bourgeois Trots also agree that 'just being realistic' is the only sensible factual starting point.

Except that this joke 'anti-imperialism, precisely does NOT start with how things really are or with the scientific historical perspectives, accessible only through Marxist understanding.

The Socialist Alliance fake-'lefts' are wrong about where things stand in the current international balance of class and national forces, and they are even more criminally misleading of any of the working class they influence on the question of what is historically POSSIBLE for the future.

Is it really so "easy" for US imperialism as the Trots state above??

Are the American monopoly bourgeois in a position to teach ANYBODY "a few home truths about the post-Sept 11 New World Order", never mind "teach the world"?.?`

And what sort of weird non-Marxist understanding is it which thinks anti-imperialist struggle is taught its place by the belief that "There is no doubt that the Israeli government could, if it chose, move decisively against Arafat. It could topple his administration or even re-annex the Gaza and the West Bank".

Could it? And, what, permanently????

So why doesn't it?

The only imbecile conclusion drawable from this degenerate drivel is that armed Zionist imperialism actually WANTS to create a Palestinian state, out of the goodness of its heart; and that the Zionists really do want Arafat dead or out of the way, and are only delaying the coup de grace in order to humiliate further the Palestinian stooge of decrepit. Arab bourgeois-feudal nationalism so as further to discredit the idea that a Palestinian entity could ever stand worthily as a fully INDEPENDENT state.

Such a rubbish-tip of fantasy rigmaroles could even blacken the name of subjective idealism, which is the last cretinous refuge of petty-bourgeois fake-'leftism' as it is.

It is OBJECTIVE realities which need looking at, not meandering subjective interpretations of what are only subjective imperialist pipe-dreams to start with.

Never mind all the assumptions in people's heads that "of course there must be a right to secure existence for Israel", etc, etc; "Of course the whole world has already accepted this at the 1947 United Nations decision to recognise the Israeli state on Palestinian territory! etc, etc; "Of course Israel is now far too powerful and far too well established to turn the clock back now", etc, etc; "Of course US imperialism would never ever consider again even the possibility of the state of Israel.-NOT existing", etc, etc; "Of course even the entire Arab bourgeois-nationalist movement And Arab 'group of states now -accept that Israel is here to stay, etc., etc.

And so on and so forte through endless subjective-idealist variations of notions which people have decided to anchor firmly in their own heads.

But what are the OBJECTIVE facts??

The colonisation of Palestine by Western Zionist imperialists took place post-1945 in the end-of-20th-century epoch of the DEFEAT and OVERTHROW of all direct colonial conquests despite the most genocidally murderous resistance by the great European empires as in Algeria, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indo-China generally, Indonesia, Kenya, Angola, Mozambique, Ghana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Egypt, Cyprus, Aden, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. The only butchery which could have prevailed to keep these places colonial extensions of the home country would have been the total genocide (which in effect was how the imperialists created the extensions of West Europe in the USA and Australia, etc.) 

How interesting that the capitalist press this week should have openly repeated a common Zionist thought that "the only way to get peace here is to kill ALL the Palestinians"; and the colonial thug (recently arrived from New York for his share of the 'promised land') obviously really meant it too. How interesting that such genocidal smiting pipe-dreams should be placed back in the limelight by capitalist press loose talk just at the time when a huge 'free world' propaganda cover-up has been mounted to DELIBERATELY AVOID drawing too much publicity-attention to the astonishing brazen act of INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM in the assassination of a leading Lebanese politician Elie Hobeika by US imperialism's favourite 'chosen people'. Hobeika was precisely the Western stooge responsible for an earlier real Zionist attempt at 'genocidal solution, trend-setting to see how the world might react.

Before the CIA had had time to impose a worldwide news blackout on the subject, the capitalist press had itself at least admitted the following:

A FORMER Lebanese Christian warlord who was a potential key witness in a war crimes trial against Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, was killed yesterday in a massive car bomb blast outside his home in Beirut. Hobeika, 45, carved out a bloody reputation as one the most ruthless and cunning of all Lebanon's warlords during the country's 16-year civil conflict which ended in 1990. Hit lasting claim to notoriety was his role as an Israeli-backed militia commander during the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in West Beirut in September 1982, and most Lebanese accused Israel of being behind Mr Hobeika's death.

A law suit was filed in June against Mr Sharon by survivors of the massacre. The suit was filed in a Brussels court based on a 1993 Belgian law that allows heads of state to be tried for crimes against humanity regardless of where they occurred.

Mr Sharon was Defence Minister in 1982 and the architect of Israel's invasion of Lebanon that June. The 1983 Kahan Commission, an Israeli government inquiry into the massacre, concluded that Mr Sharon bore personal responsibility for the killings, in which at least 1,000 Palestinians died.

Mr Hobeika had said that he was willing to travel to Belgium and testify against Mr Sharon if asked. It has been reported that, in a secret meeting in Beirut with three visiting Belgian senators on Tuesday, Mr Hobeika had told them that he feared for his life. Josy Dubie, one of the senators who met Mr Hobeika at his north Beirut office, said: "I asked him if his life was in danger and he said, `Yes, but I have to testify and wash my honour'."

Mr Hobeika had said he was innocent, had proof and he wanted to come to Belgium to say that, Vincent Van Quickendorne, another of the senators, said. "He was afraid that [his] revelations would harm him."

Emile Lahoud, the Lebanese President, implicitly blamed Israel, saying that the killers wanted to divert the attention of Arab and. world public opinion from the "crimes committed in the occupied Palestinian territories".

Marwan Hamadeh, the Lebanese Minister of Displaced People, said on a visit to the Jordanian capital Amman: "Israel doesn't want witnesses against it in this historic case in Belgium which will certainly convict Ariel Sharon, the permanent and continued criminal".

The Belgian court announced on Wednesday that it would decide on March 6 if the trial should proceed. If it does, which is looking increasingly likely, Mr Sharon could have an international arrest warrant issued against him on charges of crimes against humanity.

Leaving aside global startling facts that hatred and ridicule of the West will escalate even more dramatically as a result of this latest grotesque hypocrisy (going barmy over acts of international terrorism - but not this one; invading the Gulf to prevent Iraq reoccupying its own province of Kuwait, hacked off by British colonialism early last century and 'invented' as a 'separate state', but actually helping Zionist colonial expansionism to occupy Lebanon, a truly independent state, and now to assassinate one of its leaders who was preparing to reveal all about Zionism's anti-Palestinian genocidal plans, etc, etc), - the really challenging issue raised by all this, and ignored by the Trots, is,  are such sordid little manoeuvres as having to bump off Hobeika, and having to threaten genocide (!) for a credible(!) anti-Intifada repression plan, really an indication of an all-powerful imperialism, able to make the whole world dance to its tune???

The Zionists STARTED with genocide in 197/48, and tried several renewals since with TOTAL occupations and utterly vicious repression, driving more and more millions of Palestinians out of their homeland FOR GOOD, as the Zionist dream sees it.

And although 5 million Palestinians still rot in exile or refugee camps, and the remaining three million have to endure what are virtually the harshest open-prison conditions imaginable in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank, subject to continuous vicious and arbitrary Zionist repression at any time that the 'chosen peoples Master-race wishes to inflict it, -still the colonisation problem of "what to do with the Palestinian nation we have usurped" grows and grows and grows, raising fascistwar-imperialist revival perspectives as a 'solution' to the system's insoluble international economic 'over-production' slump crisis.

And the nastiest ' 'left' posture of all by the Trots is the nice-sounding but totally academic hoax (out of some non-existent 'ideal Marxism' manual) pretending (but without actually saying it, far too indelicate) that the only worthwhile Palestinian struggle would be in unity with "the Israeli working
class" for (presumably, but coyly unstated) a total socialist REVOLUTION against everything the whole Western world stands for.

a) they obviously do not mean a word of it;

b) it is an anti-Marxist imbecile fantasy anyway.

There may be some excellent working-class communists in ZOP (Zionist-occupied-Palestine, a.k.a. 'Israel') but ZOP is not remotely a regular country or a normal state. It is a frontline battlefield for Western imperialism's warmongering colonial revanchism, the only 'solution' to economic crisis in imperialist history.

All who are taking part in this Mafia-colonisation by the Jewish religious freemasonry are Zionists (i.e. imperialists). Whatever their economic status within that entire capitalist-colonial exploitation racket inflicted on the land, wealth, and people of Palestine, to describe the hired-hand participants as "the Israeli working class" is totally misleading, and pure idealism.

And the richest hypocrisy of all in this whole nonsense, of course, is that it is these Trots who in the WRONG circumstances never stop going on about the primacy of 'self-determination' rights?.

They supported the NATO break-up of the Yugoslav socialist federation in the name of 'self-determination'. They denounce the Good Friday Agreement retreat by British imperialism from Ireland on the grounds that the lumpen colonist 'working class' (bigoted 'loyalist' Mafia -killers, etc) are
being denied their own 'self-determination rights' to just a three-county occupation-dictatorship over the native Irish, to replace the six-county tyranny known ludicrously as 'Northern Ireland' which the GFA is properly going to dismantle, albeit at a snail'space (to avoid the national-liberation guerrilla-war triumphalism which all sections of reactionary British bourgeois ideology (including the fake-'left, middle-class Trots) find painful to digest.

But precisely where it is inevitable that national self-determination will again be the cutting edge of revolutionary struggle (and not remotely 'at the expense of' socialist aims) but as the unavoidable national-democratic liberation (or February Revolution) precursor to an October Revolution, - so do the Trots pour all the- cold water they can find on such a genuine anti-imperialist path forward. .
Is this conscious counterrevolutionary disruption and disinformation?? What does it matter. This anti-communist (antidictatorship-of-the-proletariat) petty-,bourgeois mentality instinctively will always tend to avoid potential political perspectives of a critically dangerous nature where there is no guarantee of success for their middle-class interests but where there is a real danger of a serious breach with their big bourgeoisie.

Thus fake-'lefts' always talk very 'R-r-evolutionary' in abstract academic terms, but in practice always act very conservative-reformist.

The whole history of the bizarre phenomenon of defeatism in ultra-'left' circles reflects this. What are the Trots always so defeatist about?? Because they find anti-communist solidarity with mainstream bourgeois ideology so comfortable that any breach in this deeply class-based relationship always comes across initially as a hazardous, depressing, and thoroughly unnecessary escapade.

And far from being in step with world anti-imperialist opinion, these Trots are now missing the boat completely. In the long run, the fate of all fake-'left' reformism and class-collaborationism  is tied up with the fate of imperialism  itself on which it is totally dependent for an existence. No monopoly-capitalism, - no space for endlessly pretending to 'reform' monopoly-capitalism.

The Socialist Alliance view that US and Zionist imperialism is effortlessly forcing the whole world to dance to this fascist-aggressive warmongering tune is not only not backed up by the general picture of growing international crisis in all directions (economic collapse; corporate crashes and corruption; anti-imperialist revolt and terrorist guerrilla-war; anti-globalisation anarchy; incipient inter-imperialist trade war; and growing fear of revolutionary developments everywhere; etc, etc) but is specifically contradicted by many particular developments. The capitalist press itself frankly admits the utter turmoil in the imperialist system's crisis ridden affairs:

Four months later, the careful, polite, respectful ties that characterised Riyadh's political and economic relationship with America have dissolved in a whirlpool of suspicion and vitriol. A relationship based on mutual military self-interest and billions of dollars worth of oil is dangerously close to rupture.

American complaints of Saudi perfidy have been countered by implied threats in Riyadh to expel US forces from the country. Senior officials on both sides have ditched, their habitual :diplomatic reserve in favour of scathing criticism.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, a leading Democrat, warned recently that Saudi Arabia risked isolation behind a "theological iron curtain".

In Riyadh last week, Prince Nawaf bin Abdul Aziz, the crown prince's brother and Prince Turki's successor as head of intelligence, said: "The policies that America uses in the Middle East are not resulting in a peaceful settlement in the area. America is always with Israel. This is very bad."

Despite efforts on both sides to defuse the crisis, some of Riyadh's most eminent citizens are publicly calling for American troops - to leave the Saudi bases that have been a cornerstone of US strategic planning in the region since the Gulf war against Iraq.

"Since September 11, America has lost the Saudi people," said Dr Abdulrahman al-Zamil, chairman of the Al-Zamil business group and a member of the shura, the consultative council.

"America tried to convince people that they are here to protect the regime, and this is total garbage. Their presence is a liability to the Saudi government. This is the worst period of crisis I have seen."

Dr Abdul-aziz Alsebail, professor of Arabic literature at King Saud University-and deputy editor-in-chief of the daily Saudi Gazette, said many Saudis had long admired America. "Many of us and our children have been educated there and even born there. But after September 11, questions were raised. Should Saudi Arabia stay loyal to the United States? Nobody is happy that the American forces are here," he said.

Nawaf emphasised, however, that tension will continue as long as Washington fails to curb Israeli attacks on Palestinians. Even before the terror attacks, Crown Prince Abdullah wrote to President George W Bush, warning that "a time comes when people and nations part". The prince said Washington and Riyadh should now "look at their separate interests".

Nawaf complained that Washington obstructed all attempts to condemn Israel at the United Nations.

James Akins, a former American ambassador to Riyadh, warned last week that the Bush administration's handling of Middle Eastern issues was jeopardising a crucial relationship. "Oil is going to be an American interest for ever." he said. "There's every reason for us to be interested in stability in Saudi Arabia." The region has two-thirds of the world's proven oil reserves..

Akins added: "The reason we are hated in Saudi Arabia is that we have a double standard. We allow Israel to get away with breaking international law and defying UN security council resolutions. As long as that condition maintains, the relationship with Saudi Arabia and other Muslim countries is going to be very bad."

Other American experts warned that any breach between Riyadh and Washington would play into the hands of Bin Laden, who has vilified the Saudi royal family for allowing 5,000 American troops to be based in the country that houses the Muslim world's most important religious shrine at Mecca.

The spread of radical Islam in the region has compelled the Saudi royal family to enforce numerous restrictions on US military activities in the country, and American warplanes stationed at the Prince Sultan air base near Riyadh have been barred from carrying out bombing raids on Iraq.

"If we pull away from the Saudis, Bin Laden will have won a major victory," warned Anthony Cordesman, a former Pentagon planner.

Despite last week's international donors' conference on Afghanistan in Tokyo, where £3 billion was pledged to rebuild the country, there are fears that Afghanistan could blow up in the West's face.

Diplomats warn that the fragile reunification process could be compromised by the presence of powerful pockets of Taliban and Al-Qaeda resistance, Iranian meddling in the west and south to undermine the central government, ethnic and territorial rivalries, and fighting among warlords. Although American officials praised Thursday's special forces raid on Taliban and Al-Qaeda compounds near Kandahar, in which 15 fighters were killed and one American slightly wounded, some US operations have been counter-productive.

In Paktia province resentment still burns after US planes, acting on misinformation from local sources, bombed a wedding party, killing the newlyweds and their families.

American operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan are conducted largely in collaboration with forces from the Northern Alliance, which captured Kabul after the Taliban regime fell.

But Alliance forces lack support in Afghanistan's south and have sometimes used their new-found power to persecute the local Pashtun population.

America's western allies recognise that sweeping up Al-Qaeda remnants is essential for success in the war against terror. But they do not want the bombing to continue much longer. One western diplomat said: "The areas the Americans are bombing are where the government requires popular support if it is to survive."

But diplomats say it is Iran's "mischief" that casts the biggest shadow on Afghanistan's political map. Although President George W Bush has told Iran to hand over any Al-Qaeda members seeking refuge, threatening dire consequences if it tries to destabilise Hamid Karzai's western backed government, reports of Iranian political and military interference have multiplied.

Locals in the mountains around Zormat, 50 miles south of Kabul, said that after defeated Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters arrived, an Iranian official turned up with lists of those to be given safe passage and refuge in Iran.

Mohammed Yusef Pushtoon, a close aide to the Kandahar governor, said senior Iranian military officers, including two generals, had been operating for two weeks in the southern provinces of Farah, Nimruz and Helmand, trying to lure local warlords away from commitments to back Karzai in Kabul with offers of goods, cash and perhaps arms.. The Americans fear that Iranian hardliners are unnerved by a regime in Kabul that leans more towards the West than the Muslim world.

Nowhere has Tehran's influence become so noticeable as in the western province of Herat, whose powerful governor Ismail Khan lived in exile in Iran until the Taliban's collapse. Iran has since given arms and money to Khan, who declared himself emir of western Afghanistan.

In the city of Herat his soldiers strut about in crisp new , Iranian-supplied uniforms and polished boots, in marked contrast to the ragtag. fighters in the rest of the country. Iran has reopened its consulate in the city and Iranian businessmen have flooded in.

Last week American officials arrived to discuss reopening the US consulate to counter Iranian influence. They came amid local speculation that a huge explosion this month at an arms depot was no accident, but an American cruise missile warning Khan against falling under Iran's influence.

The American officials did nothing to dispel the gossip.

Elsewhere, young Somalis appeared in Western press and television interviews and reports, cheering the 'Black Hawk Down' humiliation of US imperialism's last 'easy and effective teaching of a few home truths to Third World revolt about whose New World order rules' (to paraphrase Western petty-bourgeois Trot defeatism), and eagerly awaiting the promised new American fascist aggression on their country.

And in Occupied Palestine, women have joined the ranks of the fanatically heroic suicide bombers and assassins organised by resistance groups.

(The West's fake-'lefts' who sneer at the 'reactionary' Islamic readiness to die in the course of assassinating their fascist-imperialist oppressors, should consider the rival 'morality' of the British agents who assassinated Heydrich in 1942, giving the German imperialist New World order the opportunity for a reign of terror for months,  massacring the village of Lidice; butchering more than 3,000 other Czechs; and condemning to concentration-camp deaths many thousands more; while the parachuted-in implementers of Churchill's policy (to eliminate the outstanding SS leader) remained in hiding under the crypt of Prague  Cathedral, only to be killed themselves when betrayed eventually; at which point the terror reprisals were called off, having wiped out thousands of suspected potential young lions of Czech revolutionary resistance. 

But it is these astonishingly heroic acts of outstanding 'moral' purpose to limit the Zionist 'excuses' for mass-terror retaliation (even though it seldom relents in reality) which these Trot academic stooges for the Western cause condemn with the words "the indiscriminate suicide attacks on Israeli civilians (i.e. the colonising population) are reactionary".)

At the same time, this current weekly publication of Socialist Alliance class-collaboration with imperialism has not a word to say about another suspected terror assassination of truly mindboggling implications about imperialist world-leadership incompetence and stupidity, the strange gunshot death of Enron boss Baxter in Texas, the home state of political assassinations (John Kennedy, etc). The instant convenient capitalist-press verdict was 'suicide'. 

Who knows? The story is damning enough anyway, even in the version cleaned up for the bourgeois media:

When the first report of the incident reached the desk of James Richard, justice of the peace for Fort Bend County's Precinct Four, he quickly realised this was no routine suicide. Baxter, 43, was the former vice-chairman of Enron Corporation, the bankrupt American energy conglomerate.

For weeks his name had been close to the centre of a financial and political scandal that has reached from the skyscrapers of downtown Houston to the doors of President George W Bush's White House.

Congressional lawyers and federal investigators had been queuing up to question Baxter about the controversial circumstances of Enron's collapse last year. He had already received one subpoena for documents; the terms of a difficult and potentially divisive appearance before a congressional committee were being negotiated by his lawyers.

Richard decided he was taking no chances. Police had recovered a suicide note, which reportedly referred to troubles at Enron. All the forensic evidence indicated that Baxter had taken his own life. Yet such are the political sensitivities of America's biggest corporate bankruptcy that Richard ordered an autopsy.

The corpse was transferred from a funeral home to the Houston medical examiner's morgue. "I decided to use an overabundance of caution," Richard said.

The violent death of one of the architects of Enron's rise as a global force in power generation and energy trading has cast a long shadow over Bush's preparations for his annual state of the union address on Tuesday. The image the president has built as a successful commander-in-chief of the war against inter national terrorism is suddenly in danger of being tarnished by the increasingly sinister fall-out from this corporate debacle in Texas.

The stunning failure of a $70 billion company with extensive links to senior figures in the Bush administration has for weeks been threatening the Republican president with an endless cycle of criminal investigations, congressional hearings and the kind of poisonous political scandalmongering that dogged Bill Clinton's presidency.

Yet despite an avalanche of allegations of financial foul play, executive greed and criminal mismanagement that cost thousands of workers their jobs and thousands more their company' pensions, the affair has so far had little impact on Bush's opinion poll ratings, still at record levels after the campaign in Afghanistan:

		THE Enron scandal is continuing to put pressure on the White House: Vice-President Cheney has refused to publish energy policy documents as it emerged that the failed company had directly benefited from 17 policies in the Bush Administration's energy plan. Mr Cheney said he would go to court over demands that he release secret documents showing which industry executives he met privately while drawing up the Administration's energy plan and who succeeded in influencing the White House's energy policy.
Most Americans believe that the White House is lying about its involvement with Enron, according to an opinion poll by The New York Times and CBS. It found that 58 per cent of respondents believed the White House was hiding something. Only 17 per cent believe the Administration is telling the whole truth.

Henry Waxman, a Democratic Congressman, said that he found 17 policies in Mr Bush's May 2001 energy plan that were either advocated by Enron or benefited the company. He said that a draft plan was changed to include a provision aimed at helping. Enron's business in India.

The revised energy plan "benefited Enron by formally enlisting two Cabinet secretaries in Enron's conflict with the Indian Government," Mr Waxman wrote in a letter to Mr Cheney, adding: "The energy plan does not . . . , explain why maximising oil and gas production in India should be a US national energy priority."

The congressional General Accounting Office (GAO) has threatened to sue to get the records of Mr Cheney's energy task force meetings. It would be the first such lawsuit against a White House administration:

The GAO would not be get ting "a listing of everybody I meet with of everything that was discussed, any advice received, notes and minutes of meetings," Mr Cheney insisted.

The extent to which Enron may have influenced. government policy is possibly subject to federal prosecution, -according to David Walker, the head of the GAO. "Unless we get the information or we're in the middle of intense negotiations [to do so] I am not going to sit on this much longer," he told The Washington Post.

The White House denied that its energy policy-had been crafted to help Enron, President Bush's single biggest financial patron. The Bush Administration has been dubbed "the oil and gas cabinet" because so many members have made their fortunes in the energy industry. The New York Times poll showed that Americans were increasingly concerned over the Enron affair.

Democrats used Mr Cheney's stonewalling to suggest the Administration was hiding something - namely, that an allegedly fraudulent company may have influenced government policy in exchange for campaign contributions. They coined the slogan "Enron-economics" to draw parallels between the 129 Enron executives who made millions selling their stock while 20,000 employees lost their jobs and savings and Mr Bush, whose tax cut has assisted the rich few at the expense, say Democrats, of average Americans.

THE businessman whose secrets may now never be known was a clean-cut allAmerican millionaire,.described by one colleague yesterday as "practically the last person in the world you'd ever expect to commit suicide". A former air force captain from Amityville, New York, Baxter left the military to study for an MBA at Columbia Business School. lie joined Enron in 1991 after a short spell as an investment banker.

Rising swiftly through the corporate ranks, Baxter played a pivotal role in the company's shift from power production to the highly complex but then hugely profitable world of energy trading and telecommunications.

When Baxter announced last May that he intended to give up his job to spend more time with his family, few colleagues were surprised... He had made more money than he could ever possibly spend, cashing in stock options worth $35m in three years.

IT WAS not until after the company revealed in November that it had been hugely overstating its profits - an admission that caused the share price to plummet - that a radically different interpretation was placed on the departures of both men.

As investigators searched for documents that would explain extraordinary lapses in accounting safeguards, Baxter's name surfaced on a prescient internal memo sent to Kenneth Lay, Enron's chairman, three months before the collapse.

Sherron Watkins, a company vice-president, told Lay that Baxter had "complained mightily" about the "inappropriateness" of transactions involving Fastow's offshore investment partnerships, known as LJM and LJM2.

The investigators suspect that Enron used these partnerships to remove huge amounts of debt from its books, making the company appear much more profitable than it really was. "I am incredibly nervous that we will implode in a wave of accounting scandals," Watkins concluded.

Baxter, a modest contributor to the Republicans - he gave $1,000 to Bush's presidential election campaign soon found himself under pressure from a pack of official investigators.

Questions were being asked not only about what he knew of the company's accounting procedures, but also about his propriety in cashing in valuable share options shortly before the company went bust. 
Baxter was named in at least one lawsuit by angry shareholders who complained that Enron- executives had enriched themselves despite knowing of the company's parlous state. A friend said he was "talking about perhaps needing a bodyguard".

Tackled by one reporter before her husband's death, Carol Baxter snapped back "People are being investigated. People are being sued. This is going to follow people for the rest of their lives people who didn't do anything wrong."

Mitch Taylor, an Enron executive, described Baxter as a "man of the highest integrity". He added: "I don't believe he was complicitous in anything

On Thursday a congressional panel held its first public hearing on the Enron affair. There was at least one film star in the audience. And, in keeping with the finest Hollywood dramas, the most important witness promptly invoked the Fifth Amendment, declining to answer questions on the grounds that he might incriminate himself.

It was also announced that Dick Cheney, the vice-president and a former oil executive, may be sued by a government auditing agency seeking details of his contacts with Enron.

Thomas White, a former Enron executive appointed by Bush as secretary of the army, may be called to testify before Congress about possible conflicts of interest in his handling of Pentagon energy contracts. ' 

In a further development Karl Rove, the president's senior adviser, was reported to have recommended a job at Enron for Ralph Reed, a former head of the Christian Coalition and a prominent Republican adviser. 

These hints of cronyism heightened at least the impression, which the Democrats are keen to exploit, that Bush and his Texan business buddies were too busy doing each other favours to notice the gathering rot.

But beyond all the corruption is the vastly more important story, even, about a completely uncontrollable imperialist-system crisis which :through economic injustice, damage, and deliberate trade-war destruction .will drive the entire world's next history into a new revolutionary epoch.

And the Socialist Alliance fake-'lefts' certainly not have a word to say about that either, but will scoff in undisguised ridicule at such 'crisisism'.

But Marxist science on this issue is irrefutable. The inevitable unplanned greed to become international top dog in the 'free market' relentless monopoly accumulation of capital can only ever result ultimately in such unjust and uneven development that 'surplus' capital mountains eventually find no further outlets for profitable exploitation, and a so-called 'over-production' crisis must then drive the imperialist competitors to physically wiping-out the 'surplus' investment capital of their rivals via trade war, and then fascist-aggressive war.

With the Bush armsrace hike to $380bn a year for weapons of war (while wrecked Afghanistan will be lucky to get a worldwide aid total of much more than $2bn which will not even restrain it from a return to warlordism and opium-growing, both of which criminal-Mafia pursuits were held in check by the Taleban),- is clear that US imperialism is preparing only for World War III and not for any New World Order 'peace' settlements at all.

The newly-exposed US imperialist terrorism  in Korea; the total American terror-tyranny against Vietnam and Indo-China, (massacres,. defoliation, torture, assassinations, etc); and the British and French equivalents in Algeria and Bloody Sunday in Ireland, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, dictate the world's 'morality' for the 20th and 21st centuries.

Sept 11 and the Intifada suicide bombers are just the first tiny feeble attempts by the.. exploited, humiliated, and militarilydominated Third World to strike back.

Such anti-imperialism will grow unstoppably. Build Leninism. EPSR\

World Revolutionary Socialist Review

(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

'LOYALISM AND THE FORCES OF THE STATE HAVE ALWAYS MARCHED TOGETHER.

Damning report on Omagh fiasco and its cover-up sparks off & gives rise to more suspicions and worse recriminations than ever.

What of course is at the heart of this latest controversy is why the Special Branch behaved as they did when they had two prior warnings that at a minimum  'something' of a violent nature was being prepared for Omagh Town on 15 August 1998. In trying to understand the 'Branch's' motivation in relation to Omagh the word 'failed' is playing a big part in the written and spoken media, e.g. the 'Branch' `failed to pass on' the information to the local RUC commander; the RUC's system 'failed' the people of Omagh; internal RUC communication 'failed'; the RUC's leadership 'failed'.

Of course it has to be stated very clearly that the people responsible for the deaths in Omagh are those who planned and planted the bomb.

It also has to be remembered, in the midst of this controversy, that we are dealing with relatives of twenty-nine people who were killed. And while commentary on these revelations is not only legitimate, but essential, the whole affair has to be handled with due regard to the fact that it is an enormous human tragedy.

The Omagh relatives join hundreds of other families across Ireland whose lives have been blighted by the covert and overt dirty war that the RUC's Special Branch has waged, particularly over the last 30 years.

The huge loss of life in -that bombing in its own way brings home just how ruthless and calculating a group of people the Special Branch is.

T he truth of the matter is of course in the world inhabited by the RUC's Special Branch they did not 'fail' the people of Omagh. I am not saying that they were gleefully rubbing their hands at the enormous loss of life. But they did not 'fail' anyone. Their reaction to the information they received about an incident in Omagh, prior to the Omagh bomb, is consistent with the way they have handled information from informers in other situations.

They assessed the Omagh information in exactly the same way they assess all information: How is it to be used to advance the Special Branch's political project? Prior to the IRA's cessation's of 1994 and 1997, all information was assessed in terms of: How can it be used to inflict a body blow against republicans and nationalists? That was the logic the 'Branch' used when they received the Omagh information.

Is it totally outrageous to suggest that the 'Branch' could have made an informed guess that a bomb was being prepared for Omagh? After all, the RIRA had planted, in quick succession, big bombs in several towns in the Six Counties, immediately prior to the Omagh bomb. Part of the information they received from an informer with a pseudonym, Kevin Fulton, included a big bomb being made.

The Special Branch are not passive recipients of information.  They use every scrap they get their hands on to suit their purposes. A brief look at the circumstances and  the killing of human rights solicitor Pat Finucane, dramatically illustrates this. At the time of Pat's killing, the  head of the LIDA in West Belfast, Tommy Little was a Special Branch informer. So was the man who supplied the gun to shoot. Pat, William Stobie - -shot dead.  'So was the man who set Pat, up;. Brian Nelson: So was the man who actually shot Pat dead. The fingerprints of the RUC's Special Branch are all over Pat's killing:

The Special Branch is a force-of some 800 strong, one tenth of the RUC. Their tentacles reach into many dark recesses. Anyone who dares to challenge their interests usually looses out.

Dr -Ervine,  attached to Castlereagh RUC Barracks where detainees, mainly republicans were  systematically tortured, said so in late 78-'79. He paid dearly for it. The Special Branch let if be known publicly that a British soldier had raped the doctor's wife, and that Ervine's comments were 'sour grapes' emerging from the fact that nothing happened to therapist. 
John  Stalker, a-well-respected British policeman of long standing, was appointed to investigate the RUC's 'shoot-to-kill' operations. The Special Branch ran these in the early '80s. He never  completed his enquiry nor did he function as a policeman again, when the -Special Branch filled the media with stories that he had links to organised crime. 

Colin Sampson replaced Stalker with the same intention: His report was never published. He did however recommend prosecutions of a number of RUC members. .The  then British Attorney General,  Patrick Mayhew,  provided anonymity and impunity to those-involved-when he told the British House of Commons that to prosecute those involved...'would not be in the public interest.:.

Similarly John Stevens came here to investigate collusion on three occasions. None of his reports were eve  made public.  His offices containing  the enquiries' information was mysteriously burnt down. The offices were-inside a heavily-fortified RUC barracks. He did, however, arrest Brian Nelson. lronically Patrick Mayhew, - again acting as- the Attorney General,  would later strike a deal with Brian Nelson in return for his silence about his full role as an agent during his trial.

The-'Branch's'- control of  loyalist paramilitaries is an open secret.  Many, books have-been written on this subject. Loyalist agents you will find there include Robin Jackson, R J Kerr, Billy Wright, Brian Nelson, Johnny Adair to name but a few.  They were involved in killing scores of Catholics.
 'The 'Branch' had a direct hand in limiting the popular growth of political organisations like the PUP, linked to the UVF and the UDP, linked to the UDA. Their agent, Billy Wright, split the UVF and formed the LVF, started a feud with the UVF and continued to kill Catholics. They gave political cover to the UDA to build up its criminal syndicate- based on drugs. The UDA led by another agent,  Johnny Adair, engaged in a bloody feud with the UVF on Belfast's Shankill Road. 

And, to end this casual look at the Special Branch on the morning that another of their agents, William Stobie, was shot dead -  a  man involved in killing Pat Finucane - I will leave you with the sobering thought:- 

Is it not convenient on a day when the Ombudsman would issue a damning report about the RUC's Special Branch that this man should be killed? - -The world's media how have to cover two competing stories instead of one.