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 
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No 1122 Feb 5 2002                                                                                                                                                 25p

Bush & regime are cretinous crooks. All the more reason to take their warmongering NAZI strutting seriously. The Enron scandal is a global imperialist disaster, not just a local corporate racket, and provoking as much hatred as direct American blitzkrieg bullying. Fake-'left' inability to see Sept 11 as a Third World revolutionary warning sign leaves them effectively as passive ideological class- collaborators with US rampage, prolonging the 'peaceful coexistence' and 'anti-terrorist' Revisionist nonsense by which an earlier retreat from Leninism sold out real revolutionary anti-imperialist struggle. But the patronised and abandoned Third World is clearly getting the better of imperialist crisis-warmongers and their social-pacifist 'left' cover in the ranks of Revisionism & academic Trotskyism.

A strutting Nazi of limited literacy, mouthing deadly serious warmongering-blitzkrieg threats against Iran, Iraq, and North Korea, was the sick reality of Bush's 'State of the Union' perspectives; but the fake-'left' mentality of Socialist Alliance thinking did not even manage to notice this astonishing development, let alone offer any profound comment or analysis, - judging by one of its leading weekly newspapers.

This is yet another aspect of the Sept 11 syndrome revealing these shallow anti-communist opportunists as wrapped up in a careerist-reformist subjective-idealist world of their own, and utterly incapable of giving any useful interpretation to real world events, and therefore utterly incapable of ever giving any real leadership to the working class as the crisis of the imperialist system relentlessly deepens towards total international conflagration.

Because of their philistine anti-Marxist confusion and embarrassment over Sept 11 in which their petty bourgeois 'democracy' conformism has only managed to express sympathetic apologies to the tragic casualties but grasp nothing of the epoch-making humiliation to US imperialism's supposedly 'invincible' counter-revolutionary intelligence and military might, these fake-'lefts' are now incapable of even reporting the historic warmongering aftermath inevitably following that signal Sept 11 event, let alone thoroughly dissecting it in order to outline the likely further stages of monopoly-capitalist crisis disintegration.

Although Sept 11 was, of course, merely a symptom of imperialist collapse and not remotely its cause, it has a hugely revealing significance which fake-'lefts' are not only ignoring but getting completely wrong because their petty bourgeois shallowness is so totally dominated by the 'horror atrocity' impressionism which they mimic from the brainwashing world of big-bourgeois propaganda hypocrisy.

Because academic Trotskyism regards Sept 11 as little more than a wretched irrelevance which damages 'serious anti-imperialism' and is just a black mark for Third World/Islamic mentalities, there is then this absence of any grasp at all of the dramatic significance of Bush's insane warmongering bellow, as far as the rag which most champions the Socialist Alliance is concerned.

Instead, such a mouthpiece of this 'broad left' anti-communist mentality responds to Bush's 'State of the Union' fascist delirium with yet another onslaught on "the reactionary politics behind Palestinian suicide attacks", describing these "outrages" as "mistaken" and "anti-democratic", thus giving a 'left' cover to Bush's fascist-warmongering jibber.

Alternative Trot attempts to denounce Washington's Nazi strut, but while simultaneously still 'deploring' Sept 11, are effectively mired in class-collaboration with imperialist blitzkrieg just as treacherously.

If "something must be done" about such "horrific atrocities" which are to be "condemned", then telling the humiliated American ruling class merely to "cool it" is as hypocritical and useless a posture as 'No to war' social pacifism has ever been in its entire rotten history.

Fanatical Islamic anti-imperialism is not a threat and cannot ever possibly become a threat to the ordinary people of the world, all suffering under the deep economic, social, political, and philosophical crisis of the degenerate and doomed system of monopoly-capitalist world exploitation.

Such determination to fight and stop Western imperialist domination (including making the ultimate sacrifice of dying in battle for the cause) can only be seen as adding to imperialism's difficulties by any normal people, and this is exactly how the vast masses of the Third World have reacted to both Sept 11 and the Palestinian Intifada.

Only the subjective freaks and twisted anti-communist academics of the fake-'left' could posture as 'serious anti-imperialists' themselves and then join the Bush/Blair hypocrisy to 'condemn' Sept 11 and Intifada suicide bombers, thus laying Western public opinion wide open to shrugging off imperialism's warmongering blitzkrieg preparations.

Fortunately, such fake-'left' consciousness is not what will be the final decisive influence on international working-class understanding and action. In the long run, being determines consciousness, and not vice versa.

Despite all Bush's degenerate posturing, about blitzkrieging the whole world into shape as suits American monopoly-capitalist exploitation interests, the reality is that the imperialist system is LOSING control, not gaining it.

The 1990 bureaucratic dementia which self-liquidated the planned Soviet workers state, plus the Revisionist brain-rot still ruling in Beijing, were historically false signals.

In time, they will be seen more as indications of a RISE in anti-imperialism rather than as signals of the collapse of anti-imperialism.

Peaceful coexistence was a useful temporary tactical ploy for Leninism but a monstrous straitjacket for serious revolutionary anti-imperialist developments and understanding.

One of the reasons that the bogus Revisionist international 'balance' to imperialism was so easily self-liquidated was because its hollowness was failing to inspire the international masses. 

The running-out of revolutionary steam in Moscow had long since produced more international treachery than inspirational encouragement to anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle. 

The Greek communists were sold out, e.g., and potential West European revolutionary struggles (Italy, France, etc) were deliberately undermined by the 'peaceful road to socialism' nonsense. 

Even more significant treachery (from today's point of view) was inflicted on the Middle East by Moscow's insane agreement to the US imperialist stunt of colonising Palestine to establish the 'state' of 'Israel', i.e. a permanent imperialist mailed-fist in the heart of the Arab and Muslim world to guarantee perpetual Western exploitation domination over the crucial international oil industry.

This constant, armed-thug, non-stop warmongering front line, right in the midst of the Arab world, - was the sickest joke of all deriding Moscow's idiotic perspectives of never-ending 'peaceful coexistence'.

The steam ran out of China's revolutionary influence too, inspiring the Vietnamese and the rest of Indo-China, but leaving the huge Indonesian Communist Party in the Revisionist lurch, waiting patiently for the 'peaceful road' so as not to upset "peaceful coexistence" only to have all their throats cut simultaneously.

With the world no longer inspired to communist revolution because of such endless treachery and ideological paralysis, the bogus Revisionist 'counterbalance' to imperialism collapsed to cynicism first.

But what is this cynicism? It is contemptuous of how the WHOLE world is working, and with good reason.

In the Third World in particular, from South Africa to the Middle East, from Latin America to the Far East, really atrociously reactionary and murderous regimes (e.g. South African apartheid and the Saudi feudal autocracy) lasted for decades torturing their people under the protection of this 'peaceful coexistence' racket.

Yet neither did this bogus 'international balance' keep either body up to the mark anyway. Imperialist colonial-war atrocities carried on regardless during more than 400 invasions, 'police' actions, or coups in the postwar era such as the US holocaust in Vietnam, the French massacres in Algeria, and the British butchery in Malaysia, Kenya, Suez, etc, etc, etc. 

And instead of keeping its Marxist-Leninist powder dry, the international Revisionist-bureaucracy movement just carried on relentlessly ideologically degenerating. 

The world's masses were screwed by BOTH sides of the bogus 'peaceful coexistence' international balance. 

Moscow crumbled first because of the joke 'superiority' of the 'free-market' methods of economic development. 

Imperialism will crumble second because the incurable WARMONGERING CRISIS flaws, inherent in the very economic mechanisms of capitalism, are now becoming plain for all to see. The market system is heading for crashes, slump, and the trade-war DESTRUCTION of so-called 'surplus' capital, or 'over-production'. 

The tyrannical US imperialist political system is now openly preparing for universal warmongering in order to retain its world domination in an anarchic period of bourgeois collapse and humiliation.

Thus, far from GAINING control as it flexes its fascist-blitzkrieg muscles, imperialism is LOSING credibility, worldwide.

And understanding Sept 11 as an unmistakable signal that the Western monopoly-capitalist system is no longer tolerable to the interests of mankind's broadest masses, is an inevitable key part of any serious anti-imperialist understanding and revolutionary political preparations.

Fanatical Islamic ideology in two particular anti-imperialist struggles is an incidental irrelevance to the global message overall that the monopoly-elitist Western system is in catastrophic trouble EVERYWHERE.

In one sense, Sept 11 really IS 'irrelevant' in that Koran-quoting suicidal plane-hijackers are nothing to do with the essential issue facing mankind, - that mass revolutionary action will have to overthrow the capitalist bourgeoisie everywhere if the planet is to be saved from endless destructive ruin, despoilation, and other nonsense.

But that a violent total break with the present 'New World Order' will unavoidably be central to this real REVOLUTION, is a crucial philosophical message about the exact nature of true historical transformation, which the dramatic Sept 11 events and their aftermath capture brilliantly.

For the umpteenth time, just what is 'deploring' Sept 11 supposed to mean?  Exactly how can the Islamic cultural-philosophical idiosyncrasies of always 'imperfect' anti-imperialist fighters be represented as 'reactionary' (in the fake-'left' meaning of a return to a fascist-feudal 'dark ages')???

There is no established Marxist-Leninist scientific leadership anywhere. So the young people growing up in the Middle East and elsewhere in the Third World take up the liberation war against imperialist domination anyway, - often inevitably with possibly all sorts of anarcho-animist-religious cultural idiosyncrasies in their clear grasp that the world imperialist establishment and all its local stooges and agents need declaring total war against.

The only thing clearly truly reactionary here is this Trot and Revisionist academicism which has long since abandoned any serious 'revolutionary' pretensions of its own but which satisfies its petty-bourgeois opportunist need for an ego-massage as 'Marxist' by this bogus 'alternative' criminal backstabbing of Third World revolutionaries as being just 'reactionary fanatics'.

Ignoring the real significance of Sept 11 and now completely ignoring its crisis-driven warmongering imperialist aftermath, comes naturally to the fake-'left' anyway from long class-collaborating Trot-entryist and Revisionist practice of steadily ignoring the REVOLUTIONARY collapse of imperialism anyway (see EPSRs back to issue No 1). 

Class society transformations in history are REVOLUTIONARY questions, but that ESSENTIAL content of all working-class political education and struggle is the one message which ALL Revisionism, and ALL Labour-entryist Trotskyism, and ALL shallow opportunist echoes of the same, following on behind (Socialist Alliance, SLP, etc, etc) have ALWAYS insisted must NEVER be put across "because it will frighten off working-class voters and lay us open to bourgeois-propaganda ridicule", etc, etc.

This is now a fixed petty bourgeois anti-revolutionary class mentality dooming the entire fake-'left' to long-term sterility.

For the reality surrounding Bush's boastful blather about blitzkrieging the whole world is that not only is the imperialist system LOSING control of international developments, but it is losing to essentially REVOLUTIONARY upheavals and disasters, beyond anyone's control until a movement of consciously Marxist-Leninist REVOLUTIONARY understanding and perspectives is re-established internationally.

People in the west quickly need to start thinking clearly: This low-life in the White House is close to the ultimate in degenerate Redneck expression of traditional postwar American imperialist atrocities, - the massacres and brutality in Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Grenada, etc, etc, and via its stooges and agents in Chile, occupied Palestine, Nicaragua, Shah-ruled Iran, Suharto-ruled Indonesia, Marcos-ruled Philippines, etc, etc, etc.

These degenerates are not joking. The idiot hypocritical pretexts for remote-control blitzkriegs are coming ever thicker and faster, - Libya, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia, Afghanistan....who can say that Iran, North Korea, and Iraq again won't be next.

Preconceived ideas about what the next Nazi-imperialist warmongering aggression must look like need ditching fast.

These Washington crooks have already left the imprint of their imperialist boots all over the scarred face of the Middle East, yet still their humiliation and frustration mounts.

And with the 'free-market' economic system's crisis plunging from bad to worse daily (in spite of what the stupid newspaper headlines try to pretend in order to 'keep confidence up', etc), and with the Bush gang now up to its neck in Enron scandals, - the scene is potentially set for some quite monstrous warmongering adventurism by the American imperialist ruling class to try to avoid their own possible political collapse as the system's crisis-scandals mount inexorably.

Blairism is in the same situation. Things going wrong is now the sole and permanent pattern of New Labour government, and nothing now ever seems to be put right because of capitalism itself which only consists of endless contradictions, - and ones which are forever worsening in conditions of ever-deepening and insoluble economic crisis such as now prevail.

Only a consciously and openly REVOLUTIONARY party can now answer any questions for the working class, internationally or domestically.

The ultimate inter-imperialist cut-throat trade-war competition for economic survival in a global markets collapse via aggressive warmongering will obviously get off the ground - but any idea that it could end in anything but total DISASTER for every imperialist power is simply off the wall.

Exactly mechanically HOW the imperialist powers will come to blows and screw each other, as on every previous occasion in the history of global economic crises, or eventually be downed by revolutionary overthrow because of the intolerable conditions created, - is obviously not remotely clear yet.

But that history must now move on from the shamefully philistine and hypocritical stupidity of warmongering imperialism in crisis, is becoming obvious to everyone.

Nothing works in this degenerate collapse of the American 'New World Order', as the capitalist press itself keeps on revealing if the fine print is studied.

Enron just a local Washington corporate scandal, unconnected to quite different difficulties for US imperialist warmongering aggression??? Think again:

Just a year ago, however, the company was one of the great corporate success stories. For more than a decade it spread the gospel of gas as a clean energy throughout the world, building new pipelines and power plants in countries such as Brazil, India, Mozambique, the Philippines, Argentina,  Bolivia, Brazil, Indonesia and China. Its empire strode over gas, wind-power and other electricity generation, but lately it moved into "bandwidth" capacity for the Internet, making it one of the world's largest Internet-based trading companies, buying and selling a dizzying array of products ranging from pulp and paper to petrochemicals and plastics. It was, at its height, America's seventh largest business. 	

Like Monsanto and McDonald's, outsiders said it had a corporate culture that was almost evangelical in its conviction: it believed that what it was doing was not just right, but good for the world. Wherever it went, its executives would say that Enron brought wealth and peace and efficiency to poor people. It espoused competition; the free market, world trade, globalisation and deregulation.

But its huge financial success was largely due to old-fashioned muscle and political clout. Enron was a Texan company and its links with both Presidents Bush have been long and deep. Over the years, the company and its employees have given the Bushes more money than any other organisation. Thanks largely to Enron, they ran two campaigns for governor, and two White House campaigns. During the 2000 election, it gave $2.3m to federal candidates and the political parties, more than double its $1.1m in 1998 and more than any other energy company.

Enron, it maybe said, grew on the back of the Bushes. When it won the massive contract to replace one of Kuwait's power plants after the Gulf war, critics pointed to the fact that Bush (senior) had visited Kuwait along with former US secretary of state James Baker. It just so happened that Baker, former commerce secretary Robert Mosbacher, and Thomas Kelly; the director of operations for Bush's joint chiefs of staff during the Gulf war, were all on the Enron payroll, according to US reporter Seymour Hersh in a 1993 New Yorker magazine article.

Enron's price for supplying the power was 11 cents a kilowatt hour. A rival bid put forward by the German company, Deutsche Babcock, was six cents, while the state-subsidised rate was half-a-cent a kilowatt hour. Despite the large price differences, Enron won the contract.

But in the end, political connections were not enough. Almost everywhere Enron went, it left a trail of cash, accusations and angry communities. This August, two people died at Enron's plant in Redcar, Teeside in an explosion. When it was buying up Wessex water in Britain five years ago, it was accused of lobbing Labour £30,000 over two years. There were accusations in Panama that it was abusing its influence with energy minister Luis Carlos Valenzuela to force the state oil company to sign a "sweetheart deal" with them to export natural gas to Central American countries.

In the Philippines and Argentina, Enron was accused of putting massive pressure on the local authorities through powerful figures in the US government. Only a blunt threat by the US national security council to cut off future aid to the country is said to have saved its plan to develop Mozambique's Pande natural gas field.

Enron has always beaten the community friendly drum - it has given generously to schools and regularly picks up environment awards. The environmentalists, however, are withering. Pratap Chatterjee, a former Guardian contributor now working for Corporate Watch in the US, says: "The Enron methanol plant in Texas won special concessions from Bush when he was governor, allowing the company to pollute without a permit." Bush also gave the company immunity from prosecution for violating some pollution laws. In 1997 alone, says Chatterjee, Enron's plant emitted 3,500 tonnes of nitrogen oxides, a key ingredient of smog, and only 7% of the emissions would normally be classed as legal.

Although Enron has now finally come unstuck, it's deeply disturbingly how easily it sailed through most of its battles, brushing off its critics with disdain and using power to batter them down. In 1997 it was accused by a coalition of western and indigenous groups of taking US government cash to open up pristine forest areas in the Bolivian Amazon. Friends of the Earth and Amazon Watch called on the government to terminate its financing deal with Enron on the grounds that it was violating the loan conditions and systematically failing to adhere to the environmental and social safeguards. No one listened and the pipeline went through. "They just stitched it up with government", says Friends of the Earth campaigner Jonathan Sohn.

The "power purchase agreement" between Enron and the Congress-party-ruled state government of Maharashtra for a 695-megawatt power plant was signed in 1993. It was the first private power project in India. The opposition parties setup a howl of protest and filed legal proceedings against Enron and the state government. They alleged malfeasance and corruption at the highest level. (Enron had made no secret of the fact that in order to secure the contract it had paid out millions of dollars to "educate" politicians and bureaucrats.) A year later, when state elections were announced, it was the only campaign issue of the opposition alliance and when the opposition won, in February 1995, it stuck to its word and "scrapped" the project.

Following the annulment of the contract, however, the US government began to pressure the Maharashtra government. US ambassador Frank Wisner made several statements deploring the cancellation. (The day he completed his term as ambassador, he joined Enron as director.) In November 1995, the Maharashtra government appointed a "renegotiation" committee. In May 1996, a new, minority government was sworn in. It lasted for exactly 13 days, then resigned before facing a vote of no-confidence. On its last day in office, even as the no-confidence motion was in progress, the cabinet met for a hurried "lunch" and re-ratified the national government's counter-guarantee for the Enron project (Which had become void because of the earlier"cancelled" contract with Enron).
	
And, in August 1996, the government of Maharashtra signed a fresh contract with Enron on terms that would astound the most hard-boiled cynic. The original contract had involved annual payments to Enron of $430M for phase I (695 megawatts) of the project, with phase II (2,015 megawatts) being optional. The "renegotiated" power purchase agreement made phase II of the project mandatory and legally binds the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) to pay Enron a sum of $30bn. It constitutes the largest contract ever signed in the history of India.

Experts who have studied the project have called it the biggest fraud in the country's history: The project's gross profits work out at between $12bn and $14bn. The official return on equity is more than 30%. That's almost double what Indian law and statute permits in power projects.

In effect, for an increase in installed capacity of 18%, the MSEB has to set aside 70% of its revenue to be able to pay Enron. There is, of course, no record of what mathematical formula was used to "re-educate" the new government. Nor any trace of how much trickled up, down or sideways, and to whom.

At 5am on June 3 1997, Indian police officers burst into the home of Sugandba Vasudev Bhalekar, a three-month pregnant, 24-year-old housewife living in the village of Veldur in the western Indian state of Maharashtra. She was dragged into a waiting police van, beaten with sticks and arrested. Her crimes, it transpired, were to be married to a man who was a leading objector to India's largest ever development - a $2.8bn natural-gas plant being built by the world's biggest gas company - and to have taken part in one of the demonstrations herself.

Enron, the company, denied any role in the arrests or beatings, and stated that its subsidiary, the Dabhol Power Company, did not employ, second or subcontract police officers at the site. It's a moot point, said the company's critics. Following dozens of other beatings and arrests of people who objected peacefully to the clearance of their communities for the mammoth plant, the American Human Rights Watch group investigated.

It found categorical evidence, it said, that Enron was paying the government directly to specifically police the protests, and were also lending the police its helicopters: "The Dabhol Power Corporation and its parent company, Enron, are complicit in these human rights violations. Enron's local entity, the Dabhol Power Corp, benefited directly from an official policy of suppressing dissent through misuse of the law, harassment of anti-Enron protest leaders and prominent environmental activists, and police practices ranging from arbitrary to brutal," states the Human Rights Watch report.

Enron denied it, but then Amnesty investigated. It found "suppression of local protests" and said that people who protested against Enron, however peacefully, were liable to "harassment, arbitrary arrest, preventive detention under the ordinary criminal law and ill-treatment".

Today, four years later, everything that critics of the project predicted has come true with an eerie vengeance. The power that the Enron plant produces is twice as expensive as its nearest competitor, and seven times as expensive as the cheapest electricity available in Maharashtra. In May 2000, the Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Committee (Merc) ruled that temporarily - until as long as was absolutely necessary -  no power should be bought from Enron. It was based on a calculation that it would be cheaper just to pay Enron the mandatory fixed charges for the maintenance and administration of the plant that it is contractually obliged to pay, than to actually buy and utilise any of its exorbitant power. The fixed charges alone work out to $210m a year for phase 1 of the project: phase II will be nearly twice the size. That's $210m a year for the next 40 years.

Meanwhile, industrialists in Maharashtra have begun to generate their own power at a much cheaper rate, with private generators. The demand for power from the industrial sector has begun to decline rapidly. The MSEB, strapped for cash, with Enron hanging like an albatross around its neck, will now have no choice but to make private generators illegal. That's the only way that industrialists can be coerced into buying Enron's exorbitant electricity.

According to the MSEB's calculations, from January 2002 onwards, even if it were to buy 90% of Enron's output, its losses will amount to $1.2bn a year. That's more than 60% of India's annual rural development budget.

In a contravention of the Merc ruling, the MSEB is cutting back on production from its own cheaper plants in order to buy electricity from Enron. Hundreds of small industrial units have closed down because they cannot afford such expensive electricity.

In January 2001, the Maharashtra government (the Congress party is now back in power- with a new chief minister) announced that it did not have the money to pay Enron's bill. On February 6, only 10 days after the earthquake in the neighbouring state of Gujarat and at a time when the country was still reeling from the disaster, the newspapers announced that Enron had decided to invoke the counter guarantee and that if the government did not come up with the cash it would have to auction the government properties pledged as collateral security in the contract.

As this goes to press, Enron and the government of Maharashtra are locked in a legal battle in the Mumbai high court. But Enron has friends in high places. It was one of the biggest corporate contributors to President George Bush's election campaign. Bush has helped Enron with its global business from as far back as 1998. So the old circus has started up all over again. The former US ambassador (Richard Celeste, this time) publicly chastised the Maharashtra chief minister for reneging on payments. US government officials have warned India about vitiating the "investment climate" and running the risk of frightening away future investors. In other words: allow us to rob you blind or else we'll pull out.

The pressure is on for a re-negotiation. (Who knows, perhaps phase III is on the anvil.) In business circles, the Enron contract is called "the sweetheart deal". A euphemism for rape without redress. There are several Enron clones in the pipeline. Indian citizens have a lot to look forward to. Here's to the "free' market.

All this has helped put Enron's name near the top of the anti-globalisers' "evil empire" list, alongside the likes of Monsanto, Shell, McDonald's, Gap, Nike and Exxon. But it is the organisation's sheer scale, business methods, manipulation of the international political process and extremely tight links with those in power that have caused outrage on at least three continents. On Wednesday this much-loathed company was forced to the brink of bankruptcy (it's likely to go bust this weekend) after rival energy firm Dynegy pulled out of a life-saving merger. Earlier, Enron's stock had collapsed after irregularities were discovered in the company's books. It is now poised to become the biggest bankruptcy in history.

Clearly, what was good for Enron was good for US imperialism, and vice versa.

And when things go so catastrophically wrong as now, the same rule applies.

But that was notorious American political corruption, and in no way affecting the survival of the British imperialist establishment???

Think again:

DOWNING STREET dismissed fresh claims that the Government had given special access and favours to Enron or Arthur Andersen, the collapsed US energy firm's accountants.

Tony Blair's official spokesman denied suggestions that ministers had lifted a ban on Andersen working in Whitehall because of its close links with Labour.

At the same time, the Government continued to stamp on claims that its decision to allow gas-fired power stations had been influenced by £38,000 in financial support for Labour from Enron.

The decision to end the 12-year exile of the accountancy firm, imposed after, the DeLorean car scandal in Belfast, was taken in June 1997, a month after, Labour came to power. Five months later ministers also ended legal proceedings against Andersen over the DeLorean case, with a settlement worth £21 million far short of the £200 million the previous Government had demanded.

Andersen, which provided substantial assistance to the Labour Party before the 1997 election, has since drawn up a key report for the Treasury which ministers have used to justify their Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects.

Last night John Edmonds, the GMB union's general secretary, highlighted figures showing how Andersen had been involved in 37 PFI projects, including the proposed partial privatisation of the London Underground, worth more than £10 billion.

He said: "This whole thing is looking increasingly tacky. Andersen gave the green light to PFIs in a supposedly objective report but has since made tens of millions of pounds from PFI schemes."

Downing Street denied that there had been direct contact between Enron and Mr Blair or any of his advisers prior to the decision to lift the moratorium on new gas-fired power stations in 2000.

However, it refused to comment on a US Embassy document claiming the Prime Minister had "intervened" personally to "water down", the original proposals. While acknowledging that Mr Blair would have been consulted about the decision - a move strongly favoured by Enron - a spokesman said the moratorium had always been intended to be temporary.

Conservatives turned their attack on what they termed "a very murky business" for the government.

No 10 released a list detailing seven ministerial meetings with company representatives between 1998 and 2000, and culminating, in a CBE in the 2001 new year's honours list for Ralph Hodge, the former Enron Europe chairman.

Mr Hodge has now expressed unease about the US firm's aggressive lobbying stance, triggering claims that Enron paid "cash for access" because it made low-key donations totalling £36,000 to Labour-sponsored events.

It emerged later that Enron had also given money to the Conservative party. Mr Hodge told BBC2's Newsnight: "[The money] was given in order to gain access and to at least know that you'd met the politicians concerned, and I do stress it was given to both parties."

"Cash-for-access? No. There was a desire to meet with ministers, civil servants, constituency VIPs, and certainly sponsoring those events was seen to be positive in that regard," he said.

Conservative vice-chairman Tim Collins said last night that his party "regretted" receiving £25,000 from Enron.

The firm also hired a Conservative ex-cabinet minister, Lord Wakeham, who sat as a non-executive director on the Enron board, and may have to testify on Capitol Hill.

RALPH HODGE, the former head of Enron Europe, claimed that his company's links with Labour, including the £36,000 it spent funding Labour events, were an all-out charm offensive.

Downing Street released details yesterday of six formal meetings with Enron executives and one occasion on which Stephen Byers, then Trade and Industry Secretary, was invited to open Enron's European headquarters in London.

Months later, on April 17, 2000, Mr Byers announced in a statement to the Commons his intention to lift the freeze on building new gas-fired power stations. The moratorium was lifted on October 5 and on November 16 Mr Byers gave, permission to Enron Europe for a combined cycle-gas turbine in Kent.

The alleged involvement of a fifth minister, Geoffrey Robinson, was shrouded in confusion.

Downing Street and the Treasury said that they had no record of any such meeting and that contact with Enron had been limited to the four DTI ministers.

Questions were-also being asked yesterday about the extent to which Enron's access to ministers might have influenced a decision to allow it a major takeover. On September 10,1998, Peter Mandelson, then Trade Secretary, announced that he had decided not to refer to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission the proposed acquisition by Enron Water (Europe) of Wessex Water.

Downing Street made clear that the decision had been recommended purely on the advice, of the regulator. In his press release at the time, however, Mr Mandelson appeared to refer to personal contact between himself and Enron, saying: "Enron Water (Europe) and its parent company, Enron Corp, have assured me that if their proposed acquisition is successful they will ensure that Wessex Water services Limited will consent to modifications to the conditions of its appointment as a water and sewerage undertaker."

The decision by Downing Street to come clean on the contacts so quickly was being seen as a clear attempt to avoid a repeat of the Bernie Ecclestone affair in 1997. Then, details of the Formula One tycoon's donations to the Labour Party and subsequent meetings with Mr Blair were allowed to dribble out in a series of damaging revelations.

David Davis, the Tory chairman, said: "Tony Blair has to make clear what role he played in the decision to abandon the moratorium on building new gas-fired stations.

"Enron's former boss of UK operations has said that giving money to the Labour Government was the most efficient way of getting access to ministers."

A Labour spokesman described the allegations as without foundation, adding: "The Labour Party has not received any donations from Enron." Enron Europe had bought tickets to Labour dinners and sponsored one event, but had attended no party events since April 2000, he said.

Enron's £36,000 charm offensive included a sponsored dinner at Blackpool's Stakis Hotel during the Labour conference in October 1998. Tony Blair was guest of honour. 

EXECUTIVES at Enron, the collapsed power giant at the centre of the Labour "cash for access" controversy, contributed almost £1m to the Prince of Wales's charity and had three private meetings with him.

The prince accepted the hospitality of Kenneth Lay, Enron's chief executive, with a three hour lunch in Houston. John B Wing, then chairman of Enron Europe, had dinner with the prince at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home. Prince Charles toured Enron's gas-fired power station at Wilton on Teesside shortly after construction of the £700m plant in 1993.

The plant was intended to be a blueprint for Enron's ambitious plans for a network of gas power stations that led it into a three- year lobbying campaign with the Labour government.

Shebbeare said Enron was happy with the kudos it gained and did not attempt to extract direct commercial gain. The prince visited Lay in 1993. He stopped over in Houston en route to Mexico after a private dinner with Bill and Hillary Clinton.

The lunch at Lay's home was to raise funds for the Prince's Trust, which expects revenues of £44m this year. Wing was a guest at Highgrove later that year, according to the Prince's Trust, at a dinner party for 16.

Wing's successor, Ralph Hodge, attended a similar dinner in the mid-1990s.

While Enron secured social cachet at the heart of the British Establishment, new evidence has emerged of contacts between Enron and Labour that the government has so far failed to reveal. Downing Street failed to disclose five key meetings between top-level government decision makers and Enron when it issued what was taken to be an exhaustive list of "formal ministerial contacts"' last week.

Details of the meetings were issued in an attempt to quash a potential scandal by giving a list of "meetings between ministers and Enron since 1998". The statement was intended to avert a cash-for-access row after Labour admitted it had accepted at least £30,000 in sponsorship from Enron.

What Downing Street did not reveal was that Enron was able to plead its case with close advisers of Tony Blair and Cordon Brown after failing to persuade departmental ministers to abandon their bias to coal.

Geoffrey Norris, Blair's industrial policy adviser, met Mark Frevert, the chief executive of Enron Europe, on April 28, 1998, at 10 Downing Street to discuss his ideas for the future of British energy policy. In a separate meeting Ed Balls, the chancellor's chief economic adviser, met Jeffrey Skilling, Enron International's chief operating officer, at the Treasury to discuss the same subject. Three other meetings with ministers were omitted from Downing Street's list.

Keith Vaz, the Europe minister, met Enron executives at the Reform Club, Pall Mall, in 1999 to discuss how the government could put pressure on the European commission to deregulate the gas and electricity' industries.

Peter Hain, the Welsh Office minister, met Hodge, on February 23, 1999, to discuss a proposed power plant at Ebbw Vale.

Geoffrey Robinson, the paymaster-general, met David Lewis, a director of Enron Europe, in May 1998. A month later Labour made concessions to the gas lobby, of which Enron was a part.

A Downing Street spokesman did not deny the meetings had taken place and claimed the list published last week related only to the Department of Trade and Industry ministers.

But in the fabulously wealthy modern world imperialist economy, master-minded by the all-powerful American ruling class, no capitalist establishment can ever again get into any serious revolutionary difficulties because Washington would step in to save the day, - no matter how gross the corruption or how calamitous the efficiency??????
Think again:

ARGENTINA'S crisis reached fever pitch this weekend as President Eduardo Duhalde went into battle with his own judiciary after the Supreme Court ruled emergency restrictions intended to save banks from collapsing were unconstitutional.

The surprise ruling, which opened the way for millions of Argentines to claim rightful access to their savings, sparked fears of a banking meltdown and ensuing social chaos. It came days after the congress had decided to investigate allegations of corruption against the Supreme Court judges, who have been under pressure from growing numbers of protesters to resign.

On a radio address to the nation on Saturday morning, Duhalde said Supreme Court judges had tried earlier in the week to 'blackmail' congressmen and Ministers into dropping the investigation and warned that the ruling to lift the banking restrictions 'could have extremely serious consequences for the country'.

'We are running risks. Argentina is on the brink of anarchy,' Duhalde said in a televised press conference. If millions of Argentines rushed to rescue their deposits now, he said, they would nearly all end up with nothing as the devastated banks caved in.

Duhalde, Argentina's fifth president since bloody riots in December, has struggled in his first month in office to rescue the country from economic chaos after it defaulted on its $141 billion public debt and then devalued the peso. Devaluation was meant to help restart the economy after nearly four years of recession, but the peso has plunged to less than half of its previous value, forcing 25,000 businesses to close in January and creating tens of thousands of unemployed.

'Duhalde's task was already extremely difficult,' Rosendo Fraga, a political analyst in Buenos Aires, said. 'Now, in addition to a social, political and economic crisis, we have an institutional crisis. That was the last thing Argentina needed.'

The Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the banking restrictions, in force since 3 December to prevent Argentines from taking their savings out of the economically sinking country, were unconstitutional and denied people their rights to personal property.

Newspaper reports said the decision was an 'institutional coup' that had unleashed a 'war' between Duhalde and the judiciary, many of whom were appointed during the 1989-99 government of Carlos Menem, Duhalde's arch political enemy.

The court had previously upheld an emergency law partially freezing bank deposits and rejecting individual appeals for access to deposits. On Friday, the day after a fifth mass protest outside the tribunal building, the court suddenly changed its stance.
 
Much of Argentina's legal system is widely seen as being in bed with political and business figures in the country and guaranteeing impunity for those accused of fraud and money laundering. Most recently in November, public outrage flared when a court ruled allegations against Carlos Menem for illegal arms trafficking deals in the early 19905 were impossible to prove.

'There is no justice in this country. We cannot go on like this,' shouted Alfredo Munez as he protested outside the courthouse this week. 'Menem should be locked up. And so should [former Economy Minister Domingo] Cavallo. But all you have to do is pay these judges and they do anything you want.'

Analysts say the supreme court's move takes the heat off the judges, rechannelling public anger over banking controls towards Duhalde himself. A bank holiday was declared on Monday as the government scrambled to find a way to avert what financial analysts described as a 'looming catastrophe'. Reports said police stopped six armoured vehicles trying to leave the financial district of Buenos Aires loaded with money on Friday night.

Duhalde described the economic situation as a 'time bomb ticking that needed to be defused carefully', and warned that if it exploded it would be devastating for millions of Argentines and businesses.

About 5,000 protesters gathered late on Friday in the historic Plaza de Mayo square, banging pots and pans in what has become almost a routine weekend demonstration, calling for their money back and for the country's old political guard - whom they see as corrupt and responsible for plundering the country's once enormous wealth and leading it to bankruptcy - to go. 	

Resentment at the political classes has reached boiling point in recent weeks, with several politicians being accosted in streets, cafés or shopping centres by angry crowds. Protesters set fire to the house of a deputy in Buenos Aires province.

'If this was France, here you'd see the guillotine being used,' Elisa Carrio, leader of the Alternative for a Republic of Equals party said.

Carrio - who has had to be placed under police protection as a result of her inquiries into political corruption - has said that the devaluation of the peso was likely to prove 'deeply traumatic' to Argentina. 'Duhalde's government is not going to be able to return people their money, and these are people who are getting used to throwing out a new president every week,' she has warned.

Public anger over the bank curbs have been the driving force behind demonstrations that helped bring down the government of Fernando de la Rua on 20 December and his emergency successor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa 10 days later.

'If he [Duhalde] does not succeed in reining in this crisis, probably we will have another social explosion,' Fraga said.

But against such a picture of total capitalist-chaos, it is bound to be suggested that where American imperialism REALLY wants to ensure things go according to the USA's planned interests, then it will ALWAYS act unfailingly decisively, ruthlessly, and effectively. What, as in 'masterminding' its warmongering coalition to annihilate Afghanistan, slaughter the Taleban, and wipe out al-Qaeda, yet still retain the allegiance of all Muslim and Middle Eastern states?????

Just at the moment, imperialism's warmongering-coalition prospects in the region seem to be clouding over a little; - according to these bourgeois opinions in the capitalist press (as opposed to the petty bourgeois opinions of the class-collaborating fake-'left'):

Relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia - the pivot of American power in the Middle East - are at breaking point. Although the recent call for the US to pull its troops out of the country was attributed to an "anonymous Saudi official" in the Washington Post, no one can doubt the seriousness of the breach between the two allies, nor the scale of the potential fallout from a rupture. The growing conflict is a manifestation of the very artificial nature of those relations. 

Contrary to the usual assumption that American troops are protecting the royal family, the royal family is in fact protecting these troops. Politically, American troops are still officially in the country at the request of its rulers. From a religious point of view, the official clergy's Gulf war ruling that they are guests has never been reversed. In terms of security, Saudi security forces are watching, rounding up and trying to eradicate groups which might target the Americans. 

But what was effective in the early 90s is no longer so. The regime's legitimacy has been drastically undermined, not least by the presence of these troops, while the religious establishment is no longer credible because of its support for the regime.

Meanwhile, the loyalty of the security forces is now seriously in doubt. The regime knows that Osama bin Laden is very popular in the country (a classified US report of a Saudi intelligence survey of educated Saudis between the ages of 25 and 41 in October found that 95% supported Bin Laden's cause). Any pressure on the security forces to "do their job" would backfire. The Saud family was well aware that the presence of American troops was a huge political liability even before the September events. The consensus then was to avoid trouble with the Americans. 

But since September, the issue has become an even more powerful weapon in the hands of Bin Laden supporters. The regime has found itself in an increasingly difficult situation. It wanted to get rid of this liability but knew that, for the Americans, any talk of withdrawing the troops would be regarded as a reward to Bin Laden and a victory for terrorism. The issue became even more sensitive with the American attack on Afghanistan. Although the regime did its best to stay in the American orbit, the public mood in Saudi Arabia was massively supportive of Bin Laden and hostile to the US.

Indeed, a senior congressman has already said that US forces may have to be moved out because of the socially harsh conditions they face.

It also needs to be remembered that the American presence is not only of uniformed troops. Probably the paramilitary, civilian backup, and the command and control and logistical setup are more important to the US. The Americans are already convinced that the troops can be transferred elsewhere with minimal or no loss in military advantage, but they cannot afford to abandon these other assets unless they are compelled to. Finally, it is unlikely that any withdrawal will take place while plans to attack Iraq are still live. American troops in the kingdom would be vital to such an operation.

All such expectations depend on the assumption that al-Qaida has been paralysed or destroyed. But if what is being said by circles close to al-Qaida about a major impending attack on the US or Saudi Arabia is true, then the situation is likely to change completely, with unpredictable consequences.

The public consensus that the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, has marshalled behind his policies cracked yesterday. Polls showed him receiving his lowest public approval rating in months, and 50 more combat reservist officers added their names to a petition calling on soldiers to refuse to serve in the occupied territories.

There are now 104 signatories to the petition, which is the most serious domestic challenge to his policies on the Palestinians since he came to power one year ago.

"We will not take part in the war for the peace of the settlements," said the petition, originally published in the press on January 25. "We will not fight beyond the Green Line [Israel's 1967 border with the West Bank] in order to rule, expel, destroy, blockade, assassinate, starve and humiliate an entire people:'

The protest has rattled Mr Sharon and the army, which was swift to attribute "political" rather than moral motives to its conscientious objectors.

'This is incitement to rebellion' the army's chief of staff, Shall Mofaz, said yesterday.

Four petitioners have been suspended from officer duties; the others are to face disciplinary measures, the army said. The punishments follow prison terms imposed on 49 reservists for refusing to serve in the occupied territories since the intifada erupted 16 months ago.

The difference with the latest protest is its public character, and the sympathetic hearing it has received. 

Even the former head of the Shin Bet intelligence service, Ami Ayalon, told Israeli television that he felt "a lot of empathy for the reserve officers" when they were asked to execute "blatantly illegal" orders.

"As far as I'm concerned, too few soldiers are refusing such orders. To shoot an unarmed youth is a blatantly illegal order. I am very worried by the number of Palestinian children shot in the last year:'

The protest also resonates with the predominant public mood of despair in Israel at the continuing violent confrontation with the Palestinians.

This has seen Mr Sharon's popularity ratings drop from 57% in December to 48°r6, the daily newspaper Maariv said.

Writing in Israel's Yediot Aharonot newspaper last week, the columnist Nahum Barnea said the latest Palestinian attack in west Jerusalem had made people more pessimistic about Mr Sharon. "They knew their prime minister was no better than they were: neither they nor he have an answer."

Avraham Burg, the Labour Speaker of the Israeli parliament, insisted this week that he would address the Palestinian parliament in Ramallah, despite Mr Sharon's campaign to ostracise the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.

"The occupation corrupts, or, more accurately, the occupation has already corrupted;' Mr Burg told the Knesset.

Against these setbacks for the cause of imperialist warmongering aggression's smooth sailing, the defeatist fake-'left' will assert that the promised Bush blitzkrieg against Iran was included specifically at the Zionists' bidding, and has thus strengthened the hand of imperialist reaction in the region.

But that is decidedly not how some of the capitalist press's own fine print sees things:

A vital benefit of the 1993 Oslo accord was said to be that it would fortify Israel for its eventual showdown with its far enemies.

For a long time, the strategy of enlisting the growing Arab peace camp against Iran and Islamically-inspired extremism from afar seemed to be working. Committed, under Oslo, to fight all forms of Palestinian violence against Israel, the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, came to blows with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and the anathemas he hurled at Iran, their ideological mentor, were all but indistinguishable from Israel's.

But now both threats have converged, malignantly, as never before. This, for Israel, was the deeper meaning of the Karine-A affair, the 50ton shipment of Iranian-supplied weaponry destined for Gaza, which it seized last month. It was a "most dangerous axis" said the Israeli chief of staff, that threatened to "change the face" of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle.

As well as supplying arms and finance, Iran, the Israelis say, is developing a supervisory role over the Palestinian "terror" through the exploitation of its existing assets in the arena, mainly the Lebanese Hizbullah, and its new ones, a direct link with Mr Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, and a recently created Palestinian Hizbullah of its own.

Had the Karine-A cargo made it to Gaza, and thence to the West Bank, it could have made at least a dent in Israel's enormous military superiority. The Palestinians would no longer have been entirely helpless in the face of Israeli armoured incursions into their self-rule areas. The weapons would also have brought whole population centres within range.

Though Mr Arafat and Iran denied any part in the arms shipment, there were compelling reasons why these former friends-turned-enemies should have resumed their collaboration of old. Mr Arafat's desperate need is obvious. The ever-growing violence of the conflict and the complete failure of any country to come to the Palestinians' aid present a golden opportunity for the Islamic republic, at least for the conservative, clerical wing of its leadership. This wing has exclusive, unaccountable control over underground aspects of foreign policy, such as support for Islamist "revolutionaries" like Hizbullah and Hamas.

Iran's president, Mohammad Khatami, and most of the reformist camp may seek to dilute the extreme anti-Israeli orthodoxy, but Tehran's foreign policy is very much an area of competition between the country's rival political wings.

The simplest way to thwart the growth of such a Palestinian-Iranian alliance would be to deny it its essential raison d'etre by restoring a peace process that has some prospect of success. But it has become clear that peace is just what the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, does not want: Palestinian violence serves him much better.

Persuasion

For him, the Karine-A incident provided further, dramatic justification for the undeclared but ill-disguised agenda he is pursuing in the name of retaliation and self-defence - to destroy the whole notion of self-determination on any portion of Palestinian territory.

But the Israelis took particular alarm at the words of the former Iranian president, Hashimi Rafsanjani, who said recently that if Israel continues "its hellish policy of expanding its nuclear arsenal, it will eventually draw the Islamic world into the race. Then it will be Israel, a small and illegitimate country, which will lose out and be destroyed."

Impressing on the US the gravity of the Iranian threat is a continuous Israeli preoccupation. It "must understand", said the Israeli defence minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, "that this is not only a threat to Israel, but to the whole world". Tehran would have a nuclear bomb within three years and was also developing missiles which could target any point in Europe.

Once again, the obviously self-confessed and incurable defeatism of academic Trotskyism will suggest with self-justifying smugness that the Zionists would launch their own first-strike on Iran anyway if warmongering Bush adventurism comes to nothing.

Yes, maybe so. But that won't change the direction of the whole historical pattern, as clearly revealed in these capitalist press comments above on the whole issue.

The destruction of anti-imperialism via the Oslo peace-fraud 'accord' WAS the process, screwing everybody for a while, including the 'reactionary' Islamics in Iran (as the fake-'lefts' would want to describe them, or 'bogus anti-imperialists'). 

But as uselessly superstition-ridden and unreliable as they are, no Marxist science would ever make the mistake of simply dismissing potential conflicts between such regimes as Teheran and the US imperialist master-race, - to the obvious damage of imperialism and benefiting anti-imperialist struggles everywhere. 

Even better and more interestingly than that, however, what is the PATTERN of history here??? Clearly, it is moving from a less difficult time for Western imperialist domination to a more difficult time for Western imperialist domination, to put it no more strongly.

And if that is what direction even Iran is forced into, even with such a 'reactionary' and 'undemocratic' regime strongly ensconced (as the fake-'lefts' would undoubtedly wish to stress above everything, so as to sit on the fence a bit longer about the very real anti-imperialism brewing internationally regardless of everyone's subjective wishes, including those of Iranian 'reactionaries' possibly), - then in what direction must literally SCORES of other 'reactionary' regimes be being dragged by the same forces of global economic crisis?????

In Zionism's own admissions and these in the capitalist press, Iran's position has MOVED due to imperialist crisis conditions.

OK says fake-'leftism', then the Zionists will have to zap Iran with or without American help.

Fine, but what about the next 50 sizeable states likely to be moving in the same "we will have to defend ourselves against imperialist bullying" direction as Arafat and Iran???? Will the Zionists (with or without US help) zap Pakistan so easily? Or India? Or China???

The same issues come up with Bush's own warmongering Nazi strut. Iraq, Iran, and North Korea??? But what about the really serious development of weapons of mass destruction not controlled by the USA? In Pakistan, India, and China, for example.

Or even in Britain, France, and Russia??? How will their independent control of weapons of mass destruction be dealt with when the imperialist trade-war crisis gets really nasty, and every single imperialist power is out to save its own economic-survival neck at the expense of any or even of all its rivals????

The Bush global warmongering project is as plain a confession of total political bankruptcy and inevitable doom as has ever emerged from insoluble imperialist crisis. 

And the contradictions do not end there either, with the dodgy future prospects for US fascist warmongering unlimited.

Things still stubbornly refuse to go right even in Afghanistan, which was an arena supposedly well-tamed by American blitzkrieg by now:

WASHINGTON is determined to make the best of its imperfect victory in Afghanistan, and the suave but imperfect-new leader that it has helped to install.

Hamid Karzai, the new Prime Minister of Afghanistan and the first to visit the US for 39 years, mentioned at the end of his first speech that he might well support amputation of limbs as a punishment. Provided the criminals were prosperous enough to know better, he added, in an odd and opaque gesture at the theology of such things.

But some of his remarks, together with military setbacks on the ground, show that the State of the War is far from ideal and far from the solid success that seemed within reach in November, when Karzai was chosen.

Most of his remarks, delivered in fluent English with an American-Afghan accent, supported his reputation as America's man in Kabul. He called on Afghans in the US to make lots of money - and bring it back home to invest. He is entirely right that for all the $4.5 billion (Yen113.2 billion) raised in Tokyo last week, the future of Afghanistan will be determined by whether the Afghan middle class abroad sends its money home.

But other remarks, barely picked up by the American press, fit less well with that image. In answer to a question about whether he would implement amputation and other punishments of Sharia Law, he suggested he would, in asserting that "the punishment is not for the poor. It is for a prosperous person breaking the law. There can be no punishment without prosperity." His Chief Justice Minister has given unqualified support to sharia.

The Bush Administration is deliberately overlooking those ways in which Karzai might depart from its ideal. True, the US and other donors clearly have plenty of levers over him. Unless the money pledged at Tokyo arrives, he cannot do a thing. 

But the US is clearly emphasising the positive because Karzai also represents the successful aspect of the war - the toppling of the Taleban. It is, in fact, the only clear success;  other aims are faring less well. The Pentagon portrayed yesterday's gunfight in Kandahar, in which US forces defeated a group of six Taleban holding out in a hospital, as an important success. But it serves rather better as a reminder of the strength of pockets of Taleban support that remain right across the south.

Elsewhere, too, there is trouble for the US. In the west, Herat and its Governor, the warlord Ismail Khan, are increasingly under Iran's influence. In the north, Abdul Rashid Dostum, ruler of Mazar-i Sharif, is fighting other pockets of the former Northern Alliance. In the east, governors are pointedly giving little help to the US.

All roads outside Kabul are dangerous for those not heavily armed. And the US has still not found Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar, though it believes they are still in Afghanistan.

Bush's solution to this anarchy, he made clear yesterday, is to back Karzai's request for an Afghan army. It would be "better than peacekeepers", Bush said. But this move was emphatically opposed by many of the main donors at Tokyo, who feel the country hardly needs more money for arms. To sum up four months of war: the US has Kabul, and Karzai, and influence over him, but it is hard to disguise the fact that this may be a man not quite in the mould envisaged, presiding over a war less finished than it seemed at the end of last year.

Nor is the plight of the people of Afghanistan getting any better either, in spite of all the relentless Western propaganda to the contrary. In current capitalist-press small print, Afghanistan sounds now like a REAL hellhole of arbitrary brutality, insecurity, and desperate privation:

Afghan villagers last night claimed that American special forces, had botched a raid north of Kandahar, killing at least 15 pro-government local leaders who were negotiating the surrender of local Taliban fighters. US troops have now been accused of blundering in several ground assaults inside Afghanistan since the Taliban regime fell last month. The new claims came as Hamid Karzai, the head of the interim government in Kabul, arrived in Washington for his first official visit.	

The Pentagon said on Friday that the raid on Hazar, Qadam, 60 miles north of Kandahar, destroyed a huge Taliban arms dump, killing about 15 people. At least 27 "relatively senior" Taliban were captured and taken to a US military detention facility in Kandahar, it said.

Yet villagers yesterday insisted the US troops had been badly misled. They said the victims of the attack at Hazar, Qadam were headed by an ethnic group leader called Haji Sana Gul, who had just disarmed a number of Taliban fighters still holding out in the area.

His brother Bari Gul said the men spent Wednesday night in the local madrassah, or religious seminary. Before dawn the next day US troops swept in, killing several people in the madrassah, including Haji Sana Gul himself.

Yusuf Pashtun, an aide to the Kandahar governor Gul Agha, said he too believed American commandos had struck the wrong target. "It looks like it was raided by mistake," he said. "The people of the district centre are very much against the Taliban."

American officials have acknowledged that they must frequently depend on information from members of rival ethnic groups whose loyalties are frequently shifting.

On December 29, American bombers killed at least 100 people in a village in eastern Afghanistan. The Pentagon said Taliban and alQaida fighters were targeted. Survivors said those killed had been civilians attending a wedding.

A week earlier, a convoy of 100 Afghans travelling near Khost, in the east, were bombed by US jets, and at least 60 died. Again, the Pentagon said it believed toe dead were Taliban and al-Qaida fighters, but survivors said they were elders going to Kabul to mark the new government's inauguration.

They are tiny, silent killers, dropped from the bellies of the American bombs that pulverised the Taliban defences, and striking long after the air war on Afghanistan has ended.

At least 41 people have been killed and 46 injured in Herat and nearby villages by cluster bombs which did not immediately explode when they were unleashed by the US bombers, but nestled in the soil and bided their time.

The cheerful yellow-coloured devices - called bomblets - parachuted to earth from the mother bomb 202 at a time: They are a highly effective killer, deploying, in military parlance, three "kill mechanisms" to slice through the thick armour of tanks, and injure and burn humans.

In the area of Rabat village, half an hour west of Herat, the BLU-97 bomblets have killed 10 people since the bombing ended there in early November.

First there were the three children from a neighbouring village who wandered over unfamiliar fields to attend a wedding, and thought the small yellow cylinders were toys. By December, the bomblets were killing local farmers frustrated because they could not sow their fields as planting time grew near.

For days, Abdul Rahim glared at his empty patch of land, sown with clusters instead of the customary wheat and grapes. After a seemingly auspicious rainfall on December 20 he decided to clear the field himself. "I told him many times, don't touch the cluster. Other villagers also told him not to touch cluster bombs, but he didn't listen," said his son, Abdul Naim, who watched his father embark on his deadly course.

"He began picking up the cluster bombs with a shovel," Abdul Naim said. Three arced through the air and exploded harmlessly in a nearby field. "The fourth one exploded and a piece of shrapnel caught him in the throat."

Slow work

De-miners coordinated by the UN and now working in the villages around Rabat say they have located and defused nearly 200 unexploded bomblets; embedded in the walls of the domed mud and straw houses or from under the rose bushes in the gardens enclosed within every family's compound.

But their work is painstakingly slow, and about 30% of the fields remain off-limits to the farmers, said Mohammed Gul Siddiqi of the UN mine action centre.

Last last year, angry villagers rioted outside the de-mining centre in Herat, demanding they clear their fields. "We are very nervous, and very afraid of cluster bombs everywhere," said Gul Mohammed an elderly villager. "We can't work freely on our land. When I leave my house in the morning, I can't be sure I will come back home at night:' '

Once the Taliban was routed, the US provided the UN with data on the areas where cluster bombs had been deployed. According to the figures, 1,722 bomblets were dropped on a single location in Herat.

However, the US drastically under-reported the extent of cluster bombing, de-miners say, and in some instances identified locations that were 4.5 miles from the site of the actual bombing.

Rabat did not feature on the US map of its clusterbombing of Herat. It is an open area of farmland, with no trees to provide cover to fleeing Taliban troops or pick-up trucks, and it is at least a mile from the large military compound that was used by the Taliban.

The unexploded cluster bombs have proved far deadlier than the tens of thousands of mines laid in Afghanistan by occupying Soviet forces, and de-mining experts expect a similar picture to Herat to emerge in other parts of the country that were subjected to cluster bombing.

The bomblets are exceedingly sensitive to heat and movement and can be detonated inadvertently by a radio signal within 25 metres, said Sean Moorhouse, a Durham- born de-miner from the Swiss Federation for Mine Action.

And the bomblets are a sophisticated killer: on explosion, they fragment into dozens of fiery metal fragments, slicing and burning into human flesh.

Heavy rains a fortnight ago buried the unexploded bomblets beneath the soil and swept some away to new locations. In Qala Shaater, a neighbourhood near the centre of Herat, about 100 bomblets buried in the mud of a nearby canal were carried downstream.

The area suffered some of the worst civilian casualties during the bombing of Herat last October.  In the months since, 12 more civilians have been killed by the bomblets left behind. Mr Moorhouse said his teams have cleared 225 bomblets from the neighbourhood so far.

At least six of the bomblets parachuted to earth in the narrow passageway linking the Farid family compound to the road, bursting through a mud wall and gouging out chunks of plaster from the main home. One family member died, two teenaged  neighbours were killed, and two unexploded bomblets remained behind. At first the family waited, and then they decided to try their luck. A friend of Ahmed Farid, 26, after trying defusing techniques, decided to hurl a bomblet into the courtyard of an abandoned home next door.  Unfortunately, Ahmed was crossing the courtyard.

Fiery bits of shrapnel burnt a series of almond sized scars from right shoulder to calf, and put the iron worker in hospital for two days.

"It was seriously painful;" he said. "But I am lucky. I am still alive."

The size of Maslakh camp and the enormousness and concentration of human suffering here hits the visitor like a physical assault. The tableau of wretchedness extends for more than three miles and one mile wide along a road cutting through the flat desert plain towards Iran, and more than half a mile back towards a towering mountain range.

Hundreds upon hundreds of squat, mud-walled shelters extending up the slopes of the mountain, winterproof tents for the fortunate who are receiving aid, tattered black domed tents for the nomadic Kuchi people camped here who have yet to join them, and clumps of human waste everywhere underfoot.

It was already in crisis when the International Organisation for Migration took over the camp last summer, and its population swelled after 11 September when international aid workers were evacuated from Afghanistan. Some 700 families turn up here each week, seeking food and shelter.

The scale of the camp - and the failure of international aid organisations to limit its growth to a more manageable size - are just one indication of the epic challenge confronting the international community as it prepares to disperse the billions in aid money that has been pledged for Afghanistan.

'It is true conditions aren't superb in the camp, but it is still attracting a lot of people from all over Afghanistan because the conditions are still better than in their homes,' said Rafael Robillard, the IOM's chief of mission in western Afghanistan. 'The dilemma now is how to make a nice neat camp without attracting people from all over the country, and emptying out the villages.'

Inside the camp, the stories are exhaustingly familiar.

'We left because of the hunger,' said Mona Wor, standing barefoot on the cold winter ground at the threshold of the tent that is home to her, her husband and seven children. The family arrived last November, begging a ride from a passing truck and travelling for five days from Ghor province: 'Before, we had land, sheep, a house, everything. And we lost it all.'

Further calamities were in store for the people at Maslakh. Two weeks ago, there was a torrential downpour -150 millimetres of rain in three days, hitting Maslakh with the force of a water cannon, followed by a drastic drop in temperature.

The nomads' tents were swamped, the roofs of mud huts dissolved and caved in, people froze. The icy winds that scythe across the desert plains and the relentless winter chill made pneumonia a killer. 

Abdul Alim lost his son, eight-year old Hizmatullah, who coughed until he died. 'It was terrible. He died and we could not bury him,' he said.  'We could not go out in those rains.'  Inside the low mud hit, his wife clutched at her three surviving children - all daughters - and cried quietly. Those spared by the elements were beset by human predators. Armed men are on the prowl.

This reality of the disaster for the people of Afghanistan that Western imperialist blitzkrieg has been, may not yet get into the capitalist press headlines but it is absolutely certain that the scale of this demented and hypocritical US disaster will go round the world, intensifying the hatred of American imperialism more decisively than ever.

These capitalist crisis realities are unfailingly breeding revolutionary understanding worldwide.

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