Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. -V. I. Lenin
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
Subscriptions (£25 p.a.) and circulation 0786 799 6074 P&P Bulletin Publications PO Box 50, London SW 17 9NL [Post Office Registered.)  www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk
No 1123 Feb 12 2002                                                                                                                                             25p 

European imperialist powers start to get alarmed at their American rival's massive arms-race escalation and eagerness to take a fascist-aggressive lead in the colonial domination and the warmongering, destructive slaughter that insoluble economic crisis and breakdown is going to impose on the 'free world' if monopoly-capitalism is to survive. Sept 11 is just another "Archduke assassinated" excuse for a total-war 'solution' (to incurable slump and tradewar conflict) which had already been long prepared, just like in 1914. But the conspiracy-theorists' extra point (that the CIA staged Sept 11 itself) is the exact opposite of 'left' or 'Marxist' and is just a disgusting defeatist cop-out enabling these Revisionist frauds to 'condemn' Sept 11 in tune with the rest of Western bourgeois hypocrisy while appearing not to do so, and idiotically presenting the joke US imperialist 'New World Order' as not undermined by contradictions and as capable of controlling and carrying out international warmongering domination way beyond its powers.

Regardless of how pathetically half-hearted, hypocritical, and confused it was, the EU Commission's publicly-declared disagreement with Bush's 'axis of evil' warmongering rant (in his State of the Union address) represents remarkable developments.

As the EPSR alone has explained, Sept 11 and its blitzkrieg-on-Afghanistan aftermath cannot possibly be understood and made sense of unless seen entirely as aspects of the imperialist world system's insoluble international economic crisis.

Like the obscure assassination of an Austrian archduke by a Serb student in Sarajevo in 1914 which 	is ludicrously still described as "starting" the First World War, the Sept 11 happening is insanely regarded as the 'cause' of American imperialism announcing the 	most massive arms race expansion in all history, warning every country in the world to either applaud the USA's aggression plans or else become a potential victim of them, and unleashing a bombing holocaust on Afghanistan, wrecking it completely, with active preparations and threats to flatten Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and other equally weak states thereafter if the American imperialist bourgeoisie decides that anything they do represents a menace to US interests.

In reality of course, the world's major economic-imperialist rival powers had been preparing for the 1914-1918 bloodbath for more than two decades of colonial expansion rivalry throughout Africa, the Middle East, and the Far East, -  naturally while never telling the world's population what monstrous destructive brutality was in store.

But once all sides were ready for the great inter-imperialist trial of strength, any incident would do to provide any of the protagonists with plausible 'justification' for starting the slaughter.

The obscure assassination in Sarajevo of an Austrian archduke was declared to be that "cause".

But as a 'reason' why World War I took place, - by far the most devastatingly murderous war in history at that point, pretending it was the incident in Sarajevo is just a joke.

Equally farcical is the notion that the incredible Islamic suicidal-fanaticism of the obscure Bin Laden sect, hiding in caves in Afghanistan, is the real reason why the desperate monopoly-corporate corruption around the Bush regime is so keen to impose general warmongering hysteria over the whole planet.

As last week's EPSR spelt out in massive detail, the criminally-crooked failure of the bankrupt Enron conglomerate had huge international economic and political implications as well as devastatingly damaging domestic ones, and this enormous fraud, and its hair-raising consequences to come, are an EXACT guide to the trouble the whole world imperialist economy is in.

The most rapacious top circles of the American imperialist bourgeoisie, now in office around Bush and the Texas corporate mafia, are EXACTLY representing historical monopoly-capitalist interests in deciding to plunge the world into chauvinist warmongering now that the unsustainable post-1945 international imperialist expansion boom has reached the inevitable point of crisis breakdown in which only the very fittest multinational corporate competitors will survive the CRASH and slump.

In advance of the general collapse, but forewarned by the humiliating catastrophe for Enron and many other giant US corporations, and by the whole dot.com speculative bubble before that, - the Bush regime stooges of the most ruthless finance-capital power-brokers in the American military-industrial complex have decided to get their warmongering trade-war retaliation in first, before something like another Pearl Harbour hits them from hungrier imperialist competitors like last time.

The European imperialist rivals, still pretending there is no world economic crisis or any dangerous inter-imperialist cut-throat competition-for-survival involved, have taken fright over two aspects of the Bush warmongering rant.

Firstly, they think the semi-literate illogical belligerence coming out of Washington will make the whole imperialist system a laughing stock, and hated in the world's eyes, if better reasoning and more subtlety is not shown.

And secondly, these smaller imperialist powers are simply frightened for their own skins once this greatest-ever hegemonistic monopoly-capitalist giant starts throwing its trade-war weight about in earnest. Any damage to the credibility of the NATO warmongering "alliance" from such very serious public disagreements has clearly been decided is a price worth paying by some inside the European Union, in the vain hope of heading off far more damaging splits further down the historical path of incurable warmongering imperialist-system crisis.

It is an utterly futile ambition, and these redundant hopes can only inevitably make matters worse between the rival imperialist blocs by publicising and deepening the propaganda war between them in circumstances like the pre-WWI period where the game of endlessly exposing each other as bearing sole responsibility for stoking up warmongering aims and delusions only meant that a 'spark of war' incident like Sarajevo would relentlessly draw ever nearer.

Thus this EU outburst, as mealy-mouthed and deliberately misleading as it is, nevertheless marks a possible turning point in history, the moment when the nonsensical ruse of Sept 11 as an excuse for generalised warmongering began to be openly exposed as a fraud by inter-imperialist rivalry itself, thereby paradoxically making inter-imperialist warmongering more certain than ever:

Chris Patten, the EU commissioner in charge of Europe's international relations, has launched a scathing attack on American foreign policy - accusing the Bush administration of a dangerously "absolutist and simplistic" stance towards the rest of the world.

As EU officials warned of a rift opening up between Europe and the US wider than at any time for half a century, Mr Patten tells the Guardian it is time European governments spoke up and stopped Washington before it goes into "unilateralist overdrive". 

Mr Patten's broadside came as the French prime minister, Lionel Jospin, warned the US yesterday not to give in to "the strong temptation of unilateralism".

Like France, Mr Patten singled out Mr Bush's branding of Iraq,  Iran and North Korea as "an axis of evil".

"I find it hard to believe that's a thought through policy,"  he says, adding that the phrase was deeply "unhelpful".

EU officials concede that the US and Europe could now be on a collision course over Iran, with the EU determined to forge a trade and cooperation agreement with Tehran just as Washington has deemed it an "evil" sponsor of terror.

One senior EU official said: "It is humiliating and demeaning if we feel we have to go and get our homework marked by Dick Cheney and Condi Rice. We've got to stop thinking that the only policy we can have is one that doesn't get vetoed by the United States."

Publicly, the British government continues to stand "shoulder to shoulder" with Mr Bush.  But senior Labour figures admit they are deeply troubled by the newly aggressive thrust of US thinking especially the hints that America could widen the war against terrorism to a clutch of new countries. They are likely to seize on Mr Patten's remarks as they press their case with Tony Blair.

In the interview the former Conservative party chairman delivers a devastatingly comprehensive critique of US strategy. He upbraids Washington for showing much more interest in stamping out terrorism than in tackling terror's root causes.

"When you're addressing that agenda, frankly, smart bombs have their place but smart development assistance seems to me even more significant," he said.

That view is widely held in Europe, typified by Mr Blair's much-quoted "heal the world" speech last year in Brighton. But it barely gets a hearing in today's Washington, Mr Patten concedes,

Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speech appears to have been the last straw for EU policymakers. In today's interview, Mr Patten offers withering condemnation of the phrase.

Besides balking at the word "evil", he disputes whether the three countries named are an axis at all, insisting there is no evidence that they are working together on weapons of mass destruction. But Mr Patten also expresses great irritation with Washington for undermining long-established EU efforts to reach out to Tehran, and Pyongyang.

"There is more to be said for trying to engage and to draw these societies into the international community than to cut them off" he says.

But Mr Patten's greatest ire is reserved for America's go-it-alone approach to international relations. "However mighty you are, even if you're the greatest superpower in the world, you cannot do it all on your own."

But, every once in a while, the situation demands a break from diplomatic niceties. The current direction of US foreign policy is one of those situations.

"President Bush has just announced a $48bn (£34bn) increase in defence spending," he begins. "Now if you mark the significance of Europe's relations with America by how much we're prepared to spend on defence, forget it!  We can't even pay the entrance fee!"

If the US measures seriousness by that standard, Mr Patten concedes, then Europe doesn't count: there is not a political party in Europe that would campaign for a 14% increase in defence spending, which is what it would take for the EU to match Mr Bush.

But, he says, "Europe provides 55% of development assistance in the world and two thirds of grant aid. So when it comes to what the Americans call the 'soft end of security' -  which I happen to think is the hard end of security  -  we have a huge amount to contribute".  Especially after September 11, when, Mr Patten says, we have seen "the dark side of globalisation". Now we know where the huge injustices of the global economy can lead. We  know, too, how important it is to handle failed states properly - and to prevent them failing in the first place. We have realised that we have to tackle "the root causes of terrorism and violence".

Faced with that agenda, he said "frankly, smart bombs have their place, but smart development assistance" mattered more. And it's that simple idea that Washington doesn't get? "That's a polite way of putting it," snorts Mr Patten, slumping his shoulders to take another sip of Belgian coffee.

But is Washington even hearing that more complex position, staked out by both Tony Blair and former president Bill Clinton that the west has to be tough on terrorism and tough on the causes of terrorism? "I don't know but I think it's very dangerous when you start taking up absolutist positions and simplistic positions."

That's just one of a series of gaps now opening up between Europe and George W Bush's United States, according to senior European policymakers. Specific clashes include proposals for an international criminal court, a ban on anti-personnel land mines, action against biological weapons, a comprehensive test ban treaty and, most famously, the Kyoto treaty on climate change - all of which are supported in Europe and opposed by the US. A sharp difference is emerging too over the Middle East, with the EU continuing to fund Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority even as the US denounces it.

But Mr Patten - who describes himself as a lifelong "Americaphile" with "not an ounce of Americaphobia in my body" fears a deeper, philosophical gulf could soon appear, with two wholly different views of the world taking shape on either side of the Atlantic.

While Europeans believe in tackling the root causes of terror, Washington seems keen only to eradicate the symptoms. While Europeans believe in "engaging" potentially hostile nations, trying to bring them into the fold, Washington brands them an "axis of evil".  While Europeans believe in acting together, multilaterally, the US seems ever more bent on acting alone.

The commissioner quotes John Bolton,  the hawkish US under-secretary of state for arms control, who has condemned multi-lateralism as a threat to American sovereignty  - and who recently withdrew from talks on a convention limiting small arms because it would have undermined Americans' constitutional right to carry guns. "Now this is a different perception of the world," says Mr Patten, "and it's different from what America's been renowned for. No one could regard America, as anything but the leading multilateralist of the 40s and 50s, creating institutions of governance which have made the world more prosperous and more stable." Now, he fears, the US is turning away from that tradition.

"I still hope that America will demonstrate that it has not gone on to unilateralist overdrive." The task now is for Europe to raise its voice  - "I don't think that keeping quiet makes us good allies" - and for America to listen. "Winston Churchill once said it was important to remember that when you had allies, they did tend to develop opinions of their own - and it's quite important to listen to those opinions:' Chris Patten has broken the EU silence.

But not really, of course. This bourgeois press account cannot properly denounce the ridiculous hysteria artificially generated by a humiliated US imperialist establishment about the actually quite trivial one-off terrorist incident of Sept 11 (although full of massive indirect political implications, discussed below), - nor can it dare be frank about the whole imperialist system's permanent arms-race warmongering contingency plans which never can or will alter for as long as the monopoly capitalist system lasts.

These "no to war ever again" sentiments of Patten were widespread throughout West Europe after WWI, but it did not stop the finance-capital manipulators from allowing German and Italian renewed warmongering aggression from steadily building up throughout the 1930s towards another economic-crisis-driven outbreak of World War again in the late 1930s, this time with a Japan-driven war front throughout the Far East as well.

Patten won't say it, but behind the "peaceful solution to all problems at any price" posturing, the entire European Union, led by Britain, is jockeying for position like mad within every warmongering adventure going.

They all blitzed Iraq together in the Gulf War. They all blitzed Serbia together in the Kosovo war. They have all-blitzed Afghanistan together in the Bin Laden war. And currently the entire EU military armada is gathering together again in the Gulf region so as not to be left out of the booty or reconstruction spoils as soon as the imperialist system's gangster leadership in Washington gives the go-ahead for the next holocaust, probably against Iraq once more.

But although Patten's whingeing is only a relative question about how the propaganda is handled for covering up the brutal arbitrary fascist aggression character of these onslaughts by NATO neo-colonialism, - (worried about rival US imperialism dropping the "alliance for a democratic solution" façade too soon, or arrogantly grabbing too much of the 'might is right' political influence and glory for itself at the expense of its 'loyal' European imperialist allies who have an equal interest in world domination the same as Washington) - nevertheless this small split in emphasis indicates far more important real divisions between the imperialist gangsters lying underneath.

And this is really what Sept 11 is ultimately all about too, the enforced break-up in rancour of the whole 'free world' monopoly-bourgeois market system in deepening and insoluble economic crisis.

As fake-'lefts' keep pointing out in a variety of phoney 'Marxist' analyses (so as to condemn imperialist blitzkrieg but at the same time also 'condemn' Sept 11 in order not to conflict too much with 'average' petty-bourgeois public opinion), - Bin Ladenism, and the Taleban as well, were both products of anti-communist reaction which received CIA aid and encouragement at one time because of their staunch nationalist and Islamist resistance to Soviet socialist influence on Afghanistan's affairs (and further afield in the Middle East).

The nutty theorists, who insist that Bin Laden is still working as an American agent and launched Sept 11 so as to help Washington inflict global warmongering, are dealt with below, but the one correct point about Bin Laden's anti-communist origins in CIA-favoured reactionary bourgeois circles within the backward Saudi feudal autocracy, known to everyone, makes an excellent argument against the imperialist system in today's circumstances, not an argument against the hopeless heroic gesture of Sept 11.

The WHOLE of the imperialist system is going to start breaking up under the intolerable cut-throat competitive pressures of the incurable economic crisis which will drive the major imperialist powers themselves to war with each other (in the course of the degenerate destruction of so-called 'surplus capacity' in the world, which is now destroying the profit-seeking markets which created this 'overproduction' in the first place).

Why on earth would the already-established historical tradition of the less-favoured, worse-hit, or more vulnerable countries of the imperialist-world system going haywire first (and/or suffering revolutionary turmoil first, before the major powers), not continue??

The warmongering imbroglio in the Balkans had already raged for a few years immediately prior to the main outbreak of World War in 1914, with the 'spark' for that war erupting precisely in Sarajevo from exactly the same region of incredibly complex religious and nationalist antagonisms which again have just been set going in the 1990s by pre-crisis imperialist intrigue and manipulation, conveniently allowing all the major imperialist powers to go onto a war footing in Europe again, just like in the build up to World Wars I and II.

And it is absolutely normal in such crisis-period circumstances for former imperialist stooges or protégés to sometimes turn on their sponsors and either denounce imperialist bullying or else start to commandeer the piracy game for their own independent ends (or even a bit of both).

Noriega in Panama is one of the most notable modern examples of this, needing invading by Reagan's blitzkrieg forces to shut up his new-found Latin-nationalist fervour for anti-Yanquee anti-imperialism.

Saddam Hussein is an even more famous example, put into power by a CIA conspiracy in Iraq in the 1970s (to oust the pro-Soviet military government which staged the progressive revolution against the degenerate autocratic monarchy sitting on the old British colony), - and financed by Washington to wage a 10-year war on Iran fundamentalism throughout the 1980s, – only to turn to posturing 'anti-Western' nationalism himself later on when balked by the Gulf War blitzkrieg from reoccupying Iraq's province of Kuwait, stolen and separated off by British colonialism earlier in the 20th century.

In a period of increasing inter-imperialist turmoil due to insoluble economic crisis which will in time bring down most of the current monopoly-capitalist regimes in the world, toppling many ruling classes by socialist revolution, - what is more predictable than that some bourgeois sections of the outgoing Saudi business class should fear that the feudal autocracy clinging onto power in Riyadh via fearful repression and propped up by 'infidel' armies occupying 'sacred Islamic soil' etc, etc, were no longer the best guarantee of Saudi capitalism's independence or even survival??

For years, and particularly in recent editions, the EPSR has collected the evidence from the capitalist press's own admissions of the relentless breakdown of the Saudi dictatorship in step with the steady worsening of international imperialist economic crisis complications.

Of course Bin Ladenism started out as reactionary anti-Sovietism, and of course Bin Ladenism is still easily ridiculed for its backward Islamic fanaticism. And it is likely that this stance against American imperialism which world developments have pushed Bin Laden towards will never develop further towards really useful mass revolutionary organisation and understanding of the need for socialism to overthrow the whole capitalist system completely before any anti-imperialist justice of any kind can be had anywhere on earth by anyone. This minor revolt by al-Qaeda may well remain paralysed within its own extreme anarchist-individualist limitations of suicidal self-sacrifice.

But Sept 11 as a one-off incident of terrorist adventurism was nevertheless an astonishingly powerful and useful signal of just how catastrophically rancid the imperialist world economic crisis had already become, and also a remarkably symbolic forewarning that, unbelievably, revolutionary violence by 'little people' will one day bring down the whole high-and-mighty imperialist system in spite of all its murderous brutal firepower, surveillance tyranny, and economic stranglehold.

The outstandingly heroic Intifada by Palestinian anti-imperialists is demonstrating exactly the same irresistible force of approaching, mass-proletarian history that the world is entering into, a future of planned socialist reason for the whole planet in which sincere peaceful discussion will AT LAST become a genuine vehicle for a solution to all civilisation's problems, (but only AFTER capitalism has been destroyed). Anarchic individual self-sacrifice inspired by medieval religion and backward chauvinism is clearly not a part of the armoury of socialist revolution, and will not lead there.

But this huge 'Islamic' revolt against American and Zionist imperialist tyranny over the Middle East is THE major phenomenon of current anti-imperialist developments; and the inability to grasp this and to use Washington's humiliation to advance the cause of Marxist-Leninist scientific understanding of the necessary communist revolutionary future for mankind is an open admission of petty-bourgeois reluctance to accept all the implications of insoluble monopoly-capitalist economic crisis (which is putting the world into political, social, philosophical and warmongering survival turmoil):

The buying spree for gold was concentrated in the far east, with a rush by Japanese investors to find an asset that looks safer than shares in Japanese companies or Japanese bonds. Almost any asset look safer at present than Japanese assets, and the flight into gold is entirely rational.  Japan faces political and economic meltdown, and we are talking premier league stuff here. Argentina was only the third-biggest economy in Latin America; Japan is the second biggest economy in the world. The prospect of Japan going down the tubes has yet to make much impact on the rest of the world.  Even so, the west cannot afford to be complacent about what is happening in Japan, unless it intends to use the country as a test case to explore whether a fullscale depression is less painful now than it was 70 years ago.

A strong Japan is not only essential for the long-term health of the global economy, it is also needed as a counter-weight to the growing power of China. A collapse in the Japanese economy, which looks ever more likely, would have profound ramifications; some experts believe it could even unleash a wave of extreme nationalism that would push the country into conflict with its bigger (and nuclear) neighbour.

Japan's problem is that it is bankrupt - not just financially but politically. Koizumi is struggling to cope with three interlocking problems. The first is the damage to his personal credibility caused by the sacking of Makiko Tanaka, the foreign minister, under pressure from the reactionary (and corrupt) elements in Japanese politics. When he became prime minister, Koizumi was supposed to be the clean-up kid who would cut through Japan's Gordian knot of bureaucratic inertia and political torpor to bring about reform. That now looks like a forlorn hope. Koizumi has lost public support and control of his own party. This has serious short-term implications for the government's ability to cope with the financial hurricane about to blow in.

Charles Dumas of Lombard Street Research believes a full-blown financial crisis is likely "in weeks rather than months".  Koizumi's loss of credibility, Dumas says, has ensured that the government can only react to the banking crisis after it has occurred rather than take the action now to head it off.

The imminent financial crisis is only a symptom of a wider economic malaise that is partly the result of the collapse of the bubble economy at the end of the 80s. What happened in the subsequent decade is that what were once seen as virtues of the Japanese system -  the close relationship between companies and the banks, the culture of a job for life, to name but two - have become weaknesses.  Japanese firms are unprofitable by western standards and many of them have only been kept going by virtue of the generosity of banks, which are now sitting on a mountain of bad debts. Consumer confidence and consumption are weak; deflation is already a reality making monetary easing less effective; the limits to fiscal pump-priming were reached some time ago. Koizumi's plan to make the banks clean up their balance sheets by getting rid of bad loans would only intensify the slump.

"Japan is in danger of slipping into the classic vicious circle of rising bankruptcies, higher credit costs, deteriorating balance sheets and yet more bad debts", says Graham Turner of GFC Economics. "The market is crying out for decisive political leadership but in truth the position of Japan's banks is so serious that more reform is not the answer. The only solution to Japan's difficulties lies with outright nationalisation of the banks.

But few politicians in Japan appear willing to countenance such a proposal. The result will be more muddling through until Japan's financial institutions finally collapse under the weight of their bad debts.

Deep and structural reforms will be needed if Japan is not to become the Soviet Union of the 21st century. At a meeting organised by the Royal Institute of International Affairs last week, Jean Pierre Lehman of the IMD in Lausanne argued that Japan's crisis was not cyclical but systemic. "Bad loans are symptoms of the problem. Japan suffers from institutional sclerosis, social anomie and gerontocratic governance. Unless these are addressed we are talking about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic".

In the 60s and 70s, Japan's policy of outward-looking protectionism worked, mobilising resources to achieve economic goals while keeping out foreign products. But command and control has its limits, and they were reached in Japan some time ago.  Japan's first moment of truth came in September 1985 when its pivotal role in the Plaza accord to drive down the dollar showed that the country had come of age. This, says Lehmann, was the moment to open up, to re-culture its corporations, to deregulate. 

"But it went the other way, full throttle down the track to puffed-up nationalist arrogance.”

 Japan should do what it failed to do 17 years ago: liberalise, become less racist, sexist and chauvinist. There are painful times ahead even if it does. If it does not, the risk is of domestic implosion and conflict with China. Scary stuff.

But despite such endless streams of evidence in the EPSR from the capitalist ideologues themselves about signs around the world of a total systemic collapse, fake-'lefts' have an insurmountable petty-bourgeois inability, still, to get the full Marxist dialectical-revolutionary message.

Where Marxism only sees a process of endless change, a bourgeois only sees a static observation to be recorded and filed away.

Thus Bin Laden is just Bin Laden to a fake-'left'; he is merely an ex-CIA-run bourgeois reactionary whose 'terrorist' activities could only be dismissed as 'boundlessly cynical', etc. And 'what has imperialist crisis got to do with it?', etc, etc.

To Marxism, a system in crisis, throwing up all manner of extraordinary unexpected developments is the exclusive focus.

In a phenomenon such as Bin Ladenism, what is the direction of change is the key question, and does it tell us anything about exactly how the breakdown of imperialist world tyranny will unfold???? etc, etc.

The middle-class shopkeeper's mentality of putting things firmly on shelves and in pigeon-holes infects the fake-'lefts' occasional 'socialist' enthusiasms too, - such as the ludicrous delusion of recognising Solidarnosc as a workers movement for trade-unionism and genuine rank-and-file socialism, - despite the mountains of evidence in the EPSR from day one that this was a CIA/Vatican stunt for the restoration of capitalism led by a Pilsudski fascist.

And even now that all of Poland's impressive socialist public services have now been destroyed and the whole society handed back to ruthless monopoly-capitalist exploitation with nothing but poverty for the poor at the bottom of the social heap, or prostitution, - there is still not a glimmer of recognition by the fake-'left' that the destruction of the Polish workers-state (for all its grotesque bureaucratic Revisionist faults) by Solidarnosc was a disaster for the proletariat of Poland, or that things are rarely what they seem in class-war politics, and that it is only in their CHANGE and TRANSFORMATION that political phenomena reveal their true character and direction.

The fake-'left' pigeonholes Bin Laden as just a for-all-time CIA stooge (and as still acting as an agent of American policy even as he was supposedly masterminding the Sept 11 incidents) only because to think less statically and more dialectically would require digesting the full terrifying possibilities of what a total breakdown of imperialist law-and-order in the world might mean, and thereafter oblige Trot anti-communist opportunism to stand up against the full force of petty-bourgeois public opinion at its most self-righteously hysterical vengeance-seeking, by explaining Sept 11 as just a trivial tragic accident but providing a profoundly useful marker for the world of just what destructive upheavals society was INCURABLY being driven to, and would be even further driven to in the near future, - by the onset of imperialist crisis until socialist revolution NOW could put an end to such a degenerative universal warmongering development.

That was true on Sept 11 as the EPSR immediately explained on that very day within five minutes of the incidents occurring.

And it is even more true today. Just how much more blitzkrieg mayhem and pointless destruction and economic disaster does the fake-'left' have to see before it starts tackling its own wooden undialectical anti-revolutionary stupidity about such matters?? Sept 11 as a CIA conspiracy so as to launch warmongering blitzkrieg domination of the Middle East????

Only an insane delusion in the 'power of democracy and a democratic media', etc, by the fake-'left' could produce such a barmy rigmarole.

Why would imperialism need to go to such astonishing extremes of fraught organisation and 'own goal' humiliation and deaths just to launch a minor blitzkrieg destruction of Afghanistan? Or a longer bogus 'war on terrorism'?

The entire Vietnam War and the dioxin defoliation poisoning of the whole of Indochina, not to mention the napalming and B-52 saturation bombing of the undeclared war against Laos, etc, etc, etc, - was all casually 'justified' by Washington by the totally fictional 'Gulf of Tonkin incident' when a Vietnamese tiny naval patrol boat was supposed to have sailed 'menacingly close' to a huge Seventh Fleet US armada hovering off the coast of Vietnam.

And this infamous cynical imbecility was got away with at the very height of the Cold War conflict with the nuclear-armed Soviet bloc and China.

If no more plausible subterfuge for invading Vietnam and conducting a 10 year holocaust was needed in those conditions of genuine international contradiction, why would the CIA need such an astonishingly complicated and difficult-to-set-up rigmarole as the Sept 11 guerrilla-war coup just in order to start a short bombing campaign so as to let the Northern Alliance win the long-drawn-out Afghan civil war????

Especially with the warmongering Bush mafia now in the White House??

And in general the whole history of imperialist warmongering chauvinism is one of the easiest propaganda triumphs imaginable in order to 'justify' getting into war in the first place, just plenty of national flags and imaginary 'threats to our women folk', plus boastful promises of an 'easy victory' etc, etc, is usually more than enough. The problem for the bourgeois-capitalist epoch is the danger of imperialist-war defeats and the revolutionary come-uppance which frequently has followed (1871, 1905, 1917, and a whole rash after 1945, etc), not how to start wars.

Germany only needed some joke Polish shouting outside the Gleiwitz radio station to launch World-War II. It marched from Munich-delivered Sudetenland into the rest of Czechoslovakia a little earlier because of some 'insults to our German womenfolk', etc.

In the days of British imperialist hegemony, the whole of Abyssinia was conquered in 1867 because the local 'Mad King Theodore' had taken some Westerners hostage; Greece was pacified with gunboats in 1850 because a British trader had his local warehouse looted; and war on Spain's empire was declared in 1739 because a British captain Jenkins had his ear slashed in a boarding incident in the Caribbean.

Capitalism has never had difficulty in starting wars. It is losing them that is the problem. And the added point about all 'war incidents', to repeat it, is that throughout capitalist history, the warmongering situations have mostly been wilfully prepared in advance, and have only waited for an 'incident', - any incident, a fig-leaf incident, - to spark it off once everything for war was good and ready.

Sept 11 was a genuinely humiliating shock for US imperialism, but like Pearl Harbour itself, it was a brutal, damaging, and calculated insult which previous non-stop American colonial bullying had made all but inevitable, given the rapidly deteriorating conditions of world imperialist economic crisis.

The conscious unleashing of inter-imperialist world war by Japan in 1941 obviously had vast differences from the episodic DIY guerrilla-war amateurism of the suicidal Islamics inflicting Sept 11 fanaticism.

But possible points of useful comparison could be that a) both provocations reflected serious and insoluble contradictions which had long been building up in the international economic crisis conditions as the basis for the whole situation; b) both developments had in turn been provoked by the USA's own earlier bullying behaviour; and c)widespread discussion had already been long-running in the USA about the possible need for America to take more aggressive warmongering action on a broader scale against the 'problems' continually presenting themselves to US imperialist policy and interests.

Apart from all the naïve mistaken-analyses exposed above, however, - one of the most wretched and damning nonsenses of all about this "Sept 11 is a CIA conspiracy" stuff is its pitiful subjective defeatism. These middle-class mice of the fake-'left' apparently want to tell the world in all seriousness that a) it is not uncontrollable contradictions that rule (and eventually bring down) the crisis-ridden imperialist system but the fiendish imperialist spies and intelligence services which totally manipulate world events, completely fooling the whole planet (with the exception of this handful of very clever 'left' sleuths, of course) that Sept 11 was an act of guerrilla-war terrorism by Middle East Islamic fanatics, when in reality it was the CIA who invented, dramatised, and faultlessly carried out the whole operation themselves without anyone knowing it; and b) that this was done because these world-manipulating imperialist fiends are about to impose an entire warmongering colonising perspective onto the whole of future history which will capture all the world's oil resources, permanently militarily dominate the entire Middle East and Central Asia, and force or persuade every other imperialist power to either willingly dance to America's tune, or else be ruthlessly crushed, just like everyone else in this Star Wars scenario, etc, etc; and c) that the only hope for mankind lies in people recognising the investigative genius of the authors of this 'penetrative study' and agreeing with them to...... do what, exactly?

Probably to go on a protest march outside an embassy somewhere.

This infantile rubbish is widespread from the SLP to Neue Einheit. It is a ludicrous misunderstanding of the whole content and purpose of the Marxist science of how uncontrollable contradictions endlessly tend towards imperialist-system break-up in crisis when it ceases to be able to rule on in the old way, and of how the international balance of class forces develops and changes spontaneously to create the conditions at some stage for mass proletarian revolution to consciously bring down the whole capitalist system under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Giving the CIA blockheads credit they do not deserve (for a spectacular triumph of guerrilla-war terrorism which was created not by American spooks but by an organised movement of conscious resistance to US imperialism based on a mass movement of spontaneous hatred of American domination), is a complete defeatist retreat from a revolutionary Marxist analysis of the contradictions which alone can explain imperialism's economic stumbling, political splitting, and self-destructive warmongering aggression, and alone explain the spontaneous mass movement of class and national forces which alone will eventually accept and sustain a conscious Marxist revolutionary leadership, which alone is able to guide the way to world proletarian dictatorship.

These conspiracy fantasies are just a sly way for petty bourgeois Revisionist mentalities (which like posturing very 'left') to conform with the rest of middle-class public opinion in 'condemning' Sept 11 but while giving the appearance of not doing so, - or not doing so quite in the same way because what is being condemned is not a DIY anarcho-terrorist spontaneous revolt (which some fake-'lefts' might find it embarrassing to condemn, being aware (usually because of the EPSR) of at least some of the rudimentary ABCs of Marxism-Leninism on such subjects) but yet another dastardly CIA plot. 

And in some cases around the SLP, this miserable cop-out is toyed with out of the despicable cowardice of disagreeing with Scargill's outrageous new 'condemn Sept 11'  opportunism, but being too wormlike to publicly say so.
 
The age of 'left' reformist protest politics is now over. It flourished in the class collaborating hayday of world imperialist economic triumphalism but is now doomed. In this unrelenting crisis of imperialism period now rapidly unfolding what the whole world working class needs to be hearing about is how universal revolution is now inevitable, and that only the overthrow of the warmongering monopoly-capitalist system everywhere can now possibly provide any planned stable future existence for the planet and the whole of mankind.

Striking to equalise pay differentials is not invalid, but it has nothing whatever to do with the socialist revolution.

And a supposedly revolutionary socialist political-leadership which deliberately limits the political support for mass trade-union struggles to just tacked-on vague 'socialist' appeals (on top of the lengthily detailed specifics of the dispute claim) is not 'revolutionary' at all but consciously anti-revolutionary and therefore reactionary.

Workers need to know about the rackets of pay differentials and union-busting bogus 'work-discipline' stunts, but they need to know a million times more about the World War III inter-imperialist bloodbath towards which the insoluble international economic crisis of 'overproduction' is dragging the entire 'freemarket' system of political, social, and economic anarchy and corruption.

But while Blair is up to his neck in numerous sleaze allegations of a 'cash for contacts' kind, and the crook in the White House gets contaminated more each day by Enron corruption of such spectacular volume and such brazen arrogance (refusing to answer questions to Congress because these monopolists won't take the rap for routine graft and fraud which they know the whole American ruling-class system lives by, morning, noon and night) that the regime may not survive, Revisionist politics (as around the SLP and elsewhere) urges workers to the contrary view that military super-imperialism is skilfully plotting, via the CIA's own Sept 11 conspiracy, etc, to effortlessly manipulate the whole world into an effectively-dominated new direct-colonial era, turning the clock back a century or more, or else smoothly-planned and implemented World War III will be inflicted on all resistance.

Bizarrely, even the ultra bourgeois cynics and implacable counter-revolutionaries at Private Eye are publishing snippets implying that this US master-race super-imperialist writ does not even run in Afghanistan, or cow the thinking of Third World people anywhere who still jokily like to promote the image of Bin Laden, putting one over on the Americans:

Bin Laden’s Terrorist champs: Agassaim Villagers soccer

PANJIM: (HSD) - Bin Laden's Terrorist, Agassaim, defeated Our Lady of Gloria, Agassaim, 3-1 to win Agassaim Villagers eight-aside soccer tournament, on Greenfield grounds, Agassaim.

Bin Laden's Terrorist played attacking soccer right from the word go and shot into the lead.  Benny, who headed home a John cross. They increased their tally through Manuel. 

They further consolidated their position through the boots of Camilo. 

Gloria finally managed to reduce margin through Melvin.

Francisco Silveira, MLA, was the chief guest and gave away the prises to the winners.

Following individual prizes were awarded: Best goalkeeper - David Fernandes of Bin Laden's Terrorist; Best defender - Joao Afonso of Our Lady of Gloria. Best forward - Benny Fernandes of Bin Laden's Terrorist. (The Panjim Herald, Goa).

Letter from Kabul from Our Own Correspondent

WHILE Afghan and British forces stop cars in Kabul searching for hidden arms, far more weapons are being illegally stored in the capital with no attempt to hide them.

They belong to the Northern Alliance, whose "police" now patrol with British paratroopers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Under the agreement reached in Bonn before Christmas. neither the forces nor the arms should be here. The agreement said all militias should withdraw from the capital. But the Northern Alliance interpreted this as meaning "the streets" of Kabul. So any number of heavy weapons, including tanks, can be kept there as long as they are not actually on the road.

The international team, led by the British commander of ISAF, Major General John McCall. which concluded the agreement with the interim Afghan government, has accepted this Alice in Wonderland interpretation. In every stage of the tortuous negotiations they had been outmanoeuvred by the supposedly unsophisticated Alliance leaders, and the hamstrung multinational presence here is a far cry from what was envisaged at Bonn.

Instead of guns gradually disappearing from our society, more and more are being acquired by the most dangerous of men who are using them against each other. One of the busiest purchasers is Abdul Savyaf, a fundamentalist with Saudi money whose killers carried out some of the worst atrocities in the past. Sayyaf is nominally allied with the Northern Alliance but has been kept out of the interim government. He now lurks in Kabul and his  powerbase, the adjoining province of Paghman, supposedly in secret negotiations with renegade Taliban.

Down south in Kandahar the local warlord Gul Agha Shirzai does not given bother to keep his negotiations with the Taliban secret. Shirzai has taken millions from the gullible Americans for allegedly bribing tribal leaders and Taliban commanders to hand over Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammed Omar. Even US officials began to smell a rat though when Shirzai allowed the one-eyed mullah to escape when he was supposedly surrounded, and then followed this by freeing seven senior Taliban instead of handing them to the Americans. But the US can hardly ask for its money back.. much of which has already been spent buying arms with the help of Pakistani ISI agents.

There is arming and recruiting throughout the country. In the north the Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum has been made deputy defence minister by the interim leader, Hamid . Karzai: but in reality his power rests with his 25,000 militia based around Mazar-I-Sharif, recently re-equipped by the Russians and Turks. In the west Ismail Khan, the "emir of Herat", is receiving aid and arms from his fellow Shia Iranians. While in the east Haji Qadir, the new governor of Jalalabad. has no shortage of funds from the opium fields he has secured.

Mr Karzai's writ does not run much beyond Kabul. and is tenuous even here. He is sharing the Presidential Palace with the former president. the Islamic-scholar Burhanuddin Rahbani. who shows no sign of moving out.

Mr Karzai sees ISAF as the army he needs: hence his demand, repeated in London last week that the multinational force should be increased and deployed through the country. But it would be suicidal for ISAF to do so, and even Tony Blair, who has seen his grandiose declarations of British deployment so embarrassingly delayed because the Northern Alliance and the US flatly refused him permission, will give up Britain's lead role in ISAF after three months. It will fall to the Turks.

The US, having presided over the disintegration of Afghanistan, will soon move its war against terrorism elsewhere. So far it has spent $27m a day on war and less than $1m in total for reconstruction. Various nations pledged large sums at Tokyo, of course, but as we Afghans have discovered there is a long way between the pledging and the receiving.

But if US imperialism is economically as bankrupt as Enron, and militarily as naff as its failed (so far) Bin Laden operation, then all scenarios for conditioning the working class (in Britain or anywhere) to accepting the USA's 'unchallengeable' international diktat with a shrug while concentrating on wage differentials, are missing the whole point in the biggest way possible.

Imperialist world collapse is the next huge issue for workers everywhere. Build Leninism. EPSR

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

Pointless last-ditch slaughter by doomed paramilitary colonialism in Ireland still depends totally on ongoing RUC complicity for its protection.

OMBUDSMAN Nuala O'Loan is to look into the events surrounding the death of a UDA member who had information on the sectarian killing off Catholic postal worker Daniel McColgan. 

Announcement of the investigation has raised serious questions about the RUC/PSNI investigation into the McColgan killing and once again raises the spectre of crown forces' collusion with loyalist death squads.

UDA member Stephen McCullough was found dead on Cavehill only hours after making an offer to a member of the RIR to supply information to the RUC/PSNI in relation to the loyalist killing of Daniel McColgan.

It was initially claimed that the 39-year-old loyalist from Rathcoole had fallen from the top of the mountain while out running.

After being approached by McCullough, the RIR soldier in North Belfast summoned the RUC/PSNI. According to the RUC/PSNI, McCullough was arrested on the pretext of a drink driving offence. Although the nearest RUC/PSNI barracks was Antrim Road Barracks, from where the investigation into the McColgan killing is being run, McCullough was taken to Musgrave Street, which is in a completely different RUC/PSNI division.

Despite the fact that McCullough had initiated contact with the PSNI/RUC and had stated his intention to reveal vital information in relation to the McColgan murder, he 'left' the barracks before being interviewed by the CID, it has been claimed.

Five hours later, on Wednesday 16 January at 1.30pm, a couple walking in the North Belfast country park discovered McCullough's body. Effectively, McCullough disappeared after being taken to Musgrave Barracks and turned up dead a few hours later.

Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly said that the circumstances of McCullough's death raised a number of serious questions. "Not least of these is why the RUC failed to act on the offer of information from a UDA member about the killing," he said. "It is also extremely worrying that this man ended up dead only hours after offering this information.

In a separate incident, Sinn Féin MP Pat Doherty was held and questioned by an RUC/PSNI patrol in Belfast on 11 January. The West Tyrone MP and Sinn Féin Vice President had just driven into Belfast from Dublin when he was pulled over by the crown forces.

Michelle Gildernew MP has hit out at the harassment of nationalists by the RUC/PSNI in the Ciogher area. On Wednesday night 16 January, two local nationalists were held at a RUC/PSNI checkpoint in the  village and subjected to verbal and abusive language by a police officer. Gildernew said that the incident reflected the true nature of this force's attitude towards nationalists and exposed their "charm offensive" as a sham. She said it was unfortunate that the SDLP had been hoodwinked into thinking that enough changes had been made in order for this force to be held accountable.

SINN FÉIN Assembly member Gerry McHugh has described as "disgraceful the behaviour of British Army helicopter pilots who flew their aircraft over the house of his personal assistant Kevin Lawrenson  last Tuesday night 5 January.

The British Army pilots hovered over Lawrenson's home near Newtownbutler for over 20 minutes between 8.45pm and 9.1Opm, "causing great distress to the Lawrenson family and clearly targeting them for harassment.

McHugh said livestock in nearby fields were also distressed by the noise.

Local Sinn Féin Councillor Thomas 0'Reilly accused the British Army and RUC/PSNI of increased militarisation in Fermanagh.

World Socialist Review
(Edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles) 

Whether we call it a road map or attach some other label to the concept, the struggle needs to set itself on a trajectory for victory that is tangible and clearly understood

THE CONSERVATIVE VITRIOL that ensued as four Sinn Féin MPs availed of their new office facilities at Westminster this time was very much out of sync with the political realities on the ground in the Six Counties, and wrongly suggested that Sinn Féin's trajectory is now across the Irish Sea.

David Trimble had his own disingenuous spin on the course of events. This was the penultimate step on a course that would lead Sinn Féin to take up seats in the British House of Commons, he proclaimed, an analysis seized upon by many a anti-republican political observers.

Of course, it suited David Trimble and his apologists to peddle this myth as the four Sinn Féin MPs enjoyed widespread media coverage, but Gerry Adams made the republican position clear when questioned by reporters:

"There are a lot of things which there can be no certainly of and there are some things of which we can be certain. There will never, ever be Sinn Féin MPs sitting in the British House of Commons.

"What is at issue here is sovereignty," he said. "Our position is that the British parliament has no right in Ireland."

Sinn Féin's recent success in building its electoral strength in Ireland and also in transferring political power to Irish institutions is, he added, a measure of where the party sees its political centre of gravity.

A new Sinn Féin discussion document, which was the main subject of debate at the party's Ard Chomhairle meeting on Saturday last, reflected this analysis.

Entitled A Road Map to the Republic, the document speaks for itself about the trajectory of Sinn Féin and sets about creating an internal process of debate to the party's strategy to achieve its core aim of a United Ireland.

Doubts about current Sinn Féin strategy have become more vocal in recent times within the party, due to the failure of the British to implement promises on policing and demilitarisation and its inadequate response to loyalist violence, the document states. 

Such doubts have created a dynamic for the production of an "all-encompassing strategy for what we presently require". 

While republicans may normally, even traditionally, avoid creating 'blueprints' for political strategy, says the document, this is the time to do so.

"The contention of this paper is that whether we call it a road map or attach some other label to the concept, the struggle needs to set itself on a trajectory for victory which is tangible and clearly understood by our base."

While a United Ireland is not "imminent" says the document, it is attainable in the foreseeable future.

The document says "it is up to us" as Irish republicans to begin now to effectively engage with unionists and to attempt to persuade them and public opinion in Britain of the democratic and economic benefits of Irish independence and unity. "At least 10% of the unionist community", the document speculates, "is open to this kind of persuasion."

While criticising SDLP pseudo-academic jargon about "post-nationalism" and its over-zealous empathy with unionist "alienation", and also the "vacillation and dangerous inconsistency" of British Government policy, the document also sets the agenda for a closer and timely scrutiny of Irish republicanism from within its ideals, tactics and the  general wheres, whens and hows that have up until now been left, largely, to chance.

Republicans must look north, south, east and west, but we must also delve within. Creating a clear, cohesive blueprint for political change, complete with specific aims and objectives is the main task that faces republicans today.

Quentin Davies, the self-styled 'Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary' and Tory Party MP, led the charge against the move on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, complaining that Tony Blair was "deliberately contributing to a great propaganda coup in which the Government are licking [Sinn Féin's] boots". 

While Blair responded by saying that his decision was a boost to the Peace Process, it is evident that for Davies, and many of his Tory colleagues, Ireland is a place that should remain loyally subordinate or meekly disenfranchised.

While this myopic British hullabaloo continued, very little was said about revelations that a crucial logbook from Omagh RUC Barracks, it was revealed this week, had been declared 'missing' just as Nuala 0'Loan, the Policing Ombudsman, had begun work on her report into the Omagh bombing. Less was said about the UDA's campaign against schoolchildren, teachers and postal workers. There wasn't a word of well-deserved praise for the Irish Congress of Trade Unions' rally in Belfast last Friday, calling for an end to UDA threats against its members.