Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. -V. I. Lenin 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074   [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]     www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk               
No 1125   Feb 26 2002                                                                                                                                            25p

Southwest seminar Sat Apr 20 – 2pm

The USA's overwhelming bullying might and its Mickey Mouse leadership should not fool people that no serious inter-imperialist war will result from capitalism's insoluble 'over-production' economic crisis. The coming useful debate about America's fascist-warmongering initiatives, arising from desperate trade-war and slump difficulties rather than Sept 11 hysteria, would not take place or would be meaningless if inter-imperialist World War III
perspectives were not the driving force. The Marxist history of war and revolution alone can make any sense for mankind of what the socialist dream of cooperative harmony for the planet can be about. All suggested 'alternatives' to a WWIII scenario only pose even sooner the fascist-chauvinist-warmongering nightmare. Like Kautsky and the Second International, fake-'lefts' are the surest route to the longest & worst warmongering imaginable.

The world is still waiting for all the firm detailed evidence of a crisis-driven inter-imperialist conflict (fuelling Bush's sick dementia for all-out generalised warmongering) which can only end in some kind of World War III.

So exactly who will oppose the growing American militarist tyranny, - and how, - in order for capitalism's insoluble economic contradictions to yet again seek 'resolution' in World War of a scale and character to justify the label WWIII (as a usefully indicative and descriptive handle of where the world is heading) - is not remotely clear yet.

But to avoid challenging the totally chaotic and confused sleep-walking condition of all 'world opinion' on this matter (with such an obvious Marxist analysis of warmongering imperialism) would be journalistic caution, social diffidence, and philosophical agnosticism taken to damaging extremes.

If inter-imperialist World War is the only possible outcome of the insoluble crisis-driven economic contradictions of the anarchic and self-destructive 'free market' system of global monopoly-bourgeois tyranny, then the sooner and louder ANYONE starts saying it (in order that everyone else can join in stating the obvious as this nightmare unravels), - the better.

The Marxist theory of how and why inter-imperialist world war plus the never-ending arms race has dominated civilisation's history, effectively since 1871, is unassailable.

The precise rival bloc nature and battlefield character of World War III is very hard to envisage, there is no doubt.

But the world was just as totally naïve prior to 1914 to ever imagine that anything like that unbelievably appalling and monstrous 4 years of total mindless-slaughter trench warfare and sea-blockade economic attrition was going to take place.

And after World War I, the delusion of "the war to end all wars" and "never again" grew to phenomenal 'appeasement' and 'isolationist' extremes in the 193Os as 'public opinion' just "could not conceive how they could ever go to war in this modern world", etc, etc.

And while it still proves nothing, of course, one other colossal piece of circumstantial evidence that inter-imperialist World War is coming is the fact that the fake-'left' are ignoring this dimension of the monopoly-capitalist economic crisis completely, preaching the same 'New World order' version of 'super-imperialism' that Kautsky used for brainwashing the entire Second International with, into believing that its voting for war-credits 'for defence', which each separate party did in support of its 'own' government, was not the class-collaborating warmongering-chauvinist catastrophe it turned out to be "because super-imperialism will impose a settlement of differences so that there will not be a major war, etc, etc," or words to that effect.

World War I's full unfolding horrors subsequently provided the material basis for the triumph of Marxist-Leninist science on such matters, creating the Bolshevik Revolution as the only possible way to prevent inter-imperialist war to the death.

But fake-'left' delusions about imperialist crisis and war are today more blanketing and influential that ever before, disarming the international working class completely from any revolutionary preparations at all to plan to cope with World War III on any basis at all and least of all on the sole successful basis (which is to consciously make ready for more and more Bolshevik Revolutions everywhere).

Naturally, imagining the physical dimensions of the military and political confrontation is the hardest thing in this age of weapons of such mass destruction and of dominant political imbalance and economic strangleholds through monopoly power (so that bucking the trend against overwhelming US hegemony is difficult to envisage).

But trying to picture such scenes of conflict or make out any pattern of events that could amount to World War III is peering too far ahead.

It is taking too literally the shorthand of the Marxist historical notion that in the age of imperialism, global 'over-production' crises are 'solved' by warmongering mass destruction of 'surplus' capital.

Not as a direct aim, they are not.

The first aim is to economically bankrupt each other by cut-throat competition beefed up by any string-pulling political influence or military pressure racket that can be imposed.

The world slump is the first sick 'aim' of the free-market system for ending 'glut'.

So there is a long, long way to go yet, not necessarily in time, because it could all have reached boiling point within 24 to 36 months, - but a long way to go yet in EVENTS, - mind-boggling acts of the imperialist powers deliberately economically harming each other, knowingly causing massive suffering in huge unemployment, crushed aspirations, social and political confusion, plus not a little poverty and fascist-chauvinist despair (where communist revolutionary resolve ought to be but for the generations of Revisionist and Trotskyist anti-theory fake-'leftism'), just the ingredients for warmongering hatred.

War then emerges out of the 'failure' of the slump-destruction to revive an economic world boom, exactly as was the case in the 1930s when minor localised 'recoveries' from economic collapse around the globe always instantly ran into reinvigorated cut-throat competition from the continuing huge 'surplus' capacity worldwide, still lying dormant & desperate to fight for ANY cut-throat chance to start trading again, - with the result that unemployment levels were going back up again by the end of the 1930s without there ever having been any serious 'recovery' at all.

And war was put on the agenda by the trade-war chauvinist POLITICAL extremism which inevitably grew out of such desperate and unexplained situations.

In the 21st century, such slump circumstances will seem completely inexplicable as well, on top of being deliberately unexplained by the WHOLE of bourgeois science, fake-'left' included which will inevitably bang Arthur Scargill's "British jobs for British workers" drum, in hostility to the "foreign bosses of the European Union", etc, etc.

The universal assumption now is that the 'free market' has 'won the battle of history against the planned workers states' and that 'never again' will a major world slump 'be allowed' to disfigure civilisation's progress, let alone another major world war.

So the inevitable influence on ALL thinking of such universal 'popular' understanding makes it necessary to weigh up how things are going to look once the total  indignation and bewilderment of the whole of the Western world kicks in at the sight of the major 'free world' powers deliberately setting about destroying and damaging each others' economies in a vicious trade-war slump conflict; and weigh up in addition how the world's perspectives will look once racist political extremism has started to really cut loose, blaming 'foreigners' and 'unfair competition' for the closure of British factories and jobs, and locally blaming 'immigrants' for specific unemployment difficulties up and down every Western country.

What new Mosleys, Longs, Wallaces, Musslinis, Hitlers, etc, will emerge then to spice up the warmongering-chauvinist illusions, not to mention the Haiders, Berlusconis, Thurmonds, Griffiths, Koizumis, Le Pens, already making huge progress with nationalist aggression as the main political ingredient now.

The imagination is strained to get the concept of World War III in focus because no major trade-war battles have yet dominated the headlines in their purely political form.

So far in these very early days of world capitalist economic disaster, all the dramatic bankruptcies and threatened economic conflicts have remained broadly 'tolerable' or 'explicable' because of the final credit-creation flourishes of imperialism's seemingly inexhaustible debt-mountain capacity to 'keep things ticking over', etc.

But the scale of the international dot.com speculative investment catastrophe, and the Enron collapse, and the 11 straight years of doom-laden Japanese stagnation and fear, plus the current Argentine crisis, - all so far unstemmed by further international credit creation (while admittedly also not having yet set off a domino-effect avalanche of worldwide market crashes yet either), - nevertheless give warning that huge economic forces are at work which can almost be said to be unknown and unknowable, and certainly which are beyond anyone's control.

And while completely open bourgeois press admissions of forthcoming economic slump despair are still all too rare (although by no means unknown, (see endless past EPSRs)) the jumpiness in the Western ranks and the already open expressions of political global conflict do not leave much room for doubt about the basic terrifying contradictions of imperialist economies approaching international crisis and breakdown, as classically understood by Marxist-Leninist science:

Is America about to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory? To judge by the incoherent, paranoid  mood  of  the World Economic Forum  in New York, American politicians, businessmen and media commentators appear to be on the brink of a collective nervous breakdown.

Not since the early 1980s have I seen America's business elite so lacking in confidence, not just about their immediate economic prospects, but about the long-term outlook for capitalism and the world. The arrogance of American politicians on the world stage is a natural reaction to this fundamental lack of economic and social self-confidence, as it was in the early Reagan years.

Whether the wider American public shares this manic-depressive paranoia is uncertain, but opinion polls suggest that it does. How else can one explain the record approval ratings of a President who tells them that - far from celebrating their Afghanistan victory - they should prepare for a third world war that will last for decades and expose them to unprecedented dangers?

War fever has given Mr Bush an excuse to tear up his promises about balanced budgets and to propose additional tax cuts that would benefit America's biggest corporations and richest citizens. Last, but not least, it is clearly in the Republicans' interest to sustain the war fever until the crucial congressional elections on November 5.

All this is obvious enough - and all of these themes were widely discussed in the background of the  New York forum, if only sotto voce.  It is also obvious that America's paranoia and arrogance will pose at least a temporary danger to the global anti-terrorist coalition. What is less obvious, but may prove more insidious and lasting, is the effect of the new paranoia on the global victory of American capitalist values, which seemed so decisive in the past decade.

By identifying America primarily as a military power, by asserting that it will pursue its perceived national interests regardless of international laws, coalitions or treaties, by emphasising its unchallengeable superiority over every other nation and global institution, by claiming an unconditional moral hegemony over any adversary he cares to identify, and by acting so blatantly in the interests of the US business establishment, Mr Bush is weakening America and playing into the hands of its opponents.

He is fostering the belief that America's wealth and power are illegitimate and coercive when, in reality, America is powerful because people all over the world volunteer to buy its products and absorb its values. But that is not how the world perceives things. And the more America brandishes its military power, the more it will be met with antagonism, revulsion and misunderstanding.

Even US businessmen seem to be losing confidence in the legitimacy of the system that made them rich. The millionaire corporate executives at the World Economic Forum applauded enthusiastically whenever speakers mentioned injustice, inequality and the need for more government, regulation and income redistribution on a global scale. Every mention of the global triumph of US capitalist values was greeted with embarrassed silence.

All this may be no bad thing. Perhaps global inequalities have become intolerable. Perhaps the imbalance between materialism and spirituality does need redressing. Perhaps Europe - and especially Britain - could benefit by distancing themselves further from brash American values. But as Mr Bush pushes America ever further towards the extremes of military unilateralism, there is a growing danger of a repeat of the global ideological backlash of the 1960s and a near certainty that US influence in the world will diminish. The greatest danger to America's dominant position today is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is the arrogance of American power.

Now to read such doubt and misery from a fundamentally right-wing triumphalist standpoint in the Times indicates how 'inexplicably' unstable the prospects are, and in particular how paradoxically flawed and vulnerable is this general idea of "total American domination" which inevitably makes any concept of 'inter-imperialist World War III' too hard to grasp. But the American bourgeois press itself publishes even more down-to-earth doubts that US imperialism is capable of hanging onto its unfair international advantages, let alone not deserving to by any standards of good sense or justice). This from the International Herald-Tribune:

What international political economy do you create so that, without having to throw your weight around too much, normal market forces bolster the economic preeminence of your country, allow your citizens to consume far more than they produce, and keep challengers down? 

You want autonomy to decide on your own exchange rate and monetary policy, while having other countries depend on your support in managing their own economies. You want to be able to engineer volatility and economic crises in the rest of the world in order to hinder the growth of centres that might challenge your preeminence. You want intense competition between exporters in the rest of the world to give you an inflow of imports at constantly decreasing prices relative to the price of your exports.

You want to invite the best brains in the rest of the world to your universities, companies and research institutes. You befriend middle classes elsewhere and make sure they have good reasons for supporting your framework.

What features do you hardwire into the international political economy? First, free capital mobility. Second, free trade (except imports that threaten domestic industries important for your reselection). Third, international investment free from any discriminatory favouring of national companies through protection, public procurement, public ownership or other devices, with special emphasis on the freedom of your companies to get the custom of national elites for the management of their financial assets, their private education; healthcare, pensions, and the like. Fourth, your currency as the main reserve currency. Fifth, no constraint on your ability to create your currency at will (such as a dollar-gold link), so that you can finance unlimited trade deficits with the rest of the world. Sixth, international lending at variable interest rates denominated in your currency, which means that borrowing countries in crisis have to repay you more when their capacity to repay is less. This combination allows your people to consume far more than they produce (and it periodically produces financial instability and crises in the rest of the world). To supervise the international framework you want international organisations that look like cooperatives of member states and carry the legitimacy of multilateralism, but are financed in a way that allows you control.

Is the above a Machiavellian interpretation of the US role in the world economy since the end of the Bretton-Woods regime around 1970? Certainly. America's engineering of its dominance has at times been for the general good, when it used its clout to "think for the world".  But often its clout has been used solely in the interests of its richest citizens and most powerful corporations. This latter tendency has been dominant lately.

We see it in its new single-minded unilateralism in international relations, much exacerbated by the mixture of rage at September 11 and gung-ho jubilation at "success" in Afghanistan. And we see it in what the United States is now ramming through the international supervisory organisations.

The US has engineered the WTO to commit itself to negotiate a general agreement on trade in services, which will facilitate a global market in private healthcare, welfare, pensions, education and water, supplied - naturally - by US companies, and which will undermine political support for universal access to social services in developing countries. It has engineered a "private sector development" agenda devoted to accelerating the private (and non-governmental) provision of basic services on a commercial basis. The World Bank has made no evaluation of its earlier efforts to support private participation in social sectors. Its new private development thrust, especially in the social sectors, owes everything to US pressure.

These power relations and exercises of statecraft are obscured in the current talk about globalisation. The increasing mobility of information, finance, goods and services frees the American government of constraints while more tightly constraining everyone else. Globalisation enables the US to harness the rest of the world to its own rhythms and structure.

Of course these arrangements do not produce terrorism. But they are deeply implicated in the very slow economic growth in most of the developing world since 1980, and in the widening, world income inequality.

Slow economic growth and vast income disparities breed cohorts of partly educated young people who grow up in anger and despair. Some try by legal or illegal means to migrate to the west; some join militant ethnic or religious movements directed at each other and their own rulers. But now the idea has spread among a few vengeful fundamentalists that the US should be attacked directly.

This piece went on inevitably to advocate urgent 'democratic' reforms; but what such reformist hopes can never be squared with is any adequate explanation of why, if being 'reasonable' counted for anything at all, the situation has ever sunk to this level of imminent disaster in the first place, (exactly as no 'reformist' dreams in history have ever been able to explain).

Yet the idea persists that the major Western powers do nevertheless reform things, of course, before any bad situation becomes really disastrous.

Do they? It is a complete illusion. What imperialism does is always make the right opportunistic moves towards the best long-term profit probabilities and possibilities. In certain periods of international Cold War conflict, for example, that could include temporary military cooperation with the Soviet workers state in World War II, or the introduction of health service and other welfare-state reforms in the tricky-for-imperialism aftermath to WWII.

But avoiding the doomed monopoly-domination racket described by the Herald-Tribune which the very EXISTENCE of the capitalist 'free market' system is solely and entirely 'properly' geared to achieve, - is a completely ludicrous 'reformist' delusion, utterly beyond possibility because of imperialism's very nature.

The first imperialist objections to the self-interest warmongering initiatives which the American ruling class is aggressively inflicting on its 'allies' contain little such 'reformist' naïveté.

On the contrary, while still giving no indication of any divisive pain which separate economic catastrophes will bring each rival power if Airbus, for example, should collapse completely because of trade-war conflict with Boeing in the international air-industry sector of the global over production crisis, the EU comments suggest no illusions whatever that the USA could ever have avoided getting into a dominant tyrannical position. The NATO and 'freeworld' smaller fry merely remind the USA that the global exploitation game works better if the imperialists don't fall out when facing difficulties, and that not everyone's international trade and political influence interests are the same. To come in for an imperialist zapping because of potential anti-Americanism; or a lack of 'democracy'; or pursuing too independent an arms trade; or for becoming potential 'rogue states'; etc, etc, could apply to half the Third World countries on Earth. One imperialist power's "axis of evil" could be another imperialist power's key economic partners, or states - they would like to influence peacefully. Instantly, America's war threats become a potential cause for opposing war moves by other imperialists.

It isn't happening yet because rival imperialist economic interests have not yet been driven that far by desperate survival needs in the relentlessly-deepening world slump and markets collapse; but the tone of these respectful but firm bourgeois press reports of polite inter-imperialist diplomacy (for now) point the way ahead:

The European Union's two foreign policy chiefs called yesterday for a calmer tone after angry transatlantic exchanges over George Bush's "axis of evil" speech, but signalled firm opposition to US military action against Iraq.

Javier Solana, the union's "high representative" for common foreign and security policy, warned of the need to avoid "megaphone diplomacy" and close the widening gap between the EU and the US.

"The relationship between the United States and the EU is crucial and we should not play with that relationship, and the US should not play with it either," the Spanish official said. "We have to talk as much as possible, to coordinate and to maintain a good tone, otherwise we will run into trouble. It will be very damaging if we don't talk."

Chris Patten, the external affairs commissioner, who earlier this month attacked Mr Bush for going into "unilateralist overdrive"; said separately that he wanted to convince Washington that a multilateral approach to foreign policy would pay dividends for the US as well as Europeans.

Hailing Europe's contribution to the war on terrorism, he said: "I hope that the success America has had in sustaining the coalition will convince the administration that multilateralism is the most sensible approach to America's national interest as well as the global interest.

"Our partnership is absolutely crucial, not only for our own wellbeing but for the wellbeing of the world:'

Admitting that he had "lost his cool" in his recent Guardian interview in which he was strongly critical of the US president, a placatory Mr Patten nevertheless made clear that he stood by the EU's policy of engagement with Iran and North Korea, which Mr Bush singled out along with Iraq as an "axis of evil".

But the transatlantic gap was most visible on Iraq, against a background of reported US preparations for a war involving 200,000 men and a concerted effort, backing the Iraqi opposition, to overthrow Saddam Hussein. "We must try more aggressively to push Saddam Hussein into accepting the inspectors," Mr Patten said.

But he warned: "It would be a tragedy if Saddam Hussein got the impression that he could play off one group of countries against another."

Privately, diplomats in Brussels are convinced that the US intends to attack Iraq after a war of words between now and May, when the UN security council needs to review the sanctions regime.

Mr Patten also hinted at grave doubts about the declared US goal of seeking to change the Baghdad. Regime.

Mr Patten and Mr Solana were seeking to soothe ruffled feathers in Washington after dismay across Europe and furious criticism of Mr Bush's state of the union address last month in which he referred to the axis of evil.

Both men intervened after a fortnight of name-calling in which Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, dismissed Mr Bush's speech as electioneering and Hubert Vedrine, the French Foreign Minister, described US foreign policy as "simplistic". Colin Powell, the US Secretary of State, said his French counterpart was "getting the vapours" and Mr Bush was said to to be fuming about weak-kneed "European elites".

Even more revealing was the contemptuous brush-off which Washington's warmongering hysteria received in the Far East where overwhelming US imperialist might was unable to win the Korean War; got chased out of its bases in the Philippines (a former US colony); and was utterly humiliated and defeated in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia despite America's murderous repression there, and its long-running attempts to bomb, napalm, and defoliate the whole of Indo-China back into the Stone Age:

PRESIDENT BUSH returned to the United States yesterday after an awkward Asian tour ended with fresh criticism from Chinese students and North Korea, which described him as a "politically backward child".

China also responded to Mr Bush's calls to allow greater religious freedom by arresting 47 Christians in Beijing, for what it described as forming an illegal gathering, during his visit.

Mr Bush's attempts  to soothe sentiments in the region after he had accused North Korea of being part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq appeared to have foundered.

 In its first reaction to Mr Bush's visit, the North Korean Foreign Ministry said that the US President had insulted Kim Jong Il, the country's leader, and dismissed his requests for renewed dialogue. "The remarks of Bush, prompted by the desire to conquer the Government of another country by dint of strength and dollars, remind people of a puppy knowing no fear of the tiger," its statement said.

"[North Korea] can never pardon anyone who dares chastise its supreme headquarters and slander its political system, even though he is a man bereft of an elementary reason or a politically backward child."

Mr Bush was also put on the defensive by Chinese students, who forced him to concede that there were cultural and educational shortcomings in the United States when they challenged his account of the depth of American values. Visiting China's foremost university, Mr Bush urged the country's leaders to embrace tolerance, diversity and dissent, holding up the US as an example of hope and opportunity.

But in the feisty question and answer session that followed, which contained suggestions of point-scoring by both sides, Mr Bush was challenged on his portrayal. One student said that he had read about high levels of American crime and juvenile delinquency in Mr Bush's autobiography, adding that a fellow student from Tsinghua University had recently been killed while on an exchange visit in the US.

Mr Bush responded: "There's no question that we have people living in poverty."

He said that one of the saddest aspects about American life was the significant number of nine-year-olds who could not read. "It's a shame for America that that is the case." He was also pressed twice on American policy towards Taiwan by the students.

Mr Bush remained politely good humoured as he chose six questioners from the audience of about 200 students during the unscripted session, which was broadcast live on Chinese national television. The day after President Jiang had said that a group of Catholic bishops had been jailed because they had broken the law, and not because of their faith, Mr Bush told his audience that China had enjoyed religious tolerance for centuries, and he prayed that one day it would return. 

This on-the-spot frank Times admission (of Bush's Far Eastern failure to intimidate with warmongering bluster) hints at the difficulties that mere imperialist threats on their own would have (a possible alternative scenario to being able to envisage an actual military World War III), once such an advanced stage of global economic breakdown had been reached by capitalist crisis that only DIRECT conquest imposition of the slump's burdens on each other (World Wars I and II) could provide a 'winners' and 'losers' route out of total international stagnation and triumphalist alternatives to socialist revolution everywhere.

The above four-point list for 'axis-of-evil' inclusion by Washington laughably excludes such much more obvious candidates as Pakistan, the Zionist tyranny in Palestine, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, etc, etc,(despite the most tyrannical anti-democratic regimes in each powerfully-armed extremist powder-keg), - because their reactionary current roles and their potential future nastiness just happen to suit present American interests.

But shedding this complete US arbitrariness even more (so as to include such even less tractable but even more realistic potential 'rogue' states in an 'axis of evil' list of countries which might defy Washington and aid some of American imperialism's enemies, - a list that would have to start with China), - makes an even more profound point about doubting World War III's likelihood just because it is difficult to see how any serious inter-imperialist war-destruction could even begin, given the supposedly overwhelming dominating might of US imperialist warpower to start with, far in excess of all its potential major rivals put together, etc, etc.

Trying to fit China into this warmongering equation whereby US imperialism will never need to do much more than just flex its military muscles in order to get all of its economic competitors scuttling instantly for cover like frightened rabbits,just does not work.

And China is ALREADY one of the USA's biggest balance-of-trade rivals/partners in the economic crisis.

An all-out trade-war period which does not involve some elements of US-China conflict is almost impossible in reality.

And the much greater likelihood is that China will have its own world trade-and-development interests to pursue, and they will almost certainly be diametrically opposed to the American imperialist bourgeoisie's favoured consequences for any projected US world military domination and trade-war intimidation.

China too weak? US imperialism knows different, - as the international bourgeois press has already grasped:

CHINESE scientists are close to a breakthrough in rocket technology that would allow Beijing to overcome President Bush's proposed anti-missile shield, American military analysts say.

The People's Liberation Army is believed to be in the final stages of developing an intercontinental ballistic missile with multiple warheads, matching Russian, American and British nuclear technology.  One Washington analyst said: "It looks like the Chinese are much further ahead  than we originally thought."

China's most advanced missiles have a range in excess of 8,000 miles, which puts them within striking distance of the continental United States. Chinese scientists are working on equipping these missiles with multiple independently targeted re-entry vehicles (Mirvs), meaning that the warhead can separate into more than a dozen individual weapons in space.

At present China has around 20 long-range missiles, a number that experts say would allow the American shield to protect against the Chinese arsenal. Washington aims to be able to guard against attacks by rogue states employing up to 24 missiles.

If Beijing upgraded all its missiles with multiple warheads, the analyst said, "it could easily overwhelm the shield. That would change the balance of power in Asia."

US government agencies have followed China's progress in missile technology closely before a decision on the development of the missile shield.

Beijing is said to have stepped up Mirv tests in recent weeks. Earlier this month the Japanese media reported a test flight, during which a Chinese missile completed the first half of its trajectory before disintegrating upon the deployment of the separate warheads.

It was a Dongfeng-31, which has a range of more than 5,000 miles. China is also said to be preparing for a test of the naval version. US intelligence officials are said to have spotted preparations for the test at a Chinese naval port.

Why would the mighty technological genius of Japanese capitalism and its huge under-utilised capacity (already effectively strangled for 11 years by American trade-war domination and dirty tactics) not seek an alliance with China and Korea in the next great world-trade sortout rather than once more try to emulate the West's colonial grip on world resources by taking over Korea and China, like last time???

As easily the second greatest economic power on earth with already the second greatest military expenditure on earth, how does Japan fit satisfactorily into any conceivable American plan for world military domination to wipe out the 'surplus' capacity in world capitalist profitability (which has imposed virtual stagnation on capitalist Japan for over 11 years already (thanks to America's as-yet unchallenged world political domination) and which must inflict the same total stagnation on the rest of imperialism, including the USA, sooner or later)????

The real problem with doubts about World War III as the only logical outcome of insoluble imperialist 'over-production' crisis is that actually the doubting is about the nature of the economic crisis itself (but merely expressed in the form of doubting the logic of a World War III military outcome).

It is a rejection of the Marxist analysis of INSOLUBLE 'over-production' of capital under an imperialist ruling class which can only find a 'solution' (under the class-elitist ideology of 'free-market' competition) along the route of slump and war DESTRUCTION of that 'surplus' capacity.

Nearly 23 years of EPSR weekly evidence has slowly struggled towards understanding and proof that inter-imperialist warmongering crisis remains the dominating force on civilisation in the modern era, making workers-state revolutions under the dictatorship of the proletariat the only consistently rational aim for human endeavour.

More and more, all world developments fall into place within that obviously still vague outline.

Not a scrap of theoretical 'improvement' on Marxism, or any scrap of convincing evidence, points to any 'alternative' outcome for imperialism's 'over-production' crisis.

The Blair 'Third Way' revolution?

Now helping the health service, pensions, education, the GPO, London Underground, and the rest of transport, etc,to get trashed as public services and put at the mercy of 'privatisation' corruption and cheapskate spivvery (like other local government and nationalised industries and parts of the welfare state beforehand), the New Labour shallow capitulation to total capitalist domination is currently squabbling in the gutter of unashamed bullying, bribery, and blackmail just to preserve its opportunist personnel perks at the expense of ministerial civil service workers:

At the heart of the scandal was Byers's announcement on Friday February 15 that he had accepted Sixsmith's resignation along with Moore's after a row over leaks to the news media. Byers repeated the announcement in television and radio interviews.

The implication was that Sixsmith was as culpable as Moore, who had been repeatedly accused of inappropriate behaviour.

The announcement was untrue, however. Not only had Sixsmith not resigned but Mottram had given his word that he would not be forced to quit. 

Mottram was in despair after hearing the announcement of Sixsmith's resignation. "We're all f*****," he told a fellow civil servant. "I'm f*****. You're f*****. The whole department's f*****. It's been the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely f*****". Over the past week Sixsmith, has fought behind the scenes to have the announcement retracted But Byers blocked him.

Campbell told Sixsmith that Byers was "very sore. The wounds are very fresh. He promised Jo that if she went, you would go too".

Mottram was initially emollient towards Sixsmith. He confided to a colleague that Byers "is very cunning, or very clever, he never takes responsibility for difficult decisions".

Within, days, however, Mottram fell into line with Byers, leaking against Sixsmith to a newspaper and warning him about the Downing Street "smear machine".

The futures of the beleaguered secretary for transport, local government and the regions and of his departmental permanent secretary, Sir Richard Mottram, are in question as a result of a devastating dossier compiled by their former press chief, Martin Sixsmith.

Sixsmith, a former BBC television correspondent, has shown friends and advisers the approximately 18,000 words of contemporaneous notes he kept as the scandal unfolded. They record all the phone calls and meetings he has had with Mottram, Alastair Campbell, Labour's director of strategic communications, and other top officials over the past 10 days. The notes strip away the veneer of Whitehall to reveal a pervasive rot  caused by the politicisation of the civil service and exacerbated by cynicism, mendacity, double-dealing and personal vendettas.

They show that Byers's ministry is in turmoil and that the government is so obsessed with presentation that officials are prepared to sacrifice the truth and their own colleagues.

STEPHEN  BYERS and his most senior civil servant stand accused this weekend of lying, bullying and a cover-up in a scandal triggered by the removal of the cabinet minister's controversial adviser, Jo Moore.

"As far as I'm concerned, I still have a job in the civil service," Sixsmith said yesterday. He was considering whether to turn up for work tomorrow.

He added: "Ten days ago everyone who watched TV news or listened to the radio went to bed thinking Martin Sixsmith had resigned and what is more was being tarred with the same brush as Jo Moore.

"Very senior people, including ministers, MPs, journalists and union officials found themselves being misled into providing on-the-record reaction to this false story. Why did this all happen? Because Stephen Byers had said so."

"Before Byers's announcement, the permanent secretary assured me they accepted there was no suspicion of misconduct against me. I was therefore amazed to hear they had unilaterally 'resigned me'.

"For the past seven days I have asked them to acknowledge publicly that they made a very serious error and to clear my name of any smears. I was not interested in offers of monetary compensation.

"It was clear that this was their problem and they needed to resolve it: For a week I have done my best to help them do this. But I have been stupefied by their attempts to exculpate themselves and put the blame on others."

It is understood that an informal approach has been made to him suggesting he should speak to the Commons public administration committee, which is due to hold a hearing on Thursday, about the relationship between civil servants and special advisers An official of the FDA, the civil service union, who is aware of. the contents of Sixsmith's dossier, is expected to give evidence. 

When she joined the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR) in late November, Moore was already a controversial figure.

A new Labour activist, paid by the civil service but working as Byers's political adviser, she had been forced to apologise for recommending on September 1st that it was a good time to bury an announcement of bad departmental news. Other  incidents had followed.

Sixsmith, a lifelong Labour sympathiser committed to civil service impartiality, clashed with Moore and Byers over what he saw as their attempt to block the appointment of a career civil servant as the DTLR's deputy press chief in order to make way for a friend of Moore's.

Attempts to get Sixsmith to resign followed reports on Thursday, February 14, that he had sent an e-mail to Moore rebuking her for proposing to bury more bad news on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral.

The reports were incorrect. Sixsmith had sent an e-mail to Byers, copied to Moore, concerning an announcement of rail performance indicators.

Not couched as a rebuke, it had read: "You spoke about possibly making this announcement on Friday. We should not do it on Friday, as that is the day on which Princess Margaret is being buried. There are too many connotations to the word 'buried' for us to do anything on that day."

But Byers blocked publication of the genuine e-mail and the subsequent chain of events became increasingly bizarre.

Downing Street denied the e-mail had ever existed and Sixsmith was accused of instigating a leak to the press.

On the morning of Friday, February 15, he went to see Mottram to deny this. Mottram not only accepted his denial but also revealed that the lie - that the e-mail did not exist - had come from Byers's own office.

Mottram then told Sixsmith Moore was willing to resign in 'order to draw a line under the affair' but Byers would accept this only if Sixsmith went too. Mottram said this would be unfair as Moore had misbehaved while Sixsmith had not.

The permanent secretary also gave his word that neither the DTLR nor Downing Street would unilaterally "resign" him in the meantime. Yet as Sixsmith was leaving the Chelsea and Westminster hospital he heard his resignation announced along with Moore's on a news bulletin.

He immediately rushed back to the department, where Byers refused to see him and Mottram blamed a "low-grade twerp" at Downing Street for leaking the news that there would be two resignations instead of one.

Rather than a correction, Byers's office ordered a confirmation of Sixsmith's resignation and Byers gave interviews declaring: "Both  Martin Sixsmith and Jo Moore have done the right thing by offering their resignations."

Sixsmith, who found that swipe cards giving access to the DTLR and the House of Commons had been promptly cancelled, confronted Mottram.

The permanent secretary offered two options. He could go quietly, confirm he had resigned and get £45,000 and an official exoneration, or go public with the untruths of the past week. In that case, Mottram warned, the No 10 smear machine would attack him and he would have to be "sacked" for a breakdown of trust. Sixsmith wrote to Mottram outlining this deal and his version of the "unfortunate way events unfolded last week".

He wrote: "I was shocked to hear [Byers] announce on radio that he had 'accepted my resignation'. Since I had certainly not resigned, my first reaction was that [he] should correct his mistake quickly and publicly. Following our discussions, however, I realised this would be very difficult in the current political climate."

This letter was copied to Wilson, Campbell and Granatt. None has rebutted  its contents. The proposed compromise agreement did not go ahead, however, as Byers blocked Sixsmith's exoneration. Later it was. intimated that Sixsmith might get a year's salary £100,000 - if he went quietly. Mottram  realised he was being lined up to take the blame. He confided to Sixsmith: "[Byers) will be able to say, 'It wasn't me who decided Martin had to go. It was Mottram who recommended it to me. So I was acting totally in good faith on Friday afternoon when announcing Martin had resigned'."

By the middle of last week Mottram's tone had changed. He asked DTLR security officers to question Sixsmith and began to insist Sixsmith had indicated the previous Friday he would resign.

When Sixsmith challenged this and pointed out he had kept notes of their conversations, Mottram said ominously: "Your notes of our meetings are very detailed. But I, too, will have a contemporaneous note,  my own. contemporaneous note, not as detailed as yours, but it will have a different recollection."

A DTLR statement issued by Mottram last night said: "Sixsmith  agreed with the permanent secretary of the DTLR [Mottram] to resign from his post on 15 February. This was on the basis that Jo Moore also resigned and the terms of his resignation were agreed with him. Discussions on the terms of his resignation were continuing on the basis that these were confidential between him and the department."'

Sixsmith said: 'That is just wrong."

Socialist Alliance 'left' reformism as an 'alternative' to inter-imperialist war? 

They have already voted their war-credits for World War III (equivalent to Kautsky's Second International capitulation to imperialist warmongering in 1914) by helping US fascist aggression to be 'justifiably' inflicted on the world by their 'condemnation' (dutifully in line with the rest of the bourgeoisie) of the desperate suicidal Sept 11 Middle East attempt to fight back against imperialist tyranny. 

This petty-bourgeois continuation of all the rotten class-collaborating traditions of both varieties of anti-communism (Revisionist and Trotskyist fake-'leftism') is currently helping the CIA-run system of capitalist-press brainwashing of the 'free-world' public, to set up the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe for a counter-revolutionary pro-imperialist coup.

The West is bitterly opposed to ZANU's land nationalisation programme; and the non-stop demented international propaganda campaign against Mugabe for his supposed 'anti-democracy' campaigning to defeat the West's stooge Tsvangirai in the presidential election, - (a product of the CIA's longstanding 'trade-union movement' route for promoting imperialism's anti-communist agents like Lech Walesa in Poland, Forbes Burnham in Guyana, etc etc) - is naturally eagerly supported by the Socialist Alliance.

These anti-communist Trots and Revisionists back the NCA petty-bourgeois front against Mugabe on the grounds that the British SWP's so-called 'sister organisation', the ISO, is 'influential' within this NCA middle-class political umbrella.

But it is precisely the NCA's founders who are now Tsvangirai's closest supporters (after the CIA and the West). But despite the obvious pro-imperialist stoogery of the whole anti-Mugabe 'opposition', the SWP's Socialist Alliance continues to peddle such anti-communist 'reformist' imbecilities as helping overthrow the 'undemocratic' Mugabe and then "forcing Tsvangirai to carry out pro-working-class measures".

These anti-Marxists backed the overthrow of the Polish workers state with the same sick lies of 'forcing' the Pilsudski fascist Walesa to "carry out socialist measures".

Poland is now a gangster and prostitution-ridden hellhole under total imperialist market-domination and its successful welfare state and nationalised planned economy totally destroyed.

Even the foulest excesses of Western propaganda campaigns against Mugabe, and the murkiest of plotting, do not put these Trots off their anti-ZANU biliousness.

Tsvangirai is currently embroiled in a treason scandal because of his crass discussions in the West about getting rid of Mugabe as the alternative to trying to win the presidential election via massive imperialist subversion.

But instead of headline hysteria against Tsvangirai for 'undemocratic' treachery (such as every Mugabe action draws unfailingly from every outlet of Western press and TV under CIA instructions), it is ZANU which gets lambasted yet again for "this crude fit-up".

Instead of showing the video, secretly taken of Tsvangirai's plotting, or publishing the transcript of his coup speculation, those bourgeois outlets with just a sliver of 'conscience' have just concocted the most astonishing sequence of irrelevant non sequiturs to try to kill the story while yet pretending to have 'covered it'.

Here is the original Guardian cover-up, but actually admitting some details of what the secret video is alleging:

An Australian television documentary will today allege that Zimbabwe's opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was involved in a plot to assassinate his rival, President Robert Mugabe, before next month's election.

The SBS Dateline documentary will broadcast surveillance video footage purporting to show Mr Tsvangirai, the leader of the Movement for Democratic Change, agreeing to the "elimination" of Mr Mugabe before the ageing president goes to the polls in Zimbabwe on March 9 and 10.

Mr Tsvangirai dismissed the charges yesterday. "It is a crude smear campaign against me. They are ridiculous charges and there is no truth to them," he said.

The grainy video allegedly records a December meeting between Mr Tsvangirai, two unidentified men and a Canadian firm of political consultants in Montreal.

Referring to Mr Tsvangirai's presence, one of the Canadian company's employees says in extracts released yesterday: "The MDC, represented by the top man who's sitting here right now, commits to - let's call it... the coup d'état or the elimination of the president."

"Do coffins win elections?" asks one of the Canadians.

"OK, Mr Mugabe is eliminated. Now what?" another participant in the meeting later asks. "Are you in a position basically to ensure a smooth transition of power?"

The man the documentary identified as Mr Tsvangirai replies: "Yes. I've no doubt about it."

He adds later: "We can now definitely say that Mr Mugabe is going to be eliminated.'

The documentary will also reveal alleged evidence that a British company attended two meetings with Mr Tsvangirai and the Canadian firm.

Interviewed on programme, Mr Tsvangirai denied that the MDC was plotting to assassinate Mr Mugabe.

"Why should we?" he said. "He is a 78-year-old man. We have no reason whatsoever to make any harm to him."

Mr Tsvangirai said he was surprised that a reputable journalist would fall for "such obvious propaganda".

Well, were there such meetings or wern't there? Is it Tsvangirai on the video or isn't it? Were these things said or weren't they?

The wished-for implication is "no" to all of them, but oddly these actual vital questions seem just not to have been asked.

How could that be unless the CIA has ordered the most blatant dirty cover-up imaginable and to hell with the consequences.

The next day's story proved the point. In the small print at the bottom, these vital questions are all astonishingly answered "yes". It was Tsvangirai. He did hold these meetings abroad. These things were said. The video is real.

But even more astonishingly, the Guardian coverage stands reality on its head to make the political consultants Tsvangirai sought meetings with, the villains of the piece, dragging up every irrelevant fact about Ben-Menashe's life that could possibly exist,(with most of his alleged 'misdemeanours' nothing of the sort anyway, but true stings he had been honourably party to, like the exposure of Maxwell and the vindication of Mordechai Vanunu, e.g.)

But what did Tsvangirai think he was up to in all these murky activities?

Again, the obvious relevant CURRENT question of the moment is not even asked. Just more and more irrelevancies.

How CIA brainwashing is that?

The man behind claims that the Zimbabwe opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, was involved in a plot to kill President Robert Mugabe has a reputation as a notorious fantasist, it emerged last night.

Ari Ben-Menashe, who was once employed as a junior officer in Israeli intelligence, claimed that his Montreal-based firm, Dickens and Madson, was approached last year by someone acting on behalf of Mr Tsvangirai to help the Zimbabwe opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change.

Mr Ben-Menashe described the firm as a"political consultancy" and "lobbyist" and said he had known Mr Mugabe for some time. In a statement last night, the company said its senior staff had "extensive contacts" with "intelligence agencies around the world".

An Australian television network, SBS, broadcast a grainy video last night purported to be of a meeting between Mr Tsvangirai, Mr Ben-Menashe and other company officials in Montreal last December. It suggested that those present discussed how to remove Mr Mugabe from power.

Last night, Mr Tsvangirai called the tape "contrived".

"There is no substance to the  allegations," he said. "It is a smear job. I had discussions about different scenarios that might happen in Zimbabwe. I have discussed how the transition to democracy will go if I am elected. The quotes could easily have been manipulated to be taken out of context."

Mr.Ben-Menashe, said he met Mr Tsvangirai twice in London last November. He said the opposition leader did not know the Montreal meeting was being videotaped.

Asked how SBS got hold of the video, he replied: "That is neither here nor there."

Mr Ben-Menashe met diplomats in Harare more than two years ago, indicating that he had business with the Mugabe government long before the video was shot.

The film-maker, Mark Davis, arrived in Zimbabwe in January on a tourist visa, without journalist accreditation, but then managed to get an interview with Mr Mugabe - something  a journalist without accreditiation could not do.

Time magazine has called Mr Ben-Menashe a "veteran spinner of stunning-if-true-but yarns". He has been ruthlessly attacked in Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal and New Republic.

He was also the main source of allegations made in 1991 by an award-winning journalist, Seymour Hersh, about the late Robert Maxwell, Mirror Group journalists, the abduction of the Israeli nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu, and assorted arms deals.

Mr Ben-Menashe first came to light when he was acquitted by a New York federal jury in 1990 of charges that he had illegally sold Israeli-owned C-130 Hercules aircraft to Iran. The sale, he said, was part of a US-sanctioned deal to win the release of American hostages.

He made unproven claims about Irangate and about October Surprise - a claim that Ronald Reagan's campaign team had arranged a deal with Iran and Israeli officials to delay the release of US hostages held in Tehran until after the presidential election in November 1980.

Mr Tsvangirai's spokesman, Learnmore Jongwe, said in a statement yesterday that the Montreal company had been hired by the MDC,- but that it now worked for the Mugabe regime. He said the "false" claim that Mr Tsvangirai had discussed assassination in the meeting "seems to arise from Dickens and Madson".

"Mr Tsvangirai did take part in a meeting with Dickens and Madson in Montreal in December... He came to suspect that he was being secretly videotaped ... There was no plot to assassinate Mugabe," Mr Jongwe said.

The statement included other alleged examples of smear tactics against the MDC, including claims that it was planning a civil war and that it was responsible for South Africa's biggest bank robbery.

Newsnight had some conscience to at least put ex-ZANU exile George Shire up to dispute CIA brainwashing on Mugabe's behalf. But against Shire, the BBC also insisted on yet more 'balance' using "leading Zimbabwean journalist" Basildon Peta, viciously anti-Mugabe and pro-imperialist. Private Eye had just reported on Mr Peta thus:

PROUD to be the only British paper to employ a black Zimbabwean as its stringer in Harare, the Independent was outraged by front-page claims in the Times on 12 February that reports of the arrest, detention and treatment of Basildon Peta earlier in the month had been at best exaggerated if not made up altogether.

The Indy's somewhat embarrassed correspondent in Africa's new heart of darkness now says that although technically he was never actually, er,  held in a police cell, the foetid and suffocating room in which he was questioned might as well have been. And that while he had indeed been allowed home rather than being kept overnight in the "cell", this had been a favour from kindly officers whose wish for anonymity he chose to respect. 

But did Peta do the exaggerating or was his copy gingered up in London? No doubt Leonard Doyle, the Indie's foreign editor, who from his Canary Wharf vantage point often seems to know the world better than his dwindling band of reporters across the globe, can throw light on the matter. 

But it's unlikely that Peta, whose reputation has been so recklessly called into question in return for a couple of cheap headlines, will complain: after months of pleading he had only just secured the reluctant assistance of the paper (prop: Tony "Baked Beans" O'Reilly, whose business dealings with Zimbabwe's evil dictator go way back) to get his family to safety in South Africa - and now he's gone to join them.

The West's great brainwashing game continues with the 'liberal' and fake-'left' British petty bourgeoisie from the SWP to the Guardian and the Indie well to the fore.

But if fake-'left' reformism is no answer to the Marxist perspective of intolerable warmongering imperialist crisis, perhaps the West can really impose a super-imperialist super-colonialism on the whole world after all, and really impose a 'New World Order' exactly as non-Marxist 'popular' sentiment allegedly believes is actually happening????

Hardly worth holding the breath over. It would seem from the capitalist press's own admissions that the entire might of Western armed authority cannot even impose the slightest good order on wrecked, demoralised and defeated Afghanistan:

Gunmen in Kabul opened fire on a patrol of British paratroopers, officials said yesterday as concern mounted about worsening security in the Afghan capital and throughout the country.

The incident occurred as the CIA said in a classified report that the "seeds of civil conflict" remained in Afghanistan. The report, leaked to the New York Times, warned that the country could fall back into chaos and violence as rival warlords fought for power in conflicts fuelled by ethnic tensions.

Thousands of Pashtuns are already fleeing their homes in northern Afghanistan after attacks led by mojahedin commanders from other ethnic groups, the UN said yesterday. But disputes are emerging among the western allies about the best way to confront the situation.

The CIA, the American state department and the leader of the interim Afghan administration, Hamid Karzai, want to expand the British-led Isaf force, which now totals some 4,500 troops, about 2,000 of whom are British. Though the US would not contribute any soldiers to the force, it would provide support, including aircraft. But Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, argues that the expansion of Isaf is unnecessary, and that it would divert resources from America's campaign against terrorism, the New York Times reported.

Isaf's mandate lasts for six months and is limited to Kabul. Its extension would require a new UN security council resolution. It would also require money and military resources.

Washington  is also raising the prospect of expanding the role of US special forces in southern Afghanistan to prevent fighting between Afghan factions and to hunt for the remnants of the al-Qaida and Taliban forces.

Mr Rumsfeld admitted last night that up to 15 Afghans who were killed in a long disputed raid by US special forces in January "were not Taliban or al-Qaida" as first described.

Police and intelligence agencies have been warned that Britain is facing a potentially huge increase in heroin trafficking because of massive and unchecked replanting of the opium crop in Afghanistan, the Guardian has learned.

The expectation is that the 2002 crop will be equivalent to the bumper one of three years ago, which yielded 4,600 tonnes of raw opium.

Deep concern within law enforcement circles, particularly MI5, MI6 and customs, has been reinforced by the latest assessment of the UN office for drug control and crime prevention, based in Vienna. Its field workers have just finished a study in Afghanistan and early analysis of their work has revealed that "substantial regrowing has taken place in several provinces": A full report will be published next Wednesday.

Kemal Kurspahic, who works in the UN office, warned yesterday that unless there was urgent action to stop the crop being harvested at the end of March, then the "best ever opportunity" to suffocate the illegal trade would be lost. Afghanistan is the source of 75% of the world's heroin and 90% of Britain's supply.

A ban on poppy growing in Afghanistan introduced by the Taliban in July 2000, coupled with severe droughts last year, reduced the country's opium yield by 91% in 2001, but this had a negligible effect on the market in Europe because traders had significant stockpiles along their traditional supply routes. The UN estimates that these will be exhausted by the end of this year. Mr Kurspahic said that the organisation was in a race against time to stop the new harvest restoring the supply.

"If we don't stop the flow of drugs then everything else will have been in vain," he said. "If there was no new production in Afghanistan this year then shortages in Europe would be felt by the end of the year. We don't have much time ... we have a window of opportunity.

Sustaining the ban would present the most promising-ever development in drug control: Even though Afghanistan's interim government, led by Hamid Karzai, introduced an extensive ban on poppy growing last month, the dearth of law enforcement outside the capital, Kabul, has rendered it meaningless.

"Postwar Afghanistan does not have a functioning law enforcement capacity," Mr Kurspahic said. "We have to set up a law enforcement and drug control mechanism as soon as we can. We cannot do much in the aid sector until we have security".

 One Whitehall official said that "enormous pressure" was being put on Mr Karzai's government by the UN and western governments, but that the situation was "immensely complicated in the current political situation" because of fears that it could destabilise the fragile administration.

"It is a political nightmare which could undermine the whole peace process;' a western intelligence source said.

One possible solution is for European governments to buy the poppy crop, but this would be highly controversial as well as costly. Providing aid and substitute crops to poor farmers would not necessarily solve the problem because local warlords would resist any attempt to control the trade.

Assessments of the replanting were difficult while the US bombing campaign was at its height, but recent analyses by the British security services and customs have sent shockwaves through the law enforcement community. "The replanting in Afghanistan could produce a second bumper crop; similar to the 1998-99 harvest," an intelligence source confirmed.

THE international peacekeeping force in Afghanistan suffered a major blow to its credibility yesterday after British paratroops opened fire, on a taxi taking a woman in labour to hospital, killing one person and wounding four more.

Soldiers of The Parachute Regiment shot at the vehicle.

During a three-minute fusillade, the troops shot the pregnant woman's brother-in-law as he sat in the back of the taxi, killing him instantly. The woman suffered a shrapnel wound in her neck, and her husband, mother-in-law and the taxi driver were all hit by bullet fragments or shrapnel.

Relatives dragged the woman into her home near by, and she gave birth on her living room floor a short while later.

Yesterday the dead man's family condemned the soldiers, members of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), as being "no better than terrorists", while local people insisted that they had heard no gunshots before the paratroops opened fire. 

The incident happened at a time of heightened tension in Kabul after the murder of Dr Abdul Rahman, the Aviation and Tourism Minister, who was beaten and stabbed to death at the city's airport.

Western imperialism is a sick farce. The only quantities of degenerate universal bloodshed and warmongering-chaos its further crisis-decline might avoid is through its utter incompetence and decrepitude, not because such belligerant anarchy is all too awful to contemplate.

The best way to achieve the wished-for avoidance of World War III, and the only way to limit its development, is all the sooner to prepare the Bolshevik Revolutionary answer to imperialist decay, the sole path to human progress. Build Leninism.

EPSR supporters.