Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.

-V. I. Lenin 

Economic & Philosophic Science Review 

No 1131  Apr 9 2002

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

www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk

Arrogant Zionist colonial blitzkrieg continues to humiliate its American imperialist inspiration whose 'war on terrorism' posturing now looks more fatally flawed than ever. But these real splits in the imperialist camp are the most significant lesson of all about this major historical period of insoluble monopoly capitalist crisis. The brutal expropriation of the Palestinian nation’s homeland can only end in total warmongering catastrophe for the whole out-of-date Zionist colonising -tyranny. Globalisation has transformed the world proletarian masses, but disastrous economic crisis cannot fail to eventually give them irresistible revolutionary force. The 'Arab street' will have the last word, including (and especially) in Palestine, - the whole of it.  All fake-'lefts' in Britain will continue to fail the anti-imperialist test because of their hopeless opportunist retreat from serious Marxist science.

US imperialism at loggerheads with Zionist imperialism, albeit only semi-seriously at the moment, nevertheless fulfills a long-standing EPSR understanding that inter-imperialist CONFLICT is the key to all historical development.

The ultimate perspective, only half-joking, is for bourgeois-imperialist ideology to become so fevered and panicky at the idea that its world-domination might get bungled and LOST in the revolutionary turmoil of international crisis that one half of billionaire American government might go into battle against the other half, - CIA and State Department hawks against Joint Chiefs and Defence Department 'doves'.

But in the tiniest embryo, this fantasy is already present in this embarrassing major disagreement between the US Government and its Zionist armed-thug protégés (built-up into an 'independent' war machine for permanently terrorising and controlling all would-be Arab anti-imperialist developments, but without this colonising tyranny-without-end and its constant criminal-fascist excesses being directly attributable to Washington).

Zionland as a 'rogue state' (of an entirely commendable kind) has always been a useful part of this pretence by 'Western democracy' that the genocidal suffering of the Palestinian nation (who have been systematically having their own homeland wiped out ever since the barbaric 1948 Moscow-approved United Nations decision to let 'Israel' be founded despite the need to evict more than 50% of the Palestinian nation from their homes and their land) is "nobody's fault" (SLP/Lalkar, still posturing as the 'best' of the fake-'left' for leading the working-class in Britain, continues to refuse to address this and other crucial historical understandings if Marxist SCIENCE is seriously to be given a chance to flourish again, - see subsequent section).

But now, this fraud of Zionland's 'democratic independence' has started smacking the West in the face as well as smiting the Arabs, exactly as has always been predictable from Marxism's perspectives.

Palestine has been colonised. Sharon's 'logic' is irrefutable. There will never be peace until the notion of being 'the Palestinian nation' has been reduced to 'past history' and the sort of museum-existence on reservations to which 'Western democracy' reduced the remarkable Aborigine Nation in Australia and the great Red Indian nations in North America.

But trying such genocide at the END of the 20th century (which largely accepted the revolutionary overthrow of all direct colonialism) explains the impossibility of this Zionland project. Palestinians 'need butchering' BY THE MILLION, not just by the scores and hundreds that the vicious Zionist military blitzkrieg and PERMANENT starvation-concentration camp policies have been achieving.

And Arab national-liberation REVOLUTION is far more likely to occur first, long before the Zionists have even remotely reached their goal.

It is this catastrophe-filled prospect which is thoroughly alarming the USA. The thug-gunman Zionist tail is beginning to wag the American imperialist-warmongering dog in a terror-filled historical period of such astonishing complexity and difficulty that will eventually create more paralysis in Western capitals than anything else, it is likely.

And being stuck on the horns of such dilemma is similarly applicable to almost every other 'theatre' of US imperialism's warmongering programme, and for the same reasons. The 20th century's economic globalisation has finally begun to create the savvy, much-travelled, and technologically-literate world proletariat which Marxist science explained from the start would eventually become the gravedigger of the bourgeois-capitalist class system and its privileges (which cannot flourish and survive without constant recourse to warmongering tyranny at periods of regularly-recurring and incurable economic crisis, producing revolution).

The Palestinian revolt can be briefly crushed for now; but Washington's mind-boggling project is to be in a position for revolution (against unstoppable international economic crisis) to be crushed everywhere, either directly or by reliable stooge 'allies'.

However, also inseparable from the economic crisis is inter-imperialist trade war and other desperate political, diplomatic and military manoeuvres and alliances for economic survival. Trade war over steel exports 'dumping' has already broken out between the EU (European Union) and the USA; and Argentina, being rocked to its political foundations by a towering financial crisis, has been told by the USA's stooges at the IMF (International Monetary Fund) that no more easy loans will be available until the severest austerity has been imposed on the country (despite having already brought down five governments in three months of political turmoil, and obviously posing socialist revolution questions to the Argentine people).  

The tough-talking American bully needs to put the boot into the EU and Argentina in this way, - and now into the Zionists on a different basis, but at the same time desperately needs more reliable 'allies' than ever before, to succeed with its phoney 'international war on terrorism' which is the chosen cover for a) trying to crush incipient anti-imperialist revolt everywhere, such as in the Middle East by A1-Quaeda, etc; and b) even more importantly getting the planet used to warmongering destruction as the 'best' cure for international economic problems in such a period of turmoil.

To destroy the "peacefully negotiated democratic solution" mythology of the 'free world' without getting even more hatred and blame from the whole planet for doing so, the USA needs all the 'allies' it can get for 'standing up and being counted' in Washington's warmongering provocation challenge to be "either with us or against us".

But the dangers of all this warmongering potentially going wrong (obvious in Palestine, possibly disastrous in Iraq, but not even guaranteed to be easy even in Afghanistan, etc) makes all the major Western powers fear the consequences of military defeat (so close for Britain in the Falklands) and the democratic minefield of a sceptical public (such as New Labour is now beginning to suffer) which will be all the worse once the world slump starts to really bite.

For imperialism to warmonger its way out of insoluble economic crisis by destroying all of the 'overproduction' supposedly wrecking the international markets, could be got away with once on the grand scale of World War during WWI (although at the cost of the Bolshevik Revolution); and maybe a second time with WWII (although that had to be dressed up as a 'war against fascism', and still cost the Chinese Revolution and the further huge expansion of the Socialist Camp).

But a third time??? There may well be a lot of shallow nasty right-wing 'Kill the terrorists' stuff about (and 'kill the immigrants too', etc, etc) but the overwhelming majority of the world-public SUFFERS FROM this fascist-imperialist mentality rather than shares it.

And opinion in the West could rapidly start changing its tune once the difficulties of largescale neo-colonial warmongering start getting home to everybody.

DEFEATS for the West are what crucially matter here, - not a political objective practically workable-for, maybe, but a crucial understanding to be put across in the working class.

The international capitalist slump (and its associated warmongering) destroys jobs and livelihoods at home in addition to everything else; and a) warmongering about it could kill everyone too into the bargain; and b) is not guaranteed at all to cure the international economic slump anyway.

And certainly if it does work, only to lead to yet another round of inter-imperialist war and economic crisis some time again in the not too distant future (less than 20 years separated WWI from WWII's start in the Far East).

But only with the humiliating DEFEAT of imperialist warmongering countries in this insane new round of international blitzkrieging and 'surplus production' destruction will the proletarian masses be inspired to reject all the counter-revolutionary fake-'lefts' and reformists (urging trade-union, peaceful-coexistence, class-compromise 'solutions') and take the power under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

What stops the EPSR's revolutionary understanding of capitalist crisis becoming more widespread is the prolongation of sheer scepticism. Still no one can get their minds around just how catastrophic things will become when this greatest-ever imperialist boom collapses into the system’s greatest-ever slump. 

And because the scale of economic disaster cannot be envisaged, then the scale of capitalism's accompanying warmongering disaster cannot be envisaged either, - or the scale and character of revolutionary struggle that will be unleashed. And yet the capitalist press is still reporting on the nature of the catastrophes to come in its admissions of turmoil where the crisis has struck first, e.g. in Argentina:

Argentina's central bank imposed strict new controls on foreign exchange dealing in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent the country's currency sinking to new lows.

Fearing further economic turmoil and a re-run of the riots which toppled the previous government, the bank ordered foreign exchange dealers to shorten opening hours and sell dollars only at the official rate. That is a significant retreat from the government's decision three months ago to allow the currency to float.

Hours after the announcement, the peso hit an all-time-low of 3.75 to the greenback, 75% lower than its level before January's chaotic devaluation.

Under the new rules, banks and exchange houses will be re-stocked with dollars only if they agree to buy and sell at official rates. The central bank set a rate early yesterday of 2.80-2.90 pesos per dollar for retail sales, well below the market rate. People nonetheless mobbed banks to buy dollars.

The diving peso has driven up prices of items ranging from steaks to petrol, feeding fears that rising inflation will cause more violent protests and the fall of the government of Eduardo Duhalde, Argentina's fifth president since December.

With unemployment above 20% and little chance seen of snaring soon a badly needed loan package from the International Monetary Fund, many analysts predicted more blows to an economy already battered by this year's debt default and a hated freeze on bank deposits.

The Fund suspended a $9bn loan last December, forcing Argentina to default on its foreign debt and triggering street protests which left 27 dead. The IMF refuses to resume lending until the government agrees to tough limits on public spending.

President Duhalde's argument that deep spending cuts would cause renewed social tensions has fallen on unsympathetic ears at the US government and the IMF.

Most analysts predicted the latest foreign exchange controls would further alienate the IMF, which has called on Argentina to stop artificially propping up the peso, and would almost certainly fail to stem further declines in the currency.

In the industrial city of Rosario, meanwhile - where unemployment is estimated at close to 27% - the Pelucas hair salon has started doing a brisk trade in human hair after one of its employees mentioned on the radio that the devaluation of the peso had sent the price of imported wigs rocketing, and that the salon was buying human hair to manufacture its own wigs. The next day, the Pelucas salon opened up to find to a long queue of people waiting to sell their hair for about seven dollars each.

"One woman brought her three little children; we cut all their hair and she left with a bunch of pesos," said the Pelucas's manager, Mariana Moglione.

Perhaps most demoralising of all for a country that once prided itself on being the so-called beef capital of the world were the almost apocalyptic video images broadcast on TV last week after hungry families were filmed descending like vultures on a cattle lorry that had overturned outside the predominantly working-class town of Las Flores, outside Rosario city, on its way to market.

In Argentina, even construction workers usually would turn up their noses at anything other than the prime cuts they barbecued on site during meal breaks.

The cattle being transported in the overturned lorry - most of them killed in the accident but some of them still alive - were quickly sliced up by the townspeople, who numbered
over a hundred.

"The hardest thing was slicing them up - we didn't have proper knives, only little ones, or we used pieces of wire," said one unemployed man who had participated in the carnage.

"Some of us haven't eaten in days," said another. "There is no more work for anyone here."

Argentina took a step deeper into collapse yesterday as CNN disappeared from the TV screens of 3m homes. The two main cable TV suppliers said they were unable to keep paying AOL-Time Warner, although BBC World is now being carried instead.

"Even my e-mail seemed to be running a little slow this morning," said 47-year old architect Eugenio Larosa, disturbed by rumours that the country's Internet links could be next to go.

With their savings still immobilised by the cash withdrawal restrictions imposed by the government in December, some depositors have been resorting to websites where entrepreneurs match up frustrated account owners with cash-holding borrowers. The sites take a cut when they can match an account owner and a borrower in debt to the same bank at which the account is tied up.

The account is credited to the bank to cancel the debtor's loan, and the account owner receives the cash in hand from the debtor, taking usually a 20% loss in the operation.

So far, about 50 such operations have been concluded by these sites, totalling some $200,000 (£140,000) in cancelled loans. About 3,000 account owners have posted messages seeking takers on the sites.

But with a tired yawn, however, the critics of "crisisism" explain that such bouts of financial crisis have been rolling around the capitalist system for ages, but never fatal, and always quickly recovered from.

It is also always implied, if less frequently stated, that the international system of US 'super-imperialism, will "simply not let any country go to the wall if it doesn't want it to", etc, etc, implying without stating it that the Marxist economic law of unstoppable 'overproduction' crisis and disastrous slump-destruction no longer applies.

By its 'New World Order' supposed 'total control', the assumption is that the IMF and World Bank and United Nations racketeering, all in the USA's back pocket, can fix any international situation that they want to.

But once again, the capitalist press's own admission of the facts do not back this up.

Japan has been on the financial crisis rack for 11 years and it is still getting worse. Some local collapses like Argentina's
have indeed come and gone, but they always do come back; and whose will be the next 'Japan' permanent crisis? Giant countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Brazil, etc, would argue that they are already there and have never really got out of the slump-disaster that hit them in the first bouts of supposed 'crisis-flu'.

Capitalist press reports have long since stopped pretending that "of course Japan will not be let go to the wall" or that Iran IMF intervention will soon sort things out":

JAPANESE savers are withdrawing trillions of yen from banks amid growing concern that they could lose their money if financial institutions have to write off huge loans.

People are stuffing money under their tatami rush-mat floors or at the back of drawers, or have joined the rush to buy gold bars.

Others have invested in safes and secure locks so they can keep the cash at home rather than in banks they no longer trust.

The frantic activity has been triggered by speculation about an impending financial crisis, coming just as the Government removes its blanket insurance of savings accounts

Without state protection savers' fears of losing their money in a bank crash have intensified amid the increasing fragility of the banking sector.

The sector is weighed down by an ever swelling pile of non-performing loans.

Banks have little realistic hope of recovering these debts, which have grown so huge that the banking system is technically broke, according to some experts.

Anxiety about the state of the financial sector deepened last week when a newspaper reported that bad loans held by Japan's biggest banks have increased by 40 per cent from a year ago, to more than 24 trillion yen (£130 billion) as more and more borrowers go bust in the prolonged economic malaise.

"I spread my money between the three biggest banks at the start of the year," said Mineko Takahashi, a 36 year-old Tokyo housewife, "but I don't feel any of them are really safe."

Until now money in the bank was fully protected in the event of a bank failure. But now the State will insure only up to Y10 million in savings accounts. Ordinary accounts will still be guaranteed, but only for one more year.

In a country with private savings estimated at massive Y1,386 trillion, many people, especially the elderly, have funds well over the protected limit.

As the April 1 deadline approached, smaller banks saw a rush of withdrawals by nervous investors.

Chubu Bank, a small regional bank, collapsed last month as money flowed out, following the failure of the equally small Ishikawa Bank last year when customers defected to bigger banks or to post office savings.

In the money reshuffle, the four biggest banking groups, considered safer because of their size, have attracted far more funds than they can digest, given their reluctance to lend in the current bleak economic climate.

But many Japanese, remembering the shock when the medium-sized Hokkaido Takushoku Bank collapsed in 1997, are steering clear of all financial institutions, opting for tansu yokin - depositing money in a chest of drawers.

Bank of Japan figures show people withdrew a massive Y25.9 trillion from savings accounts (of over Y10 million) in 2001.

Some flowed into current or ordinary accounts, which are insured for one more year.

"Safety is more important than getting a return on the money," said Tetsuo Imada, a retired businessman.

Besides, the difference is minimal: savers in Japan earn a razor-thin 0.05 per cent on one-year savings accounts.

Official figures show that the amount of cash in the market has grown by more than 10 per cent from a year ago, as people hoard money under the tatami or behind Buddhist altars at home.

This is feasible in Japan, which has a lower crime rate than other industrialised countries. But burglaries are increasing, boosting demand for home safes and secure locks, now one of the few expanding sectors of the economy.

Sentry Nihon, an importer of American safes, says its sales of domestic safes are up 40 per cent on a year ago.

Other worried savers are trying to protect their assets by buying gold. At Japan's biggest bullion dealer, Tanaka Kikinzoku, sales of gold coins and bars to individuals in February increased nine-fold over a year ago.

Until late last month there were queues outside one branch in central Tokyo, as mainly elderly men clutching carrier bags with wads of Y10,000 waited to purchase gold.

To the relief of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's administration, Japan escaped a financial crisis in the 2001 fiscal year ending March 31, after a 'rebound' in share prices in recent weeks. [fixed.]

Talk about a "March crisis" reflected deep fears about the damage plunging share prices would do to banks, whose capital base depends heavily on large equity portfolios.

Alarm bells rang when the benchmark Nikkei share average sank to an 18-year low of 9,420 in February, a quarter 	of its peak 12 years ago. 

For most banks, a 10,500 level for the Nikkei average is reckoned to be the break-even level - below that the 	banks' financial strength is seriously depleted by latent losses on their stockholdings.

With the financial system under threat, the Government moved quickly, to support the 	market with stock purchases by government pension funds and tighter rules on short-selling. The Nikkei share average bounced back, but then began to slide, ending the fiscal year on Friday at 11,024.94, down 15.2 per cent from a year ago.

Bankers have never before had to worry so much about stock price movements at the close of a financial year.

Under accounting rules introduced this year, for the first time Japanese banks have to  account for their 	stockholdings at market value. Where stock prices finished on Friday was therefore 	of critical importance to the earnings that banks report for fiscal 2001.

As the banks limp into a new business year, no one suggests their woes are over.

There is broad agreement that the world's second biggest economy will continue to languish until the public re	gains confidence in the stability of the banks. 

Officials acknowledge that the potential for a financial crisis remains as long as the volume of bad loans rises faster than banks can clear them from their balance sheets.

"Our view is that crises do not occur only in March," Hakuo Yanagisawa, the Financial Services Minister, said a few days ago. 

Japan's financial regulators estimated total bad loans at Y36.8 trillion as of last September at 136 banks, up Y3.2 trillion from six months earlier. 

Some foreign economists, however, think the Government has underestimated the debt burden and say the total is probably closer to Y150 trillion.

And what about IMF and other imperialist club co-ordinated interventions???

The interesting thing about Argentina is that this ability for international manipulation seems to be changing fast.

The following capitalist press admission raises the question of whether the IMF dominant powers can go on literally endlessly creating vast capital credits to bail out collapsing uncompetitive 'free market' countries? 

Even more interesting is the Bush comment: 'Forget Argentina. Not strategically important.'  It implies a) viable loan funds are running out; b) Washington's anti-communist strategy does not envisage being able to stop revolution everywhere.

It is crunch time for Eduardo Duhalde, Argentina's fifth president in as many months. International Monetary Fund negotiators returned to Buenos Aires this week bearing a message to the embattled government that there will be no international aid unless it undertakes painful reforms.

"We can't lend into anything that does not have the hope that they can come out of it with (the) promise of growth and restoration of normalcy, and that requires some ... changes," Anne Krueger, the IMFs deputy director, said on Monday.

Just yesterday, the country's top corporate debtor, Telecom Argentina, suspended payments on its $3.4bn debt principal. Foreign firms which had debts in dollars, but which must now charge customers in pesos, have been hard hit.

Mr Duhalde fears that imposing further austerity measures on his shattered country could trigger a re-run of the widespread rioting which forced the resignation of two of his predecessors in quick succession and left 27 people dead. The government badly needs fresh IMF money to stabilise its economy and shore up an almost bankrupt banking system. An IMF accord would also open the doors to billions of dollars in aid from the World Bank and other lenders. But the price of securing IMF help could endanger Mr Duhalde's political survival.

The fund has been here before - negotiating with an Argentinian government which says that its back is against the wall. Last year, it poured more than $20bn into the country in a desperate attempt to stave off a financial meltdown. Every loan came with stringent financial conditions - which Buenos Aires failed to meet. Berated by the Bush administration for being too soft on the country, the fund finally pulled the plug in December and froze a promised $10bn loan, forcing Argentina to default on $141bn-worth of foreign debt, and triggering the riots.

The fund's ominously named "special operations" unit will spend the next two weeks spelling out exactly what is required to the country's finance ministry. Ms Krueger says that any economic programme would have to include balancing the budget, a workable exchange rate regime, changes to bankruptcy laws, reining in provincial government spending and lifting the banking restrictions which have brought the financial system to a standstill.

Privately, fund officials are angry that they are being blamed in some quarters for the slow motion implosion of Argentina's economy last year. "For better or for worse, all of the key policies were fully owned by the Argentine authorities," says Michael Mussa, who was the fund's chief economist until last summer.

In the wake of the Asian crisis, Argentina slipped into a grinding recession, which the authorities have been unable to reverse. With tax revenues falling, the government was forced to borrow to close its budget gap. Public debt rose from just under 30% of GDP in 1993 to 40% in five years, alarming foreign investors and placing even more strain on the budget.

Addicted to borrowing

Mr Mussa says Buenos Aires became addicted to borrowing as a solution to its problems.

"The Argentine government is like a chronic alcoholic - once it starts to imbibe the political pleasures of deficit, it keeps on going until it reaches the economic equivalent of falling down drunk."

	But critics say that once the government got into difficulties, the fund's only remedy was to suggest that it tighten its budget, thus guaranteeing further economic contraction.

"They kept prescribing the same medicine and eventually the patient couldn't take it any more," says Kevin Watkins, senior policy adviser at Oxfam.

When Mexico got into difficulties in 1994, it received a US backed $50bn bailout which helped it back on the road to recovery. But the fund does not have that kind of money and the Bush administration is in no mood to throw money at a country it does not see as strategically important.

	Musings about a new way of handling financial crises will be of cold comfort to the Argentine government. Once the darling of emerging market investors, it has become in the words of Mr Mussa, the "world's leading deadbeat".

	Shutoff from access to private capital markets since its default in December, Argentina has no choice now but to accept whatever conditions the fund attaches to its loans. The elections are still 18 months away; Mr Duhalde will be lucky if he is still around to contest them.

All past 'recoveries' via IMF medicine have been within a generally continuing international trade boom. But now there is trade-war. The 'sick list' of countries is soon likely to see very rapid expansion rather than any more 'cures'.

A fascinating new light has been shone on inter-imperialist conflict by a leading Japanese politician's admission of yet another part of the EPSR's long-standing international revolutionary equation (based on inter-imperialist war), which dismissed objections of a Kautskyite nature that  "US imperialism is too powerful now for much inter-imperialist war to ever again become a serious possibility".

To which the EPSR has always answered that Germany and Japan, the USA's most serious rivals for world imperialist leadership, will inevitably have been constantly developing their own potential nuclear-weapons capability behind the scenes, to be brought forward openly as and when deemed timely or necessary. 

Superior Japanese or German technology (in rocketry, etc) could even quickly put Germany or Japan back ahead of rival imperialist powers, the EPSR added.

Lo and behold, look at what the capitalist press itself now reports from Japan as the international imperialist crisis deepens dramatically: 

Japan has the technology and the plutonium to make thousands of nuclear weapons, one of the country's most influential politicians declared this weekend

He said: "If Japan wishes, it can produce thousands of nuclear warheads overnight. Japan has enough plutonium at its nuclear power plants for three to four thousand of them. If that happens, we will never be beaten in terms of military strength."

Although military analysts and anti-nuclear groups have long claimed that Japan could develop nuclear weapons, politicians usually steer clear of the subject, which rekindles painful memories of the 200,000 killed by the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The government has a non-nuclear weapons policy.

The timing is also sensitive because the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, will visit China next week. Li Peng, chairman of the Chinese parliament, is currently visiting Japan to mark the 30th anniversary of bilateral ties.

Mr Ozawa is known for rocking the boat with his uncompromising statements and political tactics. In 1993, he led a defection that pushed the Liberal Democratic party out of power for the first and only time since 1955.

Three years ago, a member of his party was forced to resign as a junior defence minister after calling for a parliamentary debate on whether Japan should acquire a nuclear deterrent.

Anti-nuclear campaigners welcomed the candidness of the statement, saying that Japan's plutonium stockpile of 38 tonnes - including material being reprocessed in the UK and France - was part of an undeclared weapons programme able to make more than 7,000 warheads.

Shaun Burnie of Greenpeace International said: "[Ozawa] has exposed the myths of it being a peaceful energy programme for a resource-poor country."

Mr Ozawa insisted, however, that his latest comments were aimed at improving Japan-China relations.

Mr Ozawa, known for his hawkish views, emphasised that his remarks were aimed at encouraging China to speed up its transition to democracy, and to build a closer relationship with Japan. Some commentators said, however, that his remarks could disturb the recent improvement in relations with Beijing as the two countries mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties.

Junichiro - Koizumi, the Prime Minister, is due to visit China this week to attend an economic forum, and Li Peng, Chairman of the Standing Committee of the People's Congress and, in effect, China's number two politician, was on a tour of the Japanese provinces at the weekend.

Mr Ozawa's comments reflect a growing wariness towards China, seen as a potential threat to Japan's security but also as an increasingly formidable economic rival. Unease about China's growing might prompted Tokyo to cut its loans to Beijing in the 2001 financial year.

Mr Ozawa, 59; a former leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, told an audience in Fukuoka, western Japan, that he had mentioned the nuclear option during a recent meeting with a Chinese official. He said that he had told the visitor. "If you become too conceited, the Japanese people will get hysterical." 

However, he boasted that Japan would never lose a military confrontation if it became serious about strengthening its defences.

Japanese politicians normally prefer to avoid reminding the world of their country's undoubted ability to build up a nuclear arsenal speedily. The country's nuclear energy programme has created large amounts of weapons grade plutonium.

Diplomatically, the possible nuclear target is airily described as China. This was the imperialist game throughout the 1930s as well, arming like mad in case of 'Bolshevik Revolution' spreading.

But the subsequent WWII was essentially an inter-imperialist war, just like WWI, with the Soviet Union remarkably a 'beloved ally' of one of the warring imperialist camps.

Japan and Germany lashed out in the 1930 when the world economic capitalist crisis was being deliberately distorted by political, military, and trade-war measures (of the all-powerful US-UK-France axis) to be solved at Germany and Japan's expense.

And it is already happening again with recent-past US trade-war measures against Japan (part of its 11-year stagnation crisis) and now with steel trade-war measures against Germany and others.

The inter-imperialist conflict spirit of the coming period is well captured by all the innocent capitalist press coverage of the Galileo £2bn project for Europe's own 30-satellite GPS (global positioning system), the EU's most expensive investment ever, by far:

The project now has to prove its commercial as well as political viability. But its proponents believe there are strategic reasons why it can and must be as successful in challenging American superiority as were the Ariadne rocket launchers and Airbus jetliners.

The European commission, co-sponsor of the project with the European Space Agency, is in no doubt, comparing the significance of satellite radio navigation as an invention equivalent to that of the watch. "In the same way that no one nowadays can ignore the time of day, in the future no one will be able to do without knowing their precise location."

Unlike GPS, which was developed by the US navy, Galileo is primarily a civilian programme. But Brussels insists that in 20 years' time all aspects of European defence will involve satellite radio navigation. "If the Galileo programme is abandoned, we will in the next 20 to 30 years lose our autonomy in defence;" Brussels says. French president Jacques Chirac has talked more pithily of the risk of "vassal status".

As Keohane points out, current thinking is that Galileo should go ahead for commercial reasons. But "certainly the idea of having a military option is being discussed, with the French government very keen to have that possibility". 

The Afghan war has highlighted the accuracy of imagery provided by GPS for US bombers while both the French and Germans were dissatisfied with that provided for the Europeans in Kosovo. 

"Galileo is a better system technically. If the Europeans are serious about being able to run autonomous military options, Galileo is a very important capability to have." 

Brussels believes the objections raised by Wolfowitz are simply to protect a US monopoly. Without Galileo, officials say, the European aeronautics industry, especially Airbus, would be under threat as US companies would dominate the radio navigation market - and it is known that Boeing and Lockheed Martin, for instance, see lucrative growth in it.

Carl Bildt, the former Swedish premier who chaired a commission on EU space policy, has said Galileo is essential for Europe's plan to become "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world" within 10 years. To achieve that, the project will have to overcome substantial financial risks - and US resistance. The stakes are that high.

What is that all about, then, if it is not subtly announcing inter-imperialist conflict as the world's main future?

A specific part of the scepticism, holding the working class back from a greater thirst for revolutionary understanding, arises from that aspect of SLP/Lalkar Revisionism which does not take theory seriously itself, despite agitating correctly for a formal return to Marxism-Leninism.

Being 'for revolution in general' is good but misses the point when, for example as earlier, the truth about Moscow's (Stalinist) Revisionist misreading of the world, helping set up this impossible Zionist colonialist nightmare, is just skated over.

It was a wrong view of history which set up Zionland. It is priceless for the international working class to fully understand this. This becomes impossible if Stalinist Revisionism's shared responsibility for this is simply deliberately hidden and buried. This only spreads more and more cynical scepticism and defeatism.

But this situation gets much worse in Lalkar's latest (quite worthy) attempt to redescribe the world revolutionary perspective, - but this time attempting to acknowledge (not explicitly) the EPSR critique of the abysmal theoretical nonsense inflicted by Stalin and his sycophantic bureaucratic entourage.

If the specific theoretical howlers are NOT spelled out and corrected however, abysmal Revisionist nonsense can never be scientifically understood and corrected; i.e. Marxist-Leninist SCIENCE (and its methods) are not reinstated. There is merely some more bureaucratic shuffling and mumbling at the office, protecting personal reputations as ever. Lifeless (Museum-Stalinist) disaster after disaster can alone continue.

The article calls to "overcome the Revisionist abandonment of leadership" but it bottles out on tackling Lalkar's own grotesque responsibility and cover-up on this question, still in 2002 defending Stalin's theoretical works on emotional grounds but refusing to polemicise on the plain catastrophic nonsense they inflicted on the Soviet workers state, eventually destroying it. Credit to some of the comrades for at least having a go, but the following on p8 (in an article under Giles Shorter's name just will not do;

J.V. Stalin suggested in Economic Problems of Socialism that the capitalism which emerged from the ashes of WWII would be increasingly hemmed in by socialism, starved more and more of its exploitation opportunities. Perhaps if the erosion of confident Marxist-Leninist leadership from the assumption of leadership of the CPSU by Khrushchevite revisionism had been less pronounced, perhaps if "peaceful coexistence" had not melted from a temporary tactic into a permanent fudge, then this prediction could have held water. As it was, the most sustained boom of capitalist history ensued, with at its heart the single most bloated and bullying imperialist power of all history.

In an otherwise excellent article explaining the full inter-imperialist warmongering sweep of capitalist crisis, these unfortunate words imply that 'theory' is just casual guesswork, and that Stalin's 'quite workable' project for the world's future was simply let down by that rat Kruschev (the 'devil' as far as this Museum-Stalinist Revisionism is concerned).

This a) gets crucial post-WWII history completely wrong; b) makes light of all 'theory', pretending that no one should take mere 'suggestions' too seriously; and c) promotes the most pernicious subjective-idealist anti-theory nonsense possible by returning to the 'bad man' theory of history, - that rat Kruschev letting everyone down.

Delusions such as the 'peaceful road to socialism' effectively destroyed the world communist movement as a serious anti-imperialist force, and that nonsense had nothing whatever to do with Kruschev who simply inherited an already hopelessly Revisionist-corrupted International.

Turning Lenin’s temporary peaceful-coexistence tactic into something even worse than a 'permanent fudge' was all Stalin’s own work, presented as a valid theoretical principle of history.

The details of Stalin's disastrous role, and the important background to this catastrophic historical period,  are summarised as follows in this small portion of the EPSR's 'Perspectives 2002' document:

“When the Western economies failed to decline to a crawl and be overtaken by the socialist camp, as Stalin's 'theory' explained must happen, Gorbachev & Co decided it was because the Soviet economy was failing to make proper use of market mechanisms.

Stalin's 'theory' carried such weight that it was not even questioned, (in spite of much 'anti-Stalin' posturing after his death), because it fitted so well into so many other non-Marxist anti-revolutionary delusions the bureaucracy had lived by. 

It suited admirably the established wishful-thinking that maybe ultimate all-out conflict between the socialist camp and the 'good' Western imperialists (now dominant USA, Britain, France) could be avoided.

Moscow's delusion that workers states now had a permanent safe stake in the world, accepted by the 'good' imperialists, helped breed an attitude around much of the Third International (as was) that the last thing that was needed was any 'revolutionary adventurism', meaning 'premature' bids for working-class power, which would tend to 'unnecessarily rock the boat' of what was seen as a 'good enough' phase, of 'stable international peaceful coexistence' which it was imagined would somehow lead to imperialism eventually giving up completely on any general dreams of maintaining active, instant, universal counter-revolutionary responses to block the path forever to any further socialist advances in the world.

In this deluded atmosphere, future socialist advances were seen as almost falling into the lap of the international working class in time, practically automatically. Stalin’s casual neglecting to mention the utterly crucial importance to mankind for the working class to be ready to take revolutionary power out of the hands of the bourgeoisie upon the failure of yet another capitalist, war-disaster, both reflected and cemented this totally anti-Marxist mentality already established.

Stalin gives this deliberately non-revolutionary perspective further authority in commending the objectives of the heavily internationally CP-backed peace movement. Although not denying that to eliminate wars inevitability altogether, imperialism would have to be "abolished" (but avoiding stating specifically how), - Stalin plainly advocates the following:

"The object of the present-day peace movement is to rouse the masses of the people to fight for the preservation of peace and for the prevention of another world war. Consequently, the aim of this movement is not to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, - it confines itself to the democratic aim of preserving peace. In this respect, the present day peace movement differs from the movement of the time of the First World War for the conversion of the imperialist war into civil war, since the latter movement went further and pursued socialist aims'.

As Marx or Lenin might have commented, it is impossible to prevent the capitalist system from going to war. It is not impossible to overthrow the capitalist system. So, surely it would be easier to overthrow capitalism rather than trying to prevent it going to war. But once again, behind this Stalinist anti-revolutionary Revisionism lurks the assumption that the imperialist countries are steadily collapsing economically anyway, and that sooner or later, they will just fall into the hands of the working class like ripe plums. All that is needed from the international workers movement is to guard against letting the imperialists get away with starting another war.

And this was the essence of the "less difficult" task facing the international communist movement than the Bolsheviks had to face in 1917, as Stalin explained it to the 19th Congress of the CPSU in 1952, again implying that bourgeois imperialist decline and decay would make winning power off them relatively easier.

The following passage in 'Economic problems' finally spells out the warped 'theory' behind this anti-revolutionary retreat from Marxist science, which doomed the world movement to an impossible perspective, and condemned it to inevitable ultimate total confusion:

"The result  of East European socialist-camp co-operation is a fast pace of industrial development in these countries. It may be confidently said that with this pace of industrial development, it will soon come to pass that these countries will not only be in no need of imports from capitalist countries, but will themselves feel the necessity of finding an outside market for their surplus products.
"But it follows from this that the sphere of exploitation of the world's resources by the major capitalist countries (USA, Britain, France) will not expand but contract; that their opportunities for sale in the world markets will deteriorate, and that their industries will 
be operating more and more below capacity. That in fact is what is meant by the deepening of the general crisis of the world capitalist system in connection with the disintegration of the world market.
"This is felt by the capitalists themselves, for it would be difficult for them not to feel the loss of such markets as the USSR and China. They are trying to offset these difficulties with the 'Marshall Plan', the war in Korea, frantic rearmament, and industrial militarization. But that is very much like a drowning man clutching at a straw.
"This state of affair: has confronted the economists with two questions:
"a) Can it be affirmed that the thesis expounded by Stalin (talking about himself in the third person) before the Second World War regarding the relative stability of markets in the period of the general crisis of capitalism is still valid?
"b) Can it be affirmed that the thesis expounded by Lenin in the spring of 1916, namely that in spite of the decay of capitalism, "on the whole, capitalism is growing far more rapidly than before", - is still valid?
"I think that it cannot. In view of the new conditions to which the Second World War has given rise, both these theses must be regarded as having lost their validity".

This was the gospel in 1952. Despite the start of the open debunking of Stalin in 1956, and the beginnings of China's doubts about how well Moscow understood the world, the November 1960 statement of the 81 communist parties, including China, continued promoting the universal perspective "to achieve the socialist revolution by peaceful means" on the basis that "the pillars of the capitalist system have become so decayed that the ruling imperialist bourgeoisie in many countries can no longer resist, on its own, the forces of democracy and progress which are gaining in scope and strength ....
	"The decay of capitalism is particularly marked in the USA, the chief imperialist country ....Never has the conflict between the productive forces and relations of production in the capitalist countries been so acute ...." etc.’

But Lalkar still insists that this 'prediction' that another world war can be prevented, seriously "could have held water", -  but for Kruschev.

Clinging to these 'left-reformist-pressure' daydreams only helps cement the old 'stick-with-the-big-battalions' opportunism which kids itself that following 'socialist-celebrity-leaders' is a guide to socialism. It is a guide to the graveyard. Build Leninism. EPSR

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

Reprieve for discredited Flanagan underlines the continuing corruption of the halfway-house Good-Friday-Agreement solution and why it will crumble into Ireland’s reunification as the only healthy real progress eventually.

Despite the infamous record of the RUC and Special Branch, within which the current Chief Constable has been a key player, and despite recent revelations concerning the Omagh investigation debacle, the Police Board's decision to inflict Ronnie Flanagan on us for an extra month isn't just shocking, it's shameful.

And the fact that it's only for another month makes it all the more derisory. As Frank Connolly of the Sunday Business Post pointed out, in circumstances where the Chief Constable's head should nave been demanded on a platter, the British Government had offered Flanagan a senior position in its Inspectorate of Constabulary. But even that wasn't sufficient to appease the apparently insatiable need of unionism to rub nationalist faces in the dirt.

As Dan Keenan of the Irish Times argued, Flanagan had the option of leaving this Thursday having offered his resignation last November and worked his statutory three months notice. With characteristic arrogance, Flanagan wanted his cake and to eat it and with predictable enthusiasm the political wing complied.

The message to northern nationalists emanating from last week's decision; was simply put up or shut up and if the SDLP board members came away with egg on their faces, they had only themselves to blame.

Alex Attwood tried to brave it out. The fact that Flanagan is only to remain for another month, "speaks volumes", the Chief Constable was "a lame duck", said Attwood. But, particularly after all the huffing and puffing by Attwood before the meeting, it was a case of the kettle calling the pot. 

More importantly, the decision to delay Flanagan's departure has exposed the weakness of the new policing structures. Instead of a powerful body able to command proper democratic accountability, the Policing Board has been shown to be fatally flawed and unable to deliver even the modest aspiration of allowing a discredited RUC man to retire.

After stalling at the first hurdle, can we seriously expect the Policing Board to pose any challenge to the many unacceptable aspects of
current policing practice and structures, for example; the Special Branch autocracy? 

A key element of the Patten Commission’s recommendation was the deconstruction of the Special Branch, a force within a force linked to some of the most appalling human rights abuses perpetrated by the RUC.  

Patten had envisaged the Police Board as a mechanism of accountability, for example a body that could force the Chief Constable to open inquiries into controversial killings involving the RUC/PSNI.   But on the back of persistent unionist opposition, the British government has systematically diluted the potential for change. 

A further example would be the draft legislation relating to the Criminal Justice Review currently making its way through the British House of Commons. Flawed from the outset,  the review body responsible for drawing up proposals was made up of appointed NIO civil servants. But even some of their recommendations proved to be   'too radical'  for the British Government. 

The body recommended an independent and transparent public prosecution service - in the past the DPP has played a key role in secretly suppressing 'embarrassing' cases. But the only change proposed in the draft legislation is a new name. Once again, we are left with all shadow and no substance. 

Never mind the hundreds of nationalists who were brutalised and terrorised in Castlereagh Holding Centre when Flanagan presided over the interrogations as the RUC's duty inspector. Ignore Special Branch collusion in loyalist killings of nationalists, including Pat Finucane. Dismiss the shoot-to-kill ambushes, in which the right to surrender and stand trial was illegally suspended in favour of summary execution. Sideline recent criticism by the Ombudsman.

But whatever else you do, don't take any step that might be seen as holding the RUC to account. Allowing the timely retirement of Ronnie Flanagan would have only been a token gesture, a symbolic line in the sand between the old dispensation . and the hope for a better, more agreed future. But the Policing Board was unable to deliver even that.

"It's a vote of confidence and people should accept majority rule in this instance," said Ian Paisley Jr speaking after the Policing Board narrowly voted to keep RUC/PSNI Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan in place for another month. "We agreed, to disagree " said the board's vice-chair, Denis Bradley.

And there we have it. The classic avowal of unionist hegemony counterpoised with a conciliatory nationalist fudge. There was no agreeing in it Mr Bradley, the odds were stacked and with chairman Des Rea's casting vote, the game was played out. Nationalist grievances diced away for another round of unionist face saving.   

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

The sort of corrupt, criminal background to colonial policing in the Occupied Zone of Ireland which gives clues to the humiliating break-in (or inside job) at the top-security Special Branch office at the fortified Castlereagh headquarters.

According to recent revelations, in 1974 a Special Branch officer ambushed three RUC colleagues, seriously wounding two, of which one was permanently disabled. The third RUC man escaped injury in what has been described as a triple murder attempt. The incident, and the chief suspect, a Special Branch detective, has been connected to the killing of Catholic RUC Sergeant Joe Campbell three years later. 

The first incident took place in July 1974 on the outskirts of Cushendall. In the vehicle at the time of the attack were RUC Reservists Andrew Kennedy and Bob Thompson and RUC ,Sergeant Jack McDonald, now deceased. It has been suggested that McDonald was the target of the 1974 gun attack because of his close association with Campbell.

It is believed that the Special Branch officer at the centre of the controversy had been involved in a series of robberies and mock attacks on locally based crown forces’ personnel.

Campbell had inadvertently become aware of the irregular nature of the Special Branch officer's activities and may have shared his information with McDonald.

Campbell was shot dead outside Cushendall RUC Barracks on February 25 1977 after responding to a mysterious telephone call to his home.  His family have always believed there was crown forces' collusion in his killing.

An informer; recruited as an agent by RUC Special Branch to spy on local republicans, and a member of the British SAS, are also believed to have been involved. The Special Branch officer in question acted as the informer's handler.

According to one version, the SAS officer died in a car crash some years ago outside Lisburn but recent media reports have suggested the soldier is not only "very much alive" but also still serving with the British Army.

But the big question is not whether or not the Special Branch detective and his shadowy associates were or were not engaged in illegal activity, but whether they were simply engaged in criminality or more sinister covert operations, sanctioned by whom and for what purpose.? 

The subsequent cover up appears to suggest the latter and involved not only the RUC hierarchy, including three successive Chief Constables, but also the Justice establishment within the North.

In his investigation into allegations of crown forces' collusion , detailed in The Committee, Sean MdPhilemy argues that Campbell became a target because he "uncovered more " than the criminal activities of a 'rogue' cop.

"He had discovered that police officers, army agents, double-agents" and loyalists were colluding in a wide range of terrorist activities, acting as agents provocateurs and running 'dirty tricks' operations against Catholics in his police district in an effort to discredit the IRA;" he wrote.
"Shootings and bombings, which had been attributed to the IRA, had  "turned out to be semi -official,  low-intensity counter -guerrilla
operations run by the security services."

In the interests of Britain's dirty war, it appears that even the lives of fellow crown forces' members are expendable. And now one of the survivors has asked the Ombudsman to investigate.

Among the many aspects of these incidents the Ombudsman will no doubt consider is the claim that prior intelligence reports exposed a pending threat against RUC Sergeant Campbell posed by the Special Branch detective but no steps appear to have been taken to prevent the killing.

The secret reports regarding activities of the Special Branch detective at the centre of the controversy were ordered by the then head of Special Blanch, Assistant Chief Constable Mick Slevin and were compiled by other Special Branch officers.

The files also reveal that the weapon used in the 1974 ambush of three RUC 'officers' was "subsequently handed over by the Special Branch detective to another" RUC colleague. The report records that ballistic tests carried out on the pistol confirmed it was the weapon used in the attack.

The Ombudsman will also hear a secretly taped interview with the Special Branch detective's former landlady, who claims she saw him take a rifle from her property on the night of the 1974 shooting. Apparently, the landlady also gives an alleged reason for the attack.

In 1980, a Special Branch detective was arrested and charged in relation to the Campbell killing. He went on trial in 1982 facing some 27 charges;  including having explosives, firearms and carrying out armed robberies.

At trial, the RUC man was acquitted of the murder but was convicted and jailed on bank robbery charges. These convictions were subsequently overturned on appeal.

Despite the fact that, according to the recently discovered secret files, there was evidence to connect the detective with both the 1974 ambush, and 1977 fatal shooting, the prosecution had relied on one main witness.

The chief prosecution witness at the original trial was the Special Branch handler's own informant, who at the time was already serving an 18-year jail sentence. As an agent for the RUC Special Branch, subterfuge was stock in trade: As a witness, the informer was easily discredited on appeal. 

Curiously, after the Special Branch detective was released on the grounds that the chief prosecution witness was deemed a liar, the informer-turned-accuser was also given early release just a few months after his handler. Inexplicably, the informer was given a royal pardon by the then Secretary of State.

Meanwhile, the family of loyalist gunman Billy Wright have reiterated their call for a public inquiry into possible state collusion in the killing. Wright was shot dead while serving a sentence in Long Kesh prison in December 1997.

According to media reports prior to his death, Wright kept secret tapes and a prison journal that may be revealed if his family succeed in their call for an inquiry.

In recent years, hundreds of RUC officers have accepted financially lucrative early retirement deals in line with the Patten Report's promise of a new beginning for policing. But it has emerged that many of these former RUC officers are now being recruited back into the force by the PSNI.

Some former RUC and Special Branch members have been re-employed under the guise of civilian technicians or, as one PSNI spokesperson put it, "there are loads of people back doing things they did as police officers".

Sinn Fein Chief Whip Alex Maskey said that the revelation underlined the fact that we do not have a new beginning to policing.
"We do riot have a representative policing service and the British Government are not willing to bring one into existence," he said.

The PSNI's recruitment of former RUC officers came to light as the Ombudsman's Office has been asked to investigate another incident of collusion and cover up by the RUC and its Special Branch operatives.

During the period of the agreement, the British Army killed 68 people and the RUC four,  but because  of this gentlemen's agreement none of these deaths were; or could have been properly investigated: 

•	THE BLOODY SUNDAY Inquiry has uncovered a document which reveals that between January 1970 and March 1972 an agreement existed between the RUC Chief Constable and the British Army GOC to severely limit the scope of any inquiries into killings by British state forces, in effect offering all members of the security forces immunity from prosecution.