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 1132  Apr 16 2002

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Washington's attempted fascist putsch in Caracas pours ridicule on 'socialist' dupes in Britain who fell for the 'condemn terrorism' fraud and who play the bourgeoisie's 'democratic' game with serious respect instead of open contempt. The fool's errand Powell has been sent on in Occupied Palestine leaves as much stinking shame on the West as does the stench from the Zionist massacres and mindless destruction of Palestinian nationhood. But America's global imperialist-warmongering onslaught to guarantee its domineering survival in the coming catastrophic international 'free-market' slump, dressed up as a
hypocritical and  imbecile 'war on terrorism', is heading towards disaster on all fronts.  Soon, only SLP and Alliance cowardly political opportunism will be left believing that the degenerate US 'New World order' can impose peace settlements on Ireland, Afghanistan, and Hamas "terrorists", etc, etc. Marxist science only understands imperialist DEFEAT as inevitable. Even the bourgeoisie are losing confidence in a Western triumph. The NAZI tactics of collective punishment, flattening Jenin, which the West's 'condemnation' of 'terrorism' opened the door to, will fail.

The bungled CIA coup in Venezuela, and the US monstrous arm-twisting to force Arafat to ludicrously mouth a 'condemnation' of suicide-bombing tactics, are a further total humiliation of the fake-'left' in Britain (from Scargill to the Socialist Alliance). 

The Trot and Revisionist retreat from the only serious programme for toppling the capitalist-imperialist system (the Marxist-Leninist science of proletarian dictatorship) in order to sign up to the 'democracy' and 'anti-terrorism' frauds of bourgeois 'morality' has helped put a huge stick into American ruling-class hands with which to beat the whole world to a pulp.

The fiasco in Venezuela is a farce about 'democracy' as much as a farce about US imperialist coup-making incompetence.

But even the latter's far greater historical significance does not let the fake 'lefts' off the hook who have all, from the SLP to the SA, brainwashed their supporters into a totally false defeatist analysis via regular 'explanations' that a "New World Order of US-imposed settlements" is crushing anti-imperialist struggles from Ireland to the Middle East.

A Marxist scientific approach, on the other hand, would start with the perspective of globalised imperialism's greatest-ever world-trade boom only being capable of stoking up the greatest ever contradictions with the cultural, organisational, and technological transformation of the international proletariat (by that very same globalisation process) and would constantly seek out evidence from capitalism's own sources of how the steadily emerging FAILURE of the imperialist system to control world developments is only leading towards the greatest-ever economic crisis and warmongering-revolutionary slump-disaster in the whole of capitalist history.

Falling for the 'condemn terrorism' crap of bourgeois 'morality' and for the 'democracy is the answer' stunt of imperialism's huge propaganda and brainwashing industry, is not a 'mistake' by the fake 'left' but behavioural jibber totally consistent with their traditional 'left pressure' Trot and Revisionist petty-bourgeois mentalities in the West which after 1945 shared the dream of eventually gaining 'socialist power' slice by slice, via advances in the labour movement and parliamentary reforms, - an extension of the petty-bourgeois mentality of trade-unionism as classically analysed by Lenin.

The outrageous US imperialist coup attempt in Venezuela, and Washington's contemptible role in the ongoing colonialist tyranny afflicting the life of the Palestinian nation, sum up the utter stupidity of all 'reformist' illusions in a nutshell.

If the 'left' ever did win enough parliamentary influence to bring in 'socialist' measures, the imperialist system's world-wide power of military domination,- acting behind the local permanent bourgeois-monopoly dictatorship in economic, propaganda, social, and state-office influence, would forever relentlessly escalate its counter-revolutionary coup preparations until it eventually DID succeed in bringing down or totally undermining in one way or another the offending 'socialist' development.

Despite the CIA's failure this time, the Chávez regime is now in greater danger than ever before. The most cretinous lesson of all to draw from this coup debacle would be the idiot conclusion that some fake 'lefts' will come to that "the strength of democracy and the power of people's democratic protests proved mightier than the CIA's big business and military plotters".

This was exactly the mistake made by the 'left' about Allende in Chile, who also survived some initial coup-attempts against him during his 'socialist' government of 1970-73, only to be bloodily wiped out when the CIA decided to further escalate its coup preparations regardless of the ever-greater risk of public international exposure.

It will be no different in Venezuela. The only thing the Chávez regime can do is to carry out the measures which Allende foolishly refused to adopt from the Marxist science of proletarian dictatorship, the only possible way for socialism to start to take root anywhere, at any time in history, past, present or future, beginning with totally dismantling all the former capitalist state structures of control and propaganda/information, putting in workers militias and workers production councils in place of the police hierarchy, the military hierarchy, the capitalist press and television monopolies, the judiciary, etc, etc. It is tragic that Chávez had not really started on any of this, - and even more tragic that his first comments reported on being restored to office have hardly addressed this theme either (even though it is obvious that he might have to be treading with extreme caution on such matters in the predicament that he is in).

And it would be triply tragic if no one had been giving him any advice from the international camp of socialism and anti-imperialism to begin moves towards a workers state.

The hands of a wholesale Western conspiracy to undermine or bring down this troublesome Chávez regime, by any and every means possible, are all over this Venezuelan affair.

The business management elite of the Venezuelan ruling class's biggest money earner, the state-owned PDVSA oil corporation, had for months been winding up the corporatist trade-union leadership to fear the domestic and international populist measures introduced by Chávez because of the USA's objections to them (as PDVSA's biggest customer) and because only the traditional ruling-class oil oligarchy was supposedly competent to run PDVSA efficiently.

Last week, the corporate board brought the whole workforce out on strike on full pay to launch the coup plans masterminded by the CIA.

The planned key moment (for liaison with pro-imperialist military officers to join the coup) was to make mystery 'gunmen' fire shots at the middle-class demonstration called onto the streets to demand the resignation of Chávez.

The entire media, capitalist owned, was in on the plot and ready to play up this paper-thin provocation and to cover up the illegal criminal nature of the coup, presenting it as the most natural, 'democratic', and public-friendly thing imaginable.

The Western press, well-coached by the CIA, were in on the plot too, presenting the mystery gunmen as "an undoubted fact of Chávez tyranny", etc, and totally failing to report the real nature of the reactionary coup, - or of its dramatic failure (when it collapsed because of widespread popular anger against this imperialist stunt). The weirdest propaganda aspect of all was the presence in Caracas for the CIA coup of a Blair Government-minister spin doctor, writing an instant denunciation of Chávez for the press, blaming him bizarrely both for his populist measures of his new presidency, and for the rotten elitist privileges of Venezuela that Chávez was precisely directed to tackle in his landslide populist election victory three years ago. Remarkable coincidence? Or part of Blair's spear-carrying service-agreement for US imperialism's fascist warmongering crusade to crush all anti-imperialism under tight military control the whole world over in preparation for the monopoly-capitalist system's coming catastrophic international slump which will spark revolution everywhere? 

This humiliating arslikhan performance for the Bush Nazis by NUJ member and Rotherham MP Denis MacShane will go down as one of the most grotesque trousers-off clown acts in political history, failing to denounce the illegal armed coup at all, but basking in a military take-over by South American junta generals (!!!) which has since collapse in incompetence anyway.!!

Some 'democracy" this Blairite parliament believes in!!!!

Merged in with the rest of the mealy-mouthed bourgeois coverage of a sick fascist coup attempt, these disgraceful Blairite remarks help piece together part of the disgusting tyranny of Western 'democracy' world-rule at work:

WHAT has happened in Caracas is no surprise but it should be a warning. Hugo Chávez, the former President, was a political leader who lived by permanent mobilisation., His style was that of the populist military commander forever issuing orders to advance and attack. 

On the Sunday of my arrival I witnessed the bizarre three-hour television speech by Chávez which he announced the dismissal of six executives of the PDVSA petrol company He also announced a 20 per cent increase in the minimum wage.

Both announcements came out of the blue. It was an odd way to run a country. On the day of the strike, I watched him again on television announcing that he had "taken up the sword of Bolivar, which would not rest until the elites were put to flight".

He was dressed in a red paratrooper's beret and rugby shirt and waved his arms up and-down,  like Mussolini - an odd, disturbing spectacle. The calm, rational Chávez had been replaced by a ranting,  populist demogogue.

In the end, it was not his odd behaviour or embraces of Saddam Hussein , Fidel Castro and other relics of the 20th century fraternity of dictators that brought about his downfall.  He failed in the task of combining economic efficiency, social justice and political freedom. Venezuela is oil-rich, but poor in social justice.

The rich and even middle classes pay no income tax and the poverty of the drug-ridden barrios of Caracas are as bad as any in Latin America. With its guaranteed oil income Venezuela should be able to develop a balanced economy: Chávez was elected precisely because the previous Caracas elites failed to deliver. But the Chávez, style of rhetoric and government by populist mobilisation also ended in failure.   

Venezuela now needs to find its way to a democratic and inclusive governance in which social justice combines with economic modernisation. Britain will be there to help.

Washington has long been irritated by Señor Chávez and lost patience with him after he criticised the United States for bombing civilians in Afghanistan in its War on Terror. He did not endear himself, either,  by travelling to Cuba, Libya, and Iraq.

In 2000, Mr Chávez, 47, enjoyed his greatest international moment by hosting the second Opec summit, pitching himself as the leader of the developing world. He angered the US by being the first leader to visit Saddam Hussein after the Gulf war.

Venezuela is the fourth largest oil exporter in the world and sales provide 80 per cent of its foreign earnings and almost half of government revenue. It produces almost three million barrels of crude oil and other derivatives a day; 1.7 million barrels of it is exported to the US. News of the ousting sent international oil prices down, amid expectations that it would bring an increase in production.

Executives of PDVSA last night took the first steps to rebuilding relations with the US by announcing that they would not supply any more oil to Cuba.  Señor Chávez's Government had been providing Cuba with up to 53,000 barrels a day on preferential terms.

     managers at PDVSA,  the state oil giant, returned to work after a three day strike. Nevertheless, police gave a warning that supporters of Señor Chávez reportedly were distributing weapons, especially in the hillside slums surrounding the capital, Caracas.

The United States appeared to support the ousting. The White House accused Señor Chávez of provoking the emergency and said that it looked forward to working to "restore the essential elements of democracy".

US irritation with Señor Chávez rose after his criticism of the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan. Tariq Aziz, Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister, hailed Señor Chávez's return to power as a "victory against American conspiracy".

Two days after he had said that the position of Señor Chávez was unsustainable, Josep  Piqué, Spain's Foreign Minister, yesterday urged Venezuela to respect democratic principles.

Denis MacShane, the Foreign Office Minister, hailed the restoration of constitutional democracy and appealed to Señor Chávez to enter into dialogue with all sectors of the economy and society.

THE United States, which has long been frustrated by President Chávez and refused to call his removal from office a coup, declined yesterday to welcome his return to office.

Condoleezza Rice, the Bush Administration's National Security Adviser, expressed hope that the briefly ousted Venezuelan President would change his left-wing agenda.

Señor Chávez's friendship with President Castro of Cuba and visits to Libya and Iraq had clouded his relationship with the United States, the biggest importer of Venezuelan oil. 'I hope that Hugo Chávez takes the message that his people sent him that his policies are not working," Ms Rice said. She said that he must realise "the whole world is watching" and he should "right his own ship that has been moving in the wrong direction for quite a long time".

Venezuela greeted the return to power of the President, Hugo Chávez, only two days after his ousting in a coup, with collective silence. In part it was sour grapes and in part fear of retribution that no main Sunday papers appeared, while television and radio stations kept news to a minimum. The reason was simple. After a battle with Señor Chávez over press freedom in recent months, media owners leapt to back Friday's coup.

In the few hours that a provisional government led by a businessman, Pedro Carmona, was in power, the top media barons were among the first to visit him at the presidential palace to offer support "It was a media coup," said a disgusted Maria Lilibeth Da Corte, a veteran palace reporter for Unión Radio, .who said her editors censored all negative reporting on the coup. That included early signs that things were going wrong on Saturday. When a pro-Chávez crowd marched on the palace and members of the new government fled by an underground tunnel, no reports were aired. One photographer heard other journalists being told by their bosses to "forget being journalists for the next week, we're all working for the government now".

Señorita Da Corte said: "The saddest thing is that there were journalists who were in agreement with the bosses. Unless there is a serious internal investigation of what went on, professional journalism in Venezuela is finished." Chávez supporters stoned one television station, demanding to go on the air.

Among the worst offenders were the powerful networks, Globovision, Televen and Venevision. According to sources, Globovision executives even called CNN in Atlanta to request that it cease broadcasting negative coup images. The request was denied.

Señor Chávez reappeared at the palace yesterday in a conciliatory mood, promising there would be no witchhunt.

After publicly thanking the international media for their coverage of the coup, he turned to the Venezuelan media. "For God's sake, reflect a little," he appealed. "This country is yours too."

The violence erupted on the third day of a general strike called to support oil executives who want Señor Chávez to dismiss the new management at the state oil monopoly, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), a major supplier; to the United States.

Señor Chávez said that the television stations and the Opposition "don't want to see, hear or accept the reality" of his authority. The media, he said, were trying "to create panic and generate disturbances" to present a false image of a chaotic Venezuela abroad. 

The disruption to Venezuela's critical oil sector, the fourth-largest in the world, threatens to bring the country to its knees economically, as well as potentially affecting the world's fuel markets.

Government officials condemned the strike as a virtual insurrection, accusing the strike leaders of trying to foment unrest in the Armed forces.

The strike action comes on top of a bitter six week old dispute between the Government and managers at PDVSA. The action was called as part of a mounting opposition campaign against Señor Chávez's so-called "peaceful revolution", including a series of left-wing  reforms supposedly designed to reduce poverty.

National Guard troops fired tear gas at the front ranks of a crowd of more than 150,000 people who marched to within 100 yards of the presidential palace, where thousands of Chávez supporters had also gathered. Shots were fired near the palace, and scuffles with police erupted throughout the centre of Caracas.

Protesters shouted anti-government slogans and carried placards bearing messages such as "Chávez leave now" and "Chávez you're fired, thanks for everything".

The Mayor of Greater Caracas, Alfredo Penal, an opponent of Señor Chávez, accused government-snipers of filing on crowds, especially upon opposition demonstrators. "Chávez has shown his true face. This dictator's apprentice brutally ordered the repression of a peaceful demonstration," he said.

Señor Chávez closed five private Caracas television stations for allegedly abusing freedom of expression by inciting the protests, but the stations continued transmitting by satellite.

Alleged government efforts to politicise PDVSA, an autonomous state entity, provided the latest catalyst. "The central issue is no longer just about the oil industry," Humberto Calderon, the former Energy Minister and PDVSA president, said.  "It's about the way the country is being run."

Señor Chávez fired the president of PDVSA, General Guaicaipuro Lameda, He was replaced by a radical left-wing academic, Gaston Parra.

Señor Chávez also appointed five new members to the board, all close to his own political party. In an unprecedented move, PDVSA's top management demanded the resignation of the five and mounted a go-slow.

But Señor Chávez seems in no mood to back down, accusing the management of being an overpaid elite defending its privileges. He announced the dismissal of seven of PDVSA's most senior dissenting executives on Sunday. "If I have to, I'll fire them all," he said. '

But reports from around the country presented a different picture, with state oil company officials saying that several important refineries were all but shut down and port facilities effectively out of operation. Some reports said that as many as 28 oil tankers were stuck at Venezuelan ports unable to be loaded.

John Lichtblau, an industry analyst at the New York-based Petroleum Industry Research Foundation, said that Venezuela's dependence on oil revenue made the current situation untenable. "Venezuela must export-oil or go bankrupt. This is something that can't last very long, he said. 

Pedro Carmona, the head of Venezuela's largest business association, was declared the leader of a transitional government. But by Saturday it was clear that the coup was beginning to collapse.

Mr Carmona had angered many by trying to sweep away all vestiges of Mr Chávez's rule by dissolving Congress and canceling the constitution approved under his administration. He was soon forced to reverse his decision after the armed forces chief, General Efrain Vasquez, said he would only support Mr Carmona if the Congress was restored. Mr Carmona was then forced to suspend the inauguration of his new cabinet.

Meanwhile, in the streets of Caracas, thousands of demonstrators supporting Mr Chayez - or opposed to the way he was ousted - took over state TV to demand his return. Police fired water cannon and teargas. Agency reports claimed that dozens died in the violence. Some military commanders stayed loyal. For several tense hours it appeared factions in the divided armed forces would fight each other, but this did not happen. By Saturday night Mr Carmona had resigned and, at the end of a day of tension and confusion, Mr Chávezs vice-president, Diosdado Cabello, made the dramatic announcement that his boss would resume power. He also said Mr Chávez had never resigned in the first place.

At the Miraflores palace, Chávez administration officials - many of whom had evaded police raids over the previous two days - and loyalist military officers hugged each other with relief and joy.

"In these past two days they have persecuted us," said Rafael Ramirez, president of the state-run gas consortium and a Chávez ally. Unshaven and with red-rimmed eyes, Mr Ramirez said he had hidden in friends' homes after Mr Chávez's arrest. Asked about the turnaround, he said: "It's marvellous, because the Venezuelan people responded to this illegal coup attempt:'

Mr Chávez said he had not been mistreated in custody, and appealed for calm He said there would be no recriminations although Mr Cabello had said earlier that Mr Carmona and his supporters would be tried for conspiracy of military rebellion: More than 100 military personnel were under arrest. "They must take responsibility. They will be put on trial with all their rights, but they will be put on trial," Mr Cabello said.

In spite of not having slept for two nights, Señor Chávez could not wait to tell his story and calmly sat down at 4.30am to make a 55-minute live and unscripted address to the nation in front of 200 journalists and supporters.

"I'm still stupified. I'm still assimilating it all," he said, calling his fate an unprecedented "counter-counter-revolution".

He was still able to crack a few jokes, however. "I was absolutely sure I would return," he said. "I just never thought I would be back so soon."

Señor Chávez was in a conciliatory mood, telling his supporters, who had taken to the streets on Saturday to protest at his removal from office, that it was time to go home. "Let there be calm," he said.

He also tried to reassure his enemies. "There isn't going to be any retaliation, no witchhunt. I haven't any thirst for revenge," he said.

Señor Chávez said that it was a time for reflection. "The hour has come for profound change,"  he said, before announcing that he planned to stage a "round table" of national dialogue by  the end of the week.  

After being swept to power in late 1998 on a wave of popular support, Señor Chávez vowed a "peaceful and democratic revolution" to tackle chronic poverty and reform the elitist political system.  Last 	year his popularity fell as former allies accused him of trying to imitate Cuban-style socialism.

Señor Chávez also said yesterday that he had accepted the resignation of the board of the country's state-run oil company, PDVSA, the fourth largest exporter of petroleum products in the world. He had provoked anger earlier this year when he appointed several associates to the board, including the chairman.

His opponents could hardly believe that they had let Señor Chávez slip from their grasp. The first sign that the coup was falling apart came in the city of Maracay, home of the country's most important military complex.

By noon on Saturday thousands of troops loyal to Señor Chávez had declared themselves in rebellion against the interim Government of the businessman Pedro Carmona. Military officers and some of Señor Carmona's supporters were upset by a series of hastily drawn-up decrees dissolving the National Assembly, Supreme Court, and other public offices.  

Señor Carmona was also caught in a tug-of-war by two rival wings within the anti-Chávez forces. Hardliners from the conservative old guard hoped to eliminate any institutions loyal to the former Government.  Moderates insisted that constitutional norms should be preserved.

Carmona also acknowledged that air force officers were rebelling in the central city of Maracay.

Police arrested three politicians associated with Chávez. Four others took refuge in the Cuban embassy.  Security forces also conducted house-to-house searches for members of 'Bolivarian Circles' -  Chávez backed neighbourhood groups styled after Cuba's Revolutionary Block Committees.

By early afternoon thousands of pro-Chávez demonstrators had taken to the streets. The ousted Cabinet was soon back in charge, swearing in Diosdado Cabello, the Vice-President, as a holding move. Señor Carmona quietly resigned.

So what went wrong for the American 'master-race' in Venezuela this time? Its attempted putsch was even denounced within the Caracas bourgeoisie as this quick-off-the-mark letter to the Guardian. reveals:

The Allende story has repeated itself in Venezuela. Hugo Chávez, a democratically elected president who respected human rights, with not a political prisoner and no "missing" people, has been the victim of a coup organised by the upper classes and some generals, with the decisive participation of the media and the US.

The assault on the presidential office had no other intention than to provoke violence and turmoil. Most of the victims were government supporters. They were mainly poor and did not have access to any mass media.

Chávez's only errors were to rule mainly for the poor, and to say that killing children in Afghanistan was a crime.
Josephine Centeno

Caracas, Venezuela 		`

The outpouring of such general discontent where the anti-communist content of this imperialist viciousness might normally be expected to act as justification in all middle-class minds,  raises the suspicion that bourgeois fears of a total failure of America's attempt to militarily control the whole planet are fuelling doubts about US leadership in every specific international conflict now.

The reported open squabbling in Carmona's own Venezuelan coup-camp hints at similar problems there. Behind all the 'New World Order' braggadocio ,in bourgeois circles from the CPGB to the Daily Mail, about how the 'terrorists' will now "really be in for it," once US blitzkrieg is launched against 'axis of evil' and 'rogue' states everywhere,  -  there lurks in reality an astonishing shrivelling of international middle-class confidence that the West "will get things done".

It is just the fact that Sept 11 took place at all, virtually out of the blue, which has caused such deep-down unfathomable disquiet.

At the same time, the most terrifying global economic crisis in all history still hovers menacingly in the background in another unprecedented development which was never supposed to happen again (according to all popular Keynesian sentiment and the fact that capitalism has just won the 'battle of history' against the Soviet socialist camp, allegedly).

As if that wasn't enough, the Washington Cabinet, composed exclusively of millionaires, launches the Western world into a 'war on terrorism' against 'rogue' and 'axis of evil' states in all direction, which effectively amounts to reimposing direct military-colonial rule again over the whole planet,  40 years after the West's greatest-ever colonial empires were all hounded by national-liberation struggle into total disintegration and defeat.

And just to concentrate the bourgeois mind on just what a ludicrously insane international aim has been set for the West by Washington degeneracy, the most viciously ruthless 'bound to win' colonisation of all, finds itself facing insoluble problems in Occupied Palestine where the Zionist expropriation of this ancient Arab homeland has to either kill or exile the entire Palestinian nation or start to dismantle its monstrous colonisation.

And as the Zionists themselves say, once such a process starts, there is unlikely to be a finish to it until the whole Palestinian nation is back where it belongs, all over Palestine, and well outnumbering all the Jewish colonists there, - - especially true of a process brought about by Intifada revolution.

The middle-class world is crumbling fast. The propaganda tide is beginning to turn as well. Suddenly, we are reading in the capitalist press what a fraud the Oslo final (land-for-peace) deal was that the West has pretended Arafat was so perverse to have rejected:

Barak's proposal for a Palestinian state based on 91% of the West Bank sounded substantive, but even the most cursory glance at the map revealed the bad faith inherent in it. It showed the West Bank carved into three chunks, surrounded by Israeli troops and settlers, without direct access to its own international borders.

The land-swap that was supposed to compensate the Palestinians for the loss of prime agricultural land in the West Bank merely added insult to injury. The only territory offered to Palestinian negotiators consisted of stretches of desert adjacent to the Gaza Strip that Israel currently uses for toxic waste dumping. The proposals on East Jerusalem were no better, permitting the Palestinians control of a few scattered fragments of what had been theirs before 1967.

Barak offered the trappings of Palestinian sovereignty while perpetuating the subjugation of the Palestinians. It is not difficult to  see why they felt unable to accept. The only surprise is how widely the myth of the "generous offer" is now, accepted.

We are also beginning to see some of the most outspoken challenges to traditional Western sympathy for the 'Israeli' cause yet printed, - and from impeccably 'progressive' middle-class authors too, without the slightest hint of closet anti-semitism ascribable to them:

As was the case with the South African regime, the methods by which you hope to subjugate the enemy consist of  force and bloodshed and humiliation. Cynically you think you can get away with this as long as you play up to the supposed  vital interests of the United States.

I don't think you really care a fig for America's interests. Your doppelganger, Netanyahu, employs this crude propaganda  more openly.  But you too, by echoing the American president, who describes every "other" as a terrorist,  have shown that you take the rest of the world for  fools. Surely,  not all of us agree that the highest good in the world is America's greed for cheap oil,  and that we are hence expected to adhere to the inviolability of corrupt regimes in the region.,

It is blatantly averred, again and again, that any criticism of Israel's  policies is an expression of anti-semitism.

With that assertion the argument is supposed to be closed. Of course, I reject this attempt at censorship by thus disqualifying the grounds for debate.

No reference to some ostensibly sacrosanct Greater Israel can camouflage the fact that your settlements are armed colonies built  on land shamelessly stolen from the Palestinians,  festering there as shards in their flesh,  or snipers' nests,  intended to thwart and annul any possibility of Palestinian statehood. There can be no way to peace through the annihilation of the other,

Why should we look the other way when it is Israel committing crimes? A  viable state cannot be built on the expulsion of another people who have as much claim to that territory as you have. In the long run, your immoral and short-sighted policies will furthermore weaken Israel's legitimacy as a state.  As provocateur, cold-blooded and cruel, you stand out among your peers. In your dogged attempts to subvert previous agreements and scupper the possibility of peace - except for the peace of the graveyard and of exile, premised on the "total transfer" or disappearance of the Palestinian entity - you are bringing turmoil to the region. It remains to be seen whether the growling of your principals in Washington will inflect your campaign of calculated terror and wanton destruction - or whether it is but a smokescreen behind which to better align the "free world's" war on "terrorism" -and for the domination of resources and a global control of markets, cheap oil and "democracy":

I  recently visited the occupied territories for the first time. And  yes, I'm afraid they can reasonably be described as resembling Bantustans - reminiscent of the ghettoes and controlled camps of misery one knew in South Africa.

How abysmally sad the villages are.  The green lights in the mosques and all the unfinished  habitations. The ugliness of the architecture. The inanity of your occupation - all those lit-up detour roads built for the exclusive use of settlers and Israeli citizens. The surly pettiness of your controls at check points,  having little to do with security and everything with the primitive urge to humiliate, harass and drive to insane rage an occupied population.

The extreme youth of your soldiers. The ruthlessness with which you destroy the Palestinian economy. The ancient revenge bulldozing houses,  destroying olive groves. The Berlin walls around your settlements in Gaza (and behind them university extensions, research institutes, American linked hotels, golf courses), and then the rubble of destroyed Palestinian quarters looking now like Ground Zero.

The ebullience of the intellectuals and artists under siege in Ramallah - arguing, laughing at their own plight. How they all say: "We don't want to be heroes, we don't want to be victims, we just want to lead normal lives". 

Their wry despair. The visit to Yasser Arafat, a holed fox, his waxed yellow hands clinging to the empty clichés of "a peace of  the brave" and "the conscience of the international community". And a human rights lawyer claiming: "We are grateful to Sharon for two things: he united all the Palestinian factions and he took away every option except to resist".

Later on, the same haunted man, chain-smoking and with the sweat of death already on him, remarked bitterly that repression has penetrated the skin of the people, and that now they have nothing else to defend themselves with except their skins. Hence the human bombs.

You have not broken the spirit of the Palestinian people. They are now more resolute than ever to build a state. They saw the renewed onslaught coming, they knew you were but playing footsy with General Zmni. They also know that, since you have now made them stronger, you must strike harder and deeper, because you are caught in a conundrum of your own making. Like Bush in his crusade against the infidel and the disobedient, you have to accelerate your distension of international public ethics.

Breyten Breytenbach was recently part of an International Parliament of Writers' delegation to the occupied Palestinian territories.

 		..

The suggestion is even now raised (albeit obliquely) in the very most progressive petty-bourgeois circles of all, that the argument to put to Zionist imperialism should not just go back to the well-debated 1967 limits to its colonisation advance, but right back to the very 1948 UN-approved start to this whole vicious ethnic cleansing process of implanting an 'Israeli' Western -imperialist colony on the homeland of the Palestinian nation who have to be expropriated:

The stories of brutality and destruction filtering out of the Jenin refugee camp have become increasingly ominous. While independent observers have been kept out - along with ambulances and UN blood supplies - the Israeli army has rampaged its way through the hillside shanty town, overwhelming desperate Palestinian resistance. Hundreds are reported killed, including many civilians.

As in other West Bank towns and camps, reports of beatings and executions of prisoners abound. This is where wars against terror end, with screaming children forced to drink sewage and piles of corpses being cleared by bulldozers.

Yesterday's horrific suicide bomb attack on a bus in Haifa (from where many of the Jenin refugees fled or were expelled in 1948) has cruelly demonstrated the futility of the strategy pursued by Sharon and his government of national unity. 

The largest-scale Israeli offensive for two decades was supposed to root out the very terror networks that struck with deadly force yesterday. 

But such acts of desolate revenge are born of half a century of dispossession and powerlessness, and a civilian death count far higher than Israel has endured over the past 18 months.

What alternative does the government have to defend its citizens in these circumstances, Israeli politicians demand. The answer is painfully obvious: withdraw from the territories Israel has lorded over since 1967 and redress the ethnic cleansing which underpinned the foundation of the state 19 years earlier. 

Sharon of course has no intention of doing any such thing. Instead, he has plunged into a latter-day version of France's war against the FLN in Algeria in the 1950s. Like Sharon's Israel, France unleashed its full might against bombers and gunmen, killing, torturing and imprisoning many thousands, - crushing resistance in the casbahs with state terror. Yet after a lull, the rebellion reignited even more powerfully than before, and the French were forced to quit. 

Israelis usually have far fewer illusions about what is going on in their country than their western supporters. Michael Ben Pair, Israel's attorney general in the mid-1990s, recently described the Palestinian intifada as a "war of national liberation", adding:

"We enthusiastically chose to become a  colonialist society, ignoring international treaties, expropriating lands, transferring settlers from Israel to the occupied territories, engaging in theft and finding justification for all these activities ... we established an apartheid regime". But despite President Bush's much vaunted public appeals to Sharon to begin a military pullback from the main Palestinian towns, the US - the one power in the world with the leverage over Israel to make it withdraw for good - shows no sign whatever of seriously reining in its long-term client state.

Sharon's determination to destroy not just "terror networks" and the military infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority, but its civilian infrastructure as well - including educational and health institutions has effectively had the green light from the US government. 

Nothing could have made the real US attitude clearer than the secretary of state Colin Powell's leisurely peregrinations across north Africa while Israeli forces have wreaked devastation in Jenin, Nablus and Bethlehem. To all intents and purposes, the destruction of the Palestinian Authority has been a policy signed off in Washington.

It can hardly be a surprise: US military and economic support for Israel - worth $70bn since 1979 - has after all been the linchpin of its imperial power in the Middle East since at least the 1960s. in reality, it has been primarily driven by strategic interests in the world's most important oil region.

Unlike the various autocratic Arab potentates the US and other western states lean on to keep the oil flowing and their populations in check, Israel is an utterly reliable ally with a proven military record against Arab armies. It was Israeli military prowess which broke the dangerous spell of Nasserism when it defeated the Arabs in the six day war. 

The pattern for the relationship was set by Britain as the dominant imperial power in the region in the early part of the last century. Sir Ronald Storrs, the first governor of Jerusalem under British rule in the 1920s, explained it as "forming for England a 'little loyal Jewish Ulster' in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism". A lifetime later, that is essentially the role played by Israel for the US and wider western interests today. It also helps explain the licence given to the Middle East's only nuclear-armed state to violate UN security council resolutions at will and why even the EU is unlikely to agree to the economic sanctions demanded yesterday by the European parliament. 

The closeness of the alliance does not, however, mean the US will not bring its client to heel if necessary. When US  administrations have felt that Israeli behaviour was encroaching on vital US interests - as in 1956, when Israel seized the Suez canal in collusion with Britain and France, for example, or in the 1980s, when it tried to prevent the sale of Awacs surveillance aircraft to Saudi Arabia - they have been prepared to slap their ally down, regardless of its friends on Capitol Hill.

Bush's half-hearted attempt to strike a more even-handed public note over Sharon's onslaught in the West Bank this week is transparently the product of fears over growing unrest in the region -and the problems it is creating for US plans to settle accounts with Iraq. But the US will only move decisively if it feels its own interests are under threat.

The 'ethnic cleansing' of the 19 years prior to the 1967 blitzkrieg  6-day -war land-grab is only a very slight murmur at the moment, but this irrefutable argument is inevitably on its way towards becoming a very loud rumble of universal discontent against the whole 'Israel' colonisation nonsense eventually. 

Simultaneously, it begins to be grasped in this Guardian commentary that this troublesome Zionist colony needs to be seen as much more of a cat's paw for imperialism's general international warmongering-domination perspective, rather than just as a difficult single issue. 

And on this score, the middle-class's worst nightmares just keep looming ever larger to challenge the fake-'left' defeatist orthodoxy that 'New World Order' US imperialist omnipotence will impose 'peace settlement' defeats on anti-imperialist strugglers everywhere, - from Ireland (in the SLP's chauvinistic opinion) to Afghanistan (in everyone else's fake-'left' opinion). 

This backward anti-Marxist nonsense, and the identical 'condemn terrorism' degenerate  jibber, might come together in confused shame even in the ludicrous 'war on terrorism's first landfall in Afghanistan, the world's most benighted country which surely should have been a pushover for such a full-scale military onslaught-opening to this 'New World Order' determination to show how it could 'impose peace' anywhere it wanted to. 

But as Bin Laden and Mullah Omar taunt Washington on an al-Jazeera video film, and as the body-count befalling the Western intervention mounts ever-higher, ever more rapidly, - this capitalist press report seems to be hinting that the whole lunatic 'war on terrorism' issue has already become a farcical stinking mess, - totally:

WHOEVER is trying to destabilise Afghanistan is doing a good job. The broken cities and scorched hills so recently liberated are rediscovering fear and uncertainty.  Men of ambition, or with nothing to lose, are tugging at a peace woven with the finest thread.

In the past week alone there has been an assassination attempt on the Defence Minister, a rocket attack against international peacekeepers, the murder of a UN worker in the north, lethal assaults against Afghan troops in the south, and a firefight between rival commanders of the provisional government in Wardak Province.

Yesterday in Kabul seven men captured after a clash with international peacekeepers turned out to be members of the Afghan interim administration's own security force. A senior Interior Ministry official said the men, from the minority Shia Hazara ethnic group, had pretended they were chasing thieves in a crime ridden quarter of the city but in fact intended to sabotage security in the capital.

Security sweeps in the city have netted enough rockets and mines to send hundreds of American and British soldiers home in bodybags. The week before last, a terrorist plot to kill leaders of the interim government was uncovered and hundreds of suspects were arrested.

'There are still a lot of different groups trying to make trouble. I think most of them are hold-outs from the Taliban and al-Qaeda, plus small groups linked to [Gulbuddin] Hekmatyar,' said Agriculture Minister Saeed Hussein Anwari.

Hekmatyar, an Islamist warlord synonymous with blood and hate, has reportedly returned from exile to wage jihad against Western infidels and their Afghan proxies. His location is unknown, but he is said to back the followers of Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohamed Omar in their goal of destabilising the interim government in Kabul.

These are the guerrillas whom the 1,700-strong British battle group at Bagram airbase will hunt from this week, a bolstering of the US campaign well suited to Royal Marine commandos trained in mountain and desert warfare. However, The Observer has uncovered evidence that senior members-of the Afghan government are manipulating the Islamist threat in a covert campaign to retain power. According to a confidential UN document, the authorities are jailing and intimidating political rivals to smear them as terrorists and to destabilise preparations for the national assembly - or loya jirga -  which is supposed to choose a new government in June. The memo was written by the UN's chief negotiator, Michael Semple, and addressed to the organisation's senior political officers in Kabul, Anders Fange and Karl Fischer.

It discredited a round-up earlier this month of between 150 and 300 men on suspicion of plotting terrorism and sabotage: 'We have so far been able to identify several of the prisoners, none of whom seems a likely candidate as a terrorist or coup maker,' said the UN memo.

Among the prisoners was Maulvi Faizan, a veteran intermediary between factions: 'Well thought of for his peace-building efforts. Sufficiently well known that if they picked him up they must have known who they were dealing with,' it said.

Maulvi Syedullah Haqani - a former UN official with ties to the former king, Zahir Shah -  was held, as was Engineer Arman, who intended to stand as a candidate in the loya jirga. Other detainees had phones and cars stolen.

The document confirms Western concern - which diplomats have refrained from publicly voicing - that a power struggle within the Afghan government is undermining the hunt for Islamist guerrillas.

Falsely identifying people as al-Qaeda or Taliban pollutes intelligence and erodes the legitimacy of the loya jirga, which analysts agree is a make-or-break event for peace in Afghanistan. Suspicion is growing that elements in the government share the guerrillas' interest in instability.

Afghan politics are not so much murky as opaque, but diplomats say a pattern is emerging: ethnic Tajiks from the Panjshir who dominate the interim government through control of the Defence, Interior, Foreign and Security Ministries are plotting to marginalise Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group.

Because the Taliban were mostly Pashtun and al-Qaeda is believed to be hiding in Pashtun areas, they can be cast as Islamists but the UN report shows that many of those arrested in Kabul were innocent.

The government says the estimated 100 detainees still in custody belong to Hekmatyar's Hizb Islami movement, but one Western diplomat said it split years ago and that-the Kabul faction was not dangerous. 'It looks like intimidation. The Panjshiris are muscling out rivals.'

General Zia Aulden, a US backed Afghan commander in Gardez, mocked the notion of Hekmatyar stirring Pashtun revolt. 'He is a zero, he does not have the money or the men,' he said.

Voting to choose delegates for the loya jirga starts tomorrow, but Pashtuns in the north have been singled out for ethnically motivated beatings, rapes, abductions and lootings, according to Human Rights Watch.

'If northern Pashtuns are unable to take part in district or regional meetings to choose their representatives, then the validity of the entire loya jirga process will be called into question,' said Peter Bouckaert, a spokesman for the US-based rights group.

Excluding Pashtuns was a recipe for renewed civil war, said a diplomat. 'This is a very fragile process and it's the only game in town. There's no other plan.'

How long before it is only the idiot Bush, the idiot Blair, and a few idiot fake 'lefts' who continue to believe in this 'condemn terrorism' nonsense???

The Hitlerite character and scale of deliberately vicious destruction inflicted on Occupied Palestine by its Zionist colonist invaders, and the above-described hopeless mess from the insane idea of invading Afghanistan to put it under colonial-policing control, reveal the very weak and despised hold on world developments that Western imperialism in fact now has.

It is the actual class and national forces involved in this increasing international turmoil which have to be looked to initially for the next steps forward.

There are no capable socialist mass movements at present to produce any ideal workers-state solutions to capitalism's mess.

And while it is obvious that Islamic terrorists and other nationalist movements are no substitute for an international working-class socialist answer to monopoly-capitalist degeneracy, their battles against imperialist domination nevertheless do have the possibility of moving things forward in that these utterly corrupt and politically-bankrupt imperialist regimes following the USA's fascist-warmongering path can find themselves defeated and humiliated in these reactionary and dangerous neo-colonial aggressions.

All the more stupid, therefore, to be browbeaten into the completely futile and meaningless 'moral' gesture of 'condemning' ANY aspect of the inevitable and unstoppable violence between the Middle East anti-imperialists and their Western colonial tormentors.

The demented call by the SA's Weekly Worker to "oppose Sharon and Hamas" is the exact same logic of the SLP's sick treacherousness in 'condemning' Sept 11.

With the fake-'left' inflicting this reactionary confusion on the Western working class, no wonder that Western imperialist savagery can continue its tyranny on the people of Palestine and Afghanistan with no real fear of reprisals or opposition at home.

Build Leninism. EPSR

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

• Fidel focuses on the failure of neoliberalism and the dangers of the Free Trade Area of the Americas annexationist project in his closing address to economists' meeting

• THE system cannot be sustained, and what cannot be sustained collapses, affirmed President Fidel Castro, talking on capitalism in the closing session of the 4th International Economic Conference on Globalization and Problems of Development in Havana.

Referring to the debates and the level of ideas expressed during the meeting, the leader of the Cuban Revolution stated that "we have a rich source of men and women, economists and thinkers endowed with the knowledge needed at this time. We say farewell armed with conviction, but centrally, armed with confidence in the future."

In his address, Fidel offered an embracing analysis of the failure of neo-liberal globalization which, even in its death rattles, is prohibiting people from thinking, which constitutes an aggression against humanity.

He affirmed that humanity is reaching the end of prehistory and not the end of history as some fools would have people believe; which implies that after this whole period of barbarity and plunder the world has to move toward a distinct and better future.

He explained that current policies and the disappearance of the socialist bloc have affected the struggle of the labor movement, transformed many parties and left society steadily more undefended.

In this battle, he noted the important role played by the communications monopolies and their messages, with a constant universal rain of information which, although not always recalling the battle to rescue Cuban child Elián González and against murderous legislation - is transformed into a universal rain of lies and deception.

In another part of his address, the Cuban president recalled all the efforts made throughout the '80s in the context of non-payment of the Latin American external debt; and offered details of that very important battle for the continent's future, and which could have been won.

He recalled that in 1985, the Latin American debt stood at $350 trillion USD and last year was around $750 trillion USD, without taking the effects of the Argentine crisis and the September 11 attacks into account. 

Fidel affirmed that we are in the midst of the most serious and threatening crisis since the end of World War- II. In addition to the enormous debt, recently many national natural riches, including some of the most sacred, have been privatized and taken into the hands of foreign companies.

He added this situation is affecting the African and Asian continents as well, although Latin America remains in first place; and is now under the designs of international organizations, including the World Trade Organization, which he described as one of the major instruments of plunder and exploitation in the hands of the masters of the world.

He commented that problems have reached such magnitude that people have organized to protest against those injustices. As examples of that he quoted the demonstrations in Seattle, Quebec and New York, "in a way that the Group of Seven no longer have anywhere to meet."

Fidel spoke at length on the plunder experienced by Latin America throughout the years and on the consequences for the continent of the approval of the - FTAA, which would consign to its peoples the hardest, most humiliating and lowest-paid work. 	

"What is dangerous about the FTAA is not the point of view of academics, economists or politicians, but the lack of information on it possessed by the mass of peoples in our hemisphere," Fidel stated.

He added that many of those nations have high illiteracy levels and hundreds of millions of people have absolutely no educational training to prepare them for the threat signified by the Free Trade Area of the Americas.

Fidel referred to Cuban achievements during the years of the Revolution, the number of doctors and public health prospects, as well as teaching programs at all levels to develop a general and integrated culture.

Returning to the risks of the FTAA, the Cuban president noted that the greatest danger is a lack of awareness and exhorted those present at the conference to transmit ideas and messages, to take advantage of current conditions to educate the peoples, given that the imperialists are reaping much success by exploiting ignorance through their mass media.

In addition to awareness and knowledge, he highlighted a third element within the objective conditions brought about by history: that profound changes have always been preceded by crises.

Fidel affirmed that nobody should be surprised at an FTAA coming along and swallowing Latin America and the Caribbean, as one only has to recall the Bible's passage on Jonah, swallowed by a whale and returned to land because he couldn't be digested. 

"Even if they do swallow us up," he emphasized, "the 500 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean will emerge from the belly of a whale that can never digest them."

He also noted that it is obvious that crises not only bring change, but bring leaders, protagonists who lead or participate.	 

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

ARGENTINA

• PROFESSOR Jorge Bernstein affirmed that the crisis in his country has revealed that the system has to be changed, because nowhere in the world is a successful progressive capitalist model being achieved.

To transform 	capitalism and do it with current capitalists 	would be impossible as our capitalists have become absolute parasites and a productive conversion does not interest them. Thus we lack both the capitalists to make such a change and other models to copy."

An analysis of the current situation in Argentina reveals that the very bases of capital accumulation are disintegrating, which is creating the total exhaustion of the neo-liberal model, according to Orlando Caputo, a Chilean professor at-the ARCIS University.

That nation's crisis cannot be explained by saying that it was because things were done badly or there could have been theft, as that would merely have deepened the crisis, Caputo commented.

"If the social forces are not capable of changing the model, problems will continue in Argentina." He noted that the first criticism should be reserved for the theory that has impregnated even some trade union leaders and left politicians with false concepts.

Referring to Chile, Caputo stated that the model is relatively exhausted. The Chilean economy's global exports have not grown for seven years in dollar terms. As for foreign investment, the other active element in economic growth, it has suffered a setback by being directed at copper, which generated world overproduction, and prices, already low since the Asian crisis, have fallen further.

International competitiveness over costs is provoking wage reductions that in their turn are reducing income and affecting the domestic market.

Studies at the University of Harvard, quoted by the Chilean professor, demonstrate that no country in the world has achieved development on the basis of inserting itself in the world economy. The Asian countries entered the world economy via a model generated from within to without, unlike the case of Argentina, whose interior functioning was destroyed and an economy created from outside. That economy created from outside, with the free circulation of merchandise and capital, combined with restrictions in the domestic market led to a phase of general exhaustion.

"The ways of solving the crisis that are being sought by the Argentine people will serve for other Latin American countries," Caputo affirmed.

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

Pat Finucane was murdered by the British State on decisions at Government  level.  When do the arrests
start of British political leaders?

CROWN COLLUSION with loyalist paramilitaries was systematic, organised and sanctioned from the very top. The British didn't just recruit informers, or run agents within loyalist groups like the UDA; they organised, armed and directed counter-gangs that operated in parallel with regular crown forces.

In its determination to 	maintain partition, the British Government developed a mechanism of state-sponsored murder. Behind the mask of 	liberal democracy and the rule of law, the British state murdered citizens within their own jurisdiction.  And this wasn't just about 'taking the war to the IRA'. 

Pat Finucane wasn't murdered in the belief that he was a 'top Provo'.  Pat Finucane was assassinated because he was a diligent and effective 	defence lawyer at a time when  criminalisation became Britain's determining counter  insurgency strategy. This isn't the story of the rogue cop,  the 	frustrated soldier,  or the unreliable informer;  this is the tale of a rogue state and ruthless government.

These are the facts which successive British Governments have sought,  and continue to seek, to obscure and hide. The recent  killing of a potential key 	witness to any future inquiry,  William Stobie, and the threats and harassment of other key witnesses, suggests that British forces may go to any 	lengths to prevent public exposure.

This week marks the 13th 	anniversary of Pat Finucane's  killing. It also marks the publication of the latest report onto the killing,  Beyond Collusion; the UK Security Forces and the murder of Pat Finucane is a comprehensive collation of evidence gathered over many years from many different sources by the New York based Lawyers Committee for Human Rights.

The document presents 	new evidence, dismisses the British Government's proposal to appoint an international judge and reiterates the call for the immediate establishment of an independent international public inquiry into the killing.

New information revealed by the Lawyers' Committee includes evidence from a former member of the covert British Army unit at the centre of the collusion controversy, the Force Research Unit and information from a former RUC member who claims that pursuit of one of Finucane's killers led to threats from the Special Branch.

The document details further evidence to suggest that the Special Branch not only knew of an imminent threat against the lawyer's life but they were probably at the heart of its instigation. The Special Branch didn't just 'turn a blind eye' or fail to respond to the threat, evidence increasingly suggests they actively procured the killing.

And they weren't alone. The British Army's FRU supplied the intelligence through their agent Brian Nelson; they even accompanied Nelson on a mission to identify Finucane's house. It has also been suggested that the FRU ensured the killers had a free run by ordering other members of the crown forces away from the area during the attack. 

"Documents recording the contacts between FRU agents and their handlers have revealed that the purpose of the FRU, at least with respect to loyalist paramilitary groups, was to re-direct the killing power of loyalist paramilitaries away from random sectarian killings towards 'legitimate' republican targets.

"With the active assistance and resources of the FRU, Nelson soon brought new professionalism to the UDA's information gathering system.   Brian Nelson prepared targeting information on Patrick Finucane with the knowledge of his FRU handlers."

And if anyone thinks this has nothing to do with the British Government and military top brass, think again. The work of FRU agents was "routinely passed along to the very highest levels of the British Government" and "every week the FRU submits a report of its activities to the Joint Intelligence Committee which reports directly to Ten Downing Street".

First we have collusion, and then we have cover up. The lengths to which the Special Branch, FRU and British Government has gone to obscure the truth about the Finucane killing flags up the controversial nature of their own involvement.

The document details the FRU's frantic attempts to safeguard their agent Brian Nelson from scrutiny by the Stevens team. This includes storing illegal documentation at a British Army barracks, breaking into the investigating team's offices and attempting to destroy vital evidence by setting the office on fire.  

"FRU documents pertaining to Nelson were withheld from the Stevens investigations and subsequently found to have been altered. On the night before Stevens planned to arrest Nelson, Nelson fled to England and Stevens' offices were destroyed by fire. According to an FRU whistleblower, that fire was set by the British Army."

Then we have the RUC Special Branch threatening other members of the RUC to protect self-confessed loyalist killers, consistently refusing to act on information, doctoring intelligence tapes and destroying or 'losing' vital evidence, including taped confession and the murder weapon.

The pistol used in the Finucane killing wasn't  'lost' but, despite the ongoing nature of the investigation, handed over to the British Army who conveniently 'upgraded' the weapon, removing any chance of further forensic examination.

William Stobie was an agent for the Special Branch when acting as an UDA quartermaster he supplied the weapons used to kill Pat Finucane.  In 1990, during interrogations by the RUC's CID, William Stobie detailed his role in the Finucane killing, insisting that he had kept his handlers fully informed and that Special Branch had known the names of the UDA members involved.

"Despite his admissions, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided on January 1991 not to charge Stobie in connection with Finucane's murder."

According to a former FRU member, known only as Martin Ingram, there were three separate UDA plots to assassinate Pat Finucane.

"Ingram claims that both the FRU and Special Branch knew that the UDA were targeting Patrick Finucane. He says that they also knew, in the run up to the killings, that there had already been two attempts against his life. Despite this, Finucane was not warned of the dangers he faced."

Ingram has also confirmed that Tommy Lyttle, the leader of the UDA in West Belfast was working for Special Branch at the time of the murder. Lyttle was in charge of both Nelson and Stobie. In an interview in 1995, Lyttle confirmed that two RUC officers had originally suggested the idea of killing Finucane. He also claimed that his Special Branch contacts did not discourage the idea that Finucane should be shot.

At the heart of the intrigue, argues the document, was the British Government's criminalisation policy. When Patrick Finucane began practicing law, the British Government was shifting strategies in its conflict against the IRA.

The government de-emphasised its military campaign and opened up a new front that became known as criminalisation. This strategy depended upon a fundamental manipulation of the legal system, including powers of arrest, detention and admissibility of evidence. As a diligent defence lawyer, Pat Finucane had inadvertently struck at the very heart of this strategy. He paid with his life.