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 1137  May 21  2002

Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074  
P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]                    
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Next two weeks, EPSR regular publication liable to interruption.

The daft idea that "modern capitalism" would "never allow World War III to develop" has helped undermine communist ideology and is lulling workers into disaster. Inter-imperialist squabbling about a "New World order" going catastrophically wrong, is building up relentlessly, just like prior to WWI & WWII. And arrogant US imperialist aggression is far more irrational and incompetent, but far more bullying, than any role ever played by Germany, Japan, Italy, etc, in the history of mutual monopoly-capitalist throat-cutting and colonising skulduggery. Insoluble trade-war contradictions demonstrate that Blair's plea to "end US/EU rift" and Powell's tour to "end criticism" are impossible objectives. The brainwashed 80% public support Bush's bar-room bluster has earned from shallow US chauvinism is both a guarantee of continued demented warmongering but also of cataclysmic defeat, making revolutionary crisis inevitable everywhere.

Illusions about the supposed "liberal rationality" of the so-called "free world" remain one of the greatest obstacles still blocking the way towards the rebirth of a world revolutionary socialist movement. 

Despite a widespread attitude of knowing cynicism which is always happy to believe the worst about the monopoly capitalist system in general and about any Western leaders or regimes in particular, doubts that the imperialist "free world" would ever "really let a new 1930s trade-war Depression bring down the international economy" or let "slump-bred fascist-chauvinism really rekindle acquiescence in warmongering destruction of 'enemies' and 'rivals' as state policy in the West" still prevail in the end, continually neutralising the EPSR's systematic exposure for 23 years of the imperialist West's inevitable drift to imposing World War (WWIII) on the planet yet again, once full-blown and incurable economic crisis had been inflicted on society once more.

But this naive faith that "no one would be mad enough. or bad enough now among leading imperialist powers to deliberately aggressively lead the way into a renewal of the warmongering chaos which made a mockery of reason and humanity in World Wars I & II" is currently being increasingly humiliated as a ludicrous delusion. Not only is murderous conflict fast becoming the sole agenda for so-called "capitalist civilisation", but some corners of bourgeois ideology are already sensing that they have been made fools of by their trustfulness, - as the capitalist press itself is confessing:

Dan Rather, the star news anchor for the US television network CBS, said last night that "patriotism run amok" was in danger of trampling the freedom of American journalists to ask tough questions. And he admitted that he had shrunk from taking on the Bush administration over the war on terrorism.

In the weeks after September 11 Rather wore a Stars and Stripes pin on his lapel during his evening news show. However, in an interview with BBC's Newsnight, he described the pressures to conform that built up after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

"It is an obscene comparison ...but you know there was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tyres around people's necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be necklaced here, you will have a flaming tyre of lack of patriotism put around your neck," he said. "Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions."

Rather did not exempt himself from the criticism, and said the problem was self-censorship. "It starts with a feeling of patriotism within oneself. It carries through with a certain knowledge that the country as a whole - and for all the right reasons - felt and continues to feel this surge of patriotism within themselves. And one finds oneself saying: 'I know the right question, but you know what? This is not exactly the right time to ask it: "

Such a confession is astonishing, bearing in mind its source. Rather is almost as famous in the US as the president, though he is more secure in his tenure, far better paid and probably more pampered.

Rather, 70, has held what used to be regarded as the top job in American journalism for two decades, since he was chosen to succeed the revered and avuncular Walter Cronkite as CBS News' anchorman. CBS has lost his traditional status as the country's No 1 news channel after years of budget cutbacks.

The White House was to blame for its failure to provide adequate information about the war, Rather said. "There has never been an American war, small or large, in which access has been so limited as this one.

"Limiting access, limiting information to cover the backsides of those who are in charge of the war, is extremely dangerous and cannot and should not be accepted. And I am sorry to say that, up to and including the moment of this interview, that overwhelmingly it has been accepted by the American people. And the current administration revels in that, they relish that, and they take refuge in that."

He said his view of the patriotism differed from that of the administration. "It's unpatriotic not to stand up, look them in the eye, and ask the questions they don't want to hear - they being those who have the responsibility, the ultimate responsibility... of sending our sons and daughters, our husbands, wives, our blood, to face death."

Such a damning condemnation of a conservative regime from such a conservative establishment journalist suggests that the real anxiety in the West is about something far more serious than merely this excess of patriotic silliness, as damaging as that is to the pretended "objectivity" of the so-called "free press".

In reality, the "free world" is rapidly falling out of sympathy completely with this entire insane "war on global terrorism" project, embarrassed by the increasingly obvious total hypocrisy and phoniness of its stated "justification" as well as of its declared "objectives",  but even far more deeply disturbed that this incredible international warmongering stunt is actually going hopelessly wrong as well.

In the classical cliché, various bourgeois commentaries are subconsciously worried that a glimpse of "the end of civilisation as we know it" is the only sense that can so far be made of what is going on.

Supposedly faced by "mad Islamic suicide bombers", all the leadership that the "free world" can come up with is the seriously weird Bush regime; and even that mad dog of a
regime is being wagged by its even more suicidal "bomb everything; bomb everybody" tail in the Zionist coloinising war camp.

For the moment, all of the growing hostility to this whole imperialist warmongering disaster-course, dimly perceived behind the ludicrous "war on terrorism" posture (and which can be seen by more rational bourgeois minds as likely to create only more and more suicide bombers everywhere, and even end up in total revolutionary crisis for the West with the whole of the Third World up in arms against it), - is mainly only questioning the competence of how the war is being run (as a nervous or oblique way of querying the sanity of its whole motivation and strategy). 

As well as doubting the achievements or even the sense of the military tactics in Afghanistan, for example, the conflict's miserable confusion is already causing challenges to Bush about whether this whole "war on terrorism" was necessary at all, and whether Sept 11 was not just a one-off accident which could have been avoided if the Bush regime had been more alert to all the specific intelligence, warnings it received prior to Sept 11 that some terrorism like that was about to take place.

Last week the memo was revealed as one of the most explosive documents to arrive in any US ,President's in-tray within living memory. Suddenly, say his enemies,  the emperor seems to have no clothes. The "Imperial White House of George W. Bush" to use the phrase of US presidential historian Robert Dallek - is unexpectedly exposed, apparently in panic- and scrambling to save face.

For eight months now, Bush and his presidency have ridden on the political crest of the wave of 11 September, legitimised by its professed defence of America from the global terrorist menace.

But now its bluff is called, as layer after layer of the warnings it received that al-Qaeda would strike at America's heart is un-peeled. Now Bush and his aides are having to explain to the people, the press and even to themselves why and how they either misread or failed to read the clear warning signs: that al-Qaeda would strike in exactly the way it did.

At the heart of what is potentially the biggest scandal to blight the. presidency since Watergate exactly 3O years ago is that memo passed to Bush on 6 August, warning that Osama bin Laden's organisation was poised to hijack US aircraft to wage a terror campaign.

And according to yesterday's Washington Past, the memo left little doubt that the hijacked airliners were intended for use as missiles and that intended targets were to be inside the US.

Qaeda members talked about using a hijacked airliner to negotiate the release of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who had been convicted of plotting to blow up landmarks in New York City. Other intelligence and FBI reports gathered from the 1995 bombing of the World Trade Centre specified that al-Qaeda was out to hit the Pentagon and White House using crashed planes packed with high explosives:

As a shamed Presidency goes on the defensive, so the rest of American society has suddenly discovered its old roles. The press, slavish for eight months, has regained its position as the Fourth Estate: TV anchor Dan Rather gave a confessional interview on the timidity of the media over the Afghan war and the familiar byline of Bob Woodward, as though commemorating his own Watergate moment, emerged in yesterday's Post with devastating details of the top-secret briefing memo' passed to Bush on 6 August.

It had been a curious eight months in American politics. Historian Robert Dallek saw a return to what he calls the 'imperial' presidencies of Nixon,  Lyndon and Kennedy; the Bush administration, he concludes, 'has an  authoritarian bent'. However, Dallek, himself a biographer of Johnson, believes that such a style of government ultimately backfires: 'it creates a reaction against the executive,' he says.

The fog of war had never hung so thick as over Washington DC during Bush's global crusade against terrorism. For all that the mountains of Afghanistan were crawling with journalists, never was information on the waging of a war been so shrouded in secrecy.  Bush is himself no stranger to secrecy in news management. The Observer has learnt that when he was Governor of Texas, he made sure that all classified state documents be stored in Washington with his father - then President -  so they would not be eligible for scrutiny under state freedom of information laws. But now, as the columnist Joe Conason points out in  the current edition of the New York Observer, 'conspiracy' begins to take over from 'incompetence' as a likely explanation for the failure to heed - and then inform the public about  -  warnings that might have averted the worst disaster in the nation's history. 

For the first time in those eight months, says Conason, 'angry citizens are asking why they have suddenly learned what George W. Bush knew all along: that weeks before the event, the CIA had warned the President and other top officials of an active plot to seize civilian aircraft.'

It is stupid wishful thinking, of course, for these sceptics to doubt that there is any need for conflict in the world at all, and seeking to blame Bush's incompetence for it.

It is the economic and political crisis of the imperialist system which is causing all the conflict, everywhere, and it will all continue to escalate rapidly as the domination of the planet by the American imperialist bourgeoisie comes under increasing challenges everywhere, from rival imperialist powers inside capitalism, but mostly from the whole Third World which wants to get rid of all imperialist economic and political domination completely as their countries bear the heaviest earliest brunt of international economic collapse and trade war.

The splits BETWEEN the imperialist powers are almost always going to be the starting opportunity for third world revolutions which will finally bury the destructive, anarchic, and divisive capitalist system.

And this insane "war on terrorism" is already pushing edgy 'coalition' relations on the Western side towards breaking point.

The easiest traditional way to start having second thoughts about the direction the whole "free world" is being led into by its current American dominant force, is to commence recriminations about how any particular strategy or tactic has 'gone wrong'. 

The first production of the classic internal bitching within one of the "allies", a good early indicator that the imperialist thieves are falling out, has come from the British camp. From this strange sequence of comments and happenings and leaks, as pieced together by the equally confused capitalist press, it might be guessed that the American imperialist command has been searching for scapegoats to blame for its own dismal performance in the field and the humiliating failure of the overall American "war on terrorism" project, and has picked on the joint British commander in the field as being the "cause" of all the campaign's difficulties.

The Royal Marine officer will no doubt have been expressing the British contingent's serious doubts about the whole way in which the Americans are running the operation in Afghanistan. 

As a further guess, the grovelling Blair has accepted the scapegoating as a further contribution to receiving more star treatment in the USA as part of the "special relationship", but the MoD boss Hoon has strongly objected in the usual "he fought his Department's corner" way, undermined however by American activated stooges somewhere inside Defence:

One unnamed MoD official claimed Brig Lane's performance was sapping the morale of his troops. "Brig Lane is out of his depth and should be sacked," the official told the Sunday Telegraph. "The marines have a morale problem and the only way to get rid of it is to get rid of the man at the top: Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, yesterday rallied to the defence of the Royal Marines commander in Afghanistan, amid claims that he had lost control of the British operation against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Angered by defence officials, who voiced doubts about Brigadier Roger Lane in public over the weekend, Mr Hoon dismissed the criticism as nonsense.

However, doubts about Brig lane were intensified last night when it was confirmed that he is to be moved on to other duties. 

"I have every confidence in Brigadier Lane," the defence secretary told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost. "He's doing a tremendous job in very difficult conditions and he deserves and gets our complete support."

But the disclosure that Brig Lane is to move on will fuel speculation that he has fallen out with the Ministry of Defence. There was anger in London last week when MoD officials were forced to contradict claims that the Royal Marines were engaged in a major firefight against al-Qaida and the Taliban.

Officials believe he has over-hyped the success of his mission in an attempt to maintain the morale of his troops and to satisfy the "bloodthirsty" media.

The mistakes singled out for criticisms include:

• Claiming on Friday that British forces had come under intense fire from al-Qaida and the Taliban when they were rushed to defend Australian SAS forces. "We can confirm that the coalition has made contact with the enemy and some have been killed:' His claims were contradicted by the MoD.

• An alleged failure to inform General Tommy Franks, head of the US military, about Operation Condor, the Royal Marines' latest mission in Afghanistan: The general is believed to have found out about the operation from CNN.

• Wrongly claiming earlier this month that the war in Afghanistan would be over in a few weeks, a view directly contradicted by US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

• Over-hyping the success of operation Snipe, which was described as the largest British offensive operation since the Gulf war.

But such internal sub-group backstabbing in subservience to the gang leader will only earn Brownie points if the whole warmongering racket can be declared a "success". 

However, it is the entire war which is going wrong, and not just one group's part in it. Once the recriminations start, it is a good bet that the imperialists are really targetting each other over the whole failed enterprise rather than genuinely and profitably criticising and reforming individual failings.

If the Brigadier has been speaking out of turn, how long before it occurs for a second or third time, ending in a breakdown of all confidence, trust, and cooperation in a total disaster??

The following capitalist press report summarises the whole humiliating failure so far, including the most dreadful recent battlefield cock-ups; the demoralisation of the troops; the taunting threat of longterm Al-Quaeda/Taleban guerrilla war which the imperialists will never defeat; and the Goebbels-level warmongering propaganda and lies, and censorship, reconfirming the nasty fascist-colonial nature of this entire degenerate campaign:

Locals said that the Australians had walked into a tribal squabble over some precious woodland and the US bombers had merely killed battling villagers. Then an Afghan press agency based in neighbouring Pakistan said that in fact the men 'engaged' belonged to a wedding party, whose traditional AK-47 firing celebrations had been mistaken for offensive fire. After 'Brits in combat' headlines running on all morning bulletins the Ministry of Defence (MoD) clarified their position. In fact no Marines had actually encountered an enemy yet, spokesmen said. 'If these [were] tribal fighters then the whole thing will have to be reassessed,' said Curry. A senior spokesmen in London started the spinning. The British were 'only acting on intelligence supplied by coalition partners', one reporter was told.

Then on Saturday officers briefed journalists again. Though the Marines had yet to make contact the enemy, numbered in 'tens' were definitely al-Qaeda, they said.

There was a sense of déjà vu. On Monday; Lane was forced to announce that 45 Commando's showpiece operation, Operation Snipe, had ended after 16 gruelling days without a contact.

Marines returning revealed their frustration at trekking through mountains 11,000 feet high with full kit. When the Marines claimed to have found a huge al-Qaeda weapons store, it was soon revealed to belong instead to a local warlord. Worse, journalists had filmed it two months before.

A bad week got worse when an unidentified gastroenteric disease hit the British forces at Bagram. Again there was confusion. First journalists were told that only personnel from 34 Field Hospital - all medics -  had been affected and quarantined. Then other troops - possibly including SAS men whose tents are alongside those of the hospital - were found to be suffering:

Partly the problems can be put down to the nature of Afghanistan, a huge country of appalling terrain where communication is limited to a few poor roads and satellite phones. The fighting is taking place in some of the most remote parts of one of the remotest countries on earth.

But for many observers there is something more pernicious about the amount of real news emerging from the war theatre. They fear that governments, even those of developed Western democracies, have decided that, post-11 September, informing the public is a dispensable luxury.

'This is the most secret war in history,' Philip Knightley, the author of The First Casualty, a history of journalism during wartime, told The Observer.  'There are things being done in our name and we don't know about it. We have no real idea, even in general terms, of what's going on. It would be funny if it wasn't tragic.'

KNIGHTLEY SAID that government officials had originally learnt  'spin' techniques from successful military censorship and propaganda campaigns. Having honed them in civilian political life the new skills have been employed to devastating effect in the last six months.

'We are now seeing them applied very effectively in the [military context] again. But they are absolutely irreconcilable with pluralist democracy. I fear dark days lie ahead.' 

The focal point for the tensions between the media and the military is at Bagram itself. Dozens of journalists are living on the base, effectively as guests of the Americans. This has posed a problem for the British military authorities. Journalists on the base are not accredited war correspondents who, as in the Gulf War, would have to submit to censorship and a form of military discipline, but are not free to write what they want either. So far, though no journalist has been accused of endangering any operations by disclosing sensitive information, many have been pressured to report the war in a particular way. Even criticism levelled at the British operation in Afghanistan has been enough to provoke punishment.

Last week the Daily Mirror's correspondent, Tom Newton Dunn, was told he was a 'persona non grata' after filing a front page story - appearing under the headline 'Humiliated' - in which he argued that with al-Qaeda now hiding in Pakistan, the Marines should be brought home. At a dressing down given him by Lt Col Curry, Newton Dunn was accused of 'damaging morale'.

Other journalists have been threatened with expulsion from the base, having their heavily chaperoned access to soldiers withdrawn or being banned from 'facility trips' to see soldiers at the front lines.

Media experts and politicians accuse the MoD of trying to ensure only 'good news' stories. 'This is a war where observers on the spot are simply not welcome,' said Tam Dalyell, the veteran Labour MP. 'After Vietnam the military want to conduct their operations as far from the glare of the spotlights as possible. That is very worrying.' 

Yesterday the Marines were continuing their sweep through the mountains north of Khost. Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, insisted that it was a textbook operation and was going according to plan.

'I have very good reasons for knowing these [al-Qaeda] forces were in that particular position for a number of days,' he said.

But others were more sceptical. 'There has been a serious problem with developing intelligence about targets that justify deploying large ground forces. It's simply very hard to find these guys and then destroy them,' former British special forces soldier said.

One problem is identifying the enemy. In one instance three weeks ago, even the bodies of the al-Qaeda men whom the Allied forces claimed they had killed in a firefight had disappeared within hours. Locals told reporters afterwards that they were tribesmen.

'It's impossible. They all look the same and they all carry guns,' one Royal Marine soldier told The Observer during Operation Snipe.

Intelligence sources in Pakistan say there are no more than 400 men loyal to bin Laden still on 'active service'. Many of those are hiding in Pakistan's semiautonomous tribal areas.

Abdul Bari Atwan, the editor of the al-Quds newspaper, said that he believed that only 200 al-Qaeda fighters were still under arms. The rest have. dispersed into Pakistan's huge cities, he told The Observer.

Atwan, who has met bin Laden and has excellent al-Qaeda contacts, said bin Laden was hiding in the lawless border regions at least 100 miles south of where the Marines were now deployed. 'There is no way he or his followers will stand and fight. They will take on the coalition forces on their own terms or not at all,' he said.

Last week al-Quds reported that bin Laden was in good health despite being wounded in the shoulder by US bombing at Tora Bora, the battle in eastern Afghanistan last December.

It is bourgeois imperialism which is breaking up in disarray,  not Third World anti-imperialism, as fake-'left' cheerleaders for the West,  like Hitchens (ex SWP) swore would happen in the self-righteous "condemnation of terrorism" which all 5'7 varieties of bogus "socialism" were easily cowed into, via their class-collaborating trade-unionist/opportunist mentalities, from the Revisionist SLP to the Trotskyite Alliance.

Bourgeois sniping at every aspect of US imperialism's vicious "war-on-terrorism" colonial decadence is becoming rampant, including this all-important issue of challenging the complacency with which the assumption has universally been made that "capitalism will never again allow itself to slither into the catastrophe of a 1930s slump and tradewar, ending inevitably in the inter-imperialist horrors of World War II".

Why bother looking for another Hitler Germany when Bush regime America is degenerating so rapidly?:

What a sad place New York City has become. A vibrant, disputatious town with a worldwide reputation for loud voices and strongly expressed opinions is tip-toeing around in whispers. Grief over the casualties of the twin towers massacre is not the reason (those wounds are slowly healing), but a stifling conformity which muzzles public discourse on US foreign policy, the war on terrorism and Israel. 

"If people knew I held. these views, I wouldn't be able to stay in this job," an old college friend confided as I passed through the city for a few days last week. He was appointed by the Bush administration to a top Federal position (not connected to foreign policy) some months ago. His subversive views on the Middle East, if uttered in Europe, would raise no eyebrows: Ariel Sharon has no vision or strategy; his tactics on the West Bank are counterproductive; the American media are failing to report adequately on the suffering of innocent Palestinians in cities ransacked by Israeli troops. 

Another friend, a liberal rabbi, was about to set off on a regular visit to Israel. She contrasted the usual furious public arguments which she expected to find there to the behind-the-hand mutterings of New Yorkers. 

"Over here Sharon and Netanyahu have managed to turn the issue of terrorism, which was provoked by Israeli behaviour on the West Bank, into an existential question of the survival of the Israeli state. Debate becomes disloyalty," she complained. Listening to these anguished but private complaints suddenly reminded me of the Soviet Union of the Brezhnev era when lower-level officials, journalists and other fringe members of the regime sat around their kitchen tables, expressing their true views only to family and close friends.

When Tom Daschle, the Senate majority leader, suggested this spring that the war had failed because Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar were still free, he was fiercely attacked and never dared to repeat the point.

To enforce this abandonment of reasoned argument in the name of a witch-hunt against terrorists, a strange alliance of evangelical Christians in Congress has come together with the leaders of American Jewish organisations who normally support the Democratic party. "We live in a culture where there is a diminishing tolerance of dissent," commented Abe Brumberg, longtime editor of Problems of Communism, the Soviet-era journal which was funded by the US government. 

He drew my attention to a column by Frank Rich in the New York Times. The piece reported that America's foremost Jewish newspaper, Forward, was fielding subscription cancellations for accepting an ad from Jews Against the Occupation.

Mainstream papers are also being targeted. "Our press is not being muzzled," Rich was careful to write, "but the dictates of what constitutes politically correct conversation about the Middle East are being tightened to the point that American leaders of all stripes increasingly seem to be in a contest to see who can pander the most to American Jews:'  

On CNN's domestic news one morning their vacuous presenter Paula Zahn urged viewers to stay with her until after the break. "A new book which criticises American foreign policy and says the US has been guilty of terrorism has sold 160,000 copies. We'll have more," she announced.

Noam Chomsky's book, I wondered. Are they really 	going to let him appear? No such luck. The offending book was indeed by Chomsky but America's leading dissident was not invited on to the show.

Chomsky was unsurprised when I rang him later. "It's typical," he said. "CNN International interviews me a lot, but the US channel doesn't dare".

The fascination, and frustration, of America has always been the way one society can produce so much optimistic vigour and risk taking intellectual energy alongside a ruling culture of such boorish ignorance and cruelty. To judge from the east coast today, the middle aged liberal intelligentsia is letting itself be intimidated into taking the wrong side.

Jonathan Steele (New York is starting to feel like Brezhnev's Moscow, May 16) says university campuses are the venues for the real debate in the US today. Not so. Here in California UC Berkeley students are being disciplined for staging a pro-Palestinian sit-in and many may be expelled. And I can't get local independent bookstores around Monterey to schedule a reading for an Arab studies scholar who has just finished a book on Osama bin Laden. Name and address supplied

In any case, it has always been merely a convenient historical myth to write off the Italy-Japan-Germany axis, which challenged Anglo-French dominance and Third World revolutionism via WWII, as all being "completely mad and bad countries".

They were rivals for imperialist system hegemony and leadership, that is all.

The inevitability of conflict in a "winner-takes-all" monopoly-capitalist world has always been scientifically explained by Marxism from the start; and prior to the Bolshevik revolutionary overthrow of such intolerable degeneracy in 1917, imperialist arrogance had never even sought to hide its warmongering intentions against rival powers and Third World subjugate-regions.

With typically foresighted thoroughness, the rising might of German imperialism knew already in 1889 that it would have to fight the USA for world supremacy one day (after treading on each others colonial toes in the Far East), and started immediately drawing-up battle plans accordingly to blitzkrieg America, - as this capitalist press report relates with a touch of would-be disarming humour, making a butt of Kaiser Bill once again:

It was planned down to the Finest detail. Sixty German ships laden with tens of thousands of troops were to arrive at various points on the US Atlantic seaboard. Several thousand soldiers would land at Cape Cod and
march into Boston, while heavy cruisers entered New York's Lower Bay to bombard Manhattan.

In Washington, President Theodore Roosevelt would be forced to negotiate.

Papers found in the German military archive in Freiburg and published yesterday in Die Zeit show that this was one of several attack plans ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm II at the end of the 19th century "to put America in its place". 

At stake were German interests in the Pacific, where the US, much to the kaiser's annoyance, was expanding.

Roosevelt's announcement that he planned a Panama canal proved to be the last straw, the kaiser fearing that Germany would be excluded from the waterway.

In 1897, the documents show, he commissioned a young lieutenant, Eberhard von Mantey, to draft a series of attacks to force a treaty giving Berlin free rein in both the Atlantic and the Pacific.

The plan would have been realised had it been left to the kaiser and his admirals, all of whom were keen to indulge in Weltpolitik (world politics).

Von Mantey, who later became a respected naval historian, excluded naval blockades or sea warfare, regarding direct attacks on the north-eastern ports as the best option.

"Here is the core of America and it is here that the United States could be most effectively hit and most easily forced to sign a peace deal," he wrote.

The plans won the backing of Admiral Tirpitz, the "father' of the German navy, who saw them as the first significant chance to deploy Germany's new flotillas and a good argument for further bolstering the fleet. .

But the chief of staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, who planned the German invasion of France in 1914, quietly expressed his fear that the idea of attacking a country 3,000 miles away could turn into a fiasco.

Because of his loyalty to the kaiser, he bit his tongue, and at one point, according to the documents, was on the verge of ordering the invasion of New York, before insisting that Germany had too few troops for such an operation.

The Kaiser ordered the plans after several clashes with the United States. US and German warships confronted each other off Samoa in 1889 and, though the crisis was settled peacefully, the Kaiser understood that America would interfere with his goal of establishing colonies and military bases around the globe.

A new crisis in 1898 - the US sea battle against Spain in the Philippines - triggered the Kaiser's interest in a war against America.

The New York plan was drafted in compelling detail. Von Mantey concluded that it would take 25 days for a big German fleet to cross the Atlantic;  it would require 75,000 tons of coal, which would be carried by up to 60 freighters.

As the German Navy grew and grew, so did the Kaiser's ambitions. A third plan hatched in December 1900 proposed an attack on Boston or New York, or both. Cape Cod, south east of Boston, would be occupied and serve as the main base for the assault.

In 1903 the US mounted a blockade off Venezuela and put on a display of naval might - 54 warships in all - far more than had been anticipated by German naval intelligence.

Even the Kaiser had to accept that it was no longer realistic to hit America. Britain and France entered an entente cordiale, Russia rejected a military alliance with Germany and in 1906 the first British Dreadnought appeared: the war it seemed was going to be fought in Europe.

But what is not hidden and what isn't funny, is the obviously inevitable military conflict that the "winner-takes-all" monopoly-capitalist global economic system is bound to always lead to at the slump-crisis climax to every long world trade boom. Inter-imperialist rivalry is expressed with more caution and subtlety since 1917, but a terrifying new economic crisis for the world is now unignorable, and the "war on terrorism" is just one of the ways for the now biggest imperialist bully, the USA, to throw its weight about. 

There are other ways too,  showing that monopoly-imperialism's fascist-blitzkrieg-ruthlessness is not a national (German, Japanese, etc) characteristic, but the universal way of life of the cut-throat capitalist system with its insatiable appetites to rule the world:

The Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane was not the only one caught out by Hugo Chavez's return to power in Venezuela on Sunday, but he was certainly one of the most embarrassed. Mr MacShane committed the undiplomatic error of describing Chavez as a "ranting demagogue": 

Of course, when he let slip those unfortunate comments, Mr MacShane thought that Hugo Chavez was a leftwing ex-president of a country with important mineral reserves in which the US takes a strong interest. 

Unfortunately for Mr MacShane, the ranting demagogue in question was restored to his job by a combination of people power and constitutionally minded army officers. Odd, though, that Friday's coup, a procedure not normally considered an aid to democratic practice, did not attract the condemnation it deserved. Chavez, after all, has twice been elected president by the largest margins in Venezuela's history. In Washington, where the administration blamed Chavez himself for the coup that briefly removed him from office, the reaction to his restoration was even stranger. Far from welcoming the triumph of democracy, the US administration reprimanded Chavez expressing the menacing hope that he would be more careful in future, presumably in case he overthrew himself again.

Given that the protection of democracy has so often been invoked in the past as an excuse for US military intervention in the third world, surely Washington should .have been rebuking Pedro Carmona Estanga, the businessman in charge of the coup - or even preparing a military expedition to restore President Chavez to power.

The attempt to overthrow Chavez did not really come as a surprise. The only question was what took them so long. Nearly a year ago, a visiting Venezuelan, now living in the US, confidently informed me that a coup was in preparation, with the full support of senior figures in Washington. Chavez had been elected on a promise of radical social reform in a direct challenge to Venezuela's oligarchy. It was unlikely that they would let it pass.

As for the US interest, it hardly needs rehearsing. Every Latin American reformer, from Guatemala's Jacobo Arbenz to Nicaragua's Daniel Omega, has been perceived in Washington as a threat to US interests. When the reformer has control of the world's fourth largest oil production and makes a point of cultivating the friendship of Fidel Castro and visiting Saddam Hussein, he almost writes the script on Washington's behalf.

The coup-maker's handbook maps out the standard procedure: organise the discontent that reform has aroused, reduce the place to chaos and provoke some violent clashes. At that point the forces of reason can intervene to restore order and proclaim new elections - which will not be held until the capacity of the defeated forces to fight them has been destroyed.

So what went wrong this time? Perhaps it is a little more difficult, in the absence of the "communist menace", to portray such a coup as a blow for democracy. In Venezuela's case, this was even more tricky since the two traditional oligarchic political parties that shared the country's power for nearly 50 years are completely discredited.

The oligarchy has been forced back on substitute organisations - the Catholic Church, the main business organisation Fedecamaras and some trade unions - to challenge the elected government. In their brief moment of triumph, though, the depth of the coup-mongers' anti-democratic agenda became clear. They suspended congress, took control of the supreme court and were holding Chavez a prisoner.

Far from being perceived as an enemy of democracy, Chavez has emerged as a popular hero. He is supported not only by the poor - the 80% of Venezuelans who had seen little benefit from their country's riches until Chavez launched a large-scale public works and welfare programme - but also by most of the armed forces in a country where the army has long been a force for constitutional government.

Whatever Chavez's failings, the radical realignment of Venezuelan politics that he represents remains legitimate in the eyes of most Venezuelans.  It is only those who lack democratic support who fall back on the tired formula of overthrowing democracy in the name of democracy.

It is not Chavez who needs lectures on how to behave. No doubt he has his demagogic moments, but it would be perverse to call him paranoid. They were out to get him; they still are. Where will Mr MacShane line up on the next attempt?

Still not a true potential for the kind of fascist irrational murderous tyranny that WWIII destructiveness might be supposed to encompass???

But plenty of other CIA-run Latin American coups have resulted directly in the most vicious Nazi regimes imaginable, Pinochet's concentration camps and Guatemala's death squads being typical.

And look no further than the 'hidden war' in Afghanistan itself where all this bourgeois commentary is complaining that the truth is not being told and that only brainwashing 'patriotic'- censorship prevails.

Look at this capitalist press estimate of how many ordinary Afghans are getting slaughtered by "collateral damage" or just driven into early death by disease and starvation because of this insane imperialist warmongering rampage:

The direct victims of American bombs and missiles have commanded most attention.

A Guardian report in February estimated civilian deaths at between 1,300 and 8,000 . (Casualties among Taliban and other combatants are thought to be substantially higher.) 

Many aid agencies believe that the "indirect victims" exceed the number who died as a result of direct hits. As many as 20,000 Afghans may have lost their lives as an indirect consequence of the US intervention. They, too, belong in any tally of the dead.

The bombing had three main effects on the humanitarian situation. It prompted hundreds of thousands to
flee their homes. It stopped aid to drought victims. It provoked an upsurge in fighting, leading to yet more people fleeing. Counting victims with accuracy is impossible. Muslims bury their dead within 24 hours and the graves of those who died in the mountains are known only to their closest relatives. 

The only way to reach even an estimated figure is by extrapolation.  Just under a quarter of a million Afghans fled to Iran and Pakistan after September 11. They received aid once they arrived, either in established refugee/immigrant communities or camps. An unknown number died on the way.	At least 200,000 fled their homes but remained in Afghanistan. In Badghis, one of the provinces most affected by three years of drought, US bombing caused hundreds to flee from the capital Qala-i-Nau to villages.

People there were close to starvation and had no chance to feed the newcomers.

No one has exact figures on how much aid was lost. "Before September 11 Afghanistan was already on a lifeline, and for three months we cut the line," a western human rights analyst says.

Until September 11 the Afghan civil was had been at a stalemate for almost three years. Drought aid moved to Taliban areas or those controlled by the opposition Northern Alliance with relatively little difficulty. The US intervention ended the stalemate and the Taliban began to steal aid meant for drought victims as American planes targeted their supply convoys.

The best starting point for calculating the "indirect" casualties is the death rates at refugee camps. Médecins du Monde records show deaths at Maslakh camp in Herat averaged 145 per month between September and December last year. At three smaller refugee camps death rates were above Maslakh's.
	The camps covered by these figures contained about three quarters of the 200,000 refugees in camps throughout Afghanistan. Extrapolating from this produces an average of 400 deaths in camps every month, or 1,600 from September to the end of December.

It is hard to know whether the one million refugees outside camps had comparable death rates. If so, the number of deaths would be 8,000.

Five million very poor Afghans remained at home during the bombing, but suffered disruption of drought relief aid. Assuming mortality rates for these people were the same as for those in the refugee camps produces an additional number of avoidable deaths from September to December of 40,000. This is a maximum assumption. Adding this to the 1,600 estimated deaths in the camps and the 8,000 deaths of refugees outside the camps gives a top figure of 49,600.

How many of the post-September 11 deaths would have occurred anyway, given that so many Afghans were weakened by drought? The bombing caused a 40% decline in aid deliveries in October. If the US intervention caused 40% of the maximum number of assumed deaths, this amounts to 19,840. Even if it caused 20%, a rough total of 10,000 will have died "indirectly". The range of estimates is broad, but clearly exceeds the number killed by bombs.

No one will ever know the true figure, and the chances of reaching a narrower estimate of the scale of death are more likely to recede than to grow. The nameless graves on Afghanistan's hillsides, in the desert and in obscure corners of refugee camps will slowly be forgotten.

But even if the military savagery to blitzkrieg randomly is not lacking, it will be argued that economic crises are simply no longer capable under modern capitalism of producing the kind of sudden collapse catastrophes, or human despair, or national humiliation, that were the ingredients creating inter-imperialist world-war conflict in the past. This, however, is the biggest delusion of all. A lethal inter-imperialist trade war has been brewing for a long time, as the EPSR has systematically chronicled from capitalism's own sources. Now, with the first major international slump effects still threatening, that trade war is about to explode with devastating consequences:

PRESIDENT BUSH is poised to sign one of the worst pieces of legislation that the US has dreamt up for decades, a grotesque, bloated Bill to subsidise its dwindling number of farms even further, which will set back years of reforms and disqualify the United States from any claim to promoting free trade on the world stage.

Forget the War on Terror, the creaking pension system, and other claims on cash from Washington. This Bill will shower more than $180 billion (£123 billion) in subsidies in the next decade, an increase of 80 per cent compared with current rules, on the mere two million people who still run a farm in the US. But in the run-up to unusually close congressional elections in November, almost no one who runs for elective office in the 50 states would dare to consider blocking the monster.

Bush's home state of Texas is the biggest overall beneficiary of the change, seeing its direct crop subsidies rise by $582 million this year, up to an annual $1.2 billion.

As commodity prices slumped in 1998, Congress quickly set in place a system of bailouts. This week's legislation formalises those yearly rescues, and nearly doubles them.

All kinds of criticisms can be made, and have been, but generally in a muted way.

Early on, Bush complained that it would weaken farmers by encouraging overproduction and so causing prices to fall; this may prove true although it is hard to predict, and in any case, he soon stopped saying it.

Within the US, one of, the most resonant arguments may prove to be the worry that the Bill will undermine small family farms by raising the cost of land, and so drive more people from the tiny farming towns already struggling to survive.

The steady abandonment of these communities in the past decade has created a new generation of ghost towns across America, with their desolate Main Streets and boarded-up churches.

Most serious, however, may be the Bill's impact on world trade and the US's role in setting the rules. The Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute, an independent think-tank in Missouri, thinks there is. a one-in-five chance this year - depending on how crop prices move - that the subsidies will break the $19.1billion limit that American farmers are allowed by the World Trade Organisation. In any case, the European Union has said it will go to the WTO to challenge the subsidies.

The EU, of course, is no angel in respect of farm subsidies; the common agricultural policy (CAP), with a total budget of E42.8 billion (£26.6 billion) this year, is one of the worst offenders. All the same, the US has now pushed itself to the same levels or worse. The US's two million farmers will now get about $9,000 a head each year. The CAP amounts to $5,560 per head (£3,800 per head) for the EU's seven million farmers, and is falling as a proportion of farming income.

	The new Bill will compromise the US's ability to fight protectionism by other countries, at its own expense, and at others'.	After 	this Bill, what French or German politician would feel any need at all to take on the farming lobby?

Not that these concerns cut much ice in Congress at the end of the day. The Senate Agriculture Committee chairman; Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, said: "This isn't a German farm Bill or a Chinese farm Bill or a French farm Bill. It's an American farm Bill for American farmers. Let those other countries worry about their own farmers."

Well, they will. There's as much doubt about that as about whether Bush would dare to veto this Bill.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development delivered an unprecedented rebuke to the United States, its largest member, warning that Washington's protectionist measures on farming and steel could poison the new round of global trade talks.

Tensions over trade emerged  on the second day of the OECD's annual ministerial meeting as Washington's furious trading partners overruled US objections to issue a hard-hitting closing statement, calling on all countries to reject the use of protectionism.

The meeting's chairman, the Belgian prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, made it clear the statement was aimed at President George Bush's decision to slap tariffs on foreign steel and his approval this week of a farm bill which will pump $180bn of subsidies into agriculture over the next 10 years.

"Those who needed to hear, certainly heard," he said. "The messages were very clear." 

Developing countries are particularly worried that the US move will allow Europe, which spends even more than Washington on farm subsidies, to row-back on its commitment to reform the common agricultural policy.

The dismay Washington has provoked was underlined in a joint letter to the OECD from Horst Kohler, managing director of the IMF, Mike Moore, director-general of the WTO and Jim Wolfensohn, president of the World Bank.

"Any increase in protectionism by any country is damaging," the letter said. "Such actions hurt growth prospects where fostering growth is most essential. How can leaders in developing countries or in any capital argue for more open economies if leadership in this area is not forthcoming from wealthy nations?"

The EU said the US had forfeited its claim to be a credible leader in the drive to reform the vast subsidies that distort the world agricultural market. Progress in reducing farm subsidies will be essential to reaching a deal in the new round of trade talks launched last November in Doha, Qatar. But the US accused its critics of hypocrisy, telling the EU to clean up its own farming subsidies before criticising others.

Although this is just the opening dance, nothing about the steel wars suggests that they are about to end quickly and amicably. Intensely politicised on each side, with highly visible jobs in each continent at stake, it ranks as one of the nastiest transatlantic trade-wars to break out for years.

When the Administration slapped tariffs of up to 30 per cent on a range of steel imports in March - hitting Europe and Japan hard but deliberately sparing its neighbours Canada and Mexico - it surely knew that a European counter-attack would follow. After all, the tariffs affect about 1 per cent of the EU's $220 billion trade with the US each year.

The US claims that its action is legal under WTO "safeguard" rules, allowing it to protect its struggling industry while it restructures. The EU, proud possessor of a more modern and efficient steel industry, says this is nonsense.

Today Japan will follow suit and tell the WTO that it plans to retaliate, the first time it has done so, and even the first time it has lodged such a notification with the WTO. The move came after Takeo Hiranuma, the Trade Minister; failed to find a. solution in a telephone conversation with Robert Zoellick, the US Trade Representative, early yesterday.

Today's deadline marks the end of the two month period under WTO rules for governments to settle a dispute before the formal machinery gets into gear. Now, things get more serious.

The EU has sent the WTO two lists of American products that it wants to hit in return. There is a "short list" which represents the quick fix of immediate retaliation, and a longer list which it will submit for formal arbitration, a process which could take two years.

The short list identifies US products sold in Europe worth $364 million. With WTO approval, the EU might slap 100% per cent tariffs on these from June 18. Fruit juices are prominent in this list - a direct strike at Florida, where President Bush's brother Jeb is running for re-election as Governor in November.

The longer list identifies US exports to the EU worth $583 million last year, including steel, textiles, clothes and fruit.

For goods on this "long list", the EU suggests a range of tariffs of between 8 per cent and 30 per cent. The list includes men's and women's coats, toilet paper, yachts, women's panties, as well as "stockings for varicose veins".

Although the WTO panel will meet for the first time on May 22, it is not expected to reach a decision before the end of next year.

The trouble is that there is no sign that the Bush Administration intends to back off, given the all pervasive influence of the congressional elections, and the Republicans' bid to regain control of the Senate, now hanging by a single vote.

For Bush, those elections are crucial to his ability to get legislation through Congress for the remainder of his term. It is hard to see the niceties of US-European relations weighing more in his calculation.

 
And no more humiliating collapses, driving countries to despair??

That is not how things look in Argentina, South America's most affluent and sophisticated country, rapidly being reduced to the most humiliating and desperate banana republic condition, by capitalism's own admissions:

School no 12 in San Miguel, on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, where most parents are unemployed.

'We used to get escalopes or chicken. Now most days it's rice,' said 14-year-old Fernanda, who trades toilet
paper for food at the local barter market after school.

As the peso has slumped to less than a third of its value throughout the 1990s, prices of basic food supplies, including flour and cooking oil, have risen by 35 per cent and the cash-strapped government's school dinner budget buys less meat each month.

'We don't know each day what food is going to arrive,' said a cook at another state school in Santos Lugares suburb. 'Some days no meat arrives; other days the suppliers cheat us, so we weigh everything now, to check.'

'Children are getting weak and hungry. Some are fainting in class and others vomit because they eat too fast on an empty stomach,' said Silvia Almazan, representative of a Buenos Aires teachers' union. Staff at School no 12 say many children rely on the school for a good meal and appear desperate on Mondays after a weekend with next to nothing to eat. Increasing numbers are missing school to beg or help their parents hunt for food. '

After enjoying a European lifestyle for the past decade, Argentina has gone into economic free fall since the peso was devalued in January, two million people falling under the poverty line in April alone because of inflation. Half the country's 36 million population can no longer afford basic food and household supplies, according to official statistics.

As protests escalate, by state workers unpaid for months; two unions have announced national strikes later this month:  

Families now rummage through rubbish bags under the watchful eyes of doormen in smart districts. 

'There are lots of places in the world where people are hungry. The difference is that Argentina has plenty of food. People just can't get near it. In December they could afford it and now they can't.'

Keeping the punitive imperialist exploitation system under good control is proving impossible, even against the backwardness of the peculiar anti-imperialist revolt (currently being waged war against) in Afghanistan.

Even a muddled demagogue in Venezuela cannot be toppled successfully despite all the phenomenal wealth, power, influence, viciousness, and cunning of US imperialism and its major Western 'allies' (for now).

So how is Washington going to react other than with utterly destructive mayhem, when in despair over scores of Bolshevik-type anti-imperialist revolutions breaking out in more advanced countries like Argentina as this world economic crisis deepens further??

Build Leninism. EPSR

World Socialist Review

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

Republican confidence and success reflects Ireland's national-liberation triumph still on course.

2001 MARKED the 20th anniversary of the deaths of ten republicans in the 1981 Hunger Strikes. It was a time of turmoil and political change. For many it was the genesis of where we are today. It was a difficult time and many people were challenged on a personal level, both politically and emotionally. 	

The humanity and courage of those ten who died and the thousands of republicans who went through Armagh, Maghaberry, Portlaoise, the H-Blocks and the jails in England, fundamentally challenged the British establishment and the perceptions of, not just people in Ireland and England, but throughout the world.

Events and celebration of that commitment throughout Ireland and the tens of thousands of people who walked through the pouring rain, to hear the songs of Christie Moore cut through the darkness for the national commemoration, in Belfast, are a lasting testament.

The successes of Sinn Fein in Six Counties in the local and Westminster elections are another enduring legacy. We now have four MPs - Gerry Adams in West Belfast, with the largest personal mandate of any MP in the Six Counties; Martin McGuinness, with a massively increased majority in Mid-Ulster; Pat Doherty, storming past the SDLP's great hope, Brid Rodgers, in West Tyrone; and Michelle Gildernew, in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, retaking the seat 20 years after Bobby Sands took it, to become the first Sinn Fein female MP since Countess Markievicz.

For the first time, we stood candidates in every Westminster constituency and, in every single one, increased our popular vote. And following sustained pressure, the British Government has backed down over its refusal to allow Sinn Fein to use its Westminster facilities - a right that was undermined after they changed the rules in 1997.

We will not take an oath to the British queen and we will not be taking seats in Westminster - our abstentionist policy was overwhelmingly endorsed in the election. But we will take the fight for our constituents and our rights to everywhere and anywhere.

But the project of greening the West of the River Bann was an even greater success at local government level. We now have six council chairs West of the Bann - Robin Martin in Fermanagh, Oliver Hughes, brother of Hunger Striker Francie Hughes, in Magherafelt, Pearse McAleer in Cookstown, Barry McElduff in Omagh, Ivan Barr in Strabane and Francie Molloy is Mayor of Dungannon and South Tyrone District Council.

The mandate for the republican analysis is now stronger than at any time in the last 20 or 30 years. We speak for the majority of northern nationalists.

Against the background of this mandate there has also been continued political instability created by the British Government's refusal to challenge unionist intransigence.

More than once, the political institutions have been threatened: David Trimble's illegal ban on nominating Sinn Fein's two ministers, Bairbre de Brun and Martin McGuinness, frustrated progress on realising the integral all-Ireland foundation of the Good Friday Agreement and his resignation threats undermined the entire Peace Process.

Not for the first time, republicans took the lead. The courage and foresight of the IRA was globally recognised as saving the Peace Process from destruction. The leap taken by the IRA leadership again challenged many people, on a personal level, both politically and emotionally, in a way that many had not experienced since the ceasefires and the hunger strikes.

The political vacuum that was created by the refusal of unionists and the British establishment to accept the pace and degree of change needed in the Six Counties has been filled by the spiralling loyalist pogrom. The failure to address the sectarian murders and hundreds of pipe and gun attacks by loyalists on nationalists, throughout the North, by either the British establishment or unionists, is a demonstration of how far they need to travel to understand and accept fully their part in creating - and resolving - the conflict in Ireland.

The sectarian foundation of the Six Counties and the sectarian underbelly of unionism was laid bare for all to see as schoolchildren from the Holy Cross Primary School, in North Belfast, as young as four years-of-age, were subjected to sectarian violence,

The response of unionists to the loyalist blockade did not reassure anyone that unionism has realised that everyone is entitled to basic human rights. The protest was wrong, yet unionism remained silent, in much the same way it has throughout the current loyalist pogrom or any of the previous sectarian loyalist campaigns. Unionists and the British Government can only keep their heads in the sand for so long, before they admit their role in fostering sectarianism.

Evidence throughout the year has been making its way into the media of the levels of collusion between the British military establishment and loyalism.

The murder of Willie Stobbie and the row over the Special Branch misusing information are just the tip of the iceberg: We have known for decades just how the British and their operatives work. The question is whether the British military establishment has the stomach for the truth.

Internationally the 1981 Hunger Strike was commemorated as far afield as Australia, South Africa and Cuba. Gerry Adams unveiled monuments in both South Africa and Cuba. The international links between Sinn Fein and those who struggle against injustice remain as strong as ever. With Nelson Mandela and Fidel Castro, we have cemented the legacy of the Hunger Strikers. There was success and progress in every area of the republican struggle but, as with every year coming to an end, there is always the realisation of how much more there is to be done.