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 1143  July 09 2002

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Even when economically successful, the imperialist system means unacceptable exploitation, warmongering, destructiveness, and inequality. But its deepening slump crisis will soon have the world's majority cheering on capitalism's collapse and downfall, - but not the fake-'left', apparently, who hate "catastrophism". Marx did not agree, his Manifesto being the essence of the profound PHILOSOPHY of "catastrophism", seeing development only through irreconcilable contradiction, and revolution. And increasing capitalist press admissions about the bourgeoisie's dire fate do not agree with the Alliance "anti-catastrophists" either. Class solidarity for workers will get nowhere in this crisis without a serious, detailed political philosophical PERSPECTIVE.  Everything which conceals or plays down the global REVOLUTIONARY turmoil that imperialist slump and warmongering insanity will plunge the world into IS A LIE. In their panic confusion to not get left behind by events, the petty-bourgeois fake-'left' now inadvertently destroy their own "socialism in one country is the socialism of fools" anti-communism. The "war on terrorism" lunacy is in trouble everywhere.

The EPSR is often accused of "catastrophism" for allegedly "talking up" the scale and the number of difficulties that the imperialist global system faces.

But it is the "anti-catastrophists" who have the philosophical problem.

The whole basis of Marxist dialectical materialist science is that all phenomena only develop through conflicting opposites ending in a total contradiction which only a revolutionary leap can then resolve.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the evolutionary history of society, and particularly in the matter of economic and technological evolutionary progress being regularly temporarily thwarted by class-domination relationships which have outlived their usefulness, relatively speaking in general but at times threatening some absolute disasters.

Nothing could be more Marxist than waging the class-war for socialism to the background of a capitalist system envisaged as collapsing in humiliation, destruction, and defeat. It is what the Communist Manifesto is all about. It is what history proved to be the pattern of things in the great proletarian revolutions of the 20th century in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc.

So it is the "anti-catastrophists" who have some "Marxist" explaining to do.

The EPSR can be accused of being premature in its judgement of how imminently close is disaster for the imperialist system, a charge which can be usefully argued about by constantly re-examining all the relevant historical factors, past and present.

But to accuse the EPSR of 'catastrophism" only raises doubts about who is making the accusations, and why.

Part of the problem is clearly shallowness which can find it difficult to avoid emotional defeatism when the untimetabled concept of things plunging towards inevitable capitalist catastrophe clashes with natural speculation about how imminent such collapse and war-destruction might be.

Sceptical shallowness is also a factor in paying lip-service to the idea in general of the imperialist system crashing in contradiction, but never being seriously willing to be guided by it as an active philosophy of life, - the position of the entire fake-'left'.

These are "socialists" who might well insist that they wish for the overthrow of the ruling class and a planned society of publicly-owned equality for all more "sincerely" than anyone, but who only "use Marxism", or more frequently just its name, when it might be helpful for expanding the activist coalition and its propaganda to "get things done".

But while Marxism says of itself self-dismissively that it is "only a guide to action", it is also the only philosophical guarantee that the working-class will not FOREVER continue to be brainwashed, dominated, and controlled by anti-communist imperialist propaganda and disinformation.

And the very best antidote to that is that WE know that the imperialist system is buggered, no matter what "spectacular" counter-revolutionary "triumphs" are relentlessly being claimed by bourgeois ideology.

Not for nothing has the West's most enormous academic industry by far been the pretence for generations of "analysing" Marxism, in every university philosophy department and course ever devised, while miraculously always managing to avoid teaching about the contradiction at the heart of the capitalist system which must bring it down eventually; - closely followed by the bourgeoisie's second biggest ideological industry which has been the non-stop lies and distortions about EVERYTHING to do with workers state regimes ever since October 1917.

Not for nothing has petty-bourgeois DEFEATISM become easily the most enormous ideological handicap by far in the whole history of class-war struggle, effectively holding down the whole capitalist-world proletariat for generations with its endless anti-communist doubts and fears.

And being critical of all this defeatism and bogus "Marxism" has NOTHING WHATEVER to do with any unwillingness to be critical of some of the appalling mistakes and crimes committed by various workers-state regimes since 1917, or of some of the dreadful ideological nonsense spouted by Stalinist Revisionism throughout the ages, and by Trotsky's anti-communist, fraudulent "left opposition".

Just the opposite. The very key to understanding the failures of the Third International leaderships after Lenin (and the Fourth) resides in their defeatist inability and unwillingness to see the never-ending revolutionary EXTENSION of the dictatorship of the proletariat as the only way out of NEVER ENDING imperialist warmongering and crisis, regardless of all the "crimes, mistakes, and weaknesses" (however many) of the Soviet bureaucratic deformities. Stalinist anti-revolutionary defeatism depicted imperialism as fading, away, therefore necessitating only "peace-campaigning" and "avoidance of any unnecessary revolutionary boat-rocking" to "finally leave capitalism behind", etc, etc. Trotskyite anti-revolutionary defeatism incredibly spelt out the same "imperialism can no longer expand mankind's wealth" nonsense in the opening paragraph of his sick "Fourth International" hoax, but used it of course to help continue the spirit of "socialism through revolutionary entryism" into S-D parties, thereby maintaining a "revolutionary" joke "justification" for his counter-revolutionary vilification of the Soviet Workers State leadership.

This modern "anti-catastrophist" defeatist tradition is currently frantically hedging its bets in its showcase propaganda, of course (see below), frightened of too glaring an APPEARANCE of having been caught out wrong-footed by any sudden revolutionary collapse of Washington's ludicrous "no slump" warmongering bravado, just "in case" the markets crash completely, or Bush's bullying militarism runs into even more humiliating failures or setbacks than so far.

But their fake-'left' drivel still doesn't SAY anything, - apart from demonstrate what utterly shallow and insincere HYPOCRISY all this "anti-catastrophist" posturing really amounts to. (see below).

Despite hedging their bets, the fake-'left, will still not SAY that a worldwide REVOLUTIONARY crisis is the only way to now try to understand what is going on in the imperialist controlled planet.

The Western spokesmen themselves are far less constipated or tongue tied.

The punch-line in this capitalist press review of frank City opinions manages to strike a valuably fresh and uninhibited note:

Last week's renewed bouts of selling seemed to mark a new gloomy phase for the UK and US markets, and market veterans drew comparisons with previous famous crashes in 1929, 1974 and 1987.

Terence Ahern, 88, reputed to be the City's oldest stockbroker, says this is the worst he has seen. Ahern, who started his career two years after the Wall Street crash of 1929, says: 'It's so worldwide. The Bank of England is not very bright, in my view. The Bank and the Government have fired all their bullets. They should have put up interest rates six months ago.'

Brian Winterflood, chairman of market maker Winterflood Securities, is one of the best-known figures in the City and, at 65, has nearly 50 years' experience in the markets.

'I think the market is going to go lower. It's very worrying. I've said for a long time that the only thing this reminds me of is '74. It's a complete loss of confidence. It's the burying of the cult of the equity.'

Peter Hargreaves, 55, is joint managing director of independent financial adviser Hargreaves Lansdown. He would not be surprised if the FTSE 100 index dips below 4,000. In 1974 the stock market was cheap and was pulled out of its slump when several large institutions decided to buy shares. 'I'm not sure whether there was a concert, but it had that effect.'

Today's market is not cheap, and there's still plenty of confidence in the economy, he adds. 'The real problem is that there is an overcapacity in almost everything you want to buy. It's very difficult for manufacturers to put their prices up.'

Bill Mott, 50, manager of the Credit Suisse Income fund, says the prevailing stock market conditions have more in common with the Japanese market of the late Eighties than the UK bear market of 1974. 'The problems here, as in Japan, have been caused by an equity bubble which has burst and caused dislocation to the rest of the economy.'

The effect of the collapse in technology prices has been compounded by 'massive' overcapacity, and the consumer has been asked to keep everything going by spending. So far, thanks, to rising house prices and easily available credit, this has worked. But Mott believes that sooner rather than later consumers will run out of spending. power.

Perhaps the last word should go to a stockbroker too young to have experienced the 1974 slump but old enough to have worked through the 1987 crash. He asked not to be named, as his views conflict with those of his firm. 'On the record the background in the global economy is not too bad. There's irrational pessimism. Off the record, it's fucked.'

Bourgeois critical reason has never said fairer than that.

The deepening worries from all round the crucial areas of the imperialist world are almost as honestly admitted elsewhere in the capitalist media:

WHEN Brazil won the World Cup skimpily clad dancing fans and smiling samba drummers ruled the streets and the country naturally embarked on a long party. But now that the euphoria is wearing off the country is returning to the reality of a spiralling crisis that has raised fears its economy could soon follow Argentina down the tubes.

In the month it took the national team to climb its way towards its fifth World Cup title, Brazil's currency, the real, fell more than 10 per cent against the dollar and the main stock market index dropped to an eight-month low in the face of a looming presidential election and panic over signs of a faltering economy.

The socialist leader Luiz Inacio 'Lula' da Silva is way ahead in the polls and investors fear his Workers' Party - which has flirted in the past with the idea of restructuring Brazil's $274 billion public debt - will lead the country into default.

Last week, Lula, a trade union leader and three-time failed presidential candidate, attempted to assuage fears in a 'Letter to the Brazilian People' published in the national press which promised a 'new social contract' if he is elected but also to do nothing that would destroy confidence in the capacity of the government to honour its commitments.

Unconvinced and nervous traders sent stocks and bonds fluctuating wildly and the currency plummeted to its lowest level since 1995, when it was created. The country's investment risk factor, calculated by JP Morgan, has soared to the same level as Argentina's shortly before the economy of Brazil's southern neighbour collapsed last December.

Commentator Clovis Rossi of the Folha de Sao Paulo daily has called the debt, which is equivalent to 60 per cent of GDP, 'a time bomb... ready to explode in the lap of the next government'.

'Right now, the world is very unsettled,' said Arturo Porzetanski, chief emerging markets economist at ABM Amro, New York. 'That means people are more risk averse than usual. Everyone is looking for an accident. Brazil has become a suspect.'

As bankrupt Argentina's economy continues to melt, plunging millions into poverty and sparking mass protests, the impact of its crisis - which analysts are calling the 'tango effect' - is beginning to be felt throughout the region; causing banks to crash in Uruguay and currencies to waver from Mexico to Chile.

As fears grow that the whole of Latin America could soon be engulfed in crisis, analysts warn that the region may be left to sink in silence while the US concentrates on its own economic downturn and its global war on terrorism. Argentina has failed to win a fresh bail-out in six months of negotiations with the IMF.

'Every day that goes by without Argentina's crisis being resolved, the situation in Latin America gets worse,' said Juan Carlos Moreno, of the Economic Commission for Latin America. 'There is no economy that can shield itself from everything that's happening in Latin America.'

For Brazilian fans who made the trip, Japan became more expensive every day. Back home, flag-sellers may have made a killing but unlike in 1994, when the country's World Cup triumph helped start a stock market revival - this year few expect footballing victory to provide any economic relief.

'Throwing US taxpayers' money at a political uncertainty in Brazil doesn't seem brilliant to me,' said Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill. 'The situation there is driven by politics. It's not driven by economic conditions.'

Newspapers reported that US President George W. Bush had failed to answer several phone calls from his Brazilian counterpart, President Fernando Enrique Cardoso, after O'Neill's comments.

Unlike Argentina, which made the largest sovereign default in history after nearly four years of recession and then devalued its currency by more than a third, Brazil until 18 months ago had a strong, growing economy that was seen as a model in the region.

But it is sailing into stormy political waters at a time when the global economy is slowing and the ripple effects of the crisis in Argentina, a principal export market, are beginning to be felt.

As if its own political upheaval was not enough, last week Brazil also felt the shock waves of the WorldCom multibillion dollar fraud scandal, which sent shares in the country's largest long distance telecoms firm, Embratel, tumbling by nearly 12 per cent in a day.

O'Neill's utterly bizarre comments echo the similarly helpless despair which Bush dressed up as bravado when snarling at Argentina's intractable difficulties: "Not strategically important". 

The truth is that Washington and the IMF imperialists have no solution. All that Bush is trying to do is to make a virtue of a necessity, by pretending that imperialism's enormous counter-revolutionary tasks begin and end with the anti-Iraq, anti-Intifada, anti-Al-Quaeda and anti-Islamic "war on terrorism". This is so unbelievably stupid (and useless from imperialism's point of view) that the nonsense of American "bourgeois democracy" letting this vicious little barroom braggart "lead the world" becomes almost enjoyable. 

Further rapid developments of anti-imperialist revolutionary fervour igniting the WHOLE of Latin America from Argentina to Mexico are awaited with interest.

The insane "war on terrorism", - virtually a proposal to ludicrously try to REIMPOSE an effective COLONIAL police-control over the whole of the planet (where profound anti-imperialism is festering in every corner), -  cannot even manage to "pacify" Afghanistan effectively, succeeding only in totally alienating the "liberated" population by the contemptuously clumsy and careless incompetence of the massive military savagery.

So how would things work out for US imperialism in the far more complex and difficult task of imposing counter-revolutionary policing on somewhere like Argentina, or Brazil, or Mexico???

And what far-more-revolutionary-advanced and competent response would the enraged anti-imperialist populace of the relatively-more sophisticated and working-class populations of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico then make to American domineering incompetence????

American planes bombed a remote village near Deh Rawud in central Afghanistan on Sunday night and early Monday morning.

THE celebrations were in full swing, with hundreds of guests preparing for a wedding singing and dancing in the beam of a tractor's headlights. Out of the darkness a warplane descended, sending rockets exploding through the crowd.

Survivors of the party in Kakarak, southern Afghanistan, yesterday described the events after they came under fire in the early hours of Monday morning from American gunships. They told of a sustained attack from the air, with wedding guests being chased and gunned down as they tried to escape.

"The first rocket hit the women's section. The second rocket hit the men's section," Ahmed Jan Agha, a musician who was playing at the wedding, told Associated Press in Kakarak. "Then everybody started running. The aeroplanes were shooting rockets at the people running away. They were chasing us."

Many of those who died had been cut down by shrapnel as they tried to seek shelter from the barrage.

Victims recovering in hospital in Kandahar said the planes struck Deh Rawud around llpm on Sunday night and continued intermittently until about 4am.

"A piece of iron sliced the woman's neck in front of me," said Naseema, 15. "In a split second her head was not on her body."

Siddaqa Bibi, 14, said she was counting the people at the party to make sure everyone had a place to sleep when the attack began. "There was blood everywhere," she said. "Then all of a sudden the walls and roofs caved in and we were buried under the debris."

"I saw bodies flying like straws," said Haleema, an old woman. "I had to jump over six bodies to escape."

Locals said they had buried at least 30 people after the attack, but feared many more were still under the rubble.

"It was like an abattoir," said another woman. "There was blood everywhere. There was smoke and dirt all around, and people were running helter-skelter. It was a doomsday scene."

Those who had fled said that they hid in nearby orchards and fields for four hours as the rockets continued to rain down. Villagers said that when the aircraft finally disappeared into the darkness, US troops accompanied by Afghan fighters arrived in the village and told everyone to go inside their houses, allowing only the wounded to leave.

Twenty-five of those who died were members of one family, attending the party at the home of Mohammed Sherif, whose son, Abdul Malik, was to marry the next day. Mr Sherif, whose brother is a close ally of President Karzai, was one of the 40 people who died.

Around 500 people had gathered in Deh Rawud for the wedding party - both fathers were important men in the local Pashtun community.

Survivors picked their way through the rubble yesterday, pointing out shrapnel, bloodstains and barely recognisable human remains. Forty pairs of shoes, one for each of the dead, were piled up at the front door of the groom's family home.

"My heart is burning in anger," Mr Malik said. "The Americans should be put on trial." He denied that there were any al-Qaeda or Taleban fugitives in the village, as the visiting American soldiers had suggested. Reporters who visited the scene shortly after the attack found no evidence of any military presence.

Victims continued to arrive at Kandahar's main hospital yesterday around 40 had made it, including 14 children, but some claimed that Afghan and US forces had tried to block the roads to stop them getting to hospital.

Ma'amoor Abdul Qayyum saw his son, 11, die when "something came flying and hit him". His other son, who was sleeping on the roof, survived.

"The Americans have destroyed us," he said. "We have neither seen al-Qaida people nor Taliban but they bombed us. What did we do wrong?"

The US military is investigating but has refused to accept blame for what appears to be the biggest such incident in their campaign to track down al-Qaida and Taliban militants in Afghanistan.

"The easiest and best way to avoid civilian casualties is to avoid firing at coalition forces in the proximity of innocent
civilians," said US spokesman Colonel Roger King. Reuters

Military officials stepped up their insistence that the six sites attacked by a US gunship at the weekend had been legitimate targets. Lieutenant-General Gregory Newbold said all six, spread across several villages, had fired at US warplanes within 24 hours of the disputed tragedy.

He repeated the Pentagon's claim that US special forces on the ground had seen some of the sites firing at the AC-130 gunship before it unleashed its cannons and machine guns.

US officials said they had sufficient intelligence to believe that senior Taleban figures were present in one village. It emerged that the scale of the US-led operation in the area of Uruzgan province, 100 miles north of Kandahar, was larger than acknowledged previously. General Newbold said.

	US special forces and Afghan forces had been in the area for several weeks. Newbold said the story as it was received now may change. "This is preliminary information. Information changes over time."

	With civilian deaths condemned by Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President, the White House released a statement very different in tone from one issued earlier by Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary. It said Mr Bush was concerned about the reports of civilian deaths and "on behalf of the American people, extends his deep condolences for the loss of innocent life, no matter 	what the cause is determined to be".

Any negligence would be decided by the US military's standard barometer, which was whether a reasonable person would have acted in the same way. If some form of negligence were established, the most likely punishment would be non  judicial.

Yes, this week's mistaken strike doesn't look good - if you are looking, that is. But in the American media, it has barely flickered through broadcasts and has generally been buried in inside  pages of newspapers. An incident on Tuesday, in which US forces in Kandahar came under fire and one American soldier was shot in the foot, easily eclipsed it in television coverage.

But despite the intimidating imperialist butchery,- but equally because of it, - even the US monopoly-capitalist bullying of Afghanistan, the world's poorest country, is being jeered at by the local population:

TO his foreign friends Haji Abdul Qadir, one of three vice-presidents of Afghanistan, was sophisticated and intelligent, a generous host and an Afghan of the old school. His murder as he left work yesterday in Kabul is a personal tragedy.

His home in the eastern city of Jalalabad was a richly carpeted meeting place for tribal leaders, intellectuals and musicians alike. I visited it last December as American B-52 bombers pounded Osama Bin Laden's mountain hideout at Tora Bora, nearby.

As the B-52s flew on their deadly mission, his sadness at the destruction was plain to see. "If the Americans are not careful they will end up being stuck here like the Russians," he warned us.

He believed America's massive use of air power would turn Afghans against the anti-terror campaign. Days before his murder he was proved right: the bombing of a wedding party, led to the first anti-American demonstrations in Kabul since Taliban rule ended.

Following the murder of Abdul Rahman, the aviation minister, at Kabul airport in February, yesterday's assassination has dealt the government of President Hamid Karzai a further body blow from which it will struggle to recover.

The shooting emphasises that in post Taliban Afghanistan power still stems from the barrel of a gun and,  despite an international stability force and millions of dollars in foreign aid, real peace is a distant dream.

Qadir was shot outside his office at the public works ministry as he was driven out of the main gate at lunchtime. Two gunmen blasted his car with 36 rounds, smashing the windscreen and riddling the side with bullets. Qadir died instantly with his driver, said to have been a son-in-law.

Blood was spattered over the dashboard and a set of prayer beads on a cushion between the front seats of the vehicle, which onlookers said contained no guards. Ten ministry security guards who failed to intervene were arrested.

"I remember Qadir telling me the importance of having two jeep-loads of bodyguards," said Eric Margolis, a leading author on Afghanistan. "This is a major blow to American efforts to pacify Afghanistan and to maintain a government they can work with. He had long co-operated with the CIA."

The killers escaped in a taxi, having robbed Afghanistan of perhaps its pivotal political player, a man whose presence could have helped to resolve dangerous ethnic tensions.

He came from the largest ethnic group, the Pashtuns, but was also a member of the Tajik dominated Northern Alliance which swept into Kabul late last year to oust the Taliban with American support.

Qadir acquired enormous prestige by fighting the Soviet occupation. His pragmatic outlook and fabled business acumen - his family owned an airline in the 1990s to import goods from Dubai and sell in neighbouring Pakistan - set him apart from other warlords. 

Qadir opposed Bin Laden and the Taliban, which hanged his brother Abdul Haq last year for leading an American backed uprising.

Although a Northern Alliance member, Qadir had struggled for better Pashtun representation in government. As a result he was seen by the Pashtun people as their principal spokesman against Tajik hegemony. His death will make Karzai's task in trying to build bridges between the two peoples all the more difficult.

General Deen Mohammad Joorat, the interior ministry security chief leading the investigation into the killing, said he believed it had been an "inside job" by terrorists, probably organised by Al-Qaeda.

President George W Bush speculated that Qadir might have been eliminated for standing in the way of Afghanistan's lucrative opium trade by supporting attempts to curb production.

"It could be drug lords, it could be longtime rivals," Bush told reporters.

THE US military yesterday announced a formal investigation into last week's bombing raid on a village wedding party, without conceding the number of dead or even that any bodies had been seen.

The Afghan government claimed that 48 died and 117 were injured, but Lieutenant General Daniel McNeill insisted there were "ample indications" that the airstrike had been in response to anti-aircraft fire. "If innocent civilians died, it was an accident. It is not our policy to target innocents," McNeill said in Kabul.

Bewildered villagers in Kakarak, which was blasted by an AC130 gunship in the early hours of Monday morning, say American troops searched the area after the attack and saw the carnage for themselves.

"They were very serious and were searching the houses and tying the hands of the women," said Pir Jan, one of the villagers who survived the attack.

Yar Mohammed, the governor of Uruzgan province, warned that: "If the Americans don't stop, killing civilians, there will be holy war against them in my province."

This belated American near-apology gets the worst of all worlds.

The original intimidatory "Too bad about your casualties" line becomes meaningless when excuses do get eventually made.

But the near-apology then does no good because of seeming so reluctant. And it does even worse when it could look as if it had been forced out of the imperialists because of this striking-back against one of the CIA's key assets,  in Abdul Haq's brother Qadir.

The whole disaster is a poor advert for being a US imperialist ally or asset of any kind.

But bad as all this is, it is not even the worst development from imperialism's point of view, even in the Middle East which Bush stupidly pretends is the sole major source of concern in the world for the American counter-revolutionary crusade. The USA's warmongering potential for the whole region (for protecting its oil interests and its Zionist stooge mailed-fist thugs who are colonising Palestine under the guise of being the imperialist invented 'state' of 'Israel') will be dealt one gigantic hammer-blow if Turkey's imperialist stooge economic sickness should also turn into a hotbed of revolution (Islamic, or, even worse, communist), as seems inevitable even to the bourgeois media itself:

TURKEY'S political and economic elite is so fearful of what the future might hold that it is  preying that the dying 77-ydar-old Prime Minister, Bulent Ecevit, can somehow hold on.

He has been away from his office for almost two months, with spinal problems, stomach problems and a neurological disease that leaves him looking shaken and confused.

Turkey is now the International Monetary Fund's biggest single debtor. Partly because the markets are suspicious of the intentions of opposition parties when it comes to carrying out the IMF's plans, the Turkish lire has lost more than 20 per cent of its value since the Prime Minister's illness began (there are almost 2.5 million lire to the pound); interest rates have climbed by 15 per cent. One of the larger banks was taken into receivership this month; the shares of its sister bank, the second largest in Turkey, halved in value. 

Turkey, a key Nato member, 65 million people strong, is at the edge of a political and economic precipice. Ecevit is almost certainly the only man who can hold the governing coalition together. Opinion polls suggest that the coalition would be swept from power in fresh elections.

The most popular group in parliament is the Islamist Justice and Development Party; the most energetic member of the coalition is the far-right Nationalist Action Party. Things have been bad before; but things have rarely been so bad for so long.

It is the threat of the Islamists, led by Tayip Erdogan, that inspires most comment rather than the far-right Devlet Bahceli, whose party has links with the Grey Wolves, a neo-fascist organisation that spread terror in the 1970s with assassinations and assaults on the Left.

'The Islamists were clever,' says Yigit. 'They changed the education system with their religious schools. Then when they came to power in 1997 they changed the people working for the state-owned companies so that it became their system.'

It is perhaps not surprising that the Islamists arouse their ire; the newspapers, owned by people who like to stay close to the government of the day, have been pouring scorn and scandal on Erdogan ever since he emerged as an electoral threat. 

One paper which does not follow that line is the weekly cartoon paper LeMan; there is a lot of scatological humour, but there is a big dollop of politics too. For Turkey, still under the grip of the censor, it is close-to the-bone stuff. 

Turkey often feels ignored by the outside world; foreigners who live here do not understand why there is so little interest in such a large and complex country. But that may have to change; an unstable Turkey on Europe's edge will set alarms ringing up and down the Foreign Ministries of Western Europe.

	Among those who work on, watching their politicians manoeuvre as the economy plunges, there is not much hope. The contempt for the politicians of all colours spills out.  'Some of the politicians are illiterate,' says Haki Yigit, 41, a credit officer with the bank ABN Amro. 'One of them didn't finish primary school! Some of them can't talk properly, and one of them has got, is it two or three wives?'

'Something has to change in the way that politicians affect the economy,' chips in Nesli Hanaker, a 29-year-old woman who works in exports. 'There is something wrong with the politicians. If you don't have money you can't be elected.'

One volleyball player stayed silent throughout the conversation at the cafe. The bank Dilek Akan works for was announcing redundancies the next day; half the staff were to be dismissed.

'The politicians don't want to deal with the problems of Turkey,' he spat, 'they just want to earn money. As for the future, it won't be good for us; I think we are going down and down.'

Out of sheer worry at this potentially catastrophic blow to imperialism in Turkey, or possibly out of bemused astonishment at this weird spectacle of pretending that the sick and demented premier Ecevit is still healthy, sane, and functioning normally, - the Times foreign editor inadvertently let out the following monstrous comment from the West's joint fortress of " democracy" and "freedom for people to develop how they want".

No such "freedom" for 65 million Turks, it seems, with this advice about the basket-case Ecevit:

Shouldn't he call elections immediately?

It is a pity that this is not the best option, but, owing to the quirks of the Turkish electoral system, almost certainly it is not. The inhibition, which is justified, is the risk that a conservative group with an Islamist tinge could get power. The Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the former Mayor of Istanbul, shows support of nearly a fifth of voters in polls, nearly double that of any other party. Under the electoral rules it is certainly conceivable - although far from certain  -  that the party could win all the seats in parliament.

Well, well, well, that would never do, would it. The wrong result entirely. So cancel "democracy" again immediately!

No wonder the Saudi Arabian feudal autocracy has so long been the favourite "ally" of the USA, the "world's" greatest democracy", in the crucial Middle East arena.

But the news, even as admitted by the capitalist press itself, just goes on getting worse, and worse, and worse, - or more "catastrophic" even:

Buraydah sits at the very heart of the Saudi kingdom, an oasis surrounded by nothing but desert for hundreds of miles in all directions. The terrain is harsh, pounded by a sun that will push the temperature to an extreme 50 degrees within the next few weeks. The resident Bedouins whose lives only 50 years ago were entirely dependent on the camel - hold views that match the fierce terrain. For decades the town resisted the introduction of the radio and telegraph as un-Islamic. When the Saudi royal family began educating girls for the first time in the early 1960s, they protested so forcefully that the army was brought in.

It is their duty, too, to protect their fellow Muslims wherever they are threatened. The group is angry now. Voices are raised. Fists clenched. They have a new enemy.

"Bush is the puppet of Israel, and he is killing our brothers; a teacher says. "We want a jihad to save our brothers in Palestine."

The conversation turns to September 11. "Who shall bear the blame for what happened on that day?  America. Suppose you put a cat or a dog into a room and beat it over and over again. What would happen? It would bite you. That is what happened on September 11: the dog bit back."

I ask the farmer, was the attack good or bad? "When I see what America has done all over the world since the attack happened, yes, I start to think this was a good thing. "The teacher butts in: "Osama bin Laden. Now he is a hero, for all the oppressed, all over the world."

September 11 came as a great shock to the Saudi kingdom. A country that prided itself on its unique blend of deep religious conviction and western-style development suddenly appeared to have a problem. Not only were 15 of the 19 hijackers Saudis (and Bin Laden himself Saudi-born), but many of their convictions were based on precisely those austere fundamentalist Islamist views of purity and jihad that are so staunchly adhered to in Buraydah and which have formed an essential part of the Saudi state since its creation.

But the question of why Saudis were so central to the attack will not go away. Last week the Saudis revealed they had captured 13 men linked to al-Qaida who were believed to be planning attacks on US installations. There were reports of missiles and launchers being found near the main US military base at al-Kharj. A few days before that three Saudi men, suspected of being a "sleeping" al-Qaida cell who were planning attacks on British and us ships, were arrested in Morocco.

There have been 10 successful or attempted bomb attacks against British and other western expats in Saudi Arabia in the past 18 months. Five Britons are in jail facing sentences ranging from 18 years to execution for the bombings, which the Saudi authorities blame on a mafia war between illegal British drinking gangs. But the latest killing of a Briton, 10 days ago, combined with a bomb planted in a US couple's car on Saturday, has prompted new fears that Saudi insurgents lie behind the attacks.

If all that should give intelligence chiefs in Washington and London food for thought, there is more.  Hatred of America as a result of its support for Israel has reached such a pitch that liberal commentators fear the country is being destabilised and that a whole new generation of potential bombers is being spawned.

At the centre of this heady swirl is the austere strain of Islam that characterises the Saudi state and which the people of Buraydah best personify.

The result is a country of astonishing contrasts. Riyadh is a hyper-modern city with ancient social customs: It is Dallas, Texas, policed by the Taliban. Women entirely shrouded in black abayas, with even their eyes covered, go shopping at a Harvey Nichols inside a Norman Foster building. Men pour into the mosque under an enormous neon sign advertising Sony, as if they were entering an electrical goods sale rather than a place of worship. McDonald's is seemingly on every street corner, and yet it closes its doors five times a day for prayers making Saudi Arabia unique as a country where the most powerful franchise on earth bends its knees in front of an even stronger brand: Allah.

Staggering contradictions run deeply through the kingdom's relations with the outside world too. There is only one power that matters for Saudi, and that is the US. It was America that backed the country's initial oil explorations, and it is America that still bankrolls the economy with $100bn a year in oil revenues. In return, the house of Saud sends its sons and daughters to American universities to learn western ways. Saudi has spent $45bn on US fighter jets and other military equipment, and tolerates the presence of 5,000 US troops stationed here since the Gulf war. This is more than a marriage of convenience. It is love.

	And yet ask an average Saudi to define where the kingdom sits globally and he will say that it 	is the centre of the Muslim world. For much of the past 20 years Afghanistan, not America, has 	been the focus for the mutawwa of Buraydah and their countrymen. The state actively encouraged about 10,000 young Saudis to go to Afghanistan during the 1980s and 90s to fight the Soviet invasion in the name of jihad and purity. They were led by Bin Laden, a man steeped in the teachings of Wahhabism, who then enjoyed official favour. Among them were 15 young Saudis  - many from good middle-class families, most of whom had been through religious training at one of the 60 Saudi schools and colleges dedicated to Islamist teaching -who went on to become the September 11 hijackers.

There was no perceived problem with this at the time. As an Islamist state, it was the duty of the kingdom to fight the kafir or infidel wherever he threatened Muslim brothers - in Bosnia, Chechnya and Afghanistan. But then September 11 came along, and the chickens came home to roost.	

Like everyone else in the kingdom - from prince to pauper - Sheikh Adnan is angry with America. "A child is not born aggressive. But if you give him something and tell him it is his, then snatch it away from him, he will react. That is natural." 

America is the world's only superpower, he goes on to say; so it should behave towards other countries as father to child, not master to slave. It is guilty of double standards - supporting the strong (Israel) against the weak (Palestinians). 

	Sheikh Adnan has publicly spoken out against the September 11 attacks, and he continues to argue for peace. But he says that he is losing the argument. "If you ask me, 'Does the man in the street side with Bin Laden?' the answer is absolutely, yes. Today, if you criticise Bin Laden people will look at you as if you are mad. They think Bin Laden is good."

There is chilling confirmation from outside the mosque. It is 5am now and the men of prayer are shuffling away into the gloom, still spluttering and hawking. An older man with a salt-and-pepper beard who spent two years in England ("I loved the Guardian, it was my paper") gives an insight into what Sheikh Adnan calls the views of the man on the street. "For 20 years America, has been sucking the blood of the Muslims. I respect the American people, but not the government. It is under the power of the Jews." 

He claims to have known two of the hijackers. So what does he think of Bin Laden? "He is a great man. I am glad about what he did to demolish America.. We now know that America is the first enemy of the Muslims."

Rhetoric, certainly. Bravado, probably. But it is repeated so many times and in so many places that there is no dismissing it. And it is set against worrying economic and demographic statistics that can only heighten the sense of alarm. On the one hand are stagnant oil prices, which make up 75% of Saudi's income, on the other hand a massive population explosion, among the fastest in the world. More than half of the population of 15 million Saudis (discounting an additional 5 million expats) is now younger than 20.

The combination produces an unemployment rate of 30% among men (95% for women because of the Wahhabi injunction against women in the workplace). Every year, 400,000 more young men graduate into immediate joblessness.

Add to that the prevailing fundamentalist religious climate and a white-hot wave of anger towards America over Palestine, and you have a cocktail that is lively, perhaps even explosive.

Dr Khalil al Khalil, a lecturer at Riyadh's main Islamic university, teaches 600 students a year and estimates that more than half are pro-Bin Laden. "We want our young people to be the raw material for a better future. But if they are left with no guidance, with no positive way forward, then yes, they will be the raw material for violence."

Dr Khalil despairs at the Bush administration. It appears, he says, blind to the fact that its own policies in the Middle East are completely undermining the efforts of its greatest supporters. "People like me who are speaking constantly about the need for good relations with the west are being tortured. When Bush calls Sharon a man of peace, that does our cause untold and lasting damage."

Saudi newspapers are daily filled with graphic descriptions of Palestinian deaths and of the American made Apache helicopters and tanks that caused them. The reverberations are being felt at every level. Big Saudi investors are threatening to pull their money out of the US and redirect it to China. A consumer boycott of US businesses has spread throughout the country, hitting outlets such as Starbucks and McDonald's.

The boycott is playing itself out in curious ways. A young man dressed in jeans and T-shirt in an internet cafe in a relatively cosmopolitan part of Jeddah told me that he had just bought a new car. He had wanted a Chevrolet but at the last minute switched to a Mercedes because of the boycott..  That one purchase will not cause Chevrolet executives any loss of sleep. But if America is serious in its struggle to protect itself from further attacks, then the hatred of this most westernised of Saudi youths should give someone in the beltway some pause.

It is one of the great ironies of the war on terrorism that in trying to hold at bay this tide of Saudi anger against the US, the Bush administration is having to rely on one of the world's most feudal political systems. The house of Al Saud rules the kingdom as a family fiefdom. It is monarchy as we knew it pre-1688, except that power is not passed from father to son but from brother to brother. And there are plenty of them. No one knows the exact figure, but there are thought to be about 7,000 princes in this most archaic of autocracies.

It is a regime famed, since the advent of oil money, for its ostentatious wealth and corruption. Saudis rarely talk with disrespect about the princes, but just occasionally someone will open up and reveal their deep resentment. A retired schoolteacher took me for a ride through the outskirts of Jeddah. He drove through a huge swath of derelict land. He explained that it had been grabbed by a group of princes for their own profit - they were selling it off plot by plot for homes at prices most families could scarcely afford. Further on we drove past a succession of walled palaces. The teacher's commentary grew progressively more bitter.

At the top of this princely heap sits King Fahd, an ailing and fading figure who has passed day-to-day running of the kingdom to the heir apparent, Crown Prince Abdullah. In the post-September 11 world, the prince's job must rank as one of the least desirable. He is beleaguered from all directions. America glares down at him and demands, in the name of the war on terror, that he reins in the Islamics. To the side of him there are his brothers (there are plenty of them too: his father, Ibn Saud, hardly a model of family planning, had 34 sons) jostling and vying for power. And below him is the seething mass of young unemployed men, inspired by the hardline religious ideals of Wahhabism and inflamed with anger towards America.. The good news is that if anyone can hold things together it is Prince Abdullah. He commands loyalty among many Saudis because of his own devout religious beliefs and because he has tried to put an end to the more outrageous excesses of his relatives.

To some extent September 11 has helped him shore up popular support, drawing public attention away from the corruption and iniquity of the regime. The country's dissidents and pro-western reformers have abandoned their dreams of democracy because they now fear elections would return a government of bearded extremists.

So much for the good news. The problem is that, as hatred of America grows, the regime's intimate association with the US looks daily snore precarious. Prince Abdullah has taken steps to distance himself from Washington - he refused to allow the al-Kharj base to be used in the bombing of Afghanistan and has similarly rebuffed any talk of an attack on Iraq. He also launched his own ambitious peace plan for the Middle East, which would see Arabs accepting Israel in return for the creation of a full Palestinian state along pre-1967 borders. All that needs to be done is for Bush to reciprocate by forcing Israel to end its occupation.

There's the rub. Bush's response has been a terrible silence, broken only by his denunciation of the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, which has merely intensified most Saudis' feelings of righteous indignation. The longer Bush Bush allows the Middle East crisis to slide, the greater the anger of the Saudi people, the closer the kingdom creeps towards the edge.

So how bad could it get? A deterioration in already-strained relations could put an end to the 50-year-old American love story. If Prince Abdullah has to choose between losing the trust of his own people and throwing out the US military, he will throw out the US military. His advisers consistently deny it, but if he has to go further and wield the notorious "oil weapon" - as happened with such devastating effect in 1973 - he may be tempted to do that too.

More ominous still, there are signs that the religious hardliners, the followers of Wahhab, are on the march. No one mentions it by name, but the historical precedent of a monarchy being overthrown through a popular anti-American insurrection is omnipresent. It sits in the corner of the room, like a familiar but unwelcome dog: Iran.

"This is a time-bomb ticking away," says a leading liberal dissident. "The evidence points in one direction: the religious people are the coming power. One day they will reach a point when they will go public - and that's when the real problems begin."

"Israel's actions, with the US behind them, are putting Saudi stability at risk," says a western diplomat. "They are exposing the strains and weaknesses of the system."

King Fahd's nephew, Prince Abdullah bin Faisal bin Turki, fears that if the Bush administration keeps on its current pro-Israeli course, if it keeps conducting its Middle East policy "in absolutely the wrong way",  it will "swing the opinion of the silent majority into thinking that the west is just playing tricks. It will demoralise people. We do not have long."

The sun has set now in Buraydah, and the last of the day's five prayers have been said. I am taken to see a radical sheikh who is well known in the kingdom as a firebrand and a thorn in the side of the royal family. He sits at one end of a large carpeted room, surrounded by his followers and students, as large white fans turn slowly above us. I ask him whether he thinks it is time for religious figures such as himself to formally enter politics. "Religious people have a natural ability and right to be involved in politics. They are the right people to lead."

There is a deep rumbling going on underneath the surface of Saudi society, he says. "There is so much anger and so much hatred in people's hearts towards America that they are losing their balance. This is a place where people can do anything. Nothing can be predicted any more."

Openly admitted, - this time in the Guardian, the bastion of "liberal freedom", - the only "good news" is that at least there is no "democracy" yet in Saudi to further queer the pitch for Western (imperialist) interests.

Could it be that all caution, circumspection, and pretence in the "educated bourgeoisie" is being undermined ....by imminent catastrophe???

The fake-'left' anti-catastrophists, by contrast to all this big bourgeois doom and eye-opening reactionary admissions, just continue flapping around like headless chickens, indistinguishable from their usual mindless squawking.

The 'theorists' of the Socialist Alliance dramatically set the scene:

At all costs, capital has to avoid the recognition that WorldCom et al represent the tip of an  iceberg - a generalised systemic failure. Hence, The Times assures us that US investors are a "hardy bunch" who have "plenty of historical experience of capitalism that... has sometimes lived on the edge of the frontier". However, "food capitalism quickly drives out bad capitalism, scandal is followed by reform" and "the US economy can recover at speed from the embarrassment... wounds will be licked and entrepreneurs will quickly move on" (June 27).

Just as predictable, though we have yet to hear it, will be the reaction from certain sections of the left, for whom this current crisis, in their catastrophist dreams, will (yet again) betoken the beginning of the end.

Then follows a 6th former's straightforward news-report crib of bourgeois accounts of WorldCom's rise and fall via inflated stockmarket valuation, hiding profit falls and debt, masked by Andersen crookedness and Bush-regime embarrassment. It goes on:

So much for the detail, but how should we assess the financial, economic and political fallout from the WorIdCom affair? Does it, for example, portend some kind of general crisis for the capitalist system as such? One's first instinct is to say decidedly not: In the last decade alone markets have weathered much more serious events - true, billions in capital have been destroyed and perhaps millions of jobs have been sacrificed on a global basis, but the system itself has survived these shocks. Why? In great part because of a global capital surplus, with huge sums of money looking for a home and much of it finding a haven in US equity and bond markets, where historical returns have been consistently satisfactory.

Within this farcical anti-Marxist ignorance, there at least appears to be a tentative stab at honesty: "No crisis".

But the Weekly Worker's nerve soon gives. Hardly surprising given these CPGB frauds' belief that Marx's greatest contradiction of capitalism, - the boom build-up of capital 'surpluses' which end up incapable of all making a profit and therefore CRASH, bringing down the whole system with it, - has somehow become capitalism's greatest strength.

The SA 'theorists' belatedly decide to join the general bourgeois panic over how badly things are going for the "free-world" system:

On the other hand, it would be foolish to ignore the sheer psychological impact of recent events on investors who are thinking of buying US assets. Confidence has already been badly shaken. If more skeletons emerge from the closet and it toms out that the barrel itself, rather than a few apples, is rotten, then the worldwide consequences would be immense. A significant flight of capital from US bond markets and an ongoing investors' 'strike' would basically bankrupt the administration, which is sitting on trade and budgetary deficits that are frankly unsustainable.

We forget sometimes that the world's mightiest and richest country is actually living on tick. Imagine what would happen if the USA defaulted on even one small tranche of its debt repayments: as always, it would be the working class that would have to pay the price in terms of social provision, but the political dislocation resulting from such an event would be incalculable. Even leaving aside such nightmare scenarios, you could argue that the ideological basis of US hegemony in the post-Soviet era has already been severely damaged. No alternative? To this?

If there was a scrap of objectivity or honesty in this game,
then an ironic "catastrophists welcome the Weekly Worker to their ranks" could be added, but this opportunist self-contradictory anti-Marxist gobbledegook is the most cynical posturing. The irresponsible rottenness of all such fake-"left" posturing sectarianism is brilliantly captured by top 'theorist' John Chamberlain, (a.k.a. Conrad) who elsewhere in WW continues his Trot-type rant against "the socialism of fools - socialism in a (single) breakaway country", in a plea for workers to embrace European Union unification rather than country-by-country splitting off the EU to build socialism.

With wimpish middle class defeatism, beaten before it starts, the "reason" for refusing any chance of a single country socialist revolution is given as:

Any reformist or revolutionary government that might arise amidst the turmoil would suffer instant retaliation. Fascist counter-revolution or, that failing, isolation through asphyxiating trade embargoes and perhaps a joint EU-US 'peacemaking' force.

But why not fight such counter-evolution? It was the MAKING of the Soviet workers state which rewrote all the world's history books in its 70 years existence, just as defeating counterrevolution in China and Vietnam was the MAKING of those two great proletarian revolutions.

Cuba's whole workers state prestige is built on the same heroic basis, building a brilliant society in total defiance of every filthy counter-revolutionary stunt and subversion and propaganda that the entire might of the world's greatest imperialist power can throw at them.

But the anti-communist counter-revolutionary Gods of anti-Leninism must be appeased. "No" to dreams of making the best of unfavourable circumstances by setting about building socialism in the (single) Soviet state when world revolution failed to spread in the 1920s.

And so no let-up in the Socialist Alliance's anti-Chinese workers state venom either, no doubt; or cynical contempt for Cuba, it probably goes without saying among these class prejudice-driven anti-communists.

Yet suddenly, what is this tacked onto the end of Conrad's rant???

Wining the battle for democracy in the EU and securing working class  rule in this geographically small but economically and politically powerful comer of the world would give us a fortress from where US counter-revolutionary threats could be confidently rebutted. The revolutionary contagion would then rapidly spread. That is the best service we in the EU can perform for our comrades in the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia

Is this Western cultural prejudice recurring again? The CPGB is renowned for it, refusing to accept the validity of the Sinn Fein/ IRA national-liberation struggle (despite more posturing in favour of "self-determination rights" on an anti-communist basis elsewhere in the world than any other fake-'left' group), and refusing to defend their right to "sectarian Green terrorism",  laying equal blame for the 'Troubles' on the 'bigots' of "both sides", etc.

This then leads them to exonerate the thug-fascist remnants of degenerate orange-Unionist "Irish" championing of failed British Imperialist colonialism, and to demand a new three county "Partition" for Michael Stone, Mad-Dog Johnny Adair, and all the other deranged nazi killers to cavort in anew.

It is a clear echoing of the "Irish bogtrotters" contempt that the British have always maintained for their colonised Irish subjects.

It resurfaces now as contempt for the great nation of Russia in trying from 1917 (with colossal epoch-making success) to build an alternative planned-socialist society to imperialist world domination; and even greater contempt for the great Chinese nation.

Suddenly, after a Trot lifetime of "no breakaway country of socialism, no socialism in a single country" counter-revolutionary garbage, the fake-'left' now tells us that a totally disunited tower-of-Babel Europe COULD build socialism and defy US counter-revolution, to the deserved congratulations and delight of all, - but that Cuba, e.g. still deserves contempt for being the "socialism of fools".

Ah, but the EU (350 million), while "geographically small" is an "economically and politically powerful corner of the world which would give us a fortress from where US (280 m) counter-revolutionary threats could be confidently rebutted. The revolutionary contagion would then rapidly spread," etc, etc.

Cuba's successful fortress?? No, - "FOOLS".

Cuba's successful influence?? Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Zapatistas, Venezuela, FARC, FMLN in Salvador, etc, etc, etc??????? No, -"FOOLS".

The Soviet workers state's 70-year fortress defiance of western imperialist counter-revolution and fascist aggression; and spreading influence like contagion (China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, East Europe, national-liberation struggle internationally, etc, etc, etc)?????? No, "Socialism of FOOLS".

The EU (350m) powerful and capable-enough to survive US imperialist counter-revolution and thrive despite being a Tower-of-Babel basket case of conflict and disharmony, - but China (1,200 million and most powerfully politically united and culturally cohesive) only capable of the "socialism of FOOLS"???????????

Is there, perhaps, just a whiff of cultural Western chauvinism in all this insane contradictory fake-'left' Socialist Alliance gobbledegook??? Build Leninism. EPSR

World Revolutionary Socialist Review

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

The government of Sudan, gets 5 % of the oil revenues. Southern Sudan, the land where the oil is, gets nothing, while the international community enjoys the 95 % share

DESPITE Sudanese co-operation with the US, providing intelligence on the whereabouts of the Al-Qaida network - this empoverished country has been singled out,   together with Somalia, Yemen and Iraq to figure as targets for the broadening of the "War Against Terrorism".

Northern Sudan was allegedly host to Osama Bin Laden, until 1996; where it is believed he lived as a guest of Hassan al-Turabi, an Islamic militant and former speaker of the country's parliament whose niece is married to the Al-Qaeda leader. It was Sudan where the US bombed a supposed chemical weapons plant that,  after investigation, was confirmed to be a pharmaceutical factory.

Sudan is no stranger to war. Since 1955 two-million people have been-killed and more than four million displaced, with the country, for 46 years, being ravaged by a civil war. Some have characterised that war as a religious battle between the Islamic, Arab North and the  Christian,  Black-African-South. But beneath the superficiality of this easy but untidy definition, a colonial legacy, and oil have supplied the dynamic for unabated war.

Dr Mansour Y. AI Ajab, chairperson of the Sudan Human Rights Organisation, based in London, says that "these conflicts are deep rooted in the malformed, socio-politico and economic structures of Sudan. Its root cause is the colonial legacy of uneven development and the outward orientation of the economy". In Sudan the British colonisers concentrated their efforts on developing the north of the country, where universities, roads, sanitation and hospitals were built for the benefit of the Arab population.

Meanwhile, in the South, a growing sense of inequality. 

And that sense remained and grew yet more when independence was declared and the national government adopted, without exception, the same geographically particular policies, discriminating against the Southern Sudanese population.

Northern Sudan is now in the hands of the Government of Sudan, its strings being pulled by the security forces. Most of the South is governed by the Sudan People's Liberation Army. 

These abuses lake many forms; from the displacement of population, to the harassment, intimidation and elimination of political opposition, human rights activists and religious, leaders; from the imposition of female genital mutilation on the Christian refugees who may arrive to the capital, - to slavery and the trafficking of women and children. 

So, while the Sudanese people need healthcare, education, food security, and most of all, peace, to prosper, one might think that the discovery of oil in Southern Sudan could herald the solution to this myriad of problems. Guess again. As with other mineral replete countries in Africa, oil in Sudan has added to the suffering of the population because oil revenues are being used to kill rather than protect.

'The government are getting $1 million a day from the oil, but they are also spending $1 million on the war" says Elizabeth Ogwaro, a Sudanese Human Rights activist based in London.

Aid agency Trocaire adds that, since the discovery of oil, hundreds of thousands of villagers in the Upper Nile region of Southern Sudan have been terrorised into leaving their homes. "Government forces and militias have killed civilians, destroyed harvests, looted livestock and burned houses", it reports.

Since construction of the pipeline between the oil fields in Upper Nile and the Red Sea began in 1998, the government has increased its use of helicopter gunships and indiscriminate high altitude bombardment. Despite a damning body of evidence from independent human rights investigators, the UN has not made any public comment about the scorched-earth war waged by the government to exploit the oil of the South.

Trocaire accuses the Sudanese government of using relief as a weapon of war and as a strategy to clear the oil-producing areas of population. "The government ban on aid flights amounts to a denial of relief which is exacerbating a looming food crisis". The crisis was the consequence of a year of drought, the destruction of crops and the displacement of population.

And all along, the oil multinational companies carry on regardless, ignoring not only the human right violations in the area, but facilitating the army in its terror operations against the people of Southern Sudan. A Christian Aid report revealed an airstrip, upgraded by the oil companies, that was also being used by Sudanese government aircraft for bombing missions against civilian populations.

"The revenue from the oil operations is being used by government forces to pursue their war efforts. The only way for oil companies to prevent being implicated in further human rights abuses in Southern Sudan is to suspend oil operations until a just and lasting peace settlement has been reached", explains Dan Silvey, Christian Aid's senior policy officer.

"Tens of thousands of civilians have been killed and displaced by a systematic policy of depopulating the oilrich areas. Each time an oil concession is developed, it is accompanied by massive human rights violations."

To the denunciations of Christian Aid, Trocaire and other agencies, the International Community has responded with silence. For Elizabeth Ogwaro, it is very clear that they are trying to defend their own economic interests. "The government of Sudan, gets 5% of the oil revenues. Southern Sudan, the land where the oil is, gets nothing, while the international community enjoys the 95%. But today, everyone, including the Irish, is quiet about what is happening in Sudan. They just want to talk about oil, how the oil is of benefit for Sudan."

All the multi-national companies involved in extracting oil from Sudan say that their presence has, improved the standing of the country, bringing a new wealth to Sudan. Elizabeth Ogwaro strongly disagrees:

"When Christian Aid visited Sudan last year they were looking for first hand information, because they want to know if it was truth if the oil companies were of benefit for the areas where they were staying, whether they were bringing peace to the area. How can you bring peace to an area where you are killing people so you can build an oil pipe? How can you bring peace to an area while encouraging the country's government to bomb the people?"

Human Rights activists, Churches representatives and Aid Agencies in Sudan have called for the stoppage of oil extraction in Sudan until the human rights situation has been thoroughly investigated, but the corporations have ignored this call. For Elizabeth Ogwaro, and the Southern Sudanese population, oil is not a guarantee of wealth, but of death:

"When we look to that oil, we are looking at death, we are looking to our children going starving. We look at malnutrition increasing... We even hear the bombs coming... Now, they want to extend the oil extraction up to the border with Uganda, because the Sudanese government want to get rid of the Southern Sudanese."