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 
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No 1188 June 10 2003                                                                                                                                25p 
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Just accepting the inevitability of ultimate imperialist crisis fails to do justice to the urgency required for explaining how routine boom time imperialist bullying transforms into world-threatening warmongering aggression out of imminent economic disaster. If capitalism is just "in crisis, and it is getting worse", then it will remain problematic to convince workers that imperialist domination is facing terminal difficulties which will tend towards inter-imperialist war threats at some stage, by all historical precedents. It is in the very nature of capitalist economic crisis as a unique phenomenon that the revolutionary essence itself of the huge changes that the world is hurtling towards becomes graspable. Total upheaval and breakdown is at the core of this revolutionary understanding, - and the imminence or otherwise of a long period of chaotic revolutionary turmoil is a naturally vital key to winning sympathy for anti-imperialist agitation on Leninist lines.

Doubts are expressed about the tendency in recent EPSRs to describe the economic collapse-crisis (lying behind US imperialism's warmongering belligerence) as being "imminent" or "on the brink", - an excellent debate to have, and the more input the better.

Nothing in the Review has ever claimed to have detailed scientific knowledge of exactly how or when this greatest-ever "overproduction" crisis in capitalism's history is going to result in such widespread breakdown, and such largescale slump internationally, as to merit the description "imperialist collapse".

But describing the capitalist system as facing "imminent disaster" or "on the brink" is designed to convey something else entirely.

In Marxist terms, the "free market" has been facing collapse again, ever since its warmongering "recovery" was engineered by 1945 via the, most colossal destruction ever known of civilisation's industrial, economic, social, and cultural achievements.

Entire major countries such as Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, and much of East Europe were reduced to total rubble, and a dozen more countries did not fare much better.

But 2003 is no longer 1945. To merely repeat the scientific certainty (that by the Marxist laws, the post-war "recovery" definitely will end ultimately only in another warmongering collapse) is an abandonment of the revolutionary journalism Lenin strove to describe in What is to be done.

It also happens to be a formula behind which Third International Revisionism was perfectly content to hide.

The grotesque flaw with Stalin's Economic Problems,1952, is not in wishing to deny that imperialism remains an economic system of ultimate crisis.

That is accepted.

The problem lies in Revisionist theory's total denial that it is imperialism's aggressive economic EXPANSION, on route to a fall, that was going to be the absolute driving force governing or influencing ALL world developments after 1945.

To this day, the Revisionist remnants will still agree (Morning Star, etc) that "of course imperialism is still a system of crisis; we are Marxists", etc, etc, and then proceed to "analyse" world developments in exactly the same old impressionistic way as ever, devoid of any revolutionary perspective whatsoever, and attacking capitalism's ad hoc difficulties purely episodically, with ALWAYS only a reformist "solution", plus the words "we want socialism", tacked on at the end.

This Scargillite crap is buried deeply in British workers spontaneous trade unionist consciousness.

How to dig it out? Certainly, just shouting "imminent", or "on the brink" about crisis collapse all the time would be counterproductive.

And certainly, if the "free market" is henceforth destined for another 10 to 20 year period of "recovery" before finally succumbing to Marx's "overproduction" breakdown, then the EPSR's attempted political tradition is going to be even more marginalised than ever.

But the Review's presentation is not some silly gamble.

Its style of anticipatory perspectives obviously lends itself to giving many hostages to fortune, both large and small; but journalism as revolutionary agitation is impossible without it.

On another plane of struggle entirely, an entire stupid bourgeois industry has grown up of academic pedantry which has reduced world history to one long jeer at "Marx's wrong predictions", etc.

The EPSR was born because nothing existed that would champion the achievements, so far, of the existing workers states but at the same time denounce Revisionism for its refusal to understand that imperialist boom/bust even existed, let alone be the great significant driving force for all future developments on Earth, which could only be of a totally REVOLUTIONARY character, therefore.

Inter-imperialist World War III, towards which this slow-maturing, long-drawn-out, post-1945 capitalist economic crisis is inevitably heading, in Marxist-Leninist scientific understanding, may possibly never amount to much in terms of actual warmongering destruction if revolutionary upheavals or other outraged or terrified reaction should so revolt against any such insane affront to everything that civilisation stands for.

But the blitzkrieging is already well under way (Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia, etc) and the international working class has just passively accepted the total devastation of the modern Iraqi state purely on the whim of the deranged, terrified, warmongering creeps currently in purchase of "elected office" in Washington.

Misplaced hysteria about an 'imminent" economic collapse (as the driving force for this re-invention of NAZI bullying intimidation under a US flag as the "only serious international leadership in a time of great crisis") would merely draw more sneers of "crisisism" from the cynical fake-"lefts", and leave world opinion even more comatose or demoralised than ever when it proved untrue.

But the EPSR's detailed fact gathering about deepening imperialist economic contradictions and their reflection in political disintegration, incompetence, and aggression, has followed a long and consistent path through many areas of imperialist crisis.

Anticipatory perspectives have been crucial for giving a pattern to an otherwise "endless line of mere episodic happenings", - such as fake-'left' cynicism has only ever made of 'the troubles' in Ireland, for example.

Based on a Marxist theory of accelerating British capitalist decline at the end of a century of starker imperialist-colonial world contradictions than ever before, with British monopoly power being among the early losers being squeezed out, - it was not unreasonable analysis from the start to see London's increasing distaste for, and difficulty in handling, the growing civil-rights national-liberation struggle from the late 1960s onwards in Ireland, as a developing indication (1) of the impossibility for long-continuation (in the modern world) of the bogus "Northern Ireland" police-military dictatorship (supporting a basically apartheid and illegal "state"); and (2) of the British wish to basically get out of that mess as soon as possible, consistent only with not making it too obvious that the colonial occupation injustice was capitulating to unbeatable national liberation, revolutionary, guerrilla war.

Since 1979, the EPSR has followed all the events in this colonial relationship in massive detail, and has regularly concluded that the final defeat of this wretched "Northern Ireland" statelet nonsense, and therefore the reunification of Ireland, - has been drawing closer, and closer, and closer.

But Ireland is, in world terms, a relatively smallscale issue (even if very intimately entwined with the whole fate of British imperialism specifically), and can still be described in incremental stages without too awkwardly sitting on the fence, in appearance, and skirting the big question of "when" does this wretched colonial collapse finally become no longer deniable, (the sneering challenges about the Sinn Féin/IRA struggle having met "defeat" in the Good Friday Agreement still pouring out from every orifice of petty-bourgeois disinformation such as most of the capitalist press and the fake-'lefts' like the SLP and the Alliance who all described GFA as a "retreat" by the national-liberation struggle in the face of a "peace settlement imposed by US imperialism", etc, etc).

It might currently be quite appropriate to bring together the recent growing avalanche of disastrous developments for the continuing fraud of the doomed, colonial "Northern Ireland" bogus statelet - (unstoppable internecine murder between the now demoralised and defeated 'loyalist' thug-colonists; humiliating revelations of British colonial NAZISM (see elsewhere this issue) by its own Establishment hand, desperate in its decline to clean up its image; dwindling political returns (and ever more costly for a basically bankrupt British imperialist state) from trying to keep Sinn Féin/IRA in the dog-house of "bad people that we are giving a chance to by 'allowing' them to participate in the 'democratic' process", etc etc, - and to keep Ulster Unionism sanitised as it staggers on its last legs of sterile sectarian prejudice, still basically refusing to accept power-sharing or the loss of its illegal colonial fortress; etc; etc;  etc;) - and declare the final demise of the "Northern Ireland" fraud virtually "imminent".

But it would serve no real purpose, apart from some added self-congratulatory journalistic pride. "Gets closer" is adequate.

But the world economic crisis is a different order of contradiction entirely.

Much of the historical record, and all human expectations, only ever think of burst economic bubbles in terms of a Great Crash.

That in itself is no reason to talk incautiously about "imminent" or "on the brink", of course, without the evidence.

But, surely, if the evidence is forthcoming, then it is in the very nature of economic crisis itself that the notions of "closer" and "closer" should be constantly posing the question of "how near the brink"???

How long is "imminent" or how deep is the edge of the "brink" is possibly never going to be firmly predicted by the EPSR because (a) these things are obviously unknowable, and the Review has never pretended otherwise; and (b) the EPSR has only maintained support during 24 years of extraordinarily difficult and confusing world developments by its striving for conscientious honesty and openness, well aware that always on the record will remain its incautious delusion that the Soviet workers state achievements were "here to stay", a mistaken understanding from which much has had to be learned.

It would be almost as damaging, although in a quite different way, to be wrong about the broad onrush of imperialist economic crisis by a factor of, say, 20 to 30 years; - and collective struggle and support would almost certainly be sadly affected.

But without any consciously artificial tweaking-up of the perspective, it is the whole logic and pattern of the imperialist crisis itself which has been dictating the EPSR's discussions.

One outstanding step so far, - gained from the insistence on crisis as the essential driving force of all world developments, is the acceptance, after some debate, that the startling open-NAZI-warmongering phenomenon launched from Washington, is itself best understood as just another aspect or expression of the economic crisis itself.

But now there is even more to be speculated about, - much, much more; and much, much more complicated.

As last EPSR discussed, this huge, initial warmongering cover-up/diversion from capitalist crisis, pretending that the "evil axis of terrorist rogue states" was all that was wrong with the world, - has come to a spectacular, crashing dead-end.

The would-be imperialist warmongers have become an international laughing stock.

What is this all about?? What happens next????

Not a single line of questioning can get away from the conclusion that reflections of an economic crisis far, far worse than even the EPSR could ever have imagined, are the only obvious thread to these astonishing latest disasters for US imperialism. All the American interest failures seem inseparable from the notion that the USA cannot be anywhere near as powerful and influential as it would appear from first glance at the undoubted military might; the most overwhelming wealth-preponderance of any empire in history; the most outstanding up-to-date can-do in every sphere of science, technology, and all-round human culture that has ever been recorded; a confident international propaganda aggressiveness and subversive potential that makes American imperialism invincible to most minds; etc; etc; etc; etc.

And yet the USA's "putting-the-world-to-rights" interventions and onslaughts around the Middle East and elsewhere, for years, have resulted in nothing but international ridicule.

This is now building to a crescendo. Afghanistan is heading back towards total, ungovernable hostility to the West; Iraq looks set to become a nightmare for the "colonisers" a thousand times worse, even; and the "peace process dividend" for the Middle East from all this warmongering, expected to arise from an imposed settlement of the Palestinian national liberation war against the Zionist-imperialist colonisers, will either be a dead letter almost immediately, or is going to have to see the Americans making serious warmongering threats against the Zionists in order to make any worthwhile progress.

Either way, the "potential total control" of world developments that is anticipated from American economic imperialism's overwhelming world-domination will be approaching something like total crisis.

If all of that looks anything approaching a likely analysis of the current international turmoil, then it makes Marxist sense to look at the economic factors driving the Western imperialist era into this miasma.

Having looked, it is then possible to conclude that in terms of the economic/financial changes that could still happen, - no, the imperialist system is not quite on the brink of collapse yet. Let the evidence be brought forward and let the assertion be made. The EPSR would love to debate it. In its absence, there is no obvious necessity to insist that the imperialist system now must be on the brink of collapse. And there would not necessarily be any great harm in settling for "closer to collapse" on which all analyses can agree.

But that would not be true to what the struggle for revolutionary agitation has always been about since Marxism began its influence on civilisation. Any reading of Marxism-Leninism (and even Trotskyism) reveals instantly a tone of an urgent fight to take the truth of an analysis as far and deep as possible.

EPSR discussions have long asserted the cancer of deep and incurable systemic crisis spreading very rapidly into every aspect of capitalist society, and very plausibly seeming to be reflected in ever worsening and ever more chaotic international turmoil too.

Unfailingly, the EPSR has always recorded in lengthy detail the digestible facts of international economic crisis in this political and cultural cataclysm.

Briefly, the picture established reveals the system-wide significance of 12 years of classic "overproduction" crisis which have been terrifying Japan with fears of total collapse and for which no cure can be found; the steady spread of the same profits-crash phenomenon throughout the rest of the corporate-imperialist world in the latter period, bringing a stock market collapse and rising unemployment; the equally predicted arrival on cue of growing and increasingly bitter trade war between the imperialist "partners"; the blind turn to arms-race warmongering aggression by the biggest monster with most to lose in this terrifying imperialist economic swamp which has no solution; the anticipated inevitable spilling-over of trade-war disagreements between the imperialists into serious shooting-war disagreements between them; the ever-deepening technical bankruptcy of the US imperialist state itself, continuing to maintain its political influence on the world by the same dollar-printing credit expansion methods, as usual, which in these circumstances can only be heading for a huge bust-up, - a fall possibly heralded by the dollar's recent rapid decline, (duly arriving as the EPSR has long since explained must happen, at some stage).

Yet it is on top of all this that the very latest developments have put the fat in the fire on an even more dramatic scale than ever. The whole planet, including fellow imperialists, is now branding the Western imperialist world leadership as nothing but hypocritical lies, and lies in pursuit of a blitzkrieg-bullying total failure. There were no weapons of mass destruction, and the West knew it; and the invasion/colonisation of Iraq has turned into an uncontrollable nightmare disaster for the Iraqi people and for the US imperialist occupation. Meanwhile, the world summit conference has come and gone without being able to utter a scrap of sense about all this, or a single word of agreement about the towering international economic crisis that menaces behind this unprecedented mess. Exactly the opposite. Capitalist press admissions about imperialist browbeating could almost be read as US preparations for a warmongering coalition against its own former "allies":

Travelling around Europe, Mr Bush has been subtly but assuredly extending his doctrine of "you're with us or you're against us": It had been crafted at the outset of the War on Terror to round up as large a coalition as possible.

The approach will no longer be confined to the battle against al-Qaeda or nations harbouring a terrorist problem. It will govern Washington's view of its "allies" across the board.

Furthermore, US officials say, there will be no tears shed if traditional Western friends, such as France and Germany, fail to come up to the mark "If they don't sign up, they don't sign up. We'll move on," one official said.

It is unclear to what extent foreign capitals have grasped the scope of the change, which has been prompted by the opposition to the Iraq war.

One French official said that Paris had not yet caught up with Mr Bush's speech in Wawel Castle, Cracow, on Saturday, such was the dizzying swirl of world leaders travelling to St Petersburg's weekend 300th anniversary celebrations and on to Evian.

In Poland, Mr Bush committed the United States to "a strong Atlantic alliance", but stopped short of defining it as the centrepiece of US foreign policy making.

Instead, he mapped out a sweeping agenda of unflinching resolve in the face of terror.

America was looking for "like-minded allies", a senior Administration official said, suggesting that Iraq had wiped clean the prewar network of friends.

US officials said that Mr Bush's new agenda "may or may not affect the relationship" with other allies. The unspoken message was that if it did, that was their problem

Body language alone at Evian suggested that Mr Bush has already made up his mind about who his friends are at the top table.

At the initial informal meeting of G8 leaders, Mr Bush greeted Silvio Berlusconi by cupping the Italian Prime Minister's neck in his hand in locker-room familiarity. Junichiro Koizumi, the Japanese Prime Minister, received a full-swing slap on his back, the kind of welcome reserved for team-mates.

Tony Blair and Mr Bush limited their body contact to a knowing handshake of mutual respect

By comparison, the staged handshakes with President Chirac and Gerhard Schröder lacked any appearance of genuine warmth.

Mr Bush offered warm words to M Chirac, saying that the pair had disagreed, "but that doesn't mean we have to be disagreeable to each other". But US officials made clear that Mr Bush was not out to invest time on M Chirac and Herr Schröder simply because of history. Reflecting on the harm inflicted by the Iraq war, one official said: "We'll see how long it takes to heal. Some may take longer than others." 

And some boldly published fake-'left' comments in the bourgeois media are concluding that the chaotic incompetence and brutality in the colonisation of Iraq might just be exactly what this warmongering bullying turn in overt US imperialist politics is actually aiming for:

The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of uncollected garbage and crime. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets. 

In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire "structural adjustments" prescribed by Washington, from Russia's infamous "shock therapy" in the early 90s to Argentina's disastrous "surgery without anaesthetic". Except that Iraq's so-called reconstruction makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments. 

Paul Bremer, the US appointed governor of Iraq, has already proved something of a flop in the democracy department in his three weeks there, nixing plans for Iraqis to select their own interim government in favour of his own handpicked team of advisers. But Bremer has proved to have something of a gift when it comes to rolling out the red carpet for US multinationals.

For two weeks, Bremer has been hacking away at Iraq's public sector. Bremer banned up to 30,000 senior Ba'ath party officials from jobs in government. Less than a week later, he dissolved the army and the information ministry, putting 400,000 Iraqis out of work without pensions or re-employment programmes.
	
Bremer has gone far beyond purging powerful Ba'ath loyalists and moved into a full-scale assault on the state itself. It seems doctors who joined the party as children and have no love for Saddam face dismissal, while low-level civil servants with no ties to the party have been fired en masse. Nuha Najeeb, who ran a Baghdad printing house, told Reuters: "I ... had nothing to do with Saddam's media, so why am I sacked?"

As the Bush administration becomes increasingly open about its plans to privatise Iraq's state industries and parts of government, Bremer's de-Ba'athification takes on new meaning. Is he working only get rid of Ba'ath party members, or is he also working to shrink the public sector as a whole so that hospitals, schools and even the army are primed for privatisation by US firms? Just as reconstruction is the guise for privatisation, de-Ba'athification looks a lot like disguised downsizing.

Similar questions arise from Bremer's chainsaw job on Iraqi companies, already pummelled by 12 years of sanctions and a month and a half of looting. Bremer did not even wait to get lights back on in Baghdad, for the dinar to stabilise or for the spare parts to arrive for Iraq's hobbled factories before he declared, on May 26, that Iraq was "open for business". 

Duty-free imported television sets and packaged food flooded across the border, pushing many Iraqi businesses into bankruptcy, unable to compete. This is how Iraq joined the global "free market" economy: in the dark.

Paul Bremer is, according to Bush, "a can-do type of person": Indeed he is. In less than a month he has readied large swathes of state activity for corporate takeover, primed the Iraqi market for foreign importers to make a killing by doing away with much of the local competition, and made sure there won't be any unpleasant Iraqi government interference - in fact, he has made sure there will be no Iraqi government at all during this crucial period when so many key decisions will be made. Bremer is Iraq's one-man International Monetary Fund.

Like so many of the men who populate the Bush foreign policy landscape, Bremer sees war as a business opportunity. On October 11 2001,  just one month after the terror attacks in New York and Washington, Bremer, once Ronald Reagan's ambassador at large for counter-terrorism, launched a company  designed to capitalise on the new atmosphere of fear in US corporate boardrooms. Crisis Consulting Practice, a division of the insurance giant Marsh and McLennan, specialises in helping multinationals to come up with "integrated and comprehensive crisis solutions" for everything from terror attacks to accounting fraud. And, thanks to a strategic alliance with Versar, a specialist in biological and chemical threats, clients of the two companies are treated to "total counter-terrorism services":

In order to sell this kind of high-priced protection to US firms, Bremer had to make the sort of frank links between terrorism and the failing global economy that activists are consistently called lunatics for articulating. In a November 2001 policy paper, titled New Risks in International Business, he explains that free trade policies "require laying off workers. And opening markets to foreign trade puts enormous pressure on traditional retailers and trade monopolies." This leads to "growing income gaps and social tensions"; which in turn can lead to a range of attacks on US firms, from terrorism to government attempts to reverse privatisation and trade  incentives.

He could be describing the backlash his own policies are provoking in Iraq. But then guys like Bremer always know how to play both sides: Like a hacker who cripples corporate websites then sells himself as a network security specialist, in a few months Bremer may well be selling terrorism insurance to the very companies he welcomed into Iraq.

And why not? As Bremer told his clients back at Marsh, globalisation may have immediate negative consequences for many but it also leads to "the creation of unprecedented wealth".

It has for Bremer and his cronies. On May 12, the day he arrived in Iraq, his former boss, Marsh chairman Jeffrey W Greenberg, announced that 2002 "was a great year for Marsh - operating income was up 31%, Marsh's expertise analysing risk and helping clients develop risk management programmes has been in great demand. Our prospects have never been better".

Many point out that Paul Bremer is no expert on Iraqi politics. But that was never the point. He seems to be an expert at profiting from the war on terror, and at helping US multinationals make money in far off places where they are both unpopular and unwelcome. In other words, he is perfect for the job.

Even the American press and the straight British capitalist	media are now openly commenting on the NAZI conquest aspects of US neo-colonialism.

This style of US supported, or US-implemented, gendarme-tyranny is in no way a completely new phenomenon but is absolutely typical of most American imperialist history, exactly matching, in fact, the utter brutality of all European colonial history.

But what has become of the "New World Order"; or its wonderful, Blairite, 'Third Way' contemporary updating, breathlessly preaching peaceful democracy, justice, and progress for the whole world??

Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death..

The US condemned this repression for many years. But since September 11 rewrote America's strategic interests in central Asia, the government of President Islam Karimov has become Washington's new best friend in the region.

The US is funding those it once condemned. Last year Washington gave Uzbekistan $500m (£300m) in aid. The police and intelligence services - which the state department's website says use "torture as a routine investigation technique", received $79m of this sum.

Mr Karimov was President Bush's guest in Washington in March last year. They signed a "declaration" which gave Uzbekistan security guarantees and promised to strengthen "the material and technical base of [their] law enforcement agencies".

The cooperation grows. On May 2 Nato said Uzbekistan may be used as a base for the alliance's peacekeeping operations in Afghanistan.

Since the fall of the Taliban, US support for the Karimov government has changed from one guided by short-term necessity into a long-term commitment based on America's strategic requirements.

Critics argue that the US has overlooked human rights abuses to foster a police state whose borders give the Pentagon vantage points into Afghanistan and the other neighbouring republics which are as rich in natural resources as they are in Islamist movements.

The geographical hub of the US-Uzbek alliance is 250 miles south of the capital, - Tashkent. Outside the town of Karshi lies the Khanabad military base, the platform for America's operations in Afghanistan.

One western source said: "[The Americans] expect to be here for over a decade." This will suit the Uzbek government, which welcomes America's change in attitude as its own security forces continue to repress the population. Uzbeks need a permit to move between towns and an exit visa to leave the country. Attendance at a mosque seems to result in arrest. Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan, said: "The intense repression here combined with the inequality of wealth and absence of reform will create the Islamic fundamentalism that the regime is trying to quash." Another senior western official said:

"People have less freedom here than under Brezhnev. The US is also funding some human rights groups in Uzbekistan. Human Rights Watch's office in Tashkent said: "I would deny there has been any real progress. "The steps taken are basically window dressing used to get the military funding through the US Congress's ethical laws. Nothing has changed on the ground."

"People's lives here are no better for US involvement," he said. "Because of the US help, Karimov is getting richer and stronger."

Such primitive, neo-NAZI mayhem makes opportune yet another very close look at how hopelessly exposed to disaster the world imperialist economy might already openly be, so that these truly desperate world-control measures might just as well bear their NAZI holocaust threat overtly, and let the intimidation to all become a frank aspect of US imperialist policy. How far doomed to collapse does the American world-rule economy have to be for this willing embrace of warmongering tyranny to no longer matter???

In domestic US terms, the crash-doomed attrition ploughs on relentlessly, in the capitalist media's own admission, - not collapsing as such just yet, but providing yet more added proof that the "overproduction" route to disaster only, is already well under way, and that nothing conceivably can remove the "surplus" capital mountains, (responsible for these "gluts", which will nearly paralyse world trade at some stage and bring living standards crashing down everywhere),- except inter-imperialist World War III, the only way that capitalism's last two great economic crises were ended:

A FEROCIOUS price war is wrecking the recovery hopes of DaimlerChrysler's US car business, which yesterday gave warning that it would lose £1 billion (£720 million) in the second quarter of the year.

The signal that Chrysler, the US arm, would miss its operating profit target of $2 billion (£l2 billion) for the year sent DaimlerChrysler shares tumbling by more than 6 per cent in Frankfurt

The company's bonds were also battered by the news and DaimlerChrysler said it would not proceed with a $2.5 billion debt issue that had been previously announced by its North American holding company.

Chrysler's troubles caused Standard & Poor's, the credit ratings agency, on Tuesday to change its outlook for DaimlerChrysler debt from "stable" to "negative". The company sought to reassure investors yesterday, indicating that the rest of the group was performing according to expectations.

The worsening plight of the American business was blamed on "further incentive increases". The need to offer customers bigger discounts has forced Chrysler to cut the value of the cars stocked by its dealers. "In addition to lower revenues from ongoing sales, this result is primarily attributable to a revaluation of dealer stocks and residual values," the company said.

Analysts reckon Chrysler was offering some $3,000 off the price of its average car in the first quarter in the form of discounts and zero interest finance. In May the company upped the ante with a further $850 to $900 off the price of its cars, but customers were not impressed and, Chrysler sales fell 3 per cent last month.

Cutting the price is not reducing the number of cars on American dealers' forecourts, Michael Dean, an analyst with Merrill Lynch, said. The  seasonally adjusted annual rate for May, an extrapolation of monthly sales for a full year, came in at 16.1 million vehicles, down from 16.8 million in the first quarter. "The rate of sales is falling even though the incentives are higher," Mr Dean said.

Chrysler's tale of woe emerges after its rivals General Motors and Ford said they would cut their North American car production. GM, the leading carmaker, plans to cut third quarter output by 6 per cent after a 12 per cent cut in the year's second quarter.

GM is reining in production despite a 4 per cent sales gain in May, but Ford sold 5.8 per cent fewer cars last month and the number two carmaker is reducing its North American vehicle output by 15 per cent.

In contrast, Japanese car importers gained ground. Toyota and Nissan both increased unit sales in May by more than 6 per cent, while Honda gained 18 per cent.

Upmarket carmakers, which have remained aloof from the discount battles, have continued their sales advance.

CHRYSLER'S tale of woe comes amid a worldwide slump in volume car sales (Carl Mortished writes). US car sales are under severe pressure, with registrations of domestic cars down 8 per cent year on year for the month of May. Analysts blame the battle of the discounts for the loss of volume. However, market saturation may be taking its toll. Some 85 million new cars have been sold in the US over the past five years and US domestic car manufacturers are losing ground to Japanese importers.

In Europe, too, the outlook is increasingly bleak. PSA, the French company that owns Peugeot and Citroen, gave warning a week ago that its full-year operating profit target of €3 billion (£2.1 billion) was threatened. The grim outlook was confirmed this week with evidence of a slump in French car registrations in May. The French bought 13 per cent fewer cars last month than a year previously and the drop in sales for the first five months of the year was 9.8 per cent.

The trend is repeated in Spain, where sales were down 6 per cent in May and, for the first five months of the year, were down 3.4 per cent compared with the same period the year before.

But these terrifying global slump threats, matching the 1930s, with unemployment already soaring in the USA, Japan, and Germany and other European Union countries, - are merely the least speculative part of the picture.

A world economic collapse is also going to be much influenced by dramatic state actions and interventions, each imperialist power being forced politically to respond, as a matter of life and death, to developments which rival imperialists-in-trouble are imposing on the planet which could scupper its own power-interest, or, in its view, EVERYONE's interests.

The technical bankruptcy of the US imperialist state, owing an unrepayable fortune to the rest of the world's countries for their inward investments into America (US Gilts, corporate bonds, and shares, etc) which alone have financed Washington's chronic armsrace budget deficits and anti-communist-campaigning international payments deficits, - has effectively posed the question ever since 1945 of when will this Bretton Woods bubble burst (the post-war recovery deal which declared the only stable currency, the US paper dollar, to be "as good as gold"), bringing the world's involuntary tribute to American imperialism suddenly to a halt???

Is the technical economic insanity of this dollar largesse about to strangle itself??? Already so deep in debt to the world's investors that it no longer cares (because repayment is no longer a serious proposition), the US imperialist state is now blitzkrieging its way through crisis without any further thought about who is going to be hurt.

One way of looking at it is that the whole planet is being made the offer it cannot refuse of sinking or swimming with this American warmongering onslaught.

The script written for the idiot Bush of "either you are with us or against us" could have even more meaning than was obvious.

In addition to its thousands of billions of debts already, the US state just casually adds another $2bn a month to pay for its messy repression in Iraq.

But how desperate a last-ditch move might this be (in terms of the global imperialist financial crisis where the credit-based "surpluses" of capital finally stop being an ever-renewable stimulus to still further imperialist expansion, and literally start choking the system to death (by swamping the limited available profitability on Earth, created by exploitable labour power in Marx's analysis of all booms' limitations and eventual slump-destruction regrouping)).????

Against even widespread imperialist objections, the Iraqi state has been smashed.

Apart from oil-supply security and other buccaneering corporate interests, American imperialism has another great stake in the region in ZOP (Zionist-Occupied-Palestine, called 'Israel'), a stooge outpost of American monopoly capitalist interests in the Middle East, forever able and willing to act as the USA's mailed fist whenever any dirty work needs doing by way of cutting down to size any upstart Arab nationalism which might think of challenging America's domination of the region.

This whole imperialist enterprise is in crisis in the Mid-East.

Incapable of a Marxist grasp that this is because the world imperialist system is in crisis, fundamentally, Washington has been driven into lashing out against the perceived causes.

Growing worldwide anti-imperialist revolt has seen the Palestinian national liberation revolution grow steadily towards destroying any meaningful Zionist "security".

An American blitzkrieg on the Intifada is politically out of the question (so far), and in any case what good would it do where the even more ruthless, brutal, and well-equipped Zionist forces cannot succeed in colonising the revolt into silence.

Kidding themselves that Iraqi mischief making and anti-imperialist defiance was a key part of the Zionists problem, Iraq had to be destroyed on any pretext going.

But the USA had to do it because of the uproar that a Zionist blitzkrieg would have caused.

In this perspective, what drove the imperialists to such desperate measures, ones that have now resulted, it is appearing, in no let-up whatever in the Zionists' Palestinian difficulties, but now a totally alienated Iraq as well, whose growing anti-imperialist liberation resistance is only likely to feed into Palestinian resistance more strongly and genuinely than ever Saddam's posturing mischief-making was achieving.???? 

Allowing for the strangely twisted language of the bourgeois press which takes US imperialism's "peace" push in the Middle East at face value, this capitalist media report hints at an American state desperate to cut its losses prior to life-or-death major world struggles to come when the capitalist crisis really erupts:

THE chances of progress in the Middle East are cast so easily in terms of personalities that it is easy to forget the overshadowing disaster of Israel's economy - and the fact that this threat is now itself a force for peace.

The Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, said as much a fortnight ago, in remarks which caused a shock on several fronts. "I think the idea that it is possible to continue keeping 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation - yes, it is occupation, you might not like the word, but what is happening is occupation - is bad for Israel, and bad for the Palestinians, and bad for the Israeli economy."

Inevitably, his choice of the word "occupation" dominates analysis of his comments. But the pointed, separate reference to the economy, from a man so identified with Israel's security and politics, made waves. It has been in recession for nearly three straight years since the start of the Palestinian intifada, and its economic statistics are bleak on every front.

Since September 2000, according to government figures, its gross domestic product (GDP) has fallen by 3 per cent overall, and by 7 per cent per head. 

Much of the contraction has come in the private sector, the bursting of the dot com bubble has added to the nightmare for Israel's large high-technology sector. Tourism has collapsed, plunging by nearly two thirds in the first quarter of this year.

The closure of businesses has pushed the public sector up to about 55 per cent of GDP. Meanwhile, tax revenues are plummeting because of the recession.

The United States has been well aware, in these conditions, of the extra value of its economic help to Israel. In April, Congress gave an extra $1 billion grant for military assistance and $9 billion in loan guarantees, on top of the normal $2.7 billion in annual aid.

The US has made some of the guarantees, which Israel needs to repay government bonds and support the budget deficit, conditional on economic reform, according to reports. The US has indicated, too, that it would take a dim view of continued large subsidies to the West Bank settlements.

In doing so President Bush appears to have adopted similar tactics to his father, who attempted to use a freeze in loan guarantees to halt settlement activity.

The message about economic reform also appears to have got through; the strength of Mr Sharon's position at home means that he may be able to push through unpopular changes. Last month the Finance Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, three months into his new job, proposed an emergency austerity budget which amounted to a blunt acknowledgement of past mismanagement.

He aims to slash huge areas of government spending, particularly education and welfare - although not defence. He proposed wage cuts for those who remained in the public sector of 8 per cent. Mr Netanyahu is scheduled to meet the main credit rating agencies in London and New York later this month to try to persuade them not to lower the rating on Israel's debt.

It would be easy to overstate the role that the American economic lever has had in bringing about the shift in Mr Sharon's position. But it appears to have played some part. More significant, however, seems to be the recognition by Mr Sharon, represented in his remarks a fortnight ago, as well as in Mr Netanyahu's budget, that the conflict with the Palestinians could squander all the rewards of Israel's economic success, and that preventing this is an urgent need in itself.

In a deepening crisis, routine warmongering repression to keep US imperialism in the saddle starts to become impossibly costly.

At the 11th hour when all is nearly lost to uncontrollable economic crisis, launch a desperate, make-or-break, warmongering adventure to try to force everything back under control again.

The fear of collapse leads to the warmongering beginnings of World War III, which only then brings the brink of collapse even closer. Build Leninism. EPSR supporters.

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

The British share of a dying but still dangerous world colonial-imperialist economic system in crisis, needs throttling just as badly as the rest

WHO RAN BRITAIN'S DEATH SQUADS?  British Intelligence

TIME FOR CHANGE.  TIME FOR DISCLOSURES

For 30 years, the British Government, through its agencies - MI5, British Military Intelligence and RUC/PSNI Special Branch - has been involved in the murder of its citizens. Together, they directed the activities of various loyalist death squads. This was much more than simply passing on information. This was about the deliberate and orchestrated targeting and assassination of citizens.

What has been allowed to happen, to borrow a phrase from former British Lord Chief Justice Denning, represents an "appalling vista". The facts documented below bear this out.

MI5 is in charge. It was and still is their job to monitor the activities of Military Intelligence and RUC and PSNI Special Branch. MI5 exerts its authority through having a seat on the RUC's Tasking and Co-ordinating Groups and a liaison officer with the British Army's Force Research Unit.

MI5 is obliged to report on all of these matters to Whitehall and to Downing Street. In the period covered by this dossier, MI5 reported directly to Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair, respectively, in their capacity as British Prime Minister. This means that successive British Prime Ministers knew and still know of the activities of the Tasking and Co-ordinating Groups, of Brian Nelson and of the FRU/JSG. If they didn't, it means that they were lied to or had information deliberately withheld from them by senior figures in MI5, British Military Intelligence and the RUC/PSNI, including Special Branch.

What is now required is that there is full and proper disclosure on all of these issues.

Stevens 3 is the report of the third Stevens' inquiry into limited aspects of collusion by British Government agencies and loyalist paramilitaries, who have acted as proxy agents of British Intelligence for 30 years. The report has taken 14 years to produce. It is limited by design and incomplete because of obstruction by British Government agencies.

Belfast Newsletter reported that loyalist and British Intelligence sources confirmed that a loyalist paramilitary organisation - the Ulster Volunteer Force - had a "spy network which colluded with military and police personnel to kill". The report detailed a system of informal collusion between the UVF, British soldiers and members of the RUC as opposed to the highly formalised system of collusion reported on by Stevens.

British Intelligence briefed, in a comprehensive way, a wide range of media outlets in Britain and Ireland about unsubstantiated allegations in respect of an alleged British agent in the IRA codenamed "Stakeknife" or "Steakknife". The storm of spin and speculation created by these faceless and nameless British agents continues to rage.

The British Intelligence briefings commenced within days of the unilateral cancellation by the British Government of elections to the fixed term Assembly in the North of Ireland. These were established under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, which was democratically mandated by the electorate in Ireland, North and South, five years ago on 22 May 1998.

The media storm created by British Intelligence around their alleged role in the IRA relegated this undermining of democracy and the Peace Process to the inside pages of the print media and erased it from the broadcast media.

The common thread to all of this is British Intelligence agencies who, having failed to defeat the IRA in 30 years of conflict, continue to seek to politically defeat Irish republicanism by other means.

During the conflict, their targets were human rights lawyers, members of the nationalist community, Sinn Féin elected representatives, unarmed IRA Volunteers and others like Roseanne Mallon, a County Tyrone pensioner.

Today their target is the Peace Process.

It is inconceivable that these activities could have been conducted down the years without the political sanction and protection of the British Government at the highest levels. These activities must be stopped.

They are a barrier to peace, a barrier to reconciliation and a barrier to justice.

There must be full disclosure of these activities. 

British Military Intelligence functioned primarily through a covert unit called the Force Research Unit (FRU). The FRU, in recent years, was given a new name - the Joint Services Group (JSG) - but its fundamental functions and procedures remain the same. Brigadier Arundell David Leahy of the British Army confirmed the JSG's "methods of operation... have not changed to any significant extent". 

The Force Research Unit, under the command of Brigadier Gordon Kerr; between 1987 and 1991 recruited and ran British agents, including Brian Nelson.  At Nelson's trial, the head of FRU gave evidence in his support and British Defence Secretary and former Secretary of State Tom King described him as a 'valuable agent'. 

Patrick Mayhew, then British Attorney General, did a deal with Nelson to avoid him giving evidence which saw the charge of murder withdrawn. Nelson was resettled by the British government after his release from prison. 

RUC/PSNI SPECIAL BRANCH (TASKING AND CO-ORDINATING GROUPS)

The RUC Special Branch, through their Tasking and Co-ordinating Groups (TCG), were responsible for the action end of the collective intelligence gathering, of these agencies in the 1980s. Everything from MI5, Special Branch and Military Intelligence ended up with the TCGs for assessment and response. Some of these 'responses' included the shoot-to-kill operations in North Armagh in the early 1980s which saw several unarmed IRA Volunteers gunned to death by the RUC.

Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the former Chief Constable of the RUC, 1996-2002, was in charge of TCG South, which included North Armagh. He was also a senior figure in the Special Branch at the time of the murder of Pat Finucane.

The RUC Special Branch transferred into the PSNI Special Branch. Soon after the RUC/PSNI name change, PSNI Special Branch set out to undermine and frustrate the inquiry by Policing Ombudsman Nuala 0'Loan into the Omagh bombing and they did so with complete impunity. Neither the Ombudsman nor the newly-created Policing Board could do anything about this. No member of the PSNI Special Branch has been subjected to disciplinary proceedings.

STEVENS 3 - COLLUSION & MURDER

The Report of the Stevens Inquiry (Stevens 3) was handed over to Sir Hugh Orde, the Chief Constable of the 'Police Service of Northern Ireland' (PSNI) on 17 April 2003. The report consists of thousands of pages. It is the property of the Chief Constable. He may share some or all of it with a small sub-committee of the Policing Board of the PSNI. Whether he will or not remains to be seen.

The Irish Government, which is a joint and co-equal partner with the British Government in seeing the full and faithful implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, including its terms on policing, have no right to see the report.

This needs to be rectified.

This was the third Stevens' Inquiry in 14 years.

On the same day, Sir John Stevens, the author of the report, in conjunction with its handover, publicly issued a 19-page document titled "Stevens' Enquiry: Overview and Recommendations".

The author made clear that his enquiries highlighted:

• Collusion;

• The wilful failure to keep records;

• The absence of accountability;

• The withholding of intelligence and evidence;

• Agents being involved in murder.

He made clear that these serious acts and omissions have meant that people have been killed or seriously injured. He detailed how his enquiries have been obstructed.

OBSTRUCTION

The Stevens' Inquiry's terms of reference were so narrow that it is reasonable to draw the conclusion that those who designed them sought to prevent information from emerging as opposed to constructing a process for full and proper disclosure.

For instance the third Inquiry focused in detail on only two killings in the three years covered by the report -  1987-1989   - which had seen scores of deaths and attempted killings as a result of collusion between British Intelligence agencies and loyalist paramilitary organisations. Moreover, Stevens notes in his report that in November 2002, 13 years after his enquiries had begun, a considerable amount of documentation from the British Ministry of Defence "became available to the Enquiry team for the first time". 

He went on to say: "I record the late disclosure with considerable disquiet. I have encountered the same problem of late disclosure during my two previous Enquiries and expressed then my strong concerns surrounding the issues."

Stevens, later in his report, sets out the nature and extent of the obstruction. Much of this was already in the public domain but is repeated here because, as will be shown, this remains entirely pertinent - not just to the limited issues under investigation by Stevens but to the wider activities of MI5, Military Intelligence and Special Branch.

For what Stevens encountered is endemic to these agencies and has long been a destructive impediment to the Peace Process.

Stevens said that:

Throughout his three Inquiries he recognised that he was being obstructed.  This obstruction was cultural in its nature and widespread within parts of the Army and the RUC.  Crucial evidence had been concealed from his inquiry team, including the facts that:

• Brian Nelson was a British Army agent.   

• Nelson had been in possession of an 'intelligence dump' which his British Army handlers had seized when Stevens' 1 began.

• Information was leaked to the loyalist paramilitaries and the press before the planned arrest of Nelson and senior loyalists, which resulted in the arrest operation being aborted.

• Stevens' incident room had been destroyed by fire before a new arrest operation could be mounted. In his view, this was a deliberate act of arson that has never been adequately investigated.

• He had been lied to about the existence of particular documents he asked to examine.

CULTURE OF OBSTRUCTION

The obstruction encountered by Stevens and which he described as cultural in its nature and widespread within parts of the British Army and the RUC, relates to the narrow area of the issues covered by his Inquiries.

This culture of obstruction, however, was and is widespread in the British Army and British Intelligence and the RUC; and remains in the PSNI because human rights abusers in the RUC were not, as recommended by Patter, dealt with and, in particular, because many have transferred into the PSNI, where they continue to obstruct attempts to get to the root of things.  

The facts to support these matters are incontrovertible. The pattern of obstruction set out above by Stevens is evident in a whole range of other cases stretching back over 30 years and includes the refusal to compel British Government agencies to make full and proper disclosure of all relevant information. This pattern and practice is clearly a matter of policy.

Opponents of change have erected a bogus and deliberately misleading argument about the financial costs involved in getting to the truth about these matters. They point to the costs involved in the Saville Tribunal into the killing of 13 Irish citizens by British Paratroopers in Derry in 1972.

The cost involved in the Saville Tribunal arises mostly from the resistance within the British system to providing truthful information. Indeed solicitors and barristers are reduced to the painstaking extraction of nuggets of truth in a process akin to pulling teeth.

There is no need for any of this. Most of the answers are contained in the British Government's own files. Political will and an internal trawl could produce the truth and save millions.

The Irish Government has an onerous responsibility in seeing that full disclosure of the truth comes about. The victims of British Intelligence who fill these pages were Irish men and women and, as often as-not, Irish citizens. Moreover, a resolution of what is involved here is key to rights, justice, reconciliation and the future course of the peace process and to the success or failure of those who want to derail it.

Some of the cases involved include:

WALL OF SILENCE 
• The wall of silence encountered in the RUC around the death of Sammy Devenney, who was beaten to death by RUC officers in 1969.

REFUSAL TO INVESTIGATE
• The refusal to investigate the consistent claims over almost 20 years by loyalist killer and former
British soldier 'Ginger' Baker that RUC officers drove illegal loyalist weapons through British Army and RUC checkpoints, regularly gave RUC files to the UDA and tipped off loyalists to prevent the seizure of their weapons.

DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE
• The destruction of British Army weapons used to kill 13 Irish citizens in Derry on Bloody Sunday, 1972 and so preventing this forensic evidence from being submitted to the Saville Tribunal.

• The destruction of an MI5 tape recording of the killing of Michael Tighe in a hayshed outside Lurgan in 1977 and the prevention of legal proceedings against those involved by Sir Patrick Mayhew, the then British Attorney General.

• The destruction of a tape recorded confession by Ken Barrett, a Special Branch agent and UDA member, in which he claimed that he had shot dead Pat Finucane, the human rights lawyer.

• The destruction of the notes of interview of the SAS personnel involved in the killing of IRA Volunteers Pete Ryan, Laurence McNally and Sean Dorris in a shoot-to-kill operation in, 1991.

• The burning of John Stevens' incident Room during the Stevens Inquiry.

FAILURE TO MAKE FULL AND PROPER DISCLOSURE

• The current refusal by the PSNI to comply with the Coroner's request for full and proper disclosure of information to the inquest into the death of unarmed IRA Volunteer Pearse Jordan who was killed by the RUC in 1992.

• The current refusal of the British Army and PSNI to comply with the coroner's request for full and proper disclosure of information to the inquest of County Tyrone pensioner Roseanne Mallon, who was killed by loyalists under surveillance by the British Army in 1994.

• The refusal by British Government agencies to make full and proper disclosure on the Dublin and Monaghan bombs of 1974, which resulted in the deaths of 33 Irish citizens.

• The refusal to give full and proper disclosure of the facts surrounding the summary execution of Peter Thompson, Eddie Hale and John Joseph McNeill by British soldiers from the 14th Intelligence Company during an attempted robbery.  John McNeill was shot repeatedly from the back while sitting behind the wheel of a getaway car.

• The ongoing refusal of the British Ministry of Defence to provide full and proper disclosure to the Saville Tribunal of information relevant to Bloody Sunday.

OBSTRUCTING INQUIRIES
• The obstruction by the PSNI Special Branch of the Ombudsman's inquiry into the Omagh bombing by withholding relevant files and hiding relevant files in complex computer systems. None of those involved were reprimanded or disciplined.

• The public defamation of British police officer John Stalker when his inquiries into shoot-to-kills started producing results unwelcome to MI5, the RUC and the British government.,

FAILURE TO PROSECUTE
• The collaboration between the British Attorney General, the British Army and the RUC which ensured that British Army agent Brian Nelson evaded charges of murder and walked out of prison a wealthy man after only four and a  half years; and that only fragments of information with a bearing on collusion between British agencies and loyalist paramilitaries saw the light of day in the court proceedings.

COLLUSION AND COVER-UP
The pattern and practice of collusion and cover-up that has emerged over the past 30 years, right up to the present, as the above limited number of examples illustrate, is as follows:

• The obstruction of inquiries by various means, including a wall of silence by members of British agencies - M15; Military Intelligence; RUC/PSNI Special Branch; the British Army; the RUC/PSNI.

• The destruction of evidence, the hiding of evidence and a policy of refusing to make full and proper disclosure.

• The refusal to conduct adequate investigations, including wilful neglect or refusal to do so, the limiting of terms of reference of inquiries so as to limit their potential, and the shutting down of inquiries when they appeared to be getting somewhere.

• The collaboration by various British Government agencies, including government law officers at the highest levels, and intelligence and security agencies to prevent proper investigations and maintain their agents' loyalty by protecting them against the full rigours of due legal process, including preventing prosecutions from taking place.

• A reliance on wholly illegal activities, including multiple killings, and a confidence to act with impunity in respect of these matters.

POLITICAL SANCTIONS

The upshot of all of this is far too extensive to deal with here in its detail but the following represents some sense of what is involved:

Successive British Governments have sanctioned murder. They have employed agents. They have given them a license to kill and the freedom to act with impunity.

Agents like Brian Nelson were not sources for British Government agencies, they were the servants of those agencies in the direction and manipulation of loyalist paramilitaries. Reporter John Ware, in the Newsletter on 29 June 2002, wrote: "So far as I can tell many,  if not most of the West Belfast UDA Brigade was working for the CID or Special Branch or MI5 at one stage or another."

Belfast man Brian Nelson is the classic example. He was recruited by M15. Nelson was an employee of British Military Intelligence and a member of the UDA.

Nelson's employer, Brigadier (then Lieutenant Colonel) Kerr, the head of the FRU, testified in court in January 1992 that Nelson was being paid by FRU, which had instructed him to infiltrate the UDA. MI5 was a party to this and had full knowledge of Nelson's role.

He further testified that FRU had helped to improve Nelson's intelligence files and took steps to prevent the unwitting loss of these files to an RUC raid by telling the Special Branch where they were being stored and that the FRU had access to all of these files.  

In a televised report into these matters last year, the BBC's Panorama team said:  'By our count, at least 80 people listed on Nelson's targeting files were attacked. '29 were shot dead.'

The same programme noted that according to Military Intelligence records, "RUC sources" provided a "considerable number of targeting files. Fifty came from an officer in the RUC's Special Branch."

Brigadier Kerr, in his 1992 court appearance, testified that Nelson's identity was known to RUC Special Branch officers at the highest levels and to two senior MI5 officers.

No member of FRU, or of the RUC Special Branch, has been charged with any offence relating to these 80 attacks, including the killing of 29 people, on Brian Nelson's files.

These files were supplied by members of the British forces, including Special Branch and were improved by FRU, which maintained access to all files. FRU and Special Branch, moreover, colluded to ensure the protection of Nelson's files. The British Attorney General took control of Nelson's prosecution, or rather the avoidance of prosecution. For instance, two charges of murder were not pursued. The reasons for dropping the charges of murder against Nelson have never been given.

There is little possibility that British agencies could be involved in such actions without political sanction and protection.

AGENCIES UNDERMINE PEACE PROCESS

Conversely, the mountain of information on state sponsored illegal activities, including killings, attempted killings and gunrunning in the hands of these unaccountable and covert British agencies, may be acting to hobble the Peace Process.

British Labour MP Kevin McNamara has recently said in a Westminster speech on the Stevens' Report: "I believe that intelligence agencies played a significant role in shaping the political geography of Northern Ireland and prevented the emergence of a political alternative for many years.' 

	These agencies have not been subjected to any process of reform.

	They have not been made subject to a public debate about accountability in the way the issue of policing has. 

	Instead, MI5 and Military Intelligence -  the FRU being a case in point - have remained immune from change.

Moreover, over several successive summers we have witnessed an ongoing campaign of loyalist violence aimed at destroying the peace process - a campaign heavily-influenced by British agents. Accordingly precious few arrests have been made. Clearly, the old agenda continues.

This is wholly unacceptable. The reasons are self-evident.

All of this raises a number of important issues entirely relevant to the current situation, including truth and justice and reconciliation. It is also entirely pertinent to the political situation at this moment and to our political future. 

The British Military Intelligence personnel involved in these matters are still in place and have had their activities endorsed by the British Government. Some 70 honours and awards have been made to the British Army unit involved in colluding with loyalists in the killing of Irish citizens - the Force Reconnaissance Unit (FRU).

Moreover, the public had been led to believe that this unit had been disbanded. The reporting of the March 2001 raid on Castlereagh Barracks, Belfast, however, revealed the unit to be still in place and functioning under a new name - the Joint Services Group (JSG).

The Director of Military Operations in the British Ministry of Defence spelt out the wholly unacceptable significance of this in an affidavit sworn in 1998. In this, he said that the FRU "is now known as the Joint Support Group (JSG) Northern Ireland" and is employed as one of "two specialist units" that "acquire intelligence on behalf of the Royal Ulster Constabulary". He added that JSG's "methods of operation have not changed to any significant extent..." since 1987. The import of this is that the policies and practices which led to the death of Pat Finucane and 28 other people as a direct result of FRU agent Brian Nelson's files are still in place today. This is totally unacceptable.

In addition, the RUC Special Branch, including those with an involvement in the most serious allegations of collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, which lies at the heart of these incidents, transferred en bloc into the PSNI Special Branch. They were at the centre of attempts to obstruct the Ombudsman's enquiry into the Omagh bomb.

British Intelligence agencies and their agents are still fighting their dirty war, still obstructing the necessary search for truth. They continue to undermine the Peace Process by mounting propaganda operations, creating an avalanche of spin aimed at destabilising the process in general and republicans in particular. All this is intended to exacerbate an already bad situation.

The Policing Board cannot investigate these matters. It has no powers to investigate either MI5 the British Army or incidents involving the RUC prior to 1999.

The Ombudsman's powers to investigate such matters are yet to be tested but the point Is somewhat moot, given that it is already clear is that the Ombudsman does not have the financial resources to conduct such inquiries. She also has no power whatsoever to investigate the British Army or MI5.

ACTION REQUIRED

The position of the Finucane, Nelson and Hamill families is clear and unambiguous. They are demanding independent judicial inquiries into the deaths of Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson and Robert Hamill. Sinn Féin unequivocally endorses that position.

We believe the evidence of collusion between British Government agencies and loyalist paramilitaries demands this. Three separate police inquiries have failed to get to the root of the matter. Immunity from prosecution granted by the British Government to some of those involved has presented an obstacle to the truth that has been insurmountable to date. There is no confidence in the nationalist community in Ireland that any British Government agency will get to the bottom of what is involved here.

This is, in part, a legacy of the British Government's "Widgery Inquiry" into the killing of 13 civilians by the British Army on Bloody Sunday 1972, an inquiry that has been totally discredited as a whitewash.

This has been reinforced by the British Government's refusal to cooperate with its own inquiry into Bloody Sunday - the Saville Inquiry. The obstructive conduct of the British Minister of Defence in impeding the inquiry is such as to prevent it fully investigating the role of the British Army on that day.

The 14 years it has taken to produce Stevens 3, a limited enquiry which still remains far from complete because of official obstruction underlines this.

Sinn Féin fully supports the inquiry demands by the Finucane, Nelson and Hamill families.

• We demand full and proper disclosure of all relevant information by British Government departments and agencies in relation to all cases of collusion. For example, there must be full disclosure to inquests, the Stevens' Inquiry, the Saville Tribunal and the Barron Inquiry.

• We demand the publication in full of the Stevens' and Sampson/Stalker reports.

• The FRU/JSG must be disbanded.

• The Patten Report on policing must be implemented in full. The British Government signed up to a police service that is representative, accountable, acceptable to the community as a whole and imbued with a human rights ethos. The PSNI as currently constituted is unaccountable and unacceptable. There must be full local democratic accountability.

• The British Government must end the operations by British Intelligence agencies aimed at destabilising the Peace Process.

• The Irish Government must seek and be afforded full and proper disclosure by the British Government on all information vital to the rights and welfare of Irish citizens and the defence of the Peace Process