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 1199  September 09 2003

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NW seminar Sat Sep 27 or Sat Oct 4.

Bush's $87 billion "fight on" defiance speech, plus Meacher's acknowledgment that this is a US imperialist war for "world domination", gives massive fuel to EPSR perspectives that what the working-class is facing is the greatest capitalist-system economic crisis ever, which is inexorably leading to something like World War III, and that only a Leninist programme to cope with total revolutionary turmoil is going to be of any use at all to ordinary people everywhere.

The ruling-class mentality around the American presidency is now plumbing the depths of degeneracy with its crude aggressive mouthing to "finish the job" in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the filthy chaotic disasters being created there, still determined to pretend that the "war on terrorism" makes any sense at all when the whole world already understands that this is a war of global control and exploitation which is only going to create "terrorists" by the million.

The capitalist system's own propaganda service is giving the details of how Third World resistance is effectively getting the better of this monstrous Western imperialist aggression, or at least so resentfully and determinedly defying it that both the warmongering itself and its ludicrous "rationalisation" as a "war on terrorism", - or any kind of worthwhile operation,- is becoming not only increasingly doubted but even despised:

Boston Globe

September 2

"The Bush administration's hubristic foreign policy has been efficiently exposed as based on nothing more than hallucination. Hi-tech weaponry can kill unwilling human beings, but it cannot force them to embrace an unwanted idea. As rekindled North Korean and Iranian nuclear programmes prove, Washington's rhetoric of 'evil' is as self-defeating as it is self-delusional. No one could have predicted a year ago that the fall from the Bush high horse of American Empire would come so hard and so quickly ... The rise and fall of imperial Washington took not hundreds of years, but a few hundred days ...

"Sooner or later, the US must admit it has made a terrible mistake in Iraq, and it must move quickly to undo it. That means the US must yield not only command of the occupation force, but participation in it ... This might seem terribly unlikely today; but something like it is inevitable. The only question is whether it happens over the short term, as the result of responsible decision making ... or over the long term, as the result of a bloody and unending horror."

Mail on Sunday

September 7

"I know with total certainty that things are far worse [in Iraq] now than they were a few months ago ... Large parts of Iraq are now run by armed militias, Kurdish and Shia, that ignore the occupation forces. How many more British and American troops do they think will be needed before we have Iraq 'under control'?

"I would like to hear from some of those who beat the drum for this war. I would like them to do as I did and go by the road route from Amman to Baghdad ... to travel round and talk to the Shias about what sort of Iraq they want - since they are the majority and a true democracy would be run by them. And then see how many of them continue to believe that the operation was a success, even though the patient died."

A rocket-propelled grenade had formed a conical crater on the verge, narrowly missing a US armoured car. The American soldiers piled out, and residents spent the next two hours in their gardens, as their houses were searched.

Yesterday, some 12 hours later, Donald Rumsfeld arrived by helicopter from Baghdad in Saddam Hussein's home town and the symbolic heartland of the old regime.

The architect of the US-British victory was unable to set foot on the streets. Far from being a place of joyful liberation, Tikrit is in the grip of a low-level insurgency. And outside the palace-turned-military fortress in which he briefly touched down, almost no one was glad to see him.

Even the weary American troops had reservations. "I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Rue Gretton, a member of the US forces, said.

Mr Rumsfeld cancelled a speech citing a tight schedule and flew on to Mosul, where he had to view from a helicopter the house in which US troops killed Uday and Qusay Hussein.

There was no mistaking that someone very important was coming to Tikrit, but for most of the inhabitants the occasion was nothing more than a nuisance. From early morning, the town centre and the main road in front of Saddam Hussein's former palace were blocked by checkpoints, reinforced with tanks and armoured cars. The number of US troops was tripled.  Some 1,500 Iraqi police were deployed, including reinforcements from the neighbouring towns of Owja and Samarra.

Teenage boys had been employed for an urban beautification programme, painting neat yellow and white lines along the curbs of the roads, but none of it was visible from Mr Rumsfeld's thunderous air convoy of Apaches and Black Hawks.

"We can see lots of helicopters, the roads are all closed, and there are rumours of a visitor," said a 29-year-old lorry driver named Idris Amer. "But we didn't see anyone."

There is near-universal resentment in Tikrit of the US presence, and the guerrilla attacks have become almost routine. The complaints centre on the inadequacy of the electricity supply and the cost of living.

"If I could speak to Mr Rumsfeld, I would ask him about the bizarre and inexplicable behaviour of the coalition," Laith Fadel Abdulrzak, a 17-year old student, said. Two months ago his motorbike was seized and burnt, by US soldiers, along with those of dozens of young men. "They claim the Fedayin [Saddam loyalists] were using such motorbikes, but I bought it with my own money."

Hummadi Josim, 65, a local sheikh, who says he has twice been arrested, handcuffed and interrogated by US forces on both occasions without charge - said: "If you are decent to me, I will do the same for you. But if you are rude to me and don't treat me as a human being, I will answer you with my actions."

Tikritis say that they have no idea who was behind the grenade and mortar attacks, and none went so far as to articulate explicit support for them or nostalgia for Saddam. The soldiers face a frightening and difficult task, and a deadly enemy; the raids and searches and checkpoints are a response to real danger. 

But Iraqis who are caught in the middle after years of suffering, have little understanding of this and still less sympathy.

But the recently-replaced-after-6-years-in-the-Blair-Cabinet Michael Meacher has poured oil on the flames of bourgeois doubt with a vengeance by his remarkable public attack at the weekend on the entire "justification" imperialist skulduggery which has cynically used the militarily-trivial Sept 11 "terrorist" incidents of 2001 in the USA as a covering "excuse" for Middle East re-colonisation plans which crisis-threatened Western monopoly-capitalist interests have in fact been hatching for more than six years, just waiting for a "cause" and an opportunity to get going with:

We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld's deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush's younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney's chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America's Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says "while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein."

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must "discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role". It refers to key allies such as the UK as "the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership". It describes peacekeeping missions as "demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN". It says "even should Saddam pass from the scene", US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently, as "Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has". It spotlights China for "regime change", saying "it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia".

The document also calls for the creation of "US space forces" to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent "enemies" using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons "that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool".

Finally - written a year before 9/11- it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a "worldwide command and control system". This is a blueprint for US world domination.

The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: "The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence".

Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured".

The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that "the goal has never been to get Bin Laden" (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). 

None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.

The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called "war on terrorism" is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: "To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11" (Times, July 17 2002). 

Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).

In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that "the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East". Submitted to Vice-President Cheney's energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, "military intervention" was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).

Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that "military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October". Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan; Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban's refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs" (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public rejoin the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into "tomorrow's dominant force" is likely to be a long one in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor".

The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the "go" button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing "severe" gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.

A report from the commission on America's national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron's beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India's west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the "global war on terrorism" has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.

Meacher is a political lightweight but that only makes his devastating onslaught all the more remarkable.

His obsession with the "CIA conspiracy" theory as an "alternative" explanation for the dramatic shock of Sept 11 demonstrates his weak grasp of capitalist-system crisis which is the crucial thing to bring out about everything that has happened in this whole long warmongering-aggression buildup in the West from the blitz of Serbia onwards; - but to hear an authentically degenerate British Cabinet member (of long-standing) acknowledge that this whole "war on terror" hysteria is nothing but a rotten cover for vicious and dangerous neo-colonial tyranny by the West against the Third World, is very useful anti-imperialist propaganda.

The insoluble economic crisis at the core of all these warmongering activities, which the soft-headed Meacher misses, is far more difficult to pinpoint, especially from capitalism's own admissions where although still anxious, all the talk is still of "recovery" and "solutions", - and is likely to always continue in that vein to a certain extent, no matter how catastrophically bad a collapse and slump may become in the near future.

But all the dodgy signs that need interpreting are still coming as thick and fast as ever, and are even worse than ever, in some respects.

The latest US unemployment figures are a shattering blow to all the Washington bullshit about "the recession is definitely over", etc ,suddenly leaping dramatically to over 6 percent, fully 16 months into "renewed growth" claims, and prompting pretend amazed discussions about "the jobless recovery".

But shedding labour while doing marginally better in trading is a classic sign of ferociously SHARPENING competition for world markets, which is exactly what the many other signs of so-called "recovery" are also indicating.

And ever-more-vicious cut-throat competitiveness is not necessarily a good "recovery" sign at all but can fairly be taken to mean the exact opposite.

Getting the sack to aid the firm's costcutting survival is still getting the sack.

And if the whole world market is simply just continuing these costcutting rampages, then what history is looking at is not any kind of "recovery" but ever-worsening trade war and global mass unemployment plus falling living standards, - the absolute recipe for a total international economic slump and "over-production" crisis on the way, which twice before in the last century has only ended up in inter-imperialist World War.

Will the "militant brothers" at Brighton this week, supposedly "defending working class interests" with collaborative "reformist" petty bourgeois illusions, have the slightest concern or understanding for a single tiny aspect of all this?????

Or will one single fake-'left' sect, trading newspapers or leaflets outside the hall, challenge the TUC brothers with these truly vital questions?????

And will they even get a platform hearing on the next supposedly "national anti-war demo" on Sept 27????

Most crucially of all, how long before the WORLD REVOLUTIONARY implications of this titanic capitalist system crisis sweep aside the anti-revolutionary backwardness of all 57 varieties of wretched Stalinist and Trotskyist opportunist sectarianism ????????

All of them have dismissed the ideologically naff shallowness of spontaneous national religious resistance to Western imperialism as "condemnable terrorism", - all of them totally missing the point about the colossal depths of the globalisation crisis which is dredging up anti-monopolist struggle from any number of hitherto undisturbed delusions and attitudes, just waiting to be hammered by the unstoppable revolutionary process itself towards renewed Bolshevik revolution purposefulness and consciousness.

Speculatively, the EPSR has repeatedly used the Palestinian experience as a possible example of how the unfolding of this greatest-ever class struggle to determine the world's future might develop, and right on cue, it is once again demonstrating its possible validity.

Just as all sorts of new conclusions are slowly being come to everywhere about exactly what kind of degenerate mess the Western imperialist-dominated world is relentlessly plunging itself into, up rears this indomitable Palestinian resistance once again to help stretch imaginations to the limit.

"You MUST stop fighting", the terrible might of US-backed Zionist imperialism keeps on telling the totally brutalised and enslaved remnants of the Palestinian nation, completely driven out of the heart of their homelands by the monstrous Stalinist-backed UN Partition decision of 1947 to recognise armed Jewish colonisation as a "legitimate state" on 57% of Palestine; further driven into the wilderness from now 78% of their homeland by the "legitimate conquest" of the 1967 war as far as the Western imperialist armaments supplies to Zionist colonisation were concerned; and even now butchered and bullied out of the best part of even that remaining 22% of Gaza Strip and West Bank territory by the never ending armed-Zionist colonisation process fervently backed by the whole mighty influence of West European and US jewry.

"You MUST stop fighting" this most cruelly persecuted territory in all modern colonial history continues to be commanded, backed by ever-more ferocious blitzkrieg punishments and Nazi-style assassinations to hunt down the universally-condemned (by the entire corrupted West) "Islamic terrorists".

But exactly as the EPSR has speculated, all the contemptible "two-state solution" and "road map" so-called "peace" processes simply ignorantly and blindly refuse to consider the epoch that the world is moving into, one of nonstop REVOLUTIONARY turmoil.

What the proud, 7 million-strong Palestinian Arab nation is effectively being asked to accept is nothing less than the PERMANENT loss of their homeland (or 80°/ of it) to the "state of Israel", so-called.

But this in an epoch where surely ALL Western imperialist colonial domination is due to be finally swept from the Earth?????

And in conditions of terrified capitalist system crisis where EVERY ruling-class without exception in EVERY corner of the planet is brutalising, exploiting or humiliating ALL that it controls (in the desperate struggle for SURVIVAL in this greatest-of-all imperialist crises), does this not result in this non-stop ruling class tyranny	 virtually FORCING its subjects to learn how to make an irresistibly successful SOCIALIST REVOLUTIONARY response eventually, built on the dictatorship of the proletariat Bolshevik-style, which no amount of imperialist bullying tyranny will ever dominate ever again thereafter????

ALL of these aspects of a greatest-ever imperialist-system crisis remain decidedly speculative perspectives, but equally they have already provided the EPSR with years of international political analysis which has always so far proved remarkably more accurate than any other attempted characterisation of the precise historical epoch the world is going through, and of what will be the inevitable fate of all fake-'left' opportunist manoeuvres which do not start out with the clear priority to build an open party of Marxist-Leninist revolutionary theory as THE great requirement for the best interests of the working class.

Wall-to-wall backward philistinism and fake-'left' opportunism is all that will be heard on Sept 27, surrounded by the spontaneous ever-willingness of tens of thousands of ordinary people to listen to any revolutionary perceptions that might emerge.

It is a general time for revolutionary socialist studying to stretch itself to the maximum possible, the key works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin, and the key moments of the long triumphant/tortured history of the world communist movement after 1911, dovetailed into the most flexible possible grasp of where this greatest ever imperialist-system crisis is heading next.

It is the complications of the potential economic collapse which remain among the most difficult issues to fathom.

By general agreement, a key part of this whole balance of Bush's neck-or-nothing warmongering spending-blitz hangs on how quickly or slowly this further intolerable imposition of unrepayable American debt (from hopelessly unrealistic US budgetary and foreign payments deficits) forces the rest of the world "free market" economy to buckle under the strain.

In general, this endless dollar-pollution of the international exchanges is going to bring inevitable collapse and ruin at some stage. But how soon??

Or will all of that be superseded (as well as the fate of this anti-Third-World blitzkrieging, currently in such desperate trouble) by warmongering/bullying American action kicking off against totally new and even more hair-raising targets such as China and Japan?????????

Without much comment, it was reported last week that the former socialist camp is now receiving more international cap capital investment than the "free world", with China ousting the USA as the planet's favourite investment area.

Not much was said about what a reflection this was on the relentlessly sharpening international trade-war competition whereby Western monopoly-corporations are now frequently closing down plants in the West (causing rising unemployment) in order to open more modern and cheaper labour plants in China and the former socialist camp.

But simultaneously, the US Treasury Secretary Snow was reading the riot act in China demanding that the all conquering Chinese economy should now start reflecting its position with an ever-rising currency (giving rival world traders a chance) instead of perpetually pegging its value to the US dollar, thereby always maximising China's exporting opportunities to the huge American market.

China initially has told Washington to keep its nose out of China's affairs.

Then Japan came in for a similar warning, told to stop artificially trading the yen for dollars on the markets in order to keep the price of the yen (and thus of Japanese exports) artificially low.

Simultaneously to those opening shots in a fresh trade-war round, the international conference in Mexico opened where the Third World is expected to openly declare war on the First World for the continuing disgracefully unfair treatment which the less developed countries are receiving, - their exports tariffed out of contention, while they are continually politically or militarily bullied in various ways to open their doors to Western corporate penetration and/or privatisation on pain of losing Western aid or support of various kinds.

The total anarchy of the capitalist "free world" market is nicely building up to its greatest crisis ever, at last knocking the nonsense out of Revisionist/Stalinist beliefs that "world cooperation with non-aggressive imperialism" was a viable way forward for the planet, and thus setting the scene for a rebirth of Marxist-Leninist REVOLUTIONARY anti-imperialist understanding worldwide.

Meanwhile, idiot Blairism's governmental crisis rolls on unchecked.

The Hutton inquiry recess only meant that inevitably gloomy prognostications for Blair about the judge's eventual findings were filling every newspaper column.

The following was typical from the pro-Blair (and anti-BBC) Sunday Times (a voice of Murdoch).

The following was among the best it could offer,- dressing up the lying nonsense (put out by New-Labour spinning, in order to stay committed to the prearranged US blitzkrieg warmongering plan for Middle East political recolonisation) as merely the result of "muddled thinking" by the Defence Intelligence service.

But to put it another way, this war was launched on the basis of either a complete mistake or a total lie, by official admission:

THE government's handling of vital intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction was muddled and confused, a committee of senior parliamentarians is preparing to tell Tony Blair.

In a report to the prime minister on how intelligence was gathered in the run-up to the Iraq war, the intelligence and security committee (ISC) has concluded that Whitehall officials made what sources describe as a "muddled series of judgments" when including the infamous 45 minute claim.

In secret hearings over the past three months, MI6 and defence officials have given the committee conflicting evidence about what they thought the 45-minute warning referred to.

Some believed it meant a local artillery commander would take 45 minutes to fire chemical or biological shells once he had received orders. Others told the committee they believed it referred to the time it would take from Saddam giving the command to fire the shells. Some in the media presented it as the time it would take Saddam to strike Britain.

The committee is understood to have concluded that "muddled" thinking - as opposed to a deliberate attempt by Downing Street to mislead led to this confusion. It is believed to say that the 45-minute warning should have been fully explained, a move which would have avoided the subsequent claims that No.10 was deliberately trying to overstate the dangers posed by Saddam.

The findings, expected to be published this week, are likely to be seen as a criticism of John Scarlett, Britain's most senior spymaster. As chairman of the joint intelligence committee (JIC), Scarlett had overall responsibility for drawing up the Iraq dossier.	

Scarlett has been a key figure in the inquiry by Lord Hutton into the apparent suicide of Dr David Kelly, the government weapons expert, which is preparing to enter its second phase.

When Scarlett appeared before the inquiry, he broke with protocol to comment on the raw intelligence that the 45-minute claim was based on. It was made clear for the first time that the claim narrowly focused on battlefield munitions rather than long-range missiles.

This week's ISC report will fuel the controversy. Its conclusions on the 45-minute warning are unlikely to please the government as it suggests he entire row and perhaps even Kelly's death could have been avoided had clearer language been used.

Scarlett told the inquiry last month that Kelly, who was sceptical of the 45-minute claim, probably thought it referred to missiles with ranges of hundreds of miles. In fact it related to short-range "munitions [and] mortar shells". Scarlett also said he had not been aware of any dissenting voices in the intelligence community.

Last week, however, Brian Jones, a recently retired senior weapons expert with the defence intelligence staff, said he and fellow officials had had concerns about the intelligence and the way it was presented.

The information, Jones said, had been passed to MI6 from an informant who got it from an unidentified Iraqi army officer. "If didn't really give us any real feel that the primary source knew very, much about the subject," said Jones. "There was a lack of detail."

In its report, the ISC has concluded that the 45-minute tip came to MI6 from someone who had proved reliable in the past. But when it came to be presented in the dossier "nobody actually knew what they were saying", a source said.

The committee's conclusions will be cold comfort for Scarlett. He told the inquiry the JIC had approved the dossier but Jones challenged whether intelligence officials did actually sign off on it. If Hutton rules that standard procedures for producing such reports were bypassed, it will prove damaging for Scarlett and the government.

However it is interpreted, the "war to stop Saddam Hussein's WMD (weapons of mass destruction) from permanently threatening Britain's security drastically on only a 45minute fuse" was based on nothing but a total pack of lies.

And to go along with this long prepared Western-imperialist programme to inflict unwanted & lying warmongering tyranny on mankind, what could be more appropriate than a huge increase in the size of the British Gestapo (the secret state police) over the last few years of ever mounting INSOLUBLE capitalist-system economic crisis (which was undoubtedly pointing to the need for re-emphasised Western political-military world control in this immediate future, which was likely to prove highly unpopular in this post-communist epoch of supposedly wall-to-wall "peacefully negotiated democratic solutions to all the world's problems", etc, etc, etc).

A civil liberties group has published a report on this huge rise in domestic Special Branch activity:

Statewatch says the numbers in Britain grew from 1,638 in 1978 to 4,247 last year.

The special branch is now two and a half times as big as it was at the height of the cold war or the worst part of the Northern Ireland conflict.

"Political police - special branch and MI5 - are more intrusive in everyday political activity than at any other point in British history," claims Tony Bunyan, editor of the Statewatch bulletin.

In addition to the growth in its size, the special branch "now has far more civilian staff and the means for mass surveillance of telecommunications and the payments of informers which it never had in those days," he adds.

In the run-up to the next EU summit in Brussels in mid-October, each special branch division in Britain will be expected to provide the names and profiles of activists who are expected to go to Belgium to protest, Statewatch says.

The special branch was set up by the Metropolitan police in 1883 to combat the activities of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, otherwise known as the Fenians, in England and Wales.

Yet by the mid-1960s it still had only 300 officers. Provincial forces only began to create their own special branches after the mass protests of 1967 and 1968.

So the growth of special branch numbers to 1,638 by 1978 represented a big expansion in the activities of the "eyes and ears" of the security services.

As the BBC series True Spies documented last year, the 1970s saw the special branch infiltrating and recruiting paid agents in trade unions and leftwing organisations, including the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmanent and the National Union of Mineworkers.

By the early 1990s the size of the special branch had grown to 2,220, with the biggest point of expansion in the 600-plus officers stationed at ports and airports around Britain.

But, as Statewatch points out, the growth in the 1980s was even more rapid than this figure suggests, because first the 93 officers in the anti-terrorist branch were hived off into a separate organisation, followed by the 847 officers in the royalty and diplomatic protection squad.

This process continued in 1992 when the lead role in the special branch's original function of combating Irish terrorism was handed to MI5.

Each police force in Britain outside London has a special branch varying in size from couple of dozen to several hundred officers.

They complement the work of the security services who rely on them to detain suspects and present evidence in court.

A review by the chief inspector of constabulary, published this year, confirmed the changing role of the special branch in monitoring emerging threats, including Islamist extremists.

But it also concentrated its efforts on the threat to public order from groups such as the animal rights movement and anti-globalisation demonstrators.

Its official brief says its operational work "is directed towards counter-terrorism, followed by public order ... the two main methods of targeted surveillance collection being through human sources and surveillance". The events of September 11 underlined the "urgent need to monitor those who abuse democratic liberties to further their terrorist intentions".

In this context the term "surveillance" means observing, following, bugging homes and offices, and tracking, including placing bugs on vehicles, says Mr Bunyan.

The use of human sources means running "covert human intelligence sources" or agents within the procedures laid down by the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000.

The potential for running such operations is limited by the number of special branch "handlers" who are available, but the Home Office has made clear that some universities now provide training courses.

Traditionally such agents are recruited either from among those who are politically or ideologically hostile to the individual or group they are spying on, or who are blackmailed into becoming agents in return for dropping charges such as drugs, or covering up embarrassing personal information.

Mr Bunyan says that it is surprising how small the financial inducements involved maybe, with a regular payment of £100 a week not unusual in return for information.

A second important role for the special branch is the monitoring of demonstrations that may lead to a breach of the peace.

Although a distinction is made for legitimate political protest, the special branch also sees it as its role to keep in touch with local or national demonstrations.

Undercover officers may attend planning meetings and may even volunteer to help in an attempt to gather information.

In this role they have a distinctive function compared with the security services. The special branch will investigate potential threats to public disorder, while the security services are limited to those who pose a direct threat to national security.

For "spying on anti-globalisation activists", read subversion against every breath of anti-imperialist politics that the Gestapo can flush out, or hysterically stunt-up, in this ever-growing atmosphere of ludicrously-exaggerated "terrorist threats to the West's survival"; etc.

And also how handy will this expanded state surveillance be for reinforcing the Big Business cost-cutting attack on jobs, workers rights, and conditions (to survive in this cut-throat trade-war phase of crisis) which is what is provoking the alleged "awkward-squad militancy" revival around the TUC, - putting the Gestapo finger on any 	genuine anti-imperialist revolutionary understanding which might really be able to inform and inspire trade-union resistance to speed-up pressures.

With all these pointers to a knowing systemic crisis,- meaning that the warmongering offensive and the "defend against terrorism" domestic hysteria are deliberately planned in order to take world developments relentlessly only towards more and more all-out conflict in all directions; some hard thinking is required about this uncharted historical territory.

In previous times of major, inter-imperialist, "overproduction" economic breakdown, deliberate aggressive wars against Second and Third World countries have mostly been a route towards all-out blitzkrieg conflict between the major imperialist powers themselves, as rival "spheres of influence" or "vested interests" have been more or less consciously threatened, knowingly provoking retaliatory armaments build-ups.

The unprecedentedly totally unbalanced shape of the imperialist world today, completely dominated by overwhelming US military and technological industrial might, keeps straitforward inter-imperialist war still on the very furthest horizon, in spite of the obvious and predicted (EPSR) splits in the Western imperialist camp which this phase of insoluble tradewar crisis was always bound to lead to.

And at the same time, "minor" build-up wars against Second and Third World countries are no longer quite what they used to be either, - especially in the post national liberation and post Soviet bloc-independence era, - and especially in the oil-rich Arab Middle East where one of history's greatest cultures has fallen on lean and backward times in recent centuries, but where it never proved quite colonially tamable in the way that overtook the rest of the planet under Western imperialist tyranny.

Aspects of advanced industrial development; courtesy of nationalised oil industries and state-of-the-art military weaponry plus the almost universal Third World and Muslim-religion horror and indignation at the grotesque brutality, suffering, and humiliation to which the Palestinian, Iraqi, and Afghani nations are being systematically subjected by Western tyrannical aggression - raises faint suggestions that maybe it is this onslaught itself on the Second and Third World countries which will in fact turn into World War III, - with the doubting second rank imperialist countries forever tut-tutting on the "anti-terrorist" UN sidelines, never quite sure which adventures or which forces to back, and with the proletarian masses of the Third World and the Middle East possible aspirants for the next revolutionary socialist advance in the world, much as Asiatic Russia played that role after World War I, and China, Korea, and Vietnam, etc, repeated it after World War II.

The Middle East has already "liberated itself" once from Western imperialist domination after 1945, - only to end up permanently subservient to, or dependent-upon, or browbeaten by Western imperialism once again in the long "anti-communist" aftermath.

II the Middle East AGAIN "liberates itself" from Zionist colonisation and Western warmongering tyranny in the near future, where would there be any historical sense for such a once-before and potentially-again LEADING region of world culture in merely stopping short to languish yet some more as second-rate capitalist powers still continuing in the shadow of dominant Western imperialism???

The historical logic all points towards unbeatable proletarian dictatorship socialist states as being the only possible vehicle for taking this region seriously forward for a completely new start in global cultural historical development. Build Leninism. EPSR supporters (theoretical speculation seminar).

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

•'There remains not the slightest doubt that we will do everything we can, in spite of our limited economic resources, to fight to the death international drug trafficking and the incipient domestic market that certain foreigners and national criminals are attempting to encourage' 

• HUMANITY is experiencing, minute-by-minute, the silent horror of a real war that knows no borders and is generated by the illegal commerce of drugs. This trade is unstoppably expanding like a global threat, affecting all corners of the planet and hundreds of millions of habitual consumers, while engendering violence, corruption, social instability, ungovernability, insecurity, the deterioration of people's physical and mental health, and money laundering, among other ills.

The illegal trafficking and undue use of such substances, linked to the extensive gamut of crime and other damage provoked by it, is eroding countries' social, economic and political bases. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) affirms that more than 50% of violent crimes and deaths in the world are the result of drug addiction.

According to UN studies, in the United States, the largest market in the world for illicit drugs, the economic cost of the illicit use of drugs is estimated at a minimum of $70 billion USD per year. In that country, the cost that society pays for each case of drug addiction in is in excess of $28,000 USD per annum.

The impact of drugs on societies where they have become a generalized plague generates multimillion costs to confront it, including addiction programs and healthcare. The Third World nations cannot assume that kind of financial burden in cases where there is a genuinely firm stand on eliminating that scourge.

Our country has received world acknowledgement of that principled position, made patent in concrete facts and acts, even though successive U.S. governments and a tight partnership between the Cuban-American mafia and ultra-conservative sectors have taken it on themselves to invent all kinds of lies to damage Cuba's image in this sphere.

Prior to 1959, the trafficking and illicit consumption of narcotics, basically marijuana and cocaine, was a social problem in certain strata and sectors of Cuban society. That situation was eradicated after the triumph of the Revolution, as a result of its profound political, economic and social transformations and the exodus of the main traffickers, dealers and consumers to the United States.

Is Cuba escaping this problem today? No. Is there an incipient market for dealing and consuming drugs, which could expand if it is not combated, as the country opens up more and more to trade, tourism, exchanges of visitors and economic relations abroad, which are unavoidably occurring? Yes.

While neoliberal globalization is stimulating narcomafias to seek out new routes, methods and markets in order to continue expanding, Cuba, as a member of the international community, is also confronting greater threats and risks posing dangerous challenges to our national security. These manifestations are qualitatively more complex, in the face of which the response of the Revolution and its people has been and will continue to be steadfast and exemplary. Recently, the undue use of drugs on the island has increased, although very discreetly in comparison with other nations. As in the case of the most serious and deadly diseases,- this harmful and pernicious vice has to be prevented and intercepted in time.

Among the main causes of this phenomenon, the first and foremost are drug consignments reaching our coast as a result of international narcotics operations in our vicinity en route to the United States, some of which are whisked away by unscrupulous and criminal elements in search of personal gain. Between January and October of last year, 255 consignments were detected, resulting in the seizure of 4,553 kilograms (4.5 tons) of narcotics. It is estimated that roughly 40% of drug shipments to the United States are transported via the Caribbean and around 50% of the marijuana traffic going to that destination, while 65% of cocaine shipments en route to Europe also use this regional avenue.

This is compounded by foreign criminals attempting to use our country not only as a transit route, but also as a center of operations for this immoral business, in association with national elements also disposed to promote such slippery practices at any price.

From 1995 to November of last year, 175 drug-related cases have been detected in our airport installations, basically en route to Europe or introduced into national territory for domestic marketing. In these cases, 252 foreigners have been detained in such cases, 146 of whom are currently serving sentences in our prison system or awaiting trial.

In facing this adverse phenomenon, the position of the Revolution is categorical: violations of security, health, ethics, dignity and the values we have created in the face of all dangers will not be tolerated. There will be no impunity for anyone.

Our society, unlike so many in this world, has the strength and energy to do away with this degrading phenomenon.

The battle against drugs in our country is consubstantial with the incredible values of humanism and solidarity that the Revolution has forged; it is a part of our vocation to bring ever-increasing dignity to human beings, with the objective of achieving a generalized integrated culture as a true and infinite part of the creation of a new society.

Will our society tolerate such an iniquity in our country? Will our workers, campesinos, intellectuals, retired people and housewives allow a drugs culture to grow and proliferate? Will they allow immoral, unscrupulous individuals to promote and encourage drug taking among our young people and other sections of the population? We firmly believe that the answer is no.

In the face of extremely complex challenges, and with limited resources and very little experience, the Revolution was able to eradicate this problem in its first few years. Nowadays we can count on the invincible strength of the people, families, and political and mass organizations to stamp out this crime wherever it rears its ugly head. Besides this, we have such noble and humane weapons as the more than 100 ideas on social order, public health, education and culture prioritized in the Battle of Ideas. We have all the forces and means available to effectively combat this phenomenon and to educate and treat those. who have been the prisoners of this ill.

The popular nature of our strategic defense calls upon everyone to engage in a constant battle for the present and the future of our Revolution in the face of the threats and risks we are facing, the very same threats that imperialism itself uses in an attempt to exterminate us.

There remains not the slightest doubt that we will do everything we can, in spite of our limited economic resources, to fight to the death international drug trafficking and the incipient domestic market that certain foreigners and nationals criminals are attempting to encourage. Corruption, violence and other such vices are the enemies of the achievements and sacred values attained by our people and will never gain a foothold in our society.

"Drugs will never enter Cuba, only with blood and fire can they enter! Only with capitalism can drugs enter our nation!".

We know that capitalism, with all its inequalities, exploitation, injustices, outrages, degradations and vices will never again return to Cuba.

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

Why doesn't Blair start war-crimes prosecutions against Britain's own political murders?

Rosemary Nelson, the Lurgan defence lawyer who died in a booby-trap car bombing in March 1999. Like the earlier killing of Belfast defence lawyer Pat Finucane, shot dead a decade before in February 1989, the circumstances surrounding the killing of Rosemary Nelson bear all the same hallmarks of state collusion.

• As a defence lawyer, Rosemary Nelson, like Finucane, was involved in a number-of high-profile cases regarded as particularly irksome to the British state.

• Rosemary, like Finucane, became the focus of RUC intimidation and harassment including repeated death threats.

•Despite prior knowledge within state agencies and amongst government officials of threats against the lawyers' lives both Rosemary and Finucane were denied protection.

• Despite the fact that many of the names of those involved in both killings are known, only one person has been charged and no one has been convicted in connection with either killing.

• Members of the British Army and agents working for Special Branch were involved and are known to have taken an active part in commissioning and carrying out both killings.

• No charges or disciplinary action has been taken against members of the RUC involved in prior intimidation and threats against either lawyer.

• Despite repeated calls from international human rights bodies, including the United Nations, the British government has systematically avoided the call for independent public inquiries into the killings.

Around 12.30pm on 15 March 1999, Rosemary Nelson began the short journey from her home to the office where she ran a solicitor's firm in the small town of Lurgan. Moments later, a massive booby trap car bomb ripped through the vehicle, fatally injuring the 40-year-old mother of three. Rosemary died two hours later on the operation table of a nearby hospital.

Just a few weeks earlier, Rosemary Nelson had traveled to America to address a hearing of the US Congress. In Washington, Rosemary had detailed her experience of RUC intimidation and harassment and compared that experience to that of defence lawyer Pat Finucane. Rosemary left US Congressmen in no doubt that she had good reason to fear for her life.

Human rights groups, including a United Nations Special investigator, Param Cumaraswamy, had also raised concern for her safety. Cumaraswamy had called for urgent action by the British Government but as he later admitted, at the time he had not fully appreciated the real danger posed to Rosemary.

Like many of us, after ten years of political controversy following the murder of one defence lawyer, it was almost unthinkable that the same fate awaited another. The fact that the killing would be carried out under circumstances so remarkably similar immediately suggested that the same forces had a hand in the killing.

Last week, it emerged that a serving British soldier at the time of the killing and a Special Branch agent were amongst ten suspects who have been identified by the team of detectives investigating the murder.

But as in the Finucane case, identifying suspects becomes an empty exercise without the political will to bring them to justice. And it's the lack of political will that continues to deny justice to the families and communities of those who died.

Tony Blair has been one of the most successful British Labour Party leaders in the history of the state, commanding a powerful majority within the House of Commons and securing a second office as Prime Minister. At the time of his first election as the leader of his country he enjoyed unprecedented popular support.

The British state stands accused of one of the most serious crimes of any body politic, of commissioning the deaths of citizens within its own jurisdiction. Tony Blair had the power to expose state collusion with loyalist death squads as a folly of another administration. He did not. Instead, the investigations into the deaths of Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson have been characterised by delay, denial and subterfuge.

After her death, the British Government claimed it was unable to afford Rosemary Nelson protection because she had not officially applied to be part of a scheme, known as Key Persons Protection Programme.

During the immediate aftermath of Rosemary's murder, family members and members of the local community reported harassment, including taunts about the killing, from members of the British Army, RUC and local loyalists and later Orange band members.

At the time of the killing, Rosemary Nelson's family, friends, colleagues and wider community had called for the investigation to be carried out independently of the RUC, the hostility of which to Rosemary Nelson was already a matter of public record.

The British Government responded to media pressure and announced the murder was to be investigated by the American FBI. But this proved to be little more than a stalling tactic. The FBI was allotted the specific task of examining the bomb used in the attack and departed within two weeks.

The British Government refused to take the investigation out of the hands of the RUC but announced that a Deputy Chief Constable Colin Port from England, assisted by English clerical back up staff, would head the team.

Four years and £7 million later, not a single suspected has been charged, let alone convicted, in relation to Rosemary's killing. Late last year, Colin Port announced he was stepping down as head of the investigation. Three months later, a successor has yet to be appointed, further fuelling the belief of the Nelson family that the investigation is effectively over.

Amongst those suspected of the killing, according to the media, not Colin Port, whose findings have never been made public, are three high profile unionist paramilitaries, described as 'highly active' and 'known to the police' in the Lurgan/Portadown area at the time of the killing.

Former leader of the LVF, Mark 'Swinger' Fulton is believed to have coordinated the attack on Rosemary Nelson. He was in prison on the day of the killing but he had been granted parole in the days leading up to the bombing and is also believed to have been in contact with other members of the gang while in jail. Fulton was found dead in his cell in June last year. The death was recorded as suicide.

The Port team is also believed to have identified a loyalist in his mid-40s who has been convicted in connection with both UDA and UVF activities. This man, they believe, was the bomb maker. Another member of the gang was a British soldier in his early 30s serving with the RIR at the time. He left the regiment two months later.

Another gang member has been identified as a County Armagh based unionist paramilitary, who was subsequently identified during a court case unrelated to the Nelson killing as an agent working for Special Branch.

Last week, the Police Ombudsman, Nuala 0'Loan, published a report revealing that over 50 lawyers and banisters had complained they had been targets of intimidation and harassment by the PSNI.

According to the lawyers, the nature of the harassment took a variety of forms. These included PSNI officers making direct physical threats, defamatory comments, threatening the lawyer with arrest, accusations of membership of a paramilitary organisation and threatening to pass the solicitors personal details to loyalist killers. Other complained of unprofessional conduct and racist and sectarian abuse.

Of several thousand lawyers, working in the north of Ireland, only a small percentage deal with high profile cases similar to those undertaken by Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson. It is from this particular group within the legal profession that the vast majority of complaints about PSNI harassment and threats emerged.

	Rosemary Nelson died four years ago. Pat Finucane 	died a decade earlier. The failure of the British government to expose the mechanisms that led to these  killings continues to distort the operation of justice today. •

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

• While the IMF and World Bank are preaching market liberalization, the developed countries are applying policies destructive to the developing nations' primary exports 

• The developed countries spend billions of dollars per day in subsidies to the agrarian sector 

• The European Union uses half its budget for such compensations to farmers

Agricultural subsidies in the EU amount to $27 billion USD per year, and farmers, who are 5% of the population, consume 50% of the funds.

Comparative data by the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development (CAFOD) revealed on the Internet the damaging effects on the world of agricultural subsidies in the rich countries. To call attention to the issue, the Catholic organization put together a digital graphic showing European cows boarding airplanes en route to various tourist destinations with lavish allowances.

Unfortunately, the reality isn't so humorous, CAFOD activist Sam Goddard commented to the BBC.

• CATTLE breeding in the European Union has a greater income than half the world's population. The EU spends on its Common-Agriculture Policy an annual total similar to the cost of transporting its 21 million dairy cattle around the world by plane, while the Jamaican cattle industry is collapsing due to the entry of subsidized powdered milk.

A communiqué from the CAIRNS group, which met in Bolivia, notes that there are still significant access barriers to markets, and export subsidies in all their forms continue to deny trade opportunities to nonsubsidized agricultural producers.

The CAIRNS alliance of 18 nations, named after the Australian city where it was created, insisted that in spite of the principle agreed in the Uruguay Round that agriculture constitutes an integral part of the international trade system, there has been no real advance toward a reduction of subsidies and mass protectionism. The group questioned the position taken by the United States, the European Union and Japan in their refusal to completely liberalize trade.

"The most important of all the issues on the Doha development agenda is doubtless agriculture," Brazilian Luis Felipe de Seixas Correa, current president of MERCOSUR, affirmed before the World Trade Organization in Geneva on November 1.

According to official data, internal aid to farmers in the developed nations was in excess of $310 billion USD in 2001, and this is sow compounded by the millionaire subsidies approved by the Washington government in he Farm Bill ($180 billion USD for its farmers over the next 10 years).

It is precisely the developing countries' most competitive products that are being shackled in this way. EU sugar subsidies and those of cotton in the United States ire occasioning losses to Brazil of $1.5 billion USD per year.

The EU imports approximately $1.6 million tons of sugar per year on preferential terms, and subsequently refines that raw material and sells it at subsidized prices which, according to the Brazilian communiqué to the WTO, are not included in the commitment to educe those practices signed by the above-mentioned union. In the case of cotton, the Brazilian complaint is based on falling prices due to the United States flooding the market with that product.

Brazil has petitioned the WTO to create a panel for the airing of other grievances over orange juice, as the country pays an import tax to the U.S. state of Florida.

The South American giant employs 400,000 people in the production of orange juice and is the world's greatest exporter of that product, garnering some $1,500 billion dollars annually.

DAMAGE TO OTHER ECONOMIES

Reducing agricultural subsidies is the most important thing that wealthy nations can do, admitted Ian Goldin, none other than the policy director of the World Bank, reflected IPS.

According to a study by the international financial institution, if subsidies were eliminated in the rich countries, poor nations would stand to gain $9 billion USD annually.

Agriculture, for example, represents one quarter of production in Africa and is essential for attaining the annual economic growth of 3.5% needed for that continent's survival.

In Argentina, the damage of subsidies granted by the United States, the European Union and Japan is visible in the heavy indebtedness of the producers of soy for cooking oil, grains and protein meal, of which that nation is one of the world exporters. Indebted and with growing taxation pressures in recent years due to fiscal necessities, thousands of small producers in Argentina are confronting the dilemma of either trying to survive in poverty or auction off their lands.

A study undertaken by the Argentine Rural Society's Institute for Economic Research estimates that fuel represents 50% of costs in rice production. Agriculture is the sector most affected by the price of fuel.

In Costa Rica, where farmers assume a plethora of burdens: paying taxes and buying their supplies with no benefit whatsoever to sell their merchandise at free market prices, it is tantamount to suicide in the midst of such disloyal competition and numerous protests have appeared in the national La Republica daily.

But the paradox lies in the fact that while the United States and the European Union are flooding the markets with subsidized products, the World Bank and the IMF are denying the poor countries any possibility for protection by forcing unilateral liberalization on their domestic markets, as Oxfam International affirms.

Paradoxes in a cruel world, in which the maxim reads "Save yourself you who can."