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
Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074       [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]           www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk                                                 
No 1136 May 14 2002                                                                              25p                                                                                                                                                     

As well as tackling the shoddy breakdown of specific 'free enterprise' anarchy and profiteering such as the railway chaos, it is vital that working people grasp that this is a whole world economic system in crisis, and that there can be no return to 'gradual improvements' in any direction. In refusing to concentrate on this, fake-'left' groups of political or trade-union 'reformist pressure' are simply misleading the working-class, and disarming it from the truly life-or-death struggles to come, already abundant on the international anti-imperialist scene. The fake-'left' refusal to grasp sound Marxist theory on the whole historical pattern of inter-imperialist warmongering crisis and destructive skulduggery means that a serious worldwide workers revolutionary movement still cannot be built. Falling for unchallenged 'logical' assumptions of bourgeois 'liberalism' on issues like the Zionist colonisation tyranny called 'Israel', and like so-called 'terrorism', renders all Western fake-'lefts' as just the racist stooges of Western imperialism. To insist on the spontaneous revival of worldwide anti-imperialist struggle without any 'terrorist' accusations flying around is to basically abandon anti-imperialist revolution.

Capitalism's deepening economic gloom is still not sparking a serious revolutionary socialist world movement because the necessary understanding among workers remains handicapped by the dominant ideas of the fake-'left'.

'Left' party programmes, plus the rare occasions on which a world-analysis or a perspective on the future is attempted, invariably refuse to disturb the common illusion that things only change gradually and that 'steady pressure' for the 'moral' or just solutions is the only 'way forward', etc, etc.

But all that such straight-line 'logic' and reformist thinking really achieves is to cement every restraining influence on workers from the bourgeois ideology that everyone in capitalist society grows up with.

The most crucial pretence for 'Western democracy' for keeping the working class under control, is precisely to foster this illusion that all necessary changes to society will only be made in calm and reasonable order.

The absolutely vital implied 'conclusion' from this utter historical nonsense is that any challenge to the political or social status quo which involves "violence" is to be instantly completely condemned by every sane and civilised person.

But what helps the bourgeois-imperialist international ideological system to get away with the barefaced hypocrisy of condemning "violence" in support of political struggle or protest, but yet crushing with total ruthlessness anything which can be misdescribed or misrepresented as an "anti-democratic evil", is the fake-'left' continually reinforcing the nonsense that "change will happen gradually, if at all".

The Crow-Rix "pressure on Labour to be guided once again by trade-union militancy"; examined last EPSR, is a perfect example of the "cure" (which will never come) being worse than the "disease"; because all that such vain hopes achieve is to spread the false idea that only "steady Conference lobbying" will finally topple Blair's pro-imperialist and anti-socialist treacherousness.

But it is vitally important for the working class everywhere to understand that it will be the present imperialist-system project and plans for world development, crashing down in ruins and disgrace, which will basically defeat the current Western world leadership and whoever immediately replaces them.

The economy is not going to return back to a past period when governments and Labour Party leaderships mythically were thought to listen to the sound advice from trade-union conference decisions.

The public services are not going to return to a mythical golden age of safe and reliable nationalised industries where the bolts which anchor the stretcher bars for working the railtrack points would not have been left off the securing structure by private enterprise contract maintenance cowboys, as has been hinted at over the Potters Bar disaster.

Instead, the insane 'privatisation' and 'profit-driven' mechanisms for running all commerce, industry, and public services - insisted on in Western imperialism's last credit created boom flourish for "defeating world communism, - are going to be driven to their final barmy conclusion in the utter anarchy of worldwide inter-imperialist tradewar and complete systemic breakdown, - the whole international 'free market' poisoned to a standstill by its own ultimately indigestible credit-bingeing.

This is not a question of specific predictions. Precise Marxist scientific economics of exactly how the next great monopoly capitalist crash will develop is not claimed by the EPSR (or by anyone else, more's the pity); and not just the working class but the whole future of civilisation will be beholden to whoever can provide the extremely useful understanding of the where, when, how, and why of the progressive imperialist-system financial collapse that is unmistakably coming. The point is to wake up the workers movement to the inevitably violent and dialectical nature of all the changes and upheavals to come. NOTHING is going to happen smoothly at all. EVERYTHING is going to happen because of the utter pandemonium and chaos of the final break-up of the old CLASS order of things.

Of course the rail unions should demand a methodical systematic investigation in calm order into the whole nonsense of Potters Bar (and if that case turns out not to be the consequence of administrative nonsense, then the next crash is likely to), - including an insistence on railworkers' involvement in all such safety procedures in future, etc, etc.

That approach uses the maximum advantage to be squeezed out of the fraudulent 'democracy' racket which capitalism pretends to live by, using it AGAINST the endless and incurable bourgeois economic and political racketeering.

But in all political perspectives to go with such demands, the LAST thing that wants to be implied is that there is any hope at all in the future that the capitalist ruling class and its various office wielders in its stitched-up parliamentary system, are some day going to admit their wrongdoing and agree to work forever after in the closest cooperation with the working class and the trade unions for the good of all.

There will be NO 'progressive reasonable outcome' to all this increasing chaos everywhere.

Economic necessities have FORCED the monopoly-capitalist system onto a historical course of all-out inter-imperialist conflict once more, replacing the cosy fraudulent illusion of class-collaboration which the West liked to maintain throughout most of the Cold War nonsense of "altogether in the fight for freedom against communist tyranny", etc, etc.

And it is this increasingly dominant all-out class-war NATURE, and inter-imperialist war NATURE, of all political struggles to come, everywhere in the world, which it is most important of all to propagandise in the workers movement.

Otherwise, as happened to Germany and much of Europe in the 1930s, and to Chile in 1973, and Indonesia in 1965, etc, etc, - the working class will be taken unawares by the most devastating aspects of class war for which its fake-'left' Revisionist and Trotskyite leaders failed to give adequate warning, or any correct warning at all.

As examined last EPSR, shouting 'fascist' at everything which moves on the right has nothing whatever to do with it.

The problem is NOT any individual parties or leaders thrown up by capitalism's political-cultural degeneracy.

The problem is the historic class and international CONFLICT direction into which the unalterable iron laws of capitalist 'over-production' crisis have now hurled the entire 'free-market' system worldwide; to which the ONLY answer... is REVOLUTION.

Once imperialism has been driven by uncontrollable economic forces into inter-imperialist warmongering-for-survival mode, then nothing can stop reactionary chauvinism from spreading, (all the time that capitalism lasts) EXCEPT REVOLUTION.

The ludicrous mistake of the 1930s (and in 1965, 1973, etc) lay in the fake-'left' delusion that "fascism can be stopped" on its own, thus completely miseducating the working class about the historical phase that was on the horizon for the 'free market' system.

Far from a period of "ever-improving democracy", the cyclical-crisis nature of capitalism must ALWAYS eventually return to a phase of uninhibited class-repression and international warmongering.

Always knowing this, the imperialists merely have to make tactical timing judgements about what can be risked, or what needs to be risked, in such matters as unleashing a 1965 on Indonesia or a 1973 on Chile, or a 2002 on Venezuela, etc, etc. NOT knowing this, the working class has frequently been misled to catastrophe by fake-'left' leadership into deluding itself that "the bourgeois democratic state can be preserved and is all the progress we need at this stage", etc, etc, as in Chile in 1970-73, and in Spain around the petty-bourgeois Republican parliament against Franco in the 1930s, when in reality only a complete REVOLUTIONARY seizure of power by the working class under the dictatorship of the proletariat could possibly have saved the people from total repressive tyranny by that selfsame bourgeois state.

Absolute economic PROOF of imperialist-collapse has obviously not been made widespread yet; - only the circumstantial evidence of increasingly relentless 'spindoctor' political cynicism; chauvinist degeneration, isolating and dividing workers more and more; cultural dumbing down towards the most phonily 'inclusive' philistine consumerism in everything; and a depraved international "war on terrorism" which is covering-up the most blatant counter-revolutionary skulduggery preparations with the barmiest hypocrisy ever.

But the unending lies about 'economic recovery'; the growing social decay and despair in all things; and the rapidly deteriorating competence and believability of the entire corporate and political leadership of the Western world, make a strong case as being indicators of an imminent dramatic CRASH of the whole imperialist system of indefensible injustice and unfairness, and irrational wastefulness and destruction.

The paralysing confusion caused by the fake-'left' inability to understand the revolutionary-crisis nature of the epoch, resulting in a muddled and inactive working class (politically) and the continuing failure to see the start of any international revolutionary party building, is demonstrated in one of imperialism's worst messes, in Palestine.

"To call for Israel's abolition is unMarxist" declare the self-regarding 'theoretical' giants of the Socialist Alliance in Weekly Worker 430.

As an attempted definition of Marxism, this would make even a donkey smile.

If it is a 'moral' stance, it stinks even more.

But as practical 'socialist' agitation, it is not just cowardly class-collaboration but consciously COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY mischief making.

Marxism is the science of historical inevitability or historical necessity, not an ethical guide to subjective feelings of 'right' and 'wrong'.

Strongly believing in the social evolutionary PROGRESS of human civilisation through various epochs of class struggle, the 'moral enthusiasm' of Marxism is inseparable from achieving the worldwide triumph of the dictatorship of the proletariat which will finally allow the class-divided, war-scarred, frequently foolishly destructive 'pre-history' of irrational subjectivism and conflict to advance to the triumph of objective reason and planned cooperation between all peoples and with nature.

The only 'good' is what leads to the speediest assured triumph of the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat.

ONLY from then on can the balancing of 'rights' and 'wrongs' even begin to aspire towards "the maximum all-round justice for the greatest number", - (via which, 'pre-history' bourgeois 'morality' pretends to dispense 'fairness' and 'justice' but in reality only breeds resentment by serving subjective interests and covering them up with boundless hypocrisy and self-righteousness).

This Alliance posturing justifies its preemptive 'moral' stance by pretending to 'know' that dismantling the Zionist colonisation of the land of the Palestinian nation "is either naïve utopianism or genocidal."

Firstly, these Western stooges want to make up their minds. Either the Palestinian national-liberation struggle can recapture the whole of its homeland, relentlessly colonised and ethnically-cleansed by waves of (literally) millions of Zionist settlers from all over the world since the 'go ahead' was given by the imperialist-dominated United Nations' infamous decision of 1947-48.

Or the Intifada will fail.

But fail just this time, or NEVER succeed??

Taking a 'right' or 'wrong' verdict in such an Alliance situation of supreme fake-'left' ignorance only emphasises what idiotic petty-bourgeois 'morality' games these dilettante 'socialists' basically never cease playing.

Marxist science would undoubtedly like to KNOW what would be a realistic outcome of the Zionist attempt to hang onto its colonisation of the homeland of the Palestinian nation in a period of worldwide imperialist-system terminal crisis when the entire Third World, which basically must include the entire family of Arab nations from Morocco to Iraq, will increasingly take the revolutionary road to end the Western imperialist domination of the planet, of which the Zionist colonisation of Palestine is plainly a part.

Unless some almost incomprehensible and extremely unlikely freak conditions prevail whereby the Zionist colonial state of 'Israel' was allowed to survive by the Arab anti-colonial revolution, then Marxist science of world anti-imperialist development must surely conclude that the monstrous armed Zionist colonisation and ethnic cleansing is doomed to ultimate failure.

Or else all of Marxist historical understanding is total gibberish and the proletarian dictatorship is not destined to take the world into a new civilisation at all.

Either way, to boast of knowing that the abolition of 'Israel' would be 'unMarxist' shows only what grotesque posturing these middle-class fake-'lefts' indulge in who clearly have no connection or sympathy with Marxism whatever.

In the fast-developing circumstances on Earth of imperialist crisis and anti-imperialist revolution everywhere, surely the most likely scenario, even for straight-line 'logical' petty-bourgeois ideology which cannot ever cope with dialectical transformations, is that the Palestinian national-liberation-struggle will continue to endlessly improve its clarity, determination, capacity, and skills, as it has been doing ever since 1947 (and even earlier against British colonialism), and start to give Zionist repressive tyranny an even bloodier nose and an even bigger headache than it has already succeeded in doing.

And why would such a process have to end in "genocide"? (by which it is presumably meant the killing of every last Zionist colonist where they currently stand)?

Why would not the pattern established already by the colonisation states of White South Africa, Rhodesia, and 'Northern Ireland' be repeated whereby the colonists continued to repress with the utmost ruthlessness, savagery and cruelty but were forced to accept defeat in the end, and either scuttle away to White/British domination pastures new, or else make a brave face of "accepting" their capitulation to majority rule (or to dismantling the sectarian bogus 'statelet' in the case of the British-occupied zone of Ireland)???

"The Israeli Jewish nation is historically constituted", these Alliance imperialist stooges go on in their counter-revolutionary diatribe against Palestinian national-liberation revolution.

But no more or less than were the White nation-builders in Rhodesia, or in South Africa (there nearly 400 years), or in British-occupied Ireland (there even longer). But of course, it is precisely these Alliance 'theoretical' counter-revolutionaries who agitate even now to resurrect the despised and failed 'Partition' of Ireland, the source of as vile a tyranny and fascist hatred as any other infamy in history, into a new mini-Partition occupying and tyrannising just three of Ulster's nine counties instead of the previous six ripped out at bayonet-point by British imperialism in 1921.

But as the EPSR's struggle for Marxist science has understood and explained for all its 23 years of existence, this is the epoch of imperialist decay, and of national-liberation revolutionary triumph against all vestiges of colonialism, in time.

The utter worthlessness of these fake-'left' fraudulent 'Marxists' in quoting Lenin on the national and colonial question is suitably judged by their utterly reactionary agitation for the fascist-colonial 'British' remnants in Ireland to be still granted a concentration-camp laager to administer, because of being equally "historically constituted" just like the "Israeli Jewish nation".

Interestingly, the vicious cruelty and routine torture depravity inflicted by the supposedly 'legally-constituted' colonial 'authorities' such as 'Israel' and 'Northern Ireland' do not figure at all in these 'self-determination' fanatics' academic musings on their own truly-utopian world-shaping ideas of leaving some native Irish still trapped behind artificial 'Partition' boundaries, or behind the lethal racist lines of Zionist imperialism's self-appointed 'promised land' as far as abandoned Palestinians are concerned.

Is this astonishing lack of concern or curiosity about the old colonial tyranny continuing - while changes in the opposite direction are feared for as "genocide" - not a racist posture in itself???

Other degenerate fake-'left' stances are being equally shown up to be vacuous anti-Marxist opportunism by the rapid turn of events.

The Stalinist Revisionist swamp, still faking it as 'revolutionary socialists' around Lalkar and the SLP, have ventured one of their (very occasional) perspectives on the question of the Middle East too, also settling for the safe bourgeois 'two-state solution' posture of 'liberal fair-play'.

It stinks from every point of view, not least because it is anti-historical garbage based on bet-hedging guesswork drawn from a long Stalinist class-collaborating tradition (of 'peaceful road to socialism' Western communists) to always put themselves across as being eminently-'reasonable' on all public issues. Marx would turn in his grave.

But while these Scargillite remnants of Stalinist 'theoretical' philistinism have not yet sunk so low as the fake-'left' Alliance opportunists in slandering Hamas as the 'reactionary racist twins of Sharon', and have gone no further than a general 'condemnation' of 'terrorism' in line with the US imperialist dictates from Sept 11, - the poverty of their straight-line 'logical' thinking is outrageous enough.

There is no 'two state solution' to be had, even with Sharon in reality; let alone with Netanyahu who is now overtaking the Likud government leader from the right.  As the EPSR has consistently explained over the years, there is an inescapable conclusion to any 'sense' that unrestrained Zionist smiting has made over the years (against Palestinian attempts to fight back against having their country stolen from them and ethnically cleansed) - namely that there will never be an end to Intifada resistance to Zionist colonisation until the WHOLE Palestinian nation, not just the 5 million in exile abroad, or in refugee camps in Gaza and on the West Bank, are safely ethnically-cleansed out of their homeland altogether.

Far from it being merely Sharon's intemperate 'logic' of wanting to see Arafat's authority crushed that is a problem; Netenyahu, now pressing for Sharon's leadership position within Likud, is even dismissive of that for its 'capitulatory softness'. Netenyahu insists on destroying FOR ALL TIME any serious possibility for any serious authority to be vested in any Palestinian state at all.

A permanent colonially-subjugated race is the only future inside Palestine that this increasingly aggressive and expanding section of Zionist opinion is prepared to allow the Palestinian nation (whose homeland this whole territory solely was until the infamous decision of the imperialist-dominated UN in 1947-48, shamefully supported, of course, by Stalinist Revisionism through the USSR's Security-Council vote.)

In such endlessly renewing circumstances of Zionism's extremist survival dementedness, what sense can even the cowardly class-collaborationist 'utopian' two-state solution make??

For their part, the Trot and Revisionist 'theoreticians' of the Alliance make an even more contradictory nonsense of everything, when the Weekly Worker merely makes an inconsequential passing reference that "Palestinians must have the right of return"; but without one moment's further thought about exactly what this would mean for the "historically-constituted Israeli Jewish nation state".

It represents more deadly dynamite than even one thousand suicide bombers, exploding themselves in unison in one town centre, would represent.

This Alliance 'thinking' is just crazy. How can 5 million exiled or refugee-camped Palestinians be put into Zionist-occupied Palestine ('Israel' so-called) yet still leave it as the "Israeli Jewish nation-state"???

These fake-'left' plans are meaningless. This pretend 'evenhandedness' towards the historical rights of the ousted Palestinian nation is just an appalling racist posturing fraud by these fence-sitting petty-bourgeois stooges for 'liberal' imperialism's bogus 'two-state' alleged 'peace' proposal.

It is just a figleaf cover for PERMANENT domination by Western Zionist-imperialist interests over the Palestinian and wider Arab Third-World potential for anti-imperialist REVOLUTION.

The final Alliance 'argument' captures all this fake-'left' deceitfulness in a nutshell.

"The position of Rhodesian or South African Whites is not analogous. These did not, nor could they, form a nation. Nowhere in territorial terms did they form a historically constituted majority".

But they did make plans for an all-white province in South Africa. And they had a naturally-evolved language which was unique to South Africa, unlike the totally artificial 'Hebrew' which Zionist colonialism had to invent for purposes of imperialist-state domination over the usurped, ousted, and ethnically-cleansed natives.

In many ways, what the Zionist colonisation imposed on the original inhabitants was infinitely WORSE than what was inflicted as far as cultural genocide is concerned on the black natives of South Africa.

And how did the Zionists get to become "the majority" anyway??

Only by the utterly murderous ruthlessness of their colonising tyranny, relentlessly depriving the Palestinians of their lands, their water rights, their freedom of movement, their rights to build homes ANYWHERE inside their own homeland, etc, etc, etc, - constantly driving the Arabs into exile or refugee camps. What sickeningly vile FASCIST tyranny these fake-'lefts' are concealing behind this disgusting pseudo-'Marxist' posturing about a "historically constituted majority", etc.

But best of all is the final 'justification' for all this Weekly Worker reactionary gibber:

"Ours is a fighting programme under the conditions of capitalism whereby we fight and win the battle for democracy. I.E. our fight for democracy is integral to the struggle for socialism... Communists therefore envisage a democratic solution in Israel-Palestine ....Communists look towards a democratic and secular Israel existing alongside a democratic and secular Palestine,"

etc, etc;

Contemplating all this reactionary bilge from these petty-bourgeois hoax 'Marxist revolutionaries', it is no surprise to recall that the one great boast of the Zionist colony is that "full democracy is allowed to rule there, unlike in all the Arab despotisms all around".

And British imperialism loved to insist on the "democratic" way forward in the propaganda and military-dictatorahip tyranny against the imprisoned Irish Republican minority, left with only utterly meaningless and toothless 'democratic rights' by virtue of the very same gerrymandered arbitrary Partition imposed on them at bayonet-point precisely to render them a 'minority', - exactly in the same way that Zionism boasts of its 'democracy' against the Arabs, (but only for as long as its decidedly 'undemocratic' colonial military tyranny ensures that the Zionist colonisers always will keep their 'majority' secure in any territorial carve-up that is proposed).

But by all means let all these 'democratic' posturers stick together, and let the dictatorship of the proletariat (truly only the Arabs in Palestine) finally settle accounts in a revolutionary way with all such 'democracy'.

Build Leninism. EPSR

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

The worst and the clearest "war criminal'  in modern history is alive and well, strutting his stuff as US imperialism's closest ally and chief thug.

Day after day, the number of casualties in this conflict increases. More than 1,000 Palestinians and 200 Israelis have been killed in the fighting, which erupted in September 2000, after a visit by Ariel Sharon to one of the Muslim holy places in Palestine. The violence immediately brought down the government of Labour leader Ehud Barak and after elections, Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel. Since then, the Israeli Government has held Arafat's administration responsible for the upsurge of violence in the Occupied Territories, while maintaining an unswervingly confrontational stance.

Since his arrival to power, Ariel Sharon has been seen by Palestinians as the main obstacle to efforts to re-initiate negotiations aimed at achieving a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. His extreme right-wing approach to politics and his more than dark past in previous governments are not the best references for a peace broker. The massacres in the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila have come back to haunt him. Sharon was declared responsible for the massacre of at least 2,000 Palestinian refugees by a Tribunal of Inquiry set by Israel's Government. The United Nations Security Council condemned the massacre with Resolution 521 in September 1982. This condemnation was followed by a 16 December 1982 General Assembly resolution qualifying the massacre as an "act of genocide".

But the more than a thousand people who disappeared in the aftermath of the massacre are now emerging as the key element in the efforts of the relatives of the victims to bring Sharon to trial for war crimes. A suit that has been filed in a Belgian court - under legislation that allows Belgium to prosecute foreigners for war crimes regardless where these have been carried out - charges that Sharon had command responsibility of the disappearance of those refugees handed to the Israeli Army by the Lebanese militias.

On 6 June 1982, the Israeli army launched operation "Peace in Galilee" and invaded Lebanon. After occupying the south of the country, the Israeli troops penetrated as far as Beirut, and by 18 June 1982 they had surrounded the Palestine Liberation Organisation's armed forces in the west side of the city. The Israeli offensive, particularly the intensive shelling of Beirut, caused 18,000 deaths and 30,000 injuries, mostly civilians.

A ceasefire was negotiated "through the intermediary of United States envoy Philip Habib. It was agreed that the PLO would evacuate Beirut, under the supervision of a multinational force deployed in the evacuated part of the town. The evacuation of the PLO (more than 14,000. people) ended on 1 September 1982.

On 10 September 1982, the multinational forces left Beirut. The next day, Ariel Sharon announced that "2,000 terrorists" had remained inside the Palestinian refugee camps around Beirut.

The intention to send the Phalangist forces into West Beirut had already been announced by Sharon on 9 July 1982. From dawn on 15 September 1982, Israeli fighter-bombers were flying low over West Beirut and Israeli troops had secured their entry. From 9am, General Sharon was present to personally direct the Israeli penetration.

From midday, the camps of Sabra and Shatila were surrounded by Israeli tanks and soldiers and bombarded with shells. Shortly after 5pm on 16 September, a unit of approximately 150 Phalangists entered Shatila camp from the south and southwest. At that point General Drori telephoned Ariel Sharon and announced, "Our friends are advancing into the camps. We have coordinated their entry."

For the next 40 hours, the Phalangist militia raped, killed and injured a large number of unarmed civilians, mostly children, women and old people. These actions were accompanied or followed by systematic roundups, backed or reinforced by the Israeli Army, resulting in dozens of disappearances.

The Israeli Army, whose officers knew perfectly what was going on in the camps, as they were in permanent contact with the militia leaders, did not intervene until the morning of Saturday 18 September 1982. Instead, they prevented civilians from escaping the camps.

The count of victims varies between 700 (the official Israeli figure) and 3,500. The exact figure will never be determined because in addition to the approximately 1,000 people who were buried in communal graves by the ICRC or in the cemeteries of Beirut by members of their families, a large number of corpses were buried under bulldozed buildings by the militia themselves. Also, particularly on 17 and 18 September, hundreds of people were carried away alive in trucks towards unknown destinations, never to return.

After 400,000 people took to the streets in protest, the Israeli parliament (Knesset) named a commission of inquiry presided over by Yitzhak Kahan in September 1982. In spite of the limitations of the commission's mandate (it was a political and not a judicial mandate) and the total absence of the voices and demands of the victims, the Commission concluded that the Minster of Defence was personally responsible for the massacres: Sharon resigned from his post of Minister of Defence but remained in the government as Minister Without Portfolio.

In spite of the evidence of what the UN Security Council described as a 'criminal massacre' and the sad ranking of the Sabra and Shatila massacres in humankind's collective memory as among the great crimes of the 20th century, the man found "personally responsible", his associates and the people who carried out the massacres have never been pursued or punished.

In 1984, Israeli journalists Schiff and Yaari concluded their chapter on the massacre with this reflection: "If there is a moral to the painful episode of Sabra and Shatila, it has yet to be acknowledged." This reality of impunity remains true to this day, but the victims and their relatives will keep fighting to challenge it by all possible means. Today, their hopes centre on a court in Belgium.

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

Special Branch are a fifth column against change, gatekeepers of a failed past

SPEAKING at the launch of a document highlighting the role of British Intelligence in recent events, including Castlereagh, Sinn Féin spokesperson Gerry Kelly said that the "British securocrats now pose a real threat to the Peace Process".

"On, 17 March the Special Branch offices at Castlereagh were rated and files were removed," he said. "The raid was carried out in a bid to remove information which presumably would detail the extent to which those in Special Branch were engaged in illegal activity, including collusion, cover up and murder. There is no doubt in my mind that this was carried out by elements of British Intelligence. Ronnie Flanagan said it was an inside job."

Those responsible then set about creating a smokescreen "Republicans were the obvious target," said Kelly. "Other fairy tales were fabricated by British Intelligence. These have ranged from IRA pipe bombs in Palestine to the IRA purchasing weapons in Russia.

"This has been seized upon by Mr Trimble in his battle with the DUP and anti-Agreement elements in his own party for ascendancy in the wider unionist constituency. The effects of all this, as is clearly the intention of those behind the whirlwind of spin, has been to destabilise unionism and the entire process," said Kelly. "This is the danger which faceless people now pose to this process and I would call upon the British Government to rein in these elements before they are allowed to damage the Peace Process further."

Kelly went on to say that within the British system, which has run the north of Ireland for the past several decades, there exist influential elements who cannot countenance any outcome to the conflict in Ireland other than political defeat for Irish republicanism. "They are a threat to the peace process," he said.

These people include British intelligence members, often euphemistically referred to as senior civil servants, senior police officers and military intelligence. For them, the Peace Process is simply the pursuit of conflict by other means. The RUC Special Branch was and is the most important operational arm of British Intelligence. Their agents are still operating in the UDA and are part and parcel of that organisation's ongoing bombing campaign. In large part this explains why there have been hardly any arrests or charges.

The RUC Special Branch, under the direction of British Intelligence, moved en bloc into the so-called new policing structures. The RUC Special Branch became PSNI Special Branch overnight and included all of those involved in the human rights abuses outlined above.

"There is no way of identifying and removing the human rights abusers referred to by Patten. The Policing Board cannot do it. The Ombudsman cannot do it," said Kelly. "The impunity with which Special Branch traditionally functions under the direction and protection of British Intelligence remains intact, despite all the claims made of the new arrangements in policing."

There is not the slightest doubt that elements of the British Intelligence community are at the centre of the raid on Castlereagh, Kelly told the media, and this involved at least two cover-ups.

"The first cover up relates to the information stolen in Castlereagh. Clearly the raiders believed that the information they stole was at risk or potentially at risk, information that might well shed light on the many illegal activities and human rights abuses which British Intelligence and the Special Branch have been involved in down the years," said Kelly.

"The second cover-up relates to the attempt to divert attention away from the perpetrators, the attempt to create a doubt as to who was responsible, the attempt to divert attention away from what was so important in the information stolen in Castlereagh. Extreme measures were resorted to in order to minimise the potential repercussions associated with it," he said.

The raids on homes and offices, the wrecking, the arrests and the unprecedented daily press briefings by the head of the Special Branch were and are part of a massive PR exercise towards that end, he believed. This has now been escalated into a full blown assault on the Good Friday Agreement and ultimately the peace process itself.

"The British Government has a fundamental decision to make; for if the tail is allowed to continue to wag the dog it will shake the peace process to its foundations," said Kelly.

********************************

"SPECIAL BRANCH is still a force within a force," Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly told a Belfast press conference this week.

"One thing that has become clear since the raid on Castlereagh is that the Special Branch and the British Intelligence establishment are still firmly in control," he said.

"Their persistent attempts to contrive a crisis in the Peace Process through anonymous briefings of selected journalists shows clearly that they are at the very core of the policing problem and are a serious threat to the peace process'

Kelly's comments came as Tom Considine, the Oversight Commissioner tasked with monitoring the implementation of change in policing in the North, highlighted the failure of the current policing arrangements to implement the Patten Report's recommendations in relation to the Special Branch. As the principal operations arm of British Intelligence, all aspects of policing in the North are subordinate to the Special Branch, especially in relation to the arrest, questioning and charging of individuals.

"Nameless and faceless Special Branch officers have developed a self-regulating, self replicating cabal enjoying disproportionate power both within and beyond policing which has also extended to the power over life and death on many occasions," said Kelly. "John Stalker went so far as to describe the activities of the RUC Special Branch as akin to a Latin American death squad." .

When the Patten report was published in 1999 it was viewed as having the potential to mark the end of Special Branch style policing and its role as a force within a force. However, the report has been subverted and the malign influence of the Special Branch continues unabated, said Kelly. "This is not acceptable. It is not what was agreed on Good Friday."

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IN A DETAILED document launched at the press conference, Sinn Féin scrutinises the record of British Intelligence and Special Branch. British Intelligence directs Special Branch in its activities. British Intelligence reports directly to the British Prime Minister. Together with British Military Intelligence, MI5 and Special Branch form the secret society which has run the North of Ireland for the past 30 years.

Special Branch is the principal operations arms of British Intelligence. Uniformed branch cannot make an arrest or bring charges for any offence without first referring to Special Branch. The uniformed branch is a filter for the recruitment and protection of Special Branch agents like those involved in the killing of Pat Finucane and in the ongoing UDA/Red Hand Defenders' bombing campaign.

The document points out that British Intelligence and the Special Branch have been involved in shoot-to-kill, torture, perjury, the destruction of evidence which would incriminate Special Branch members and agents, miscarriages of justice and collusion with loyalist paramilitary murder gangs.

Since the British Government's 'Police Act 2000' came into effect, save those who took early retirement packages, the RUC Special Branch moved en bloc into the PSNI Special Branch. Predictably, human rights abuses have continued and the document cites a number of examples.

Special Branch Agent William Stobie, one of the central characters in the killing of Pat Finucane, was left unprotected by his Special Branch employers and was killed by the UDA. The UDA/Red Hand Defenders, which is riddled with Special Branch agents, has conducted, unhindered, a protracted bombing and shooting campaign, especially in north Belfast. No arrests have been made or charges brought.

In January of this year, UDA member Stephen McCullough, when stopped at an RIR patrol, offered to supply the RUC with information on the murder of Catholic postman Daniel McColgan. Stephen McCullough was taken into PSNI custody and apparently released before being found dead a couple of hours later on Cavehill, Belfast. This case is currently being investigated by the Police Ombudsman.

The Special Branch attempted to subvert the inquiry by the Ombudsman into the Omagh bombing. They were supported in this by Ronnie Flanagan. In the course of this, they withheld 300 documents from the Ombudsman. No sanction of any kind, not even disciplinary action, has been brought against any Special Branch officer or other member of the PSNI in respect of this. The Policing Board and the Ombudsman could not bring sanctions of any kind. They are powerless in this respect.

It has been reported that 25% of all Superintendent rank positions in the 'PSNI' are going to Special Branch officers. Several former Special Branch officers who took early severance payments have been retained in a 'civilian' capacity in the PSNI. The job tenure of a significant number of Special Branch officers at this juncture is 15 years.

Others have variously served between five and ten years.  They are a fifth column against change, gatekeepers of a failed past.

The document concludes with a detailed analysis of the Castlereagh raid, which is described as "an inside . job with inside objectives". Castlereagh is one of the most secure barracks in Western Europe. Those who carried out the raid were fully informed and equipped to deal with every obstacle they might  encounter. This included A-Z knowledge of the security system, possession of British military passes, knowledge of security codes and location of the room that held the files they sought.

They were cleared through the front security barrier staffed by Members of the PSNI. They were cleared through a number of internal security checkpoints inside the building, staffed by PSNI members. The Special Branch officer guarding the room opened a locked door for them.  He didn't feel threatened by their presence. They overpowered him, trussed him up, placed a Walkman over his ears to prevent him from hearing them and took his pulse regularly. These were the actions of people who are trained for such operations

The document points out that those involved in the raid were in the room for half an hour. No urgency or fear of detection was attached to their actions. and they left the barracks as they entered it, calmly and confidently.

"The RUC's Chief Constable said the raid was an 'inside job'. He meant an 'inside intelligence job'."
 
Some media outlets reported a secret investigation into the Force Research-Unit (FRU) in respect of the Castlereagh raid. FRU was involved through its agent Brian Nelson in collusion with the UDA in its murder campaign. It was also involved in destroying evidence collected by the Stevens inquiry:

Those with a connection with Castlereagh and who were arrested or questioned include a waitress and a chef. We are being asked to believe that the people who setup and/or carried out this highly sophisticated raid on the most secure barracks in Western Europe were canteen workers in Castlereagh.

The Policing Board, whose primary function, according to Patten, is to hold the police accountable, is excluded by the British Secretary of State from having any power of investigation into the Castlereagh raid. They cannot hold those responsible to account.

The British Secretary of State, John Reid, appointed senior intelligence figure John Chilcott to head the investigation. Chilcott had presided over the secret society that runs the NIO from 1990 to 1997. In one of his last acts as Chief Constable, former Special Branch boss Ronnie Flanagan set up a separate Special Branch investigation into the Castlereagh Raid.

The Ombudsman does not have the power to investigate the Castlereagh raid. The Ombudsman will not be involved in an investigation unless the outcome of the MI5 or Special Branch investigations into the Castlereagh raid shows that 'PSNI' members were involved in it.

	Neither the Ombudsman nor the Policing Board have any power to investigate activities involving or the 	suspected involvement of British Intelligence or British Military Intelligence.

And then there was the smokescreen. Special Branch moved quickly to divert attention away from what had been stolen and the 	responsibility of British agents. As a minimum they set out to create a doubt. What followed, if violent and intimidatory, was pure street theatre to achieve that objective. Seventeen houses were raided across the north of Ireland. The Gardai were duped into raiding premises in Donegal. The premises of four community groups were raided. Eight people were  arrested. Questioning about the Castlereagh raid was minimal in all cases and in some cases those arrested were not questioned about the raid at all. None of the people arrested were charged with any Castlereagh raid related offence.

Identifying a double standard, the document compares official responses to ongoing loyalist violence to "unsubstantiated allegations levelled at the IRA". The UDA/Red Hand Defenders have been involved in an ongoing, concerted bombing campaign for several years now. This has been particularly intense in North Belfast over the past 14 months. More than 500 bomb and gun attacks have taken place. Several people have been killed. Arson attacks and assaults run into hundreds. None of this, it appears, is a threat to the peace process. Or if it is nobody is saying so. By contrast, a number of unsubstantiated allegations levelled at the IRA and many of which including the raid on Castlereagh, have been denied by the IRA leadership, have been used in a contrived way to bring the peace process into crisis.

Unsubstantiated British Intelligence manufactured stories were planted in willing media outlets. This put wind into the sails of political opponents of the Good Friday Agreement. Fairytales about IRA arms purchases in Moscow and IRA designed pipe bombs in Palestine added fuel to this. Opponents of the Agreement seized, for their own ends, the attempt by some people in the US to use the arrest of three Irish citizens in Colombia to effect a change in US government policy in Ireland. "

It would be naive to expect the DUP or anti-Agreement elements in the UUP to do otherwise. But it is not acceptable that British government employees have created a political storm that has a potential to destroy everything achieved over the past decade. British securocrats are a threat to the Good Friday Agreement and to the peace process. The British Government must rein them in.

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

New York Times confirms Reich-Carmona ties

HIS fingerprints are all over the perimeter of the crime. The disgraceful disinformation Carmona carried out by the private Venezuelan media; the siege of the Cuban embassy in Caracas: the false resignation of president Chávez and his alleged plea for asylum in Cuba: everything bears the stamp of Otto Reich.

The former top official in the Reagan regime, buddy of the most fanatical anti-Cuba terrorists and now - incredibly - the number one man for Latin America in the U.S. administration,  he has personally and clearly masterminded the subversive plans that nave just failed in Caracas.

• THE confirmation arrived quickly: Otto Reich was the true mastermind of the coup in Caracas. Reich mini-managed every move the coup leaders took, according to an April 17 article in The New York Times, which - paradoxically - tries to minimize the U.S. role in those events.

According to the daily, Reich personally advised coup leader Pedro Carmona, in telephone conversations. The State Department has said that. it was consulted about the coup, days before it was carried out, and now it is trying to cover its tracks by saying that it recommended that Carmona not dissolve the national legislature, according to the Times. This is an implicit admission that the Bush administration did indeed support the coup.

Although the White House denies its role in the recent events in Venezuela, the prestigious U.S. newspaper based its detailed report on statements by U.S. government officials, who attempted to absolve the Bush administration of any responsibility.

The Times reported with absolute certainty that Reich had contact with Chávez's successor on. the very day of the coup d'état.

The CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department are thoroughly contaminated with the virus of intervention, and the only cover-up the White House could manufacture, presented by its spokesperson Ari Fleisher, is that members of the administration had met with the conspirators, but he stressed that the United States did not plan to support the coup.

TWO COUP PLOTS: THE CIA'S AND THE STATE DEPARTMENT'S

Meanwhile, a report issued by the private U.S. agency called Strategic Forecasting (Stratfor), published in the Mexican daily La Jornada, states that there were two separate U.S. plans for a coup against the Chávez government. Stratfor, composed of former CIA agents, indicated that both the CIA and the State Department advised the anti-Chávez forces in their efforts to bring down the democratically elected Venezuelan president. .

Stratfor added that the CIA-backed opposition had originally planned the coup for February 27, but were convinced to abort that attempt.

Recruited by the CIA while he was still in the university, Reich was a specialist in deception during the Reagan administration: Reagan's vice president, George Bush, was a former operative and then head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

From his Office of Public Diplomacy, Reich covered tip all the dirtiest operations of the war in Nicaragua, circulating false information through the media.

During the '80s, Otto Reich launched disinformation from his Office of Public Diplomacy, like the one about MiG fighter planes being purchased secretly by Nicaragua and allegedly ready to attack U.S. territory, and the story that the Miskito Indians were being persecuted by the Sandinistas. He also circulated rumors to discredit journalists who wrote about the Nicaraguan revolution in terms that were considered too positive.  

When the narco-contra scandal - poorly named the Iran-Contra scandal - blew open with the discovery of drug trafficking operations managed by Cuban-American terrorists Félix Rodríguez and Luis Posada Carriles, Reagan was forced to remove him from the White House.

U.S. EMBASSY, HEART OF THE CONSPIRACY.

Otto was appointed as ambassador to Venezuela, a disparaging gesture remembered for years in Caracas. There he dedicated himself to securing the release of killer pediatrician and CIA agent Orlando Bosch - detained there after the horrific sabotage of a Cuban airliner - and to act the mafioso on behalf of U.S. interests,  particularly within Venezuela's Cuban émigré business circles.

Reich, born in Cuba of an Austrian father and an émigré to the United States at an early age, established his Venezuelan network in military circles - thus obtaining an order for Bosch's release from a military tribunal - and within the Venezuelan secret services, in which the CIA and the U.S. embassy had their people well placed.

That same U.S. embassy in Caracas is currently occupied by Ambassador Charles Shapiro, former head of the State Department's Cuba Desk -  who received the central civilian conspirators of the April 11 coup on a regular basis, for several weeks prior to that action.

Reich clearly threw himself into his passion for "slanted" journalism again, starting on January 11, when Bush handed him his new post, against the will of the Senate.

Since February, the U.S. press has been talking of an alleged malaise within the Venezuelan administration. The Washington Post wrote of a precarious and dangerous situation, quoting a senior State Department official.

On February 5, Secretary of State Colin Powell affirmed before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Chávez had broken with democracy.

On February 6, CIA Director George Tenet and Carl Ford, aide to the secretary of state for intelligence, spoke before the Senate Intelligence Committee of a climate of crisis in Venezuela.

On February 7, Colonel Pedro Soto, former aide to Carlos Andrés Pérez (president at the time of the 1992 coup led by Chávez) affirming that he represented "75% of the armed forces," publicly attacked the Chávez government. (Invited by an international institute, a CIA client, Soto then visited Washington and Miami, where he was to be found on April 11, loudly celebrating the "return to democracy," along with Cuban-American terrorist leaders).

Thus a rapidly and steadily more brazen deception campaign was mounted, rapidly joined by the Venezuelan private press, which ended up running a grossly hostile campaign against the government. El Universal daily and Radio Caracas, Television Gobovision and Venevision TV networks were already actively preparing the media coup, channelling information and systematically harassing the constitutional government and the head of state.

During the coup, the same disinformation gang cut off the broadcast the president's speech to the people and repeated lie after lie, unleashing violent incidents that would subsequently serve to justify the subversive operation. Meanwhile, the representatives of the new "order" were destroying state television program material.

Then the communications junta shamelessly spread the false information that Chávez had resigned, silenced all public pronouncements by members of the government, and played up declarations in favor of the criminal coup. One of these was made by Ambassador Shapiro, who affirmed that April 11 was an extraordinary day in the history of Venezuela.

In the morning of Saturday, April 13, speaking before more than 30,000 people at a rally in the municipality of Güuira de Melena, Habana province, in the presence of President Fidel Castro, Bruno Rodríguez, Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, clearly denounced the media disinformation campaign in Venezuela. "The truth is that a coup d'état has taken place in Venezuela and that a sellout and pro-U.S. junta is usurping, by means of force, the power invested in President Chávez by the Venezuelan people, with hopes of erasing decades of injustice and corruption by applying Bolivar's ideals."

Other lies followed the one alleging Chávez's resignation, including the assertion that Chávez had sought asylum in Cuba, which was rapidly refuted by Havana.

Indeed, the media complicity with the coup organizers was so strong that when the latter attempted to take the imprisoned president out of the country to the United States, it was planned to transport him aboard a private plane registered in the United States in the name of Gustavo Cisneros, the owner of the Venevisión TV network.

Meanwhile, CNN en Español linked up with Globovisión to finally announce the taking of Miraflores Palace by the people and the presidential guard of honor... five hours after it happened.

Lies, deception, violence, terror: everything smacks of Otto Reich in this failed coup. Even that hysterical rabble of Cuban-Venezuelan émigrés that surrounded the Cuban embassy in Caracas for a number of hours, destroying cars and threatening to enter by force - before fleeing when the Bolivarian leader's return was announced.

Otto Reich, the White House's top representative in Latin America, servant of the Miami mafia and protector of terrorists, had a fleeting triumph last weekend. But he also had to accept a bitter lesson: that the voice of the people is much stronger than a concert of lies.