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Economic and Philosophic Science Review

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

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Recent issue

No 1247 September 7th 2004

The disgrace of Putin's rotten Russian-imperialist posturing is just a more sordid and feeble reprise of the Middle East mess already sunk into by American Empire superpower he deludedly mimics, and it makes bigger fools than ever of the reformist fake-"lefts" who play the imperialist game of "condemning terrorism". Hints of "deeper international terrorism" behind the Beslan catastrophe rather than "genuine Chechen national-liberation" all deliberately and spectacularly miss the point, — WHY is the world suffering this astonishing turmoil anyway? And the "crush these un-negotiable outside provocations" as a so-called "solution" is just a disgusting stunt for condoning the spread of US imperialism's "war on terrorism" crisis-driven global warmongering plans savaging the world regardless. But this "kill them all" serious propaganda by the Empire to use the "terrorism" excuse to leave no "rogue states" challenging US domination anywhere is being undermined by the Empire's pathetic failures everywhere. Putin's "no talks" stance because "the US doesn't negotiate with Bin Laden" will shake Western ideology still further. Why doesn't it?? Because it poses the end for imperialism.

The sickest thing about the Beslan school-hostage disaster is the universal "condemnation" hypocrisy from archbishops to fake-"lefts" of every hue.

To what purpose do they strut their moral-posturing "condemnation"?

To no useful purpose whatever, but greatly to the reactionary benefit of the global monopoly-imperialist market system which is driving small nations to national-liberation extremes in increasing numbers.

Not a single Chechen or sympathising Middle-East Muslim is going to be deterred from their growing hatred of Western imperialist world domination by hearing deluded "anti-imperialist" reformists tutting that "taking children hostage is not the way", etc, etc.

Of course this real resistance to imperialist domination understands the terrifying injustice to the innocent victims of random terrorist strikes. They already grasped it far better than any "moralisers" in the West BECAUSE TENS OF THOUSANDS OF THEIR OWN CHILDREN HAVE ALREADY BEEN ARBITRARILY BUTCHERED by imperialist rule.

The mounting proliferation of suicide bombers in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and elsewhere should make it obvious to even the most limited intelligences that such hatred, determination, and willingness to sacrifice shows that the problem has already moved far far beyond anything that can be helped by a chorus of "condemnation" from the cowardly hypocritical swamp of middle-class "reformist" do-gooders in the West who will "do anything" to stop imperialist tyranny except actually stop it.

The Palestinian nation has been systematically butchered and thrown off their land into stinking refugee camps FOR 59 YEARS NONSTOP already.

No less than THREE GENERATIONS of this ancient and culturally-historically-rich people have suffered this ultimate humiliation and despair of virtually eternal stateless imprisonment and nonstop murderous bullying tyranny, — told by relentless Jewish-imperialist settlement activity that they will NEVER go home.

And throughout these 59 years, the Palestinian nation has been assured by three generations of Western "reformist" do-gooders that peaceful protest marches and demonstrations at the United Nations and around the Western capitals are "about to bear fruit", etc, etc, etc.

But tomorrow, another Jewish helicopter gunship, supplied and armed and paid-for by Western imperialism, will again be slamming rockets into an "occupied territories" slum or a refugee camp "in retaliation for terrorist atrocities", butchering scores more Palestinian children, women, and men, — terrorising the Palestinians into surrender EXACTLY AS HAS GONE ON NON-STOP SINCE 1945.

And elsewhere, more Palestinian homes, often wretched enough to start with, will be blown up in cold blood by the Jewish colonial army "because of suspected terrorist activities", etc, etc.

But remarkably, when one prominent "reformist" do-gooder, Jenny Tonge M.P., actually commented after a visit to the "occupied territories" slaughter zone that she could "begin to understand why some Palestinian women might in despair turn themselves into suicide bombers", she was immediately demoted in disgrace to the bottom of the Liberal-Democrat parliamentary party.

It is an absolute taboo throughout the West for anyone to say anything about any kind of terrorism, suicidal or otherwise, other than that "it must be utterly condemned", etc, etc.

And all the little fake-"lefts" from the archbishop to Vanessa Redgrave and the Trots all dutifully join in the "condemnation" chorus.

And will it stop the growth of terrorism??

Not a cat in hell's chance.

But what will it do???

Play right into the hands of the monopoly-imperialist Western domination system which created this endless history of colonial injustices in the first place, — incidentally PIONEERING the modern usage of hostage-taking in the process.

This barbarism was particularly savagely inflicted on the children of the chiefs of the 150 or so small nations of Native Americans to keep them cowed during the ethnic cleansing of the US and Canadian parts of the North American continent, and also used for generations to keep the families of black slaves in line across the Southern USA.

More recently, hostage-taking was very viciously applied by the British and French colonial empires throughout the Middle East, particularly on the Arabian peninsula where the sheikhs of scores of small tribes routinely had their favourite sons or daughters murdered by the British or French empires for failing to keep their tribesmen "under control", etc, etc.

Now, the monopoly-imperialist Western system no longer kills hostages but goes in for "collective punishment" butchering instead, — using Fl6s, helicopter gunships, tanks, or armoured Humvees.

Trouble for the occupation forces in Iraq from someone suspected to come from Falluja??? Set up a blitzkrieg bombardment of some kind or other, and although 40 or more people locally might get killed, including women and children, — at least the "suspect's" house gets wiped out.

Exactly the same routinely happens in Afghanistan where wedding parties are a regular target for an aerial shooting-up, wiping out 50 or more members of the same family at times "because suspected terrorist gunfire was thought to be coming from the scene", etc, etc, etc.

Against Palestine, the Zionist imperialist butchery is simply non-stop, for every "reason" and none.

And the worldwide reformist chorus of "condemn the terrorist resistance" lets the monopoly-imperialist system off the hook of EXPLAINING WHY TERRORISM IS NOW SUCH A RAPIDLY INCREASING PHENOMENON.

And it lets the monopoly-imperialist system off the hook of explaining WHY THE EVER-GROWING REPRESSION ONLY SEEMS TO CREATE MORE AND MORE TERRORISM.

And it lets them off explaining where yet more "tough stance" repression is going to lead in due course, given that it doesn't work in stopping terrorism but has the exact opposite effect.

All of these questions immediately go right out of the window the moment that the middle-class "critics" of imperialism all start clucking in unison: "We must start by condemning this latest terrorist outrage", or "of course firm preventive measures must be taken", etc, etc, etc.

The argument never gets any further.

And what is worse, there is not a single "reformist" do-gooder who does not KNOW that all of the 'condemnation" in the world is not going to reach or have the slightest impact on the wretched victims of imperialist injustice who have been driven to terrorism, and in particular to suicide terrorism, to start with.

They KNOW that terrorism is not only going to continue but is going to grow, — as does everyone else on Earth with half a brain.

So what is this "condemnation" for????

On analysis, it emerges as the purest farce of MORAL POSTURING.

And for whose benefit????

Clearly to let these "reformists" demonstrate to the monopoly-imperialist status quo that they are consciously determined to remain "embedded" with the prevailing Western system on Earth, no matter how "critical" they become of some of imperialism's "misdeeds". Their "moral" posturing serves no other purpose than that.

And how delighted will the imperialist status quo feel at hearing all its "critics" capitulate to "Western democratic values" the moment that the question of serious RESISTANCE to imperialist domination should come up.

And no wonder Jenny Tonge was so quickly shown the door.

Another particularly odious version of this "reformist" moral posturing is the studio "intrepid" interviewer who bores away at any first signs of terrorist sympathising with repeated mindless "challenges" such as "And is it right to kill children, no matter what the cause??", etc, etc, etc, etc, etc.

Of course it isn't "right", it is a human catastrophe. But what has making people answer this question got to do with anything????

It has got to do only with yet further stunts to get the imperialist system off the hook of having to answer WHY this growing terrorist phenomenon is occurring; WHY more repression will only make things worse, not better; and WHERE is this endless "tough stance" posturing by imperialism heading?????

And where it is all heading, of course, is relentlessly towards a "kill them all" attitude throughout the West against not only the terrorists but eventually against every community that can be held "responsible for producing terrorists", etc, etc.

In other words, this whole "condemn terrorism" racket must be seen as a major brainwashing campaign worldwide to prepare the planet ever more readily to accept a return to the generalised international warmongering which is the real aim of the imperialist system,now stuck deeper than ever in incurable economic crisis and incurable political crisis.

Monopoly-imperialist world domination is halfway there already, butchering with abandon on front lines in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Systematic threats to widen the blitzkrieging are now routinely made against Iran, against North Korea, against Zimbabwe, against Syria by the Zionist stooges of American Empire policy, and against Sudan by everybody, "lefts" included.

The ever-widening "terrorist" justification for more and more warmongering will bring increasing numbers of "rogue states" into the picture, easily accusable of any number of "terrorist"connections by a determined-enough imperialist media domination.

The effects of this mighty global brainwashing power are already clearly seen. The warmonger administration in Washington swore that it could repel John Kerry's challenge to the Bush regime by attacking the Massachusetts senator's very STRENGTHS, not his weaknesses.

And what has happened???

The fact that Kerry volunteered to actually FIGHT "for his country's interests" as he first saw them in Vietnam (before his subsequent postwar doubts) whereas Bush and Cheney both pulled strings to AVOID having to fight in the national cause as universally accepted initially (and as STILL verbally championed by Bush and Cheney), — has ended up after the spin treatment by the huge rightwing media control in the USA as castigating Kerry for really being a cowardly wimp and a malingerer in "fraudulently" gaining his three bravery awards in Vietnam, — and leaving Bush and Cheney more popular than ever as the "real warriors" fit to give leadership to the USA at a time of "a war in the national interest".

But the power of propaganda has clear historical limits, as is basically emerging in the extraordinary crisis into which the age of the American Empire is now sinking.

And it is precisely this insuperable historical obstacle which lies at the root of the catastrophic mess that Putin has got himself into in Russia, trying Bonapartist political tricks to try to create an illusion of "established and unchallengeable Great Power status" alongside the might of Western monopoly-imperialist power.
But this whole "imperial power" game is now a fraud in several directions, for all of the players, — which is what is basically now emerging in the ludicrous and unwinnable "war against international terrorism".

If the warmongering bullying is not working in the Middle East for the overwhelmingly strongest imperialist power, the American Empire, — then the mess that Russia is getting itself into is hardly surprising.

The propaganda tyranny seeking to brainwash public support for ever-extending "anti-terror" warmongering to rope in more and more "rogue states" (basically any regime anywhere which dares to challenge the Washington diktat over how all world affairs should go henceforth, as the imperialist global economic system sinks deeper and deeper into uncontrollable crisis and disaster) is as threatening and as aggressively bullying now as it has ever been in the whole of Western imperialist history.

It is probably worse now than it has ever been (BBC bosses toppled for telling the TRUTH about expert doubts on the veracity of Weapons of Mass Destruction claims re Iraq; Mirror editor toppled for showing the reconstructed TRUTH about prisoner maltreatment in Iraq, cocking up only by not seeing that the photos were clear reconstructions and not real-time snaps; two ludicrous "public inquiry" whitewashes of the Government's lying deceptions to get Britain into this warmongering; etc, etc, etc) because the historical age the world has now reached is precisely all ready to ABANDON the monopoly-imperialist system for running the Earth as no longer at all suitable for modern mankind, and no longer remotely beneficial for the needs of civilisation as a whole.

In other words, colonial-imperialist bullying of small nations not only STINKS to modern susceptibilities, all round, but is also being violently REJECTED anyway, and rejected successfully.

This imperialist warmongering crisis, farcically presented as a conflict "against terror", can only press on to engulf the whole planet in total war that will dwarf even the unspeakable barbarism of World War I and World War II to which the now crisis-ridden monopoly-imperialist system has already treated civilisation.

But it is to these horrors that the whole propaganda tyranny of "we must condemn terrorism" can alone lead.

The ultimate logic of all the hyped-up television propaganda, repeatedly sensationally (and pointlessly) asking "But what can be done to stop such obviously ruthless people who clearly have abandoned all the normal restraints and civilised conventions on acceptable human conduct,no matter what the cause", is to conclude: "We shall have to kill them all".

Which is roughly the mentality which imperialism is already in practice getting people used to in the present frontline struggles.

In Fallujah, Tikrit, and elsewhere in the Sunni triangle, and now increasingly in the Shiite south of Iraq too, the imperialist warmongers repeatedly routinely wipe out 40 or so more Iraqi children, women, and men to "teach them a lesson" in unofficial collective-punishment speak, but to "control terrorism" in official explanations, as terrorist resistance continues to flourish mightily.

In the previous decade of sanctions disciplining of Iraq, no less than 2 million Iraqis were wiped out by repeated bombing raids or through the destruction of the infrastructure (medical services; clean water supply; sewage control; electricity supply; all transport and communications, etc, etc).

Over half a million Iraqi children were killed in that sanctions holocaust. Thousands more have been butchered in the colonial reoccupation blitzkrieg to "bring democracy physically to Iraq", — under a new tyrannical stooge regime in Baghdad.

This is all rather more dead children than tragically suffered in the school at Beslan, but the imperialist media brainwashing is inevitably choosing to have a field day in highlighting the "bayoneted for asking for water" and "shot in the back for crying for her mother" hearsay horror stories whipping up the "kill them all" general warmongering mentality further and further.

And following the non-stop butchering in Iraq, and the nonstop butchering in Palestine by the Jewish imperialists since 1945, Putin is being helped by this "anti-terror" media brainwashing to continue the non-stop butchering that Chechnya has suffered in the last decade of serious national-liberation struggle, its tiny population virtually decimated by the military occupation from Giant Russia.

And just as the only logic of Zionist vows (to "stop all terrorist resistance") is eventually to kill all the Palestinians and make a real job of the Jewish settlers relentless ethnic cleansing since 1945, — so the only logic of Putin's threats of even more military repression in Chechnya to "stop the terrorism" is eventually to kill all the Chechens.

And this imitated Western-imperialist barbarism is likely to be all that happens for a while, (just as it is all that is ever going to happen in Palestine), — — for as long as Putin plays out his Bonapartist fantasy of joining the Big League of monopoly-imperialist states.

But the days for such delusions are nevertheless numbered, — whatever the personal political fate of Putin.

That Putin has been humiliated in Beslan is damaging, but far far more serious for all imperialist posturing is the reality that the American Empire is close to being humiliated in the Middle East, — the major immediate frontline of the Great Power/monopoly system's warmongering determination to keep the status quo by military enforcement as the way for the capitalist-imperialist ruling classes to get through the slump-threatening economic crisis with their privileged positions still intact.

Despite continued Goebbels-level insane bluster from the White House and Downing Street that the "rebuilding of a democratic Iraq" is progressing well on course, the capitalist system's own media continue to reveal that security in Iraq is ever worsening, and that the population is as unreconciled to Western military occupation as ever, and that the "Iraqi" appointed stooge government of Allawi is as powerless and despised as ever.

The latest farce reported confirms Allawi on course to becoming only a petty tyrant, — exactly the same setup that the CIA and American imperialism had with Saddam Hussein for 20 years to control Iraqi policy, — until the despot got too big for his boots. Some "democratic progress"!!!

Iraqi security officers stormed al-Jazeera's Baghdad offices and sealed the newsroom with red wax at the weekend after the US-backed interim government banned the Arabic television station from broadcasting in the country.

The raid followed a decision by the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, to close the station temporarily in August because of its apparent  failure to back the US occupation. Officials said al-Jazeera had now been shut indefinitely because it had ignored the original ban.

Several armed police officers were posted outside and in the lobby of Baghdad's Swan Lake Hotel, where al-Jazeera has its offices, yesterday.

"We have been told not to let anyone in; we are just following orders," Captain Abu Jibal told the Guardian. "If you take any photos we'll arrest you," he said.

Robert Menard of Reporters Without Borders said the ban contradicted "Iraqi officials' statements on democracy". Other media groups, including the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, have criticised the earlier ban.

Al-Jazeera said the decision was "reminiscent of the way certain other regimes have behaved".

Last month Iraqi police seized around 60 journalists from a hotel in Najaf, including reporters from the BBC, Guardian, Independent, Times and Telegraph, and took them to the police station at gunpoint. Asked later whether he condemned the incident, Mr Allawi refused to answer.

Yesterday an al-Jazeera spokesman, Jihad Bailout, said his station had abided by the original temporary ban and had used agency footage from Iraq, like other media groups.

The future of al-Jazeera's 100 reporters and other workers in Iraq was unclear, he said. "We have never compromised our editorial values. We believe what happens in Iraq is very important for the whole Arab world and needs to be covered comprehensively, objectively and in a balanced way."

The closure came during a weekend of further violence across the country. Two US soldiers were killed and 16 wounded yesterday in a mortar attack on an American base on Baghdad's western outskirts. At least three Iraqis were also killed and more than a dozen wounded as US troops renewed their attack on the northern town of Tal Afar, near Mosul.

On Saturday, at least 13 people died, including women and children, and 60 were injured as clashes erupted across the town. Fighters opened fire on a US helicopter, forcing it to make an emergency landing. Officials said US and Iraqi forces were trying to flush out a militant cell smuggling arms and people from Syria.

About 500 Iraqis were also arrested on Saturday in the Sunni town of Latifiya, 40 miles south of the capital, where two French journalists, Christian Chesnot and Georges Malbrunot were kidnapped last month.

This is the third time that fascist dictatorship restrictions have been placed on al-Jazeera's objective coverage of events in Iraq. The following bourgeois press admissions were made in Britain after the previous ban:

When the Iraqi Governing Council first banned al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya from covering any official activities in Iraq at the end of September 2003, the ban undermined the council's calls for democracy, and its stated independence from the US administration. Now the ban by the prime minister, Ayad Allawi, has similarly undermined his credibility.

Once again the Arab press has observed how life under this government, just like life under the coalition, is similar in spirit, if not in practice, to life under Saddam — journalists in the field are continually harassed, shot at and arrested and their equipment confiscated. Armed police forcibly closed down the al-Jazeera news bureaux while accusations that the channel had inside knowledge about attacks on the coalition are not substantiated with proof.

Although this ban has not stopped the channel covering events inside Iraq, it has served to send a clear message to Iraqis — that freedom of expression in Iraq does not mean the same thing as it does in the west, just as civil rights for Arabs do not mean the same thing as they do in the west. The al-Jazeera bureau in Baghdad is shut down for a month or maybe more, because, according to the Iraqi interior minister Falah al-Naqib, the network is encouraging "criminals and gangsters". Al-Jazeera claims that it is simply doing its job.

More of the Democratic convention was aired on al-Jazeera than on most US networks — several hours each night, more than the combined time of the three US news networks covering the convention. Al-Jazeera's London bureau has a similar focus on British politics. Three weekly programmes come live out of London, besides which al-Jazeera gives extensive coverage to British news, politics, opposition activities and goings-on in parliament.

After 9/11, al-Jazeera started a weekly talkshow out of Washington, From Washington, during which the host interviewed many members of the US administration, as well as a variety of other politicians, Republican and Democrat.

In January, at the start of the US primary elections, al-Jazeera started another weekly show called US Presidential Race which, like From Washington, is broadcast from the Washington bureau. US Presidential Race is concerned with the forthcoming US elections: it covered most of the primaries in the major states and will continue to cover events up until the November elections and beyond, until the president's inauguration.

US Presidential Race has taken great pains to explain to Arab viewers the US political and electoral process. Al-Jazeera reporters travelled around America to meet Arab communities in different states; they asked people what they thought of the elections, what were the key issues, who they were going to vote for and why. By the time the election arrives, Arab viewers will have had an opportunity to follow the democratic process every step of the way.

America has only two or three spokespeople capable of appearing in a debate on al-Jazeera to advocate US policy, in Arabic. And if America cannot even answer the case against it, then what can it expect but be trampled on in every argument?

This American warmongering tyranny is NAZI barbarism reborn, and it is heading in the same historical direction.

Here is another, capitalist media admission of the unspeakable degeneracy of the American Empire's warmongering:

At first there was the looting of the museums under the watch of coalition troops, but that was to be followed by more extensive and active destruction.

Active damage of the historical record is ongoing at several archaeological sites occupied as military camps. At Babylon, I have seen the continuing construction projects, the removal of and digging into the ancient mounds over the past three months, despite a coalition press release early in June stating that work would halt, and the camp would be removed.

A helicopter landing zone, built in the heart of the ancient city, removed layers of archaeological earth from the site. The daily flights of the helicopters rattle the ancient walls and the winds created by their rotors blast sand against the fragile bricks. When my colleague at the site, Maryam Moussa, and I asked military personnel in charge that the helipad be shut down, the response was that it had to remain open for security reasons, for the safety of the troops.

Between May and August, the wall of the Temple of Nabu and the roof of the Temple of Ninmah, both sixth century BC, collapsed as a result of the movement of helicopters. Nearby, heavy machines and vehicles stand parked on the remains of a Greek theatre from the era of Alexander of Macedon.

The minister of culture has asked for the removal of military bases from all archaeological sites, but none has yet been relocated.

Iraq is ancient Mesopotamia, otherwise called the "cradle of civilisation". It has more than 10,000 listed archaeological sites, as well as hundreds of medieval and Ottoman Muslim, Christian and Jewish monuments. The coalition did not establish a means of guarding the sites, though they would be protected in any other country rich in antiquities. As a result, archaeological sites are being looted to an extent previously unimagined.

The looting supplies the appetites of an international illicit trade in antiquities, and many objects end up in places like Geneva, London, Tokyo and New York. The lack of border controls has only added to the ease with which the illegal trade in Mesopotamian artefacts functions. The looting leaves the sites bulldozed and pitted with robber holes. Ancient walls, artefacts, scientific data are all destroyed in the process.

But it is not only the stolen artefacts that are lost. The loss of this data is the loss of the ancient history of this land. Many important Sumerian and Babylonian cities have been irreversibly damaged in this way already. Passive destruction of this kind has been widespread under the occupation, but antiquity is not the only area of concern.

In Baghdad, the National Library and State Archives building is a burned-out shell in which the employees work in the most horrendous conditions. The Ottoman archive that records the history of the country, spanning the 16th to the early 20th centuries, is in the gravest danger. Having been soaked by flooding last year, the archive began to mould. Upon the advice of conservators, the entire archive was removed to freezers to stop the mould.

The power in Baghdad (outside the US-occupied presidential palace and embassy buildings) is available, sporadically, about nine hours a day. If the archives should thaw, the documents will be destroyed. The conservation process needs to be done in a time and climate-controlled manner if the archive is to be saved. But the Coalition Provisional Authority reassigned ownership of this building to the ministry of justice. There is now still no place to move this archive to, the loss of which would be the loss of the modern historical records of Iraq, much of which has not been studied or published.

I am painfully aware that there is no parallel for the amount of historical destruction that has taken place over the past 15 months in Iraq. The Geneva and Hague conventions make the protection of heritage the responsibility of the foreign powers during occupation. Instead, what we have seen under the occupation is a general policy of neglect and even an active destruction of the historical and archaeological record of the land.

The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban was met with an outcry in the United States, Britain and the countries that form the coalition in Iraq. Yet the coalition forces can now claim, among other things, the destruction of the legendary city of Babylon.

Zainab Bahrani is professor of ancient near eastern art history and archaeology, Columbia University

But will the "world's greatest democracy" not choke on such rottenness in due course??? Not the remotest possibility of that happening yet. Chauvinistic aggression will still carry the day whether Bush or Kerry wins (and it looks increasingly like the "reborn" depraved moron Bush and his billions, — so crass is Kerry's "challenge" to the warmongering lies, responding to Bush's fatal admission that "the war on terrorism cannot be won" with the lunatic bellow: "Oh yes it can").

Far from retreating, the warmongering crusaders representing Washington monopoly-imperialist Big Business power are already preparing further blitzkrieg escalations into the "worst rogue states" where local governments refuse to dance to Washington's tune, such as North Korea, Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Sudan, etc.

Against Zimbabwe, a new "coalition of the willing" stunt has been brazenly outlined publicly in next-door South Africa:

THE UNITED States has called for the building of a "coalition of the willing" to push for regime change in Zimbabwe. The new American ambassador to South Africa, Jendayi Frazer, said quiet diplomacy pursued by South Africa and other African countries in its dealings with the Zimbabwe president needed a review because there was no evidence it was working. She said her country would be willing to be part of a coalition if invited.

The US could not act on its own, "put the boot on the ground" and give President Robert Mugabe 48 hours to go as requested by beleaguered Zimbaweans but the US would be willing to work in a coalition with other countries.

Ms Frazer, in a meeting with journalists in Johannesburg yesterday, said: "There is clearly a crisis in Zimbabwe and everyone needs to state that fact. The economy is in a free fall. There is a continuing repressive environment. There needs to be a return to democracy."

She said the US believed that South Africa could play a positive role and that it had the means to do so. "It [South Africa] has the most leverage probably of any other country in the sub-region and should therefore take a leadership role," said Ms Frazer, a protégé of President George Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Ms Frazer's expression of a more aggressive US line towards the Mugabe regime came the day before the British Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, arrives in South Africa for series of bilateral meetings with the Mbeki government during which he intends to raise the question of Zimbabwe.

The International Parliamentary Union (IPU) released a report yesterday accusing the regime of doing nothing to stop its youth militias from persecuting the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC).

The report was released after the IPU's three-month mission to Zimbabwe. Mr Mugabe has approved new legislation that will ban foreign non-governmental organisations working in the human rights field in Zimbabwe and the banning of foreign funding to Zimbabwean NGOs. Churches have warned the proposed law would hinder their efforts.

"So we have got to re-look at the approach, that South Africa is taking in terms of quiet diplomacy ... It's not evident that it's working at this point.

"We have always talked about building coalitions of the willing and I, for one, believe that the coalitions of the willing are going to be the new force in global affairs ..."

Instead of quiet diplomacy, Ms Frazer suggested an open admission by regional countries was an important first step followed by pressure to force Mr Mugabe.

The anti-Western bashing that was carried out by SADC leaders at their summit in Mauritius last week would not help change President Mugabe, she said. The Tanzanian President, Benjamin Mkapa, had lashed out at the West saying it cannot lecture democracy to African countries which it oppressed through a policy of colonialism in the first place.

And all because Mugabe's overwhelmingly majority government decided to wipe out the monopoly-imperialist giant-farm-plantation (white owned) land tenure, inherited from the British Empire colonisation of the territory (then called Rhodesia) with a cooperative form of socialist land nationalisation.

Putin is struggling with similar problems, — all the time still giving in to further and further monopoly-imperialist control of Russia's economy, but all the time regretting the loss of state power that this implies, should international market requirements (American dominated) start to conflict with social and dynastic interests (as they have temporarily become under Putin) in Moscow.

Putin's pained and confused nationwide address on his regime's humiliation reflected his ongoing Bonapartist doubts about where his opportunist deference to American Empire diktats would be likely to take Russia:

He said that following the collapse of the Soviet Union the nation had been weakened and unable to respond as effectively as it must. In an aside aimed at the outrage in Russia at the bungled assault to free the hostages, which may have contributed to the large number of deaths.

Putin said: 'It is vital to create an effective crisis management system, including fundamentally new approaches in the activity of the security forces.

'We need to admit that we did not show an understanding of the complexities and dangers of the processes occurring in our own country and in the world. In any case, we could not adequately react... We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten.' He noted that Russia's borders had become porous and 'unprotected' and that corruption had pervaded the law enforcement agencies. Putin also called for a mobilisation of the nation before what he called the 'common danger'.

'We stopped giving enough attention to questions of defence and security, and allowed corruption to infect our judicial and law enforcement sphere,' he said.

'Moreover, our country—which used to have the strongest defence system of its external borders—became unprotected from either the west or the east,' he added.

Putin said some enemies wanted to tear off parts of Russia, and others were helping them. 'They help, supposing that Russia, as one of the greatest nuclear powers, still poses a threat to them, so they have to get rid of that threat.'

Russian officers who took part in the shootout said one of the greatest mistakes had been to allow armed relatives of the hostages so close to the school. Some were said to have shot at the school from the first day despite the terrorists' threats to execute 20 hostages for each wounded Chechen.

When Russian forces advanced, local men also rushed towards the school, hampering the hunt for the terrorists. "It was mayhem," said one special forces officer.

Hostages said the terrorists had complained they could not make contact with Russian negotiators after the siege began on Wednesday.

At 7am on Thursday the elite Alfa anti-terrorist unit was ordered to prepare 30 people to storm the school, even as the head of the FSB was ruling out the use of force.

Russian claims that up to 10 Arab fighters had been among the terrorists were being treated with growing scepticism last night. Many hostages said they had not seen any Arabs; nor had they heard any of the gunmen speak Arabic.

Clear from this is the universal regret about the foolish abandonment of Soviet state power; fears that an all-imperialist world means nothing but endless treachery, especially to the weaker players as Russia would be; the shallowness and depravity of the pretence that Beslan had nothing to do with Russia's criminal colonial brutality in Chechnya but was the consequence of the "worldwide problem of international terrorism", — a completely idiotic, meaningless, and deliberately deceitful concept; the lying propaganda and disinformation which this disreputable Putin regime was immediately prepared to spread about its latest humiliation; the lying deception that was immediately put up to conceal the catastrophic clumsiness of the aggressive macho response Putin has always favoured; and finally the total chaos of these Russian operations once things had gone wrong, betraying a regime of the most shallow, dispirited brittleness.

Unsurprisingly, critical bourgeois realism in the West, already deeply troubled by the American Empire warmongering offensive and especially by the grotesque propaganda disasters which have accompanied the "shock and awe" blitzkrieg's ridiculous failures, is not well disposed towards this total Putin catastrophe:

The massacre places immense pressure on the Russian government to identify targets for retaliation. Here is the purpose of the terrorist, defined by Lawrence Durrell in Bitter Lemons, a classic account of the 1950s Eoka insurgency in Cyprus: "His primary objective is not battle. It is to bring down upon the community in general a reprisal for his wrongs, in the hope that fury and resentment roused by punishment meted out to the innocent will gradually swell the ranks of those from whom he will draw further recruits."

It is customary to regard such extreme counter-insurgency methods as unique to the Nazi era. However, it is worth recalling a 1966 conversation in Vietnam between Neil Sheehan of the New York Times, and America's commander General William Westmoreland. Sheehan asked Westmoreland if he was troubled by the number of Vietnamese civilians killed by indiscriminate bombing and shelling. The general answered: "Yes, Neil, it is a problem, but it does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn't it?"

Here was the ethos that made possible the My Lai massacre. When an enemy is faceless, the rage and frustration of soldiers charged with suppressing insurgency are readily vented upon the innocent. This happens constantly in Chechnya, while President Putin systematically suppresses those courageous Russian journalists who seek to expose its manifestations.

George Bush persistently abuses the word "war" to describe the task facing his own nation since 9/11, which also perpetuates a delusion that it can be addressed by firepower.

Bush also seems willing to regard all terrorists, whether Palestinian or Chechen or al-Qaida, as faces of a common phenomenon. He indulges both Ariel Sharon and Putin in any means they see fit, to suppress those who use terrorist methods.

Once the world's surge of compassion for the victims has faded a little, the challenge for any responsible government is to assess terrorism, whether that of Chechnya or Palestine or al-Qaida, without sentiment. The only questions that should matter are whether the grievances represented by a given movement receive a political as well as a military response (viz the Good Friday agreement), or whether governments persist with exclusively military policies (viz Sharon, some people in Washington whose names momentarily escape me, and Putin). The fact that what has happened in Ossetia this weekend is unspeakable does not make Putin any more likely to win his Chechen war.

Putin's Russia will never make it as a triumphant warmongering imperialist power because
a) in today's totally monopolised world, there is only room to become a tame stooge of the American Empire;
b) because even that position will become intolerably uncomfortable when real economic disaster from the system's "overproduction" crisis (see EPSR box) finally hits the planet;
c) because all neo-colonial bullying of smaller countries is facing more and more insuperable resistance everywhere, and is becoming completely unacceptable to rapidly maturing worldwide consciousness; and
d) because internal socialist-educated forces and traditions will reassert history's anti-imperialist forward march at some stage, fired up by all the above and by many many other world developments that this crisis will bring.

The small nations of the Caucasus were an endless hotbed of anti-imperialist resistance against the Tsarist Empire.

Within the egalitarian aims of the Soviet workers state, the Russian influence steadily ceased to be a major conflict-sustaining problem.

Major wars such as have totally destroyed Chechnya since Russia abandoned the egalitarian workers state itself but refused independence to smaller republics like Chechnya (unlike to the 15 major republics which made up the USSR), — butchering 250,000 Chechens including 42,000 children, and wrecking the capital Grozny, — would have kept Western anti-Soviet propaganda going for all its 73 years existence had they ever occurred, but there was never any basis for them.

Apart from some Stalin paranoid deportation vindictiveness against some Chechens accused of pro-German collaboration during the NAZI invasion of 1941-45, Chechnya and the whole Caucasus flourished not badly inside the Soviet Union. There were no national-liberation wars.

Even all Western commentators are agreeing that all the old nationalist problems begin again in earnest after 1991 and the definitive abandonment of the Soviet workers state in favour of monopoly-imperialist market forces.

And now the small Chechen nation, which once all worked only for the benefit of its own Soviet state, now can only work for foreign monopoly-capitalist oligarchs like Abramovitch, Fridman, Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky, etc, who make billions out of exploiting the workforce, and then only spend it abroad on London football clubs and palaces in Spain, etc, etc, etc.

Chechnya is bigger than the 30 smallest members of the United Nations.

Whatever one's doubts about the existing Chechen separatists and who might be behind them; and whatever one's doubts about whether the Soviet Union has really disappeared for good, and therefore should not its further break-up be resisted, — Putin's hopelessly tongue-tied opportunism leaves no choice formally:- the Chechens have the right to self-determination.

And their fanatical determination to fight and suffer for the national-liberation cause, — countered by Putin's dumb, brutal, and confused intransigence, — makes Beslan and Chechnya a Russian-imperialist tyrannical outrage until Moscow starts to see Soviet socialist sense again. Build Leninism. EPSR supporters.

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LATEST LETTERS EXCHANGE IN WEEKLY WORKER.

Gay plot

The Economic and Philosophic Science Review's Royston Bull is perfectly entitled to critique the manner of gay activist groups' participation (not counter-demo) in May's Palestine Solidarity march (Letters, May 21). The PSC, Outrage and others passionately debated the issue in the Morning Star at the time. He's also entitled to attack what he perceives as left "reformism" — radical currents, including Class War, Green Anarchist and the Spartacist League all make similar criticisms. He's even entitled to praise the "brutal" nature of the forthcoming dictatorship of the proletariat (although few will share his admiration).

But Mr Bull cannot continue to use his newsletter to peddle his mangled 1940s pop-psychology view of homosexuals. In response to the Weekly Worker's charge of homophobia, Bull dedicated nearly half of his July 20 issue to an unflattering portrayal of gay men (curiously lesbians and the transgendered appear not to figure in his equations). Credit where it's due — Bull does allow that post-revolutionary sexual expression should be a matter of personal choice, but asserts overall that:
• homosexuals display "vicious" individualism;
• homosexuals have stifled open debate on the nature of their "condition";
• homosexuals have exaggerated their historical and social presence;
• professional homosexuals are operating an "old boys club" in the corridors of power;
• homosexuality itself is a ruling class-degenerate state, linked to the decadence of late capitalism.

These are serious allegations — indeed they amount to the presence of a homosexual conspiracy, which is more than either the National Front or the BNP claim. Curiously though, scant evidence is offered by Mr Bull to back up his claims. The tale of a paedophile allegedly protected by a council's gay equality policy, and insinuations from Private Eye magazine and outlandish TV programme Bo Selecta do not a watertight argument make. Indeed they point to utter desperation.

The Weekly Worker (pot-smoking, homosexual Zionists, according to the EPSR, so heaven alone knows what he makes of the Alliance for Workers' Liberty!) should invite Bull to present his evidence for this interpretation of human sexuality. He has the chance to persuade the rest of the left that we were wrong to move away from what a previous correspondent described as the "pseudo-Freudian" explanations of gays (Letters, July 14).

Or maybe it's just that the EPSR is now supreme in its isolation, at war with every other current of left thought, and destined to languish in obscurity, screaming deranged abuse to a non-existent readership.

Sion Griffiths Aberystwyth

Sion Griffiths avoids the real challenge to the 'personal' politics of the fake-'left' raised by the Economic and Philosophic Science Review (Letters, August 5).

This accuses single-issue reformism (feminism, black nationalism, gay rights, etc) in the very first paragraph of being "the last refuge of anti-communism, which will provide history with the most reactionary, last-ditch defenders of the monopoly-imperialist 'free world' system in its final counter-revolutionary debacles. When the personal became the political, it was endless variants of extreme individualist philosophy which were being deliberately aggressively promoted ...So-called 'human rights' became more successful than ever as a battering ram for the western imperialist controllers' non-stop worldwide propaganda priority to wipe out communism."

The EPSR's point was made in a letter to the Weekly Worker. "Dream on if you think that reforms have banished racism, or reduced violence, or made for happier families, or replaced drugs and booze for discontented youth, or taught society to really value all people equally ... or improved the environment, or stopped international imperialist tyranny" (July 22).

It is typical of the subjective politics now dominant that Sion Griffiths ignores this crisis of the 'left' in order to make a venomous personal attack because of only seeing some insult to homosexuality in the EPSR piece. But there is no insult; and the real phenomenon of homosexuality itself as such is not the issue. The cynical individualist nihilism of some gay politics (and many other single-issue philosophies) is the problem, typified by the sabotage of the Palestinian march to air the personal feelings of hurt homosexuals.

Gays should feel offended and intimidated by continued barbaric backwardness of international capitalist society on these questions, but a revolutionary world of workers' states is the only long-term guarantee of real human enlightenment on all the rotten discriminations still prevalent in an insecure, class-divided society. Have you checked out your school playground insults lately?

But Sion Griffiths can only make jeering jokes about proletarian dictatorship, typical of current 'left' ignorance about, and hostility to, the real, historic-making achievements of the world's workers-state experiences so far, despite their inevitably "brutal" realities too (as referred to, neither in praise nor admiration). And this single-issue anti-communism will last throughout the whole dying counter-revolutionary era of 'free world' degeneration.

All the other issues about 'politically correct" crassness on gay questions, and doubts about the phenomenon continuing when society is no longer macho-dominated from class or hierarchical struggle, can be debated academically; but wouldn't they be best postponed in favour of the world seeing its way to a total Palestinian victor, over the whole post-1945 Jewish/imperialist colonisation attempt, one unavoidable key on the way to the world revolution?

Another major EPSR point which Sion Griffiths managed to completely ignore in order to pursue personal 'homophobic' venom.

Royston Bull

 

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