Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.V.I.Lenin
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
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e-mail: contact@epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk                         www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk www.epsr.org (repeat site)
No 1313     6 May 2007                                                                                                                            25p
Sales mtng deferred to 26th May as agreed. Same venue - West.  Pls accumulate recpts.

Inconsequential Scottish and local elections reflect deepening cynicism to all parliamentary lies.  The reality of warmongering capitalism is class dictatorship becoming ever more openly fascist as the crisis of the system pushes it ever further towards destructive Third World War to “solve” its problems.  Worldwide rising tide of anti-imperialism paralyses the West in defeat but it will be driven further into war.  The need for revolutionary theory and leadership grows ever more urgent 

The fragmentary, and inconsequential Scottish, Irish and local elections further collapse the bourgeois democratic parliamentary fraud as imperialism’s desperate crisis deepens, and the impact of its huge setbacks in the vicious Iraq and Afghanistan wars grow ever more serious.
The most important tool for the old way of ruling by the ruling class – the pretence that democracy changes anything – is virtually dead in the water in Britain – and a huge historical vacuum is growing.
It will be filled only by continuing descent into the increasingly overt dictatorial fascistisation of society, tearing up “freedoms” and rights and imposing non-stop surveillance to suppress dissent, so that the bourgeoisie can push on into the warmongering chaos they need to try and avoid the oncoming slump disaster that festering world capitalist contradictions make inevitable (see Marxist economic quotes p6).
Or it can be filled by revolutionary politics to finally overturn and end for good this corrupt, de-humanising and degenerate system. 
The desperate attempts by panicky bourgeois press commentators to pretend for a little while longer that the election game matters, by hailing a “breakthrough” for Scottish nationalism, were immediately undermined by  the SNP leadership of the supposed “historic moment”. Just one thing was clear it said, New Labour had resoundingly lost.
Exactly so, and nothing more.    
Every other part of the bourgeois democracy lie also lost - including the SNP and the spectrum of “Scottish socialist” around Tommy Sheridan, and other fake-”lefts”, whose “radical left” reformism has utterly failed to warn the working class at all about the realities of the capitalist crisis and its unstoppable slide to world war. (This Trotskyite anti-communism has simply  bolstered, with a “left” cover, the expensive “Scottish parliament” attempt to spin bourgeois democracy illusions a little further.)  
As the EPSR has always maintained, all opportunist posturing will be devastatingly exposed, along with the parliamentary lie, once the real depths of capitalist crisis start to be felt in the working class.
The Scottish “socialist” joke has already fallen apart into bitter personalised squabbling, mudslinging and accusations of betrayal, reflecting the utterly politically opportunist nature of its trickery on the working class, tying it to limited illusions of “left reformist” movement and “change for the better” within the capitalist parliamentary framework and the nonsense of a “separate” way for the Scottish working class.
What will survive is only Marxist-Leninist scientific struggle to understand the truth about the enormous historic crisis of the 800 year old capitalist system now unravelling and the need for the working class to take it on in revolutionary struggle.
Capitalism is plunging into crisis mayhem, already four or five wars along its destructive path, in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and now Somalia, and with plenty more being lined up, with screaming demonisation and Goebbels justification Big Lies against Iran, Burma, the Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Venezuela, and other “axis of evil” victims as well as such permanent hate targets as  Cuba and even China. 
The terrified ruling class sees this “shock and awe” path as the only way through the oncoming overproduction slump collapse of the entire profit system – both to suppress growing mass revolt and to deal with the massive rival imperialist challenges for collapsing markets which is the driving force of crisis. 
New Labour is right in the middle of this imperialist warmongering alongside dominant US imperialism, carrying through for the ossified British ruling class what it has been unable to do for itself (after disastrous  Thatcherism).
But it is going disastrously wrong as the arrogant imperialist onslaught runs into ever growing resistance in the Middle East and more.
The entire expensively-housed parliamentary racket, like the laughable 2005 general election before it, is completely hollow. Turnout was no more than 50% on average in Scotland, and even less in Wales and the local authorities, and the voting such as it was, universally negative. That is 50% of those who are registered, so even less of the population notionally entitled to vote. Percentages going to any of the parties were minuscule. 
Almost certainly only petty bourgeois class attitudes, desperate to bolster up their illusions in the “stability” and “normality” of capitalism, even as the unnerving sense of crisis deepens all around,  bother voting anyway and any remainder did so only out of hostility. Much of the working class as always simply stayed away, suspicious and correctly convinced that the whole mechanism is a monstrous confidence trick run by opportunists and shysters, and incapable of reflecting any of their wishes and needs, let alone doing anything about them. 
“New” Labour’s spin trickery, a last ditch effort to keep the discredited parliamentary wool pulled over the working class’s eyes, is in deep trouble, now collapsing utterly in even the Scottish stronghold where a radical working class tradition had partly maintained its Labour loyalties a little longer than England. 
All others tied to the New Labour lies and glitzy “political correctness” posturing fraudulence such as the Lib-Dems, in a pact since 1999, were resoundingly hammered too. 
Least of all did the Scottish Nationalists, with an inconsequential “majority” of one, actually “win”; or did the silly neo-Blairite “green” Tory public relations trick actually “win”.  
Blairism, and its increasingly obvious neo-Mosleyite fascist agenda, is now universally hated and derided (except by some diehard or deluded petty bourgeoisie). 
The shallow opportunism of the backbiting and squabbling Labourites, believing that they can play a “new leader” card to get out of their hole will prove an enormous zero too, however much “unity” is pretended by the Reid’s resignation or “support” of the ultra-Blairites for Gordon Brown.   
A  Brown leadership will be no different in essence, running the same outrageous Goebbels lie-machine, declaring in best Alice-in-Wonderland Humpty-Dumpty style that declarations and manifestos and statistics can mean whatever you want them to mean; that the degenerating realities of the worsening drug-profiteer dependent National Health Service, regimented and elitist school education, unaffordable and increasingly scarce housing, declining social provision, worsening local authority services, ever rising taxes and ever diminishing benefits, and the plunder and bankruptcy of state and private pensions leaving most workers now completely unprovided for, somehow represent a “never had it so good” world; and that realities experienced on the ground by ordinary people simply don’t exist. 
All challenges to this from the increasingly stressed, debt-ridden house-inflation buffeted overworked normal population, beset by increasingly draconian “pull-your-socks-up” targets and examinations and tests, and disciplined and punished by ASBO’s and eviction orders and small-minded “politically correct” restrictions, will be ignored or turned back on them with in-your-face outright lies delivered with unctuous practised smoothness and condescension.
The failings and disasters of the capitalist system itself will continue to be laden right back on the working class with a petty blame culture that declares every societal collapse symptom, increase in crime, despairing turn to drugs, failure to cope, expression of ignorance etc etc etc to be fault of the working class itself for which individuals  should be punished and disciplined, directly or via parents or relatives or communities –exactly as Blair has blamed the “black” community with casual racism and class contempt for gun crime.
Shootings in the big cities are not the fault of capitalism and imposition of ever worsening alienation, despair  and futility on especially the youth and marginalised minority sections of the populations, fed nothing but relentless Hollywood glorification of shallow consumerism and violence and whose only lessons in life are of the corrupt get-rich-quick dirty dealing of the bourgeoisie itself, but their own fault they are sneeringly told. At least more thoughtful part of the intelligentsia do not buy this any more:

Tony Blair’s knee-jerk response to the recent murders of youths in British cities (Blair blames spate of murders on black culture, April 12) is once again the rhetoric of populist authoritarianism. There is little or no attempt to grasp the wider social and economic conditions that have led to such “gang culture”, which is common in all British cities and not peculiar to black communities. Blair’s speech was a paean to the wonders of New Labour’s regeneration of British cities. But the very processes that have seen the transformation of the cities have also intensified the inequalities in British life, in particular among the already disadvantaged. As the social structure of Britain becomes more and more like that of the US, so its social problems resemble those of American cities. Just as in the US there has been the wholesale criminalisation and incarceration of young black males, so too this is happening in Britain, as Patricia Scotland has indicated to the home affairs select committee. The failure to deal with the systematic exclusion of too many young black males in British society lies firmly at the door of this government.
Dr Richard Smith
Lecturer in sociology, Royal Holloway College, University of London

The next generation of knife killers are currently at primary school - black, white or otherwise. Addressing the problems with adult weapons - whether it be mandatory sentencing or more police initiatives - is not going to get to the root of the problem. Nor is blaming it on a generalised and misrepresented view of black culture. What the government needs to do is increase the resources available for primary schools to work with vulnerable children who are the victims of both social and emotional deprivation, or worse, and support them as they find ways of dealing with their destructive and violent feelings. If they are left to fend for themselves we will continue to have generations of children looking for identity and family in the form of gangs, where all their anger and desolation can be projected on to others through violence and killings. Sure, we need to tackle the physical manifestations of social deprivation, but ignoring the emotional impacts will have a heavy price.
R Macleod
School counsellor, London

What will change? Brown declares with unblinking mendacity, credit for the moribund British “economy” achieving “ten years of solid growth”. What a fabulous misrepresentation. 
The truth is that its precarious and wobbly path through the cutthroat imperialist world trading order – already dramatically out-competed by more efficient capital across the planet, large and small, – has been sustained only by crawling up the arse of the most reactionary wing of US imperialism, handing all key decisions to the bourgeois bankers anyway, running up unprecedented public and private debt (now £s one and a half trillion), and selling off every item of value to PFI profiteers, buying back the same hospitals, airports and everything else “on the never-never”, loading the future with an ever growing debt burden, ten times value, to maintain vital services.
And all that has come only because of the even more insane burst of dollar printing and war spending insanity used by US imperialism to stretch the inflationary world capitalist structure to more distorted levels than ever before – utterly unsustainably.
To ride this credit madness New Labour has sold its soul to every fat-cat, carpet-bagging, plundering capitalist “oligarch”, huckster billionaire and finance shark on the planet, with ever more lubricating tax free residency deals to get them to bring their finances into London, fearful, in true Third World offshore banking style, that  they will leave again when the “easy money” runs out.
The hot money culture has force grown the “rentier capitalism” first observed by Engels and Lenin, where the initial service role of finance and banking has completely consumed the once-productive side of manufacturing capitalism like some ghastly Dr Who monster. All that is left is a massive layer of parasitical bourgeois “coupon clippers” with not a single useful productive function except to channel the flow of ever expanding “surplus” capital and mountains of paper credit through their hands, siphoning off enormous “commissions” and fat “consultancy fees”, paid to each other in grotesquely inflated salaries and “bonuses”, like the incredible £9bn  for Christmas in the City.
The massive unfairness and inequality of the winners and losers capitalist system (with the working class guaranteed to be the losers because of the huge class disadvantages and deprivation it faces from day one of being born) has reached new levels of obscenity. 
But things have gone much further than in the early 20th century. Now the British economy is one of the most distorted on the planet, almost totally dependent on its misnamed “earnings” from the huge streams of world capital running through London, a transient and highly vulnerable source of funds which can topple over in a second.
The real world of actual production is shot to pieces, agricultural infrastructure driven into the ground by profiteering monopolies and what little industrial base is left either owned by foreign capital or concentrated on the anti-human destructiveness of the advanced arms industry   
Layers of the petty bourgeois “service industry” hang around the City’s table legs to catch what morsels they can, dependent on New Labour’s corrupt toadying and back-scratching facilitation “deals” with the bourgeoisie to keep it going,  handing out coveted “honours” which the bourgeoisie so crave, and covering up bribery and corruption on a massive scale.  
So smelly has all this become that the bourgeois state itself has been driven to mount at least a show of investigating the “cash for honours” racketeering and influence peddling, despite it being a routine part of the freemasonry and “clubbing” of the capitalist class conspiracy, whatever specific allegations should or should not be “proven” by the special interests of the ruling class state forces.)  
Sections of the international bourgeoisie have been driven to complain:

US officials made a formal protest to the Foreign Office over Britain’s decision to drop an inquiry into allegations that BAE Systems had bribed Saudi royals.
The Foreign Office confirmed today that the verbal protest was made by a US embassy official at a meeting at the department in January.
The protest came after the Serious Fraud Office’s investigation into corruption allegations against the British firm was controversially halted by the British government in December last year.
Ministers cited national security concerns over the possibility that Saudi Arabia would not cooperate on security.
Today a Foreign Office spokesman said that the US protest in January was a reiteration of concerns that had been made at a meeting of an anti-bribery working group at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) a few days earlier.
The spokesman said: “The protest was done as an aside by a meeting. It was at a low level.”
He said that similar protests were routinely exchanged at such meetings.
The OECD has criticised the decision to halt the inquiry.
The SFO had been examining claims that BAE - the UK’s largest defence contractor - was operating a £60m slush fund providing luxury holidays and goods for senior Saudis as sweeteners to secure deals.
The claims related to contracts that were part of the Al-Yamamah arms deal in the 1980s that involved BAE supplying Tornado fighter jets and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia, which paid the British government with oil.

These aggressive diplomatic shots come from no great moral principles either, rather revealing the tensions of brewing international trade war by objecting to the  British stealing a march in the desperate fight for  lucrative arms deals, giving away too much about the blatant bribery and corruption which all bourgeoisies use to fight their corner and manipulate the network of stooge reactionary regimes worldwide. The dirty games get even murkier:
  
The UK is covertly trying to oust the head of the world’s main anti-bribery watchdog to prevent criticism of ministers and Britain’s biggest arms company, BAE, the Guardian has learned.
The effort to remove Mark Pieth comes as his organisation has stepped up its investigation into the British government’s decision to kill off a major inquiry into allegations that BAE paid massive bribes to land Saudi arms deals.
British diplomats are seeking to remove Professor Pieth, a Swiss legal expert who chairs the anti-corruption watchdog of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), claiming he is too outspoken.
At the OECD meeting in Paris last month, British officials tried to stop Prof Pieth addressing a press conference at which he announced his agency was to conduct a formal inquiry into the government’s decision to terminate the BAE investigation. They then privately briefed other diplomats involved with the OECD, saying he should be removed.
When that failed, the campaign against him continued unabated with further back-channel complaints.
But concern about the conduct of the British diplomats filtered back to Prof Pieth, who confirmed yesterday that he was aware of the attempts to remove him. “I am aware that the British ambassador was asking at the time for action to be taken against me,” he said.
Prof Pieth refused to elaborate, but he is understood to be privately furious at the way he has been bad-mouthed.
A source at the OECD added: “The UK’s representatives were sent to Paris to emasculate the [watchdog] and ensure they did not say anything publicly. They failed and were not pleased. They behaved in a manner that would not have been out of place in a boxing ring.”
The director general of the OECD, Angel Gurría, also believes the UK is encouraging a smear campaign against him. Last Friday he was accused in a British magazine of giving a job to his daughter, getting free football tickets, and spending €733,000 (£500,000) to refurbish his Paris flat in what was described as “the poshest bit of the swanky 16th arrondissement”.
Following the allegations, Mr Gurría issued a combative statement, saying that he was under UK media attack by “innuendo, gossip and partial truths”.
“It is no surprise that this attack occurs at this time,” he added.
Britain’s ambassador to the OECD, David Lyscom, admitted yesterday that he had talked off the record to the Economist but added: “The UK had absolutely nothing to do with planting the story.”
The UK partly controls OECD purse-strings, and also has the power to veto Prof Pieth’s reappointment, due next January.

This “genteel” version of mafia-style manipulation is nothing compared to the hostilities and hatreds that will eventually erupt between the big imperialists as the dollar credit propped international capitalist trading system finally implodes into catastrophic slump turmoil (which only the EPSR has consistently and continuously warned the working class about, despite the shallow derision and misplaced mockery of the entire shallow brained fake-”left” (now beginning to try and catch up)). 
Exactly the same jostling was apparent in the run up of the last great capitalist crises and their eventual explosion into the shattering horrors of two world wars, ended only by the revolutionary determination and sacrifice of the working class, particularly in Russia. 
The election of “hard man” racist Sarkozy in France, and the poacher-turned-gamekeeper East German Angela Merkel to push speed up and discipline onto the working class and cut back welfare, are signs of the stripping to the waist being done by all the bourgeoisies, to try urgently to trim themselves up for forthcoming all-out conflict.
But the French presidential election was as much of a fraud as anything in Britain offering no real choice except petty bourgeois sub-fascist anti-immigrant scapegoating by the jumped up Hungarian anti-communist (an immigrant himself) or the anodyne and pointless platitudes of “socialist” nationalist Segolene Royal, challenging nothing real about the capitalist agenda, and half-heartedly voted for only to block the right-winger. 
The explosions of revolt in the suburbs straight afterwards were a telling working class “bras d’honneur” even if their anarchic destructiveness is yet not mature enough to offer a coherent revolutionary answer to the foulness being promised, and has no world historic Marxist Leninist perspective to build a leadership. 
The devastating blitzings imposed by the major US imperialism in the Middle East are a much stronger signal too of the warmongering “solution” envisaged by imperialism to deal with the huge capital overproduction “surpluses”. 
The monopoly dominance of Washington has long been plotting to get in first, to demonstrate to the world its ruthless capacity to intimidate and  destroy, not just upstart rebelliousness in the Third World (which Saddam, among many others had been forced to ride, despite his origins as an imperialist stooge, anti-communism tool) but any challenges to its rule, especially including the major bourgeois rivals.
Its desperation is multiplied a thousandfold with the relentless increase of the printed worthless dollar deficits it has run up world wide for six decades to maintain its tyrannical exploitation via a network of bribed fascist stooges and bullying coup interventions. 
There is no possible way any of this can ever be paid back, or the capitalist system’s “contracts” be honoured so the US ruling order has simply declared now that the rest of the world can go whistle for its real value – and face a blitzing nightmare if it does not like it.
British imperialism has been right in behind, even more exposed to the potential disasters and terrified of the oncoming slump.
But even more than the explosive French banlieue, the world’s masses are no longer willing to tolerate this endless tyranny and exploitation as the escalating recruitment into Middle Eastern anti-imperialism and insurgency has underlined, rocking imperialism backwards.
The quagmire of Iraq and Afghanistan grow endlessly worse, pushing more and more foul revelations to the surface:
One in 10 of the US soldiers in Iraq mistreats civilians or damages their property, according to a survey published by the Pentagon last night. The report said the mental health of soldiers and marines deteriorated significantly as a result of extended or multiple deployments.
The study confirms the extent to which the US military is being strained by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The survey into the mental health of the soldiers and marines was requested by US commanders in Iraq and carried out by the office of the surgeon-general in August and October, with 1,300 soldiers and 450 marines interviewed.
The report says: “Approximately 10% of soldiers and marines report mistreating non-combatants (damaged/destroyed Iraqi property when not necessary or hit/kicked a non-combatant when not necessary).
“Soldiers that have high levels of anger, experienced high levels of combat, or screened positive for a mental health problem were nearly twice as likely to mistreat non-combatants as those who had low levels of anger or combat or screened negative for a mental health problem.”
The report also found that fewer than half of all soldiers and marines would report a team member for unethical behaviour, and more than one-third believed torture should be allowed to save the life of a fellow soldier or marine.
There are about 150,000 US troops in Iraq. Many have been complaining in emails and blogs about President George Bush’s decision this year to extend deployment from one year to 15 months as part of an attempt to pacify Baghdad and Anbar province.
Reacting to the ban, soldiers said that the real reason for the curb was their negative comments about the war, including scepticism about Mr Bush’s claims about progress.
*****
Iraqi civilians are experiencing “immense suffering” because of a “disastrous” security situation, deepening poverty and a worsening humanitarian crisis, according to a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
The ICRC also sees no sign that the American-led security “surge” in Baghdad is bringing relief to the capital, while hospitals struggle to cope with mass casualties as malnutrition as well as power and water shortages become more frequent across the country.
“The suffering Iraqi men, women and children are enduring today is unbearable and unacceptable,” Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the organisation, said at the group’s Geneva headquarters.
The report, Civilians without Protection, provides a grim snapshot of the situation in Iraq but will carry special weight thanks to the ICRC’s reputation as the scrupulously neutral “silent service” of international humanitarian work. It maintains a presence in Baghdad despite the bombing of its offices in 2003, and works closely with the Iraqi Red Crescent.
The report says that more than 100,000 families have been forced to leave their homes in the past year because of the shootings, bombings, abductions, murders and military operations.
“Every day dozens of people are killed and many more wounded,” it says. “The plight of Iraqi civilians is a daily reminder of the fact that there has long been a failure to respect their lives and dignity.”
Saad, a humanitarian worker, is quoted as recalling the scene after a bomb blast: “I saw a four-year-old boy sitting beside his mother’s body, which had been decapitated by the explosion. He was talking to her, asking her what had happened.”
The report quotes a woman as saying: “If there’s anything anybody could do that would really help us, it would be to help collect the bodies that line the streets in front of our homes every morning and that we find nobody dares touch or remove.” It was “simply unbearable” to face them every morning on the way to school.
Medical services are in dire straits, with many health workers fleeing the country after the deaths or abductions of colleagues. 
*****
six out of eight projects the Bush administration claimed to be a success were falling apart, throwing doubts over the long-term viability of much of the $30bn (£15bn) programme.
The report and finds serious failures and neglect at the heart of the reconstruction plan. Stuart Bowen, the head of the office of special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says: “These first inspections indicate that the concerns ... about the Iraqis sustaining our investments in these projects are valid.”
The inspectors found serious plumbing and electrical failures, looting, and expensive equipment lying idle, either because staff did not know how to use it or those that did were no longer employed.
Of the eight projects which had been declared a success, some only six months before the inspection took place, six were now no longer working properly. The inspectors expressed concern at the speed of deterioration and questioned whether the projects would survive.
The office of the special inspector general was set up by Congress to monitor reconstruction projects after reports of widescale waste of funds. It produces quarterly updates, most of which have been scathing about the lack of progress...fraud, waste and abuse of funds... 
At a recruiting centre in Hilla, south of Baghdad, inspectors found bathrooms buckled by what appeared to be blocked drains and faulty wiring. The inspectors said the centre had been built to specification but its life would be significantly shortened if the problems were left unresolved.
The latest report blames the problems not on the insurgents but mainly on poor maintenance. Part of the responsibility lay with the Iraqis and part with the US for failing to include funding for maintenance, such as training and spare parts.
At the airport, critical for maintaining the US presence in Baghdad, the inspectors found that while $11.8m had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6m worth were no longer functioning.
Inspectors found numerous problems on a visit to a $5.2m special forces barracks in Baghdad, completed by the US army corps of engineers in September 2005. The problems related to faulty plumbing throughout the buildings. Four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer working.
At a maternity and children’s hospital in Irbil, in the north of the country, inspectors found a sewer system that was occasionally clogged. Inspectors saw needles, bandages and other medical waste in the sewer system and septic tank. A new incinerator to dispose of such waste was not in use. The report says the inspectors found this was “because those initially trained to operate the incinerator were no longer employed at the hospital.”
*****
His face is cut, bruised and swollen, the intubation tubes used to try to save his life still in place in his mouth. Yesterday, a mortuary picture of the Iraqi hotel worker Baha Mousa, who died after being in the custody of British soldiers, was released for the first time.
It was accompanied by a statement from his father, Daoud, a colonel in the Basra police force, who had hoped to travel to Britain for a House of Lords hearing but was prevented from doing so because of “visa issues”.
He said: “When I saw the corpse I burst into tears and I still cannot bear to think about what I saw. I was horrified to see that my son had been severely beaten and his body was literally covered in blood and bruises ... He had a badly broken nose. There was blood coming from his nose and mouth. The skin on one side of his face had been torn away to reveal the flesh beneath. There were severe patches of bruising over all of his body. The skin on his wrists had been torn off and the skin on his forehead torn away and there was no skin under his eyes either.”
Mr Mousa, a 26-year-old hotel worker, was detained in 2003, along with a number of other Iraqis, by members of the Queens Lancashire Regiment. He received 93 injuries and died of his injuries. Yesterday, Phil Shiner, a lawyer representing his family, claimed that not only had he been hooded, bound and held in a stress position but he had been starved for two days by his captors.
Mr Shiner explained that he had requested the photographs following the completion of a court martial of British soldiers accused of mistreating the Iraqis. Until now, the images have been subject to a court order and were seen only by the judge, the barristers and the military panel sitting in judgement on the accused.
Mr Shiner also obtained an until now restricted medical report by an RAF forensic pathologist into Mr Mousa’s death which says: “The multiplicity of injuries and their widespread distribution is consistent with a systematic beating taking place over a period... The injuries are all consistent with the history that he could have been struggling on the floor of the detention centre. The fact that there is a mixture of grazes and bruises is indicative of a mixture of glancing blows against a firm object and directly applied force with blunt object.”
Mr Shiner said he was releasing the pictures because questions needed to be answered about who knew what was going on, and the extent of the use of abusive techniques. Seven soldiers were acquitted in March after Mr Mousa’s death. Another, Corporal Donald Payne, 35, of the QLR, admitted the war crime of treating a number of Iraqis in his custody inhumanely. He became the first British convicted war criminal and is awaiting sentencing.
After listening to the evidence, the judge, Mr Justice McKinnon, felt there had been a cover-up. He said: “None of those soldiers has been charged with any offence, simply because there is no evidence against them as a result of a more or less obvious closing of ranks.” All of the soldiers insisted that they could not remember what happened.
Mr Shiner said: “Everyone who pleaded not guilty has been found not guilty. No one in command has been called to account. The video played in the court martial makes it very clear that unless you were stone deaf, if you were on that base you knew what was going on. We are talking here about torture. Not some nuanced degrading of treatment. We are talking about techniques that were banned by the Heath government in 1972: hooding, sleep deprivation, stressing, food deprivation and white noise.”
...Shami Chakrabarti, director of the human rights charity Liberty, said the aim was to concentrate on systematic issues “rather than on whether one particular young soldier is guilty of misbehaving or not”. She said: “This is not about kicking the boys in Iraq. This is about holding the government at the highest level to accountability.”

The disaster is now so thoroughgoing that quite astoundingly even senior sections of the bourgeois establishment have once again called for an end, conceding on the way the right of the insurgents to struggle:

A retired British army general says Iraq’s insurgents are justified in opposing the occupation, arguing that the US and its allies should “admit defeat” and leave Iraq before more soldiers are killed.
General Sir Michael Rose told the BBC’s Newsnight programme: “It is the soldiers who have been telling me from the frontline that the war they have been fighting is a hopeless war, that they cannot possibly win it and the sooner we start talking politics and not military solutions, the sooner they will come home and their lives will be preserved.”
Asked if that meant admitting defeat, the general replied: “Of course we have to admit defeat. The British admitted defeat in north America and the catastrophes that were predicted at the time never happened.
“The catastrophes that were predicted after Vietnam never happened. The same thing will occur after we leave Iraq.”
General Rose is a former SAS commander and head of UN forces in Bosnia. Last year, he called for Tony Blair to be impeached for going to war on “false pretences”. He has written a book, entitled Washington’s War, which compares the Iraqi rebels to George Washington’s irregular forces in the American war of independence.
When he was asked if he thought the Iraqi insurgents were right to try to force the US-led coalition out, he replied: “Yes I do. As Lord Chatham [the politician William Pitt, the Elder, who, in the second half of the 18th century called for a cessation of hostilities in the colonies and favoured American resistance to the British Stamp Act] said, ‘if I was an American - as I am an Englishman - as long as one Englishman remained on American native soil, I would never, never, never lay down my arms’. The Iraqi insurgents feel exactly the same way. I don’t excuse them for some of the terrible things they do, but I do understand why they are resisting the Americans.”
Rose’s straight-backed admission of the justice of the insurgency (which contrasts favourably with the detestable and craven “condemnations” of the mealy-mouthed fake-“lefts” ever since 9/11) does not emerge from some sudden bourgeois sense of “fairness” but is driven out by precisely the defeat he concedes in Iraq and more generally the litany of disasters for imperialism throughout the planet as its system runs into ever greater historic contradictions. And his perspective for a pullout has everything to do with what one wing of the establishment sees as the best strategy for “hanging on to what we have got” – not some historic admission that the long piratical history of imperialism has been a monstrous tyranny of barbaric plundering of the world’s resources and enslavement of its multitudes for the enrichment the tiny ruling class, which deserves turning over for good.
His delusion is that somehow things could be handled right, allowing imperialism to continue its centuries long world dominance by simply accommodating to the Iraqi national bourgeoisie.
It contains all sorts of hints of behind the scenes establishment discontent which could see yet extraordinary developments if the election chaos and disintegration continues to produce the ever more unsatisfactory and fragmented mess that the Scottish elections are pointing to, with even military coups and the like not ruled out by a bourgeoisie becoming increasingly despairing for its future. 
But the onslaught on Iraq was not some “awful mistake”, or incompetence by the wrong people perhaps, or a mess that imperialism has got into but from which it should now extricate itself. It is part of a pattern of warmongering being driven out of the imperialist system by its desperate crisis.
Imperialism is out of time, an 800 year old social and economic order which has worked through what development it can for human society and which is now weighted down with   contradictions which are overripe for resolution, in the only way possible, the complete revolutionary transformation of society.
The world can only go forwards by eliminating parasitic private ownership and its anarchic competitive destructiveness, to build a world level planned economy of cooperation and rational Marxist science. 
The problem goes far deeper than Vietnam, which though it was, and continues to be, a shattering unprecedented defeat for the imperialist system, from which its morale has never fully recovered, was containable. The failure to stop the Vietnam masses still managed to inflict sufficient damage on a no longer revolutionary revisionist world leadership to slow up further communist advance, at a time when the imperialist crisis momentum had not yet hit the buffers. 
But conditions have moved on. The desperate printing of dollars which financed the Vietnam war (leading to Nixon’s famous detachment of the dollar from the gold standard) reflects an irrevocable poisoning of the world finance system with inflationary mountains of credit, feeding the  relentless accumulation of more and more “surplus” capital in the world, all seeking profitable investment and unable to find it. The continued steady piling up the intractable economic  difficulties for imperialism now has no other way out of its difficulties than escalated warmongering all the way to fullscale World War Three. 
Its demented fascist thrashing around has created, and is rapidly recruiting on an ever larger scale,  an insurgency which is not limited to Iraq and Afghanistan but is a worldwide upheaval of deep running and ever maturing hatred for the 800 years old and now completely inappropriate imperialist system. 
In its raw early forms this rising struggle takes multiple forms, tied to local  cultural realities, and without yet the Marxist leadership and scientific struggle which alone can guide the full development of revolutionary transformation needed by mankind. But for all the limitations and sometimes barmy notions of ostensibly religious leaderships, or South American macho, or Maoism which are current, they cannot be “condemned” as the Trots do as “reactionary”. The job is to fight for clearer understanding that can win the masses to scientific leadership. 
Above all a constant fight is required against the continuing soft headed delusions of Stalinist revisionism which have so confused the 60 years of post-war struggle with disastrous perspectives of “the peaceful road”, destroying mass support for Marxism throughout the Middle East for example (so that it turns instead to “Islamic radicalism” as substitute), and still leaving the South American working class vulnerable in the “democratic” Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela etc. South America’s “left” leaderships like Lula in Brazil are posturing reformist demagogues doing nothing to seriously remove capitalism; at best the anti-imperialist left-nationalism of Chávez does not go far enough, and as the Bolivians under Evo Morales are discovering, the bourgeoisie will endlessly organise counter-revolution while it exists as a class: 

But his pledge to redistribute land and resources in a country where seven percent of the population own ninety per cent of the land has rapidly led to confrontation between whites and indigenous groups.
(Channel Four) Reporter Hamida Ghafour and producer Ed Watts begin their journey in Cochabamba, the centre of the country and the dividing line behind the two competing cultures: white descendants of Spanish colonialists and indigenous Bolivian tribes.
More than 2,000 police officers and soldiers are stationed in the town following a demonstration by indigenous groups against the regional governor alleged to be biased against them. One local claims that a peaceful protest turned into a street battle when police allowed white militants to descend on the demonstrators. An indigenous farmer was killed and a white teenager strangled, slashed with machete and then left hanging in the street.
The team visit the teenager’s family. They tell Ghafour that the whole family were out on the streets because they were angry that so many indigenous people were marching through their city. They say that the President is only interested in looking after the indigenous peoples and is dividing the country.
Ghafour and Watts move on to El Alto, the slum district of La Paz which is home to 800,000 indigenous Bolivians and a power base for President Morales. Javier Limanche, President of the Residents’ Association tells them that now the indigenous groups finally have power they want their share of the country’s natural resources. And he threatens violence if the whites who control these resources stand in their way. The foreigners - as he calls them - will have to be kicked out.
This is no idle threat. In Achicaci, the team meet members of the Ponchos Rojos - the armed wing of the indigenous revolutionary movement. Their leader Roberto de Quespe says that he can call on 90,000 members to defend the rights of the indigenous people against their white oppressors.
To get the other side of the story, the team travel to Santa Cruz, and the centre of the country’s oil and gas reserves. Ghafour attends a meeting of the Santa Cruz Civic Committee, a powerful political movement backed by landowners and business leaders. Their newly elected leader tells Unreported World that the people of Santa Cruz want more control over the money and resources their region produces. The movement claims to be peaceful, but Ghafour finds that a quasi-fascist movement blamed for attacks on local indigenous people is based in the same offices. A human rights activist, Dr Aldaberto Rojas, claims that the big landowners in Santa Cruz are arming themselves, hiring mercenaries and trying to provoke a civil war.
Back in the old capital, Sucre, a constituent assembly is attempting to write a new constitution for the country. But after six months, the two ethnic groups have been unable to agree on a single article.
This monstrous anti-democratic blocking has all the hallmarks of the CIA backed sabotage by the bourgeoisie over three years in Chile, culminating in the brutal torturing Pinochet coup overturning “legally elected” communist Salvador Allende in 1973 to install fascist repression with US approval. Tragically Cuban revisionism still hails Allende as a hero -  continuing illusions which leave the working class utterly vulnerable. The dogged sounding Poncho Rojos is an encouragement however – needing only to supplement its arms with the most important weapon of all – revolutionary Leninist theory and science.
Don Hoskins

Discussion polemic written at request of “Liberation” (Communist League Britain) for its March/April issue. 

Anti-immigration campaigning is certainly used as right-wing rabble rousing divide and rule tactic by the ruling class – but “open all borders” idealism and pure ‘anti-racism’ campaigning are a big diversion from revolutionary politics too. Under capitalism, all ‘reform’ demands (‘left’ or black nationalist) only add to cynicism and hypocrisy

Notions that the jingoistic British National Party and other right-wing campaigning against immigration (or the US vigilante anti-Latino border fence) can be countered by vociferous campaigning simply “against racism” and for better race relations are going to break down in futility because all relations under crisis-ridden capitalism are turning bad. 
   The same goes for the ‘Islamo-phobia’ being stoked up by the Blair poodles to Washington’s “war on terror” insanity, which feeds the general xenophobia so useful to the capitalist ruling class for diversionary purposes. 
After generations of betrayal by the class-compromising Labour party and trade union movement, racist scare-mongering, trade and job protectionism (look at the US Democrat stance on this!) are going to sway an uncomfortable number of petty-bourgeois influenced workers, and the destabilising loss of their jobs and industries won’t be stemmed by reformism anyway – which can’t stop the slump, as boom turns to bust. 
And advocating or endorsing mass immigration from the put-upon Third World to the richer imperialist countries is equally reformist nonsense. 
The poorer countries lose a mass of people who should be weighing into the struggle for revolution in their own countries, are stripped of doctors, nurses, scientists and technicians for the benefit of the Western rich and middle class, and their remittances from overseas help to buy time for counter-revolution in their home countries. It is not a matter of therefore campaigning against immigration, but it is a complete idealist mockery of Marxist politics to campaign for it, or even for mass “asylum seeking”. 
Lenin’s line was to argue for the socialist revolution in all countries, without exception. Until workers states are established, the proletariat and its party should not take a line for or against any capitalist economic mechanisms in their unending global trade war, where mass people movements are used as “safety valves” to dissipate anger in the oppressed countries; as cheap labour for the rich countries; to undercut wages in the host countries, and for fears over all this to be used to be whipped up at any moment for racist rabble-rousing.
Therefore, when the ‘left’ falls for single-issue campaigning over any of this, all that happens is that the vicious circle is being stoked up. 
And look at what unbalanced diversions from the real (racist) imperialist warmongering ensue: anti-fascist campaigners, such as UNITE, end up trying to beat back fascism by protesting at the handfuls of BNPers around the country, but completely fail to highlight that fascism springs from the very global economic disasters of capitalism, which is already seeing monstrous fascist torture and blitz savagery inflicted by Bush and Blair (a Labour prime minister) on Iraq and Afghanistan. 
The conflicting and unresolvable arguments about how to improve race relations in Britain are themselves exactly a reflection of what caused the flight into ghettoisation, separate-faith schools isolation, and northern city riots in the first place.
The ‘problems’ about which no one can find a cure or agree, lie in the dissatisfaction with life itself under the inevitable class-hierarchy tensions of the winners v losers capitalist system.
On top of the jeering resentment of the very rich by the relatively poor majority because of the injustice, unfairness, and exploitation by which the extremes of wealth are accumulated and then preserved, there must be added the unavoidable sense in the non-white population that a lot of their difficulties come from discrimination.
And the racial prejudice is very real, too, and colossally hurtful, — clearly the overwhelmingly dominant issue as far as most non-whites are concerned.
But the black nationalist response to the outrage of race-discrimination, — trying to fight it as a single issue with a ‘reform’ solution based on putting ‘moral’ pressure on racists to get them to behave differently, or legal curbs to stop them acting prejudiced, is not only doomed to frustration for as long as capitalism lasts (which automatically endlessly breeds bitterness, envy, and tribalism in all races), but will be used by racists to further justify their resentment of ‘difference’.
All ‘reformist’ ‘solutions’ to ALL Britain’s social (and ‘racial’) problems will only have this aggravating effect in the end precisely because there can be NO ‘solutions’ under capitalism, the preservation of which is the sole real purpose for the very existence of ‘reformism’ in the first place, — the never-ending pretence that the unstoppable monopoly-imperialist accumulation pattern of the ‘free markets can be legislated towards ever-increasing ‘fairness’ and ‘justice’ via ‘democratic government’.
The silliest deception of all rests in the universal make-believe that the plain sad reality that capitalist society has presented the world with in the 2000s, — race-riots in cities, ghetto-isolation of ethnic minorities, withdrawal into single-faith schools in despair of social justice any other way, retreat into black-nationalist cultural postures out of self-protection instincts, etc, etc, are all the result of ‘mistakes in policy’ which can now be put right by ‘capitalist democracy’.
But quite obviously, envy, prejudice and fear, plus serious communal conflicts when things go seriously wrong in the economy, are exactly what capitalist society is capable of, and all that capitalism is capable of.
An even bleaker picture is presented by the historical record of ‘capitalist democracy’, and by its current ‘world leadership’ preoccupations.
The Western-backed genocide of the Palestinian nation in order to complete the handing over of the Palestinian homeland to the Western Zionist-imperialist leadership of world Jewry to build a ‘national home’ for the faith-linked freemasonry of some of the Western world’s most powerful monopoly-capitalist banking and commercial dynasties is one of the most monstrous, sustained acts of official racism in all world history.
The West’s ‘liberals’, ‘democrats’, and ‘reformists’ can swear hostility to ‘racism’ in society for all they are worth, but the very existence of the Western way of life is based on its world economic domination, which in turn is totally dependent on the USA’s international military-control system for propping up armed stooges like the Zionists, and putting down any local Third World regimes which might challenge the Washington ‘New World Order’.
This planet-wide network of ruthless blitzkrieg repression is unashamedly 100% racist, by the very definitions of the First World dominating the Third World, and by the utterly merciless brutality with which the master-races put down the Earth’s untermensch.
Growing up for 7 generations or more with such a regular routine race-superiority/race-inferiority background to all history, how can the people of the Western imperialist countries not be steeped in prejudices, and assumptions, and hypocrisy of all kinds, concerning what real ‘justice’ there is on earth for the overwhelming majority (non-white) of mankind???? 
These fascist tyrannies against the Palestinian and Iraqi nations are happening in the West’s name right now, as criminally murderous as any racist-atrocity injustices in all history.
How can there be anything other than complete disbelief, suspicion, and mistrust in all dealings between the majority ethnic populations of the world and the minority White master-race?????
But just as bad as the petty-bourgeois white ‘reformist’ delusions that the capitalist world can be changed to one which has perfect equality and justice, are the ‘reformist’ delusions of the black-nationalist middle-class who basically just want to climb on the bandwagon of Labour or other ‘parliamentary’ opportunism, and ape their ‘party democracy’ careerist colleagues in pretending that just one more inquiry, or just one more complete new legislative change, etc, etc, will “transform race-relations in Britain”, etc.
Under capitalism, and especially facing a long period of deepening world economic crisis which will see xenophobic warmongering-chauvinism become the main policy platform for every Western power to divert the unemployed masses at home from revolution (blaming ‘abroad’ for the slump economic difficulties and trade-war disasters), the lives of most of the population will never be far from turmoil, dire insecurity, or real suffering and a vengeful sense of grievance of one kind or another.
Brought up and educated in total brainwashed political and historical ignorance, how can all Western populations possibly avoid being whipped up by racist diversions thrown into the domestic bargain.???
The whole ‘immigration’ racket is a capitalist exploitation fraud to start with, and has been for hundreds of years, shipping vast numbers of people back and forth around the globe all for the sake of economic domination and exploitation. Slave trade & anti-Third World genocide (America, Australia, etc) were the tragic human suffering at the start of this bourgeois-imperialist racket; race-riots in slump-terrified Western lands will mark its conclusion. 
The USA points the way. It has experienced more dramatic ‘civil-rights’ and anti-slavery struggles and victories, and has had more outstanding integration triumphs at the top of public life, backed by as much ‘political correctness’ as can be imagined, as any country on earth. But the racial tensions in parts of America, and the expectations of future racial strife, are more violent and bleak than at any time in US history, — driven into that volatile condition by the insanely unrealistic propaganda for the American capitalist way of life which pretends that a fabulous life for all US citizens is guaranteed now for all time by the American ‘New World Order’. 
That lying hypocritical dream will not fall apart in the most appalling civil-war bloodshed (at some time in the future) just because US global domination is based on racist-fascist tyranny, as seen above, but much more because in the international economic collapse, the imperialist bourgeoisie can only try to pass off the burdens of slump and collapse onto the working class everywhere.
Tragically, class prejudices are likely to be indistinguishable from racist prejudices for a while for many of the victims of the world slump, and it will require a massive rebuilding of an international Marxist-communist revolutionary movement to rally all spontaneous outbursts and struggles into a class war to take power to build a workers state, universally.
‘Reformists’ of all kinds, — New Labour, Black Nationalist, Lib Dems, BNP, and dozens more to come, — will be the main obstacle, — still all trying to sell to the working class the idiotic dream that the totally unstable, divisive, unfair, and unjust capitalist exploitation system can somehow be ‘reformed’ into a much happier society by this or that series of changes, major or minor.
It is garbage. If a capitalist country’s entire population was totally cloned like peas in a pod, they would still be bamboozled into taking it out on each other when things went wrong if they had been brought up in the brainwashed ignorance such as rules Western ‘democracy’ today, living a totally false economic existence based on worldwide racist exploitation and tyranny.
All American and other Western history once again proves it. Since the 19th century, every new wave of exploited immigrant labour has been systematically vilified with officially condoned racism, always ready to divide and rule the working class in case of slump and revolutionary necessity, — anti-Irish, anti-Jewish, anti-Polish, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-black, anti-Asian, anti-anything-that-goes.
Get rid of capitalism, and all need for such backward, lunatic, racist filth disappears.
The ‘race-reform’ lobby is not especially bad or stupid, but it is as misleading a fraud and diversion to the working class as any other reformist delusions. 
It disarms the working class from the crucial understanding that its historical destiny is to make the greatest revolutionary advance in the entire record of civilisation, to rid the world of class domination, by building the true democracy of workers states under the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Chris Barratt and Roy Bull

 
E P S R   BOX

Leaving the world to be run by the greed of the capitalist monopolies can never stop resulting in periodic crises where trade-war destruction MUST rule, and to which the only antidote is Revolution and a strong workers state, --- as these essentials of Marxist-Leninist SCIENCE explain.

Only the crisis events of collapsing imperialist rule interpreted in this Marxist-Leninist light will educate a mass workers party of leadership to do the necessary tasks.

The Revisionist retreat from the Soviet workers state because of crawling to shallow Western glitz and shame at their own past bureaucratic mistakes has only proved the soundness of Lenin's 'State & Revolution' science about a very long period of proletarian dictatorship being the only way for the world to see-off monopoly imperialist warmongering, now back with a vengeance.

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It is often said and written that the main point in Marx's teachings is the class struggle; but this is not true. And  from this untruth very often springs the opportunist distortion of Marxism, its falsification in such a way as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the doctrine of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and generally speaking it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognise only the class struggle are not yet Marxists;  they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a practical issue, not only all the opportunists and reformists, but all the "Kautskyites" (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgeois democrats who repudiate the dictatorship of the proletariat. V.I.Lenin

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"The last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit." (Capital. Vol III. P568.)

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" For many a decade past", wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, "the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crisis a great part, not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary...they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them."

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

“Dark hand” involved in bombings
Gardaí fail to investigate 1974 bomb attack
Sinn Féin last week attempted to have the Dáil recalled during the Easter recess to debate the issue of collusion. Responding last Wednesday, 4 April to the publication of the McEntee report on the Dublin/Monaghan bomb atrocities, Sinn Féin Dáil leader Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin TD called on Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to recall the Dáil to allow time for a full and open debate on collusion.
At a press conference last week marking the publication of the McEntee report, solicitor Gerry O’Neill described the 1974 bombings as the single greatest atrocity ever perpetrated on this island.
“Thirty four people including an unborn child lost their lives in the 1974 bombings in Dublin and Monaghan.” 
“The impact of the report is breathtaking and terrifying. If this was revealed about the police force in France, the Netherlands or any other EU country I would imagine that resignations would already have been handed in” from another jurisdiction. It took until 1993 when a television station did a programme on the bombings before official interest was taken in what was the greatest mass murder in the history of the state and the singe greatest atrocity on this island.”
As legal representative for The Justice for the Forgotten Group representing the families of the victims of that atrocity O’Neill made it clear that the group took no comfort from the McEntee report and that it merely reinforced their sense of being forgotten.
In 2005 an Oireactas Committee established a commission of enquiry to look into the Garda investigations conducted at the time. While acknowledging that the report attempted to deal with the issues involved; O’Neill said the commission “has been hampered and compromised by an appalling chronicle of failures and errors on the part of our police force”.
He went on to say that the report exposed “a terrifying catalogue of systematic failures by the Gardaí. The commission was to a large extent unable to discharge its functions because of the absence of documentation. It wasn’t even able to establish why the Garda investigation was wound up prematurely. Neither could it determine what files (were missing).
“We’ve had two enquiries - the Barren and now this one, but there’s a fear of investigating the issue of collusion”, he said.
Ó Dúlacháin went on to say enquiries conducted through the Pat Finnucane centre in the Six Counties indicated a critical degree of collusion stretching through bombings in the 26 Counties.
“The failings of the 70s are no excuse for the failure to investigate the issue of collusion now”, he said.
A spokesperson for Justice for the Forgotten Paul McGuill speaking to An Phoblacht in the aftermath of the report’s publication said: “The fundamental question everyone wants answered is why was the investigation wound down so quickly and what the report tells us is that McEntee can’t answer that question because there’s no documentary evidence available to say when or why it was wound down.
“There were sloppy Garda procedures involved in terms of keeping and registering files and incompetence in terms of losing files,” he said.
McGuill also raised the issue of possible political intervention in relation to the premature termination of the investigation. While the McEntee report was taken up with the issue of the missing documents , it failed to fully tackle the issue of potential political involvement.
If there was political interference we want to know why and in what context? Was it down to intimidation or pure exasperation at the lack of co-operation from the British authorities?”, McGuill asked.
Sinn Fein’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin said: “This report exposes a massive failure on the part of the Gardaí to pursue the investigation of the Dublin and Monaghan Bombings. The only logical explanation for what took place is a cover up of collusion. Gross incompetence is not enough to explain the failure to investigate and the apparent destruction of records. The report again exposes the failure of the British authorities to cooperate with the commission established by the Oireachtas.
‘The Government must now follow through with their commitment to have a full debate on collusion in the Dáil. This debate must be full and open and on the whole issue of collusion and not limited to Dublin/Monaghan alone.
“To facilitate this I am calling on the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to recall the Dáil during the Easter Holidays. The Dáil is scheduled to rise for two weeks and there is speculation that it will only return for two days before the Taoiseach dissolves this Dáil ahead of the general election. This would not leave enough time for a proper and full debate on collusion and that is why I am calling for a sitting during the Easter Holidays.
“Earlier this month Sinn Féin published a Dáil motion on collusion that was drafted in consultation with groups such as The Pat Finucane Centre, The Justice for Eddie Fullerton Campaign, Justice for the Forgotten and Relatives for Justice. We feel this motion should form the basis for the debate in Leinster House as, if passed, this motion would ensure that follow up actions take place.
“Our motion calls on the Government to demand an inter-governmental conference with the British Government specifically dealing with the issue of collusion and truth recovery and calls for the establishment of full, public, independent, judicial inquiries into murders in this state where collusion is reasonably suspected.
‘The bottom line is that citizens in this state have been murdered by British surrogates and that puts responsibilities on this Dáil to have a full and open debate on collusion and on the Taoiseach to demand British cooperation in collusion inquiries.’

American-Irish concern over McEntee report
On behalf of the Ancient Order of Hibernians in the United States Jack Meehan has expressed concern following the publication of the McEntee Report into the Dublin/Monaghan bombings of 1974.
The organisation’s national President Jack Meehan said the investigation was at best, a disappointment but that it did make some “interesting revelations”.
“On that fateful day the Irish nation suffered an attack which, considering the size of Ireland and the impact of the attack on the Irish people, could be said to be as heinous as the 9/II attack in New York City It was conducted by at least six loyalist terrorists and, according to the Barron Report, with the full knowledge and possibly with the aid of certain elements of the British Army. The British government refused to cooperate in the investigation. Now Mr. McEntee concludes that the Garda lacked much of the basic documentation necessary for a thorough investigation and some of those documents are still missing, specifically, 10 highly sensitive security files. This is indicative of an institution that is disinterested, disorganized and, more importantly, may have something to hide”, Meehan said.
He went on to say that it was amazing that the Garda concluded its investigation into the largest crime in the nation’s history in less than six months, without a single interrogation or arrest of the six suspects sought in the North.
“The Irish government did not even raise the matter at the UN. The British documentary Hidden Hand  in 1993 actually conducted a more thorough investigation than that of the Garda” he said.
Meehan said the AOH joined with others “in continuing the quest for the truth of Bloody Sunday and the numerous collusion murders that took place during the conflict and that only now are being exposed”.