Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx.
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
 [P&P Bulletin Publications PO Box 50, London SWI7 9NL][Post Office Regd.]
 No 816 Tuesday August 21 1995                                                                                                                         10p

Historic revisionist weakness in Yugoslavia no help to determination of Serbian nationalism to resist imperialist dismemberment of Balkans. But imperialism is the weak element even now - and revealing more of the real fascism — in Croatia - because of its crisis worldwide and failure to agree even in tiny Yugoslavia on how to intervene. And more details too of general anti-communist trickery 1945-1995.

Confused bourgeois press signals about a "deal" in Yugoslavia divvying up the former workers state, and most of "Bosnia" between the Croatian fascists and the opportunist wing of Serbian nationalism give no real comfort to imperialism.

If the rumours prove true or even if simple fascist bullying succeeds in imposing the US/German stooge Croatian Ustashe/fascist writ on more of the country anyway, it would only emphasise how much strength even the confused Serbian residue of justified Yugoslavian national struggle has had so far and partly retains.

The stand-off between the temporarily cocky US-backed Croatian fascism (a cockiness which rings suspiciously hollowly anyway in the various CIA fed-news leaks currently) and Serbian nationalism, looks like just that, a stand-off, particularly if the other hints are true that other territory, like the Gorazde and Srebrenica [Srebrenica] enclaves go to the Serbs.

But the weaker opportunist revisionist threads of Serbian nationalism seem to have aided imperialism to some extent by colluding actually or philosophically with imperialism and "giving away" the Krajina region (at horrific cost) in the mistaken belief that this is the best way to a "quiet life".

They may regret "giving an inch" if, as always, imperialism in its aggressive fascist mode simply feeds off its own "success" and tries to take a mile later on, as a dozen historical examples confirm from Hitlerite annexations onwards.

Press reports indicate that firmer, if by no means resolutely proletarian, leadership prevails in Bosnia itself, though opportunist wheeler-dealing may undermine that. At least according to some press reports, that leadership is aware that the best "deals" came from punching imperialism as hard as possible on the nose:

THE hardline Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, yesterday accused his former patron, President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, of treason for standing by idly while his fellow Serbs were routed by Croatia.

In an open letter addressed to Mr Milosevic that raised the stakes in the power struggle in the pan-Serbian camp in former Yugoslavia, Mr Karadzic made his strongest denunciation of the Belgrade leader.

"You destroyed Serb forces with political games. You deceived the people with guarantees of a political settlement," he said. "You have turned your back on the Serb cause. You have started ceding to outside pressure to the extent that it borders on treason."

A SERB leader from the Krajina region of Croatia blamed the hardline Krajina "president" Milan Martic for the loss of the enclave, overrun by Croatian forces in just three days.

"I was astounded to learn that the general staff of the Serb army of Krajina and President Martic had ordered a general evacuation of the population and withdrawal of the army," the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug quoted Milan Babic as saying.

Mr Babic, Krajina's "prime minister", said Mr Martic had ordered the withdrawal on front lines "even though there were no serious combat activities along most lines of contact with the Croatian army".

Many refugees said the resounding defeat smacked of betrayal. The Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, has accused Belgrade of ordering the evacuation.

But despite this sad spectacle of revisionist induced wrangling, the great powers of capitalism have by no means succeeded in "wrapping up" the more resilient Serbian nationalist elements of the old Yugoslavia yet, and it is by no means certain they will get much further.

If they do, or even getting as far as they have, it is no great achievement for imperialism since the victory is no more than the follow through to the weaknesses of decades of revisionist misunderstanding in Belgrade and illusions in "market forces".

Revisionist retreat in Yugoslavia was already asking for trouble twenty years ago when it began messing more and more with illusions in "market forces" as a solution to problems (as opposed, possibly, under certain tightly controlled planned economic circumstances, to the market as a mere temporary development tool within a broader socialist framework).

But Yugoslavian feeling, even expressed in more backward Serbian nationalist terms, has remained so far a lot less done-in than the liquidationist conclusions to revisionist illusions (in Moscow and eastern Europe) might have indicated they could be historically. So far at least the whole of Serbia has not abandoned wholesale its anti-imperialist hostility and welcomed in with open arms the Mafia/fascist confusion prevailing in the FSU:

One more hint that all is not lost in former Yugoslavia was to come. In the street an athletic young man bounded up and kissed Gordana on both cheeks. A friend of her sister's family, he was a Croat, but remains an officer in the Yugoslav National Army. He joined before the country fell apart and although the YNA is under complete Serb control, he carries on "without any problem".

We told him of the heavy artillery we had seen going to Eastern Slavonia to hold the line against the Croats. Did the high command of the YNA weed Croats out of front-line units, we asked? "Not at all," he said. "We joined the army to fight against nationalism. That is the enemy."

The limits of a non-Leninist grasp of the world are now showing more strongly however, most severely in the fact that not only Belgrade but even more solid forces in Pale cannot grasp at all the extent of the splits and confusion of imperialist policy.

The crisis of capitalism raging on a world scale means that all these interventions, are very much a hand-to-mouth affair, by regimes from Bonn to Washington almost too moribund to take decisions about anything, let alone the tiny Balkans. As action after action has shown the willingness of the imperialists actually to do anything is sent scattering with every vigorous move made in legitimate defence of Serbian self-determination (whatever nationalist philosophical nonsense might be put forth at the same time).

It remains to be seen how much advantage paralysed and split imperialism can make of these new revealed weaknesses. But the nature of the various possible deals murkily implied via various "informed" journalists, "diplomatic channels" and "leaks", such as the infamous map-on-a-menu supposedly drawn up by neo-Ustashe fascist leader Tudjman, recognises, by the concessions they do make to the Serbs, that Serbian nationalism remains, even with its mere 10M strong population, a fairly fearsome foe to further imperialist ambitions.

And even if some plan or other should come to fruition, or simply plain imperialist-backed fascist bullying should allow one or other of the imperialist powers vying for influence and prestige in this confused hellhole to claim a greater "success" (than currently for the strained US/German axis which has armed the Croatians) against the already monstrously and unjustly vilified Serbs the broadest historical verdict can still only be - so what?

The titanic problem of world economic collapse, trade war and ever more imminent all-out conflict between themselves is the prime cause which has led the big imperialist powers into this tiny corner of the world. And that contradiction is growing greater every day.

The great pretence at "sorting out turmoil and easing conflict" as part of a glorious "New World Order" has been 95% a battle to outmanoeuvre each other in the worldwide rivalry for "face" and "influence".

It may have been a common 5% anti-communist motivation, to drive a wedge into the old Yugoslav workers state and break it apart, which started the push for Balkanisation and the wars around it, allowed in partly by Yugoslavian state revisionist illusion. But from the beginning inter-imperialist conflict has been the crucial if submerged agenda.

No power has wanted any other to gain the territorial or market advantages that come (for capitalism) for breaking up the old communist state and making sure it cannot revive in one piece.

Equally, in a climate of bitter international competitiveness, none want the others to be seen to be more "capable" or "influential" in general.

From the moment German imperialism played a slightly more open hand than its usual highly secretive international interventions, recognising Croatia, the rival imperialist diplomatic and propaganda hostilities have bubbled furiously (see last week's and many past EPSRs).

They can only continue to do so over one or another issue, even if the whole Yugoslav matter was to be settled finally tomorrow, because the engine for these conflicts is the worldwide battle for markets and profit and monopoly domination over all other capitalist rivals.

Ultimately (and already below the surface) these conflicts dwarf any of the issues tearing the hapless Balkan peninsula and its people into to shreds. The complacent billions elsewhere on the planet and especially in the richer metropolitan countries will be getting hammering slump lessons in these realities too fairly soon.

The plunge towards slump collapse now increasingly obviously signalled in regular market upheavals, currency slides and surges, and roller coaster credit instability, is inevitably associated with the push to win ever greater market domination. Capital relentlessly accumulates on a worldwide scale but with nowhere to invest - at a profit.

As last week's EPSR pointed out many of the big banks and monopolies are buying back their own shares because thy can no longer find sufficient investment openings. The current mega-hype around the mere updating of the famous Microsoft Windows product is another symptom of the South Sea Bubble-like mentality this lack of suitable investment is producing. Even more so is the massive overvaluation of another software house recently floated on the exchanges. On the chance expectation that it "might" become another Microsoft its shares rose hundredfold in a day, to prices that analysts said could "never" be repaid.

And the slump is a prime cause of ever more intensification of the competitive trade hostilities, developing already into bouts of open trade war around, say, US and Japanese cars, or American and European films and TV products, or covert sniping like the German "green" attack on Shell (a mainly British monopoly) over the Brent Spar oil rig sinking.

It cannot stop. It can only create ever greater instability and no more so than in the direct finance area of currency itself. The bourgeoisie's press endlessly teases these questions even though rarely grasping the full implications:

Ironically, the weakness of the dollar gave the central banks an opening to push up its value. By mid-April, when the U.S. currency hit a record low of 79.75 yen, shell-shocked speculators had grown weary — not to mention poor — predicting an upward bounce for the dollar.

As a result, many traders say the currency markets have taken on the quiet of the tomb in the last three months.

"There just wasn't much point being in the market," said Henry Wilkes, the foreign-ex
change manager with Bank Julius Baer. "Everybody is saying that volumes have been horrendously low."

Andres Drobney, currency strategist for CS First Boston, said, "For a long time now the thing to do was to move into a strong currency like the yen or the Deutsche mark and just sit tight and take your profits."

For central bankers determined to safeguard the rightful values of their currencies, the lull is good news. In such thinly traded markets, central bankers can exert their wills seemingly without effort. Where once they could spend billions and hope at best simply to slow the dollar's fall, now they can spend less and send it rocketing giddily-

But some analysts suggest that the central banks have been too successful.

Hunt Taylor, chairman of FINEX, the Dublin-based currency futures market, pointed out that in trying to breathe new life into the moribund dollar, the central banks have repeatedly sought to "punish the speculators" who were seen to be betting against it.

By snapping up dollars at moments when speculators had massively sold the currency short — that is, they had sold dollars that they did not then own — the central banks forced them to cover those positions by buying dollars at a higher rate than they had sold them.

With many speculators now having decamped the currency market and others reduced to taking small positions for short time spans, some specialists say the stage has been set for more, rather than fewer, violent swings in currency values.

"The irony of all this," Mr. Taylor said, "is that as a result of the authorities' efforts to reduce volatility in the market, they have wound up only exaggerating it."

As market liquidity falls, the ability of central banks to impose their wills rises.

The danger is that the markets have also become far more vulnerable to external shocks ranging from war to financial meltdowns.

The full implications are the revival of all the old inter-imperialist hostilities particularly as the Bulletin has relentlessly and continuously explained, between the USA and the two great rivals Germany and Japan. These two rivals have eaten away at US monopoly dominance non stop since the USA established its Cold War sustained hegemony, the outcome of the last great inter-imperialist shoot out, the Second World War.

Again the bourgeois press keeps teasing the subject: 

SINGAPORE — Fifty years after it surrendered in World War II, Japan is seen by its neighbors in Asia and the Pacific as a nation that could again become a powerful military force in the region if its alliance with the United States frays or China becomes more assertive.

The end of the Cold War, China's rapid rise as an economic and military power, and growing nationalism in Japanese politics, shown recently by Tokyo's readiness to confront the United States over trade and China over nuclear weapons testing, have thrust relations between Tokyo and Washington, and Tokyo and Beijing, into a state of unpredictable flux, analysts say.

Although American and Japanese officials insist that the security treaty between the two countries remains strong despite persistent economic frictions, Japan's neighbors are worried that the alliance may be in terminal decline.

Jose T. Almonte, presidential security adviser and director general of the National Security Council in the Philippines, said that although public opinion in Japan continued to regard the alliance with the United States as essential, "nationalist sentiment is rising, with the new right urging a more independent course for Japan."

He said Japan's mercantilist trade and economic practices could cause serious deterioration in the relationship with the United States.

The American pledge to protect Japan during the Cold War was based on more than just the threat from the Soviet Union; it was a fundamental commitment to the rest of the region to make sure that the Japanese did not re-arm or undertake expansionist military policies.

The prospect of rising Chinese-Japanese tension and diminishing American ability to sustain a stable balance of power in the region alarms smaller countries in Asia and the Pacific.

They fear that such a situation might prompt Beijing to be more aggressive in enforcing claims to disputed land and maritime territory with many of its neighbors.

Mr. Almonte said a rift in ties between Washington and Tokyo could be dangerous.

"China might misread the trade disputes between the U.S. and Japan as hampering their ability to cooperate in a strategic response to China's assertion of power in Southeast Asia," he added.

Tokyo is also deeply concerned by the dispute because most of Japan's oil and much of its trade pass through the South China Sea.

Rivalry for influence in the region between Tokyo and Beijing would put pressure on other Asian and Pacific countries to align with one or the other.

Japan's 1947 constitution, drawn up under the supervision of U.S. occupation authorities, bans possession of "sea, land and air forces" and prohibits the country from using military means to resolve international disputes.

But since they were established in 1954 with American support following the Korean War, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces have become the most powerful and modem in Asia.

The Japan of August 15,1945, was one of the poorest nations on earth; there were no skyscrapers, no wealthy banks, no jewelry markets. There was devastation everywhere, with a desperate population living in open shacks and scraping bark from the ginko trees for food.

The Japan of Aug. 15, 1995, in contrast, ranks as a world economic superpower, richer by many measures than its vanquishers.

Postwar Japan has also established a commanding economic presence in Asia, gaining through peaceful means at least part of what it had hoped to get through military conquest and colonial rule.

This transformation from rubble to riches has been called "Japan's postwar miracle." Yet, the nation is hardly in a celebratory mood this week as it marks the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Rather, as Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama said recently, many Japanese are "discontented with the present and worried about the future." A half-decade of recession has led to widespread doubts about whether the formula that worked so well for a half-century will meet the nation's needs for the next 50 years.

Among the 500 biggest companies in the world recently ranked by Fortune magazine, 149 are Japanese, 151 are American. Japan is the world's dominant maker of technologically complicated products like industrial robots and liquid crystal screens. With the resulting wealth, Japan has become the world's largest creditor nation and biggest foreign-aid donor.

With a population of 125 million, about half that of the United States, Japan's economy is nearly 70 percent the size of America's. This wealth is distributed more evenly here than in the U.S. and most other nations. That contributes to an atmosphere of social harmony that gives Japan the lowest crime rate of any developed country.

Japan, Mr. Dower observed, had become a major economic power before the war, exporting more goods than any other country except the United States, Britain and Germany. Postwar Japan thus had a strong base of business and manufacturing experience. And this knowledge was fortified by the all-out industrialization of the war years.

The Japanese government, meanwhile, dedicated itself to the goal of economic growth and catching up with the West.

By the early 1950s, the legendary Ministry of International Trade and Industry had established long-term plans for the development of basic industries like steel, shipbuilding and electric power. These industries received substantial government support to foster expansion, including low-interest loans, subsidies, and protection from imports.

One other precious resource that contributed mightily to the Japanese "miracle" was its best friend, biggest market, and military protector: the United States.

While other major nations were spending mightily on defense, Japan enjoyed the protective umbrella of the U.S. military. While this situation has been reversed today — Japan has one of the world's biggest military budgets, and most of the money goes to pay for U.S. forces here — the so-called "free ride" gave Japan a major advantage that persisted for decades.

Moreover, it was the postwar U.S. occupation, in the person of a hard-nosed Detroit banker, Joseph Dodge, that established austere budget-cutting and credit-restricting policies. This "Dodge line" set Japan on a path of low inflation and high national savings.

By the end of the 1980s, the total value of all the land in Japan had soared to more than four times that of the United States, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange had become the world's biggest, based on the market value of Japanese shares.

But then the "bubble economy" burst. Real estate and stock prices fell by more than 50 percent. Today, five years after the end of the "bubble," the frothy growth of the late eighties looks clearly like an anomaly.

Japan been mired for four straight years in near-zero growth. Japanese industries that once looked unstoppable — autos, computers, semiconductors — have lost significant amounts of market share to revivified American competitors. Can Japan bounce back again? 

The rivalry and competitive trade fighting permeates every part of imperialism and dictates that the future of all relations both between the big nations and inside them can only be one of exponentially growing conflict and mayhem.

Eventually this will turn into open warfare, just as it did in the 1914 and 1939 outbreaks of trade fighting.

The same disorder of course guarantees that the Yugoslav issue will not "be solved" either, for as long as the imperialist market system is imposed on that country (or its fragments).

Whether the market comes by force or by "deals" it will cause increasing anarchic fascistic turmoil whatever happens. The same will afflict every other part of capitalism until the cause of it, the competitive monopoly market system is finally turned over and buried in favour of a planned economy.

Initially that of course means under the firm control of an anti-bourgeois proletarian dictatorship until the gradual redevelopment of a rational Leninist society and its individual and collective self-control makes workers state coercion ever more redundant.

It is the remnants of just such a resilient workers state power in Yugoslavia (and the first great historic wave of communism behind it, beginning with the 1917 Russian revolution) which drove the hatred of Yugoslavia to intervention pitch.

The outrageous provocation of residual petty Croatian and Slovenian nationalism by western influence, to try (successfully) to revive old nationalist hatreds and particularly old Ustashe fascism, has been the sole cause of the war, a truth continuously turned on its head in the lying and vindictive press propaganda.

But as the EPSR keeps documenting for the record, the bourgeois press itself cannot help giving away same of truth. Details emerge because the propaganda blitzkrieg is never complete, bourgeois critical realist journalism occasionally asks questions and because rival imperialist forces, like the currently outmanoeuvred British and French imperialists have other interests.

As the Review has previously noted these powers (associated with the UN forces as opposed to the American NATO axis) want, as far as they can hold together any coherent policy, which is not far from day to day, to see a rump Serbian state remain as a guarantee against too complete a German imperialist dominance of the region via Croatia.

Again the big power rivalry is expressed via this corner of Europe. None of them are interested in the people on the ground as such, but it suits their interests to leak details sometimes such as these following revelations about the multiethnic and anti-nationalist realities still existing, of Serbia and Yugoslavia, and of the raw fascism of Croatian revived nationalism:

THE United Nations said yesterday that it had found evidence of mass graves and of execution-style killings in the Krajina region of Croatia carried out days after government forces crushed the Serb separatist insurgency there.

Human rights agencies say that they too have found bodies of civilians in ransacked villages, and that Serbian settlements which survived the government offensive are now being systematically burned, apparently by Croatian troops.

The discoveries contradict Croatia's description of Operation Storm, on July 4-7, as a "clean" and relatively bloodless military offensive. Rebel fighters and civilians were initially reported to have fled their villages before the first government troops arrived.

Chris Gunness, a UN spokes man in Zagreb, said that UN monitors had found evidence of a possible mass grave in Knin, the abandoned "capital" of the former breakaway republic.

"[They] discovered 96 crosses that have been placed in opposite sides of four raised flat-top mounds. The crosses are very close to one another and there are no individual mounds. Fewer than 20 crosses bear names. Despite the authorities' evident effort in preparing the site, the area gives the impression of a mass grave."

He said that when UN civilian police tried to investigate another suspected site, in the nearby village of Zyjerinac, they found 22 new graves, some marked with crosses, only five with names. The police were forced by sniper fire to abandon the investigation.

UN investigators have also found bodies in Krajina which showed signs of having been executed. Mr Gunness said that on Wednesday, UN personnel found four corpses in the village of Zagrovic, near Knin.

''Two of the bodies, both men, were in a gully by the side of the main highway. Marks on the road indicated that they had been dragged to the spots from the other side. Both men had bullet holes in their heads." Mr Gunness said.

''They were dressed in underwear and T-shirts. One was wearing slippers. Several fingers had been cut off."	

Two bodies were found nearby, one shot in the head, the other top badly decomposed to determine cause of death. UN civilian police found three more corpses in civilian clothes in Zvjerinac. Bogdan Denic, director of the human rights group Transition to Democracy, said that Croatian soldiers returning from Krajina reported seeing bodies of civilians, apparently shot by other soldiers.

"There are signs of summary executions, mostly around Knin. One of the soldiers saw bodies of mostly elderly people lying in the street," Mr Denic said.

He said that many formerly Serb villages which survived the initial Croatian assault were being set on fire by troops.

"There's massive burning, and the police are standing by and not doing anything," he said, adding that the burning was systematic, contradicting Croatian government claims that it wanted Serb refugees to return to Krajina.

'They're doing everything they can to prevent that sort of thing happening. This is a question of individual revenge, but it's also a way of ensuring there's no chance at all of people returning."

Monitors from the Helsinki Federation for Human Rights have seen large-scale burning of abandoned Serb houses in Krajina. The UN has also repeated reported looting by Croatian troops.

President Tudjman yesterday denied the allegations.

"The Croatian army has not looted or burned anywhere," he told journalists yesterday. He insisted that the Krajina Serbs had left "of their own free will, despite our invitation to remain".

He hinted that Serb property would be handed over to Croatians driven out of their homes during the 1991 conflict with Serbia, saying Serb "homes and estates would have to be reintegrated."

ON THE top floor of a crumbling Habsburgian tenement in the centre of Zagreb yesterday, six women spent the entire day alternately sobbing quietly, wailing in grief, and hugging the telephone.

They were all Serbs, members of the Croatian capital's much diminished but still large Serb community. All are caught up in what is already the biggest and quickest single population transfer in four years of Balkan war, following the Croat seizure of the rebel Serb enclave of Krajina.

"We all have to go now. There's blood on the streets and no one will help us," said Mira, a retired post office clerk, aged 65. "Most of us will leave. We're afraid we'll be liquidated."

Anka Bunarevic, aged 75, said: "For four years we Serbs in Croatia have been living on the doorstep of hell. The door has just opened." Mrs Bunarevic looked every inch the stereotype of the Balkan peasant, her crumpled, wrinkled face wrapped in a black shawl. In fact, she was one of Yugoslavia's most distinguished pathologists, is president of Zagreb's Serb Orthodox Council, and has spent more than half a century not working the fields, but living in this city.

"This is a tragedy for Serbs. But it's also a tragedy for Croats and for the many mixed families," said Milorad Pupovac, a moderate political leader, of the Serb minority. "It looks like it means the end of 400 years of Serb life in these territories."

Before the war erupted in Croatia in 1991, about 100,000 Serbs lived in the Croatian capital. The majority of Croatia's Serbs — 400,000 of 600,000 — were urbanised; many had roots and relatives in rural Krajina. Mr Pupovac estimates that the ethnic cleansing of the past four years has left some 130.000 Serbs in Croatia's cities, 40,000 in Zagreb.

Serb leaders in Zagreb tried to contact Croatia's prime minister, Nikica Valentic, to get human rights guarantees and] assurances of safety for members of their community. But the Croatian government, in triumphalist mood, ignored them.

The Serb mothers of Zagreb are enraged by Croatian government calls for Serbs to stay in Croatia. One 40-year-old pointed to her son, aged six, and said there was no way he would grow up in a climate of harassment and discrimination. But they agreed there was enormous social pressure in the fiercely nationalist climate for Serb schoolchildren to become Catholics. Young Serb friends, they added, were changing their names.

Mr Pupovac said there was no violence or large-scale harassment of Serbs in Zagreb, but the entire community was gripped by fear and panic.

"If the Croatian government wants to integrate us socially and culturally, we urban Serbs will remain. But if the situation stays as it is now, there will be a new movement Serbs from Croatia and it will be the last."

Mladen Klemencic, a Croat political scientist and geographer, agreed that up to 200,000 Serbs could flee Croatia after the latest war games of the nationalist leaders in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia.

"We need to break the cycle of revenge. We have to find a way to bring some of them back. As many as half might come back if we offer the right conditions."

Such remarks inspire a frenzy of shrieking and wailing in the six Serb women. "There will be few Serbs left here and they'll be like animals in a zoo, exhibits for Tudjman to show Western visitors who are concerned about human rights," said Mrs Biinarevic.

Flushed with its victory over its Serb minority, Croatia is basking in martial glory.

Patriotic music fills the air waves. The country's red chequered flag flies from almost every home. Even the smiling young girls on magazine covers wear combat uniforms.

Dissident voices questioning the army's conduct are being muffled and measures are being taken to ensure that the country's new-found ethnic "purity'' is not diluted. Clear signs emerged yesterday that the government was raising the drawbridge to prevent other minorities taking the place of the Serbs, more than 150,000 of whom have fled.

According to UN officials, Croatia is threatening to bar entry to Muslims forced out of Serb-controlled areas of Bosnia, while welcoming Bosnian Croats expelled from the same region. If Croatia sticks to the decision, more than 1,000 Muslims will be stranded on the Bosnian side of the border.

Up to 50,000 more Muslims face expulsion from the Banja Luka area, where Bosnian Serbs have been evicting thousands of non-Serbs, in retaliation for Croatia's offensive, against the Serb rebel region of Krajina.

The newly assertive regime has shown scant sympathy for the Muslim victims of this latest bout of ethnic cleansing. They are seen principally as an unwelcome distraction from the triumphant reclamation of Croatian territory.

A new video appeared in the shops this weekend entitled "Five Years of Croatian Freedom". It portrays President Franjo Tudjman, dressed in a brilliant white uniform with outsized epaulettes, reviewing row upon row of military hard ware from the back of a jeep.

During the video's 90 minutes, paeans of classical proportions are heaped on the soldier-leader. He is described as the "Prometheus of Croatia, igniter of the drowsing spirit of patriotism for the fatherland".

Critics who question the methods used in the conquest of Krajina are lambasted by the state-controlled media, despite growing evidence of summary executions and the burning of Serb homes.

The Croatian government has formally invited back the Krajina Serbs who fled to Bosnia and Serbia earlier this month. But in reality the door is closing behind them. According to the United Nations and the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, Serb villages are being systematically razed.

President Tudjman confirmed on Friday that the constitution would soon be adjusted to remove all vestiges of the Serb presence, erasing clauses giving special status to ethnic minorities exceeding 8 per cent of the population. The formerly Serb settlements of Knin and Glina would also lose their minority privileges.

Other minorities will not be welcome in their place. President Tudjman has ordered out 30,000 Muslims who fled fighting in the Bosnian enclave of Bihac earlier this month and Muslims attempting to escape Serb-held areas of Bosnia are also being denied refuge in Croatia.

Political diversity could be another early victim of Croatia's assertive mood. Zvonimir Cicak, a political commentator, predicts that victory will be followed "not just by a national homogenisation but a party homogenisation as well".

The pro-government press is dropping heavy hints that elections could be called before the end of the year. The ruling Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) controls well over half parliament's 138 seats, and that majority is expected to be considerably strengthened in the euphoria of victory. Mr Cicakj fears that it provides President Tudjman and the HDZ with a motive for extending the martial atmosphere as long as possible.

"We are entering a dark tunnel in Croatian political life." Mr Cicak said. "If you are a Sparta, you don't need a parliament. you just need soldiers."

The streets of Dubrovnik teem with soldiers on leave, replacing the tourists their offensive is supposed to win back.

'Banja, Banja, Banja Luka here we come,' warbled a drunken soldier, sporting the 9th Wolf Brigade's patch on his arm. 'We are the Ustashe from Lika. I want to go back to lovely Lika and get drunk.'

'We're just waiting for the green light from Zagreb,' said another soldier, whose mates drove past in a looted truck marked 'Knin Electricity Company'.

'We have to do this to get the tourists back but it won't be as easy as Knin. The Bosnian Serbs won't give in so fast,' said the Croat soldier. 'If they lose the sea here, they won't get it back for 100 years. I wish the offensive would hurry up.'

DUBROVNIK'S foreign tourist was proving so elusive that the sceptics were beginning to question his very existence.

His name is Matthias Jung, aged 32, a shopkeeper from Hanover who was on his first holiday for five years.	

He said he had been careful not to speak German, aware of its resonance in a country which had a wartime alliance with the Nazi regime. Right-wing Croatians still look back on that era with nostalgia.

"On the day the Krajina fell, there were some people giving Nazi salutes and even saying: 'Heil Hitler'. I'm not joking,"' Mr Jung said. "So I have taken care not to speak German. You might get problems when you find friends from the wrong faction."

Compare that to the front-page hysteria raging around the latest entirely unsubstantiated CIA released allegations of "mass graves" outside Srebrenica. A petty bourgeois press comment accompanying some indifferent pictures of Bosnian muslim refugees, (who look about as miserable as anyone would in a war but whose portraits in no way prove anything about anything) ironically raises some interesting questions about the endless manipulations going on:

A word about the timing of the release of the satellite pictures. The news agenda had been dominated by the misery of the Krajina Serbs, ejected by the Croat army: a mudslide of humanity trekking from the homes they had lived in for generations; homes burnt, Serbs stoned while Croat police looked on, immobile. These images were vivid testament to the agony of war, but they were also 'good propaganda' for the Serbs. The effect was to ease pressure on the Serbs and embarrass the Croats and their tentative Muslim allies in the Bosnian government. At the high tide of sympathy for the Serb refugees Albright chose to release the satellite pictures as hard evidence of Serb infamy.

A simple question: how long does it take for the images to be beamed down from the satellite and fed into the quietly ticking computers of the US National Security Agency? Five minutes? Ten? Visual analysis of the pictures would take longer, of course, but let us remember the date that hole was filmed: 13 July. It was

Manipulation is nothing new however.

It is the endless lying propaganda hatred of all communism and any of its remnants (like the heroic Yugoslavian partisan struggle against Nazism under the Croatian Tito) which has created the current poisonous willingness of the petty bourgeoisie and its hundred and one varieties of leftism (from Labourite parliamentary "moderation" to numerous supposedly "revolutionary" threads) to splutter in apoplectic hatred against the Serbs whatever the evidence that the actual criminals are those pushing for the artificial Muslim and Croat confessional stooge regimes.

Such lies started with the first workers' revolts and the success of the Paris Commune, growing more sophisticated with the imperialist tricks like the 1924 Zinoviev letter forgery and continuing with Goebbels "big lies" backup for the Hitlerite anti-communist bulwark (for which service imperialism was prepared to overlook everything).

Post war, despite the overwhelming tide worldwide in favour of the heroic Red Army and Soviet Union which virtually alone had smashed Hitlerism (with aid from the likes of Tito and Serbian core Yugoslavian anti- Nazism of course) the vitriol was poured out. And by who?

Naturally it was the Labour Party itself, full of chummy sincere Clause Four "real" leftism and Attlee "real socialist" flannel (as vouched for by Scargill, Benn and the "anti-Blairite" lefts e.g.) but secretly in total collaboration with the most reactionary undercover unaccountable intelligence forces of the capitalist (anti-working class) state as belatedly government records (partially) reveal. (Once again during the no-one-will-notice silly season):

THE Labour Party agreed to be a conduit for the spread of secret MI6-financed propaganda against communism at the start of the cold war, documents released yesterday at the Public Record Office show.

But many papers — disclosed under John Major's "open government" initiative — remain withheld to protect individuals and organisations involved in the clandestine operation set up by the Attlee government in 1948.

The extent of Labour's cooperation with the covert propaganda unit, the Foreign Office's Information Research Department, also remains hidden. A file listed as including "Labour Party contacts" contains cards saying papers have been withheld. However, documents reveal links between IRD officials and Denis (now Lord) Healey, then head of the Labour Party's international department.

Among others used by the IRD to disseminate its message were the philosopher Bertrand Russell, the poet Stephen Spender, and— briefly — the Soviet agent Guy Burgess.

The documents show that Mr Healey gave the IRD names of social democrat émigrés from Czechoslovakia and Hungary for use in the campaign.

A secret Foreign Office memo in February 1948 described the establishment of the IRD as a response to the "developing communist threat to the whole fabric of Western civilization".

Christopher Warner, a senior Foreign Office official, told colleagues: "We are under rigid instructions that it must not become general public knowledge that HMG are themselves conducting anti-communist propaganda. The papers prepared by IRD... have a covering slip emphasising that although they may be given to people who will be interested, they must be given quite unofficially".

About 300 IRD officials channelled most of its information through ministerial statements, the BBC, the national press and British embassies.

The US government adopted a similar line on what the British embassy in Washington described as "psychological warfare against communism". The main initial targets were Italy and France.

Lord Healey, a member of the Communist Party during his days at Oxford University, said yesterday that it was part of his job as Labour's international secretary to fight communism. Moscow, he said, "regarded Labour and social democratic parties as their main enemies".

Whilst officials initially paid lip-service to the idea, they were soon calling for something stronger. The Chiefs of Staff, always fascinated by the clandestine, wanted secret "black" operations. The department was not authorised to conduct subversive operations, but ministerial control was minimal. Informal arrangements with the military and MI6 enabled officials to interpret the guidelines in the broadest terms. Within a year, IRD had been transformed into an aggressive anti-communist crusade engaged in political warfare. The social-democratic theme was dead.

No longer a passive organisation, the offensive message began to dominate and the IRD soon promoted propaganda "designed to stimulate subversive activities in the Soviet orbits. Black material — forgeries, lies and fabrications — was disseminated for use by M16-funded radio stations and news agencies. By engaging in "cowboy" operations, the more worthwhile tasks became tainted.

During the 1950s, while open-information agencies contracted, the IRD expanded — with 60 staff alone in the Soviet section and, in all, 300 people by the middle of the decade. The department was also expanding its operations inside Britain. 

Alleged communist front groups ware attacked and conferences disrupted. Material was handed over to trade union anti-communist fronts such as the Industrial Research Information Service and Common Cause. Trade union and senior Labour Party officials were in receipt of briefings which, in the case of Labour, formed the backbone of its Proscribed List of organisations and was influential in the selection of candidates.

The IRD also had a massive list of contacts, including journalists and academics who were in receipt of its briefing papers or who wrote for one of its publishing outfits. In the 1950s and 1960s. the IRD had woven its propagandist web around "opinion-formers of every sort". It is

The justification, voiced just days ago on the radio by Christopher Mayhew himself was that the reality of communism was "totalitarian" and "anti-democratic". But he said, completely oblivious of the irony, that no-one in the parliamentary labour party or working class would have accepted that at the time, so "everything had to be done in 'secret'". Some democracy!

The whole notion of bourgeois "free speech" democracy is a huge joke anyway since it is a tightly controlled dictatorship of capital, working through a million underhand methods such as this agency.

There is more. That great bastion of "impartial world news", the BBC, supposedly "so much more reliable" than "totalitarian radio broadcasts" (which "damming indictment" is currently part of the anti-Milosevic anti-Serb propaganda), turns out to be even more of a secretly controlled biased instrument against the truth of communism:

A meeting was held in February 1948 between Murray, a senior FO official, and Major General Sir Ian Jacob, director of the BBC Overseas Service, at which the IRD's "scheme of priorities" was "approved". Sir Ian asked for five copies of everything the IRD produced and arranged for members of the FO unit to discuss co-operation with BBC controllers.

The IRD was not only concerned about overseas broadcasts. Sir Maurice Peterson, the British ambassador in Moscow, complained to Christopher Warner, the FO official overseeing the propaganda unit, early in 1948 about a Home Service broadcast regarded as "soft" on Soviet communism. The programme had talked "nonsense" about the availability of women's hairdressing in Moscow, failed to make clear that many flats were communal and wrongly implied that central heating was reliable. "It is not much good our planning anti-communist psychological warfare if we are going to let communist-inspired drivel of this kind into the inmost fortress of the BBC," thundered Sir Maurice.

IRD gave advice to the BBC about propaganda broadcasts to the Soviet Union itself. In a memo to Jacob, one IRD official warned: "Phrases like 'the Kremlin' in a hostile context should never be used. The Kremlin is an evocative symbol to most Russians. Wicked things done in Poland, Korea, etc. should not be attributed to 'Russian imperialism' but to an international conspiracy of oppression using Russian troops. Russian revolutionary anniversaries should be made the occasion for references to Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin and other 'close friends of Lenin'."

This was not the first time the BBC became a tool of government foreign policy; it had been overtly directed by the government during the war, and papers disclosed yesterday clearly show it intended to use the corporation in the event of another "emergency".

It is interesting to hear in this piece how the great anti-communist crusade pays no heed to truth. Just don't tell them the central heating is good, screams the British Ambassador.

But anyone who ever went to Moscow, or Leningrad, or Irkutsk or even Alma Ata, will know that the central heating was so good it was almost stifling; anyone coming in from -15° outside had to strip virtually down to shirt sleeves. And it did not break down. And it was done by environmentally sensible district heating methods (which the greens clamour for) and like most basic services for the population it cost very little, just a per cent or two of the average workers wage.

But never mind the truth, if you hate communism anything will do, in secret, brainwashing everyone.

The endless press and media manipulation has not stopped; if anything it is even more subtle. Witness the rise of nothing-but-petty-hourgeois-opportunism Blairism revealed in the shenanigans around Bryan Gould in this past period:

One of those consulted was Peter Mandelson, with whom I was still on very friendly terms. It was at about this time that I began to detect some cooling in our relationship. Peter was a demanding friend, expecting attention and cosseting for which I had neither the time nor inclination.

Peter was also beginning to believe his own myth and to learn how easily manipulated the media were by someone prepared to use it as ruthlessly as he did (with) his combination of charm and threats. 

There was also the prospect of our commitment to the Maastricht Treaty, which would entrench the ERM difficulties. It became clear that the Shadow Cabinet saw no problems in accepting Maastricht, and that unless I could somehow exercise a leading influence, we would drift into acquiescence.

There was pressure on the pound and doubt as to whether could sustain its parity within the ERM. The Prime Minister and Chancellor both maintained that there was no alternative to membership and that they would do whatever was necessary to defend sterling. The crisis heightened daily. I again made very public my belief that the party should be bolder. Our failure to speak was important in itself and seemed to illustrate the wider issue. 

When the news finally came through that we had left the ERM, I shed a momentary tear. An issue on which I felt so passionately and had sacrificed so much, on which I had allowed myself to be divided from my party and my colleagues, had finally culminated in a total vindication of all I had stood for. It was a heady moment, but I suddenly knew that nothing would change and that the game — for me — was up. I had watched aghast as the party, and Shadow chancellor Gordon Brown, had maintained an even more intransigent line than the Tories throughout the crisis. Gordon had even said that if the Germans had revalued the mark to stabilise the ERM or relieve some of our difficulties, he would want to see the pound revalued in line with the mark This was economic lunacy. It has always been a puzzle that people who make mistakes of such magnitude and reveal such inability to understand the issues of which they are supposed to be masters (go) on, unscathed by any suggestion they might not be up to the job. What was even more difficult was to realise that the fundamentals would not change; mistakes would be perpetuated.

The political establishment, which had been proved so wrong continued as before. The Tory government repeated until the last moment that there was no alternative, then carried serenely on with a quite different policy which they barely understood and had previously condemned. 

The Labour opposition did not allow events even to check its stride. None of its major figures even hinted that they might have been wrong or that their attitudes or policy might change. It was a classic example of the British establishment at work. Virtually all of the opinion formers, the political leaders, the leader writers, the captains of industry, the Civil Service mandarins — had been united in their views of the key to economic success. That unanimity had convinced the majority, who knew nothing of the actual issue, that they must be right. When they were shown to be wrong, the fact that they had all been implicated in the mistakes meant that they comforted each other to conceal their embarrassment. I was deeply depressed. I realised that if I could not bring about a change in policy when events had conspired to support me so strongly, then I could never hope to prevail. A future career in British politics would mean observing a process with which I had no sympathy but which I was powerless to influence.

I began to think that the task of rejuvenating British society, freeing the British people from the weight of their own history would not be accomplished. The British seemed like a great beached whale, whose size and strength were of no use because of its determination to swim in the wrong direction.

The most telling comment here is how rigidly paralysed the moribund and defunct British ruling class has become and with it the reformist capitalist (anti-communist) reflection of the Labour Party.

Equally bankrupt are all the old "lefty" offshoots as the continuing opportunist progress of the old Militant Trots underline, even allowing for bourgeois press hostility as in this piece:

'IT is not,' wrote Marx, 'the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.' There is a certain nearness that, in the post-Thatcherite 1990s, Derek Hatton, once the country's most notorious 'subscriber' to Militant, the Marxist Paper for Labour and Youth, should have abandoned the Struggle and currently be offering his services as an £8oo-a-night after-dinner speaker.

Hatton, like so much of Britain, is now of the new middle class and, as his circumstances have changed, so have his views. In a sense, you might say, the very fact that he is no longer a Marxist proves Marx right. The only sign of the strain of his three-and-a-half years as de facto and demonised leader Liverpool council is an occasional tic in his right eye, which he prefers to put down to eye strain.

HE WAS EXPELLED from Labour in 1987.

Shortly afterwards he was sacked from his job as a community development officer at neighbouring Knowsley and then thrown off Liverpool council. Next came Alan Bleasdale's GBH, which appeared to be a satire on Hatton (but was far too acid-trippy to be a satire on anything), the two court cases, the first of which, he says, cost the country £20 million and was the establishment's attempt to have the last word.

He felt defeated, he says, for 'about 90 seconds': 'There was no way I was going to end up in the gutter. I had a family to support.' And thus the new Hatton was born, the Hatton who played King Rat in panto, who starred in a watch commercial, who posed with bimbos in a nightclub, who started a PR consultancy, and who now works as a Granada TV presenter. Meanwhile, his family prospered: his eldest daughter, Becky, is running an Outward Bound course, son Ben is about to leave for Washington on a soccer scholarship, while Sarah and Laura show jump for England.

Next month it will be 10 years since Neil Kinnock condemned Hatton's council from the pulpit of the Bournemouth conference platform. 'You start with far-fetched resolutions,' the Labour leader began, '...and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council - a Labour council - hiring taxis to scuttle around a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers.' The cameras caught Hatton, his hands cupping his mouth, shouting: 'Lies.' (Hatton says the sackings were accompanied by notes saying they would not be implemented and that the cabs went to workplaces, not homes.) I ask, over the sweet and sour, how he felt at that moment.

'I actually found out about it an hour before,' he says. 'It was part of Kinnock's naïvety to think he could keep it a secret. But when you heard it the reality still shook you. You thought of the issues in those days.'

'I have respect tor Tony Blair. He has said that he doesn't want to be linked with socialism or the trade unions any more. I can understand that and say: "Tony, well done. At least you're being honest." Kinnock said one thing and did another. 'Thatcher was sincere. Tony Blair is sincere.'

And Derek Hatton was sincere?

'No question at all.'

But he told us Militant wasn't a party within a party and it was, wasn't it?

'Of course it was a party within a party, in the same way that Tribune and Solidarity were.'

So he was insincere then?	

'That was more a tactical thing. That wasn't a fundamental thing. People (a) knew it was happening and (b) couldn't care a damn as long as they got their houses built and there was a campaign going on against the Tories. But you had to say you weren't a member. There were too many people looking for an excuse to get you rather than discuss the policy issues.'

Perhaps he would care to present Militant's arguments now?

'I don't think I can remember them. It is very hard to now. Militant was something you had to be in the middle of. In 1995 to sit in a Chinese restaurant and talk with any degree of enthusiasm about what we thought is very difficult. I can talk with enthusiasm about what we did and about the politicisation of people in those days. You could go round any pub in Liverpool in the 1980s and they used to be talking about what was going on politically. Now they just talk about football. Now I could stand in the middle of town with nothing on and shout and scream for Marx and no one would listen. That is what I mean by it being a different world.'

Gould is right. The imperialist ruling order is paralysed and none so much as the outmoded out-competed British wing, unable to keep up even with the Americans, also outgunned (maybe soon literally) by newer rivals.

But the Germans and Japanese are not going to save capitalism; their cannot-help-themselves challenge will undermine everything.

And Degsy is right. The old politics of the left has failed, part of the paralysis of all bourgeois ideology. But he is wrong to think the working class has lost. Far from it.

Now the ideological decks really are clear for the truth to be fought for - the Leninist understanding of the need for worldwide revolutionary overturn of all capitalism - not through Labourism, or through activism, or through rejection of the great achievements of the first heroic 70 year long communist state building; but by rejection of all the great retreats from Marxist-Leninist understanding of the irreconcilable class struggle and the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat to resolutely suppress all the old warmongering rubbish.

Leninist clarity has never been in such great need. Study Marx; Study Lenin. Struggle for today's Leninist development of human understanding. Study the EPSR. Discuss Leninism.

Argue Leninism. Build the Leninist party.

Don Hoskins.

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. VI Lenin
South West Bulletin
[P&P Bulletin Publications (South West), BOX 32, 82 Colstom St., Bristol BS1 5BB]
No 134 Wednesday 16th August 1995  

Discussion

The Labour Party is as anti-communist as ever it has been in its history, but now without the veneer to be 'democratic socialists' who would achieve 'socialism' without the need for revolution.

The whole reason for electing Blair as Labour Party leader, was so that this cretin would get Labour elected to office, at any cost, and no more then that.

After the Labourites took the advice of Fleet St. they probably thought this goon would have a completely free-ride to the next General Election. And after abandoning every 'left' reformist trick in the book from Clause IV to nuclear disarmament, even the old anti-communist reactionary Roy Hattersley, understands that if the Labour Party has had any purpose within capitalism, it is that it is essential to have every 'left' liberal reform possible, to fool the working class as long as possible into turning away from a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist perspective.

By Blair clearing the decks of any 'socialist baggage', on the basis that "communism is dead", because of the liquidation of the former Soviet State, by the Moscow revisionists.

But Hattersley has no more desire for the working class to take power then does Blair, but he can probably see the writing on the wall for Labour if it doesn't offer some 'left' reformism for the working class. But even this perspective is a dead loss for Labour, as the most 'left' of Labour governments (that of the Attlee government of 1945-51) was nothing but the biggest con on the working class, and only came about due to the Soviet example which was an inspiration to every worker, with the Labour Party used to divert the working class away from overthrowing capitalism itself.

But with growing inter-imperialist trade-war, the Labourites presumably believe that they can show capitalism that they are fit for office by becoming even more reactionary then the Tories. For example, the Labourites 'law & order' policies have gone much further then the Tories in for example eviction of 'bad' neighbours etc. and last weeks announcement that they are setting up 'hotlines' on 'benefit fraud'.

But Blairism is not merely a repeat of the 1931 McDonald 'National' government, but it is a reflection of the crisis within imperialism, and British imperialist problems in particular, has led to a situation where anyone who claims to be a bourgeois 'leader' (be it a Chief Constable, leader of the Tories, High Court judge or leader of the Labour Party) looks a completely incompetent idiot, as much as Major or Condon etc. And the following capitalist press article really only emphasis how useless and incompetent Blair really is, when Blair is portrayed as a 'strong leader' with all the answers for 'Great Britain PLC':

WHEN the railway signal workers were on strike last summer, Tony Blair tried to dodge the waiting media by leaving from a side door of 4 Millbank, the complex of broadcasting studios hard by parliament. He didn't want to answer potentially embarrassing questions about the dispute that was disrupting life for millions of commuters.

But the reporters and television crews simply gave chase, and when flight was clearly impossible the Labour leader stopped running and asked them to switch off their cameras. He then dialled his chief spin doctor, Peter Mandelson MP, on his mobile phone to ask him what he should say. Having got the line, that the Opposition does not take sides in an industrial conflict, he parroted it to the quote-thirsty journalists.

In fact the whole of Labour are just a joke, not just Blair. Although even bourgeois propaganda can't quite make up its mind what exactly the Soviet Union was all about. Either it was a "dictatorial power governed exclusively and ruthlessly from the centre" or it was as the article below states, it was "neighbourhood governing committees" -- what is it to be??

Last week, probably the party leader's most horrible seven days in his first year of office, Blair was sunning himself in Italy and Mandelson was not around to fix the press. He was also on holiday, in the United States.

So the chapter of disasters was free to unfold, and duly did so. On Monday night, deputy leader John Prescott met Environment spokesman Frank Dobson, - the Shadow Cabinet man who is left to mind the political shop during August. They discussed how to play the coming week. Dr Brian Mawhinney, John Major's abrasive new Tory Party chairman, was due in Walsall the next day to launch a campaign against Labour's "loony-left" councils, a well-worn theme but one still dear to Conservative hearts.

What a wheeze it would be, they thought, to spike Mawhinney's guns by announcing the decision - taken some weeks earlier - to suspend the town's district Labour Party, for assorted loonery including alleged intimidation and a too-hasty shift towards "Soviet style" neighbourhood governing committees under a Spartist fork-lift truck driver nicknamed Citizen Dave.

It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time: Labour leader gets tough with the militants. That always goes down well with the voters. After Conservative Central Office had put it through it through the mincer, it did not look quite such a winner, Mawhinney must have thought it was his birthday. He seized on the suspension, announced on Radio 4's Today programme by Dobson, as "a panic measure", up-to-the minute evidence that "new Labour" was a sham, no different to old-fashioned "real Labour" that put ideology before good government The headlines were predictable. "Blair forced to suspend Left bullies" screamed the Daily Telegraph. 

What is clear is that the clique from Walsall Labour Party were certainly not setting up some 'British Soviet', they were almost certainly playing the same game as all local Labour Party groups have always done. And that is to begin what it knows best, graft, corruption, and opportunism. And the Labour Party has had such a 'wonderful' history of such dealings, in Liverpool, Monklands, Lambeth etc. etc.

And the much hyped 'success' of the supposed 'massive increase in membership' which is part of 'New Labour', is of course nothing of the kind as the following capitalist press article shows:

In this development, Blair is helped by the surge in party membership, now well over 300,000. Half of the party has joined since the last election, vast swathes of them since he became leader. Yet the sharp rise in members is not necessarily accompanied by an increase in participation. One north-east MP, a strong proponent of "new Labour", laments: "I have got three hundred new members in my constituency. But I never see them. They don't come to meetings. They are happy just paying their subs.

But the main reasons for the 'increase' is evident to anyone who knows that this period up to the next General Election, is one of re-selection for possible MPs, so undoubtedly the usual game of fixing the elections, by enlisting as many of their cronies as possible for membership for the period up until the end of re-selection.

Build Leninism Build the ILWP W S Kram

Marxist-Leninist science is ultimately the only way that Serb nationalism will defeat imperialism and that also applies in Ireland, Palestine, South Africa and everywhere else.

Serbian nationalist resistance to western imperialist intrigue in the Balkans had already achieved its best political anti-imperialist struggle long before the Croat annexation of Krajina.

Yet the western imperialist 'allies' are still likely to face further defeats and humiliations before they finally retreat from the Balkans, even though the Serbs have long since abandoned the dictatorship of the proletariat and a clear Marxist-Leninist perspective to overthrow capitalism.

The capitalist press has covered the Krajina invasion on the basis of that the Serbs "have deserved everything coming to them, having unjustly occupied Croat territory since 1991" etc. and that "it is now providing the opportunity for peace in the area". Both statements are completely wrong and show just how 'neutral' the press are.

On the day which saw Serbs (who were thrown out of their homeland) being brutally attacked by Croat thugs, the CIA produced aerial photos of "possible Muslim mass graves". And as ever the entire 'free' press just lapped it up with very little criticism of their origins. All of a sudden the CIA can produce aerial photographs that can detect the difference between a burial ground and building rubble, and in particular a Muslim grave and a Serb grave. But this whole story stinks of CIA dirty tricks (see "How the 'free' press lies to order" EPSR No 813 July 30, 1995)

And not entirely unexpected, the west was completely quiet on the idea of "bombing the Croats back to the stone-age due to their criminal aggression against the Serbs". It was really only to be expected that Fleet St. would not utter this statement. The hypocrisy of western imperialism is legendary, this will only reinforce such understanding for every worker on the planet.

The Croat aggression over the last week or so, with the corresponding remarks from the US about "an opportunity for peace" etc along with the Tudjman sketch of how he would split up the former Yugoslavia only demonstrates what the SWB No 132 speculated upon:-

And in the future, it is certainly possible that the west could quite quickly dump their Muslim stooges, just as they did with one at their main Muslim stooges in Saddam Hussein (Iraq), if for any reason that they got in the way of imperialism making 'a quick buck'. (see EPSR No. 813, which outlines the Reconstruction and Development Bank's plan to lend DK15m to an Italian company to take charge of Slovenia's gas distribution system e.g.), as Hussein did in Kuwait e.g.

Certainly what is clear, is that more of the West's stooges throughout the world are likely to be dumped at any time, for any reason, especially as the world imperialist crisis deepens and the local population demand a solution to the crisis (e.g. Iraq),and in doing so upset their bosses (e.g. US, Germany etc.)

Build Leninism. Build the ILWP W S Kram