Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions - £20 p.a. [P&P Bulletin Publications. P.O. Box 50, London SW17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]    
No 973 Tuesday Nov  3  1998                                                                                                    10p weekly

Marxist philosophy a.m. Sunday Midlands

Ron Davies — sad victim of New Labour's bourgeois political image cultivation, covering up careerist ambitions with public-relations exercises, and hiding policy bankruptcy with pleasing soundbites and trivial advertising poses. Blair's lies are the biggest issue by far in this PR and PC fiasco which reveals the sick shallowness of image-conscious electoral philistinism searching for the 'right message', — the appalling modern-communications sibling of original (and unchanging) parliamentary cretinism. Davies brutally humiliated by the farcical requirements of so-called 'democracy'. The opportunist lies of the 'politically correct' self-righteous petty bourgeoisie are the worst help possible for homosexual tolerance and understanding.

Ron Davies and New Labour are in trouble for telling lies and for falsely representing themselves at election times.

Like any modern politicians, they have relied to a considerable extent on presenting a clean-cut family-oriented image.

Homophobic prejudice remains a widespread factor in this. But it is not the main issue here.

The rotten fraud of ALL bourgeois-opportunist politics, — which permanently deceive the ENTIRE working class about EVERYTHING to maintain wage-slavery exploitation (& worse to come as the crisis of capitalism degenerates towards inter-imperialist warmongering), — is much the most important question.

The 'democratic choice', — whereby the voters every four years or so are supposedly able to scrutinise the character, beliefs, honesty, reliability, and policies of those seeking to represent them as the members of the nation's parliament (and therefore government), — is a COMPLETE SHAM, financed by colossal central party-funding expense provided by.... who knows?

It is this grotesque FRAUD, — that "voters really get to know their MPs, to like them, and to trust them", etc, — which the government, the establishment, and parts of the media are so determined to protect. The electorate know absolutely NOTHING about any of their supposed 'democratic representatives'. They could ALL be the most emotionally unstable, socially deviant, sexually retarded, mendaciously opportunist careerists ever collected under one roof, for all that the voters REALLY know. And as we are periodically able to see due to the occasional scandal which somehow cannot be covered up successfully, that is EXACTLY what is likely to be revealed at some point or other.

But it is the whole hoodwinking mechanism ITSELF which is the real scandal, rather than the individual failings and idiosyncrasies of the ambitious slimeballs themselves, the MPs.

Blair's is the biggest scandal of the week by far, insisting on stressing that Davies had shown in leaving office "great courage, responsibility, and dignity", and STILL pushing the 'family party' line to the bitter end, hoping it could still be got away with, by sympathising with "what are clearly such difficult times for you and Christina (Mrs Davies)".

At that stage, the effective prime minister of Wales was merely supposed to have suffered "one moment of madness" resulting in "one lapse of judgment" which 'unknown criminals' took advantage of.

But now it emerges that Davies does very little else with his spare time but cruise the men's bogs all the way from Wales to Clapham Common; that he had already-made homosexual tours of two parks that evening with one of the 'strangers' supposedly later to rob him; that he gave the police a completely phony story until they warned him about giving false evidence; that these 'strangers' were phoning him at home the next day asking him for more money; and that he was notorious on the men's lavatories homosexual scene along the M4 corridor for his recklessness at cottaging with complete unknowns although himself a government minister, and almost as notorious for being 'well endowed'.

And what did the handful of Blairite constituency groupies, standing outside the Caerphilly party meeting vowing loyalty, know of all this???

Or of his first wife's torments going five years without sex while Davies returned 'relaxed' from the local Turkish Baths, being badgered by him for drugs, and discovering he had the sex-and drug-transmitted disease Hepatitis B?????

Now, EVERYONE has a history of some sorts, and it IS their own business, — except, of course, precisely in THESE circumstances of public politics, where the PERSONALITY of the would-be leader/representative involved, — their integrity, maturity, sense of public duty, etc, etc, — is virtually all there is that is consistently sold to the electorate, — not policies.

Blair & Co are engaged in a huge LYING FRAUD in their initial Davies cover-up because they fear that their whole deceitful presentation of politics could unravel over such deliberate misleading of the public. 

So it is NOT the fear of a homophobic backward response by the public at all which catches New Labour out in all these LIES.

It is their fear that one day, the public might grasp that the WHOLE POINT of bourgeois-'democracy' elections is just to put on a good PR presentation in order to con everybody, to make as few commitments as possible about what the government is really going to do about things, and to come up with the least meaningful but most effective advertising slogans and soundbites possible.

So this scandal is NOT about being homosexual, — as Chris Smith, Twigg, the Eagles, and others in the present parliament have demonstrated.

It is ALL about the bourgeois wish of parliamentary political parties to create as pleasing a faked-up image as possible of the party as a whole.

Such ruthless ambitious careerism knows that 'family values' are a good stunt to go for. And ambitious individuals like Davies chose to go along that same party path, together with all the rest of the completely opportunist and largely dysfunctional gang known as the parliamentary Labour Party, where alcoholism, corruption, careerism, and adultery are the only serious pursuits. 

It is THEIR choice, — the New Labourites, — that Ron Davies's thrills and spills around a long trail of men's public lavatories all the way from Wales to Clapham Common with complete strangers, looking for anonymous homosexual sex, — is not quite the electoral idyll that Blair & Co wish to put over to the public.

It is a complete joke that "nothing was known" about Davies's fulltime, emotionally-vulnerable, dangerous and dissolute lifestyle, — that "it came as a total surprise to us all" as the New Labourites are still pretending  — for various opportunist party reasons.

The Murdoch press is reporting that Davies, along with other MPs, was named on an official MI5 warning list last year as potential blackmail and security risks because of their lifestyles. It also reported that MI5 liaised with the Clapham police this time to try to get the full facts on the Davies scandal, directing them to the Star Steam homosexual massage parlour near the Common.

The Murdoch press quickly gathered evidence of Davies's unrestrained homosexual foraging around toilets and other pick-up points near his home in Draethen, Gwent; regularly on Clapham Common near his London home; at the Cardiff Gate M4 service station conveniences; at some toilets on the A46 near Bath; logged several times this year by residents of a clean-up campaign for Forest Fawr woods, a homosexual cruising scone near Draethen; at several other casual—sex areas used by homosexuals around Bath; and so on; — most of this information passing regularly through the hands of the police, according to the Murdoch press.

So what is all this NONSENSE coming from Downing Street about one "lapse of judgment"?????? They KNOW it is total bollocks, even as they put it but Davies was going about his REGULAR sexual/emotional needs, cruising first on Battersea Park and then on the Common for sexual excitement with a complete stranger he had just picked up in the bogs behind the Windmill pub. This is a REGULAR years-long routine, all over the M4 area from South Wales to London. So what was the "lapse of judgment"??

Clearly, there was NO sudden, one-off, "moment of madness" at all. This was all pure state-lies to help the New Labour government preserve its totally bogus political image, so as to help keep the ordinary masses permanently in the dark ABOUT EVERYTHING.

The aim is ALWAYS simply the same; — whatever the issue, only tell the public the vary barest minimum that can be got away with, just a bit of nonsense that will keep things quiet.

This time, it was only Labour's phony electoral-presentation image that required some spin-doctoring. Next time, it might be something more serious that needs hushing up, — like a split in the imperialist camp over its warmongering in the Middle East, against Iraq, against Serbia, against Libya, etc, or anywhere else that is being used as a smokescreen to divert imperialist-world attention away from the insoluble economic crisis which is plunging the entire 'free world' towards catastrophic slump and trade war.

Just be convinced that whatever the issue, the government of British imperialism will tell whatever lies that are necessary that can be got away with.

Some commentators are pretending that Davies is being hounded and ditched from the government just for being a homosexual. This does not make sense when there are already many open homosexuals on the government benches and prominent in public life generally.

Alternatively, the blame for the scandal is being put on society's backwardness which caused Davies to stay in the closet and then so embarrassingly fall out of it in public. This is dud logic too. What is the government of the country if not the best-placed authority to campaign for more enlightened attitudes on things, — on racism, on drugs, on drink-driving, on the protection of children, etc, etc. Davies and New Labour deliberately CHOSE to remain in this particular closet.

The real issue is WHY did they so choose?? Because of very REAL lifestyle problems posed for homosexuals, and by no means all to do with continuing popular ignorance and distaste.

In the very broadest terms of the history of human culture, being homosexual cannot help but constantly be recorded as an aberration. It is always an abnormality.

This has nothing to do with homophobia but with biological reality and with the obvious clinical/social frustrations and deviations which both give rise to and result from the homosexual condition, — clearly not made any easier by public prejudice, but equally clearly not remediable no matter how enlightened social attitudes become.

For whatever reason, the politically ambitious Davies decided to base his career on the pretence of being 'normal'.

This sad fraud is not helped by the PC (politically correct) shallowness of the gay rights lobby which refuses to accept the clinical description of how the homosexual orientation arises out of inadequate parenting in the crucial emotional-formative years and especially up to the age of four.

A compensating aggressiveness is substituted instead which INSISTS that being abnormal is perfectly normal, and even as good as or even better than being straight, and that anyone who will not go along with this is a homophobic reactionary. Many homosexuals reject this militant irrationalism, and prefer trying to stay in the closet to actually deal more tolerantly with their own sadness (arbitrarily called 'gayness' in PC's determined irrationalism) than aggressive 'gay pride' can ever allow.

It is the FUNDAMENTAL exploitational sickness and ideological distortions of capitalist society which will ENDLESSLY foment all the splits, divisions, fears, hatreds, and envies it can, in order to keep the working masses divided and ruled via deliberately-imposed ignorance, thus INCURABLY keeping homophobia going all the time that capitalism lasts.

It is just more illogicality to INSIST that this continuing period of prejudice will produce more enlightenment and be more comfortable for homosexuals if the relentless in-your-face 'gayness' of the 'pride' movement and the 'liberation' front retains 'politically correct' support. Many homosexuals have indicated a preference for a quieter life in as civilised a society as possible where homosexuals could be protected from persecution but did not need to be making a permanent song-and-dance about their sexual preferences on a 24-hour basis.

Such calmer open acceptance of homosexual abnormality might have suited Ron Davies but his real 'sin'(of political ambitiousness and opportunism, endemic throughout New Labour,) got the better of him. Humbug, character weakness, and unsuitability (as prime minister of all the Welsh) became the issues because of New Labour's deviousness, — not Davies's sexuality.

Sexual preferences are clearly, as widely claimed this week, a "private and personal matter" — — — up to a point.

What turns ANYONE on, whatever it is, is in one sense neither good nor bad. It is entirely their own private personal concern, — — — — up to a point.

The problem for Ron Davies and New Labour is grotesque hypocrisy and dubious credibility as public figures. 

Modern politics is more outrageously shallow, deceitful, and purely image-conscious than ever before in history. The glamorous glossy video-clip and the snappy but meaningless advertising-slogan-soundbite are the favoured 'message' in this new age of slick multi-media communications.

Leading politicians have to be seen to be 'happy families' people, — playing football in the garden with the kids, walking romantically along the beach with the spouse, being cute with a loving and beloved family pet, etc, etc, plus going to church if possible.

ANYTHING is good to feed to the gullible public as long as it enables too great depth of policy investigation TO BE AVOIDED.

So get the Blairites elected just by repeating mindlessly, stuff like "New values on old traditions; Everyone for society and a society for everyone; Care for the family, and families that care; A new Britain for a new age" etc, etc.

The all-round caring 'concern and wisdom' of the leading figures in the New Government was the general impression being aimed for, — responsible, self-denying, right with the mainstream popular pursuits, tastes, and interests, etc.

At this point, the 'normal' abnormalities of the Ron Davies homosexual lifestyle became a question of electoral misrepresentation at least, even if people remain unconvinced that they necessarily also indicate extremely vulnerable emotional instability.

And although 'normal' for the abnormalities of some aspects of homosexualism, it is NOT homophobic to anticipate that the public would have preferred the opportunity to have had a franker understanding of the potential future prime minister of Wales BEFORE a clearer picture of Ron Davies had to emerge in the police/tabloid revelations, — all sparked off by Blair & Co's own monstrous hypocrisy of only kicking Davies once he was down.
Once again, it is the oh-so-correct PC warriors of New Labour who emerge as one of the biggest reactionary sicknesses in society with their inveterate philistine shallowness, substituting glib electability for any serious sensitivity, either to the electorate's problems or even to their own hand-picked 'leading representatives'. One minute, Ron Davies is portrayed as a 'sound family man', and 'utterly reliable' and carrying New Labour's "full confidence" as the future prime-minister of Wales. The next minute, the completely insensitively mis-described Ron Davies is out on his ear for lacking all ability to show any judgment at all. What a degrading farce the whole thing is.
Tragically, Davies then went on to slam the free-market press, — the one that the New Labour privatising pro-capitalist spirit surely alone believes in, — for pillorying him with 'disinformation'.

Not true. For whatever rotten profit or political motive, the media have simply pursued all the obvious contradictions in the whole deceitful New Labour behaviour on these matters. New Labour and Ron Davies have been deliberately spreading all the disinformation, — from start to finish.

Davies should use his tragic position to urge on society a much more openly agreed scientific analysis of exactly how and why the homosexual phenomenon occurs, and to urge that a simple relaxed understanding and acceptance of the existing reality of homosexualism, in all its idiosyncrasies, would be society's best way forward, — minus the cover-up pretence of family-normality in the Davies/Blair style, but equally minus the shallow, aggressive PC posturing of the 'gay' militancy with its completely irrational insistence "that homosexuality is the same as heterosexuality", etc.

The general all-round talentedness of homosexuals which, like that of any other sector of the population, will only be able to be fully utilised by society once capitalist divisiveness is got rid of for ever, — and once PC hysteria is got rid of forever, — comes to fitful prominence under capitalism due to the effects of lingering homophobia which on the one hand continue to discriminate, but on the other hand inspire homosexuals to strive that much harder to achieve greatly in order to compensate for the difficult hand life has dealt them, particularly in a still-ignorant society where prejudice abounds.

And in a bourgeois social system which is steadily dying because of the endlessly mounting contradictions of its long-term insoluble cutthroat-competitive crisis, — more homosexuals come to outstanding prominence than ever, in all walks of life, due to a general paralysis in motivation by the main bourgeois class.

Tebbitt's comment implying the emergence of secret homosexual mafias in many key institutions, helping each other gain promotion, is almost certainly true, but is a bit rich coining from the Tory ruling class, the masters of freemasonry corruption. Blame capitalism, Mr Tebbitt, if you don't like such dubious developments.

The Davies scandal has great similarities to the Clinton scandal, with every section of bourgeois ideology, from the far right to the fake-"left", either deliberately missing the point, or doing it out of 'democracy'-mesmerised PC stupidity.

In one sense, Clinton's office groping IS a private matter, —  for the girls involved, Clinton, and his family and loyal staff. If none of them mind his creepy exploitative opportunism, then no one else should mind it either.

Except that in American politics even more than in Britain, the shallow soundbite personality presentation of a nice image is EVERYTHING, — with hundreds of millions of dollars expended to put across completely synthetic illusions of what the President and the First Family are supposed to be like. 

And, as EPSR analysed in detail, the total lying nonsense about Hillary supposedly 'standing by her man that she so admires for what he has done for the American people', etc, etc, was even still being peddled right at the moment of the seediest climax of this humiliating farce, — at the holding of the 'prayer breakfast' after the truth had come out about all the lies and the cover-ups, when Clinton turned on even more of the 'serving the people' humbug, and Hillary at last staged some gesture of forgiveness and solidarity, etc.

All utter bunkum. They HATE each other. They are in it together for a power-grabbing business, along with very influential Democrat-Party sectors who backed the glamorous Clintons from way back to deliver the electoral goods.

And still the farce goes on now, with total brainwashing propaganda control being churned out at a cost of more hundreds of millions of dollars to just get the right spin on all the tacky imbecilities which have gone on around the investigation of presidential misconduct, lies, and cover-ups.

Entirely lost in all this media frenzy is the slightest awareness of what an insult to the working people of America is this billion-dollar spin-doctoring circus which keeps serious discussion of important political issues at even greater arms length than in Britain. No wonder that less than half the electorate can routinely now be bothered to turn out even at presidential elections. In both Europe and the USA, electoral 'democracy' is becoming increasingly like a remote theatrical event, — so bizarre and outrageous that it would be hard to make up a satire about it any more.

Only the incurable crisis of the capitalist system puts a perspective on everything.

All is pointing towards a complete breakdown of society where the old pattern of ruling-class exploitation-relationships can not stagger on, and simply falls apart in the very act of governing, — utterly paralysed by its own contradictions of economic collapse, grotesque social inequality, and catastrophically intolerable inter-imperialist warmongering conflict. 

Revolution will be FORCED to emerge out of such turmoil. All it will want is a Marxist party to lead it, organise it, and educate it.

The sick nonsense of the tragic Davies continuing to back the whole Blairite government-by-propaganda fraud must be persistently exposed by the SLP if it wants to be seen as the leading, authoritative, enlightening voice of the labour and trade-union movement, — just as the exposed nasty farce of all the Clinton regime spin-doctoring should have been thoroughly investigated, bringing out the important splits in the American ruling class (and their origins in insoluble world crisis) which set up the Monica Lewinsky circus which humiliated everybody. 

Just pretending to be above this trivial but world-shattering scandal with a dismissive tut-tut educates nobody in anything.

The disarray of, and the contradictions between the subjective-idealist delusions of capitalist 'democracy' and the sordid reality of imperialist exploitation, bullying, and warmongering in practice — — are THE material for building up a working-class communist philosophy to drive out the deliberate rotten confusion that the capitalist system daily tries to blight working-class consciousness with.

It was Lenin's lessons on revolutionary journalism and party-building in Where to begin and What is to be done which routed decades of blanket revisionist complacency which masked Marxist science once before. An even better understanding of Leninism than Lenin himself had, is needed by the socialist revolution today. Build Leninism.

Royston Bull

Time to fight all anti-communism harder than ever

What an amazing pity that Socialist News 14 was marred by three or so articles that made the entire paper unsaleable — arguing for educational apartheid; supporting the imperialist onslaught on revolutionary Congo (rather than backing the utterly heroic fightback by Kabila's forces, SWAPO, Angola and especially Zimbabwe); and some gross examples of agnosticism about capitalist crisis into the bargain.

The argument must rage inside the Socialist Labour Party over whether the mass movement of the workers against capitalism will be politically inspired by communist-minded revolt; or whether trudging along in the wake of spontaneous workers and trade union struggle, with occasional nods to socialist ideology will do.

But as the EPSR has highlighted recently (971 & 972), a non-stop, active struggle against the anti-communism used by big business brainwashing to poison workers is the very starting point of building a powerful workers movement. A workers movement that can be pulled by the nose by the right-wing press at any moment of its choice by the slightest anti-communist stunt is an emasculated movement, that doesn't stand a chance.

All the Trot parties that ever existed, and all the revisionist parties that ever succumbed to Cold War pressures, have only ever been just playthings of the bourgeoisie, susceptible to the slightest gee-ing along from MI5 or MI6, to go along with pro-Solidarnosc stunts; pro-Hungarian counter-revolution stunts in 1956; "Tiananmen Square massacre" stunts and propaganda against Red China ever since 1989; etc.

If the SLP wants to be a truly mass movement of the WORKING CLASS then it has to consciously and deliberately EDUCATE workers in all the tricks and chicanery employed by the ruling class and its media manipulation. Including POLEMICS against the fake 'left' — one of the biggest outlets for confusing the class into anti-communist blind alleys.

As the global capitalist economic crisis mounts, so workers — including office workers who might be rather more conceited and open to anti-communism, will get politicised and drift towards left political groups, including the SLP. Workers ranging from those involved in factory struggles, to London office workers getting involved in re-unionisation, are all giving the Trot SWP a hearing however (and buying its paper).

Certainly, the natural home of the socialist-spirited industrial working class is Arthur Scargill's SLP — BUT tackling the idiotic, anti-Soviet and juvenile activist approach of the Trot groups would both clarify the SLP cadres themselves, and win over the less petty-bourgeois minded office workers and others influenced by the Trot 'left' (in reality McCarthyite red-haters and class collaborationists of the worst kind).

Those unsure in the SLP over whether the party should adopt a full-blown political appeal and start taking a serious approach to using a Marxist-Leninist analysis (as best as can be managed) about all world events and issues in the fight, should take a look at Socialist Worker, and see if they like what they see there. 

The hallmark of the SWP is its activist CONDESCENSION to workers. Talking down to the working class like a mindless rabble, and stopping every article just when it's got to the politics. Of course, this wretched, shallow treatment also saves them from committing more errors of gross anti-communist, anti-Marxist stupidity than they otherwise might — but there is always plenty of misleading rubbish on the page.

A nod or two towards totally formal positions "for getting rid of capitalism" but the lengthy guts of discussions of strike struggles, or economic problems, or the new Social-Democratic governments across Europe, is to leave the reader with the impression that there is a vague hope something might be improved; workers conditions could get better "if bold action was taken"; if New Labour "would do this", etc.

Like the stinking Marxism Today frauds, they are uselessly 'left' of Blair, but there is never any analysis of why capitalist crisis will drive workers to rise up INDEPENDENTLY, against ALL the parliamentary reptiles and impose its own state out of NECESSITY. A socialist revolt that will make the English Civil War look like a tea party. This understanding offends every fibre of an anti-communist Trot's being. It would mean being FOR Red Armies; being FOR a KGB; being FOR a Berlin Wall if necessary; being for ruthless proletarian dictatorship against the ruling class and its supporters.

As the EPSR has explained, it's precisely because the deepening global surplus-capital crisis is putting the monopoly bourgeoisie in fear of their continued rule — the fear that communist revolution could storm back onto the agenda — that the Marxism Today stooges are being wheeled out to peddle "official Marxism" (i.e. full-scale support for capitalism, counter-revolution against workers, and anti-Sovietism) and that the anti-communist history series, Cold War, has to re-blacken the USSR's name and re-exonerate (by faint damning) Western 'democracy' for all its massive war crimes of the 20th century.

But look at the series to CONFIRM THE OPPOSITE understanding — that the mass action, success or temporary defeat of the working class in history, is built on POLITICS. Built on the depth of conviction in the working people that they MUST fight the capitalist class, whatever its lies and propaganda against socialism.

Why are the monopoly media barons bothering with this re-hash of documentary footage? To put their poisonous spin on it; to re-infect everyone with anti-communism if possible. This is the level of the necessary fight for socialism — the philosophical level, and this fight CANNOT BE AVOIDED if socialism is to be achieved.

As the EPSR has also explained, the crisis of capitalism is also the crisis of all 'reformism' and, of course, of all anti-communism and anti-Sovietism. Along the way to overcoming the ruling class, workers will be forced to re-examine and reject all the LIES that told them that the USSR was no good, a disaster, a hell-hole. To start sensibly comparing what the USSR was able to achieve economically, in terms of social justice, in terms of defence against incredible all-out hostility from the imperialist West, in terms of a peaceful and crime-free and civilised prevailing culture, sports, arts etc — whatever the limitations of the revisionist leadership post-Lenin. And imagine the possibilities of what a socialist society could produce in an advanced Western country, and redouble all efforts to beat capitalism.

Fight anti-communism. Build the mass movement in the SLP. Build Leninism.   Chris Barratt

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

Martin McGuinness tells Republican News that the Trimble veto on further peace-settlement progress is causing a crisis, but that Unionist attempts to rewrite the Good Friday Agreement will be totally resisted.

The fact that the guns are not now in use is of immense significance. It underlines the IRA commitment to the search for a lasting peace.

DAVID TRIMBLE'S speech to his party conference was a disappointment to all of us who want to see the institutions agreed on Good Friday put in place and further progress made towards a lasting peace. David Trimble appears to be saying that he is not now prepared to honour the commitments given on Good Friday. Instead he has declared his intention to block the institutions which would begin the process of turning the promise of the agreement into the reality of a new approach based on inclusivity and equality and involving crucially for nationalists, all-Ireland structures.

It appears that the political leadership of unionism, in all forms, remain wedded to a failed and unworkable status quo. The unionist parties are opposed to change and seek to prevent change, either by outright opposition to the Agreement or by hollowing out its potential to deliver change. Inertia in the process serves the strategic interests of unionism.

In contrast nationalism, in all its forms, remains wholeheartedly committed to this process of change. For over ten years now, Sinn Féin's primary focus as a political party has been our peace strategy and the development with others of a process to resolve the causes of conflict and deliver a lasting peace settlement.

Since the first joint statement by Gerry Adams and John Hume in April 1993, which publicly kick-started the peace process, we have collectively made significant progress towards that objective. Who could have imagined then that we would have had the IRA cessations and inclusive negotiations, much less an agreement and its endorsement by the vast majority of the Irish people.

But at all times the process has had its detractors, those who remain outrightly opposed to the process and its agenda for change. Unfortunately therefore the progress made to date and potential for further progress cannot be taken for granted.

The Agreement is not a peace settlement. Nor indeed does it purport to be one. It has not resolved the causes of conflict but it has mapped out a political and institutional framework within which many of the causes of conflict can be addressed. Other vitally important issues were addressed but not resolved including human rights, policing, justice, equality in all its dimensions, decommissioning, and the demilitarisation of society.

But to listen to David Trimble one would think that decommissioning was the only issue yet to be resolved. Unionists have deliberately developed a crisis in the process. They have sought to obscure other issues of central importance to a just and lasting peace.

No one should be in any doubt about how strongly nationalists feel about unionist militias — the RUC and the RIR — who still patrol our streets. Or a justice system which has perpetuated the repression of nationalists for generations. Or the system of pervasive inequalities which have rendered nationalists second-class; citizens. Or the denial of human rights across the whole spectrum of issues. Nor should they doubt how central the resolution of these issues is to a lasting peace settlement. But for any party to make any of these important issues a pre-condition to the implementation of the institutional provisions of the Agreement is an act of bad faith which breaches and therefore threatens the entire Agreement.

The refusal to establish the Executive and the all-Ireland Ministerial Council and the associated implementation bodies cannot be viewed as an isolated blip in the implementation of the Agreement. This is not a difference of interpretation or emphasis. It is in fundamental conflict with the provisions of the Agreement. It is undemocratic and a denial of the rights and wishes of the vast majority of the people of Ireland who voted for the Agreement on May 22nd this year.

But a conflict resolution process cannot stand still — it is either moving forward or it is moving back. And this process is certainly not moving forward at present. This must be a matter of deep concern for everyone.

Sinn Féin is committed to the wholehearted implementation of the Good Friday Agreement in all its aspects including the provisions on decommissioning. Central to Sinn Féin's peace strategy is the development of a credible and effective way of achieving political change through peaceful and democratic methods. Collectively we have constructed a peace process, which has already delivered cease-fires by all the main ' protagonists with the obvious exception of the British state forces. 

Sinn Féin played a key role in delivering the total and unequivocal cessation by the IRA last July but fundamentally it was the firm and binding political commitments given that inclusive negotiations would begin that allowed us to convince the IRA that they should restore their cessation of military operations.

The value of that initiative by the IRA should not be underestimated. The fact that the guns are not now in use is of immense significance. It underlines the IRA commitment to the search for a lasting peace settlement. It created the conditions for further progress towards that objective.

The key to ensuring that progress is made lies in the creation of the required political conditions. That is a collective responsibility. Rather than exploring this sensible option, however, the opposite is now happening. The refusal to establish the political institutions and the resurrection of the demand for decommissioning as a precondition to excuse this, strengthens and encourages the rejectionists and makes our task more difficult.

It should be remembered that when the IRA announced their first cessation in 1994, the response of the then British government was to demand decommissioning to prevent the commencement of inclusive negotiations in the full knowledge that the IRA would not surrender.

It should also be remembered that if unionists had had their way, their demands for decommissioning would have prevented the second IRA cessation, would have prevented inclusive negotiations and would have blocked the Good Friday Agreement. Most of the numerous political initiatives over the recent past have been taken by Sinn Féin unilaterally or as part of the wider political leadership of nationalist Ireland.

Along with other leaders of nationalist Ireland we played a key role over a period of years in creating the conditions which allowed us to persuade the IRA to call a unilateral cessation of military operations in 1994 and to re-instate this in 1997.

The disciplined maintenance of the IRA cessation was a significant contributory factor to the negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement.

•  In September 1994 in conjunction with John Hume and Albert Reynolds we pledged our total commitment to democratic and peaceful methods of resolving political problems.

•  We engaged positively with the International Body on Decommissioning in 1995 and 1996 in an attempt to resolve the impasse created by John Major's demands for an IRA surrender.

¡ Despite the self-evident bad faith of the Major government we used our influence to sustain the first IRA cessation for a full 17 months until the rejection by John Major of the report of the International Body on Decommissioning.

•  Republicans worked tirelessly throughout the summer of 1996 and 1997 to calm the situation and to positively influence the response of the nationalist community to events surrounding Drumcree.

•  We continuously took political initiatives in this period, often with John Hume, to put the peace process back on track and succeeded in this in 1997.

•  In September 1997 we affirmed our commitment to the Mitchell Principles

•  Throughout the talks process we participated constructively in the work of the liaison subcommittee on decommissioning.

•  From December 1997 to February 1998 we worked tirelessly to keep the process on track in the face of the concerted loyalist murder campaign which saw eleven nationalists killed and almost one hundred wounded in shooting attacks.

•  Since the Good Friday Agreement we have continued to use our influence positively to effect its full implementation. Despite the risk of a destabilising effect on our own constituency we sought and secured our party's support for the Agreement in both referendums. This involved amending our constitution and removing a 75-year ban on members taking seats in any Northern Assembly.

•  In the run up to President Clinton's recent visit we took a series of initiatives to help move the situation out of the political vacuum caused by the failure to implement this stage of the Agreement. On September 1st Gerry Adams repeated Sinn Féin's commitment to make conflict a thing of the past, emphasised that inclusive and honest dialogue is the only way forward for this country, and unequivocally set out our belief that the violence we have seen must be for all of us now a thing of the past, over, done with and gone. That statement along with my subsequent appointment as Sinn Féin's representative to work with the IICD were welcomed and acknowledged as important political initiatives and confidence building measures by the US President Bill Clinton, An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern and the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Unfortunately these initiatives did not have the intended effect of ending the current political impasse. Rather than acknowledging and responding to these initiatives and employing them to energise the support he has within his own party, within the unionist population and within the North in general for the Agreement, David Trimble disappointed everyone by his begrudging and ungenerous response.

Sinn Féin appreciates that David Trimble has problems within his own constituency. Indeed we have been careful not to exacerbate these difficulties. 

But we all have problems. The difference is that Sinn Féin and Irish republicans have faced up to these problems. We placed great importance on internal communication and dialogue, in effect internal negotiation within our own political constituency. We have stretched the Irish republican constituency to the limit in the process and not without taking damage. The republican constituency can go no further.

It is becoming clear that David Trimble sees the impasse, generated by his refusal to implement the next stage of the Agreement, as an opportunity for unionism to rewrite the Good Friday Agreement, by skilfully utilising the divisions in unionism in an attempt to re-negotiate the Agreement. It is increasingly my opinion that he does not want to implement it and that he has changed his position on the Agreement since Good Friday.

I am concerned that the UUP strategy for rewriting the Agreement is having a negative effect on some of the parties to the Agreement and the threat this poses to the Agreement itself. There is a collective duty on all of us who negotiated and endorsed it to defend and ensure its implementation. The two governments have a particular responsibility in their overseeing role, to ensure that the Agreement is implemented in full.

The people of Ireland are democratically entitled to see the structures agreed on Good Friday and endorsed in subsequent referendums, established without further delay. Sinn Féin is democratically entitled under the terms of the agreement to Executive office and to places on the all-Ireland Ministerial Council. 

So, too, are all other political parties with a sufficient mandate from the electorate. These are mandatory provisions of the Agreement. They are not subject to the discretion of Mr Trimble. David Trimble holds the position of First Minister only as part of automatic power-sharing arrangements. If there is no Executive, selected on the basis of proportionality, then there can be no First Minister. If there is no Executive or all-Ireland Ministerial Council then there can be no Assembly. 

David Trimble cannot pick the elements of the agreement with which unionism is comfortable and ignore the others. He cannot overrule the votes of the majority of the people of Ireland. He cannot unilaterally rewrite the agreement or assert a veto over its implementation. 

The two governments are primarily responsible for ensuring that the provisions of the Agreement are implemented, in the terms and within the time-scales agreed on Good Friday.

The test for the two governments and for the Agreement itself is whether these democratic rights will be defended and acted upon.

Human rights, policing, justice, equality, decommissioning and demilitarisation are all issues which can and will be dealt with and the Agreement makes provision for addressing all of these matters. What concerns people now is that the peace process continues, that the guns are not in use, that the agreement is built upon, and that we continue on the road to a lasting peace settlement. The establishment of the political institutions agreed on Good Friday is the specified and essential next step for taking that agenda forward; the next staging post which can change the political context in which ail of the unresolved issues can be dealt with.

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

US neo-colonial domination of the Americas now challenged over the chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons-pollution it is arrogantly leaving behind, - and over Washington's relentless continued land-grabbing imperialism.

PANAMA

Death is calling...

• Barely one year before the deadline for completion of the historical Torrijos-Carter accords on the transfer of the inter-oceanic canal, the U.S. side is continuing to find pretexts to prevent their proper fulfillment.

On this occasion, the controversy is centered on the refusal to decontaminate the U.S. military bases and firing ranges, an obligation that Washington assumed at the time, as is known. Its failure to do so implies a high risk to the lives of Panamanians and possibly their neighbors.

According to private research, over 15,000 hectares of land in the Panama Canal Zone were used over the years for bombing and shooting practice and to test out experiments related to bacteriological warfare.

The data, accepted almost universally, is terrifying. We have selected a report from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, a U.S. non-governmental organization. It affirms — and this has not been refuted by the Pentagon — that over 3000 hectares of the canal region have high concentrations of unexploded munitions, contaminating agents and waste from chemical weapons.

From the 1920s onward but with greater intensity after World War II, the U.S. armed forces experimented with mustard gas, agent orange (tied to the genocide of the Viet Nam war), hydrogen cyanide, phosgene and other lethal weapons in Fort Clayton, on the islet of San José, and in other military bases. Panama was also used to test out munitions loaded with neurosis-producing chemicals and with uranium, like those used in the Gulf War.

These chemical substances, as the United States is well aware, maintain their effectiveness for many years and thus it is the duty and moral obligation of those responsible (or irresponsible) to eliminate their consequences.

Cubans have personal experience with what that means, because in the '60s, from their Panama bases and others in U.S. territory, the United States initiated a criminal biological war on Cuba, including the introduction of blights; defoliants of sugarcane, the country's principal resource; and, the most monstrous of all, viruses and bacteria to be employed against humans.

In the '70s and '80s, two contagious diseases — hemorrhagic dengue fever and hemorrhagic conjunctivitis — affected hundreds of thousands of persons and led to many deaths, including those of over 100 children.

The source used here cannot be accused of being pro-Cuba: Newsday, the Long Island daily, revealed that in 1971 a virus originating in Fort Gulik in the Panama Canal Zone had been transported in a fishing boat to CIA agents operating against Cuba. The same publication stated that in 1977 a biological program to destroy poultry breeding on the island had failed for unknown reasons.

Returning to the issue in question, the crucial decontamination of U.S. military bases and shooting ranges located in the Canal Zone, it is obvious that the responsibility lies entirely with those who created the situation.

As lethal as a bomb or hand grenade are the various substances that take longer time periods to work their lethal effect, or others that cause irreversible harm to living beings, a Panamanian researcher recently pointed out. And Granma International adds that much more dangerous than the mines, bombs and unexploded ammunition are the remains of chemical, bacteriological and radioactive weapons.

HAITI

The enchanted isle

Another David and Goliath? Political observers of the Caribbean have described  it  in  various  ways,  but "embarrassing" and even "laughable" are perhaps the best descriptions of the United States' attempt to reclaim sovereignty over the tiny Haitian island of Navase.

The focus of the dispute is a tiny and uninhabited key barely five kilometers in size, located 55 kilometers off the coast of Haiti and hundreds of kilometers from the United States.

The conflict dates back to over 100 years ago, when Haiti, the poorest nation in Latin America, exerted its rights in the face of growing U.S. expansionism and its pretensions to take over not only European colonies (Cuba, Puerto Rico) but also other territories in Central America and the Caribbean.

From the very first Haitian constitution, which dates back to the 19th century, the island appears as belonging to Haiti, along with other small islands nearby, but these references were eliminated during the successive U.S. military interventions that caused such suffering to the people of this small Caribbean nation.

Now the conflict has been reopened. Washington insists that a U.S. company was established on Navase in 1857 and that the island does not fall within Haitian jurisdictional limits. For their part, authorities in Port-au-Prince maintain that they will never renounce their sovereign rights, not even if faced with the use of force.

It is quite probable, then, that if a compromise cannot be negotiated, the dispute will be taken to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. For the time being, the Haitian Senate has launched an international campaign seeking the support of other countries, parliaments, non-governmental organizations and political parties in its efforts to defeat U.S. arrogance, no matter how slim the chances of success.