Hitherto philosophers have interpreted the world in various ways. The point however is to change it. Karl Marx
Economic & Philosophic Science Review
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No 1058 Sep 19 2000                                                                                                                                               10p

New Labour threats to stop protests against injustice put Government deservedly in the dog house. The sanctity of 'public order' is a farce when that capitalist order produces a society of such ridiculous inequalities and managerial disasters. The fuel-tax revolt is not socialism, but popular discontent could quickly become consciously anti-imperialist. The highly-integrated vulnerability of the globalised economy has a huge political message. Consumerism, aimed to dumb-down workers, trips up capitalism instead. The glitzy philistine system is running out of credible defenders. Blairism is the party of imperialist crisis, not a workers party. But the answer to the TUC's Euro-imperialist membership drive is not Little Englander import controls but deliberate revolutionary consciousness.

Sparked off by the public's fuel blockade against the unfairness of capitalism in general, which Blairism foolishly ignored, – the Government's standing is now in crisis-panic in all directions.

The only serious 'anarchy' in life comes straight out of the chaotic mismanagement and corruption of state and corporate affairs in Britain, with the Dome fiasco as a prize example; and people are getting wise to it. For the justified fuel-price protest to then be insulted and threatened as 'anarchy' by Blair & Co has been the last straw for many.

Self-serving posturing and crooked stupidity is all that the wretched Blairite parliamentary opportunists bring to government, but their hope that the beyond-their-control world imperialist economy would carry on providing 'prosperity' and thus making them look good in office regardless of their hopeless incompetence and their ludicrous inflated egotism, has crashed disastrously.

The economy is not entirely off the rails yet, and world trade has still not collapsed, plus which the Tories and the Lib-Dems and nationalists can and will only enact the same stooging role for international monopoly-imperialist big business that New Labour is doing, – so the Blairites are not quite being chased out of office yet.

But the huge rip-offs taking place in public and corporate life, plus the grotesque injustices being inflicted on ordinary people everywhere, coupled with unbelievable administrative muddle, waste, and pointlessness in routine misgovernment of the country's affairs, – is making everyone very cynical.

The anti-fuel-tax protest has some very middle-class and even rightwing aspects to it, but surely the main point in the public's support for it was agreement that the way things are run in this country is just not fair. And what is more, and perhaps surprisingly, people are already ready to do something about it. 
 
And although small proprietors organised the blockade, it had key anti-imperialist monopoly aspects to it, valid for everyone.

Efforts to downplay the significance of the Blair government's humiliation over high fuel taxes as just "greedy consumerism" or "a poujadist revolt by petty-bourgeois proprietors who hate progress", etc, all miss the point.

Although no far-reaching progressive political causes were being embraced, the petrol blockade revealed a lot about contemporary capitalist society's fragility which needs explaining.

The deep cause of the uprising, its ability to instantly paralyse the entire economy, and the momentary willingness of the vast mass of ordinary people to go along with it, all show aspects of a system heaving with contradictions.

As Marxism scientifically analysed, the unceasing growth of the power of monopoly capital must eventually create such grotesque unevenness of development, and rewards, that even the normality of bourgeois property itself is finally made impossible. Intolerable fluctuations produce so much conflict that the suffering majority ultimately accept that the rule of big capital must come to an end.

In people's minds, obviously no such conclusions are yet remotely in sight, but the circumstances of the power of monopoly competition being unleashed through the European Union on petty proprietors like hauliers, farmers, fishing-boat owners, and taxis, – right across Europe and not just in Britain, – and the background circumstances of the world motor monopolies creating an 'over-production' crisis which has nearly wiped-out Rover Cars, e.g., and of similar threats to textiles, steel, coal, shipbuilding, etc, – all of which are dictating the mood in the country, – are uncannily like descriptions from the Communist Manifesto about how capitalist society eventually brings about its own self-destruction:

Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much, industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of. the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them.

The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited  from all classes of the population.

But with the development of industry the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level: The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The unceasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class-struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling-class,, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

The lower middle class the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society, can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

Appearances at the moment are that the monopoly-imperialist bourgeoisie have never had such triumphal domination over the planet, with new-technology billionaires storming ahead in all directions, and willing philistine consumerism seemingly now the unstoppable universal culture. On the surface, people look as if they had nothing better to do than wait around to hail the latest 'successful celebrity'. The fact that such 'stars' frequently turn out to be uniquely talentless nonentities (in the glaring light of subsequent corruption, scandal or failure) seems to make little difference (apart from underlining why such a society should be deservedly close to destruction).

But were not Blair and Blairism just such instant international political and social sensations only a brief few months ago? And were not Clinton, Thatcher, and Reagan the titans of world imperialist PR (public relations) just before that, – ushering in 'the end of history', no less, with the 'triumph' of capitalism (as the only system for the world) apparently no longer in dispute? And what of all these reputations now? 

There can be no proof that international free-market forces are simply burning up 'credible political leadership' at an ever faster and more desperate rate to try to keep the grotesque inequalities and injustices of the international monopoly-exploitation racket going for a while longer without anyone seeing through the philosophical hollowness and cultural barrenness of it all, and its increasingly rickety foundations; – but the philistine shallowness of Thatcherism's raucous crowing followed by overnight humiliation, of Clinton's sordid cover-up and exposure, and of Blair's sudden collapse from glorious stardom (as of those around him) can hardly be explained away by just being 'dud people', all of them.

Seeing the whole of bourgeois politics as just one great swamp of self-serving posturing mediocrities (which they obviously are) is surely most interesting as a reflection of society's own state of mind. At the same time as massive propaganda and brainwashing campaigns, – generally ruled from Washington through the world's TV and press news agencies, – continue to keep international political opinion totally confused and malleable, – specific things continue to go disastrously wrong with increasing frequency, and cynicism about politics and all bourgeois politicians gathers apace everywhere.

Blairism's bubble has burst dramatically. The 'hero of New Britain' one minute, he was summarily dismissed last week as 'insufferably arrogant', and his government was humbled by a bunch of protesting nobodies. 

But this is far more than just the deserved comeuppance of the particularly unpleasant variant of opportunist wretchedness that 'social-democratic' politicians on-the-make (all of them) represent. Government by the Tory Party just now would be just as big a joke. New Labour at the moment stands for far more than just a bunch of passing petty-bourgeois careerists. Although past Labour governments, usually in office by default of some Tory scandal or other, have always been given, and accepted, a key role in international imperialism's global counter-revolutionary domineering, Blairism's unashamed open turn to anti-socialism recently, drew majority support from British big business, in despair at Thatcherism's worrying demise, and seeing Blair & Co as some kind of new marketing wonder-product with which to blind the public while continuing to steal its purse. 

The PR bullshit around Blairism has been phenomenal, indicating a system which somehow suspects that it might be playing some of its last cards. For historical analogy, the EPSR originally explained that Blairite propaganda had swept in a bit like Mosley's 'New Party' variant of Germany's NSDAP (National Social-Democratic Workers Party) behind Hitler during the imperialist economic crisis of unevenness, injustice, and volatility internationally in the 1920s and 1930s. But unlike the farce of 'parliamentary democracy' then which willingly ceded power to Hitler's government-by-propaganda, the anticipation in Britain by the EPSR at this time was that any government which lived by PR could just as quickly die by PR as well, – such is the enormous importance of changed historical circumstances now.

Blairism may not be dead yet, but it has been damagingly wounded, maybe even cripplingly so. And there is far more to it than just the fuel-tax fiasco, which much spin and many commentaries are rushing to lay the blame for at the door of the weird prima donna at the Treasury, Gordon Brown, so recently being gossiped about as demanding all the credit personally for how well Labour Government was looking because of its 'miraculously successful management of the economy', etc, etc. 

Blairism is increasingly recognised as nothing but a dim-witted stooge of rampant big business and murderous world imperialism. Its privatisation and PFI (private finance initiative) stunts are seen as putting more ill-gotten billions into sordid private pockets than ever even the Tory Party of entrepreneurial racketeering would have dreamed of doing; and its onslaught on struggling caring middle-class professions, e.g., like teaching and National Health as though they were the cause of crisis-of-expectations conditions in education and health (which in reality are precisely just a feature of the unfillable aspirations and unsolvable contradictions of world imperialist unevenness and injustice), – beggars belief. 

The Dome farce even outdoes New Labour's fuel-tax arrogance, brilliantly encapsulating how empty a gesture is government by propaganda-showmanship, and how costly for real human needs is this dying display of futile imperialist pomposity. And all of this utter Dome chaos, – from its ludicrous start of embarrassing posturing, right through, – has been inflicted via fraudulent accounting and cover-ups which is close to criminal.

And yet despite all this nonsense of dereliction of serious government by these cretinous 'parliamentary democracy' careerists, it is Blairism which has the gall to chide popular protest against fuel-tax injustice with the charge 'anarchy'.

It is the insane 'over-production' mess and the subsequent cutthroat competition of inter-imperialist trade war which is the all-important source of anarchy in the modern world, the catastrophic effects of which are precisely the factors which have driven a series of smallscale proprietors into revolt against the glut conditions which are wrecking their livelihoods, and hence into protests against fuel-tax impositions. 

And Blair is being doubly stupid with his hardline response, threatening future smallscale protesters with being humiliated by the power of oil monopolies under direction by government dictatorship. It is precisely big business and its uncaring stooge governments which is humiliating people enough already. Blair might have just thrown a lighted match into the fumes of petrol-tax revolt.

The mass reaction to the blockade was intriguing. Short-fused consumerism, supposedly with little in its head except an eye for a bargain and a readiness to rush and buy the latest fad or fashion, whatever it is, – revealed a surprisingly unanimous patience and tolerance towards the protest. Even more interesting for a supposedly 'unpolitical' action, the public consciously turned its anger against the Government, thus making it a very 'political' issue indeed. 

As already agreed, this is not remotely yet a conscious anti-capitalist development, but it surely does reveal how fragile is the system's supposedly all-powerful hold. As even Hague felt it obvious to observe, scoring points off Blair, – it was not a lack of corporate monopoly might which left the government of British imperialism helpless, but its inability to convince people that all-round it was being fair and reasonable.

Arrogant self-serving monopoly power are what ordinary folk see as major flaws in how the economy and government are mismanaged in this country, – not the rare public protest at any particular injustice such as the government's very high fuel-tax imposition.

And now that this month's amazing petrol blockade is a reality of political life, it inevitably poses further generalisations. 

It has long been accepted that the ever-greater integration and globalisation of the world economy was making every sector of society increasingly inter-dependent, thereby raising everyone's social awareness to new heights. To Marxist thinking, production ultimately becomes a social activity of such an advanced mutually-cooperative character that relationships of socialist planning are almost spontaneously suggested by the high degree of integration and mutual dependency. 

In one way and to a certain extent, this is what the mass protest was trying to educate the Blair Government into understanding, –  "we are all inter-dependent, but you are not listening to what the overwhelming majority of us think deserves more consideration, – the high rates of fuel-tax in Britain"; and to ram the point home about inter-dependency, the country's economy was duly brought to a standstill.

It would be fanciful to over-exaggerate any feelings of specifically class-solidarity raised in giving the Government a lesson, especially when a majority of blockade activists were undoubtedly middle-class, and the action was against an avowedly social-democratic government. 

But a quite remarkable unity and solidarity nevertheless took place, particularly so bearing in mind the destructive atomisation that largescale multinational corporatism has imposed on social and community living in Britain and the West, and in view of the genuine great insecurity everyone now feels living within the ever-quickening capitalist rat-race. And even more peculiar that private car transport, – the one obvious essential prop to being able to survive this atomised insecure existence which no one could possibly be without or be willing to give up for too long, – was the sacrifice everyone was willing to make to help give the Blair Government a bloody nose. 

To decide just how remarkable and significant an act of conscious public solidarity this all was would require far more evidence over a far wider range of activities, but its close historical resemblance to an act of revolutionary class solidarity will create explanatory difficulties for defeatists rather than for Marxists. Undoubtedly, huge masses of the public showed an unsuspected willingness to all pull together to rout Big-Government injustice, – and at some personal sacrifice. It was an eye-opener.

The dialectical topsy-turviness of this conflict also gave further weight to other arguments in the last two EPSRs (before this) challenging the ancient understanding of Labour as being 'a workers party' (albeit a 'bourgeois workers party' in Lenin's description). 

As explained that characterisation was given at a time when the prominent Labour figure, Ramsay Macdonald, was officially in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat in Bolshevik Russia; when the total socialist ownership of the entire British imperialist economy was Labour's only political programme (and a crucial new clause in its constitution, clause IV); when the trade-union backbone of Labour had been enthusiastically organising the Revolt on Red Clyde, and the Hands Off Russia movement to physically challenge imperialist counter-revolution; and when there had never yet been the slightest hint of what nine future Labour Governments of Britain (from 1924 to 1997) would actually do in office (convincingly sell-out the working class both nationally and especially internationally).

It was a period when 'social-democracy' ('socialism' introduced by majority acts of parliament) was still a universally-attractive notion and as yet completely untested (and therefore not yet thoroughly exposed as totally bogus and fraudulent). In those circumstances, it was helpful to remember that Labour was a workers party of sorts (albeit bourgeois) to help maintain any united-front tactics for exposing the utter class rottenness of trade-union politics (petty-bourgeois opportunism).

But in the now vastly changed historical circumstances, are not such reminders that 'Labour is still a workers party' completely misleading and out of place? Labour is now the political party of first choice for serving the majority of British imperialist big business.

Far from 'Hands Off Russia', Labour and the TUC have played as big a reactionary role in Western governments' imperialist leadership since 1945 in trying to achieve the nuclear counter-revolutionary destruction of the Soviet workers state and other anti-capitalist revolutionary movements. 

And what does this latest conflict do but richly confirm the complete reactionariness of Labour and TUC politics in this epoch of imperialist crisis when Big Business can get little other support or legitimacy. While even the Tories and Lib-Dems hesitated in the face of such popular feeling against the supposed sanctity of 'the law-and-order authority of the state', of 'the democratic process', and of 'consistent pricing and taxation principles', 'taking the rough with the smooth as economic cycles dictate', etc, etc, – it was Labour and the trade-union leaders who declared instant class-solidarity with Big Oil Monopoly profits and with Big Government taxation surpluses, and wholly against the 'destructive and irresponsible anarchy' of the massively popular spontaneous protest against high prices. 

So advanced is the monopoly degeneracy of the imperialist-crisis system that organised petty-bourgeois opportunism ('social democracy') is now the last great political support protecting monopoly-imperialism from even further exposure, hatred, and potential overthrow. Should the need ever return for united-front tactics to split any remaining proletarian-socialist aspirations away from Blairism, that will be time-enough to recall that Labour was once a 'workers party' of sorts. Meanwhile, such cowardly tail-ending – electoralist confusion-mongering by the fake-'left' "socialist Alliance" movement in support of 'parliamentary democracy' can only cause enormous damage to workers understanding and to the real Marxist struggle against imperialism.

Labour and the TUC are playing an identical reactionary role towards EU monopolisation in general as in rejecting these latest protests by sectors in revolt against super-imperialist competition. Blairite trade-unionists are the only regular class (petty-bourgeois opportunism) consistently favouring pro-monopoly class-collaboration all the way to British membership of the European Union monopoly-imperialist currency. 

Now divided by more than 80 years since trade unions genuinely represented real working-class political aspirations, the TUC nowadays fails to see how workers have any separate political aspirations at all to those of monopoly-imperialism. No wonder these complete stooges of big business not only could not find a scrap of sympathy for the small businesses being destroyed by EU monopolisation's cut-throat competition, but were actually calling for the protest organisers to be arrested by the police and charged with 'restraint of trade' (i.e. restraint of capitalism).

This role of full-time counter-revolutionary agents is the ultimate expression of anti-theory philistinism in the British-imperialism workers movement; and it has its equally-unsavoury counterpart in the Little Englander chauvinism which pretends that leaving the European Union, keeping the pound, and using import controls for 'sounder economic management', would offer a seriously better 'alternative future' for the working class. 

It would do nothing of the sort, of course. It would merely offer capitalist trade war with a slightly different emphasis and orientation. Only world revolution can halt imperialism now. 

Competitively defending 'Made in Britain' production in all things as a supposed way of moving the working class forward towards the idea of socialist public ownership of everything again, is just a cowardly philistine avoiding of the issue. It is the longstanding globalising monopolisation tendencies which gave birth to the European Union, not vice versa. 

American imperialism monopolies were already dominating vast sectors of international industry and technology long before the traumatic European experiences of World War II had even caused the EU to be thought of. British monopoly-imperialist exploitation was savaging its own working class, and fiendishly union-bashing, even long before international monopolisation and inter-imperialist world war (I or II) had even been thought of.

Going along with 'British jobs for British workers' and 'Import controls to protect British industry' is just a cowardly Luddite creep into Union Jack class-collaboration out of an opportunist philistine inability to even contemplate world socialist revolution without a snort of cynical complacency and workerist contempt for theory.

One of the most subversive aspects of working-class struggle is the willingness to pay superficial respect to the idea of Marxism but in practice to never take seriously the attempts to apply Marxist science to a contemporary analysis of imperialist crisis, – last week's fuel-tax revolt and the general phenomenon of Blairism (as seen by the joke 'Socialist Alliances') being the latest examples. Crude applications are not the point. 

The middle-class-originated protest against crippling taxes (in the light of even more crippling EU-monopoly competition) was as remote from a Bolshevik Revolution as it is possible to be. But that still leaves the entire phenomenon to be investigated, – and Marxist science of imperialist crisis remains the only sensible approach. 

Build Leninism. Joe Harper

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

Uneasy imperialist peace cannot hide or solve Guatemalan suffering from Western exploitation.

FERMINA LOPEZ is one of the 60,000 widows of the Guatemalan armed conflict. After 36 years of civil war and 500 years of silent resistance, that country's indigenous communities are still struggling to come to terms with the excruciating pain caused by repression and violence. More than 200,000 people were killed, hundreds of communities were wiped off the map and more than a million people were displaced from their homes and communities by the counter-insurgency policy of the army and government — a policy that could not have been carried out without the support of Western states. The government tried, unsuccessfully, to wipe out the left-wing guerrilla organisation that fought against military rule, the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (UNRG).

During the 1980s, when the worst and most numerous human rights violations were carried out, the United States was giving significant financial and military aid to the Guatemalan Government — $50m at its peak in 1983. The British Government gave various forms of support to the Guatemalan military between 1994 and 1996. Although human rights violations were no longer at their height, the Guatemalan Army was responsible for a number of human rights violations during that period, like the massacre of Xaman, when an army patrol attacked a community of refugees who were returning from Mexico, killing eleven people, two of them children, and injuring another 30.

The effects of years of violence have been and still are devastating. More than a decade on, people are still trying to find out what happened to their relatives, how they died and where they were buried, with the hope of re-interring them with dignity.

Fermina Lopez, together with other widows, organised the CONAVIGUA or National Co-ordination for Guatemalan Widows, a group which fought and is still fighting against militarisation and human rights abuses. Now she is member of the Women's Forum, created as a consultative body after the Peace Accords. 

"We had to work against human rights violations and at the same time fight for the rights of our son's and daughters to education and to enjoy better living conditions," she explains. "But the most important aspect of the organisation is that allows the participation of women at all levels."

Despite the extreme violence and genocide carried out by the military, some indigenous communities maintained forms of resistance. After 500 years of genocide and discrimination, people still speak Mayan languages, wear Mayan clothes and live life according to Mayan traditions and values. During the 36 years of civil war, nearly half-a-million people, most of them Mayan, had to leave their homes and communities. Some 150,000 took refuge in neighbouring countries, mainly Mexico. Thousands of people moved to the cities, becoming fringe dwellers, part of the urban poor. But some communities managed to stay organised. Some of those indigenous who fled to the jungle formed the Communities of Population in Resistance (CPR).

The existence of any form of association was important as a form of defiance but also because, as Fermina explains, it allowed the participation of indigenous people in the Peace Accords signed in 1996. "One of the amazing things about the war is that the people were able to stay organised in spite to the bombings and the threats and were able to maintain their organisations. These were so strong that when the UNRG sat down to negotiate with the government, we were able to put forward proposals on human rights and the indigenous people and they had to be taken into account."

Although the armed conflict ended even before the final peace accords were signed in December 1996 and these documents were welcomed as a turning point in Guatemala's history, change has been very slow. For the indigenous population, the Accords meant the possibility of living in peace for the first time in 500 years but, as Fermina points out, "the transition from war to peace is not an easy one and it is not easy to know how to protest, how to make change. But the Peace Accords have given rights to people and the possibility of participation. But it is very difficult to change the military mindset to a more civilian type."

A series of different committees were set up with the signing of the Peace Accords, bodies which were supposed to tackle the issue of the displaced people, returning refugees, and indigenous women. But as Fermina says, the committees are useless unless the necessary resources are provided.

In the December 1999 general elections, the right-wing Guatemalan Republican Front, Party of former dictator Efrain Rios Montt, won the majority of the votes. The leader of the party, Alfonso Portillo, won the country's presidency with 68% of the votes. Rios Montt, the man with the worst human rights record in Guatemala, is now the president of Guatemala's Congress.

Fermina does not want to compromise on this issue: "He is trying to make out that he is a little bit more progressive and liberal than he is, but he is also very aware of the Pinochet case and he has not left the country in quite a while. We are worried about the position he has now, but we will have to wait and see what happens."

The failure of the judiciary to deal with those responsible for the human rights violations during the war is one of the biggest worries for the indigenous community. For that reason, Nobel laureate Rigoberta Menchu has had to take the step of bringing the case of Xaman before the Spanish judiciary.

Guatemala now has to face up to all the problems at root of the armed conflict — social inequality, discrimination and land ownership.

Fermina feels that the Peace Accords have brought about the awakening of indigenous culture. "The celebration of the 500th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus to America, with the creation of the Indigenous Movement of Resistance, was important, but it was with the peace accords that the presence of the ethnic groups was acknowledged. Before, no one would talk about the 22 linguistic communities in Guatemala, but now people are talking about that and recognising it."

But there is still a long way to go to achieve the fair and just society that Guatemalans want to achieve. 

COLONIAL LEGACY
The indigenous population was subjugated by Spanish invaders nearly 500 years ago. Vast numbers of Mayans were killed or died from illnesses brought by the Spanish. Independence from Spain in 1821 did not benefit indigenous peoples, who continued to be subjected to repression and discrimination by landowners and successive governments. 

STANDARD OF LIVING
Average life expectancy is 59.3 years. Only 62% of the population have access to safe water. There is only one doctor per 4.000 people. Illiteracy is 44.9%. These reflect worse conditions than anywhere else in Central America (UN, 1999).

DISTRIBUTION OF RESOURCES
Ninety per cent of the indigenous population lives below the poverty line. Less than 3% of the population owns 65% of the arable land. The wealthiest 10% possess 47% of the national income.•

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

Even bent UN 'peace' monitors have to condemn Mexico's class-war treachery.

The Mexican Army's grip on the conflict area was tightened in the form of new  checkpoints obstructing travel and additional military encampments. Several indigenous communities which have long been settled in the Lacandon Jungle have recently been accused of "ecological infractions" and simply ordered to leave. (They claim that their displacement is actually intended to strengthen a military corridor connecting two important bases.)

Security force harassment of perceived Zapatista supporters, including aircraft overflights at very low altitude, constitute a constant pressure on the indigenous communities that exacts a physical and psychological toll. The military pressure is a principal focus of continuing popular protest activities, which have recently Included roadblocks, marches, and a National Consultation on Women's Rights. 

The other rallying cry of the Zapatistas and indigenous rights supporters is implementation of the San Andres Accords. Signed in 1996, their fulfilment has been stalled by disagreement regarding implementing legislation. Recent comments by federal officials make the prospects for resolution look dim. The EZLN (Zapatista Army of National Liberation) was criticised repeatedly for its unwillingness to engage in dialogue. In addition, President Zedillo asserted: "Dialogue with the EZLN will not resolve the problem of Chiapas. Francisco Labastida, presidential candidate of the ruling PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party), went further: "You cannot have a small group of people substitute for the legislative powers of the country. Laws are not made from the jungle." The San Andres Accords that the federal government negotiated and signed require legislative reform regarding indigenous rights.

Meanwhile, there was an increase in visits to Chiapas by Mexico City-based diplomats, and the remarkable chorus of international criticism of Mexico's human rights record continued unabated. After her February visit to Mexico, Erika Daes, President of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Peoples, called on the government to respect the San Andres Accords. She said that the Mexican Army should suspend its patrols in Guerrero and Chiapas, return to its bases, and focus on external threats. (She also called on guerrilla groups to put down their arms and seek dialogue.) Also in February, UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions Asma Jahangir released a report on her investigation in Mexico last July. She concluded that some of those responsible for well-known massacres have not been prosecuted and that "the incapacity of the judicial system results in an increase in human rights violations". She called upon the government to demilitarise society and to refrain from using the armed forces for law-enforcement activities. Other voices critical of Mexico's human rights record during this period included representatives of the European Parliament, who lamented the rote of paramilitary groups in Chiapas, and the US State Department.

The recent deportation of veteran election observer Ted Lewis, despite having observer credentials from the Federal Electoral Institute, raised the spectre that the Mexican Government is expanding its campaign against human rights observation to target observers of its election process as well. Lewis, Mexico Program Director of US-based Global Exchange, was deported despite his accreditation by the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) to conduct observation activities related to the current election campaign.

Mexico continues to aggressively pursue international trade agreements. In mid-February, Mexico and the European Union approved a free trade treaty. It was subsequently ratified by the European Parliament and by the Mexican Senate. However, its implementation was impeded by a failure to achieve approval in the Italian Parliament.

Negotiations on free trade agreements proceeded with Japan and Israel. As in the case, of the European agreement, opposition political forces as well as social organisations complained that they were being left out of the discussions and their concerns were not being heard.

RECOMMENDED ACTIONS:

1.	Urge the Zedillo administration: 
To implement the recent recommendations of UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial  Executions, Asma Jahangir, including: "Ensure the demilitarisation of society and avoid deputising the armed forces to maintain law and order or to eradicate crime... End the impunity enjoyed by certain privileged categories and classes of people..."

To respect the internationally recognised function of election observation and the autonomy of the IFE (Federal Electoral Institute) in approving election observation applications by granting a visa to experienced election monitor Ted Lewis. 
     
2.	Circulate information, such as this report, on the situation in Chiapas.
3.	
World Revolutionary Socialist Review
(edited extracts from a variety of anti-imperialist struggles).

Modern US/UK genocide for imperialist domination of world oil resources makes Hitlerism look amateur

THIS WEEK marks the tenth anniversary of the imposition of sanctions against Iraq, which the Iraqis would call ten years of genocide. Nearly 5,000 children under five are dying every month as a consequence of the United Nations-imposed blockade. The United States and Britain are still bombing the Middle Eastern country almost every day, while the "oil for food" programme holds the Iraqi economy to ransom. What was initially sold as a strategy to put and end to Saddam Hussein's regime is actually destroying the United Nations image as a humanitarian agency.

In 1998, Denis Halliday, a Dubliner working as Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations, one of the elite senior officials, decided to resign after 34 years of work with this organisation. "I am resigning," he wrote, "because the policy of economic sanctions is totally bankrupt. We are in the process of destroying an entire society... Five thousand children are dying every month... I don't want to administer a programme that results in figures like these."  Nowadays, Halliday is working to end economic sanctions against Iraq and he was in Ireland to meet with government officials to try to get the Irish government to, stand up for the Iraqi people.

He is not alone. UN officials in Iraq have also criticised the policy. On 13 February 2000, Hans von Sponeck, who succeeded Halliday as humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, resigned. "As a UN official, I should not be expected to be silent to that, which I recognise as a true human tragedy that needs to be ended," he said. "How long should the civilian population of Iraq be exposed to such punishment for something they have never done?" Von Sponeck drew harsh criticism from the United States and Britain for his statements.

UNICEF survey results released in August 1999 revealed that in the South and centre of Iraq, home to 85% of the country's population, under five mortality increased from 56 deaths per 1,000 live births (1984-1989) to 131 deaths per 1,000 live births (1994-1999). This means that at least 200 children will die today and another 200 tomorrow. As Halliday points out, this is due to the man-made famine created by the sanctions: "I refer to it normally as genocide, but in fact it is famine."

Those who have an understanding of Iraqi history know that this country could not be considered part of the developing world. Iraq in the 1990s had a standard of living comparable to many countries in Europe. That was due to the country's oil revenues, which were not all spent by Hussein's government on armaments; the Iraqi Government also invested billions of dollars on the economy and the wellbeing of the people.

The educational system in Iraq in the mid 1980s was outstanding. Any student, regardless of political linkage or religion, could go overseas to get a Masters or Doctorate degree at the expense of the government. Illiteracy rates in Iraq in 1958 were 85%. By 1990, illiteracy was down to between 5% and 8%. The health-care system in Iraq before the sanctions was so good that the World Health Organisation used to send people into Iraq to study how to run a public health system, urban and rural.

During the Gulf War, British and American aircraft focused their attacks on the basic and most important infrastructures in what it was from the very start a war against the Iraqi people. First were the oil refineries, without which Iraq's transport system came to a halt in weeks. Within hours of the start of the air war on 17 January 1991, 90% of the country's electricity production had been destroyed, which led to the stoppage of factories and made food distribution nearly impossible by the loss of refrigeration. The allies bombed four of the seven major water pumping stations and 31 municipal water and sewage facilities. Even food warehouses and grain silos were hit.

In those days, in the 1990 period, Iraq was importing 70% of its food stocks. For the first nine months after the war, the member states of the UN's Security Council imposed a total ban on the sale of Iraqi oil and on the importation of food stocks. That is a guarantee of famine in a matter of months," says Halliday. "This was an outrageous thing for the UN to do."

"The Americans are still bombing Iraq almost daily, certainly two or three times a week," explains Halliday. "Recently, they dropped flares in the north of Iraq specifically to burn the wheat and barley that have been growing in the North; this is the harvesting period. It is hard to believe that they have destroyed, burned, the wheat that Iraq is growing itself."

The combination of all these factors affects worst the young, the poor and the sick. Children today are dying of diarrhia due to the bad water system combined with their lack of immunities, general malnourishment and the shortage of basic medicines to treat curable diseases. Sophisticated drugs for treating heart diseases or cancer often are not available. Such basic chemicals as chlorine to treat the water were blocked by the UN Sanctions Committee. Just before Christmas, Britain's Department of Trade and Industry blocked a shipment of diphtheria and yellow fever vaccines.

"On top of the mortality problem you have malnutrition," says Halliday. 'About 70% of adults are now anaemic. Probably more than 30% are malnourished. Among children, 50% are now chronically malnourished, and that means physical and mental damage. More young mothers are anaemic or malnourished, or have lost their immunities. Their children are born underweight and of course the consequences are horrific. That is an incredible situation. The West and the United Nations are creating this situation with the sanctions."

Halliday, with all his 34 years of experience with the UN, feels that the organisation "is simply being used as a cover for the US".

"The embargo is about finances, it's about controlling oil supplies over the world, and especially for Europe and Japan. It is about defence; it is about selling American weapons and European weapons.

"Plus, there is political control. By running a system where Saddam Hussein is still in power, the UN and the US are sustaining the big fear that Baghdad creates in the hearts of the Kuwaitis, and the Gulf, and the Saudis in particular, which makes a perfect opportunity for selling arms. It is a wonderful circle of opportunity. You created the fear and sustained it. You create the opportunity and sell weapons. And you finance the Gulf War with Saudi money... This is a fantastic neo-imperialistic opportunity, which has been very well orchestrated by Washington."

The hypocrisy of the sanctions regimen against Iraq is clear for Halliday. He still remembers how chemical and biological weapons were happily sold to Iraq by all Western powers to be used against Iran and the Kurds: "We know Saddam has undertaken appalling exercises against the Kurds, against the Sheeah majority in the South, who were encourage by George Bush to rise up in 1991 and then, of course, got no support in fact, the Americans stood back and supported Baghdad's crushing of both the Kurds and the Sheeah itself," warns Halliday. 

"The credibility of the UN has been very badly damaged. I speak in Europe very often and people ask me 'Mr Halliday, has the UN any future?', 'Is there any independence of the United Nations or has it become part of the US State Department?'. There is a feeling that the UN has been lost to the Security Council, which has been corrupted by the five permanent members. Particularly, it has been corrupted in recent years because now we just have one hyper-power, the United States. So the whole UN is now being manipulated in the best interests of US foreign policy."

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

Decadent colonists are congenital killers,– first the Irish, and now each other.

FOR MANY northern nationalists, the photograph of a uniformed RUC officer standing to attention and saluting the coffin of loyalist paramilitary Bobby Mahood as the funeral cortege passed along the Shankill Road last month said it all.

Of course, everyone is entitled to show respect for the dead and offer comfort to the bereaved, but many of us doubted this lay at the heart of the gesture. After all, respect for the dead had never informed RUC policy in the past. Until fairly recently, riot clad RUC officers regularly jostled and routinely batoned mourners attending the funeral of a republican.

Indeed, the decision to deploy the British army within the Shankill and other loyalist areas affected by the UVF and UDA feud has been seen by nationalists as tacit recognition that as a counter insurgency force against nationalist aspirations, the RUC has never seen its role as confronting loyalist violence.

And then there were the Apprentice Boys, led by their governor Alistair Simpson, providing a guard of honour at what was generally regarded as the funeral of a loyalist paramilitary. Bobby Mahood  was described as a "long standing and committed member of the Apprentice Boys".

Last week, in a space of a few days, Northern nationalists witnessed elements of Orangeism parading their allegiances. As the loyalist feud plunged them into crisis, the niceties of distance and distinction were momentarily forgotten.

On Monday evening, it was the turn of Belfast's unionist politicians to close ranks. In Belfast City Hall, unionist councillors rallied to protect UDP Deputy Mayor Frank McCoubrey from censure after he had shared a platform with UDA killers Johnny Adair and Michael Stone during an armed loyalist paramilitary show of strength which had erupted into violence.

Addressing the monthly meeting, Ulster Unionist Councillor Jim Rodgers said he was disappointed by the motion tabled by Alliance's David Alderdice which "deplored"  McCoubrey's presence at the rally.                 

Sinn Fein's accusation that Frank McCoubrey had failed to represent all of the people of Belfast and had brought the position of Deputy Mayor into disrepute was also rejected by unionists.      

"I don't think this will do any good for this council or for the city of Belfast and certainly wouldn't be welcomed by the people of the Shankill," said Rodgers. Unionist councillors, including two members of the PUP, closed ranks in support of the UDP man and the motion was defeated.

A few days later and the Loyal Orders' tolerance towards sectarian violence was further confirmed when members of the Orange Order laid wreaths at a mural dedicated to UVF killer Brian Robinson during a paramilitary commemoration on the Shankill. Robinson was shot dead by the British army in 1989 as he made his escape after killing a Catholic in Ardoyne.

Patrick McKenna was shot 11 times by the UVF as he walked a short distance from his home in Farringdon Court in North Belfast. Around 10am, in a street crowded with shoppers, two masked gunmen opened fire from a motorcycle at close range. Patrick had survived an earlier attack when a booby-trapped card sent by loyalists blew up in his face. His family also complained of RUC harassment.

County Grand Master, Dawson Bailie, said that the local lodge's decision to take part in the UVF commemoration "would not be a problem." "The Orange Order is a very broad church and it's not my responsibility to say to people they can't be members of various organisations," said Bailie.

But the Loyal Orders can't have it both ways. When hundreds of leaked intelligence files being used by the loyalist paramilitary group, the Orange Volunteers, were discovered at Stoneyford Orange Hall, the Order washed its hands of all responsibility. They were "astonished". Any Orangeman involved in paramilitary activity would be expelled, the Order had declared.

In July 1997 a 16-year-old Catholic school boy was abducted and beaten to death on the outskirts of Clough, County Down. James Morgan's mutilated body was discovered in a lime pit used by local farmers to dispose of dead  farm  livestock. An Orangeman, Norman Coopey was subsequently convicted of murder. Despite intense media pressure, the Orange Order refused to expel Coopey from their ranks. •