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 1061  Oct 10 2000                                                                                                                                              25p

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West's puny 'success' over the mere memory of what Yugoslavia once stood for is as desperately shoddy as the political rubbish that has been turfed out. The 'liberation' of East Europe has only brought economic insecurity and cultural degeneracy. Cook & Co’s 'triumph' boasting over sick revisionist decay (the real revolutionary Yugoslavia would have wiped the floor with NATO's cowardly blitzkrieg) is just a diversion from the 'free world' trade-war chaos and colonial decadence in Occupied Ireland and Occupied Palestine. Zionist imperialists do not need to threaten war. It is inseparable from their very colonising presence in Palestine, to which only a full restoration of Palestinian sovereignty over the whole territory will ever be a solution. Colonial privilege is just as doomed in Ireland, regardless of Unionist bluster. There is equally no 'reform' solution to the West's drug-taking contradictions. Only ending capitalist society,  whose culture creates both cause and effect, will offer a healthier perspective. The political anarchism of drug libertarianism is a help, not a hindrance, to imperialism.

The artificial triumphalism whipped up by the Western authorities over the middle-class overthrow of the Serbian Socialist Party reveals more about imperialist weakness than about the wretched Milosevic regime.

The Belgrade bureaucracy has suddenly been called 'communist' again by capitalist-press propaganda in the last days of its downfall so as to make the 'victory' of free-market forces sound that much sweeter, but no one should be fooled. The corrupt and muddleheaded Milosevic dynasty was as distant from Bolshevik Revolution as it is possible to be on the political spectrum, and indeed had already long had far more in common with bourgeois regimes in Europe than with communism.

The revisionist privatisation and anti-communist nationalism under Milosevic and his predecessors had years ago put the writing on the wall for the doomed Yugoslav workers state, playing into the hands of the Western-financed and CIA-plotted breakaways from the socialist federation by Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Macedonia, and Kosovo, one after the other, and making the tragic land-grabbing, national-chauvinist wars a serial inevitability.

While a defeat for imperialist meddling remains the sole interest the international working-class could have in this particular phase of the Balkans imbroglio, it needs very sharply differentiating from any daft notion of the slightest regret for the passing of the Milosevic regime. This revisionist garbage was an utterly humiliating end for the proud history and mighty achievements of the Yugoslav workers state since 1945, and the miraculous communist-partisan resistance which preceded it against the previous great Western imperialist armed meddling in the Balkans led by Germany and Italy, appeased by Britain, France, and the USA.

The huge all-Europe conquest-forces, inspired by Hitlerism and Mussolini-ism were often shamed by communist guerrilla-war struggle, sacrificing everything then to destruction but making possible thereby the greatest pages of Balkans history ever, under the cooperation of the Socialist Federation which united all Yugoslavs for the first time. The Milosevic gang allowed far feebler NATO blitzkrieg forces to humiliate Serbia without a fight, and to steal Kosovo anyway, and now to engineer the overthrow of the Serbian Socialist Party as well, such had been the total degeneration of the once-proud workers state by these revisionist wretches. More shame to once-honest communists now in the SLP which sent a 3-man delegation out to solidarise with Milosevic, during this recent elections farce. What an insult to a serious understanding of Leninist internationalism and real anti-imperialism to go opportunistically sucking round this corrupt oaf Milosevic as though decades of Marxist analysis of revisionist catastrophe were beyond workers' understanding. 

This ludicrous imperialist triumphalism over this sordid Western-inspired middle-class coup by its stooges in Serbia deserves the greatest scorn, but identifying with cretinous Milosevicism as a way of doing it is (so) philistinely sick and brainless that it can only cause more harm and confusion to the working-class interest.

This SLP expression of its petty-bourgeois hatred of the fight for Marxist theory is no different in the chaos-creation game from Blair's barminess welcoming the European Union towards 'superpower' status, or the propaganda brainwashing being poured on the working class over Zionist terror-colonialism threatening even more genocidal tyranny against the Palestinian nation than the UN-approved annexation of the Palestinian homeland which allowed 'Israel' to be set-up at gunpoint in the first place, and which will never cease to remain an impossible contradiction for a resumption of normal regional history ever to proceed beyond. The Zionist imperialists do not need to threaten 'war'. The very existence of 'Israel' can never imply anything other than war, - permanently. But without Marxist revolutionary theory, the working class cannot expose the war/power threads of Western crisis.

Current insoluble problems hitting free-world headlines all reflect the insoluble contradictions lying at the heart of capitalist society itself. Drugs, Ireland, the economy, and Zionism, all trip Western political leadership up because the only context for any way forward is the actual overthrow of the West's imperialist system, which none of the bourgeois parties can possibly contemplate.

Widdecombe has been ridiculed for proposing £100 fines for any possession of cannabis as part of zero tolerance for drug-taking in Britain. But Blair felt obliged to pose just as authoritarian on "zero tolerance of the yob culture", with £100 fixed-penalty fines for any 'brutish disorderly behaviour' or any drunkenness in public. B1air explained the rationale for this identical voter-appeal: "Four out of 10 violent crimes are alcohol-related. Half of property crime is drug-related".

But all of 'crime' is society-related, and both electoral gimmicks should meet voter scorn or scepticism, for without changing society, all such promises to reduce crime are just empty nonsense (and neither Tory nor Labour, nor anything else on the bourgeois electoral scene, or in the daft reformist so-called 'alternatives', are even aware of the revolutionary challenges now facing the capitalist system everywhere, let alone eager to support them).

If Tory reaction is pathetically predictable, it is New Labour reaction which deserves most exposure and hostility. Tory anti-crime venom is basic property-protection and buttressing of the very notion of law and order. The Blairites, on the other hand, share these same privileged conservative values deep down, but add insult to injury more when pretending that Labour’s 'reformism' can overcome the class-system damage (and permanent provocation) to the unpropertied and the underprivileged, which capitalist society can never avoid inflicting, every day, for as long as it continues.

In terms of 'curing' or 'wiping out' crime ("zero tolerance"), any talking to a class-system of society in urging tones of 'being good citizens', or threatening all kinds of dire punishments for people 'behaving badly', is just a never-ending dreadful deception on an unhappy public. Where lies, corruption, violence, and incompetence are as much part of modern world leadership and rule as are honesty, self-sacrifice devotion to duty, and playing by the rules, the ever-growing technological freedom and streetwise sophistication of the masses is everywhere going to lead to ever-rising rates of 'crime', robbing governments before they rob you; seeking to do unto others before they do it to you; and cynically doubting that anyone has come by anything 'honestly'.

Tragically, how 'unpleasant' this all is, too often blinds people into a vengeful rage, translating the normal personal response to the pain, fear, or suffering from violence and crime, into a deluded social/political vision of 'eradicating it'. Soft 'leftism' does most damage, forever hovering between social-welfare sympathy (for those alienated by poverty/dysfunctional circumstances of many varied kinds who have never had anything good happen to them in their lives), and reforming zeal (which anticipates that any kindness, help, or solidarity shown, or social-welfare/ educational schemes, should produce dramatic results). And within certain conditions, there never fail to be limited improvements. And no attempt at understanding why people end up on the wrong side of the law (or social inclusion) ever fails to see a lot of potential for good in everyone, or overwhelming evidence of 'common humanity’ everywhere.

But such soft leftism also always succeeds in muddling the issues. For, as fast as any improvements are noted in individual attitudes, or as far as any 'understanding' is spread of a particular 'criminal' mentality, inevitably along come further waves of horror and revulsion at some new aspects of violent crime in society, and 'zero tolerance' is immediately back on the agenda again. And it always will be put back there, because the whole of conditions of international capitalist society can never fail to create ever more resentment everywhere among the vast majority who never make it to 'success' on any category of judgment or any scale of measurement within the grotesquely unequal cut-throat competitive system (which is a by-word for ridiculously corrupt fortunes, gross injustice, and terrifying mishap and disaster for the least advantage). Resentment breeds 'crime'.

Libertarian arguments (of left or right) 'in favour of drugs on principle' only add to the confusion. Only in wantonly artificial sophistry can drugs and 'crime' be separated in practice. Without argument, no drug (alcohol included) can be disentangled from the problem of widespread social self-destruction (or self-paralysis) in the present class-war conditions in the world, which can only be a matter of no concern to total dupes of destructive imperialist misrule, or to total anarchists (which in practice comes down to exactly the same thing, of course, disregarding all the subjective 'mindblowing'). 

'Dropping out' is by definition a 'crime'-matter since without exception, even all bourgeois governments still define such developments in terms of 'illegal' (or else newly 'legal' in a few cases). And 'left' libertarians on such matters should worry about the political company they keep on this issue with far right libertarians, and with Orwell's imperialist-police society l984. Why is a young person having their head battered by too-easy drug culture, objectively better than cop abuse (£100 fine)? Both are diversionary nonsense in terms of the Marxist philosophy of conscious struggle as the only way forward for mankind.

Drug-taking also cannot be separated in practice from worry and confusion over crime matters in class-divided society because widespread drug addiction (and alcohol addiction, of course) associated with whole new categories of dreadful acts of violence by desperate junkies.

But in the same way that all attempts at drug regulations by bourgeois state authorities have always everywhere a) been irrelevant to the social/philosophical issues involved; and b) been a failure anyway, the anarcho/libertarian idea that complete freedom can be advocated for every person on earth to just decide for themselves what they want to do abut drug-taking, is just as meaningless. Under the sick and artificial (in evolutionary terms) pressures on human existence of a capitalist system, crumbling ever deeper into a crisis of all its values and relationships, then to suggest that anyone is really 'free' when they opt for any particular lifestyle at all, is just total self-contradictory nonsense as Marxist science understands reality. People can kid themselves, all they want, that they would at least 'feel freer if the irrelevant bourgeois-state laws were not there trying to regulate everyone's existence or trying to punish people for doing their own thing', etc. But it is an artificially-constructed sense of 'relief' and there is no reason at all for assuming that modern man would be keen to spend much time getting doped-up if society was completely transformed by the collapse and elimination of all capitalism's bourgeois values and social aspirations, its class-domination and its property fetishism, and its effective state dictatorship. 

Equally, there is no guarantee that people would not want to simply stay half-drugged or perpetually inebriated all the time, once organised rational society finally begins on the other side of anti-imperialist revolution, or at least free to get stoned whenever they felt like it. 

But projecting such anticipation forward into the present, agitating for such 'freedom' as a 'reform' of life under capitalism, is just that, - a reformist delusion, in more ways than one. If bourgeois society lets it happen, it will be because bourgeois society thinks it is a way of keeping control over things, not a way of losing control, not as any kind of defeat for capitalism or victory for 'liberty'. And the chance to get pleasantly stoned (if that is what most drug taking is seen as) elevated into some kind of philosophical 'freedom', is merely yet more escapism, to be added to the vast array of escapism already on offer. It is a total agitational blind alley as far as serious stands against the imperialist system are concerned.

Widdecombe's freakout needs critical reaction in terms of what light it sheds on worried and volatile ruling-class thinking about the demoralising predicament its capitalist/imperialist system is in nationally and internationally, and what desperate stunts it thinks might work to maximise populist support for a return to hardline Tory government.

The instant verdict that it won't work may be more wishful thinking than informed political analysis. A chauvinist turn to "the healthy, solid, honest virtues which made Britain historically great" is the only line remaining for pro-capitalist parties as the system's crisis-ridden corruption and contradictions come home to roost domestically and internationally; and the Blairites are already bidding for the same ground, which is why 'zero tolerance' for loutish disorder is a posture both are pursuing. Predicting that 'a pure British way of life' will have no appeal as a political slogan is claiming much more than just that 'criminal drug dealing' will not necessarily be accepted as a fair description of the alternative. It is also saying that there is no chance of public opinion getting swept up in jingoistic nostalgia or national survival fear, (which could breed any amount of hypocrisy if they caught on, comparable to Widdecombe unrealistically condemning marijuana-stoned youth while publicly guzzling a glass of strong champagne herself). 

This is a happy thought but, at best, subjective and contention guesswork. A final flourish of Union-Jack-waving (as inter-imperialist crisis threatens to humiliate Britain yet again) is almost inevitably going to be launched. The big doubt is how long will it last and what success will it have, once it gets going; and more important still, how will the anti-imperialism be led once the jingo nationalism brings only more setbacks and failure.

Fake-'leftism' which has identified too closely with drop-out defeats and cynicism, could find itself as much associated in the public mind with the past as with a completely new revolutionary future which will be agitated for. As already noted, a 'reformist' movement sowing illusions that life under capitalism could be fine if a few legal restrictions were relaxed, like those on drug-taking, is almost as identifiable with the system as the authoritarians who pretend that capitalist society would be perfect if it were not for law-breakers spoiling it for everyone.
	
Denouncing bourgeois 'legality' on everything, without itemising single issues, is the way forward for serious anti-imperialist revolution, - the whole of capitalist society (every part of it) as the cause of civilisation's problems; and no part of it reformed or otherwise, as remotely relevant to any solution. Personal lifestyle choices should remain just that. Single-issue campaigns to change the law on strictly personal matters play no different a political role to any other reformism, - strictly an anti-revolutionary diversion, possibly to be sympathised with, but to be agitated about only as grist to the mill of the need for the revolutionary overthrow of the whole of capitalist society, - its whole philosophy, motivation, and organisation, - before any agreed new society can meaningfully start to be built.

'Reformed' capitalism is an illusion. Life is a problem of a strictly limited system (in terms of its exploitation mode of production and property relations) which increasingly must conflict with the ever expanding human, social and philosophical requirements of the mass of the people, technologically and organisationally transformed to the point where they can no longer tolerate the system which has transformed them. The mass of dissatisfaction on earth (with the capitalist system) can only relentlessly grow. 'Reformed' capitalism is an impossible dream. Single-issue encouragement of pipe-dreams plays right into capitalism's hands, regardless of Widdecombe's asking-for-trouble 'legal' farce.

On a vastly more serious plane, Zionist imperialist attempts to force Palestinian revolt to live within conquest-imposed and militarily maintained artificial 'frontiers' within their own land of Palestine, and suffer prison-condition deprivation/starvation of life’s vital necessities like water, land, employment, freedom to travel, political and education rights, etc, etc, etc, - are all doomed to catastrophic failure. Land annexation and capitalist-exploitation colonial rule over a living nation is already historically redundant by many decades.

This tragic Western imposed barbarism can only end in one way, - with the whole of the land of Palestine (including the colonised UN-approved annexation called 'Israel') being handed back for all of its original inhabitants to live there freely again, in absolute self-governing equality (with any Zionist colonisers, who wish to stay, having handed back al1 the land and properties they stole from the people of Palestine). 

For more than 55 years, the shameful record of ever-increasing domination and brutalisation of the Palestinian nation and surrounding sympathetic Arab peoples by the Zionist conquerors, has blitzkrieged on unchecked. But finally the 'worm' has turned. For scores of different reasons, and in a million and one unchartable molecular ways, slowly the balance of historical forces has started swinging Palestine's way, in step with the growing anti-imperialist maturity of the world's masses the whole planet over.

As with every other aspect of capitalism, the transformation in people themselves makes them no longer fitted to be exploited subjects or colonial slaves any longer.

Even many Zionists 	now admit that the Palestinians have been shockingly betrayed, and appallingly treated:

Since the first Israeli redeployment in the Gaza Strip and later in the West Bank, in 1994 and 1995-6, and since the establishment of a Palestinian self-rule regime, Israel has been the supreme sovereign. It has exercised its power to the full, controlling vital aspects of Palestinian life. It has full control over 61% of the West Bank and 20% of the Gaza Strip, where it expands settlements, builds new roads which mainly serve those settlements and their links with Israel proper - all at the expense of Palestinian land and territorial contiguity. Israel is still in full control of the allocation of water to both Israelis and Palestinians. The Palestinians are as discriminated against in this distribution, as they have been for the past 30 years. In summer, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians do not have running water, while Jewish settlements have all they need.

Israel also controls Palestinian freedom of movement. In 1991, an Israeli military order annulled the right of Palestinians to freedom of movement and introduced a new policy of passes. This policy, which started years before Hamas had planned suicide attacks, has been perfected over the years, especially since the establishment of the Palestinian National Authority.

Only 2,300,000 Palestinians, out of some 3m, have even a limited travel permit, enabling them to move between Gaza and the west bank and/or to Israel. These permits might be annulled or withdrawn at any moment by Israel. This policy, known as closure, has affected all aspects of Palestinian life, individually and communally, It has brought economical deterioration; social and family separation, cultural deprivation and psychological stress.

At the same time, Israel has pampered the Palestinian civil and security leadership with privileges - in particular freedom of movement. The Israeli-given privileges have been one of the main reasons for the leadership's access to economic prosperity, denied to the rest of the population. The backbone of the Oslo accords has become the security forces and the political organisation Fatah.

At times, Palestinian policemen have shot at their own people and, more often, prevented them from approaching the Israeli military posts which are scattered all over the West Bank and Gaza. In a society of high unemployment, joining the police forces - in numbers far beyond those permitted in the Oslo agreements - has become the chief source of income. The privileged lifestyle of the Palestinian leadership and its close political and economic ties with Israeli elites has led to growing criticism. During the negotiations over the interim agreement (which keeps being extended and renewed), the Palestinian leaders have been dealing with the same officials who grant them their privileged positions, known as VIP status. They have shown much flexibility in regard to the timetable and continuation of talks in spite of the expanding construction of settlements.

The compromised position of the Palestinian National Authority has led to its arresting and detaining without trial hundreds of people who have criticised the Oslo accords. Security cooperation between the two sides also led to the arrest of people suspected of terrorist activity against Israel. During the interim period, the PNA has made a big contribution to the sense of security enjoyed by Israelis.

Palestinians have grown accustomed to the idea that in return for personal benefits, their leadership is preparing for a settlement which will be closer to the Israeli and American view than theirs. This settlement will not be based upon UN resolutions, will not have the July 4 1967 borders as the basis, will not allow refugees to return home, and will end in the dissection of Palestinian territory into several enclaves through the mass annexation of settlements to Israel.

The Palestinian leadership's basic disregard for the people's suffering mainly caused by the closure policy and the PNA's impotence in relation to the Israeli settlement policy have strengthened such a conclusion. It seems that Israel has counted on such a development since 1994, while always stressing the imperative of security collaboration between the two sides, and emphasising Arafat's promise to stop all acts of violence and terror.

For the Palestinians, and their leadership, the Oslo accords meant a gradual withdrawal of occupation, in return for an immediate halt to violence and terror. Seven years after the Oslo accords, all Palestinians feel betrayed, because they are still living under occupation. They have tried to express their anger and frustration, and make the Israelis listen to them, in several ways. Because they have not been listened to, they have backed terrorist attacks in Israel. 

They doubted their leadership was able to develop a successful strategy out of their martyrdom and their bloodshed. After each clash with Israelis, Palestinian police prevented them from renewing their attacks. This gave Israel good reason to trust its strategy: the Palestinian security organs continue to participate in subduing by force and a few promises to their angry, frustrated people. 

Since Camp David, the Al Aqsa mosque has become the crux of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This has become the issue where Arafat knows he is totally backed by Muslims the world over: he did not change his stance. When six Palestinians were killed by close-range bullets at the mosque by Israeli police, the anger which swept everybody contained all other angers, of seven years and longer. This time Arafat could not dream of checking the spreading anger with his security forces. After all, it was about Al Aqsa. All his credibility would have been lost, so he ordered the policemen to stop. Even without an order, his policemen were unable to restrain their fire, while watching Palestinian youngsters being shot in their eyes and heads by the hundreds. Even if the clashes are subdued, the Palestinians now demand a change in the rules of the game. And their message is meant not only for Israel but for Arafat too.

Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist whose book about the Israeli occupation, Drinking the Sea at Gaza, is published by Hamish Hamilton.

Arafat's treachery is the West's last card, but it cannot be played for much longer. Sooner or later, the growing Palestinian ability for full-scale successful revolt against this infamous Zionist colonisation of their homeland must find expression:

Israeli Arabs see this week's violence as an explosion by a community torn between sympathy for its Palestinian cousins and its situation in Israel. Palestinians who chose citizenship rather than exile when Israel was created make up, with their descendants, 18% of Israel's population.

They are much better off materially than those in Palestinian-controlled areas, but they suffer systematic discrimination in jobs, schools, housing and social services.

Since 1948 no new Arab town has been built in Israel. Until this year Arabs were barred from buying land and building homes in much of Israel. Their towns are crowded and dirty. Much of their traditional land has been seized.

Few Jews have Arab friends and in cities they lead their lives in separate neighbourhoods; only two or three experimental mixed schools exist.

Still, many thought they were making progress. At last year's elections many Israeli Arabs voted Mr Barak. They believed he was sympathetic to the campaign for equality, which has been gaining momentum for five years.

Many thought the Israeli-Palestinian peace process had put the days of confrontation behind them, and that the growing prosperity from Israel's hi-tech boom would gently erase the other frictions.

"I never voted. I never demonstrated. I did not want to raise my kids with this stupidity: should you be an Israeli, or should you be an Arab," Mrs Zidan said. "I thought I could put the whole question in a drawer."

These protests have shaken that belief. So have her conversations with Jewish acquaintances. "Now I really think Israelis have a psychological problem of denial. I live in a Jewish neighbourhood, and they just do not see me." She corrected herself: "They don't see us, and we don't see them." 

Samar Zidan sobbed as she recalled the screams of her teenage daughter Sukina. The girl had logged on to an Internet chatroom earlier this week at home in Haifa, to discover that one of her friends was among 11 Israeli Arabs killed in the week's violent protests.

"A 15-year-old suddenly realised we are two nations who hate each other, and that the other one can suddenly kill her friend," Mrs Zidan said yesterday.

The protests by Israeli Arabs which have convulsed the Arab heartland, Galilee, and penetrated mixed areas of Tel Aviv and Haifa, led to the worst ethnic violence within Israeli borders since 1948.

Perhaps no death captures the feelings of betrayal and despair that have engulfed Israelis - Arabs and Jews more than that of the boy who was Sukina's chatroom friend.

For an Arab teenager Asleh, had an unheard-of circle of Jewish friends. He had met them through Seeds of Peace, an American summer camp for Jewish and Arab teenagers.

His father, who described the death yesterday to a hushed crowd of Israeli Arab activists trying to make sense of these bloody days, said his son was first beaten by soldiers and then shot in the neck. 

His audience, professionals mainly, Hebrew speakers and veterans of peace and human rights organisations, have seen their dream of coexistence destroyed by the security forces' killing of Asleh and 10 others.

The imperialist past is equally doomed in Ireland where the colonial occupation (outrageously partitioned off at bayonet-point in 1921 as a nonexistent 'Northern Ireland') has been on its last legs for 30 years of unbeatable national-liberation struggle by Sinn Féin and the IRA, and was finally given a certificate for a peaceful painless death via the Good Friday Agreement which effectively legislated for the snail's pace reunification of Ireland. 

The current propaganda alarm in sections of the shamefaced British imperialist press, (humiliated by their past support for a colonial tyranny, which now looks obviously unsupportable to everyone bar a handful of die-hard 'no surrender' reactionary colonist circles (Paisley, UFF gunmen, etc)) - had been artificially inflated on the strength of last month's South Antrim by-election, when a safe Trimble-unionist seat was lost to a Paisley unionist, allegedly implying a whole unionist community vote against the Agreement now (whereas a referendum gave it 70% unionist support before).

But the figures are a fraud, and the suggestion that the Agreement will now be torn up or else the unionist community in the Occupied Zone, (the majority) will no longer cooperate and will bring the territory to a standstill, is fanciful nonsense. Only 16% of the total South Antrim electorate turned out to vote DUP to wreck the GFA. Meaning that 84% of this overwhelmingly 'unionist' constituency used this 'second referendum on the Agreement' (as the 'no surrender' campaign calls it) to refuse to vote it down. Even of the people who bothered to vote at all on the day, less than four in ten voted to wreck the Agreement, while more than 6 in 10 voted for pro-GFA parties.

A weightier argument is that Trimble's own pro-Agreement unionists are now more split than ever against his stance, and the UUP's own candidate in South Antrim made clear his own doubts about continuing with the GFA.

But this old theme (about total Loyalist intransigence over ever "surrendering" their dominant 'British' status quo in the Occupied Zone of Ireland) reckons without the historical reality. The record shows that on countless occasions since the outbreak of the latest nationalist rebellion more than 2 years ago, the colonising mindset has threatened to ape the white Rhodesians under Ian Smith and declare armed UDI (unilateral declaration of independence). Mandelson has just deliberately reminded the Unionist councils, who are plotting to overthrow Trimble and end cooperation with the GFA, that the next return to direct rule, forced by their 'loyalist' intransigence, will be the territory placed under joint government from London and Dublin. The unionist big bourgeois might shrug at this zero threat to their existing capitalist positions, but the social and political humiliation at having their bluff called would be thought too high a price to pay by many of them for a mere gesture. The 'Northern Ireland' that was is finished, and everyone knows it, bar handfuls of sectarian extremists of right-wing or left-wing subjectivism, like the BNP and the trots. If Trimble and co pull out of the agreement again, sooner or later the majority community of British unionism will simply find a new political leadership. None of the ordinary people of the former colony want war again, and all recognise that the Sinn Féin/IRA national-liberation struggle was unbeatable first time round, and would be even more so second time round. And especially if London and Dublin decide to hold the ring together, - to the conscious deliberate advantage only of the Good Friday Agreement. The Unionists would risk losing everything. It is most unlikely to happen. The snail's pace reunification of Ireland will continue as the inevitable and only sane solution:

DAVID Trimble put his political reputation on the line yesterday with as emotional attack on dissident loyalists 'knee-jerk response' to the Good Friday Agreement.

Trimble told his Ulster Unionist Party's conference in Belfast that he would not be bullied out of Stormont by those who wanted to see him fail.

I am not impressed by self-serving calls for us to rush out of the Assembly,' he said. 'Knee-jerk reactions are unwise. Will we sleep any sounder in our beds if we are seen to ditch this agreement? Will there he decommissioning? Will the Union he guaranteed? No, no and no again.'

Trimble's charged speech was one of the most important of his political career and threatens to split, his party. Two-thirds of the audience gave him a standing ovation. The rest booed.

Trimble faces a challenge at an emergency meeting of his party's ruling council next month where dissidents will attempt to have him overthrown.

As long explained by the EPSR, the historically-diminished fortunes of British imperialism have long made clinging on to its warship-building and arms-manufacturing colony in Ireland politically and economically unviable, - a huge embarrassment really, and far more trouble than it was worth. As soon as it became strategically difficult to defend and keep peaceful as well (because of the unbeatable national-liberation struggle), it has only made sense to wiser counsels in London to get out, in as dignified way as possible, resisting Sinn Féin and the IRA and dragging things out only sufficiently to cover up or obscure the reality that British imperialism was being forced to retreat by revolutionary urban-guerrilla warfare and political tactics.

Whatever hysterical self-righteousness the Unionists jeer at London for "giving in to terrorism", etc, far more embarrassment accrues to Britain on the international scale from its seriously flawed and failed war of repression in the Occupied Zone, - as in these recent revelations, broadcast worldwide, about the British military massacre of the people of Derry in 1972:

According to conversations between security force personnel captured on tape, General Robert Ford, then deputy commanding officer in Northern Ireland, was jubilant at the outcome. Three weeks before Bloody Sunday he had recommended shooting selected ringleaders of the youths who regularly rioted in the city

The Parachute regiment shot dead 13 unarmed Catholics on an illegal civil rights demonstration in Derry on January 30 1972. Another man who was injured died several months later, and the tape will fuel suspicions that the soldiers' actions were premeditated.

One man recorded in the communication rooms says to another: "Look there's obviously been a hell of a sort out...The whole thing's in chaos...yeah, obviously I think it's gone badly wrong in the Rossville...the doctor's just been up the hospital and they're pulling the stiffs out there as fast as they can get them out."

Another replies: "There's nothing wrong with that, Alan."

The first man says: "Well, there is because they're the wrong people...There's about nine and 15 killed by the Parachute regiment in the Rossville area...they're all women, children, fuck knows what and they're still going up there...I mean their pigs [armoured cars] are just full of bodies... There's a 3-tonner up there with bodies in."

The second mail later says: "The padre's a bit upset. He's going off to see the commander about all the ill-treatment"

The first man asks: "General Ford?"

His companion replies: "Yeah"

The first man says: "He was lapping it up."

Second man: "Who was?"

First man: "Ford"

Second man: "Was he?"

First man: "Yeah...he said it was the best thing he'd seen for a long time."

Second man: "Interesting, isn't it?"

First man: "'Well done, 1st Para'  he said. 'Look at them...24... million dollar:"

Second man: "Good excellent."

First man: "He said this is what should happen."

Second man: "Yeah."

First man: "He said we're far too passive ..."

In another exchange, one man in the communications room refers to detachments brought into Derry. He says: "They've been here over the weekend. We've had a pretty good bloodbath here this evening...which you'll probably hear on the late news."

The Derry Journal said it was convinced the tape was authentic. But there was no explanation of why a tape of events three decades old was only now being leaked, when it would have represented a sensational propaganda coup many years ago.

The recording includes details of army personnel, phone extensions and equipment which would otherwise be confidential. But there were no independent means last night of confirming its veracity. 

It also features the voice of Max Hastings. He was then with the BBC, and is now editor of the Evening Standard.

The Ministry of Defence refused to comment last night. But it is expected the tape and its transcript, which runs to 25 pages, will be passed to Lord Saville's inquiry before it reopens in December.

There are references in it to the "beautiful picture" of a priest over a man lying dead on the ground; to longstanding allegations rioters brought out an already dead body, of a girl, falsely to boost casualty rates, and examples of black humour in the room.

Under pressure from journalists, one of the men in the centre offers a version of events in Derry. He says those on the march bombarded troops with milk bottles and iron bars. They then threw some CS grenades at the military, who donned respirators.

In an area touching on the key controversy, the man says that when the subsequent arrest operation began "gunmen opened fire ...from the rubble...at the base of Rossville flats...and the soldiers returned fire...casualties have been reported. The military have suffered casualties from the severe stoning they underwent."

When Mr Hastings calls from Belfast, he asks: "I was just going to ask what the latest score was." He later says: "I just don't mean how many were killed...how many soldiers were killed?"

He is told all the casualties are civilians. He is also told that the Parachute regiment was only in the Bogside, where the shootings took place, for a "short, devastating moment." 

Although no figure is offered for casualties, Mr Hastings says: "We may have to come back to Derry if your soldiers carry on shooting people at such a remarkable rate.'

The man replies: "Ha ha ha. Well, yes, I'm from Belfast myself and I think it is a very good trend myself."

The whole imperialist international 'free-market' system (monopoly-capitalist domination in reality) is no longer suited to the human and social existence of 21st century civilisation. Pleading by fake-'lefts' for New Labour to resume heavy taxation of the multi-national oil corporations on their North Sea profits is logical common-sense and justified, but it also misses the point of this epoch completely. It is not greater or lesser taxation revenues under the capitalist system which are going to transform the lives of people, it is letting rid of the capitalist system itself. Technology and improved living standards have already given people a glimpse of the potential good life there could be for everyone. What prevents it most of all is not inequality and relative poverty as such but the class-ridden system of monopoly-property, privilege, and injustice which is inseparable from the 'free-market' mechanisms themselves. Modernised people are now aching for a rationalised civilisation, where reason and non-posturing honest values alone prevail, where deliberately and thoughtfully chosen worthwhile ambitions for the whole of society replace the dumbed-down shallow consumerist glitz and culture. People despair that universal cynicism can now ever be eradicated, - and they are right as long as the capitalist way of running the world survives. Overthrow the greedy, incompetent, insincere, and wasteful capitalist system of international exploitation and bullying domination, -  and the world will be transformed, as well as everyone's expectations in it. Build Leninism. EPSR 

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

For the first time, a Latin American country chairs the International Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery, held in Havana and attended by 600 delegates from 26 countries, among them Isaac Kaplan, considered the father of laser surgery

CUBA'S successful use of laser for treatment and surgery over more than a decade, and the fact that this expensive technology is available to all those who require it on the island, were crucial factors in the decision of the International Society of Laser Medicine and Surgery (ISLMS) to award Cuba the presidency of its 13th Congress, which was held over a three-day period in Havana.

Attended by 600 delegates from 26 countries on five continents, this was the first occasion on which an ISLMS congress has been held in Latin America, on the dawn of the 21st century, when this technique may contribute to the diagnosis and treatment of numerous illnesses.

During the event, which took place at the same time as the 9th Latin American Congress, the 3rd Ibero-Latin American Encounter and the 5th National Congress on the subject, 11 courses were given on the most up to date laser treatment methods and on the application of these techniques. The 267 participants had the opportunity to enter into discussion with renowned experts in the field, such as Isaac Kaplan, the founder of the ISLMS in 1975 and considered the pioneer of laser surgery.

Kaplan, who currently carries out mostly plastic surgery operations by laser, believes that the future of medicine and surgery lies in the harmonious use of laser, computers and robotics.

On his third visit to Cuba, the eminent South African scientist pointed out to Granma International; "This Congress has allowed participants from every continent to learn about what is being done in Cuba, because up until now they have tried to isolate Cuba from the rest of the world."

This scientific revolutionary, who has trained 600 surgeons outside of his country, emphasized that Cuba is very fortunate to have a group of highly trained surgeons working with laser and he particularly mentioned the pioneering work of the team at the CIMEQ hospital in Havana .

According to specialists, the main advantage of the clinical and surgical application of laser, which stands for "light amplified by stimulated emission of radiation" and was developed by Kaplan, is that it makes an incision in the skin and "seals" the blood and lymph vessels, which facilitates greater cleanliness in the operating areas. Moreover, it eliminates bacteria which could infect the wound, because the work is carried out in conditions of very high temperature. It reduces post‑operative pain since the method is quicker and less intrusive. Consequently, patients benefit and costs are lower for the health care system, given that fewer antibiotics are required and the length of the hospital stay is shorter.

Its analgesic, anti-inflammatory and cicatrizant properties, as well as its ability to stimulate the regeneration of the skin, make the use of soft or low-intensity lasers ideal in physiotherapy and rehabilitation, and the use of hard or high-intensity lasers in surgery.

Manuel Cepero Nogueira, president of the organizing committee for the Congress, pointed out that Cuba has been using laser for almost 19 years in the medical field and is currently manufacturing. Low-intensity laser models are being manufactured and are used in 86 health centres throughout the country. He pointed out that their quality is comparable to those produced internationally.

Cuba is the leading nation in Latin America with respect to the application of this cutting edge technology, the use of which is dominated by the most advanced European nations, the United States and Japan. The island has exported more than 400 laser therapy units to countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Ecuador, with which exchange and advising links have been established.

• THE first Cuban carbon dioxide (C02) surgical laser was presented internationally in a formal ceremony during one of the sessions of the congress. With a potency of 25 watts, the unit was produced by the joint venture Tecnologia Especializada Cubana-Española (TECE S.A.), and has a similar quality to those manufactured by U.S., European and Japanese companies.

Jorge Peréz Flores, general manager of the company, commented to Granma International that this laser scalpel, the cost of which would be no less than $45,000 USD abroad, was presented last May at the Health for All Fair. From that point onward it has been widely used in CIMEQ, where it has been employed in more than 200 operations with excellent results in the treatment of malign tumors located in the urinary tract, and on the skin.

The LQ-25, belonging to the Lasermed brand, will provide this entity with the opportunity to broaden its scope of laser surgery, backed by the experience of physiotherapists who generated the financial and technological capital necessary for its development.

The congress turned out to be a very favorable forum for the launch of the new export product, which has already been requested by several Latin American countries. Flores added that through their participation in the congress, renowned figures will become promoters of Cuban technology. This fact underlined, once again, that in spite of the economic restrictions and the U.S. blockade, Cuba is able to develop important technology.

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

US Police brutality

"FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD Jenni Hightower was killed in March 1998 in Trenton, New Jersey, after police fired 20 shots into the stolen car in which she was a passenger. The driver, 16-year-old Hubert Moore, was critically injured. A state grand jury declined to file criminal charges against the officers when they argued that the teenagers had tried to run them down." This is one of the cases highlighted by an Amnesty International report on Police Brutality in the US, presented to the .United Nations' Human Rights Commission, and which highlighted "the widespread and persistent" abuses inflicted by police officers on US citizens.

The last example on a very long list, a 22-year--old Guinean immigrant and street vendor, Amadou Diallo, was gunned down by four white policemen in the vestibule of the building where he lived in the Bronx in the early morning of 4 February. According to a New York medical examiner, Diallo was struck at least 19 times. So much for the "zero tolerance" policy of Mayor Giuliani.

The United States of America, the 'model democracy', has some of the most violent police officers, who will kick, punch or baton suspects who have already being restrained. The use of excessive physical force and batons, chemical sprays and electro-shock weapons account for most of the complaints presented against police departments, together with the deaths caused by dangerous restraint holds and shooting incidents. But there is another aspect to the pattern of abuse: racism.

Amnesty International's report points out that the majority of victims are members of racial or ethnic minorities, while most police departments remain predominantly white. African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Indians "are more likely than whites to be stopped and searched without cause".

'Race-based police profiles' label every black driver a suspected drug offender, a practice so common it is widely known as "driving while black". This racial bias has caused the deaths of 23 black undercover police officers at the hands of fellow officers in New York City alone.

In a ten-year period, 94 suspects have died as a consequence of restraint related in-custody deaths, involving hogtying - where a suspect's ankles are bound from behind to the wrists - or after pressure has been applied to the neck or chest.

The Amnesty International document points out how officers are rarely prosecuted for excessive force and the inadequacy of the sanctions imposed on officers found guilty of brutality Impunity is related to "the code of silence", as in  most cases other police officers will be the only witnesses to the abuses or  killings. Civil rights and community groups have frequently questioned the impartiality of criminal investigations, claiming that local prosecutors depend on police co-operation.

In recent years there have been moves to introduce independent oversight of the complaints process in some US police departments.