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 1078 Feb 27 2001                                                                                                                                                 25p

World economic collapse-fears emphasise the arbitrariness and frightening, random brutality of imperialist warmongering. Iraq today. Who is next? Turk financial calamity could spread equally randomly. Splits, exposures, and recriminations are climbing rapidly, revealing an imperialist system just as close to political and moral bankruptcy as to economic downfall. The wider revolutionary-crisis perspectives are now crucial to workers, but the false 'left' remains brainwashed in single-issue narrowness and mired in disinformation diversions such as the 'evil man' nonsense. Long-term subjective self-justification has replaced objective revolutionary analysis within the Trot and Stalinist sects. Shameful creeping without a word from 'New World Order' theoretical stupidity disarms the working class worse than ever. Belittling imperialism’s warmongering essence is suicidal.

The background crisis pressures forcing Western imperialism into agitated zapping mode but simultaneously causing widespread questioning of even the sanity, let alone the advisability, of the continued 'persecute Iraq' direction of some of the more blatant warmongering, – have worsened dramatically.

The economic crash in Turkey and the continued relentless sickening of the West's stock markets will have injected more irrational hysteria into imperialist thinking than ever.

The broad hostility to US/UK blitzkrieg-terror tactics, both domestically and internationally, is as much a measure of unhappiness at how the whole 'free world' cause is going as it is discontent or disagreement with the supposed 'strategy' towards Iraq or the Middle East in general, no matter how specifically-oriented are most of those expressions of criticism.

The increased warmongering atmosphere is highly disturbing to everyone. Few believe there is any clarity or reason at all in Washington’s periodic routine anti-Saddam kneejerk reactions. Consciously or not, a lot of the response to the brutal aerial bombardment is as much worried by where inter-imperialist conflict is heading in general as by the specific dismay at the West's precarious Middle East policy.

Remarkably, these wider doubts and discomfort are already finding expression in the capitalist press itself, always an impeccable source of evidence for the real picture of bourgeois-world developments:

Nato ensured US supremacy over potential political and economic rivals.

Once the Cold War ended, however, transatlantic conflicts that had been suppressed for the sake of Allied unity broke into the open. Trade disputes between Europe and the US multiplied at a furious pace. America responded by trying to think of ingenious ways of keeping Nato - and therefore US dominance over Europe - going in perpetuity. Nato was to have new missions. It would operate 'out of area' and crusade for 'peace', 'democracy' or oil interests in the Caucasus and the Gulf. Europe would have to sign on for these imperial adventures: Nato was all they had, and it has always been an American show.

It is not surprising, then, that America responds with fury to Europe’s faltering attempts to free itself from Nato. Nor that Europeans are alarmed by a US missile defence system. As camp followers in some absurd US-led caper in central Asia, say, they could find themselves vulnerable to missile attack while the instigators happily cower behind their shield. Less than two years ago, former Nato Supreme Commander Wesley Clark had been ready to start shooting at Russian soldiers ensconced at Pristina airport. Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, much to Clark’s annoyance. Given the depth of US contempt for Europe, such restraint may not always carry the day.

Holding fast to these broader perspectives is crucial because one of bourgeois ideology's key methods of propaganda brainwashing is precisely to mis-focus all attention on a specific detail, deliberately for the elimination of all concentration on the larger picture. The current Mandelson inquiry, for example, could avoid the real scandals of constant sleaze and graft in high places corrupting all the political parties making them dependant on rich backers; of specific crookedness of one law for the rich and another one for the poor on immigration and passport questions; of special-interest opportunist mafias at work throughout politics, such as the homosexual freemasonries which have captured key influence in the leadership of the Labour Party and important sections of the media; of shallow emotional-blackmail levels of political infighting which are a standing humiliating rebuke to the whole fraud of 'democracy' in bourgeois politics; - avoid them just by concentrating on the narrow nonsense of whether a phone-call had been made or not, whether it had been properly reported or not, and whether or not there was any impropriety in the phone call anyway, etc, etc, etc.

Around the Middle East crisis, bourgeois propaganda would love to harp on the ludicrous notions of "the Kuwaiti right to self-determination"; or "going to war to preserve your independence, and ready to do it again if necessary"; or "curbing the aggressor"; or "preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction"; or "bringing war criminals to justice"; etc, etc, etc. The thought-controllers would prefer no references at all to the reality that the Gulf crisis is just a mere detail of inter-imperialist conflict as a whole, of the never-ending monopoly-capitalist battle for world supremacy which can only end in the total system bankrupting itself in war and slump yet again, - inevitable under the laws of monopoly accumulation and cutthroat competition which are incurably endemic in a private-capital free-market system.

Tragically, the false 'left' in politics help the bourgeois establishment to brainwash the masses via hiding or playing down the broader picture because these subjective-idealist Trots and Revisionists become obsessed with their own narrower interests in these world matters, usually stressing trivia which they hope will vindicate their own dodgy political records on all anti-imperialist struggles, past and present.

Thus the ’Socialist Alliance' Trot camp of 57 snarling back-stabbing sectarian mortal enemies is currently helping the CIA build up the anti-Saddam hysteria once again, compounding the West’s favourite diversionary theme of blaming everything on "the evil men of history" and their individual psyches and their allegedly huge "personal roles" for what happens in history. Hitler is getting massive media concentration at the moment once again as being almost uniquely responsible for World War II because of his tragic psychological make-up. This relentless garbage lets off the hook the inevitability of World War II whoever was in office in Germany because of the still-unresolved (and insoluble) conflict between rival imperialisms as to which really was the strongest, and which deserved recognition as the strongest, - a conflict which every financial agency throughout the whole imperialist world had an active stake in of some kind, either backing Germany directly or indirectly, or else still backing the Entente powers, - either way only perpetually further fuelling eventual conflict again.

In reality, the sick personality of Saddam and the tragic aspects of his bonapartist dictatorship are nothing whatever to do with the broader patterns of American imperialist aggression which drives on ruthlessly whether a convenient "evil man" scapegoat for warmongering has been identified or not. Progressive political developments were destroyed by imperialist sabotage, coup or blitzkrieg-intervention just as surely in Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Guyana, Dominican Republic, Chile, Grenada and Nicaragua, where no "evil man" could be conjured up, as in Panama, Iraq, or Yugoslavia, say, where Noriega, Saddam, and Milosevic could more easily be demonised.
The vast majority of colonial blitzkrieging that Western imperialism has inflicted since 1945 has had nothing whatever to do with "curbing evil men" or "restoring freedom", etc. But the pattern of continuous warmongering domination for its own sake (to control and preserve power) remains unmistakable.

So what is this Gulf crisis really about?

It is about increasingly-desperate American imperialist attempts to maintain their routine warmongering control of the planet in the face of growing international economic crisis difficulties; (b)worsening inter-imperialist rivalry as to how the world might better be run in imperialism's interests; (c)mounting hostility and capability among Third World powers against being pushed around by Western imperialism any more, and the consequent fear in the West of any 'anti-imperialist' becoming some kind of hero or model of achievement for the rest of the world.

So what are the 'Socialist Alliance' Trots up to with their endless concentration on the "evil" of Saddam and on the "justice" of the help the West is giving to the "opposition" in Iraq and to the "self-determination rights" of the Kurd and Marsh-Arab separatist struggles with which Washington hopes to keep Saddam’s Iraq divided and ruled for the foreseeable future.?????

And what is the equally vast back-stabbing sectarian camp of Revisionist Stalinists up to with their various methods of ingratiating clubbiness hoping to embrace Iraq in collegiate anti-imperialism which poses, as per traditional anti-theory stupor, no awkward questions (and least of all any revolutionary challenges) about how this nice, cosy, moderate anti-imperialist solidarity is ever to progress beyond the futile hand-wringing stage??????

The Trots and other 'Alliance' anti-communists are at their usual academic game of trying to analyse the world to make it fit some barmy pre-set petty-bourgeois non-Marxist 'theory', all utterly without regard to the facts or reality, in order that they can continue posturing as the only 'true revolutionaries', etc. A recent hang-up has been to demonstrate that the imperialist 'New World Order' really exists and has now engineered the total imperialist domination of every 'hot spot' of potential anti-imperialism on the planet, forcing into compromise-retreat-deals such struggles as Anti-Apartheid in South Africa, Sinn Féin/IRA in Ireland, etc, etc. The 'pure' moral posturing of 'true revolutionaries’, abstractly championing 'self-determination rights' for every last obscure 'ethnicity' (which has usually been fomented towards separatist disruption to suit some imperialist divide-and-rule plan or other), - is being completely academically punted as "the only way forward".

The Stalinist-Revisionist 57 varieties are urging continued non-revolutionary "challenges" to imperialism as acceptable because it brings closer a universal world of 'sensible peaceful compromise' where all mankind’s problems can be solved rationally and harmoniously. It is all just a way of re-stating that their 65-year catastrophic stewardship of the Soviet socialist camp and world communist movement did not end in the anti-Leninist capitulatory disaster that history knows for certain already did happen.

A reported polemical conflict (of a sorts) between these rival anti-communist camps provides the evidence of the blind leading the blind, back into their antagonistic sectarian bolt-holes, - this poisonous but empty posturing providing half the front-page lead of the current Weekly Worker:

Labour MP George Galloway, that consistent friend of Iraq, immediately flew out to Baghdad and was pictured at the bedside of injured children. He said: "What the British and American governments are doing is reckless, lawless and murderous. For every bomb that is dropped, Saddam is getting stronger." Galloway went on: "I honestly wonder sometimes whether the British and Americans are working for Saddam Hussein, because the policy they are pursuing is boosting his standing around the world rather than reducing it." 

Galloway plays a highly useful role for the Iraqi government. He is no crude propagandist, but is able to point out convincingly how counter-productive are US attempts to remove the regime through both sanctions and covert means. He claims to share the aim of a democratised Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, but I have never heard Galloway utter a word of criticism of his actions. Only the west is condemned.

Imperialism is of course our main enemy, but that should not lead us to uncritically tail self-seeking anti-working class despots like Saddam Hussein. This dictator has the blood of thousands of Kurds, Marsh Arabs, trade unionists, communists and democrats on his hands. Yet 'anti-imperialist' autocrats like Saddam, Mugabe and Milosevic have over and over again received the support of large sections of the Trotskyite and Stalinite left.

Unlike Galloway, Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party is totally unashamed in its unqualified backing for Saddam Hussein’s ‘progressive’ regime. Before last weekend’s raids the London region of the SLP had already planned a meeting to oppose imperialist sanctions. Quite right. But what is totally unacceptable is the whitewashing of the Iraqi regime. In a leaflet to advertise its meeting the author nonchalantly states that it was "quite untrue" that the work of UN weapons inspectors had been obstructed prior to their expulsion in 1998: "Iraq told them to leave the country since it was clear that nothing Iraq could do would ever satisfy them."

Turning to the no-fly zones, the SLP declares that the reason for their imposition was "to give imperialism a better chance of fomenting unrest among minority communities in Iraq, with a view to splitting up Iraq and thus weakening the ability of the whole region to resist imperialist looting". This really is pathetic. As in Bosnia and Serbia, and before that Yugoslavia, imperialism will usually discourage where it can the break-up of larger entities with an established infrastructure, frequently opposing the right to self-determination of oppressed people such as the Kosovar Albanians.

Fulsome in its praise of Saddam Hussein, the SLP states that, "His only crime in the eyes of the imperialists is to want to try to moderate the looting of Middle Eastern oil, so that the people of the Middle East can benefit from it to finance the economic development of the countries in which they live."

Again, oil is hardly the overriding reason for US imperialism’s meddling in Iraq or the region as a whole. It is, as I have already pointed out, more to do with maintaining and strengthening hegemony. But to paint the Iraqi regime as a defender and benefactor of its oppressed subjects is a disgrace for so-called ‘socialists’ (ultra-Stalinites in the case of the London leadership of the SLP).

We communists stand four square behind independent working class politics. We never provide cover -‘critical’ or otherwise - for oppressors of the working class, whether in Serbia, Zimbabwe or Iraq. We are not fooled by the claims of Saddam Hussein, Mugabe or Milosevic to be ‘anti-imperialist’. In the 21st century the only consistent anti-imperialism is that of the working class.

Only the working class can deliver Iraq from the clutches of both imperialism and Saddam Hussein. It is in its power, in alliance with the rural and urban poor and the oppressed minority peoples, to dump its Ba’athist rulers and strike out for its own destiny.

We say: imperialism, hands off Iraq! For a working class-led people’s revolution against Saddam Hussein! 

If this mealy-mouthed posturing is really trying to say that only a proletarian dictatorship under the leadership of a Leninist communist party is the sole realistic historical solution to such a monstrous mess in the Middle East or throughout the Third World imperialist-system crisis in general, just as the Bolshevik Revolution provided the only way for the world out of its appalling imperialist-system mess in the First World War, - then it would be far better saying so bluntly, and then dealing with the inevitable ideological-polemical consequences of such a statement.

But even assuming that the above mealy-mouthed posturing does bear such a rational, historically-unanswerable interpretation, - these purely abstract observations evade all the serious real-life questions currently being posed if the working class is to have the slightest hope of developing a trusted party leadership, scientifically-competent to analyse every stage of the imperialist-system crisis correctly and to shape working-class interventions appropriately.

The treacherous bonapartist opportunism of the Saddam regime is beyond dispute, but while the above drivel's put-down of SLP tail-ending anti-theory Stalinism is correct, its own self-righteous moralising against the Saddam regime (and its apologists) is just the most ludicrous irresponsible nonsense, satisfying egocentric subjective gratification and very little else.

At this early stage of zero international communist movement, the working class has one colossal historical need, - for some major, headlined, imperialist-system political catastrophe to take place. Economic debacle; disastrous inter-imperialist conflict; humiliation in the Third World; domestic scandal and contradictions of uncontrollable proportions; or anything else. The more calamities the better. The hypocritical, largely pointless, persistent attempted persecution of the Saddam regime might just blow up in American & UK faces considering that the USA is currently rearming, financially guaranteeing, and politically championing, as always, the most murderous blatant despotism by far in the Middle East, - namely the illegal, warmongering, Zionist colonisation of Palestine, (which the above 'total revolutionary' 'analysis' astonishingly fails to mention at all.	How is it possible to discuss the full global implications of the latest detail in the long-running saga of Arab national interests versus imperialist regional domination when the whole heart and soul of that domination in modern times, - the maintenance of the vicious hired-gun thugs holding devastating firepower right at the heads of the entire Arab nation, right on the very front line of the insoluble contradiction in the Zionist colonies in and around Palestine, - does not even get a mention, especially at a time when that conflict in and around Palestine has just reached its historically highest fever-pitch ever, and when a fair guess at the 'logic' behind this obscure renewed US zapping of Iraq is as a show of solidarity with the troubled Zionist colonists.)

This serious working class interest in a major international imperialist setback is in one sense completely indifferent to what causes the humiliation, - inter-imperialist war, for example, where the political record and character of the 'winners' is almost of no concern to the working class provided that it is its 'own' ruling class that has been defeated. The Bolshevik interest in the Tsarist Autocracy's and then the Provisional Government's defeat, wasted not a second thinking about the rival German imperialist victory, a matter for subsequent German revolution to sort out. The above wholly academic parading of reservations about Saddam's regime reveals a lack of any serious wish to see imperialism defeated at all. Communists inside Iraq should indeed be looking towards the earliest possible opportunity for overthrowing this treacherous opportunist dictatorship. But it would be ridiculous suicidal opportunism of their own to anticipate immediate support from the Arab masses for any botched attempt to bring down Saddam now. Only consistent anti-imperialism, removing Saddam only in order to lead a more skilful and successful fight against imperialist regional domination than he has done, could possibly make sense at the moment. And that means that support for imperialist defeat in the Gulf should be loudly proclaimed unconditionally for the moment, regardless of how it comes about.

The above reproduced drivel, and its preceding sections, fall into another calamitous CIA ideological trap in going on in endless detail about the whole itemised record of Saddamism and its confrontations with Western imperialism. This swallows bourgeois brainwashing's diversionary bait whole. Instead of mind-numbing paragraphs going over the same old boring record for the umpteenth time (and getting it wrong) about the farce of the NATO 'no fly zones' (which are entirely about crippling Iraq and not remotely interested in the 'rights', 'safety', or 'well-being' of the Kurds, who get routinely slaughtered with NATO help in neighbouring Turkey), why not introduce some of the real matters of imperialist crisis which alone might make it possible to correctly analyse more deeply the broader all-round imperialist crisis which is making the Washington administration so trigger-happily jumpy and scarcely rational or confident in its Middle East knee-jerk reactions at the present time. The capitalist press itself is far more informative about the real-world imperialist-system crisis, far removed from the rival academic abstractions and generalisations with which the apologetic remains of Trotskyite and Stalinist theoretical failure still sterilely moralise at each other:

On the Richter scale of emerging market crises, Turkey is somewhere between Russia’s debt default in 1998 and the Brazilian devaluation a few months later.

The first threatened to bring down the global financial system and forced the US authorities to mount a £2.4bn bailout of a troubled hedge fund. The second shook the markets briefly but is now scarcely remembered outside Brazil.

So far the latest upheaval looks as if it has been contained within Turkey. But in an increasingly integrated global economy, pronouncing a crisis over is a risky game.

Last night Argentina was forced to reassure the markets that it has no intention of following in Turkey’s footsteps and abandoning its currency’s peg with the dollar.

In Turkey the signs of crisis are spectacularly evident. Earlier this week interest rates hit almost 5,000% and the stock market fell through the floor. On Wednesday night the authorities gave up the struggle against financial market panic and allowed the lira to find its own level. It promptly crashed to more than 1m to the dollar.

Though the immediate trigger for the crisis was Monday’s falling-out between the prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, and the president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, over the government’s willingness to tackle corruption, the underlying cause was the shaky state of the Turkish economy — a combination of an overburdened financial system and corrosive inflation.

In November the International Monetary Fund rescued Turkey from its last financial crisis in exchange for a package of belt-tightening measures. The centrepiece was a gradual revaluation of the lira against the dollar — a strategy which now lies in ruins.

So far the devaluation has acted as a safety valve for the most immediate pressures. Interest rates have fallen from the levels seen earlier this week and the stock market has recouped some of the week’s losses. But it has also added to Turkey's problems.

Some £l3bn of foreign debt is due to be repaid this year, and the lira’s plunge has made these loans costlier to repay. In addition, Turkey’s 
ambition to join the EU in the next wave of entrants has been dealt a blow.

In a bid to re-establish control of the economy, and retain the support of the IMF, Ankara has agreed to an inflation-targeting regime, but there is concern over whether it can put together a new package.

Turkey is not the only victim of this week’s events. The IMF has been left with egg on its face at a time when its role in stabilising the global financial system is under scrutiny from a sceptical new administration in Washington.

The Turkish lira plummeted yesterday, losing nearly 30% of its value against the dollar, after the government was forced to let the currency float.

It was another reminder of the potential for instability in a country which aspires to EU membership and is a vital member of Nato, guarding the alliance’s south-eastern borders with the Caucasus and the Middle East.

The decision to allow the lira to slide was taken after several days of financial panic, prompted by a public row between the prime minister and the president about the pace of investigations into high-level corruption.

The prime minister, Bulent Ecevit, had stormed out of a meeting with President Ahmet Necdet Sezer on Monday, speaking of a "serious crisis", after Mr Sezer criticised the government for failing to fight corruption in high places.

Billions of pounds have been wiped off share values and removed from foreign exchange reserves this week. Now ordinary people will pay the price, as inflation eats further into fixed incomes and economic growth stagnates.

Crowds gathered yesterday outside currency exchanges in the capital, Ankara. Clerks sat idle inside, refusing to sell dollars.

"I am in shock, I can’t even comment," said one pensioner, who would not give his name. "My debt has doubled. The ones who created this crisis should feel shame. We keep delaying life, we are always indebted."

"They have made the public pay for their greed... the poor will be poorer, the middle class will be wiped out and the rich will be richer," a former schoolteacher said.

Last night there were growing calls for a major government reshuffle and anger at the way the crisis had been provoked. The Civil Initiative, a coalition of trade unions and employers, called for a government shake-up. "Unsuccessful ministers and bureaucrats must be replaced and more qualified people put in their place," it said.

Mr Ecevit played down his row with Mr Sezer as a cause of the crisis, preferring to point to economic causes. "There was an economic problem and it exploded."

Confidence in the government’s handling of economic policy has by no means been restored, however. Mr Ecevit, who is blamed by most Turks for causing the financial upheaval, has reaffirmed his commitment to economic reform, but the markets will be watching extremely closely.

A programme of strict economic austerity agreed with the International Monetary Fund is dead. Devaluation of the lira means inflation is bound to rise, at least in the short term. Both the government and the IMF know that they need to work on a new set of economic targets.

Washington is aware that failure to agree a new programme would be a big blow to both Turkey and the IMF. But it has already warned that it will not support the IMF giving unlimited funds to countries which have caused their own economic problems — a threat that appears to apply to Turkey.

The other issue still making the financial markets nervous is the fact that the underlying dispute which sparked the crisis has not been resolved. Mr Ecevit and President Sezer are still at daggers drawn.

Financial upheaval on the edge of Europe sent tremors across the continent yesterday, after the Turkish government was forced to abandon the fixed exchange-rate policy that had been the centrepiece of its economic reforms.

Last night the International Monetary Fund was sending a team to Turkey to assess the damage done during a tumultuous week. There were fears that the freefall of the Turkish currency could topple the government and set off widespread aftershocks across the financial markets and the European political system.

IN THE old streets of Kum Kupi, Istanbul, the workshops lie silent. Five years ago hundreds of pairs of trainers, jeans and cheap shirts were turned out from these little streets every day, but now they are awash with imports from China and the Philippines.

Burly men still quarrel over the prices and drink coffee and play backgammon. But the sewing machines are still.

Turkey, its economy in free-fall and its society deeply riven, is facing its worst crisis in decades. Claiming to be victims of globalisation, its vast population of migrant workers are demanding change. Their poverty is deepening, their lifestyle worsening.

There are now almost 1.3m lira to the pound, a 30% increase in a week, and the shares of hotel companies are among the few to have survived the stock market crash.

But as Turkey’s coalition government held crisis talks yesterday aimed at preventing financial collapse, military officials warned that social unrest could trigger riots and that extremist groups were plotting terrorist attacks. Intelligence officers have told the government that the Turkish Communist party, loosely allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ party, or PKK, is plotting an urban bombing campaign that could attract sympathy from the swelling ranks of unemployed inner-city dwellers. They fear the impact of any outbreak of violence on Turkey’s last remaining economic lifeline: its tourist industry.

Turkey hopes to attract 12m tourists this year, 20% more than in 2000, when visitors spent £7 billion. Although there have been no warnings from western governments against travel to Turkey, the military has reminded ministers that the last time there was any political violence in Turkey, following the capture of Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader, in 1999, the tourist industry was badly hit. "There were a few well-publicised bomb incidents and business went through the floor," said one source.

Ocalan languishes in a prison island off Istanbul, and his party is said to be frustrated at its lack of progress in talks with the government since it agreed to a ceasefire 18 months ago. Although largely beaten back by the Turkish military in the Kurdish homelands towards the Iraqi, Syrian and Iranian borders, the PKK’s influence in the inner cities is spreading, and its leaders sense their moment may have come. Turkey’s senior generals are concerned that violence from extremists such as the Communists and PKK could play into the hands of Islamic groups, including the radical Welfare party, which tried to establish an Islamic but non-fundamentalist state four years ago.

The army forced it from power but the party was not destroyed, and some in the secular elite worry that mass demonstrations and Islamic violence could topple the establishment if the economic crisis spins out of control.

Turkey’s turmoil was precipitated by a public clash between President Ahmet Necdet Sezer, 59, and Bulent Ecevit, the 75-year-old prime minister, over how best to confront endemic corruption.

The military hierarchy appears to sympathise more with Ecevit, the great survivor of Turkish politics, whose popularity stems from the invasion of Cyprus in 1974 and Ocalan’s capture.

Sezer has irked the officer corps by resisting a military-inspired decree to sack thousands of Muslim civil servants, and last October he further angered generals by inviting pro-Islamic journalists to a Republic Day reception.

At the time Ecevit accused Sezer of hindering the government’s campaign against militant Islamicists, a remark that only enhanced the president’s popularity among religious politicians. Many commentators believe the gulf between the two men is now unbridgeable, seriously threatening a 21-month-old government seen by the West as Turkey’s best chance of stability.

Military sources said that as well as monitoring the PKK cells, intelligence officers were watching radical Muslims who have recently returned from Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.

Is the financial collapse in Turkey the start of another emerging markets meltdown like the Asian crisis?

So far, no, but it’s a bit early to declare the danger over. The lira has lost more than 30% of its value since the government stopped trying to prop it up last week.

That makes Turkey’s large foreign debt more expensive to repay because most of the loans were made in dollars. As a result, Turkey’s already wobbly banking system is under further pressure.

Why did the government devalue?

It had to. Overnight interest rates had risen to 4,000% as it desperately tried to hold the lira’s value to the dollar. Just as in the Asian crisis, floating the currency swaps one problem for another. Interest rates have fallen back, but now foreign, not domestic borrowing is putting the strain on the financial system.

Isn't that what happened in some Asian countries?

Yes, although Turkey’s debt is nothing like as big.

South Korea owed foreign lenders $150bn when its financial system started crumbling. Turkish banks have borrowed around $45bn.

It’s a much smaller economy and has limited trade links outside of Europe. Asia’s crisis spread rapidly because many countries in the region proved to be weak when their economies came under pressure.

So are the risks limited to Europe?

The trouble with financial crises is that they are about panic not logic.

If investors decide that emerging markets are looking dodgy again, they may pull out of the countries they consider weak, regardless of whether there is any logical link with events in Turkey.

Which countries are the likely victims?
Countries with lots of short term international borrowing are vulnerable. Within Europe, the Czech republic is a possible candidate, though its total bill isn’t very high.

Argentina and Brazil owe a lot, and about half of it is short term borrowing. Another factor is currency pegs which are looking increasingly like bad idea.

When speculators take on governments, they usually win because they have more money — as is demonstrated by the ejection of the pound from the exchange rate mechanism.

Most Latin American countries have abandoned pegs in favour of currency boards — like Hong Kong’s — or fully adopting the dollar.

However, Africa is a different story. It has two big regional currency blocs which are pegged to the French franc and therefore the euro.

The economies of the region are weak because of falling commodity prices, and political upheaval which is also shutting down western aid programmes.

A devaluation would make political and economic sense and would have limited impact on the rest of the world because the economies are so small to begin with.

So which country is the number one candidate if the crisis spreads?
Probably Argentina, It owes a lot of money, it has a pegged currency, which is coming under increasing pressure, and it has had big inflows of "hot money" from investors in search of a quick return taking a bet that the currency peg will hold.

If the peg crumbles there will be a mad rush for the exits.

This phenomenal localised crisis and astonishing admissions about the whole imperialist-system responsibility for some potentially explosive far-reaching implications, have all blown up in just a week after previously having heard nothing about any Turkish economic crisis at all. This underlines the extreme volatility of the whole imperialist economic international house of cards, and demonstrates yet again what utterly misleading nonsense used to be conveyed by the Trots ’New World Order' defeatism that the imperialist West, in view of the supposed 'collapse' of communism, would now be able to systematically go round the world 'imposing' settlement after settlement in 'hot spot' after 'hot spot'.

The reality was as the EPSR alone explained, at the time and repeatedly since. It was the deepening inter-imperialist crisis which persuaded Washington to end its costly and phony "total confrontation with the evil empire" posturing, in order to spend more on its trade-war real life-and-death struggle against Germany and Japan. This gave the idiot Stalinist-Revisionist tradition the opportunity to liquidate the long-defunct 'world revolutionary' aims completely, consciously liquidating the proletarian-dictatorship state in order to allow 'no longer hostile' market forces the 'neutral' economic opportunity to build better 'our common European home' than Soviet bureaucratic planning-rigidity was expected to be able to contribute to on its own. But along with the sterile Stalinist bathwater, the still healthy baby of the Soviet workers state itself got thrown out as well.

But this totally catastrophic outcome caused by nearly 70 years of anti-Marxist theoretical lunacy by both pro- and anti-Stalinist camps (Trots and others) could not have the slightest influence on the already-deepening insoluble inter-imperialist economic crisis, - no matter how many cartwheels were performed by Francis Fukuyama and other 'end of history' idiots. Real history, on the contrary, was just beginning again, - the final revolutionary crisis of the by-now completely self-contradictory globalised imperialist system, — and resuming in circumstances where the dead hand of universally-honoured Moscow Revisionist claptrap was no longer making sterile the entire international communist movement.

But still this false 'left' peddles these defeatist infantile imbecilities about the supposed imperialist 'New World Order'. Slightly in retreat and shamefaced, this current CPGB front page tries a small self-conscious sideways wriggle (on the way to getting out of this nonsense altogether without anyone noticing) in the following way:

Of course this does not mean that the imperialists are concerned for ‘democracy’ or ‘human rights’ per se. But they do want to resolve conflicts in the world’s ‘hot spots’, the better to impose their own domination in the interests of global capitalist exploitation. Unlike sanctions, the no-fly zones were never backed officially by the UN.

But that's where dishonest wriggling gets you, - out of the frying pan but only into the fire. Firstly, of course, it will be news to the vast majority of mankind in the ex-colonial world that the history of imperialism in its entirety could be remotely equated with 'concern' of any kind for 'democracy' and 'human rights' at all. The imperialist system’s only watchword ever has been: "As much fascist brutality as it takes". The capitalist press itself is currently running some stunning contemporary admissions on this score, (presumably hoping to restrict these revelations, courtesy of the US Freedom of Information Act to manageable proportions):

Notice the likeable way in which Mr Korda demonstrates his broadmindedness with the Cambodia jest. Everybody "knows", after all, that Kissinger inflicted terror and misery and mass death on that country, and great injury to the United States Constitution at the same time. (Everybody also "knows" that other vulnerable nations can lay claim to the same melancholy and hateful distinction, with incremental or "collateral" damage to American democracy keeping pace.) Yet the pudgy man standing in black tie at the Vogue party is not, surely, the man who ordered and sanctioned the destruction of civilian populations, the assassination of inconvenient politicians, the kidnapping and disappearance of soldiers and journalists and clerics who got in his way? Oh, but he is. It’s exactly the same man.

And that may be among the most nauseating reflections of all. Kissinger is not invited and fêted because of his exquisite manners or his mordant wit (his manners are in any case rather gross, and his wit consists of a quiver of borrowed and secondhand darts). No, he is sought after because his presence supplies a frisson: the authentic touch of raw and unapologetic power. There’s a slight guilty nervousness on the edge of Mr Korda’s gag about the indescribable sufferings of Indochina. And I’ve noticed, time and again standing at the back of the audience during Kissinger speeches, that laughter of the nervous, uneasy kind is the sort of laughter he likes to provoke. In exacting this tribute, he flaunts not the "aphrodisiac" of power (another of his plagiarised bons mots) but its pornography.

In a famous expression of his contempt for democracy, Kissinger once observed that he saw no reason why a certain country should be allowed to "go Marxist" merely because "its people are irresponsible". The country concerned was Chile, which at the time of this remark had a justified reputation as the most highly evolved pluralistic democracy in the southern hemisphere of the Americas. The pluralism translated, in the years of the Cold War, into an electorate that voted about one-third conservative, one-third socialist and communist, and one-third Christian Democratic and centrist. This had made it relatively easy to keep the Marxist element from having its turn in government, and ever since 1962 the CIA had — as it had in Italy and other comparable nations — largely contented itself with funding the reliable elements.

In September 1970, however, the Left’s candidate actually gained a slight plurality of 36.2% in the presidential elections. Divisions on the Right, and the adherence of some smaller radical and Christian parties to the Left, made it a moral certainty that the Chilean Congress would, after the traditional 60-day interregnum, confirm Dr Salvador Allende as the next president. But the very name of Allende was anathema to the extreme Right in Chile, to certain powerful corporations (notably ITT, Pepsi Cola and the Chase Manhattan Bank) which did business in Chile and the United States, and to the CIA.

This loathing quickly communicated itself to President Nixon. He was personally beholden to Donald Kendall, the president of Pepsi Cola, who had given him his first corporate account when, as a young lawyer, he had joined John Mitchell’s New York firm. A series of Washington meetings, held within 11 days of Allende s electoral victory, essentially settled the fate of Chilean democracy. After discussions with interested parties, and with CIA director Richard Helms, Kissinger went with Helms to the Oval Office. Helms’s notes of the meeting show that Nixon wasted little breath in making his wishes known. Allende was not to assume office. "Not concerned risks involved. No involvement of embassy. $10,000,000 available, more if necessary. Full-time job — best men we have... Make the economy scream. 48 hours for plan of action."

Declassified documents show that Kissinger — who had previously neither known nor cared about Chile, describing it offhandedly as "a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica" — took seriously this chance to impress his boss. A group was set up in Langley, Virginia, with the express purpose of running a "two track" policy for Chile: one the ostensible diplomatic one and the other — unknown to the State Department or the US ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry — a strategy of destabilisation, kidnap and assassination, designed to provoke a military coup.

There were long- and short-term obstacles to the incubation of such an intervention, especially in the brief interval available before Allende took his oath of office. The long-term obstacle was the tradition of military abstention from politics in Chile, a tradition which marked off the country from its neighbours. Such a military culture was not to be degraded overnight. The short-term obstacle lay in the person of one man — General René Schneider. As chief of the Chilean General Staff, he was adamantly opposed to any military meddling in the electoral process. Accordingly, it was decided at a meeting on September 18,1970, that General Schneider had to go.

The plan was to have him kidnapped by extremist officers, in such a way as to make it appear that leftist and pro-Allende elements were behind the plot. The resulting confusion, it was hoped, would panic the Chilean Congress into denying Allende the presidency. A sum of $50,000 was offered around the Chilean capital, Santiago, for any officer or officers enterprising enough to take on this task. Richard Helms and his director of covert operations, Thomas Karamessines, told Kissinger that they were not optimistic. Military circles were hesitant and divided, or else loyal to General Schneider and the Chilean constitution. As Helms put it in a later account of the conversation, "We tried to make clear to Kissinger how small the possibility of success was." Kissinger firmly told Helms and Karamessines to press on in any case.

Here one must pause for a recapitulation. An unelected official in the United States is meeting with others, without the knowledge or authorisation of Congress, to plan the kidnapping of a constitution-minded senior officer in a democratic country with which the United States is not at war, and with which it maintains cordial diplomatic relations. The minutes of the meetings may have an official look to them (though they were hidden from the light of day for long enough) but what we are reviewing is a "hit" — a piece of state-supported terrorism.

Ambassador Korry has testified that he told his embassy staff to have nothing to do with a group styling itself Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Freedom), a quasi-fascist group intent on defying the election results. He sent three cables to Washington warning his superiors to have nothing to do with them either. He was unaware that his own military attachés had been told to contact the group and keep the fact from him. And when the outgoing president of Chile, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei, announced that he was opposed to any US intervention and would vote to confirm the legally elected Allende, it was precisely to this gang that Kissinger turned.

On October 15,1970, Kissinger was told of an extremist right-wing officer named General Roberto Viaux, who had ties to Patria y Libertad and who was willing to accept the secret US commission to remove General Schneider from the chessboard. The term "kidnap" was still being employed at this point, and is often employed still. However, Kissinger’s Track Two group authorised the supply of machine guns as well as tear gas grenades to Viaux’s associates, and never seems to have asked what they would do with the general once they had kidnapped him.

Let the documents tell the story. A CIA cable to Kissinger’s Track Two group from Santiago dated October 18,1970, reads (with the names still blacked out for "security" purposes and cover identities written in by hand — in my square brackets — by the ever-thoughtful redaction service):

1. [Station cooptee] met clandestinely evening 17 Oct with [two Chilean armed forces officers] who told him their plans were moving along better than had thought possible. They asked that by evening 18 Oct [cooptee] arrange furnish them with eight to ten tear gas grenades. Within 48 hours they need three 45 calibre machine guns ("grease guns") with 500 rounds ammo each. [One officer] commented has three machine guns himself but can be identified by serial numbers as having been issued to him therefore unable use them.

3. [Cooptee] asked if [officers] had Air Force contacts. They answered they did not but would welcome one. [Cooptee] separately has since tried contact [a Chilean Air Force General] and will keep trying until established. Will urge [Air Force General] meet with [other two officers] a.s.a.p.

Request headquarters agreement by 1500 hours local time 18 Oct on decision delivery of teargas to [cooptee] vice [false flag officer].

6. Request prompt shipment three sterile 45 calibre machine guns and ammo per para 1 above, by special courier if necessary. Please confirm by 2000 hours local time 18 Oct that this can be done so [cooptee] may inform his contacts accordingly.

The reply, which is headed "Immediate Santiago (Eyes Only [Deleted])" is dated October 18 and reads:

Sub-machine guns and ammo being sent by regular [deleted] courier leaving Washington 0700 hours 19 October due arrive Santiago late evening 20 October or early morning 21 October. Preferred use regular [deleted] courier to avoid bringing undue attention to op.

A companion message, also addressed to "Santiago 562", went like this:

1. Depending how [cooptee] conversation goes evening 18 October you may wish submit Intel report [deleted] so we can decide whether should be dissemed.

2. New subject. If [cooptee] plans lead coup, or be actively and publicly involved, we puzzled why it should bother him if machine guns can be traced to him. Can we develop rationale on why guns must be sterile? Will continue make effort provide them but find our credulity stretched by Navy [officer] leading his troops with sterile guns? What is special purpose for these guns? We will try send them whether you can provide explanation or not.

The full beauty of this cable traffic cannot be fully appreciated without a reading of another message, dated October 16. (It should, however, be borne in mind that the Chilean Congress was to meet to confirm Dr Salvador Allende as president on the 24th of that month):

1. [Deleted/handwritten code name Trick-turn] policy, objectives and actions were reviewed at high USG [United States Government] level afternoon 15 October. Conclusions. which are to be your operational guide, follow:

2. It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 21 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing even appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions  be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden. [italics added]. While this imposes on us a high degree of selectivity in making military contacts and dictates that these contacts be made in the most secure manner it definitely does not preclude contacts such as reported in Santiago 544 which was a masterful piece of work.

3. After the most careful consideration it was determined that a Viaux coup attempt carried out by him alone with the forces now at his disposal would fail. Thus, it would be counterproductive to our [deleted; handwritten insert "Track Two"] objectives. It was decided that [deleted; handwritten insert "CIA"] get a message to Viaux warning him against precipitate action. In essence our message is to state, "We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you together with ail your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support." You are requested to deliver the message to Viaux essentially as noted above. Our objectives are as follows: (A) To advise him of our opinion and discourage him from acting alone; (B) Continue to encourage him to amplify his planning: (C) Encourage him to join forces with other coup planners so that they may act in concert either before or after 24 October. (N.B. Six gas masks and six CS cannisters [sic] are being carried to Santiago by special [deleted] courier ETD Washington 1100 hours 16 October.)

4. There is great and continuing interest in the activities of Tirado, Canales, Valenzuela et al and we wish them maximum good fortune.

5. The above is your operating guidance. No other policy guidance you may receive from [indecipherable: State?] or its maximum exponent in Santiago, on his return, are to sway you from your course.

6. Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to press forward our [deleted] objective in a secure manner.

Finally, it is essential to read the White House "memorandum of conversation", dated October 15,1970, to which the above cable directly refers and of which it is a more honest summary. Present for the "high USG level" meeting were, as noted in the heading: "Dr Kissinger, Mr Karamessines, Gen Haig." The first paragraph of their deliberations has been entirely blacked out, with not so much as a scribble in the margin from the redaction service. (Given what has since been admitted, this 20-line deletion must be well worth reading.) Picking up at paragraph two, we find the following:

2. Then Mr Karanicssines provided a rundown on Viaux, the Canales meeting with Tirado, the hitters new position [after Porta was relieved of command "for health reasons" ] and, in some detail, the general situation in Chile from the coup possibility viewpoint.

3. A certain amount of information was available to us concerning Viaux’s alleged support throughout the Chilean military. We had assessed Viaux's claims carefully, basing our analysis on good intelligence from a number of sources. Our conclusion was clear: Viaux did not have more than one chance in 20 — perhaps less — to launch a successful coup.

4. The unfortunate repercussions, in Chile and internationally, of an unsuccessful coup were discussed. Dr Kissinger ticked off his list of these negative possibilities. His items were remarkably similar to the ones Mr Karamessines had prepared.

5. It was decided by those present that the Agency must get a message to Viaux warning him against any precipitate action. In essence our message was to state: "We have reviewed your plans, and based on your information and ours, we come to the conclusion that your plans for a coup at this time cannot succeed. Failing, they may reduce your capabilities for the future. Preserve your assets. We will stay in touch. The time will come when you with all your other friends can do something. You will continue to have our support."

6. After the decision to defuse the Viaux coup plot, at least temporarily, Dr Kissinger instructed Mr Karamessines to preserve Agency assets in Chile, working clandestinely and securely to maintain the capability for Agency operations against Allende in the future.

7. Dr Kissinger discussed his desire that the word of our encouragement to the Chilean military in recent weeks be kept as secret as possible. Mr Karamessines stated emphatically that we had been doing everything possible in this connection, including the use of false flag officers, car meetings and every conceivable precaution. But we and others had done a great deal of talking recently with a number of persons. For example. Ambassador Korry’s wideranging discussions with numerous people urging a coup "cannot be put back into the bottle." [Three lines of deletion follow.] [Dr Kissinger requested that copy of the message be sent to him on 16 October.]

The meeting concluded on Dr Kissinger’s note that the Agency should continue keeping the pressure on every Allende weak spot in sight: now, after October 24, after November 5, and into the future until such time as new marching orders are given. Mr Karamessines stated that the Agency would comply.

So Track Two contained two tracks of its own. Track Two/One was the group of ultras led by General Viaux and his sidekick Captain Arturo Marshal. These men had tried to bring off a coup in 1969 against the Christian Democrats; they had been cashiered and were disliked even by conservatives in the officer corps. "Track Two/Two" was a more ostensibly "respectable" faction headed by General Camilo Valenzuela, the chief of the garrison in the capital city, whose name occurs in the cables above and whose identity is concealed by some of the deletions. Several of the CIA operatives in Chile felt that Viaux was too much of a mad-dog to be trusted. And Ambassador Korry’s repeated admonitions also had their effect.

As shown in the October 15 memo cited above, Kissinger and Karamessines developed last-minute second thoughts about Viaux, who as late as October 13 had been given $20,000 in cash from the CIA station and promised a life insurance policy of $250,000. This offer was authorised direct from the White House. However, with only days to go before Allende was inaugurated, and with Nixon repeating that "it was absolutely essential that the election of Mr Allende to the Presidency be thwarted", the pressure on the Valenzuela group became intense. As a direct consequence, especially after the warm words of encouragement he had been given, General Viaux felt himself under some obligation to deliver also, and to disprove those who had doubted him.

On the evening of October 19,1970, the Valenzuela group, aided by some of Viaux’s gang, and equipped with the tear gas grenades delivered by the CIA, attempted to grab General Schneider as he left an official dinner. The attempt failed because he left in a private car and not the expected official vehicle. The failure produced an extremely significant cable from CIA headquarters in Washington to the local station, asking for urgent action because "Headquarters must respond during morning 20 October to queries from high levels."

Payments of $50,000 each to General Viaux and his chief associate were then authorised on the condition that they made another attempt On the evening of October 20, they did. But again there was only failure to report. On October 22, the "sterile" machine guns above-mentioned were handed to Valenzuela’s group for another try. Later that same day, General Viaux’s gang finally murdered General Schneider.

According to the later verdict of the Chilean military courts, this atrocity partook of elements of both tracks of Track Two. In other words, Valenzuela was not himself on the scene but the assassination squad, led by Viaux, contained men who had participated in the preceding two attempts. Viaux was convicted on charges of kidnapping and of conspiring to cause a coup. Valenzuela was convicted of the charge of conspiracy to cause a coup. So any subsequent attempt to distinguish the two plots from each other, except in point of degree, is an attempt to confect a distinction without a difference.

It scarcely matters whether Schneider was slain because of a kidnapping scheme that went awry (he was said, but only by the assassins, to have had the temerity to resist) or whether his assassination was the objective in the first place. The Chilean military police report, as it happens, describes a straightforward murder. Under the law of every law-bound country (including the United States), a crime committed in the pursuit of a kidnapping is thereby aggravated, not mitigated. You may not say, with a corpse at your feet, "I was only trying to kidnap him." At least, you may not say so if you hope to plead extenuating circumstances.

Yet a version of "extenuating circumstances" has become the paper-thin cover story with which Kissinger has since protected himself from the charge of being an accomplice, before and after the fact, in kidnap and murder. And this sorry cover-story has even found a refuge in the written record. The Senate Intelligence Committee, in its investigation of the matter, concluded that since the machine guns supplied to Valenzuela had not actually been employed in the killing, and since General Viaux had been officially discouraged by the CIA a few days before the murder, there was therefore "no evidence of a plan to kill Schneider or that United States officials specifically anticipated that Schneider would be shot during the abduction".

However, Kissinger needed the crime very slightly more than he needed, or was able to design, the deniability. Without waiting for his many hidden papers to be released or subpoenaed, we can say with safety that he is prima facie guilty of direct collusion in the murder of a democratic officer in a democratic and peaceful country.

OPERATION CONDOR
This was a machinery of cross-border assassination, abduction, torture and intimidation, coordinated between the secret police forces of Pinochet's Chile, Stroessner's Paraguay, Videla's Argentina and other regional caudillos. It is now known to have been responsible, to name only the most salient victims, for the murder of the dissident general Carlos Prats of Chile (and his wife) in Buenos Aires, the murder of the Bolivian general Juan José Torres, and the maiming of a Chilean Christian Democrat senator, Bernardo Leighton, in Italy. US government complicity has been uncovered at every level of this network. It has been established, for example, that the FBI aided Pinochet in capturing Jorge Isaac Fuentes de Alarcón, who was detained and tortured in Paraguay, then turned over to the Chilean secret police, and 'disappeared'. Astonishingly, the surveillance of Latin US dissident refugees in the United States was promised to Condor figures by US intelligence.

These and other facts have been established by the work of 'truth and reconciliation’ commissions set up by post-dictatorship forces in the countries of the southern hemisphere. Stroessner has been overthrown, Videla is in prison, Pinochet and his henchmen are being, or have been, brought to account in Chile. The US has not so far found it convenient to establish such a commission of its own.

All of the above-cited crimes, and many more besides, were committed on Kissinger’s watch as Secretary of State. And all of them were, and are, punishable, under local or international law, or both.

This is an edited extract from The Trial Of Henry Kissinger, by Christopher Hitchens, to be published by Verso, priced £15, on April 30.

But whether such clear candidates for the Hague Warcrimes Tribunal as the entire American administration from 1970 to 1973 when Allende himself was finally killed and illegally overthrown by a CIA coup, can be substituted for the pathetic ethnic-strife Yugoslavs from all sides currently there, victims of a deliberate civil-war break-up of Yugoslavia engineered once again by Washington, remains to be seen, — as does the question of whether such FoI revelations will be allowed to query the current fascist-brutality essence of American imperialist bullying, as opposed to that of 40 years ago which is now thought (or hoped) by some to be treatable today as 'mere history'.

A second problem with that anti-Marxist 'hot spot' paragraph above is the really offensively misleading implication that 'peacefully resolving conflicts' could from time to time be a worthwhile assessment of the imperialist system's real interests. In the long run of world history, this has got to be one of the most perniciously treacherous cover-ups of the reality of world imperialism that any false 'left', trying to queer the pitch for Marxism, has ever uttered. False to even think about the imperialist system in terms of 'conflict resolution', on any timescale. The imperialist system means conflict and war, as far as the modern world should understand things, - and nothing else. Insoluble economic crisis is taking civilisation itself to the brink of catastrophe under imperialism, and at its supremely grim moments, the imperialist system has always historically gone gung-ho into as wide a warmongering conflict as possible, needing, and rejoicing in, the devastation.

War triumphs and war heroes remain the essential history of the imperialist system, more so today than ever. Just look at the huge size and massively destructive firepower of the US military domination of the whole planet. Imperialism is now just war and zapping, or its ever-present threat, - nothing else. The excuse used to be 'fear of the evil empire'. Now US imperialism has to spend its whole time inventing new excuses about the imaginary 'threat from North Korea, from Saddam, from Gaddafi', etc, etc.

But swamping the entire world with the menace of destruction is merely exactly what monopoly-imperialist economic control of the planet really implies.

At any stage of its history, the 'free market' has only ever been an alternative description of class rule, - the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, domestically concealed as state power, and internationally parading as the 'NATO defence alliance', or as the 'United Nations', or as any one of a whole proliferation of regional pacts of one kind or another. But the unstoppable growth of economic crisis will make the warmongering essence of the imperialist system clear for even the dimmest fake-'left' intellects to grasp.

Already undermining the fairy-tale cover-story that the Middle East bristles with massive US imperialist fire-power "because of an evil man in Baghdad", - a diversion which only the naïve front pages of the Trot stooges of the imperialist system really fall for any more, - is the chaotic mess itself of imperialism's own policy. Within the NATO powers, for example, the right hand no longer understands or trusts what the left hand is doing.

And it is exactly this break-up atmosphere around the system which more and more encourages the spirit of revelations about the system's wrongdoings. In modern times, there has never been such an avalanche of public exposure of capitalist and imperialist criminals, high and low, as is now flooding out, the tilt at Kissinger above being typical of hundreds of similar examples. Likening the bourgeois journalists and publishers involved to rats deserting the sinking ship need not be taken negatively. The historical perspective is positive: that the system is now rotten and deserves to die is becoming clear to more than just committed communist revolutionaries.

And cynics have a not dishonourable place in history as the mordant chroniclers of collapsing folly. Such anarchic wit will be utterly useless for doing anything about clearing up the mess of the imperialist world order, but the only science of changing civilisation, Marxist philosophy, is more than adequate for the task, and would have had the job three-quarters finished by now if Stalinist Revisionism had not addled international working-class thinking for the last 75 years.

And even better than recent-past revelations of the Kissinger kind, the imperialist system continues to fall flat on its face on a daily contemporary basis.

Now the insane evils of economic monopoly power domination plus the desperate measures of cut-throat competition in order to survive, have produced the 'cheap meat' syndrome, which, having poisoned the livestock world, with BSE, is now set to wipe it out with foot and mouth disease:

The meat trade is global, and inspection not always stringent. Pork and beef is imported from countries such as Uruguay, Brazil, Zimbabwe and South Africa, all of which have had foot and mouth outbreaks in the past year. Other meat has been imported from Japan and Thailand, which had serious outbreaks of the strain that is infecting Britain.

When meat arrives in Britain it is rarely inspected, and certainly not for foot and mouth disease. Harriett Kimbell, a director of the Consumers Association and adviser to the Government on BSE, said: ‘This is an accident that has been waiting-to happen. Anything could be coming in.’

Pressure to produce cheap and plentiful meat can lead to livestock being kept in conditions that those outside farming consider horrendous. The Heddon-on-the-Wall farm may have been notorious in its area, but most pigs are kept in poor conditions. Almost all bacon and sausages sold in Britain come from industrially-produced pigs, who spend their lives cramped in dimly-lit sheds. They rarely have straw as bedding, and are kept on floors that are either concrete, or slatted so that their manure can drop out. The pigs get so distressed they start biting each other’s tails, which are now routinely docked to prevent this.

Chickens are often kept in even worse condition than pigs. Up to 80,000 hens are kept cramped in dark barns, starved of fresh air and light. They are bred to grow so fast that they often have splayed legs, unable to support their unnaturally swollen bodies, and many suffer heart failure. To stop them pecking each other, their beaks are clipped, and they are fed antibiotics to stop disease spreading. The use of antibiotics in agriculture has risen 15-fold in 30 years, and now more antibiotics are used on farm animals than on people.

Selectively-bred dairy cows now produce 50 litres of milk a day, 10 times what a calf needs. Although sheep are generally reared traditionally on hillsides, they are transported long distances in large numbers. Live export of animals - the subject of vigorous campaigning a few years ago - has doubled since the protests. Evading bans by regular ferry companies, farmers now charter their own boats, increasing the number of animals exported from a low of 400,000 to more than a million.

THE RESULT of all this is that food poisoning in Britain has been increasing rapidly. Since the early Eighties, reported cases have risen sevenfold to more than 100,000 a year.

Peter Stevenson, political director of the lobby group Compassion in World Farming, said: 'We will continue to have these diseases so long as we have industrialised farming. Animals are kept in such cramped and squalid conditions it is hardly surprising they harbour disease, and once an animal is infected it spreads like wildfire.'

Once again consumers are being asked to pay the price for a system of agriculture and food production which, time after time, has shown itself to be deeply flawed.

We have had, and continue to have, listeria, salmonella, BSE, E. coli, swine fever and infectious anaemia in farmed salmon. We now have foot-and-mouth for the first time since 1981. And yet the root cause of each of these disasters is the same: the policy that we must produce as much food as we can, as cheaply as we can.

So ingrained has the concept of cheap food become that it seems impossible now to eradicate it from the political process, institutional planning and the public mind. Yet no one seems to stop to count the true cost of 'cheap food'.

For a number of years the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has been following a covert policy of closing down 'red meat' abattoirs. The theory was that there were too many of them to be viable - and it was true that many of them were badly run.

Under the guise of implementing EU regulations, MAFF set about closing the smaller ones, and centralising the slaughter of animals in large units. The logic behind this had little to do with the EU - it would have been easy to bring the smaller abattoirs up to standard over a reasonable period - and much to do with economies of scale.

Never mind that animals would become more stressed because they would have to travel greater distances to be slaughtered. Never mind the greater chances of infectivity in the case of an outbreak of disease. The costs of slaughter would be reduced. Meat would be cheaper. The public would be appeased.

So, between 1985 and 2000, the number of abattoirs fell from 1,022 to 387. Over the same period, the average number of animals killed each week has risen from 13,313 per abattoir to 32,729. The consequences of this policy have been made evident by the course of the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth. When the first case was identified, the focus of investigation fell on Cheale Meats in Little Warley, Essex. It has since been established that more than 600 farms, from as far away as Northumberland, Yorkshire, Gloucestershire, Isle of Wight, Northern Ireland and Scotland, send their meat there.

Given the fact that the foot-and-mouth virus is so highly contagious and can be transmitted by living animals or in the carcases of dead ones, it is easy to see the potential for contamination. It may well turn out, of course, that the true source of the outbreak is traced to meat imported from another part of the world - all in the name of cheap food - and so we can pass the buck. But we have to accept the blame ourselves because we have institutionalised the whole notion of cheap food.

The original reasons behind the cheap food policy, conceived in the wake of World War II, may have been worthy, but the case for change is now overwhelming. The drive for cheap food has been behind every major food catastrophe of the past decade.

BSE was caused by the use of ground-up animals for feed because they were a cheap form of protein. Salmonella is endemic in chickens and their eggs because the broiler system delivers cheaper poultry products. E. coli is a by-product of intensive live-stock practices. ISA in salmon is caused by the broiler system being applied to fish.

The consequences for the consumers, and the active part we play in the perpetuation of the policy, are equally dire - vCJD, food poisoning and obesity. We love cheap food. We binge on it. Diet-related diseases kill more people in the West than any other cause. We eat too much, diet too much, worry too much about our figures. Yet still we advocate keeping food as cheap as possible.

The always philistine, sleazy, and irrational world of capitalist progress is now also such a poisoned world (as well as one of ever-escalating warmongering) that its demise is certain. But it will inevitably end via total crisis, not by calm reason. 

The polite electoralism of the false 'left' is only misleading the working class and helping the capitalist 'democracy’ racket survive longer than necessary. The system is heading for worldwide revolution. Workers need revolutionary education now. Build Leninism. EPSR