Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested.

V. I. Lenin 

Economic & Philosophic Science Review 

No 1157 October 22 2002

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www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk
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Major propaganda defeats for US imperialism can not stop capitalist crisis eventually sinking to warmongering destruction, its traditional 'solution' to trade-war mayhem and over-production difficulties, but the setback to Washington's aggression will spread paralysing splits in the warmongers camp, - which hint at the bigger defeats to come once inter-imperialist conflicts and Third World revolutions really get going in the slump collapse ahead. If out-of-date imperialism achieves nothing but humiliating failure (al-Quaeda; Iraq; Afghanistan; Indonesia; nuclear proliferation; USA terrorism; etc) when booming, what total chaos is due when its global economy crashes? 

American imperialism's propaganda programme for slump-defeating warmongering is almost shot to shreds after the announcement about a North Korean nuclear bomb having been developed and after the USA had to back down at the United Nations.

The US threat to blitzkrieg the planet has in no way lessened; neither has the demented 'New World Order' arrogance; or sick determination to stay 'top dog' as the slump rottenness of the incurably crisis-ridden imperialist economic system spreads worldwide misery and devastation, - declined.

And these serious blows to America's world domination pride and credibility do not yet spring from any serious rivalry to them in foul and murderous weapons of mass destruction of all kinds where the USA still retains an utterly commanding and truly evil lead.

Even if North Korea actually has atomic weapons already and this is not a case of exaggerated Washington hysteria or wily oriental bluffing, this damage to US warmongering plans so far remains in the realm of ever increasing propaganda battle difficulties.

But while the outcome of the propaganda war will clearly decide nothing of itself, and imperialist slump's warmongering devastation needs will eventually have to blitzkrieg and slaughter their way forward regardless of how degenerate and out-of-order the main monopoly capitalist powers look while unleashing their 'top dog' rivalry in its ultimate, rock-bottom crisis form, - nonetheless every difficulty (and propaganda defeats are not unimportant) will make for ever greater divisions and doubts within the American ruling class camp, and thus increase the chances of defeats for the USA (sooner rather than later) in the actual imperialist warmongering crisis events as they unfold.

It is DEFEATS for the worlds leading imperialist powers, - in any aspect of their return to inter-imperialist trade-war rivalry, and warmongering alliance preparations and skirmishing, which give civilisation the chance to overcome this last great scourge of human society, this breakdown of the capitalist order. Only in DEFEAT will this handful of global economic-exploitation powers and warmongering bullying-armsrace protagonists become seriously vulnerable to having their domination and might overthrown by class and national forces representing the overwhelming majority of ordinary people on Earth (who just want a peaceful productive cooperative life which modern technology now makes easily possible for everybody on the planet, once monopoly private ownership can be brought down).

And while it may still be a long distance from any material significant defeats for any of the rival imperialist protaganists in trade-war skirmishes, or loss of regional influences in the world, or setbacks in the arms-race or in the weapons alliances being formed, - any propaganda defeats help show the world how vulnerable, and backward, and stupid are these narrow ruling class circles.

But that encouragement does not want to take things no further than merely jeering at the obvious total absence of any 'New World order' (which the degenerate Washington imperialists and their New Labour stooges like to boast about).

Although the ridiculous arrogant conceit of an oaf like Bush is paper-thin, and he cannot even start as favourite to win battles with basic English, this moron remains the fully-empowered leader of the entire Western system of corporate corruption and utterly discredited paid-for "democracy", and only REVOLUTION will change things.

Capitalism's whole 'free-market' class system is out-of-date and bankrupt for modern human needs, and only the REVOLUTIONARY understanding of Marxist-Leninist science can now take civilisation forward.

As 800 years of bourgeois rule comes to the end of the road, the last thing it will do is go quietly, - ashamed and humiliated at its own capitalist system's obvious breakdown in economic slump, 'surplus'-capital destruction, trade-war throat-cutting, and warmongering bloodletting and devastation.

The West's frenzied propaganda war to prepare the way for appalling suffering and disruption to 'normal' life is to cover up this imperialist exploitation system's responsibility (for the total economic dislocation and collapse that is coming) by piling all the blame on many varieties of "axis of evil" which are supposedly destroying "the good life as we have known it" 

For three-quarters of mankind (the poor throughout the entire Third World), there has never been any "good life" anyway. They have never got out of the cruellest poverty and the savagest exploitation. But the 'overproduction' markets crash is now going to slash the lifestyles and living standards of EVERYONE on the planet, a total social catastrophe.

The ridiculous game-playing shallowness of this warmongering hysteria to rout the "evil" which is allegedly doing the world down, is shown up in precisely this very latest alarm about North Korea supposedly possessing nuclear weapons, news suppressed for weeks. Why?

As the capitalist press itself has uneasily admitted, huge questions are raised challenging America's seriousness about "the threat to the world from weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands", etc, as a result of this strangely-emerged and even more strangely reacted-to tale of North Korea's alleged nuclear capabilities.

Is this an early example of propaganda defeats leading to further ruling-class splits and doubts, and thus setting the scene for even more chaotic and self-damaging setbacks in the warmongering agenda further down the slippery slope????

The Bush administration will not go to war with North Korea - part of what it sees as a global axis of evil - despite Pyongyang's pursuit of a secret nuclear weapons programme, the White House said yesterday.

The decision to use diplomacy as a first resort came hours after the confirmation that North Korea had resumed its nuclear weapons programme, breaking an agreement reached with President Clinton in 1994.

The confirmation by North Korean officials of US intelligence reports of attempts to procure weapons-grade uranium presents Washington with a potential nuclear crisis in Asia at a time when the administration is gearing up for a possible war against Iraq and remains engaged in the hunt for members of al-Qaida. 

Washington took a low-key approach yesterday, with no comment from President Bush, and officials saying the US would focus on a "peaceful solution". 

"This is best addressed through diplomatic channels at this point," the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, said. "These are different regions, different circumstances."

The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, said Baghdad posed a more dangerous threat than Pyongyang, "because of the breadth of what they're doing'.

However, analysts said that the distinction drawn by Mr Rumsfeld was also a reflection of the enormous difficulties  posed by a conflict on  the Korean peninsula. 

Moving towards such a course would complicate American relations, with China, Japan, and South Korea they said, adding that Seoul was well within range of North Korean weaponry.

But this makes no sense at all. Lots of places US imperialism has crucial relationships with are within range of Iraqi weaponry (assuming it has any).

And North Korea has NEVER agreed to be monitored, unlike Iraq for 10 years, and would NEVER put up with constant overflights and bombing, - as Iraq still has to do daily.

Moreover, North Korea is still a self-confessed communist proletarian dictatorship, presumably with still active world revolutionary dreams for socialism all over the Earth, whereas the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq remains the same capitalist-stooge outfit that the USA installed in the first place 20 years ago to REPLACE a revolutionary regime.

On top of that, Iraq is actually REQUESTING inspections and diplomacy to try to get Western imperialist domineering off its back, whereas the North Koreans have already fought one total massive war (1950-53) in rejecting US imperialist control over their country.

The obvious conclusion????  Iraq is being targeted for war solely to suit the warmongering-destruction needs of the global imperialist economic slump, and nothing whatever to do with any "weapons of mass destruction", real or imagined.

But caught red-handed in this astonishing exposure of US imperialism's murderous lying hypocrisy to blitzkrieg a small country on utterly spurious grounds, purely to suit America's own rotten villainous needs, - what has been the cowardly British bourgeois press & TV response???? Total silence. 

Instead of screaming headlines and editorials asking "What is the USA up to?", etc, etc, and admitting that the "case" for a devastating and bloody war on Iraq, with possibly huge casualties on both sides, is now in ruins, - the wretched capitalist media have relegated what damaging admissions they have had to make (to retain any 'news' credibility at all)  to just small, down-column stories on the inside pages, instead of screeching in huge headlines about "Goebbels-level warmongering treachery and dishonesty of the Hitler era" as would be justified v the USA. 

The following is the only dribble of US confusion and embarrassment that is being acknowledged:

The North Korean affair has sharpened questions about Bush's handling of Baghdad. Democrats who supported the president in last week's congressional resolution on Iraq complained yesterday that they had been kept in the dark about the nuclear revelations, even though the White House had known about them for 12 days before they were announced.

Several senators argued that there should be no inconsistency of approach to members of Bush's "axis of evil". He should either be threatening North Korea with military action, one Democrat suggested, or be sticking to diplomatic measures against Iraq.

Officials argued that nothing about North Korea had altered Bush's view that "Iraq is a serious threat that needs to be dealt with immediately". One added: "The volatility of having a madman with a nuclear weapon in the Middle East is something that is in a different category."

That view was disputed in Asia; where regional officials feared that a madman with a nuclear weapon in Pyongyang might prove just as alarming. 

Koizumi was, yesterday under fire in Japan for being "weak on security", according to one conservative newspaper.

Other Japanese analysts speculated that Washington had orchestrated the nuclear crisis to prevent the war on the "axis of evil" being seen as a conflict between America and Islam.

But the Bush Administration's extremely cautious and worried response, after the first stunned shock, shows that it is taking the darkest interpretation of the move.

One argument is that this could be a response to the pressure the US is putting on Iraq.  North Korea, named with Iraq as part of Bush's "axis of evil" in January, does not want to become a target in the same way, so the case goes.

Wishful thinking again. 

Unfortunately, it may be outweighed by the third interpretation, altogether more alarming, and the one the Bush Administration appears to hold at the moment In Samore's view: "North Korea has decided for tactical reasons that this is the best time to precipitate a crisis with the US."

The calculation that the US is in a position of weakness is clearly right. Bush is losing ground in his battle in the United Nations to try to win its backing for military action in Iraq. Terrorism has exploded on new fronts from Indonesia to Kuwait and Yemen; he must decide whether these are equally demanding of US attention - and military forces.

Meanwhile, the conflict in Afghanistan, tying up American troops, is conspicuously unfinished, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden jeopardised by local resistance.

If this view is right, North Korea is aiming to trade constraints on its weapons programme for concessions from the US.

It may well have miscalculated the Bush Administration's willingness to do such deals with part of the "axis of evil". But judging by the caution of the US's response, the Bush team are well aware that they have little room for manoeuvre - much less than in Iraq.

Unlike Iraq, North Korea has a formidable arsenal of weapons - including nuclear weapons, it seems. Unlike Iraq, neighbouring allies of the US - South Korea and Japan -  are fervently opposed to the notion of an American military response; that is quite different from the nervous but acquiescent stance of Iraq's Arab neighbours.

Since the disclosure the Bush Administration has not responded with the bellicose tone that many might have expected; far from it. But it would be wrong to take this as an encouraging sign. Yes, it reflects sheer shock, but also recognition, in a week when the US's problems have multiplied, of the nastiness of the newest threat and the danger of aggressive response.

North Korea's stunning disclosure that it has a nuclear weapons programme could force the Bush administration into an unpalatable course of action: engagement with the state that, together with Iraq, is one of the nodes of its "axis of evil'.

Washington's first step towards getting confirmation of North Korea's weapons programme - during an October 3 visit to Pyongyang by the assistant secretary of state Jim Kelly - was to despatch its envoy to Seoul and Tokyo, and he is presently on his way to Beijing.

Although Mr Kelly arrived armed with US intelligence of North Korea's efforts to produce enriched uranium, it had been expected that Pyongyang would respond in the traditional fashion: by stonewalling and denial.

On the first day of consultations the North Koreans did exactly that, but they returned the next morning and acknowledged the programme, evidently with the approval of their leader, Kim Jong-il.

This exchange was not made public by the White House, apparently for fear of muddying its efforts to secure congressional support of its resolution on Iraq, until Wednesday, when officials learned that an American newspaper was working on the story.

On the Korean peninsula, the Bush administration is seen as having wrecked a two year peace process between the south and the north and parallel efforts at normalising relations with Japan.

Some commentators in Seoul are already suggesting that the US revelation is designed to "spoil the party".

The Korea Times reported yesterday that Seoul had been caught off guard by the US leak.

	It said there were suspicions that this was "part of a [US] ploy to sabotage the mood of détente emerging on the peninsula'. 

Analysts in Seoul find it as hard as ever to interpret Pyongyang's motive for admitting the US accusation.

North Korea is acknowledged to have grounds for complaint about the slow implementation of the 1994  agreement to supply two light water nuclear reactors for peaceful use in return for a freeze on its own programme.

The first reactor was due to be completed next year, but 2008 is now thought to be the earliest feasible date.

Well, it would be comforting to think that the US warmongering programme could be stopped completely because even the little countries could give the American ruling class a bloody nose, even without serious inter-imperialist war defeats and global socialist revolutions intervening.

But for the moment, this cowardly fear in the USA is more a reflection of their own rotten guilt and degenerate paranoia than any real material considerations, coupled with more and more nervous uncertainty about the whole sick warmongering enterprise and propaganda itself.

But the greatest propaganda blow of all to the USA's warmongering agenda was in the hidden away capitalist press revelation that it was the latest generation of US imperialist stooge 'allies' in Pakistan, vital for the American blltzkrieg seizure of Afghanistan last year and the brutal occupation since then, -  and even more vital if the invasion of Iraq is to be carried out successfully and its even more difficult occupation maintained, - - who have been the biggest help of all to North Korea (another part of the Iraq "evil axis") in developing nuclear weapons:

The report in yesterday's New York Times that Pakistan had supplied equipment to enrich uranium, including gas centrifuges, deepens the crisis posed by the discovery of North Korea's clandestine development of a bomb. Pakistan's military dictator, General Pervez Musharraf, is seen as a bulwark in the Bush administration's war on al-Qaida and the Taliban. 

However, the report on the collaboration between North Korea and Pakistan merely confirmed what scientists, anti-nuclear campaigners and intelligence officers had suspected for years: that there was a natural partnership between North Korea's missile technology and Pakistan's expertise in the use of gas centrifuges to produce weapons-grade uranium. 

Over the years there have been repeated reports that Pakistan supplied North Korea with its know-how on enriching uranium in return for its No-Dung missile, which was essentially duplicated, and tested, by Pakistan as the indigenously produced Ghauri missile in April 1998.

Bob Einhorn, a former assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation in the US state department and a fellow at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Washington had long been concerned about transfer of technology between Pakistan and North Korea, particularly in the 1990s. 

At a news conference in Islamabad, Gen Musharraf yesterday bluntly denied helping North Korea.

"This is absolutely baseless. There is no such thing as collaboration with North Korea in the nuclear arena. Pakistan has several times said, and I have said personally, that Pakistan will never proliferate its nuclear technology and we stand by this commitment," he said.

However, some experts said it would have been relatively easy to conceal the nuclear implications in the transfer of centrifuges to North Korea.

"Pakistan could argue that it was not as if it was transferring actual fissile material for a bomb. Pakistan could argue that it was transferring material that was useful for civilian purposes. There is a rationale that people in Pakistan could make as to why this technology is not as sensitive as others," Dr Wright said.

Mr Einhorn raised another possibility: that materials had been smuggled out of Pakistan by rogue scientists and technicians. He said there were signs of leakage even after President Musharraf came to power.

"Scientists from the Atomic Energy Commission were having conversations with al-Qaida, perhaps even with Osama bin Laden, and there were other concerns. There have been institutions and individuals who have done more. freelancing than others."

Musharraf's denials of responsibility are meaningless. It is not a question of which regime has done what, and why it has done it. 

The problem is the relentless CAPITALIST system spread of nuclear know-how for money.

It will NEVER stop. It will go on as long as the arms race goes on, which is as long as the capitalist system goes on.

The particular spice for this added fraud on the US imperialist hypocrisy of "no weapons of mass destruction in unreliable hands" is that ALL arms are in unreliable hands (with the creditable exception of the workers states, past and present) for as long as US imperialism continues to rule the planet, sucked up to as it must be by the scabbiest of opportunist autocratic regimes (like Iraq and Pakistan) whose only honour is earned (however slight) precisely when they turn on the monstrousness of lying imperialism (as Iraq has done) which previously sustained them. 

These embarrassing revelations about Pakistan's role in these alleged North Korean nuclear weapons only underlines the sordid shallow pointlessness of this whole Western imperialist desperate attempt to hang onto a global order now well past its sell-by date, using such wretched forces as Saddam originally, and now this corrupt military dictatorship in Pakistan, as its "noble allies".

The fast-crumbling and hopeless temporariness of such a 'New World Order' is brought home by further capitalist press revelations that the autocrat stooge Musharraf is himself only helping to breed more and worse anti-imperialism inside Pakistan than ever before.

His stooging to put his neighbours under the US imperialist cosh looks like ending in his own demise, and America's position worse off than ever before:

PAKISTAN is sinking into disarray as parties wrangle over the formation of a new government more than ten days after elections produced a "hung" parliament.

An attempt by the pro-military Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-iAzam), which is the single largest group in the newly elected National Assembly, to link with Islamic groups hit a snag when hardliners raised the stakes, demanding the post of Prime Minister.

Mutahida Majlis-i-Amal, (United Council for Action), an alliance of five Islamic groups, has nominated Maulana Fazalur Rehman, a pro-Taleban leader, as its candidate for the job. After its success in the elections, the alliance holds the balance of power in the divided assembly.

Its position has been further strengthened after the Pakistan Muslim League, led by Nawaz Sharif, a former Prime Minister, threw its support behind the Islamists.

It is not likely that the Islamists will obtain the office of Prime Minister, but the prospect that they may form a crucial part of a coalition government raises a serious question about President Musharraf's promise to continue support for the United States in the War on Terror, and his policy of social and economic reforms, which they oppose.

"The country is in the throes of a political crisis that raises serious questions about President Musharraf's own survival in power," one analyst said.

The Islamic leaders have issued a clear warning that they would not allow American troops to use Pakistani military facilities and vowed to establish a strict Islamic system, reversing General Musharraf's social reforms.

"We will not allow any foreign troops on our soil," Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani, head of the Islamic alliance, said. He also declared support for the "Afghan people". Though he did not clarify whom he meant, most analysts say it indicated support for remnants of the Taleban and the Afghan Pashtuns who are not happy with President Karzai's administration in Kabul.

Such hardline declarations have caused serious concern to General Musharraf, as the Islamists not only hold the balance of power in the centre, but are also set to form governments in North West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, which border Afghanistan.

Islamic groups supported the Taleban during the US campaign in Afghanistan and have strong links with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a rebel Pashtun leader who is plotting to destabilise Kabul's regime.

Despite fundamental differences with the Islamists, General Musharraf has no choice but to let them form governments in the two border provinces, where US forces are helping Pakistani troops to hunt al-Qaeda fugitives. "It is a Catch-22 situation for President Musharraf," a former senior Pakistani official said. "He has a massive problem at hand if he gives power to the Islamists, and is certain to face insurrection if he prevents them."

Western diplomats and senior Pakistani officials fear that the rise to power of Islamists in Pakistan will affect military operations against al-Qaeda in the lawless tribal areas and that the border provinces may also become sanctuaries for the Afghan rebels.

And the murky reality which emerged after the Bali bombs only put the US imperialist record in a worse light than ever rather than gain Bush much serious sympathy for his fraudulent "war on terrorism".

Instantly, all but the most brainwashed apolitical masses on Earth began asking if the state-terrorist rottenness which the West had deliberately encouraged in Indonesia for more than 35 years was now backfiring on them, as the bourgeois press itself began to admit:

Terrorism has been an unpleasant reality for Indonesia for decades. General Suharto's regime was based on state terrorism for 30 years. Without the free press we have now in Indonesia, and with a world committed to the investment climate Suharto nurtured, the locations of murderous campaigns such as Aceh, Lampung and Tanjung Priok never became household words. East Timor was known mainly because of Australian involvement, now history.

In the 1970s, Suharto thought the communist danger required the military and Muslim extremists to work together. This led to the establishment of Jemaah Islamiyah, now mentioned as the local arm of al-Qaida. The military hardliners continued to support radical Islamist militia off and on throughout the years, working in networks on "special operations".

When Suharto fell his military hardliners had to move their base outside the state, but their networks remained. They became known as the "dark forces";  consisting of rogue elements within and outside the military. The May riots of 1998 demonstrated their power, resulting in more than a thousand deaths. The Banyuwangi killings took hundreds of lives and the ethnic conflict in Kalimantan produced gruesome deaths. The conflict in Ambon took many hundreds of lives. 

As the only victims were Indonesians and al-Qaida was not headline stuff then, the world looked away. But the terror went on, always aimed at destabilising the nation.

A convicted criminal continues to head the parliament. Mlitary hotheads not only shoot dissenters, but also attack the police. Privatisation fuels corruption. A messy state is sliding into a failed state. 

The world thinks President Megawati hesitates in acting against terrorism to maintain a balance with Muslim political groups. This does not make sense, because the major Muslim groups are opposed to terrorism.

Laskar Jihad, or Holy War Force, was formed in early 2000 and caused ructions in the military after Lieutenant General Agus Wirahadikusuma, a rare reformist and ally of the then president Abdurrahman Wahid, accused unnamed hardline officers of creating the group to destabilise the nation.

His claims were denied, but they have been proved correct. The military allowed thousands of armed Laskar Jihad forces to enter the Moluccas in 2000, a move which massively escalated the intensity of the fighting, 	where they nursed tensions between Christian and Muslim groups into an open conflict.

In 1995 President Suharto was a visitor to the White House. The New York Times reported that, in addition to Bill Clinton, top officials present included Vice-President Al Gore and Secretary of State Warren Christopher, and the main agenda was business and trade.

President Suharto ruled Indonesia from 1965 to 1998 in a corrupt and brutal regime almost unparalleled in modern times. As severance pay he took $15 billion, 13 per cent of his country's national debt. Suharto authorised a purge on communists and suspected communists; estimates of the number killed range from 500,000 to one million. Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975. Amnesty International estimated that 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population, were killed in that war.

The US was involved with Suharto's regime m the start, backing his coup against Sukarno in 1965. The CIA supplied his security services with the names of 5,000 suspected communists. From 1975 to 1998 US arms sales to Indonesia were valued at over $1 billion. The Indonesians and the US have carried out many joint military exercises, and Indonesian security forces have received training from the US.

As Wimar Witoelaar says so eloquently (Terror has deep roots in Indonesia, October 16), the history of state terrorism in Indonesia goes back a long way. 

Bali, the island so highly lauded as a haven of peace and tranquillity for foreign tourists, has a dark history dating back to 1965-66, when killings swept through Indonesia in the wake of Suharto's seizure of power. At least 80,000 suspected communists were killed on Bali. The killings, as elsewhere in Indonesia, were prompted by the army, and supported by the local political elite.

When I visited Bali in 1999, on my first visit back to Indonesia after having been blacklisted throughout the Suharto years, I spoke to many Balinese people for whom the trauma of those dark days was still very real. Carmel Budiardjo: Tapol, the Indonesia Human Rights Campaign

Tony Blair condemns the terror attack in Bali (Bali bombing, October 16). Why, then, does his government aid the state terrorist Indonesian regime? 

Over 100,000 people have been killed in assassinations, village massacres and aerial bombardment in the region they call Irian Jaya, but which the indigenous population know as West Papua.

Indonesia invaded and occupied West Papua in 1963. This annexation has been accepted by Britain, the US and Australia. 

These countries, which loudly condemn terrorism, arm, train and cooperate with the Indonesian killing machine.  The Labour government authorised the delivery of armoured cars and war planes, and continues to supply spare parts for these weapons of major destruction. 

Indonesian officers have received military training at Sandhurst and Camberley.

THE Indonesian President, Megawati Sukarnoputri, is to assume draconian emergency powers, provoking fears of a return to the repressive days of military dictatorship.

In response to the Bali bombings, Mrs Megawati will establish a new and powerful security agency and will sanction the arrest of suspects without warrants and their detention without trial.

	The emergency measures will be welcomed by the United States, but it will dismay many in Indonesia, from student democracy activists to Muslim fundamentalists, who were victimised 	under the 32-year dictatorship of President Suharto.

"I have grave misgivings about this, and not only because of our history of repression," Sarwono Kusumatmaadja, a former Suharto Cabinet minister who later became a critic of his regime, said. 

"The military and intelligence services are involved in illegal activity, including narcotics and illegal logging, and these activities bring them in close contact with criminals of all kinds, including terrorists. The irony is that strengthening the military like this could end up strengthening terrorism." 

Until they lost much of their power when Mr Suharto was driven out in 1998, Indonesia's various spy organisations had a grim record of oppressing those regarded as enemies of the President, whether criminals or not.

Tens of thousands of alleged communists were held without trial for decades and, as late as 1998, a secret unit of Kopassus, the special forces, kidnapped and tortured student democracy activists, several of whom have never been seen again. Trade unionists and the leaders of peaceful left-wing parties were also imprisoned for subversion and insulting the President.

The campaign against al-Qaeda has seen a change in the West's attitude towards civil liberties in South-East Asia. Before September 11, Britain and the US denounced the use of subversion legislation by Indonesia's neighbours Malaysia and Singapore.

But now the Malaysians are commended by the Bush Administration for their firm action in apprehending Muslim suspects, who languish in detention without legal rights. The US plans to restore military aid to the Indonesian Armed Forces, suspended by Congress after their murderous rampage in East Timor.

These 35 years of utterly reactionary US imperialist involvement in Indonesian state-terrorism (still continuing) which has literally massacred millions (with non-stop Australian and other Western involvement and connivance) has, along with all the earlier discussed humiliating setbacks for the American warmongering programme, left Washington with no option but a further embarrassing retreat,  pursued by an overgrowing chorus of hostile 'respectable' bourgeois opinion in the USA itself and throughout the Western world:

The US bowed to almost unanimous international opposition yesterday and offered to soften its stance on UN weapons inspections by removing language specifically threatening Iraq with invasion.

The compromise resolution, effectively accepted by Russia but awaiting French approval today, would threaten serious "consequences" if Saddam Hussein failed to comply with inspections, in place of an explicit reference to military action.

Diplomats said Washington had also suggested it might drop its earlier insistence that future weapons inspections should be bolstered by UN troops, and that individual member states could decide whether UN resolutions had been violated. 

News of Washington's concessions came after a day of virtual international solidarity at the UN against the US-British hardline position on Iraq. At a security council session on the issue, one delegate after another called for weapons inspectors to be given another chance to root out Iraq's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, before any UN member state resorted to military action.

It defies common sense now to light a fuse under Islamic militancy with a "pre-emptive war" on Iraq. It defies common sense to incite extremist opposition in Pakistan, Iran and Egypt, on whose Governments the search for al-Qaeda depends. It defies common sense to confuse Saddam and al-Qaeda and link them to every outrage: The Bali bombs could be an Indonesian reaction to Australian action in East Timor. Why glorify al-Qaeda with omnipresence?

Common sense would a year ago have built-on the outpouring of sympathy for America after September 11. Even Iran, Syria, Libya and the Palestinians offered help to combat the new terrorist curse. To be anti-American was then to be beyond any tolerable pale. September's "coalition against terror" was genuine. A campaign to isolate al-Qaeda could have been launched across the world, including in Indonesia whose Islamic militants are now on the rampage.

The bombs that fell on Kabul wrecked that coalition. The bombs that may again fall on Baghdad will obliterate it. Setting up Osama bin laden and Saddam, once sworn enemies, as idols of anti-Americanism was strategically reckless. Al-Qaeda was not crushed in Afghanistan. If the Bali bomb was indeed al-Qaeda's, the organisation has dearly lost none of its ability to reduce Western states and their economies to quivering terror.

The National Security Strategy and Mr Bush's recent speeches suggest that the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq are now entwined with the thrust for global hegemony. There is a triumphalism to the talk of Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, that is out of character with America's traditional caution. It is as if Afghanistan were sufficient balm for the wounds of September 11. Now other worlds must be conquered.

Britain's role during such periodic bursts of American imperialism is to be a friendly restraining hand. Yet last week, as al-Qaeda was allegedly planning its Bali massacre, Mr Blair was in Moscow trying to sell his Iraq weapons dossier to Vladimir Putin. At the subsequent press conference Mr Putin's face said it all: "You can't possibly believe this stuff, surely?" Mr Blair looked like an antiques dealer caught passing off a Woolworth jug as Ming. What did he think he was doing?

The Bali bomb is a symptom of antiWestern sentiment, generated not by Osama bin laden but by the American and British reaction to him, a reaction now shifted to Saddam.

But new ideas are badly needed. An overall review of "war on terror" strategy is urgently required before yet more ground and lives are lost. It is time to concede that Islamist extremism is the overriding, top-priority threat, not the Baghdad bogeyman. It is time to let the weapons inspectors go back and do their job. It is time to accept that the Arab-Israeli conflict is the main source of tension between the Muslim world and the west and act to resolve it (as Mr Blair urges). It is time to curb the bellicose, petulant nationalism that alienates European and other allies from the US, halt cynical manipulation of the UN, keep promises in Afghanistan and stop conniving in anti-democratic fraud in Pakistan. It is rime, say, to use even a fraction of the new US defence budget of $355bn to address the roots of economic and political dispossession in Islam's heartlands, shut (not open) military bases, and show real, not pretended, respect for cultures and traditions not our own.

It is time to understand that erosion of civil liberties, discrimination on racial grounds, stifling of open debate, lies, fear, propaganda and constant threats of violence are not the best way to win what Mr Blair called a war of values. In other words, start again. Rather than just deploring the effects, it is time to tackle causes - for far too much time has already been wasted. Or else sit back and wait for the next disco to blow.

AS THE United States edges towards a possible war against Iraq, a sudden torrent of concern has begun to flow - a revolt by the intelligentsia spreading beyond the expected opposition political circles and penetrating the heart of the media arid foreign policy establishment.

From New York to the plains of Kansas, local and provincial papers, glossy magazines, serious periodicals and heavyweight national dailies have carried a range of articles and essays that challenge not only the proposed war, but the notion and conduct of unilateral American power in the world.

But the most dramatic intervention comes from President George Bush's own United Methodist church which launched a scathing attack on his plans for war.

Jim Winkler, responsible for the application of the church's teachings to social policy, said war against Iraq was 'without any justification according to the teachings of Christ'.

After careful study of Christian doctrinal writings on Just War, Winkler said he was 'told flatly' by the church's scholars, 'that they simply did not apply to this situation'.

Winkler said 'we keep the lines of communication open' to the White House, but added: 'I regret that the lines have been one way. I hope and pray that the President has considered the church's teachings.'

Winkler's sentiments have an impact beyond the usual circles of dissent in a churchgoing society that, for the most part, supports Bush.

From the Bush heartland, from Kansas, where  they teach the creation instead of evolution in schools, come surprising voices of objection. The Kansas City Star ran a long account of 'voices of opposition from people of faith', quoting Winkler at length, saying: 'United Methodists haven particular duty-to speak out against an unprovoked attack. It is inconceivable that Jesus Christ would support this proposed attack' .

The latest salvo came on Friday from the unimpeachable New York Review-of Books in an article by one of the country's leading commentators, Anthony Lewis, arguing that a regime change in Iraq could be 'the first step towards a new American imperium'.  Meanwhile, wrote Lewis, 'the fear of looking unpatriotic inhibits dissent'.

The uprising of the intelligentsia has burst its banks. The essayist Susan Sontag sounded the first alarm across the opinion page of the NewYork Times, on the poignant date of 10 September (the article was intended for the eleventh, but was shifted to make way for one signed by the President).

In it Sontag wrote: 'Real wars are not metaphors;  they have a beginning and an end.  But the war that has been declared by the Bush administration will never end. That is one sign that it is not a war, but, rather, a mandate for expanding the use of American power.'

Then the theme spread. Most unexpectedly, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution - published in the capital of the conservative South broadened the language of the debate with an article by its leading commentator headlined 'Invasion would mark the next step towards an American empire'.

The author rejected claimed links between Iraq and al-Qaeda. His article says that 'among the architects of this would-be American empire are people who now hold key positions in, the Bush administration: they envision the enforcement of a 'Pax Americana'.

One of America's most illustrious historians of the Vietnam and Reagan eras, Frances Fitzgerald, then took the stage, in the New York Review of Books to demand that Bush 'tell us about the risks' involved in entwining a war against Iraq around that against terror. 'The Bush administration has clearly broken with internationalist premises accepted by every other administration since World War II'.

Fareed Zakaria is a pillar of the American foreign policy establishment, an instinctive conservative; former confidante of the National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and previously editor of the journal Foreign Affairs.

In the New Yorker,  Zakaria warns of the perils of a unipolar world in which America is the sole power. He urges the US to gain the legitimacy that comes through an international consensus. Without this cloak of respectability America will face a growing hostility around the world.

At the American Prospect magazine; Paul Starr, Robert Kuttner and Harold Meyerson, write what many others are thinking; that 'the suspicion will not die that the administration turned to Iraq for relief from a sharp decline in its domestic political prospects, corporate scandals, and the fall of the stockmarket'.

Looking forward, the authors add: 'If the fighting turns ugly and there are large numbers of civilian casualties - if we have to level the very cities we say we are liberating - American legitimacy in the eyes of the world and of the Iraqis will be shot:'

Thomas Friedman of the New York Times also joined the fray: 'Iraq cannot prevent an American victory: But it might be able to extend a war over weeks and months; imposing significant costs and putting on a bloody show for the rest of the world.'

For all his success in guiding American forces to victory in Afghanistan, Rumsfeld is a divisive figure in a Pentagon which is undergoing far-reaching changes in response to unconventional terrorist threats. 

Criticism of the 70-year-old is increasingly public as he leads the charge on Baghdad while trying to shake up the Pentagon's notoriously unwieldy bureaucracy. For every blue-rinsed matron sighing with delight at Rummy's repartee, there appears to be a general who is complaining about civilian ideologues pressing for war on Iraq with scant regard for military consequences.

Resentment has spread to Capitol Hill, where senators and congressmen have scorned Rumsfeld's attempts to link Al-Qaeda terrorism to Saddam Hussein. Other intelligence agencies are reported to have complained that their analysts are under Pentagon pressure "to cook the books", about the Iraqi threat.

The discontent erupted last week in a wounding pen portrait of Rumsfeld in The Washington Post, which quoted "many senior officers" in the joint chiefs of staff and other branches of the military saying he is "abusive and indecisive, trusting only a tiny circle of close advisers, seemingly eager to slap down officers with decades of distinguished service".

The misery was said to be so pervasive that civilian officials in charge of the army, navy and 'air force were "deeply frustrated" and considering resigning. 

Anyone who has met Ruinsfeld in his Pentagon office knows he can be a very different person from the sparkling grandfatherly sage who appears on television - irascible, intolerant and "ornery". 

Others argue that the stakes are too high for a crisis to develop in military ranks just as the Pentagon prepares to invade Iraq. In the army the mood is "morose", one retired general told the Post. A former defence official said: "Things are more fouled up than I've ever seen them."

As well as this astonishing US military unhappiness at the American imperialist warmongering intentions, the most serious challenges of all to future American success in the conflict sort-outs which will climax the global monopoly-capitalist crisis, - namely inter-imperialist war and proletarian revolution, - are also already on the move.

It is one thing for universal hatred of America to be expressed by the Third World's billions (who will have their full final say in eventual proletarian revolutions everywhere).

But more preliminary setbacks to the imperialist cause than those ultimate rebellions will arrive when the major monopoly-capitalist powers themselves reach significant disagreement in the blame culture which is bound to take over as the economic catastrophe from the coming slump increasingly puts the whole 'free-market' world in the doghouse.

As the major powers start slashing at each other with trade-war splits, and rival warmongering schemes, then will the opportunities for proletarian revolt really begin to escalate throughout the entire planet.

The shock-waves are still reverberating from the German imperialist government's astonishing decision to win reelection by disowning the USA's Middle-East warmongering intentions.

The French bourgeoisie has rapidly followed up with a triumphal stab in the USA back at the United Nations:

PRESIDENT CHIRAC basked in triumph yesterday as France hailed him for facing down President Bush at the United Nations and generally reasserting French power in Europe and on the world stage.

In the eyes of his compatriots, Mr Bush's likely acceptance of a compromise resolution over Iraq at the UN Security Council marks a triumph for the French leader.

The model for the President's campaign to have France walk tall in the world is de Gaulle, whom he served as a junior minister in the late 1960s. Applying his mentor's principles, M Chirac wants to assert French "difference", reviving France as a full-blown alternative to "the American model", just as de Gaulle placed Paris neither with Washington nor Moscow.

To make France heard abroad, M Chirac has ordered a 6 per cent rise in defence spending next year, to bring the Armed Forces up to the level of those of Britain.

His threat to apply a French veto at the United Nations, the first since 1956, was also a leaf from the Gaullist book. Praising the President this weekend, Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, said: "The message is dear for the US, the Middle East, Africa and Europe: France is back. Or at least wants to be." 

"France has spoken, resisted, laid down the law and its voice has been heard," Le Journal du Dimanche said yesterday. "The author of this miracle is the President".

The newspaper said that. M Chirac had given Europe a voice, contrasting his statesmanship with that of "Bush's lapdog", Tony Blair.

Le Monde, which in recent years has striven to expose M Chirac's alleged corruption, carried the headline: "Chirac Makes Bush Reverse."

M Chirac's personal diplomacy over Iraq is part of a drive to re-establish French influence and earn himself a place in history after a first term that was widely seen as a failure and an election in which he was the first choice of only one in five voters.

M Chirac spent the weekend lecturing leaders at a summit of Frenchspeaking nations in Beirut on the need for alternatives to US doctrines. "In the modern world, the use of force should be a last resort. It should be allowed only in the case of legitimate defence or by decision of the competent international authorities," he said. 

The summit leaders gratified France by issuing a declaration yesterday that "We defend the primacy of international law and the primary role of the. United Nations."

With a centre-right Government totally subordinate to him, M Chirac, a politician renowned for his shifting views; is relishing his new role as a world statesman and sage. "He is a changed man. He feels liberated and invigorated," an Elysée Palace aide said. In grudging admiration, Liberation, the left-wing newspaper, said recently that since his re-election, M Chirac was "like a man savouring a cigarette after making love". 

Flexing Gallic muscle in a way not seen since the days of Charles de Gaulle, M Chirac, who will be 70 next month, has rallied Russia and a majority of UN states behind his opposition to US proposals to threaten the immediate use of force against Iraq. 

Behind the forceful pose, however, M Chirac has moved to heal the breach with Washington that developed under Lionel Jospin, the former Prime Minister. The compromise at the UN, in which the Americans will accept the need for a further UN decision to authorise force if necessary, is the fruit of intense backstage contacts between the Elysée and the White House.

But this French crowing plays down the real issue which is that monopoly capitalist France has no objection at all to imperialist aggressive warmongering as such. It merely intends to trip up its Anglophile rivals as much as possible so as to be in at the kill, at the sharing of all the spoils of war, more conveniently itself than would be the case if the Washington stooge axis was allowed to make all its own running, - as is clearer from this bourgeois press commentary, reading between the lines:

"They've played it very cleverly," one diplomat said yesterday. "They've cosied up to the US in almost every other area, but on Iraq they've stuck to their position and presented it as the only right and proper course. They've obliged America to take them seriously".  The success so far of France's insistence that disarmament is the only legitimate objective (and that the Iraqi leader's good faith must at least be tested before sending in the troops) has exasperated state department and Pentagon hawks set on a change of regime in Baghdad.

Jacques Chirac proposed instead a two-stage process: in the event of Baghdad's non-compliance, the security council must be reconvened to determine in a second, separate resolution what action - including possible military intervention should be taken next.

"In the modern world, the use of force should only be a last and exceptional resort," he said in Beirut. "It should only be allowed in the case of legitimate defence, or by decision of the competent international authorities."

"Allow me to thank you for France's remarkable position on the threat of using force to resolve the Iraqi problem," the speaker of the Lebanese parliament, Nabih Berry, told the French president yesterday. "It is a position that has earned the gratitude of the entire Arab world."

It has not earned the gratitude of the US, but it has at least earned their respect, the French defence minister, Michele Alliot-Marie, said yesterday after a two day visit to Washington:

"We are certainly taken more into consideration now because the US feels that our efforts on defence have made us a credible partner again, and because in the diplomatic arena our attitude which is supported by a great many countries - makes us a very credible interlocutor."

But this whole Western sick global domination is completely doomed anyway, whatever the rival warmongering plans amount to. If serious proletarian revolution is already getting a grip of Colombia where US counter-terrorist reaction has been clamping down savagely for nearly 20 years, then there is no hope for the survival of imperialist domination anywhere on Earth:

A SPRAWLING shantytown above Colombia's second city has become the most dangerous area of Latin America, as street fighting between the security forces and leftist guerrillas gives civilians a foretaste of war.

President Uribe took charge this week of the battle to wrest control of Comuna 13, an impoverished north-western zone of Medellín, from a coalition of armed militias. The rebels' advance into Colombia's urban areas has marked a new stage in a conflict that claims 3,500 lives every year.

It is the most violent outbreak of urban violence in two decades and the first indication of the scale of the challenge that faces Señor Uribe to restore order to his country. More than 3,000 heavily, armed federal troops and police have swamped the comuna, where 130,000 people live in crowded, flimsy dwellings.

Estimates of the death toll over three days of fighting vary between 14 and 25, but only seven bodies have been recovered. Four soldiers have been killed. 

The guerrilla groups have replied to the military assault, assisted by helicopter gunships, with sniper fire and booby-trap bombs. Local people have either fled or barricaded themselves inside their homes.

A paid informant, dressed in military fatigues and wearing a black ski-mask to disguise his identity, worked with soldiers and police as they searched homes, shops and bars for suspected rebels. Forty-eight arrests have been made, so far, of whom 33 were wanted by the security forces. 

'The civilian informer network is one of the more controversial aspects of Señor Uribe's tough measures to combat guerrilla violence. The President wants to recruit thousands more informers throughout Colombia.

Alfredo Rangel, a military analyst, said that the significance of the Medellín fighting was that after decades of rural violence the conflict was beginning to move into the cities. Señor Rangel said that the FARC, Colombia's largest guerrilla army, had benefited from IRA training in urban warfare and was reorganising its battalions into small cells to operate better inside the cities.

A bus bomb was deactivated by anti-explosives officers in the heart of the district, where families of up to eight live in little more than two rooms per house.

At first light yesterday, soldiers, with bullet belts slung over their shoulders, were posted every ten metres along the main street of the district. The major in charge of the area told us to leave "for your own safety. It's quiet now but shooting could break out again at any moment".

He added: "There are snipers up there," pointing up the hill to a jumble of breeze-block buildings. 

"They, remove a brick or punch a hole in the wall and shoot at us through them," he said. "They dig tunnels from the basement into other houses so they can escape quickly. The fighting here has been very hard".

Twenty-four hours earlier a car bomb packed with 90lb of explosives blew up in central Medellín, shattering windows in offices and shops.

Leonardo Gallego, the Medellín police chief, said that more than 100 rebels were still hiding in Comuna 13, but added that the security operation would continue permanently or until the guerrillas were captured or driven out.

Luis Guillermo Pardo, a former peace adviser for the Medellín city government, said that Señor Uribe, a former mayor of Medellín whose father was murdered by guerrillas in a botched kidnap attempt,  was wrong to think that peace could return to the city only with a military assault. 

"What we need in addition to the military is social investment. We need a dialogue with community leaders, even with the armed outlaws," Señor Pardo said.  Both right-wing and left-wing militias have been recruiting heavily in Comuna 13 and other poorer districts of Medellín for years. Skirmishes have broken out periodically among the groups, whose local control is disputed block by block.

More repression will do the trick for the West??  But nowhere has been more savagely repressed in the whole history of imperialism than Occupied Palestine is now, which has truly been turned into one vast concentration camp for its millions of Arab inmates, - as the British Ambassador himself has just blurted out, to the huge embarrassment of the Zionist imperialist colonisation and its Western backers. 

Yet incredibly, the Intifada just goes on and on intensifying, astonishingly out of the most bombed and barren minuscule landscape which ever imposed totally unfavourable conditions for an armed national liberation struggle. 

Yet despite all of the utterly unimaginable brutality and NAZI tyranny of collective punishments, etc, which the fascist colonisers systematically inflict on the entire Palestinian population in order to terrorise them into submission; still the revolt goes on growing, and getting more and more successful:

Ariel Sharon is pressing Washington for billions of dollars of emergency aid to revitalise the Israeli economy, driven deep into recession by the two years of Palestinian uprising.

Already the biggest recipient of US foreign aid - $2.1bn a year, most of it spent on military equipment from America, Israel is putting together a proposal for up to $10bn (£6.5bn). 

The intifada has helped to give Israel its worst recession for 25 years. Foreign investment and tourism have collapsed. The shekel loses value by the month. Unemployment has risen to 10% and shops suffer from people's reluctance to wander through malls which may attract suicide bombers.   

Three years ago the economy was growing at the rate of 6%: now it is contracting.

The bursting of the dotcom bubble has compounded the crisis by battering the hi-tech industries which were the engine of Israel's growth. The government's attempts to contain the damage with deep budget cuts, tax increases and a pay freeze has provoked  a public sector strike which has left the streets of Israel's main cities strewn with rubbish but done little to reverse the economic downturn. And there is an election next year.

Last month the chairman of the national security council, Uzi Dayao, told the Knesset that the intifada was costing the economy close to £2bn a year and that without an end to the violence there was little hope of reversing the financial decline.

Professor Ephraim Kleiman, an economist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said: "Tourism revenues have halved. Foreign investment has fallen by two-thirds since the start of the intifada, although much of that drop also has to do with the bursting of the dotcom bubble.

"I think nothing will improve until something happens to the peace process."

Mr Sharon asked President Bush for the biggest aid package to Israel for more than 10 years when they met at the White House last week.

The president made no promises, but he tried to talk up the Israeli economy at a press conference.

At present Israel must feed military aid back into the US economy by buying American equipment. One proposal is for it to be spent on Israeli made weapons, which would help boost manufacturing and prop up the shekel.

Prof Kleiman says Mr Sharon is seeking to take advantage of Washington's concern about Israel's role in any coming conflict with Iraq.

"I think Sharon is just trying to exploit it to get some money. Bush wants Israel to behave more decently to the Palestinians and to keep out of a war with Iraq. Sharon wants to exact a price and guarantees for cheap loans are it," he said.

If imperialism cannot make its despicable domination stick in occupied Palestine, then it has no chance whatever of survival once the Third World proletarian billions start seriously to challenge this completely rotten and economically-collapsing capitalist 'New World order'. Build Leninism. EPSR

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

Blair's sick hypocrisy about the IRA (at peace for six years) to cover up the embarrassment of uncontrollable murderous lawlessness among the civil-war-crazed and hate filled "Loyalist" British

OF ONE THING northern nationalists can be certain. As with the wrangle within unionism in which David Trimble finally surrendered to the anti-Agreement lobby within his own ranks last week, the current bitter and bloody feuding between loyalist paramilitaries will also end with Catholics picking up the price tag.

As Susan McKay of the Tribune acknowledged, "loyalists from both sides of the latest divide predict more violence. They also predict that the violence will turn outwards again as unity is sought in re-asserting the common enemy. Any Catholic will do."

Loyalist posters appearing in North Belfast this week proclaimed UDA icon Johnny Adair a criminal. "Guilty," ran the message, "of loose talk, self-profit, drug dealing, gangsterism and demeaning the proud cause of Ulster loyalism." Adair's "only crime",  it continued, "was loyalty (to himself)".

Of course, this has always been true. Adair's inability to keep his mouth shut and avoid boasting about how many Catholics he had killed landed him in jail in the mid-1990s. Similarly, drug dealing and gangsterism has become a way of life for members of the UDA.

Adair's journey from loyalist 'hero' to 'traitor' in less then five months is more likely to have been precipitated by his widely acknowledged desire to add 'top' to his epithet 'mad dog'.

Inherent tensions between loyalist paramilitaries spilled into the public consciousness on Friday 13 September, with the killing of LVF leader and close associate of Johnny Adair, Steven Warnock.

According to the media, Wamock's LVF in East Belfast and North Down owed the UDA £100,000 for drug deals. But if the killing was intended to frighten off other loyalists threatening to muscle in on UDA rackets, it was also seen as notice to Adair to curtail his association with the LVF.

The fatal shooting followed an earlier gun attack targeting another associate of Johnny Adair's, Davy Mahood of the UDA. In the wake of the Mahood shooting, three Catholic men were injured in a drive by loyalist shooting in North Belfast.

Nigel Dodds, DUP Assembly member for North Belfast, later reiterated Mahood's false assertion that the attack against him had been carried out by republicans.

Three days after the Warnock killing, UDA leader Jim Gray survived a gun attack in which he was shot in the face. Gray had been attending Warnock's wake when a lone gunman confronted him.

According to the media, following the Gray shooting, while the UDA leadership plotted revenge, Adair tipped off his associates in the rival LVF. The LVF leadership informed the UDA of the intervention, leaving Adair to play the fall guy.

Citing a catch phrase from a popular television quiz show, graffiti along the Shankill Road declared, " Johnny Adair, you are the weakest link, goodbye".

When Adair was released from jail last May, all six UDA ruling council leaders met him at the gates, but as Rosie Cowan of the British Guardian pointed out, "now it is more likely to be pistols at dawn after five of those commanders unceremoniously dumped him after accusing him of treason" against the organisation. Adair had already ousted the sixth after regaining control of the lower Shankill's notorious C Company.

On Wednesday 25 September, the UDA leadership issued a statement expelling the West Belfast commander, who they denounced as an 'agent provocateur' intent on exploiting the rift between the UDA and LVF to pursue his own power agenda.

Adair's loyalist rising star was founded on ignominy, built on ignominy and ended much the same. An early photograph of Adair as a teenager at a neo-Nazi rally exposed the soon to be UDA leader as a beer swilling racist in the companion of other glue sniffing thugs.

Since the late 1980s, Adair's name has been linked to dozens of sectarian killings of Catholics. At the height of his killing sprees, Adair's apparent immunity from arrest or prosecution led many to believe, even within his own organisation, that he was acting as a British or Special Branch agent.

In more recent years, within northern nationalist communities Adair will be remembered as a key figure fuelling sectarian violence at interface areas throughout the city, stoking anti-Catholic hatred within his own community to swell his own power base with youthful recruits.

The UDA and its new political wing, the Ulster Political Research Group, also expelled Adair's close associate John White. Curiously, White has always denied being a member of the UDA.

As a sectarian killer, White had been jailed in the mid 1970s for the brutal killing of a nationalist politician and his Protestant friend, Irene Andrews. As well as being shot, Paddy Wilson was stabbed 32 times and his companion 19 times in what the trial judge called "a frenzied attack, a psychotic outburst". At the time, White had told the court that "any Roman Catholic would have done".

The fear is that in an attempt to shore up loyalist unity and distract the rank and file from further internecine feuding, loyalists paramilitaries will escalate sectarian violence and any Catholic will do.