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
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No 1158 October 29 2002                                                                                                                                        25p

Murderous state-slaughter in Moscow won't help imperialism or stop the global anti-colonial revolt. It only confirms the lying hypocritical fraud of all anti-Soviet propaganda, as does the admission that "left militancy", regardless of how democratically supported it was, would always be subject to police-state control in Britain whenever necessary. The embrace of conspiracy theories about "Bush's oil war", by US rightwing cynics makes even less sense than fake-'left' delusions about 'reforming' vicious rich greed. The imperialist bourgeoisie's need to dominate developments is the real issue. Without total control, the ruling class ceases to be the ruling class. Aggressive arrogance and warmongering brutality count for everything, not oil wealth as such. Missing the point of 800 years of bourgeois rule, now facing extinction, is to miss the whole class-war point of history. An oil conspiracy carries no ESSENTIAL inter-imperialist conflict with it, unlike the monopoly-capitalist fear of losing control to revolution.

Putin's massacre of hostages and revolutionary-terrorists alike, shooting dozens of gassed-unconscious Chechens in cold blood, is ludicrously approved of by Western propaganda as "strengthening the Russian regime and the international war on terrorism" but it achieves the exact opposite.

The Chechens are engaged in a straightforward national-liberation struggle as even the most reactionary capitalist newspapers themselves admit:

Anyone with direct contact with Chechens knew the strength of their embitterment. And the Chechens have had a long time to become bitter. Conquered by the Russian empire in the 19th century, they never accepted their subjugation. Exemplary brutality by the Russians simply hardened their spirit.

They rose against Russia in 1905 and 1917.

Since 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed, they have fought for independence.

Russians can barely understand this. Mothers do not want their sons to die under a hail of bullets while on patrol in the mountains of the Caucasus. Even Putin has occasionally omitted to rule out the possibility of Chechen independence. For most Russians, the best thing that could happen to Chechnya would be that it ceases to be mentioned in the media.

But Russian politicians have always feared the disintegration of the state. Rulers who "gathered the lands", even brutes such as Ivan the Terrible and Stalin are cherished for this.

When the Soviet Union fell apart, most political leaders feared that the same fate might befall the Russian Federation if even a small enclave such as Chechnya were permitted to secede. Tatarstan, an immense oil-rich republic in Russia's central zone, often asserted its right to independence in the early 1990s. Putin's ruthless suppression of the Chechens was enormously popular.

Over the years the desperate methods employed by Chechen rebels turned Russian public opinion against their people. Terrorist forays into the towns of southern Russia horrified Russians. This was deeply humiliating for a nation that had defeated Nazi Germany. How could tiny groups of terrorists poke their fingers in the eyes of Mother Russia? The Chechens behaved as badly at home as elsewhere. Kidnappings, extortion and inter-gang violence became endemic and the Chechen political leadership introduced sharia law even though most of the people are not Muslims.

Putin has always suggested that Chechnya is merely one front in the global "war on terrorism". Criticised for his army's atrocities, he argued that western politicians and media failed to understand the threat posed by violent Islamic fundamentalism. Since September 11 he has been listened to more sympathetically.

In return for not objecting to American use of bases in Uzbekistan to bomb Afghanistan, Putin has been given free rein in Chechnya. But now the bankruptcy of his policy has been exposed.

Chechens have long memories and for them there is little to distinguish between General Yermolov, who burnt their villages and executed their mullahs in the 19th century, and Putin. Just as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers took up rifles in the mountains, many young Chechens are willing to take their guns and bombs to Moscow.

The only solution will have to be a political one. Reciprocal embitterment is acute. All Chechens are Russophobes and terrorist outrages have convinced ever more Russians that the only good Chechen is a dead one. Putin, having masterminded an end to the theatre siege, has avoided opprobrium. Yet only a fool thinks that this was the last act in the tragedy.

Such reports muddle the issue deliberately to always try to imply that the Chechen revolt continued throughout the Soviet period as well (1917 to 1990) but that is precisely NOT the case.

Stalinist bureaucratic mistakes and maltreatment may never have entirely reconciled the Chechens (and many like them) to being just one people among the 180 nationalities who successfully combined to build the world's first workers state; but national liberation war was no longer a serious issue all the time that the USSR continued with its clearly socialist aims and cooperative relationships.

A huge part of the significance of this story lies exactly in the fact that the ancient Chechen national liberation war RESTARTED precisely in 1991, the moment that the inevitable Russian-dominant cultural character of the Soviet Union turned from being a cooperative socialist endeavour (to the immense mutual benefit of all 180 nationalities comprising the USSR, many of which had never known any autonomy at all, or even any written language or identifiable educational culture, until the Bolshevik Revolution) into blatant Russian economic domineering, once again, in private and state exploitational hands, - exactly as had been the position under Tsarism.

Surely socialism wasn't that good?

Just consider the hatred and savagery which has exploded since 1991 to find the answer.

Western propaganda keeps wanting to imply that the Chechens disliked and suffered from Stalinist bureaucracy, which was true, - but then so did all the other 180 nationalities inside the USSR, including the Russians themselves.

But as should now be becoming increasingly historically obvious, the basic non-capitalist and cooperative socialist purposes of the Soviet Union were never abandoned by the Stalinist bureaucracy until its very last act when the Gorbachev regime succumbed to the ultimate Revisionist confusion (which had always been a large part of the USSR's failings as an inspirational cooperative state) and decided to relax the dictatorship of the proletariat and to re-introduce capitalist market mechanisms in order to "make even better progress".

As a result of Stalinist Revisionist confusion failing to keep Soviet society inspired with a continuing, clear, anti-imperialist fighting spirit, just biding its time and building steadily until the unhealthy exploitational economic glitz of Western imperialism collapsed again into warmongering slump (as it is about to do once more, back to the 1930s but ten times worse), - the Gorbachev bureaucrats decided that the "peaceful coexistence" illusion should be taken all the way to "an embrace of all that is best in capitalism and all that is best in socialism" so as to "build our common European home" alongside the Western monopoly-capitalist stooges of US imperialism's worldwide military domination and bullying neo-colonial economic exploitation.

The rest is history, but nowhere so dramatically underlined as by this Chechen war, or by the half-dozen other civil wars and Russian military interventions which have broken out since 1991.

Western propaganda still likes to imply that national-chauvinist rivalries were just as bitter and bloody under the Soviet workers state, but this disgusting nonsense depends entirely on the ludicrous fabrication that "the conflicts were just as bad except that the KGB was more successful in suppressing everything", etc.

What insane gibberish.

From 1917 to 1991, every grunt and groan from East Europe against socialist statehood was always instant headline news throughout the West, non-stop for weeks at a time, such as the Hungarian fascist putsch attempt in 1956 disguised as "genuine independent socialism"; the Prague Spring of 1968 described as "socialism with a human face"; and the Solidarnosc "trade union" stunt pulled by the CIA and the Vatican in 1980 and described by the entire Western bourgeoisie (including all the fake-'left' sects around the Socialist Alliance) as "rank-and-file socialism", - run by Havel, and by Walesa who is now a self-confessed Polish fascist, whose countries are now just stooges or playthings of Western imperialism once again, just as they were in their darkest days of backwardness of the 1930s, waiting like pathetic rabbits to be overrun by Nazi German imperialism.

But for months and months around such events, nothing could be read in the Western press headlines but about "Soviet tanks in Budapest" and "Soviet tanks in Prague", etc, etc, etc. Equally, the arrests or exile of anti-communists inside the USSR such as Sakharov and Scharansky were never out of the Western press headlines.

But no record of Chechen national liberation war against the Soviet workers state! And however many racist spats might have survived (inevitably) after 1917 and been reported, - where is there any record of Chechen fighting and hatred under socialism to remotely compare with this misery which the Western capitalist press are admitting has been Chechnya's fate since 1991????:

The Society for Russian Chechen Relations, in collaboration with Human Rights Watch, reports that in the span of a month between 15 July and 15 August this year, 59 civilians were shot dead, 64 were abducted, 168 were seriously wounded and 298 were tortured. Many men simply disappeared after being detained by Russian soldiers or security police; others were shot outright. During an operation in Chechen Aul between 21 May and 11 June, 22 men were killed. The majority were aged 20 to 26; two were 15.

Since Chechen Aul is considered hostile territory, it has undergone 20 such 'mopping-up operations' this year. Usually the raids are conducted by federal armed forces (particularly OMON, the police special forces, and Spetsnaz, its army equivalent) and occur at any time of day or night. Typically a village will be encircled by tanks, armoured vehicles and army trucks, one of which, known as the purification car, is designated for torture.

According to Human Rights Watch in New York, torture is a preferred method of gathering intelligence. Cut off and isolated, Russian troops' best hope of discovering guerrilla activity is by grabbing citizens, almost at random, and coercing from them whatever information they might have.

In its most benign form, such raids are limited to theft of personal property - from cars, refrigerators and television sets to jewellery, clothes, pots and pans, and, of course, money. But they frequently turn ugly.

'They arrived on 23 August at 5am,' says Zuhra from Enikaloi. 'There were about 100 army vehicles, all packed with soldiers. We ran out to meet them with our documents. God forbid you encounter an impatient 'federal'. If you do, then in the best-case scenario you may be tortured or shot dead on the spot. In the worst case, they take you away. About 20 of them, armed to the teeth and wearing masks, climbed into the yard and the house. As always, they were dirty, unshaven and reeking of vodka. They cursed horribly. They shot at our feet. They took my  identification papers and started to shred them. I had bought them for 500 roubles. They cost me everything I had. They went to our neighbours' house, the Magomedova family. We heard shots and the screams of 15-year old Aminat, the sister of Ahmed and Aslanbek. "Let her be!" screamed one of the brothers, "Kill us instead!". Then we heard more shots. Through the window we saw a half-dressed OMON commander lying on top of Aminat. She was covered in blood from the bullet wounds. Another soldier shouted, "Hurry up, Kolya, while she's still warm".

For nearly 10 years, since the beginning of the first war in December 1994, the grey haired woman has been patrolling with her camera. She shows the gruesome images strewn on her table as if they were relics, or photographs from a family album. She runs her hand over the contours of an actual cracked skull, one of about a dozen found in February between Meskyer Yurt and Chechen Yurt.

'The remains were unearthed not long after they died,' she says. 'The tissue was still in good shape. The torn pieces of flesh suggest that the victims were attacked by dogs. It's difficult to know. People don't want to talk. They are scared that they will be next.'

Blowing people up, dead or alive, she reports, is the latest tactic introduced by the federal army into the conflict. It was utilised perhaps most effectively on 3 July in the village of Meskyer Yurt where 21 men, women and children were bound together and blown up, their remains thrown into a ditch.

From the perspective of the perpetrators, this method of killing is highly practical; it prevents the number of bodies from being counted, or possibly from ever being found. It has not always succeeded in this respect, however. Since the spring, dogs have been digging up body parts in various corners of Chechnya, sometimes almost daily.

Meanwhile, the more traditional methods endure. On 9 September the bodies of six men from Krasnostepnovskoye were found, naked, with plastic bags wrapped around their heads. In June, a ditch containing 50 mutilated bodies was discovered near the Russian army post in Chankala. The corpses were missing eyes, ears, limbs and genitals. Since February, mass graves have been found near Grozny, Chechen Yurt, Alkhan-Kala and Argun.

AT 5am on 14 April 2002, an armoured vehicle moved slowly down Soviet Street. A young brown-haired man, covered in blood, his hands and feet bound, stood onboard. The vehicle stopped and the man was pushed off and brought over to a nearby chain-link fence. The car took off and there was a loud bang. The force of the explosion, caused either by a grenade or dynamite, sent the man's head flying into the  neighbouring street, called Lenin's Commandments. 'It was difficult to photograph the moment,  though I have grown somewhat accustomed to this,' says a petite greying Chechen woman, who has spent years documenting what Russia calls its 'anti-terrorism campaign'.

Usually groups of people simply disappear. Shortly thereafter their families begin feverish searches in all the army headquarters and watch posts. If they can track down a missing family member, they might be able to buy him or her back. The going rate for a live person is in the thousands of dollars. For a dead body, the price is not much lower. If they cannot find the person, family members mail letters to Putin (Russia's president) and file petitions with social organisations and rights groups. They post photographs with the caption missing.

And they wait. Most of the abductees never return and the trail grows cold.

Those who do return are often crippled, with bruised kidneys and lungs, damaged hearing or eyesight and broken bones. It is almost certain they will never have children.

The Russians do not deny that these things happen. Indeed, an official order has been issued banning such abuses.

Anyone considered a 'collaborator' by the guerrillas is subject to abduction for ransom or summary execution. This summer a remote-controlled mine, presumably intended for a Russian military convoy, exploded at a bus stop in the Chechen capital of Grozny, killing 11 civilians, including two children.

Analysts say that guerrilla leader Aslan Maskhadov, once regarded as comparatively secular, has succeeded in consolidating his often fractious forces by welcoming back into his command several rebel commanders regarded as radical Islamists. New rebel videotapes play down nationalist imagery in favour of Islamist symbols. It all suggests that the brutality of the Russians has also resulted in a growing radicalisation of their opponents.

Much play is made in bourgeois disinformation and propaganda about the Stalinist bureaucratic restrictions placed arbitrarily on Chechnya and other nationality areas during the time of the Nazi German imperialist invasion of the USSR (1941-1945); and doubtless there was some unjust suffering due to Stalinist paranoia (or realistic Stalinist assessments of possible collaboration with the Nazi invaders, but made more likely only by Stalinist Revisionism's failings in the first place).

But once again, the question is what was more important historically, to see the Soviet workers state survive successfully for more than 70 years as a planned cooperative society for all, despite all the rotten invasion destruction, non-stop sabotage and embargo-isolation, and propaganda vilification that the West could mount against it??????

Or to pretend that the endless exposure of all the world's human rights defects will one day secure a guaranteed future for the planet of perfect reason, peaceful and democratic - the core mythology of reformist Christianity???????

It is not necessary for the Chechens to be everyone's cup of tea for it to be graspable that the REAL movement of history recommences here, with the Chechen decision (echoed by BILLIONS of others all round the Third World) that being dominated by other bigger nations for THEIR private capitalist gain is (a) just a mug's game; and (b) courting certain ultimate economic disaster anyway as the global imperialist economic crisis degenerates ever more relentlessly back towards 1930s collapse, slump, and inter-imperialist warmongering conflict (at the destructive expense of everybody) in the farcical nonsense of 'solving' the "difficulties" from 'over-production', - an insanity which a planned cooperative world economy would have laughed at.

And Putin's sick and degenerate return to Russian imperialist savagery of the Tsarist era is right in the path of this irresistible REAL development of history as the Third World finally shakes off its neo-colonial chains - thereby saving the world ultimately from a return to warmongering-slump disasters (which will dwarf the Western debacle of 	World War I and the catastrophic 1930s and 1940s). He will be swept aside in due course, - by colonial-war defeats initially, perhaps, but eventually by the revolutionary return to workers states world wide.

For US imperialism to claim Putin as a vicious colonial warmongering ally to "help win the war against terrorism" tells only something about what an increasingly blatantly rotten condition this Western bourgeois crusade has fallen into, vainly trying to get out of its global economic slump via the time-honoured racket of international belligerence and armsrace scare stories in order to distract attention from the humiliating slump-collapse at home.

Smaller nations only fight in the first place because they have been economically/politically/socially discriminated against; and they only have to be crushed in the second place so that the bigger imperialist powers can cling on to their economic/political/social domination.

Historically, it is the epoch of now INTOLERABLE economic dislocation (in a world where there never need be any more poverty and slump at all) where the imperialist economic bullies will all, both separately and collectively, eventually lose out to an unstoppable tide of worldwide revolutionary and national struggle, easily identifiable from capitalism's own half-hearted admissions:

WHEN school's over, Najeeb Atallah, 10, and a couple of friends head for the local McDonald's in Amman to picket their classmates.

Two branches of the chain have closed in the region and some staff have left their jobs, fearful of local reprisals. What began two years ago as a low-key protest against US support for Israel has developed into a sustained campaign against America's best known brands. Threats of a conflict in Iraq have given further impetus to the economic boycott. Fast food outlets, toy makers, drink and cosmetics companies, and even Disneyland, are feeling the squeeze.

Muslim clerics call for a boycott during Friday prayers, religious and political leaders have gone on television in Saudi Arabia to support the anti-US protests. Leaflets are handed out listing brands to boycott, and there are thousands of protest calls on the internet.

Trade between the US and Arab countries is said to be down by at least 25 per cent since last year. Some economists argue that this is mainly due to the price of oil and exchange rates, but the boycott is taking its toll. Leading soft drinks companies and fast food chains have reported a drop in business of 25 to 40 per cent in the Arab world.

In Saudi Arabia, prices of US imports have been cut by half to tempt local people. There have been sit-in protests at branches of Burger King and McDonald's in Beirut, while outlets have been vandalised in Bahrain and Oman. Coca-Cola's plant in south India has been bombed and so has a branch of KFC in Tripoli.

On the streets of Cairo there are leaflets circulating urging a boycott of McDonald's and Burger King, Tide and Ariel detergents, Pampers nappies, Coca-Cola and Pepsi, Marlboro cigarettes and Heinz ketchup.

Protest organisers in Lebanon have targeted multinationals such as Johnson & Johnson, Philip Morris (cigarettes and food products), L'Oréal (cosmetics), Nestle, Timberland, Estée Lauder (cosmetics), Hasbro (toys) and Sara Lee.

Supermarkets serving the 250 million strong Arab consumer market say everything from breakfast cereals to American cigarettes is being left on the shelf.

HUNGER is stalking Uruguay, which used to be the breadbasket of the world.

The queue for food at Canteen Number 7 starts to form shortly after l0am and by 11am there are several hundred people waiting on the pavement opposite the naval headquarters by the docks in Montevideo for the free lunch that the government gives out to those in need.

They have all obtained an official identity card, valid for six months, which gives them the right to one free meal a day with a drink of milk thrown in for children and pregnant mothers. In a country which made its money exporting cereals and meat all over the world, one in 10 Uruguayans has state aid to stave off the pangs of hunger.

The three million Uruguayans are suffering their greatest economic depression for decades, the result of political blunders which followed a dictatorship and the difficulties of its giant neighbours, Brazil and Argentina.

'We are just the meat in the sandwich,' says Jorge, a bootblack in the deserted passenger terminal across the road from Canteen Number 7, continuing the Uruguayan obsession with food.

Three times a day the Buquebus, the large hydrofoil which connects the capital of Uruguay with the Argentine capital, Buenos Aires, docks here. In contrast to the scene three years ago when there were crowds, few passengers disembark and that is bad for Uruguay's tourist industry and the economy.

Argentina's plunge into financial disaster at the beginning of the year is one of the reasons why Leonel has so many clients.

It explains why here and in the holiday resorts which were formerly a favourite places for Argentine visitors, the shopkeepers and restaurateurs are worried. No one is in the cinemas, almost no one in the restaurants, shops and car showrooms.

One report says that Volkswagen, which in 1998 was selling 800 vehicles a month in Uruguay, is now selling 20 a month.

There are a lot of flats overlooking the South Atlantic which are for sale as Argentines take whatever price they are offered in order to make ends meet at home.

The Uruguayan peso has plunged, sending the prices of a vast range of imported goods the country needs to survive shooting up at a time when unemployment is rising, the government has slashed its budget and employers are seeking to cut wages.

All this does not mean that conditions here are similar to those of sub Saharan Africa. But it is an embarrassment for this tiny country of three million people. It used to wax rich and fat to the point of obesity on massive sales of food and wool. It also formed a welfare state long before Britain. The Uruguayan town of Fray Bentos is to corned beef what the Norman village of Camembert is to cheese.

Leonel Guanda, a bearded and affable civil servant, has been running Canteen Number 7, the second largest of the 1,500 which today dot Uruguay.

'Two years ago we had about 200 people to feed every day. Today that figure has risen sixfold. Now we get about 1,200 every lunchtime. They get bread, soup, a salad,  a plate of meat and a pudding,' he says. 'We give them about half the calories which they need to keep healthy. The rest they have to find for themselves.' 

Guanda muses about how his clients have changed in recent years. 'They used to be mostly old people, but today there are people of all ages who come here. Young people, the unemployed, people down on their luck.

'We have to give handouts to people who until recently regarded themselves as comfortably middle-class,' says Carmen Betancourt, the bustling young nutritionist who heads. the government's food programme.

Just up the street from Canteen Number 7,  in the heart of the city,  the Uruguayan Association for the Protection of Children runs another soup kitchen where children come for a nourishing lunch. 'Leonel and Canteen Number 7 can't cope with the demand,'  says Juana, a volunteer.

At Montevideo University poor students get particular attention. They get two free meals a day. 'When they come in from the countryside they find they struggle to survive here in the capital,' says Sonia, the manager. 'But we're getting fewer people because young people can't afford to study any more.'

"YOU don't worry enough," chides my sometime colleague, Jim Haskel. The Goldman Sachs vice-president, himself a natural-born worrier, feels that I have not been giving enough weight in these columns to the dark side of the economic news - what he calls "the vulnerabilities". Fair enough. So here's a dose of gloom.

We begin, of course, with the stock markets. The third quarter saw share price averages post their biggest three month decline since the fourth quarter of 1987.  All in all, Americans have watched about $8,000 billion in wealth go down the drain as share prices engage in what seems an endless search for a bottom. Many analysts feel that such losses are already discouraging business investment, and sooner or later will cause consumers to rein in their spending.

That sustained spending has been a two-edged sword. It has kept the economy moving forward in spite of a huge slowdown in business investment. But America's appetite for imported cars, television sets, trainers and T-shirts has created a current-account deficit that is now approaching 5% of GDP. Most economists think an imbalance of that magnitude between imports and exports inevitably leads to a run on the currency of the importing - some would say, profligate - nation.

So far, America has avoided more than a minor decline in the dollar by attracting sufficient inward investment to offset the massive outflow of dollars. Europeans' withdrawal of funds has been more or less matched by increased inflows from Asia. But if share prices  continue to fall, foreigners may tire of holding dollar assets. If they do so in a big way, the dollar may fall so far and so fast as to force  the Federal Reserve Board to jack up interest rates, to increase returns on dollar assets. That would, of course, abort the halting economic recovery now under way.

Consumer spending creates another problem - record borrowing. Haskel points out that the cost of servicing private debt is now running at about 14% of disposable income, the top end of the historic range. Should interest rates rise, the cost of carrying that pile of debt - now equal to more than 100% of disposable income, compared with about 75 % in 1990 will soar, forcing consumers to rein in spending.

Indeed, there is some evidence that Americans are already getting more cautious about parting with their money. Housing starts have declined for three months. Car sales fell sharply in September. And Wal-Mart and Sears, Roebuck, America's largest and fourth-largest retailers, both reported sales that fell below expectations.

If a rise in interest rates did force consumers to stay out of the shops, the current recovery could come to a screeching halt, especially as such an increase would close the door on another source of consumer funds, the refinancing of mortgages.

Consumers have been withdrawing equity from their homes by refinancing at such a rate that the ratio of their remaining equity to the market value of their homes has fallen to 55%, according to a study by Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). That's down from an average of 77 % in the 1950s; and 68 % in the 1980s.

In short, homeowners' ability to engage in a few more rounds of refinancing to get their hands on ready cash is decidedly limited. Indeed, Baker goes further. "If [house] prices decline nationally by an average of 22% . . . with the low current ratio of equity to value, many homeowners will be left with mortgages that exceed the value of their homes." This is, the dreaded negative equity.

There is worse. The rising defaults, already rearing their ugly heads (a record 1.2% of all mortgages are now in the foreclosure process), will "place serious stress on a banking system that is already suffering as a result of several major corporate bankruptcies", concludes the CEPR study.

And that was written before federal regulators reported last week that problem loans held by syndicated lenders had increased for the fourth consecutive year, before European and American investment banks announced they would write off a record $130 billion in bad loans this year, and before Douglas Flint, HSBC's finance director, warned of the "systemic implications" of the problems faced by Germany's Commerzbank. 

But despite such evidence of bitter conflict, revolutionary poverty, and total economic collapse on the horizon, - the lame arguments still persist (now embraced by Gore Vidal on behalf of worldwide bourgeois cynicism) that Washington warmongering is acting out just a nasty conspiracy to merely artificially provoke a brutalisation of the world for sordid commercial reasons, - a brutalisation which "the rest of us smart and humane people can stop by exposing it" (!) etc.

Vidal's attack on "the enemy within" is useful anti-imperialist propaganda, but an inadequate historical pointer, "denouncing" the war on terrorism "because" (accompanied by copious 'detailed proofs') a) the Washington political/military establishment all knew the Sept 11 attacks were coming and deliberately did nothing to prevent them; b) the suicide missions into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon could "never have been piloted by people trained on flight simulators at a Florida puddle-jumper school for Piper Cubs and Cessnas"; c) the war on Afghanistan was planned in advance of Sept 11 to build a Bush oil-consortium pipeline across it; d) Osama Bin Laden's connection to Afghanistan was all a pretence, done out of the Bin Laden family's lifelong business partnership with the Bush family; e) the Taliban were becoming the fêted partners of Washington in the oil-pipeline deal until it was decided that direct US invasion was needed for greater regional military security for imperialist interests, which is why the Taliban and Bin Laden are not really being seriously pursued militarily; etc; etc.'

Vidal is quite usefully better on some of the historic characteristics of aggressive imperialist hegemonism:

Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured - or threatened - party before he struck. But he had many great predecessors; not least Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowans's War in Afghanistan: A $28 Billion Racket quotes Joseph Schumpeter who, in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: "There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Rome's allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented... The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by 'evil-minded neighbours.' " We have, only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.

As of 1 August 2002, trial balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world opinion used to the idea that 'Bush of Afghanistan' had gained a title as mighty as his father's 'Bush of the Persian Gulf' and Junior was now eager to add Iraq-Babylon to his diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and the Arab world like so many lead weights. But something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra 'they are threatening us, we must attack first'. Now everyone is  more or less out in the open. The International Herald Tribune wrote in  August 2002: 'The leaks began in earnest on 5 July, when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that it said called for an invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would attack Iraq from the north, south and west. On 10 July, the Times said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The Washington Post reported, 28 July, that "many senior US military officers contend that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat..."

And the status quo should be maintained. Incidentally, this is the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not military bureaucrats, to conduct in the name of we the people. But that sort of debate has, for a long time, been denied us.

One refreshing note is now being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the cheerful admission that we habitually resort to provocation. The Tribune continues: 'Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to jail anyone found to have been behind the leaks. But a retired army general, Fred Woerner, tends to see a method behind the leaks. "We may already be executing a plan," he said recently. "Are we involved in a preliminary psychological dimension of causing Iraq to do something to justify a US attack or make concessions? Somebody knows." That is plain.

Elsewhere in this interesting edition of the Herald Tribune wise William Pfaff writes: 'A second Washington debate is whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran to destroy a nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance, under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, within the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory... No other government would support such an action, other than Israel's (which) would do so not because it expected to be attacked by Iran but because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity in the hands of any Islamic Government."

'OF ALL THE enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes. the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended... and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people...' Thus, James Madison warned us at the dawn of our republic.

Post 9/11, thanks to the 'domination of the few', Congress and the media are silent while the executive, through propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind as hitherto unthinkable centres of power like Homeland Defence (a new Cabinet post to be placed on top of the Defence Department) are being constructed and 4 per cent of the country has recently been invited to join Tips, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks suspicious or... who objects to what the executive is doing at home or abroad?

Although every nation knows how - if it has the means and the will - to protect itself from thugs of the sort that brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for nations not rootless gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing that  with the Sicilian Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing Palermo.

But the Cheney-Bush junta wants a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline, gain control of the oil of Eurasia's Stans for their business associates as well as to do as much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one day those evil countries may carpet our fields of amber grain with anthrax or something.

The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and 'friend' in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. 'None of that conspiracy stuff,' snarled Clancy. Apparently, 'conspiracy stuff' is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

As of August, at least among economists, a consensus was growing that, considering our vast national debt (we borrow $2 billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax base seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the l per cent who own most of the national wealth, there is no way that we could ever find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in 'a long war' or even a short one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid for the Gulf War, reluctantly - with Japan, at the last moment, irritably quarrelling over the exchange rate at the time of the contract. Now Germany's Schröder has said no. Japan is mute.

But the tom-toms keep beating revenge; and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our war seems only to bring hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration (Bush Snr of the Carlyle Group, Bush Jnr formerly of Harken, Cheney, formerly of Halliburton, Rice, formerly of Chevron, Rumsfeld, formerly of Occidental). If ever an administration should recuse itself in matters dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike any administration in our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere, making money, far from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left only with their heads, dreaming of war, preferably against weak peripheral states.

But even this more perceptive stuff still suffers badly from the naïve bourgeois impressionism of shallow philosophical idealism which self-regardingly believes that men's ideas (or evil plans) make the world what it is, instead of grasping the much profounder truth that men's ideas reflect the way that the objective world is fashioning events.

Part of Vidal's brain still lives in a world where a nice America could appropriately deal with "the thugs that brought us Sept 11". There is no such world, nor could be.

But Vidal's replacement world of just one giant grubby military/oilmen conspiracy is equally a subjective bourgeois fantasy.

There is much more to imperialist-system bankruptcy than just the Bush regime irresponsibly embarking on a costly war when the American state cannot even pay for its own existing bullying activities.

There is much more to the Bin Laden phenomenon than just Mohammed Heikal's joke that he could not organise his way out of a paper bag, let alone organise Sept 11.

The point is that Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, although Washington's Aunt Sallies, nevertheless do importantly REFLECT the entire Third World revolt against, not just Washington money printing irresponsibility, but against the utterly flawed crisis collapse of the entire international 'free-market' system.

And jeering at Third World 'puddlejumper' incompetence or at Islamic revolt origins in being PAID-FOR STOOGES of the USA to start with, reveals as much patrician complacency as Vidal's gag on the USA as the new Rome.

What ALL bourgeois hate (from the petty bourgeois fake-'left' to the cynical far right) is that the system which gave them their culture is deservedly now utterly doomed historically; and that quite brutal proletarian and nationalist revolt can alone replace it, sometimes springing dialectically out of the imperialists' own conceited and arrogant plans.

Vidal's critical cynicism becomes a problem philosophy when embraced by the wider fake-'left' who, out of equal-Western petty-bourgeois conceit, are unable or refuse to identify the actual revolutionary forces which objective history is now pushing into anti-imperialist action. The 'real' voice of 'revolution' has just got to be 'them', - the fake-'left' themselves.

That subjectivism is worse than Vidal's (who doesn't claim to be a 'left') which at least partly identifies the eternal NEED TO DOMINATE which is one link between Washington and Rome.

The fake-'left' insist that Bush warmongering is for oil AS SUCH, which in fact makes it just half-way rational, and also possibly solvable by any number of possible solutions, all within the present framework of things.

But the actual historical reality that needs dealing with is quite different, namely that the whole 800 year bourgeois world history is now in TOTAL crisis of a whole economic system facing such unacceptable collapse (because of how capitalism itself has so transformed and modernised the world population) that civilisation can now only be rescued ultimately by global proletarian dictatorship revolution, - an issue which the fake-'left' petty bourgeois simply dare not even talk about (nor Vidal, obviously).

The proof, routing their subjective reformist illusions, remains constant. On the one hand, in the capitalist press's own admissions, the global imperialist economy has now run into utterly INSOLUBLE contradictions, - exactly as Marxist science from the start has explained must always keep recurring, - only 'solvable' by ever worsening warmongering destruction outrages by the imperialist system, which can only keep creating ever greater REVOLUTIONARY spontaneous responses everywhere (which need CONSCIOUSLY LEADING).

A collapse of the dollar, and growing inter-imperialist trade-war rattiness, should do the trick:

Economists have long held that if a country's trade deficit exceeds 5% of its GDP, its currency will head south, and quickly. Americans' love of foreign goods is leading them to import a record amount of cars, washing machines, television sets, trainers and other consumer goods.

Meanwhile, slowdowns in Europe and Japan are constricting the markets for made-in-the-USA products. America's exports dropped 1.3% between July and August, with vehicles and car parts leading the rout. Result: a record monthly trade deficit that reached $38.5 billion (£25 billion) in August. This means that when the final totals are in at the year-end, the United States will probably have passed the 5% threshold.

This is why some economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are beginning to consider just what would happen if the dollar were to begin a precipitous, 40% drop in value. And it is why Bush administration economists and strategists are increasingly angry with the failure of America's trading partners to take steps to prop up demand in their own countries, rather than attempt to export their way to growth by using America as the importer of last resort.

The American contingent left the last round of IMF and World Bank meetings in Washington in an angry mood. Japan had refused to give unequivocal assurances that it would take the steps needed to wipe the soured loans off the books of its banks so that they can resume lending to healthy businesses. The Germans had refused to pledge the labour-market and other reforms needed to end economic stagnation and avoid a more serious deflationary cycle. The French showed no sign of being willing to ease the protectionist policies that keep America's three leading export industries - agriculture, aircraft and audio-visual products - from making greater inroads into the EU. So America's trade deficit continues to mount.

The country now owes foreigners some $2,000 billion net of what foreigners owe us. This means that foreigners have shipped capital into the United States by buying shares and bonds in American companies and the IOUs of the American government. What worries some policymakers is that foreigners might tire of holding these dollar assets and sell them in order to repatriate funds or purchase shares in companies in other countries. In short, they would be unloading a great pile of dollars on international money markets, driving down the price of those dollars, scaring still more foreigners into unloading dollars - in a cycle that could cause chaos in currency markets and force up American interest rates at a time when most experts would prefer to see them go down.

More important, in the end a currency's strength reflects the strength of the economy. It is certainly true that America is showing signs of weakness. Retail sales were "weak across the nation", according to last week's monthly Federal Reserve survey, and consumer confidence is weakening.

Other sources report that car sales in the first two weeks of this month were 12 % below the first two weeks in September and 30% below the same weeks in 2001. Since the automobile industry accounts for about 4% of American GDP, a decrease in sales and production will have important ripple effects.

A slowdown in house sales and construction would also have a considerable impact. There are signs that the high end of the market is cooling to some cities. Any easing of house prices would dry up an important source of consumers' funds - the money they have obtained by remortgaging their increasingly valuable homes to spend on current consumption.

German banks, which were once regarded as the strongest and most stable in the world, are staggering from crisis to crisis. Bad debts, falling stock markets, and overambition have created a situation that; in some eyes, threatens the stability of Europe's whole financial system.

That may even be understating the problem. The under-capitalisation and bad loans among Japanese banks mean that more failures there seem probable rather than just possible. In other words, the financial institutions that stand behind the world's second and third biggest economies have their backs to the wall.

Little wonder that Douglas Flint, finance director of HSBC, broke with traditional banking etiquette last week to comment: "We do worry about systemic risk." He added that HSBC's own capital base and liquidity remained strong but he was worried about other banks' losses "because of the systemic implications".

His use of the "S" word caused a storm but in reality he was just stating the facts of life in modern global banking.

In the past couple of decades, the use of syndicated loans (where three or more banks join together to commit money), CDOs (collateralised debt obligations, in which several parcels of debt are wrapped up together and sold on) and derivatives have mushroomed.

British banks, for example, have virtually no presence in Japan but all the big five will have exposure running into billions of pounds to the debts of Japanese banks and companies.

So how bad is the situation in Germany and Japan? Chris Ellerton, global banking strategist at UBS Warburg, says: "If Flint is worried about systemic risk, then so am I. He's a man given to worrying, but he and HSBC have been very prescient in the past few years.'.'

German banks have certainly been lending aggressively across Europe - Wembley is just one high-profile example. Compared with their British counterparts, which have concentrated largely on the mortgage market, their exposure is more heavily weighted towards the corporate sector.

In their own country, they have had to shoulder crises at the likes of Kirch, the media group, and Babcock-Borsig, the engineering company.

But those are just the high profile cases. Dresdner Bank, the third largest, has admitted that €30 billion (£20 billion) of its lending - or almost one in every eight euros it has advanced - is classed as non-performing.

German companies are also the most over-leveraged in Europe and the banks' return on equity fell from 9.3% in 2000 to 6.2% last year. That is roughly half the international average, and the rising level of bad debts, not helped by the summer floods in central Europe, mean the figure will get worse. Economic growth for the country will be barely positive this year.

Even worse, German banks still have huge direct shareholdings in some of the country's leading companies. In the old days, this was seen as a sign of strength, and a symbol of banks' long-tern commitment to the borrowers.

As stock markets have tumbled, it has become an unequivocal weakness. Merrill Lynch calculates that the unrealised losses for Commerzbank, the country's fourth-largest, on its equity holdings are €1.9 billion (£1.2 billion). Cross-shareholdings now seem to be merely an example of cronyism in a culture where mutual back-slapping between politicians and businessmen has been tolerated for decades. In such a climate, the market hunts for weakness. Rumours are exaggerated and become believed.

Commerzbank got a taste of this last week as fears grew that it was facing a liquidity crisis.

Its chairman, Klaus-Peter Müller, was on board the paddle steamer Cherry Blossom, across the water from the World Monetary Fund meeting in Washington, hosting the bank's "booze cruise" as some call its annual piece of corporate entertaining:

This pleasant break drinking champagne and eating canapés turned into a fullscale damage control exercise as the rumours intensified. The bank's value plunged 10% in one day alone during a fortnight in which its market value more than halved.

To top it all came the humiliation of Moody's reducing the bank's rating from A to A minus. Müller was forced to deny that Commerzbank was planning a rights issue and outlined plans to cut 40,000 jobs. He said: "There are no grounds for questioning the solidity, of our bank."

By the end of last week, it seemed to have done the trick as the shares rallied, but the change in sentiment also required senior German officials to give heavyweight reassurances.

Rolf Breuer, former chairman of Deutsche Bank, says: "We've reacted late to cutting our costs. But we don't face a Japanese banking crisis in Europe."

However, as chairman of the German Banking Association, Breuer could hardly say anything else, and he has certainly not convinced everybody. In the first six months of this year 110 firms a day went out of business in Germany. Business starts have fallen  dramatically at the same time - by 4.4% in the west and 11.7% in  the east.

If the market can spot a crisis, it seems that Wim Duisenberg, president of the European Central Bank, cannot. His contribution on Thursday was little more than a Corporal Jones style "don't panic".

In the view of some, that represents breathtaking complacency. "Breuer and Duisenberg must know they are wrong but dare not say anything else," says Adolf Rosenstock, European economist at Nomura investment bank.

"But talking things up is regarded by the markets as ridiculous and gives nobody any confidence. There is a high risk of collapse in Germany's financial system. If that happens everything else will go to pieces as well.

We've lived through this kind of collapse more than once in the past 200 years, yet somehow we in the modern world have convinced ourselves it won't happen again."

In Japan last week, there were reminders of how bad-life can get. Fitch, the credit-ratings agency, said measures advocated by the government to clear up the mountain of bad loans the banks had accrued were likely to leave some of the bigger ones - already under-capitalised - practically insolvent.

Fitch could hardly have been more gloomy. It said Japanese banks' "pure" core capital adequacy ratios were already negative and not all, or indeed any banks would "necessarily survive in their current form".

The bad news is that nobody knows what would happen if a German bank eventually did start to sink. Would the ECB send a lifeboat? Probably it would have to, but the price would prove there was something very rotten at the heart of Europe's biggest economy.

As can be seen, the need to dominate is not a mere description of some shallow arbitrary arrogance (which they all share) but springs from their very essence as a RULING CLASS.

No state-power bourgeoisie would ever have become such, or could ever remain such, without this crucial driving philosophy of the need to remain in charge AT ALL COSTS, otherwise they would be lost forever.

No major bourgeoisie can afford to feel any different, and inter-imperialist war is always the inevitable result.

They are gearing up for it again as their system collapses in chaos. Oil control will remain one crucial geopolitical ingredient among many involved in world domination. 

But DOMINATION is the issue, and America's warning "With us or against us", plus- "the USA will not tolerate ANY power developing an armed strength to match America's", - not oil, - remains the cutting edge of this imperialist-system crisis, driving the whole world before it.

On the other hand, the forces thrown up by this bourgeois-class debacle are objective, spontaneous revolutionary forces initially, - historically irresistible in the long run given the conscious world socialism leadership which eventually must come.

Palestinian resistance is of this indomitable character, among many current world examples. There will be many, many more, and far greater, revolutionary explosions to come.

And having the 'left' and unions everywhere riddled with police spies and CIA agents won't save capitalism but only alienate people more and more, - and - expose again the shallowness of 'left' pressure which consistently denies that a dedicated REVOLUTIONARY struggle and understanding is the only answer to endless police-state tyranny.

If Scargill "knows" that TU 'militancy' was always utterly riddled with police agents, then why has an openly and consciously REVOLUTIONARY party (of genuine planned cut & thrust to expose all time-servers) never been proposed??

If Scargill "knows" that state tyranny was all the time poised to intervene against TU "democracy", then why was the illusion persisted with that Congress and Labour Conference votes could defeat capitalism "by majority decision"???

Simultaneous admissions (to the BBC spy revelations) that the RUC deliberately let the Omagh dissident bomb go off in order to try to sabotage the Good Friday Agreement confirms the same message, - that the greatest enemy of working class and anti-imperialist progress in the world is the reformist "democratic state" itself. Build Leninism. EPSR

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

Colonial-unionist sabotage of the Good Friday Agreement to end the hated and failed British imperialist involvement in Ireland can only drag on because of Westminster cowardice and stupidity.

THERE is an urgent need for a planned programme to overcome the current crisis and ensure the full and faithful implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. 

• Human Rights: The Human Rights Commission is wholly unrepresentative and has been skewed over a period towards unionism and the UUP in particular. The essential Bill of Rights has been bogged down for almost a year now and no effective strategy is in place to provide forward movement and the securing of the vital protections of this mechanism. The NIO has worked systematically over the past four and a half years to minimise human rights protections. This, apparently, is part of the NIO's mission in all of the institutions which have a bearing on human rights. This includes policing, the justice system and the Human Rights Commission which has been deliberately denied resources and sufficient powers. The HRC is ineffective and incapable of protecting human rights.

• Equality: Equality in all its dimensions has been a victim of the general inertia and obstruction which has been injected into the situation.
	° The amalgamation of the various equality bodies into a single commission has proved ineffective in moving forward the equality agenda.
	° Serious question marks hang over the very functioning of the Commission.
	° Equality in respect of flags, badges and emblems has been flouted in practically every dimension whether in relation to public buildings, the police force or in the use of flags and emblems for political purposes. No attempt has been made to develop a policy of neutrality or equality on these matters. In all cases the British and unionist ethos has prevailed.

•Demilitarisation: The British system has ensured a minimalist approach. Rationalisation rather than demilitarisation has been the guide. Areas which never or rarely seen a British Army patrol are now heavily militarised on the ground. The occupying garrison is intact. A massive military rebuilding programme has been completed. South Armagh remains an occupied territory and places like Divis Tower in Belfast have been given no relief from military occupation.

• The issue of arms:  The obligation on all parties to use their influence to resolve this matter has been flouted. Attention was instead focussed solely on the IRA and Sinn Féin was left to take up the burden on this. All advances and initiatives were frittered away and when the IRA leadership took historic initiatives the goalposts were again moved. In March at the UUP's AGM David Trimble again upped the ante and demanded as a further unilateral precondition that the IRA surrender and disband. Where David Trimble has led the two governments appears to be following. It now looks as if the entire process is in thrall to the opponents of the Agreement. The two governments and all of the parties need to get back to the terms of the Agreement on this issue.

• Prisoners: The Irish Government has refused to honour its obligations under the terms of the Agreement in respect of IRA prisoners being held in Castlerea.

• Victims: In line with their refusal to countenance equality in a whole range of other matters the NIO has consistently discriminated even against the victims of the conflict. This has led to a situation where victims of state forces and the collaborative actions of state forces with loyalist paramilitaries are 'unworthy' victims. Only those who have suffered as a result of republican actions are deemed worthy.

• Policing: The requirements of the Agreement have not been met. The Patten recommendations have not been implemented. The British government's proposals, set out after Weston Park, in respect of legislative amendment will not close this gap. These would still leave a situation in which:
				° The PSNI remains unrepresentative, subject to partisan political control and unaccountable for its actions.
				° The Patten requirements in respect of political and cultural neutrality for badges and symbols are ignored. 
				° No serious attempt being made to imbue the force with a human rights ethos.
				° The malign influence of the Special Branch as "a force within a force" remains intact.
				° The human rights abusers who transferred en bloc into the PSNI remain in place.
				° Collusion with loyalist paramilitaries continues. 
				° The uniformed branch of the PSNI and the CID will continue to be filters for the recruitment and protection 				of Special Branch agents.
				° Lethal force plastic bullets will continue to be used in public order situations.

In addition to this, Sinn Féin has asked the two governments
			° To explain when and how they intend to transfer powers on policing and justice matters to the Assembly Executive
			° To detail the powers they intend to transfer
			° To detail the safeguards in line with the Agreement, they propose to put in place in regard to these powers and structures.

In addition to these obligations, under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, the two governments made other specific commitments. These included
			° A commitment by the both governments at Weston Park to resolve the outstanding issue of politically displaced persons, known as OTRs, by the end of last year. This included a commitment to bring forward legislation by the British Government - this has not happened.
			°  A specific commitment by the Irish government to provide for representation of northern political opinion in the Seanad and the Dáil which has yet to be fulfilled.

• The political institutions:

	° The political institutions should be re-instated immediately.
	° The all-Ireland Civic Forum and the all-Ireland Inter-parliamentary Forum should be established.
	° If any party with an electoral entitlement to be represented in the Executive fails to take this up then the procedures under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement should be followed.
	° Suspension legislation should be revoked. It is no part of the Agreement.

• Justice:   Relevant key issues which need to be addressed in order to deliver the criminal justice system demanded by the Agreement include:
	° The Law Reform Commission. Arrangements for the prosecution service.
	° Judicial appointments and judicial transformation.
	° Probation services.
	° Ethos and symbols of the Courts.
	° Approaches to restorative justice.
	° Administrative and civil service arrangements.
	° Repressive legislation and covert policing.

Sinn Féin has asked the two governments to explain when and how they intend to transfer powers on justice matters to the Assembly Executive subject to the safeguards contained in the Good Friday Agreement.

Sinn Féin proposes that;
	° The British Government lifts the suspension of the political institutions.
	° The Irish and British Governments convene round table talks involving all the parties to address the current crisis 	in the political process.
	° All parties engage in bilateral discussions to facilitate a resolution of current difficulties.

Detailed submissions on all the above points have been made to both governments.