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 1184  May 13 2003

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SW Seminar moved from May 17 to June 14.

Bomber Short's broadside, however unappealing, could still be the kiss of death for Blairism, as insane plan to revive 19th century colonial conquests runs into ever-deeper trouble. But it is the mass resistance to imperialism in the Third World which will become the real killer of the West's idiotic warmongering diversions; - in the context of still no solution possible for the capitalist system's "over-production" crisis by which the West's domination is going to condemn the world to the most catastrophic economic slump in all history. This exclusively revolutionary perspective is the only future for everyone, but the fake-'left' in Britain continue to avoid-theory like the plague and paralyse the working class with yet more "reformist pressure" delusions, and guru-worship conceit.

The sacking of America's colonial administrators in Iraq after only 4 weeks in the job (of ever-mounting chaos), followed by Clare Short's resignation (at last ) is a possible indication of rats deserting a sinking ship. In Western imperialism's own media, stories about bitter divisions within this sick, warmongering, Middle East adventurism remain rampant.

Personal statements to the Commons are traditionally heard in silence, but not Clare Short's. There were gasps and whistles, half-stifled cries of "Whaaa?", deep racking sighs and, I swear, something that sounded like a very gentle death rattle from the Labour benches.

The small handful of cabinet members who were present sat staring ahead like firing squad victims who've refused the blindfold.

For the former international development secretary had arrived, as the huntsmen say, loaded for bear. They winced as they heard each shot echo round the woods, then relaxed for the briefest time while she reloaded before pulling both triggers again.

She spoke two hours after telling Mr Blair, in a "perfectly cordial" five-minute phone call just after 10am, that she was leaving over the US-UK mishandling of postwar Iraq. Mr Blair had broken his promises to her, she claimed.

The trigger which prompted Ms Short to quit, two months after she wobbled back into office after attacking Mr Blair's "reckless" conduct, was the draft resolution which Britain and the US are now promoting at the UN. Negotiated in secrecy, it does not give the UN the "vital role" that London and Washington promised.

It left the occupation of Iraq illegal, she said.

Mr Blair had failed to stand up to President Bush - and was not so much a poodle ("poodles get off their lead and jump about") as a figleaf. "Fig leaves just stay where they are," she told the Guardian.

Noting that many constitutions wisely limit leaders to two terms, eight years in the US, Ms Short said: "I think Tony Blair has enormous achievements under his belt and it would be very sad if he hung on and spoiled his reputation."

In an aside which will anger No 10 but strike a chord with many MPs, including admirers of Lady Thatcher, Ms Short added: "There used to be a saying of the Tory whips when they were in power - this is the Tory whips, not me - 'No one ever comes out of No 10 completely sane:"

Grotesque bias, prejudices, and gutterpress sensationalism are routine throughout the capitalist newspapers, from the broadsheets to the tabloids, and very little can ever be believed for certain; but reports and commentaries AGAINST the West's authority and general interests,- DESPITE a basic bourgeois-media need for gung-ho propaganda, - do carry slightly extra conviction.

And the sheer insistent weight of the coverage now makes it obvious that this imperialist re-colonisation stunt is in all kinds of trouble.

This, further, makes it not only legitimate but NECESSARY to speculate about what sort of defining HISTORICAL doom the monopoly capitalist system is now suffering, - given the unrelieved background economic-crisis conditions that provoked Washington's turn to all-out and all-round blitzkrieg aggressiveness in the first place.

To decide in the 21st century to relaunch the past era of colonial war-conquest is degenerate insanity enough, arousing the whole planet to hostility.

To unleash such destructive tyranny to everyone's horror and amazement, and then to get it all hopelessly wrong and produce nothing but a total cockup, and drive international and class relations into & crescendo of vilification, hatred, and tension,-- is beginning to look like an incurably arrogant system on its way towards terminal suicide.

And these developments, - as admitted in the capitalist press's own reports and commentaries below, - are also unstatedly answering at the same time the one great doubt that people still have about how can the imperialist system be seen to be "in trouble" when it still possesses such overwhelmingly dominant firepower, plus such unprecedented wealth, that in theory it could crush in seconds nearly all resistance to its sway, and in the longterm all 100% of it.

These difficulties in Iraq demonstrate that Western imperialism still needs the rest of the world so as to be able to lead the luxury lifestyle it lives (otherwise, why be out there at all); but this decrees that ultimately-controlling PEOPLE is what is essential.

And it is the modern world's PEOPLE who will no longer be controlled, - so it seems from the ever growing evidence:

The US yesterday sacked one of tits most senior envoys to Iraq after only three weeks, in an admission that the task of running the country is proving tougher than expected.

With Baghdad still in a state of chaos, there was a whiff of panic about Washington's removal of the top layer of its team responsible for reconstruction. There was also a hint that it is being forced to rethink its postwar strategy.

Barbara Bodine, the US coordinator for central Iraq, was ordered back to Washington, a casualty of the failure to restore law and order or basic public services to the capital, Baghdad.

She is the second senior US official to be sidelined within a week. Her partner in the country, retired general Jay Garner, head of the Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Aid (Orha), is also to be replaced within weeks, after a lacklustre performance. He too has only been in Baghdad for three weeks.

Washington hopes the overhaul of its team will bring a much-needed sense of urgency and focus to the reconstruction process. It originally intended to get Baghdad up and running by itself, but may yet have to seek help from the international community.

The capital remains in a state of anarchy, with most of the city a no-go area at night. The former telephone exchange was on fire yesterday after being looted again, and there were big blazes elsewhere round the city. One of the few aid convoys to trickle through to the city in the past-few days was hijacked and the vehicles stolen. .

Electricity is intermittent, with most of the capital in darkness every night. Rubbish is piling up in the alleys and main streets, many shops are still shuttered, sanitation generally is poor, and the provision of public services is patchy. Only a few people have returned to their jobs.

The process of trying to establish a provisional Iraqi government is also proving troublesome.

Her relations with Gen Garner are reported to have been strained, and she was also said to have been unhappy at the dispatch of Paul Bremer, a former US diplomat, to oversee the political process. He is due in Iraq this week.

Gen Garner promised that power would be handed over to an Iraqi provisional government by the end of the month, and set a deadline of June 15 for the full restoration of public services. He has been cooped up for most of his stay in Saddam Hussein's former presidential compound on the banks of the Tigris, cut off by heavy security from the plight of the city's residents.

There has been growing resentment among residents over the failure to restore order and basic services. The US, unaccountably, has been unable to stage any big public relations coup since the fall of Saddam to win over hearts and minds, such as a huge convoy bringing in desperately needed medical supplies.

Most of the contractors appointed to carry out reconstruction work remain in Kuwait, saying Baghdad is too unsafe.

The Pentagon and state department have been at loggerheads over the running of Iraq. The defence ministry,  having won the war, is reluctant to hand over power to another department, while the state department regards the Pentagon as lacking the necessary diplomatic, and political skills for nation building.

Although Mr Bremer's appointment was hailed as a victory for the state department, he shares a similar view of the Middle East as the Pentagon hawks, such as the deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz.

At a briefing in the grounds of the newly reopened British embassy in Baghdad on Friday Major General Tim Cross, deputy to Gen Garner, made a passionate defence of Orha's record so far, saying that security was not a matter for Orha, but for the US-British forces.

The impact of his statement was undermined by frequent bursts of gunfire rolling round the city throughout the briefing.

There are frequent warning signs for the Americans of what might lie ahead. Almost every day, US forces trade fire with Iraqis throughout the country. In Baghdad yesterday a US soldier was killed in a bold daylight attack on one of the bridges over the Tigris. An Iraqi walked up to him with a pistol and opened fire.

The previous day, two Iraqis fired at a reconnaissance patrol of the 3rd Infantry Division with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades north of Baghdad. An Iraqi was killed. On the same day, near the northern town of Baiji, a convoy from the 4th Infantry Division came under fire from Iraqis with rifles and machine guns.

"We can't wait two months, or one month, or even next week for the US to sort things out. The weather is getting hotter. We can't go on living like this."

Iraqis were among the best-educated people in the Middle East until stifled by Saddam and there is determination among them, after a totalitarian regime, three wars and being impoverished by sanctions, to grab this opportunity for change.

But the US performance so far has not instilled stilled confidence. They are unimpressed by the provisional government Washington is cobbling together, scheduled to be announced next week.

That government, dominated by exile groups, could prove short-lived. Power now lies elsewhere, with the majority Shia Muslims, who were suppressed by Saddam. Many of them have a different agenda from Washington.

The US and British administration lodging in Saddam's presidential palace by the Tigris issues regular upbeat statements that life is fast returning to normal, that there are more police on the streets, that the education, health and other ministries will soon be up and running, and that full electricity and other basic services will be restored.

But the gap between such pronouncements and the daily lives of Iraqis is enormous. As the US-British administration told university teachers and students yesterday they should return to their campuses to resume their studies on May 17, the ministry of education building in central Baghdad, already severely damaged by looters a month ago, was burning, with columns of thick, black smoke pouring from its upper floors.

In a country with the second biggest oil reserves in the world, queues miles long form each morning outside petrol stations. Many have to wait in line half a day or more. Sitting in his car in a queue in Baghdad, Abdul Wahed Shukri Hamadi, a pharmacologist, said: "Nothing is better since Saddam has gone."

The worst time is at night. Most people lock their doors after 8pm, unwilling to take the risk of being out in the dark because of criminal gangs or the chance of being shot by a US, patrol. A citywide curfew falls at 1lpm. Bursts of gunfire continue throughout the night.

The rigid police state of Saddam has given way to lawlessness on a grand scale, stretching the length of the country. Looting persists and criminal gangs make travel risky. In Paradise Square, street traders sell Kalashnikovs for $75 within feet of one of the few police cars on duty in the capital.

While US soldiers tally the number of illegal weapons they manage to confiscate each night on patrol, hundreds more are being sold to Baghdad residents desperate for weapons to protect their homes.

Crime tops the list of Iraqi complaints, but they also grumble about a severe electricity shortage that leaves most of Baghdad in total darkness night after night. Beginning to run out of money, they worry too about when - or if - they will get their old jobs back.

The pedestal on which the Saddam statue stood now has a message to the US in red letters: 'All Done, Go Home'.

American efforts to foist new rulers on the people of Iraq are becoming increasingly grotesque. In some cities US troops have sparked demonstrations by imposing officials from the old Saddam Hussein regime. In others they have evicted new anti-Saddam administrators who have local backing.

They have mishandled religious leaders as well as politicians. In the Shia suburbs of Baghdad, they arrested a powerful cleric, Mohammed Fartousi al-Sadr, who had criticised the US presence. In Falluja, an overwhelmingly Sunni town, they detained two popular imams. All three men were released within days, but local people saw the detentions as a warning that Iraqis should submit to the US will.

The Pentagon's General Jay Garner has taken an equally biased line in his plans for Iraq's government. He held a conference of 300 Iraqis in Baghdad last week and excluded almost every group which has an organised following.

Washington's failure to hold broad-based consultations at central and local levels is provoking resistance, sometimes armed. In response, US troops have used excessive force, further raising tensions. Ten people died in Mosul when soldiers fired at crowds of protesters on successive days in mid-April. In Falluja the death toll from American shootings over two days last week was at least 16.

The massacre in Falluja was symptomatic. The town was quiet for two weeks after Iraqi troops and local Ba'ath party leaders fled. The imams halted the looting and got much of the stolen property returned. A new mayor arranged for schools to re-open and persuaded police to return to work. Then the Americans arrived, arrested imams, put up roadblocks and occupied a school - all without prior discussion with local leaders.

They seemed to be working from a one-size-fits-all Pentagon textbook. First "liberate"; then move in and provide policing whether people want it or not. In Baghdad there were indeed security problems after Saddam's forces vanished, and many residents asked why US forces did so little to halt the looting of key buildings. Having failed initially there, the US over-compensated elsewhere. It came down too hard in Falluja and other cities where people did not want a US hand.

The contrast with Afghanistan is sharp. For months Afghans pleaded for the US to deploy international peacekeepers beyond Kabul to cities where warlords held sway or were fighting for power. The US refused, either for fear of taking casualties or because of lack of interest in a poor country once its anti- western regime was toppled.

In Iraq, where there are no warlords and people feel they have the expertise to run the country themselves, the US insists on moving in and staying.

It has excluded Iraq's bestknown forces from consultations on forming a central government. The Islamic Da'wa party, which was founded in 1957 and suffered repression under Saddam in the early 1980s, was not invited. Nor was the Iraqi Communist party, which also lost thousands of its activists in the old regime's prisons. Both opposed the US attack. The communists are weaker than they once were, as a result of decades of propaganda that they reject Islam. But they are part of the Iraqi spectrum which needs to be recognised.

Washington's biggest omission is its refusal to make overtures to Iraq's clergy. The Shia Muslims in particular are enjoying a strong revival and cannot be pushed aside.

It is still very early days in any revolutionary movement that might be going to finally put an end to Western imperialism's class-domination of the planet with all of its disgusting inequalities and injustices.

And there is still a massive way to go just in Iraq itself to find any CONVINCING long-term anti-imperialist POLITICAL philosophy which could start a serious world movement for credibly reorganising the planet along universal socialist cooperative lines. And as the last EPSR discussed, the fake-'left' remnants from the former world Communist movement (both Stalinist-Revisionist and Trotskyite-Revisionist) still all resolutely ignore the now obvious need for an openly REVOLUTIONARY movement to be built again at last, - one CONSCIOUSLY and LOUDLY accepting IN ADVANCE that imperialism's vicious, miserable degeneracy into warmongering can only possibly end by the REVOLUTIONARY overthrow of the bourgeois "democracy" racket ("parliamentary democracy", which will only ever be controlled by monopoly propaganda and monopoly money).

BUT spontaneous resistance to imperialism is plainly not going to stop growing now, and it is inevitably bound to start educating a new world revolutionary movement in the very near future.

That will lead to a mass of international polemical debates such as the world has never known before; but Marxist-Leninist science has already provided the basis for resolving successfully most of these arguments.

It only remains for anti-imperialists to keep up the fight for a SERIOUS POLEMICAL STRUGGLE to at last be accepted by the labour movement (to replace the sectarian idiocy whereby "larger" or "more important" sects will never mix-it with challenging ideas supported by "smaller" or "less important" sects for fear of "giving them publicity", etc, etc).

These sad demagogues and religious freemasonries dominate the entire fake-'left' and only observe the narrowest pecking orders wherein one guru-group might just occasionally cross swords with one or two "comparable" guru-groups just for sectarian point-scoring purposes, but serious philosophical debate (about the whole dramatic epoch the world is living through) seldom gets touched upon.

It remains obvious, but has to be constantly repeated, that this sectarian paralysis carries on dominating because of the still unresolved CRUCIAL historical questions of what the world's first 86 years of building workers states has taught mankind.

Still ranging all the way from the sickest Stalin worship to the most demented anti-communism, the entire fake-'left' justly continues being scorned or viewed suspiciously by the working class because of its TOTAL inability to come up with any remotely coherent, convincing, or believable world philosophy, - still all peddling the same old "left reformist" fantasies and deception that kept the proletariat deluded by the promises of "left" Labourism for more than a century.

The "rank-and-file democracy" syndicalism of the World Social Forum groupies and the Reclaim-the-streets anarchists is currently lamenting (in complete bewilderment) the "loss" of some "dream" they were courting in Argentina:

With all of their institutions in crisis, hundreds of thousands of Argentinians went back to democracy's first principles: neighbours met on street corners and formed hundreds of popular assemblies. They created trading clubs, health clinics and community kitchens. Close to 200 abandoned factories were taken over by their workers and run as democratic cooperatives. Everywhere you looked, people were voting.

These movements, though small, were dreaming big: national constituent assemblies, participatory budgets, elections to renew every post in the country. And they had broad appeal: a March 2002 newspaper poll found that 50% of Buenos Aires residents believed that the neighbourhood assemblies were "a way forward, a new way of governing".

One year later, the movements continue, but barely a trace is left of the wildly hopeful idea that they could some day run the country. Instead, the protagonists of the December revolts have been relegated to a "governability problem" to be debated by politicians and the IMF.

So how did it happen? How did a movement that was building a whole new kind of democracy - direct, decentralised, accountable - give up the national stage to a pair of discredited has-beens? In Argentina, this marginalisation process had three clear stages, each of which has plenty to teach activists hoping to turn protest into sustained political change.

Stage one: Annoy and Conquer. The first blow to the new movements came from the old left as sectarian parties infiltrated the assemblies and tried to drive through their own dogmatic programmes. Pretty soon you couldn't see the sun for the red and black party flags, and a process that drew its strength from the fact that it was normal - something your aunt or teacher participated in - turned into something marginal, not action but "activism': Thousands returned to their homes to escape the tedium.

Stage two: Withdraw and Isolate. The second blow came in response. Rather than challenge sectarian efforts at co-option head-on, many of the assemblies and unemployed unions turned inward and declared themselves "autonomous". While the parties' plans verged on scripture, some autonomists turned not having a plan into its own religion: so wary were they of co-option that any proposal to move from protest to policy was immediately suspect. These groups continue to do remarkable neighbourhood-based work, building bread ovens, paving roads and challenging their members to let go of their desire for saviours. Yet they have also become far less visible than they were a year ago, less able to offer the country a competing vision for its future. 

Stage three: Just Don't Do It. Argentina's screaming and potbanging went on and on and on. Just when everyone was hoarse and exhausted, the politicians emerged from hiding to call an election. Incredulous, the social movements made a decision not to participate in the electoral farce - to ignore the churnings of the IMF and build "counter-powers" instead.

Fair enough. But as the elections took on a life of their own, the neighbourhood assemblies began to seem out of step. People weren't able to vote for the sentiment behind December 19 and 20, either by casting a ballot or boycotting but demanding deeper democratic reforms, since no concrete platform or political structure emerged from those early, heady discussions. They thus left the legitimacy of the elections dangerously uncontested, and the dream of a new kind of democracy utterly unrepresented.

Without being there, it is very hard to know exactly what opportunities have been missed in Argentina, - or might yet be slowly emerging.

But this Klein comment obviously misses plenty, deliberately failing to deal with the question of dictatorial state power, the oldest in the book.

Either the working class has it, or the bourgeois capitalist establishment retains it, - one or the other.

By all means let people push participatory democracy as far and fast as they wish inside a workers state, but state power has to be captured FIRST, or remain the IMMEDIATE OBJECTIVE, - otherwise the whole business of "cooperative control of their own lives", etc, etc, etc, is rapidly rendered TOTALLY MEANINGLESS.

Judging (with some difficulty) from what little crucial classwar observation is contained within these Pulitzer-seeking descriptions, this need for proletarian dictatorship either never got debated at all, or so terrified the petty bourgeois-minded in being mentioned, that all recollection of it has had to be instantly expunged from the memory (and the record). 

Obviously, the IMF's electoral platform SHOULD have been used to the full, - to agitate for a revolutionary WORKERS STATE to be formed by seizing the power as soon as possible.

Equally obviously, the failure to challenge the traditional Peronist incumbents of "parliamentary democracy" (the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) will have partly arisen out of a TOTAL LACK OF any really serious CLASS-WAR understanding of Argentina's diabolical economic and social crisis.

Exactly what kind of "old left, red-flag, dogmatic programmed, sectarian party activism" was being dismissed here is not clear, but the "whole new kind of democracy" as the alternative rings a bell, the utopian socialism which the great cooperator and trade unionist Robert Owen inspired the world with (but ultimately failed with) from 1800 to 1829 in the cotton industry at New Lanark Mills.

Such community life will one day be universal, but there is no way that it can ever survive successfully in today's world in competition with capitalist state power, or would ever be allowed to.

What does Klein think would be American imperialism's reaction to a worldwide movement for worker-cooperative ownership of the whole international economy?

It hardly needs recalling that Robert Owen was proud to call himself a communist to reach the right answer.

But when this "alternative" anti-imperialism does have the good sense to dispute with the capitalist system on its bourgeois democracy electoral platform, this is still invariably done only by offering "rank and file socialism", - rarely, if ever, by denouncing "parliaments" as the utterly and incurably fraudulent covers for continued capitalist state dictatorship.

The Scottish Socialist Party is the latest example to hit the headlines, but a clause-by-clause analysis of its rotten reformist delusions (or its even worse national-chauvinist nonsense) is hardly even necessary.

The posturing by one of the deputies with a great Burns poem instead of (or prior to, in fact) swearing the degenerate oath of Allegiance to the Queen says it all.

Burns' hymn to the equality of man is never less than magnificent to hear; but in front of a nation-wide microphone in May 2003, how can a Burns song take precedence (as a protest) over some detailed words denouncing the utterly ludicrous degeneracy of the British imperialist state's current warmongering Nazi infamy, and its total insult to the interests of ordinary people everywhere???

But this SSP cheap nationalism is wholly acceptable to the Socialist Alliance (since they don't denounce it).

The SWP are in alliance with the SSP directly in Scotland, and other cheerleaders for the SA anti-communist anti-theory opportunism are currently urging the Alliance in England to become a card-carrying anti-communist anti-theory party "so that we can copy what the SSP are doing in Scotland", i.e. becoming a would be "independent" Scottish capitalist state's tame-'left' parliamentary stooges. The SA shuns perspectives  "on principle".

Unbelievably, the SLP "alternative', to this fake-'left' Alliance crap is managing to make itself look even more ridiculous and irrelevant.

Passing EPSR reference has already been made to the SLP Youth paper "Spark" trying to confuse working class opposition to imperialist warmongering against Iraq by pretending that such hostility needed to cheer a Saddam Hussein victory in order to be really bold, sincere, and effective.

In the aftermath of the Baghdad nationalist posturer's farcical capitulation to US imperialist occupation without a fight, the ideological origins of this juvenile nonsense in the cultist museum-Stalinism of Lalkar and the SLP deserve further exposure. The Spark's misplaced anti-imperialist enthusiasm declared:

Today in Iraq, as the imperialist forces of the US and Britain prepare for a bloody war, Saddam Hussein is leading his peoples struggle against these mighty foes. Saddam Hussein, along with the Palestinian people, is at the forefront of anti-imperialist resistance in the Middle East and yet we are continually told by many of those in the left wing movement that we should not support him. There is no denying that he has been an outright reactionary in the past, that he has been a stooge of US imperialism, that he has killed many of our people. But is it not true that he is now preparing to fight our biggest enemy? Is it not true that a victory for him and his people is a victory for all those who fight against imperialism?

It is the Revisionist premise for this embarrassing guesswork which is worth examining, not the humiliation as such for would-be sincere anti-imperialist leadership. Mistakes in understandings and assessments can be made by the Revolutionary Party at any time, - and they need to be owned up to as quickly as possible, analysed fully, and corrected.

But what is so paradoxically interesting about this new Stalinist farce, - repeating never-corrected Revisionist-Stalinist theoretical flaws which run right through the whole misleading "left-reformist" doctrine of Lalkar and SLP opportunism, - is that it comes in an article which quotes extensively from some not-too-bad rehash of sound Leninist science on the national question produced by Stalin himself in "Foundations of Leninism".

This is routine for the general continued worship of Stalin which this sick sectarian corner of politics still clings to.

But the one quote from that book which rarely gets an airing is the most vital one for the whole understanding of 20th century world politics, and runs as follows:

I need not speak of the fear the parties of the Second International have of self-criticism, of their habit of concealing their mistakes, of glossing over sore questions, of covering up their shortcomings by a deceptive show of well-being which blunts living thought and prevents the Party from deriving revolutionary training from its own mistakes, - a habit which was ridiculed and pilloried by Lenin. Here is what Lenin wrote about self-criticism in proletarian parties in his pamphlet "Left-Wing" Communism:

"The attitude of a political party towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it in practice fulfils its obligations towards its class and the. toiling masses. Frankly admitting a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analyzing the conditions which led to it, and thoroughly discussing the means of correcting it-that is the earmark of a serious party; that is the way it should perform its duties, that is the way it should educate and train the class, and then the masses:'

It is tragic that the catastrophic Revisionist mess that Stalinism eventually turned into should still be misleading the anti-imperialist movement into identifying with Saddam Hussein's rotten nationalist opportunism as an acceptable end possible) "solution" to US monopoly-capitalism's new warmongering era.

It is EXACTLY where this crap guru-worshipping petty-bourgeois mentality went wrong in the first place.

The Cult of the Individual was the abandonment of all objectivity and criticism over a 30-year period of properly-lauded Soviet workers state triumphalism in which, however, Stalin began to make more and more GROTESQUE theoretical howlers.

Only an outlook akin to blind religious faith (a petty-bourgeois outlook of immature individualist conceit) can still fail to see the origins of Gorbachev's ultimate liquidationist insanity of "building our common European home in peaceful coexistence with the whole world" in the Stalinist anti-revolutionary programme for the "peaceful road to socialism" based on the "ultimate victory of socialism in competition with imperialism which can no longer manage any sustained economic expansion in the new conditions of vast Socialist Camp extension post 1945" (paraphrasing Stalin's ultimate 1952 theoretical disaster "The Economic Problems of Socialism" - for full textual analysis and extended polemics, see EPSR Perspectives 2002).

But the real joke is that Stalin is still worshipped NOW in the same half-brained way that led to all the trouble in the first place, e.g. quoting from "Foundations of Leninism" but totally ignoring the crucial truth about learning from mistakes, just as in real Third International history, the USSR's continued achievements were all correctly lauded, but the ever-increasing world-revolutionary THEORETICAL nonsense which Stalin was coming out with was either quickly conveniently forgotten about (as were the increasing disasters it led to), or else was ludicrously turned into yet more excuse for further demented hero-worship of "our great leader Stalin", etc, etc.

The attempt to blame Kruschev's late-1950s rule for the setbacks, difficulties, failures or disasters that hurt, damaged, or destroyed various victims of theoretically mistaken Stalinist polices (China 1927; Germany 1933; collectivisation 1930s; Spanish Civil War 1936-39; disbelief in German blitzkrieg 1941; agreement to let imperialism occupy West Berlin postwar 1945; letting imperialism re-occupy communist-liberated Greece 1945-49; supporting Zionist-imperialist colonisation of Palestine 1947; approving the "peaceful road to socialism" counter-revolutionary bollocks post 1945; refusing to fight in Korea 1950; pressuring China to curb world revolutionary enthusiasm post-1950; etc, etc, for scores more examples) - - - - is simply insane,-- a form of religious-faith insanity.

But while ALL of these vexed and complex questions MUST be polemicised to a satisfactory understanding from the perspective of a future successful world socialist revolutionary movement's needs some time soon, - for the moment the conflict for agreeing on a party of revolutionary theory can continue to concentrate on just two related issues:- the undoubted fact that the Revisionist CPSU,- bequeathed by Stalin after 30 years total dominance & backed by a similarly Stalin-created world Revisionist movement,- effectively agreed to liquidate the Soviet workers state and the international communist movement after 1990 in favour of "market economics" and the "peaceful road to socialism"; - coupled with Stalin's 1952 summation in "Economic Problems" of his belief that only imperialist war-provocations had to be avoided in order for the Socialist Camp to simply outperform "non-expanding" imperialism into capitalism's total collapse in due course.

But even getting the guru-worshippers to debate these issues, let alone even consider that Stalin might have made a series of catastrophic anti-revolutionary retreats in his 30-year career, culminating in this TOTAL Revisionist disaster, - is as impossible now as it was inside the communist movement in Moscow's hayday.

The SLP Youth delusions about Saddam Hussein's "anti-imperialist" credentials flow directly out of this paralysed inability to discuss Stalinism's ultimate bankruptcy.

Moscow's weak-minded determination to discourage "revolutionary provocations", which led the mighty German CP to sleepwalk into total annihilation in 1933 and the Indonesian CP (even bigger and even more impressive) to do the same in 1965, - never stopped pretending that anti-imperialist nationalism (e.g. the Sukarno regime pre-1965 in Indonesia) was just as good for the eventual triumph of world socialism (via the Soviet camp winning the peaceful competition with the imperialist camp) as all-the-way revolutionary socialist regimes.

In such Revisionist thinking, once Saddam had stopped being a totally tame stooge of US imperialist policy in the 1970s and had started doing arms deals with the Soviet Union, - then nothing further should be anticipated than the continued onward triumphal march of Moscow's international "anti-imperialist" coalition of the Socialist Camp, the Non-Aligned states of national-liberation, and the world communist movement. 

The obvious total collapse of this Revisionist nonsense post-1990 still cannot register with Stalin worship sectarianism. Naturally, in the world of such long-standing gradualist delusions, such spontaneous "anti-imperialism" resistance (as Saddamism had evolved into under decaying monopoly capitalist pressure would "inevitably go the whole hog one day into total socialist defiance and independence"; - just like it was supposed to happen the whole world over in the good old days of Stalinism. What sad rot.

Leninist science, freed from Revisionist blinkers, would surely have reached the completely different conclusion that the opportunist tyrant Saddam (admitted by SLP Youth) was first and foremost never to be identified as anything but TOTALLY UNRELIABLE, - a petty bourgeois class-treachery, anti-theory disaster just waiting to happen, - going completely rotten just like so many other Moscow Revisionism protégés of the treacherous "peaceful road/peaceful coexistence" era.

Any defeat or setback for the imperialist occupation policy, -by any means, - was the only sensible perspective to educate the world revolutionary movements understanding with, concentrating on the CLASS ENEMY as the only fixed point in this swirling, anti-theory, anti-communist chaos that has been unleashed on the world by the ultimate failure of Stalinist Revisionism, - and encouraging no confidence whatever in any chance defiance of monopoly imperialism that opportunist nationalism might produce (but didn't under Saddam, - but might usefully yet, under the Shias). 	

In Iraq as everywhere, an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY is a party of world revolutionary perspective, replacing the collapse into Stalinist Revisionist nonsense of the Third International from the 1920s onwards, - and ONLY such a party can be built on and relied-upon, in Iraq or anywhere else, including Britain. 

Scargill was the last hope to start off building such a party but it rapidly collapsed into the silliest, guru-worship, anti-theory, chauvinistic opportunism, - a complete farce of back-stabbing philistinism, with Lalkar as its museum-Stalinist willing accomplice. And the silliest thing in all this is that the formula for building the "party of a new type", - a Leninist party of revolutionary theory, - is, literally, an open book (or rather 100 volumes of Marxist Leninist science) which all can read, interpret, and try to apply to modern conditions just as readily as EPSR supporters keep trying. But two crucial elements of Leninist science, - the CRUCIAL NEED to always publicly own-up-to and learn-from inevitable occasional mistakes in understandings and assessments, on both large and small matters; --- and the CRUCIAL NEED to advance understanding by non-stop polemical struggle, inside the party first and foremost, but taking on ALL COMERS outside the party too, -- are intolerable to the small-minded guru-conceit of the cliques and sects which currently dominate the fake-'left'.

But the great global philosophical debate is coming whether these self-serving opportunists and anti-communists of every persuasion like it or not.

That freak show of 	self-serving conceit Clare Short is solid opportunism, but could become, for example, that insignificant or unpleasant piece of grit or rubbish, the shifting of which sets off the whole avalanche of pent-up anti-imperialist hatred now swirling all round the nasty Blairites' demented mission:

This wasn't just a cool assessment of the story so far; it was hatred, scorn, revenge and contempt, and it came welling up from the core of her being.

"It is the style and organisation of our government which is undermining trust and straining party loyalty in a way that is entirely unnecessary ... accompanied by control freak problems that have created many of the problems undermining the success of our public sector reforms," she said.

"Diktats in favour of increasingly. bad policy initiatives come down from on high ...

"Those who are wielding power are not accountable and are not scrutinised; she went on, the Brummie accent giving her a slight whining tone, as a circular saw. Think James Bond, legs apart, strapped to the work bench by whichever evil megalomaniac it was in that film. How could these appalling people get away with all this? 

"They have the powers of a presidential system with the automatic majority of a parliamentary system. "Whew! What an indictment! No wonder she could bear to serve in such a dreadful and damaging administration for scarcely more than six years! 

By this time even her natural supporters were beginning to wonder. Had she gone just a teeny-weeny little bit too far? And since the Machiavelli, the poisonous spider sitting in the centre of this web of undeserved and misdirected power, is the prime minister, how is it that he successfully begged her - several times over the past year, she claimed - to stay in her job?

But in spite of his loyalty to her, it was for him she saved the unkindest swing of the ball, the one meant to bring the chandelier crashing down. "To the prime minister I would say that he has achieved great things since 1997, but paradoxically, he is in danger of destroying his legacy as he becomes increasingly obsessed by his place in history"

The man sounds like Blofeld. It was not hard to imagine the roof of Downing St opening, klaxons sounding, as the nuclear-tipped missile rises up, trained on Birmingham Ladywood.

On the other hand, we might have forgotten the whole thing by the end of the week.

But now or whenever this crisis-rotten and out-of-date imperialist system does decline towards TOTAL chaos and confusion, building the openly-polemical party of revolutionary theory will remain the one great issue facing the working class. This is the Leninism that is needed, - minus its ultimate Stalinist confusions added on. Build Leninism. EPSR

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

• Actors Harry Belafonte and Danny Glover in Havana • U.S. and Latin American cinema compared  • Clear anti-war position

WHEN two well-known actors like Danny Glover and Harry  Belafonte are in front of you, the natural expectation is to talk about films, but these two double as social activists. Good actors they may be, but they also know that everything is powerfully linked.

Glover has come to the Havana Film Festival on two previous occasions; he told the press that it was a wonderful opportunity to make immediate contact with Cubans, their culture, music and art, highlighting the truly exceptional opening of Manuel Mendive's latest exhibition at the capital's Fine Arts Museum.

The actor explained that here in Havana, he had understood the need for independent filmmaking, the beauty of Latin American cinema, and the possibility of people beginning to unite to relate the "universality of stories that there are to tell."

To do this, he suggested we must find ways to help these efforts because "we can't wait for Hollywood to open its doors to us," we have to discover how to tell these stories and get them distributed.

His friend Belafonte however has only "missed four out of 24 festivals." He confessed that the first time he came it was out of "curiosity and fascination," wondering how Cubans had managed to organize a festival and was moved by "the seriousness, cinematic level and intense debates." Now he returns "out of a sense of duty, but with the expectation of learning something more every time."

Referring to art, the famous actor/singer commented that U.S. festivals were like stepping back to "the dinosaur age"; for him Hollywood produces "films that educate and inspire less and less." 

In comparison, Belafonte has found the "highest movie-making standards at festivals in Havana, Cartagena and Brazil, where cinema is an art showing more sensitivity than just aiming at the market."

In reply to a question on the recent Artists Manifesto against the war on Iraq, Glover answered that one of the document's main protagonists is Mia Farrow, and that he himself had signed it. He explained that it concerns artists, filmmakers and writers opposed to so-called pre-emptive strikes who call themselves 'Not in Our Name'.

"My position on the war is very clear, above all for the impact that it will have on women and children in Iraq who are already suffering the consequences of sanctions."

Glover assured that there is a growing anti-war movement in the United States that includes trade unions, universities and community groups, "in a battle that will continue until our anti-war voices are heard."

In support of this idea, Belafonte stressed that in his opinion, Bush's government is maintaining a policy "that doesn't identify with the interests of the U.S. people," but that the September 11 events "that sowed fear in their hearts" served the administration "to extend its imperialist, economic and political domination all over the planet."

Belafonte observed that Bush's government has mobilized all the media into a pro-war propaganda campaign. He specifically referred to CNN - which he called the War Channel, remarking that if at one time it was a responsible network then that was no longer the case - Fox News, plus Rupert Murdoch's group.

He paused to mention cinema's effectiveness in this type of propaganda, recalling what happened with films during the Second World War and how "today we find the same mechanisms" with seven corporations owning agencies, the press and the studios.

"Many of my friends are journalists," added Belafonte, "and they tell me that there has never been as much censorship as now, and if they rebel then they will just lose their jobs.

"There are many reporters in Afghanistan, the Middle East and Colombia but censorship comes from the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the Bush administration. The U.S. people don't know the truth," the reason why there is an urgent need to denounce such acts.

Nevertheless, the most promising sign for Belafonte is the growing awareness of this problem in the United States and that many people are beginning to raise their voices against that policy.

He believes that "the U.S. people are receiving support from millions of people all over the world in this struggle" and mentioned the situation in Argentina, Colombia ("where Colin Powell arrived with a huge sum of dollars to aid government violence"), the Caribbean states, (that are vigorously speaking out against this policy), Mexico and young Europeans.

Resistance exists, and when the press refuses to inform then we have take every opportunity to tell the truth," pronounced Harry Belafonte.

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

• Two U.S. documentarists reveal the fraud • Official documents, interviews, investigations

"AFTER the 2000 presidential elections, the recount and the Supreme Court decision, we felt a tremendous frustration, we had no power, but we knew what to do, to expose what happened in our media: the cinema."

In this way U.S. director Richard Ray Perez explained to Granma International the reasons that led him to film the documentary Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election in March 2001, shown at the 24th International Festival of New Latin American Cinema.

"The first thing we did was to investigate in Florida and we discovered a large number of documents that confirmed a conspiracy to give the presidency to George give which was set in motion two, years before the election."

Perez continued: "We went to Florida because the problem was concentrated there, you have to remember that its governor is Jeb Bush, the younger brother, and that Katherine Harris, the secretary of state, had been Bush' electoral campaign official in that state.

"We were able to document," he affirmed, "that Harris - subsequently well reimbursed by the president 'elect' - ordered erased some 50,000-90,000 names, more than half of them African Americans.

"The majority of them were Democratic Party voters and it was not true that that they were all ex-convicts, so much so that we found the name of a Protestant minister."

One of the strongest images of the 50-minute documentary is a still of one of the participants in the protest that interrupted the manual recount of the votes in Dade County. The protesters were Republican Party employees, because they give their names and even their positions.

The filmmakers also utilized the Supreme Court decision that finally granted the presidency to Bush. "For example, two of the sons of Judge Anthony Scallia and the wife of Judge Clarence Thomas worked for Bush himself (they were likewise handsomely rewarded with senior positions in the new administration). 

"One of our conclusions," Perez told Granma International, "is that the justice is not done in the U.S. courts, not even in the Supreme Court. It is not about justice, but who can manipulate the law, and that's why judgments are partial to the most powerful."

Directors Perez and Joan Sekler interviewed over 100 journalists, investigators and analysts, who gave their opinions on what is proven to be an electoral fraud; "which reinforces the view that Bush is not a legitimate president.

"Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election arrives at a final and dramatic conclusion," Perez stressed to our weekly, "that the elections are an example of the fact that democracy in the United States is an illusion."	 o

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

Jenin was loneliness, helplessness, emptiness; there was nothing anyone could do for the locals. Are there any words that can be said to a child who has just found a human leg in the debris?

TWELVE MONTHS have gone by of total indifference and silence on the part of the international community.

Exactly a year ago the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) launched what is still regarded as the most horrific assault on Palestinian civilians since the Sabra and Chatila massacre in 1982. What happened last year in the West Bank, and especially in the town of Jenin and in its refugee camp, was condemned as a crime against humanity. 

During Operation Defensive Shield, as the attack was codenamed by the IDF, more than 600 Palestinians were killed across the West Bank, thousands were arrested (the vast majority of them are still imprisoned) and hundreds are still missing and in many cases their bodies have never been found.

The rape of Jenin lasted for more than two weeks but the butchery of innocent civilians has never ceased as ordinary people, medical personnel, UN officers and peace activists have all being shot regardlessly by the IDF.

The assault on Jenin began the night of 2 April 2002. For two days, Israeli artillery shelled the refugee camp from all directions. Then the shooting from the helicopters, often operating in pairs, began in a blaze of fire. It barely stopped over the next four days; eye witnesses counted over 400 missiles being fired in less than four hours.

Using a satellite, the IN had outlined in red the positions of 1,100 houses. Sometimes the helicopter pilots got a random number and opened fire indiscriminately. The IDF tried to get the infantry in but because of armed resistance, the plan failed. The Israelis suffered 23 casualties, although the real death toll might well be much higher.

In retaliation, they razed the centre of the refugee camp to the ground, fired upon hospitals and ambulances, bulldozed hundreds of houses.

IN was still shooting, even if armed resistance had been wiped out in the previous days, and Operation Defensive Shield was far from over. It was a ghost place, you could hardly see the sky through a thick cloud of dust, ashes and smoke from burning buildings and rubbish set alight, floating in a deafening silence. It was like entering a nightmare.

A family took me into their home to avoid army patrols; their child, zig-zagging to avoid the bullets of an IDF sniper, showed me the bodies of two children, wrapped in white plastic bags and left at a corner. When I returned to Jenin in July 2002, the family's house was a pile of debris, as the IDF bulldozers had pulverised the district. Twelve months after the attack, I still have to find out whether they are dead or alive.

Into a house which had been raked by helicopter missiles. There were three bodies in a room, one of them was decapitated but the head was nowhere to be seen. Fat flies filled the rays of light filtering through the holes made by the rockets.

Another body was partially covered with the pages from an Arab paper: the image of a smiling child on the paper advert was on his stomach; his arms were opened like Christ on the Cross and his mouth was filled with insects, his teeth as white as snow contrasting against the black swollen face.

The old woman took her quilt off, she sat on the debris, threw dust over her head and started crying.

I recall the old railway station at the bottom of the camp, which once linked Jenin to Haifa; like the mosque it had been turned into a morgue and four injured people were crying for help in a corner. The air was saturated with the smell of human flesh burning; body parts were stuck to the wall. Throughout the assault, medical staff were prevented by the IDF from reaching the wounded in a calculated policy which meant many people were left bleeding to death.

Jenin was loneliness, helplessness, emptiness; there was nothing anyone could do for the locals. Are there any words that can be said to a child who has just found a human leg in the debris? Is it possible to describe the horror of seeing the blood gushing from a woman who is bleeding to death in her daughters' arms?

Twelve months have passed since that assault on the Palestinian people and no one has been accused over the slaughter in Jenin: Brigadier Eyal Shlein, divisional commander for the IDF operation in the Jenin area, has since been promoted; Shaul Mofaz, the then chief of staff of all armed forces, is now Israel's minister for defence; the Sabra and Chatila instigator, Ariel Sharon, is still Israeli prime minister.

The silence following the war crimes perpetrated in Jenin was ensured by the lifting of the siege around Yasser Arafat's compound in Ramallah. Four months after the attack, the UN finally published a report without any of their officer's being allowed into Jenin. Amnesty International, if possible, did even worse, with its findings (54 Palestinian deaths) related only to the refugees registered with UNRWA (the UN agency for refugees). These figures did not include all those from surrounding villages, Jenin city or those not registered but still living in the camp itself and the bodies which have never been found: crushed by the tanks, spirited away, burnt out, even booby-trapped, buried in mass graves or bulldozed in the sewage system.

When I returned to Jenin last summer, 150 bodies had already been identified.

Although the world has been unanimous in accusing Israel of a long catalogue of war crimes, human rights abuses and breaches of the Geneva Convention (both the UN and AI report confirm the accusations), the plunder of Jenin was silenced and put aside. But victims of human rights violations should be entitled to justice. Or have we really forgotten Jenin's mass executions, its children blown to pieces, the handicapped people bulldozed in their wheelchairs, the use of civilians and often kids as human shields, the torture inflicted on those caught and deported?

Maybe the search for the truth should start from the simple fact that this vicious act of evil was deliberately planned well in advance (it was made public in December 2001). Every politician and news agency in the world was aware of Sharon's plan for the re-occupation of the Palestinian Territories. 

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

The killing of Pat Finucane. Who supplied the gun that killed Pat Finucane?
RUC special agent William Stobie. Who shot Pat Finucane? RUC special branch agent Ken Barrett. Who was the head of the UDA which killed Pat Finucane. RUC special branch agent Tommy Little. Who supplied the intelligence. RUC agent Brian Nelson.

For nationalists and republicans, however, the 20-page summary report merely provides confirmation of what they have known since the mid-1980s; that the British state, in the form of British Army intelligence and the RUC Special Branch, was conspiring with loyalism to murder Catholics in the north of Ireland. According to Stevens, this "unlawful involvement of agents in murder implies that the security forces sanction killings".

In the report, Stevens says that his enquiries "highlighted collusion, the wilful failure to keep records, the absence of accountability, the withholding of intelligence and evidence, and the extreme of agents being involved in murder". 

British agents, he says, "were allowed to operate without effective control and to participate in terrorist crimes". These acts "have meant that people have been killed or seriously injured". The report also concludes that "nationalists were known to be targeted but were not properly warned or protected".

Throughout this latest enquiry, which began in April 1999 and was restricted to the murders of Pat Finucane and Brian Adam Lambent, Stevens says that, in common with his two previous investigations into collusion, he recognised that he was "being obstructed". This obstruction, he adds, "was cultural in its nature and widespread". 

He also notes "with considerable disquiet" the late disclosure of relevant documents by the MoD during the course of all his investigations. For example, the team investigating the activities of the British agent Brian Nelson asked to examine particular documents "but received written statements that they did not exist". These documents were eventually recovered and, according to the report, the dates on them show that they did exist when they were requested.

Stevens says that he is currently investigating "whether the concealment of documents and information was sanctioned and, if so, at what levels of the organisations holding them". It has been necessary, he adds, "to interview the same witnesses a number of times because of the failure to provide complete information at the first time of asking".

The report also mentions what it refers to as "an allegation" that senior RUC officers (one of whom, according to some reports, was Ronnie Flanagan in his previous incarnation as head of Special Branch) briefed the then Home Office minister, Douglas Hogg, that some solicitors were unduly sympathetic to the cause of the IRA". 

On 17 January 1989, Hogg chose to repeat these sentiments in the British House of Commons and, despite the intervention of other Members who begged him to retract the comments because they placed lives in danger, refused to withdraw them. Weeks later, Pat Finucane was shot dead by the UDA.

Of Hogg's decision to make his comments in the way that he did, Stevens says that "to the extent that they were based on information passed by the RUC, they were not justifiable, and the enquiry concludes that the minister was compromised".

The report goes on to say that during the enquiry into Brian Nelson, whose function as agent 6137 was to guide loyalist murder gangs towards the "right" targets, including Pat Finucane, his so-called "intelligence dump" was seized by his FRU handlers before the Stevens team were to arrest him and Nelson himself was warned by his handlers to leave home the night before the planned arrest operation. "Information was leaked to loyalist paramilitaries and the press," says the report, and the operation was aborted. 

Shortly afterwards, a fire destroyed the Stevens' team incident room. The fire, says Stevens, "has never been adequately investigated". He believes it was "a deliberate act of arson".

In his conclusion, Stevens says that during the course of this third investigation, his team made 144 arrests, of which 94 have led to convictions. To date, 57 separate reports have been submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions and are under consideration. It is in these files that the full details of all three investigations are contained, running to some 3,000 pages.

Stevens also concludes that he has uncovered enough evidence "to lead me to believe that the murders of Patrick Finucane and Brian Adam Lambert could have been prevented. I also believe that the RUC investigation of Patrick Finucane's murder should have resulted in the early arrest and detention of his killers. I conclude there was collusion in both murders and the circumstances surrounding them."

Although the Stevens summary report vindicates what nationalists and republicans have consistently said for at least 15 years, it remains an inadequate response to the issue of collusion. The terms of reference and the restrictions imposed on the investigating team means that some of the most important questions were not even addressed, much less answered.

For example, the report does not mention the head of the FRU, Brigadier Gordon Kerr, who was interviewed under caution by the Stevens team. Kerr is now the British military attaché in Beijing and in recent days the MoD have denied that he has been suspended from duty following the publication of Stevens' report. Although it is believed that Kerr is included in the 57 files that have been sent to the DPP, there is no suggestion of it in the report. At the trial of Brian Nelson, Kerr gave evidence on his behalf from behind a screen and was identified only as 'Colonel J'. He praised Nelson and claimed that he had helped to save the lives of 200 people. 

The Stevens' enquiry team has effectively discredited his claims, saying they found evidence in only two. cases where there was any suggestion at all that Nelson's information had prevented a killing.

There is no indication as to who any of the files submitted to the DPP refer to or indeed whether any of the individuals concerned are still employed by the RUC, the British Army or intelligence agencies. Despite Hugh Orde's recent claim that most Special Branch officers involved have now retired, there are suspicions that a significant number of them still retain senior positions. The report also neglects to address directly the role of Ronnie Flanagan as head of Special Branch during the height of the department's collusion with loyalists.

The report does not talk about how much members of the British Government, including Douglas Hogg, knew about the FRU and Special Branch or how much of their activities were the result of political decision making at the highest level. Crucially, although Stevens notes the implication that the security forces sanction killings", he stops short of addressing himself to the issue of whether this sanction actually originated from outside the crown forces and from within the British Government - as many in the nationalist community, including the Finucane family, suspect it did.

Further, the report fails to make any mention whatsoever of other known victims of collusion, including uninvolved Catholics who were murdered as a direct result of information Nelson and others received from British Intelligence and then passed on to loyalist murder gangs. 

"This report is widely believed to be some sort of 'systems analysis'; an examination of what went wrong in Northern Ireland and how that can be prevented in the future. On this level also, Stevens' work is flawed. Nothing went wrong. The 'system' worked exactly as intended and, in the British government's eyes, it worked perfectly. The policy in Northern Ireland was - and may yet be - to harness the killing potential of loyalist paramilitaries, to increase that potential through additional resources in the shape of weapons and information and to direct those resources against selected targets so that the government could be rid of its enemies.