Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. V.I.Lenin
Economic and Philosophic Science Review
Subscriptions (£25 p.a.) and circulation P&P Bulletin Publications PO Box 50, London SW17 9NL [Post Office Registered.] Phone 0771 2639934 www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk
No 1250 Sept 28 2004                                                                                                                                           25p

Labour conference knives show how badly the neocon MidEast war programme must be going but also how firm a project generalised war must have become for the West since Blair apparently cannot resign, which would at least give the Labourites the temporary electoral relief (they misguidedly think) which they crave. Public opinion on Iraq hostage-taking is even turning against imperialism. But much, much more war is planned by the American Empire. However the terrorist anarchy it is breeding now can only mature towards a real revolutionary answer to imperialism in due course, just as happened at the end of the 19th century. The Blair and Bush Goebbels propaganda will fail to brainwash.

Blair's seemingly-deranged determination to press on with the Bush regime's monstrous worldwide warmongering plans is convincing confirmation of just how deep and serious is this imperialist-system crisis, and at the same time an unmistakable further step towards a historic turning point in the Parliamentary fraud representing "democracy" in Britain.

Surely only because of a hidden underlying agenda of relentlessly escalating American-Empire warmongering plans could Blair continue to defy his co-authors of the New Labour project (which temporarily gave the Parliamentary fraud a new lease of life) by refusing to stand down, and thereby plunge the racket of the "party political system" into an almost guaranteed crisis of electoral uncertainty, almost indefinitely.

Not that standing down would necessarily have got New Labour and the Parliamentary fraud out of the mire for very long because there will still be the problem of how to get "honourably" out of Iraq; how to cope with the bullying juggernaut of US imperialist warmongering determination; and how to cope at all for very long once the "overproduction" crisis of the international imperialist economy breaks down into total and incurable trade war, which certain future is what is feeding the American Empire's relentless warmongering preparations and escalations.

But it is this stubborn NOT standing down which is immediately tearing New Labourites apart.

Their shallow opportunist minds cannot think beyond the electoral spivvery that if Blair apologises, stands down, and takes the can for the Iraq fiasco, then New Labour's claimed all-round "brilliance" and "dominance" on every other issue would see the party romping home again at the next election, "as popular as ever".

But this insane garbage from a now distrusted and despised regime seems not for putting to the test for the moment, since Blair apparently won't stand down.

The largely pointless turmoil that this is throwing the hate-filled "brothers" into tells everything about the entire, shallow, sleazy, rotten "parliamentary government" game in Britain (and throughout the imperialist West generally).

The MPs don't control or decide anything anyway. Parliament is nothing but petty-bourgeois cowardice on the make.

The global imperialist SYSTEM dictates all the important historical directions and developments on Earth.

The French and German bourgeois parliaments annoyed Washington by opportunistically choosing to keep some distance between themselves and the murderous and dodgy blitzkrieg on Iraq. But they won't DO anything about this warmongering imperialist outrage, (still solving none of the system's economic-crisis problems, and racistly preparing the path towards World War III).

And their giant monopoly-capitalist interests are as eagerly hanging round the Middle East for "reconstruction" spoils (mostly exploitation and materials-grabbing rip-offs) as are the American, British, and other giant imperialist corporations.

And they haven't been so sniffy about helping out with the equally outrageous blitzkrieging and occupation of Afghanistan, either, — because it was a less politically controversial stunt, and potentially less likely to go wrong militarily which is always costly.

So a Blair-less New Labour would still be cutting a pretty sorry spectacle of "parliamentary" cowardice and impotence.

And what the castrated Conference itself won't do is lead the way towards where mounting world public opinion REALLY wants to go, — towards not just denouncing this particular hypocritical, treacherous, brutalising, and disastrous war, — but towards denouncing the ENTIRE Western imperialist stance in international affairs since modern history began.

No reformist trade-unionism, — a petty-bourgeois class-collaborating philosophy, — will ever reliably take that stand, no matter how "left" the posturing.

It will only come with the international revival of revolutionary politics.

And in a wholly obscure, unpredictable, and roundabout way, - that is exactly where this complete joke of the West's "war on terrorism", a totally meaningless concept, is now taking the planet.

Exactly as happened at the end of the 19th century, the initial inevitable shallow popularity of anarchist methods of struggle including so-called "terrorism" (i.e. individual armed attacks on individual ruling-class targets as a hoped-for excitative stimulus inspiring mass armed uprisings) will eventually make way for a scientific world movement of revolutionary theory and mass political organisation, – Marxism-Leninism.

This American Empire's renewal of neo-colonial Western imperialist warmongering as the only way to "discipline" the world to make it safe for the very sweet domination of the Earth (a global Superpower control unprecedented in all history) by the US bourgeoisie and its many stooges to continue, — otherwise surely doomed by the insoluble "overproduction" trade-war crisis (see EPSR box) and by the relentless proliferating and strengthening and emboldening of "rogue state" resistance to imperialist bullying everywhere, leading to even deadlier communist revolution eventually, — is paradoxically precisely what will "educate" the world back to Marxism.

And so New Labour, for the moment, will carry on actively adding to the warmongering doom facing the monopoly-capitalist system to which this treacherous opportunist Blair government is otherwise eager to servilely capitulate via privatisation. 

Blair is even now ludicrously comparing the ANTI-imperialist resistance by a variety of different groups and philosophies inside Iraq, with the imperialist blitzkrieg actions of the American Empire's predecessors in the 1930s imperialist-system crisis, — NAZI Germany, — then as strong and as efficient an industrial and scientific power in the world as any, and consciously setting the warmongering pace for all the rest of the system (aided by Japan and Italy and others) because of unresolved genuine historical grievances against the previous Anglo-French-American domination.

Blair's comparing NAZI Germany's, Japan's and Italy's mightiest war machine ever yet assembled at that point in history, easily capable of total world conquest (and almost getting there), with mere handfuls of hunted Arabs, hiding from the patrols of a tiny US expeditionary force in a few dusty bolt-holes in Falluja and some other small provincial localities, is certifiable, and further evidence that the global imperialist system's warmongering leadership is getting desperate and partly beyond caring about how it looks, — simply going all out for putting the boot in and just relying on its unmatchable military superiority to bulldoze things through and fobbing opposition off with wilder and wilder Goebbelsian propaganda and ever more extremist nationalism, just like the NAZIs.

And predictably, the slow dawning of the World War III potentials in this so-far unstoppable NAZI-warmongering nightmare, is causing steady opposition growth and change.

Now for the first time, voices have to be let onto the BBC calling for imperialism to get out of the Middle East completely, not just end this sick and barbaric Iraq re-colonisation.

Other "respectable" commentators have raised deadly queries asking why the joke-"independent" Iraqi government's intended release of prominent women prisoners in the US military's torture jail's was overruled by the American high command, and what had anyone got to hide or be afraid of.

And other "posh" tones loudly suggested the answers, in public.

The racially insultingly nick-named Dr Germ and Chemical Sally, plus many other leading Iraqi scientists who voluntarily gave themselves up to American custody as requested upon the US blitzkriegers arrival, expecting formal interrogation and quick formal release, — are being caged up indefinitely without trial because their sincere testimony intends to be that certainly they worked on chemical and biological weapons BUT ONLY UNTIL THE 1990 U.N. SANCTIONS REGIME PUT AN END TO THE USA'S SALE AND SUPPLY OF THESE ITEMS, PLUS KNOW-HOW, TO THE SADDAM REGIME.

And it is said they have the receipts to prove all this, and that they are eager to show them.

Washington, unsurprisingly, will apparently not even think about these barbaric and illegal incarcerations until after the US presidential election.

What these Iraqi women and scientists are, of course, is hostages, now in dungeons for l⅓ years.

And this crude fate of Rihab Rashid Taha, Huda Salih Amash, and the other Iraqi scientists charged with no crimes other than serving the scientific establishment of their country whose Saddam regime was SUPPORTED by the USA for more than 20 years in the 1970s and 1980s, is now perversely winning attention because of the manufactured imperialist hysteria over the tragic Liverpool hostage Kenneth Bigley.

In a remarkable outburst in the Times, the ex-Tory MP Matthew Parris "respectably" put forward the following quite sacrilegious thoughts:

"Asking for it" expresses a thought which is callous and unfair on so many counts and which, taken literally, is plain wrong; yet which will have occurred to tens of millions of my fellow citizens this week — though few would try to justify it if challenged, and fewer still would dream of expressing in so many words.

Almost none of them, I hope, will have thought that to go abroad and take risks in order to help reconstruction in Iraq is "asking for it". But a good many will have heard the pulpit-thumping and breast-beating of the politicians whose policies caused humbler citizens to take those risks, and wondered whether a period of silence from those politicians might not be called for.

"Bush and Blair ought to have thought of these things before they sent the troops in," many will whisper to themselves in the still of the night. Official exhortations to all of us to redouble our hatred of the perpetrators and to pursue and bring to justice an insurgency of unknown size will ring the hollower for it. People are getting tired of hearing Mr Blair say this is a war against evil; they ask who poked the hornets' nest.

"Asking for it" is a horrible phrase, yet horribly close to the way human beings do think. It is not a maxim known to our law. English law holds that no degree of folly on the part of one party can justify criminal behaviour on the part of another. But "serves you right: you asked for it" is the sort of thing mothers say to their children, and when those children become adults they do not forget.

In no area of human behaviour is this more potent than in the area of aggression. Loathe him as everybody did, few see Saddam Hussein as having picked the fight in Iraq. No wonder Mr Blair tried so hard to get that second UN resolution, for Saddam might then been presented as wilfully breaching it. But in the end he never really committed anything easy to describe as an act of war against Britain or America.

It follows that, deep as our disapproval today of the insurgency in Iraq should be, "but what are we doing there in the first place?" is a question which relentlessly undermines Mr Blair's moral platform.

It is not a question which you often hear when your own side is winning; but when the tide turns it suddenly seems to matter. Even were I not opposed to this war, I would, as a matter of popular psychology, see the general perception that Mr Bush and Mr Blair picked this fight as a huge impediment to their propaganda effort now, and fatal to their attempt to whip up the public rage they need against the insurgency. 

Where (as in the Boer War or arguably the Vietnam War) the impression gains ground that a big guy is picking on a little guy, then if the tables are turned and the little guy fights back, the emotional logic is all against the supposed aggressor, even where he is arguably in the right. The Boers were no angels, but Britain's pursuit of them stuck in the throats even of patriots such as Rudyard Kipling. We had "asked for it".

It will be hard now (I suspect impossible) to turn the insurgency in Iraq into a movement which the British people believe has picked the fight with us.

When, after 9/11, we warned America against any lashing out in ill-directed rage, we were accused of a "crude" distortion of US strategy. When as war looked increasingly inevitable we worried aloud about the Pentagon's approach, we were charged with pandering to "crude" anti-Americanism.

When, as Washington worked on plans for the handover of "sovereignty" in Iraq, we recalled the time-honoured fate of puppet governments, we were accused of making "crude" comparisons with South Vietnam. 

And when we deplored our own Prime Minister's too-ready compliance with the wishes of an American president, we were said to have painted a "crude" caricature of dog owner and poodle.

And so it has come to pass in Iraq. The damn fools said America would lash out, and America did. The damn fools said it would only make terrorism worse, and it has. The damn fools said America would prove a mulish occupying power, and America did. The damn fools said Mr Blair would exert little or no influence on Mr Bush, and nor has he. 

The damn fools said things would get worse, not better, once power was handed to a puppet government in Iraq, and things have.

An even broader and more extravagant challenge to imperialism as a whole also appeared, in the Times:

When Mr Blair calls on all "sensible and decent people" to support him in this new Iraq conflict we can only ask, to what end?

When I was in Baghdad last winter I could travel freely anywhere albeit in conditions of extreme insecurity. That is now out of the question. No soldier, journalist, aid worker, United Nations official, contractor, even middle-class Iraqi thought to be worth a ransom dares to move. Iraq may enjoy some liberties but they are near worthless in a state of anarchy. 

For Mr Blair to boast his invasion as leading to 18 months of progress is nonsense. Utilities are chaotic, aid cannot be distributed, guns are everywhere, electoral registers are non-existent Most regional cities are beyond government control. Last week Baghdad's central thoroughfare, Haifa Street, was said to be "in rebel hands".

Such civil breakdown recalls Beirut in the 1980s and Mogadishu in 1993.

It is clear that nothing short of retirement will ever drive Mr Blair to admit that he has been party to one of the great errors of modern statesmanship. His dwindling band of admirers have retreated into mental dysfunction. Things are getting better, they burble, or rather they must get better. "Failure is not an option," they chant, as if saying made it so. It is all a matter of will, of troops, of votes, of money, or of... any old rubbish will do. Just keep shooting and admit nothing.

The latest Big Lie is that the invasion of Iraq was a noble idea but the Americans screwed it up. The disclosure at the weekend of London's doubts before the invasion suggests otherwise. Britain might indeed have even stayed aloof but for Mr Blair himself. It was he who subscribed to the neo-con "invasion-lite" option. He cannot escape blame, nor can those who bolstered him with polluted intelligence.

Either way, the claim that the goal of removing Saddam Hussein justified any means and any consequence is intellectually absurd. However many people died? However much Muslim hatred is provoked? However much terrorism is engendered round the world?

I thought never to hear again the Vietnam slogan: "We must destroy the village to save the village" Yet what else explains the nightly bombing of Fallujah, supported by Britain?

As long as British and American troops are in Iraq and the Allawi regime depends on them, Iraq is a magnet for every militia and suicide bomber in the Middle East. If Iraq is, as Mr Blair claims, a "crucible of world terror" the flame is the West's military presence. Not for more than a decade has a Baghdad ruler bombed his own cities to suppress dissent That is what Mr Allawi is now doing.

Mr Blair's "new" war strategy is apparently clear. It is to re-establish central power in preparation for elections. This is somehow to be achieved in part by air power, to limit American casualties and because Iraqi troops will not fight.

Then, with a properly elected authority in Baghdad, no Iraqi will feel obliged to attack soldiers or policemen. Western troops can withdraw to barracks. It will not be like last July's phoney "handover". It will be real, and achieved in just four months.

This strategy simply beggars belief. It must rank in British Army history with Balaclava, Gallipoli and Arnhem. Yet it is the only strategy in sight. Such short-termism may be needed for Mr Blair's domestic politics, but it is killing thousands of Iraqis without — we are assured — in any way diminishing the terrorist threat to Western capitals. This is not a new strategy at all.

Britain must get out of Iraq and fast. Its presence with America endangers everyone working to rebuild that country. It is an open secret that British soldiers and officials disagree with American tactics. The fact is that no plausible scenario for peace in Iraq can involve Western troops, however much the regime's placemen fear their departure.

This will not be a seemly colonial withdrawal, as from Ghana or Kenya. It will be a Vietnam, a Somalia or a Lebanon.

The Allawi regime may mean well but it is already imitating many of Saddam's tactics, bombing hostile towns and imprisoning its enemies without trial. It is surely the taste of Iraq to come.

The attempt to portray it as a crusade against global terror is dishonest, contemptible for those who die as a result. Its shambolic outcome was always certain.

In dribs and drabs, much of the press elsewhere is sharpening its criticism too, despite all being formally basically sympathetic to Western imperialist world domination, particularly blitzkrieging Washington's very own classified National Intelligence Estimate:

Boston Globe  Editorial, September 17
"It should not be surprising that a classified National Intelligence Estimate completed late last month projects three scenarios for Iraq over the next year and a half that range from dicey to disastrous — from fragile stability to civil war among Sunni Arabs. Shias, and Kurds. What is surprising is that President George Bush and Dick Cheney, the vice president ... go on campaigning on the false pretence that their Iraq policy has been a success ... The suicide bombs, roadside bombs, ambushes, kidnappings, and assassinations— all these assaults on Iraqis and foreigners show a nation in violent disorder. This continuing mayhem, which casts doubt on the possibility of holding elections ... in January 2005, also casts light on the unmistakable failures of the Bush administration's efforts at peacemaking and nation-building in postwar Iraq."

Musa Keilani Jordan Times, September 19
"One did not need the 'secret and confidential' US intelligence report projecting a bleak future for Iraq, with a civil war not being ruled out, to realise that things are going wrong wholesale for Washington in Iraq...We know that the US plan for January elections in Iraq is in deep trouble in view of the deteriorating security situation and the stiff challenge the Iraqi resistance is putting up against the American presence there. We know that, as every day passes, the US is making more enemies in Iraq than friends...

"What the Iraqis need now is stability and security first, and democracy later. The US will not be able to give them that no matter what tactics it adopts."

Washington Post Editorial, September 19
"Unless [the Bush administration] can find ways to improve security in the coming weeks, its larger strategy for the country, which begins with elections planned for January, may unravel...
Yet even before the war it seemed to us that Mr Bush was failing to recognise, or prepare for, the fact that the postwar reconstruction of Iraq would be long, difficult and dangerous...Too often American soldiers and commanders have been flung into the breach between illusion and reality. Many have responded with great courage...but more than 1,000 have died, thousands more as well have paid a terrible cost and no end to these losses is in sight...Mr Bush deserves to be judged by this record one of extraordinary recklessness and incompetence in execution."

Scotland on Sunday Editorial, September 19
"We may never know who was behind [Saturday's] leak of [secret UK memos] that blew the lid on the thinking at the heart of Tony Blair's government as plans were made to topple Saddam, but these particular revelations take their place among some of the most dramatic in modern history... A year before Britain joined the attack on Saddam, the prime minister was told by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that no one could predict the outcome...

Independent on Sunday Editorial, September 19
"A year before the invasion of Iraq [Mr Straw commented: 'There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything' Yet into that hole Mr Bush and Mr Blair fell and... now a year and a half after the invasion, the situation in Iraq is worse than the pessimists in the Foreign Office could have imagined, and getting worse... The idea that Iraq is proceeding along a pre-set timetable towards democracy is a fantasy...

And hordes of various American commentators are now regularly reflecting on the dumb disastrous embarrassment that is this Bush regime, — though still likely to be "democratically re-elected" despite nearly 8O% of the total American electorate either not voting or not registering at all, or else voting to get rid of Bush, — and less than 20% actively in favour of this mindless chauvinism:

In his stump speech, which he repeats word for word across the country, Bush explains that he invaded Iraq because of "the lesson of September the 11th". WMD goes unmentioned; the only reason Bush offers is Saddam Hussein as an agent of terrorism.

"He was a sworn enemy of the United States of America; he had ties to terrorist networks. Do you remember Abu Nidal? He's the guy that killed Leon Klinghoffer. Leon Klinghoffer was murdered because of his religion. Abu Nidal was in Baghdad, as was his organisation."

The period of Leon Klinghoffer's murder in 1985 on the liner Achille Lauro (by Abu Abbas, in fact) coincided with the US courtship of Saddam, marked by the celebrated visits of then Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld. The US collaborated in intelligence exchanges and materially supported Saddam in his war with Iran, authorising the sale of biological agents for Saddam's laboratories, a diversification of his WMD capability.

The reason was not born of idealism, but necessity: the threat of an expansive Iran-controlled Shia fundamentalism to the entire Gulf.

The policy of courting Saddam continued until he invaded Kuwait.

“Bring them on!" President Bush challenged the early Iraqi insurgency in July of last year. Since then, 812 American soldiers have been killed and 6,290 wounded, according to the Pentagon. Almost every day, in campaign speeches, Bush talks with bravado about how he is "winning" in Iraq. "Our strategy is succeeding," he boasted to the National Guard convention on Tuesday.

But, according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost. Retired general William Odom, former head of the National Security Agency, told me: "Bush hasn't found the WMD. Al-Qaida, it's worse, he's lost on that front. That he's going to achieve a democracy there? That goal is lost, too. It's lost." He adds: "Right now, the course we're on, we're achieving Bin Laden's ends."

Retired general Joseph Hoare, the former marine commandant and head of US Central Command, told me: "The idea that this is going to go the way these guys planned is ludicrous. There are no good options. We're conducting a campaign as though it were being conducted in Iowa, no sense of the realities on the ground. It's so unrealistic for anyone who knows that part of the world. The priorities are just all wrong."

Jeffrey Record, professor of strategy at the Air War College, said: "I see no ray of light on the horizon at all. The worst case has become true. There's no analogy whatsoever between the situation in Iraq and the advantages we had after the second world war in Germany and Japan."

W Andrew Terrill, professor at the Army War College's strategic studies institute — and the top expert on Iraq there — said: "I don't think that you can kill the insurgency".

According to Terrill, the anti-US insurgency, centred in the Sunni triangle, and holding several cities and towns — including Falluja — is expanding and becoming more capable as a consequence of US policy.

"We have a growing, maturing insurgency group," he told me. "We see larger and more coordinated military attacks. They are getting better and they can self-regenerate. The idea there are x number of insurgents, and that when they're all dead we can get out is wrong. The insurgency has shown an ability to regenerate itself because there are people willing to fill the ranks of those who are killed. The political culture is more hostile to the US presence. The longer we stay, the more they are confirmed in that view."

After the killing of four US contractors in Falluja, the marines besieged the city for three weeks in April — the watershed event for the insurgency. "I think the president ordered the attack on Falluja," said General Hoare. "I asked a three-star marine general who gave the order to go to Falluja and he wouldn't tell me. I came to the conclusion that the order came directly from the White House." Then, just as suddenly, the order was rescinded, and Islamist radicals gained control, using the city as a base.

"I see no exit," said Record. "We've been down that road before. It's called Vietnamisation. The idea that we're going to have an Iraqi force trained to defeat an enemy we can't defeat stretches the imagination. They will be tainted by their very association with the foreign occupier. In fact, we had more time and money in state building in Vietnam than in Iraq."

General Odom said: "This is far graver than Vietnam. There wasn't as much at stake strategically, though in both cases we mindlessly went ahead with the war that was not constructive for US aims. But now we're in a region far more volatile, and we're in much worse shape with our allies."

General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."

Thus on both sides of the Atlantic, hopelessly confused but very disturbed people are vainly trying to draw comfort from comparisons with the last "honourable" imperialist warmongering in World War II,(disregarding more than 400 dishonourable neo-colonialist blitzkriegs committed by the Western world rulers since then).

For a US general to be making the comparison between the current Washington warmongers and the NAZI blitzkrieg at Stalingrad is some remarkable testimony.

Yet the actual reality of what the Washington neocons are already stoking up is arguably far WORSE than this retired American general's possibly slightly exaggerated snapshot description of the setbacks already encountered.

The EPSR's analysis that the Bush regime is mentally prepared to threaten TOTAL global warmongering as the only "responsible" approach to "the global defence of American interests" in this insanely described "age of worldwide terrorism", - meaning the coming unavoidable period of trade-war crisis dangers (real) to the American Empire's unprecedented (and endangered) international economic domination, -      has just been confirmed in another fascinating press revelation (like all the above admissions, solely from the capitalist media, as with 99% of the EPSR quotes on current crisis disasters), outlining one more detail of skulduggery (already automatically assumed to be true by the EPSR):

Links have been discovered between senior American military officials and the failed coup plot in Equatorial Guinea that has left Sir Mark Thatcher facing trial in South Africa.

Theresa Whelan, a member of the Bush administration in charge of African affairs at the Pentagon, twice met a London-based businessman, Greg Wales, in Washington before the coup attempt. Mr Wales has been accused of being one of its organisers.

Equatorial Guinea official sources claim that last November, when the plot was in its early stages, an Old Etonian mercenary, Simon Mann, paid Mr Wales about $8,000. Mann was subsequently jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe on charges linked to the coup plot. 

A few days after the alleged payment, Mr Wales went to Washington for a dinner and conference organised by an influential group of US "private military companies" the IPOA (International Peace Operations Association).

Ms Whelan told the group the Pentagon was keen to see them operate in Africa, saying: "Contractors are here to stay in supporting US national security objectives overseas." They were cheaper, and saved the use of US forces in peacekeeping and training.

She added; "The US can be supportive in trying to ameliorate regional crises without necessarily having to put US troops on the ground, which is often a very difficult political decision... Sometimes we may not want to be very visible."

IPOA's members include MPRI, a company formed by retired generals. MPRI had already been allowed to compile a survey of Equatorial Guinea's military weaknesses.

MPRI persuaded the Pentagon it would be in the US national interest to allow the survey to be done, although the company never went ahead with a planned contract to strengthen Mr Obiang's army.

Mr Wales made his first contact with Ms Whelan at the dinner. The following January his firm, the Sherbourne Foundation, was paid another $35,000 by the coup plotters, according to Equatorial Guinea.

Mr Wales then organised another meeting at the Pentagon with Ms Whelan. This came on the eve of the day originally planned for the coup, February 19. The Pentagon says the meeting in "mid-to-late February" ranged over many African topics, and that Mr Wales's hints were so general that they did not call for any action to be taken.

The Obiang regime has complained that the US did not warn it of the coup plot, although it received intelligence from South Africa.

The February 19 plan is said to have been aborted after a hired aircraft broke down. The plotters then acquired an old former US Air National Guard Boeing, built to a military specification, that was flown over from Kansas with a crew from Florida for a second coup attempt.

Both the US and Britain have extensive oil interests in Equatorial Guinea which, in the words of one US official, is "the new Kuwait".

The Texas company Marathon is building a huge liquefied natural gas plant, of which the British gas firm BG plans to buy much of the output for the next 17 years.

There is a good deal of unofficial sympathy in US military circles for the coup plotters.

One of those present at the original IPOA dinner said yesterday, requesting anonymity: "Ethically, you have to want to see Obiang removed.

"It's a real indictment of the international community that they've failed to get rid of him."

In addition to this, the deliberate winding up of an international propaganda campaign by the CIA to paint Sudan in a "rogue state" blitzkriegable light continues apace, in provocateur article after provocateur article, and in damaging UN stunt after damaging UN stunt.

In this oil-rich region of Darfur where China has taken a development lead long envied by Western monopoly imperialism, — the curiously little-reported activities of the black "rebel" movements (Justice and Equality Movement, and Sudan Liberation Movement) draw no comment for their attempts to undermine Sudan's authority over practically one fifth of the country's territory, — but the Sudanese attempts to pacify this "terrorist violence", as it might have been termed in other circumstances, receive nothing but Western condemnation and distortions.

Currently, the deliberate undermining and warmongering destabilisation of Sudan so as to prepare the way for a Western "anti-genocide" invasion is urging the partition of Sudan (i.e. the loss of Darfur and of Sudan's major wealth, its oil) "if the political will of the Sudanese authorities doesn't produce an ending of violence on the ground" a representative of Dutch monopoly-imperialism (powerful in oil through Shell but currently embarrassed by a catastrophic decline in its reserves position) declared as the "UN High Commissioner for Refugees". 

But in Iraq, a country a fraction of Sudan's size, the USA, — 10 million times richer and more powerful than Sudan, — cannot stop all fatalities either, although aided by most of the next richest powers on Earth.

And when will the UN do something about the 10,000 a month dying of dysentery and other preventable diseases in climate-catastrophe-hit Darfur???)

This was backed by more ludicrous total hearsay about systematic "gang rapes by armed militia" throughout Darfur by the mysterious Arab Janjaweed and the Sudanese Army.

However one foreign aid worker told the Times: "It is possible that in a few cases, there are false claims", adding contradictorily though: "These women have nothing to gain from claiming they were raped". What, not oil wealth???

But with the disastrous climate and harvest conditions now relenting, more and more of the black farmer refugees are going back home, — only to be reported in the imperialist media as being "forced to return home".

Whatever the actual truth in Sudan, these disgraceful Western media provocations of Goebbelsian propaganda made notorious by NAZI Germany in Western imperialism's last Earth-shattering war crisis of insoluble economic and political contradictions, are a stark reminder of what monstrous global brainwashing the CIA managed to hang on Serbia and the remnants of the Yugoslav Socialist Federation, allowing the blitzkrieg destruction and regime change by the Western warmongers on the totally non-existent grounds of "Kosovo genocide and mass rape", - none of which took place.

A Western bourgeois broadcaster has just written a new study for the capitalist press on how Yugoslavia's wealth and political power was totally raped by Western monopoly interests and their local nationalist stooges in the reactionary circles of the five smaller YSF republics:

'Wars, conflict—it's all business," sighs Monsieur Verdoux in Charlie Chaplin's 1947 film of the same name. Many will not need to be convinced of the link between US corporations now busily helping themselves to Iraqi state assets and the military machine that prised Iraq open for global business. But what is less widely known is that a similar process is already well under way in a part of the world where B52s were not so long ago dropping bombs in another "liberation" mission.

The trigger for the US-led bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 was, according to the standard western version of history, the failure of the Serbian delegation to sign up to the Rambouillet peace agreement. But that holds little more water than the tale that has Iraq responsible for last year's invasion by not cooperating with weapons inspectors.

The secret annexe B of the Rambouillet accord — which provided for the military occupation of the whole of Yugoslavia — was, as the Foreign Office minister Lord Gilbert later conceded to the defence select committee, deliberately inserted to provoke rejection by Belgrade.

But equally revealing about the west's wider motives is chapter four, which dealt exclusively with the Kosovan economy. Article I (1) called for a "free-market economy", and article II (1) for privatisation of all government-owned assets. At the time, the rump Yugoslavia — then not a member of the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO or European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — was the last economy in central-southern Europe to be uncolonised by western capital. "Socially owned enterprises", the form of worker self-management pioneered under Tito, still predominated.

Yugoslavia had publicly owned petroleum, mining, car and tobacco industries, and 75% of industry was state or socially owned. In 1997, a privatisation law had stipulated that in sell-offs, at least 60% of shares had to be allocated to a company's workers.

The high priests of neo-liberalism were not happy. At the Davos summit early in 1999, Tony Blair berated Belgrade, not for its handling of Kosovo, but for its failure to embark on a programme of "economic reform" — new-world-order speak for selling state assets and running the economy in the interests of multinationals.

In the 1999 Nato bombing campaign, it was state-owned companies — rather than military sites — that were specifically targeted by the world's richest nations. Nato only destroyed 14 tanks, but 372 industrial facilities were hit — including the Zastava car plant at Kragujevac, leaving hundreds of thousands jobless. Not one foreign or privately owned factory was bombed.

After the removal of Slobodan Milosevic, the west got the "fast-track" reforming government in Belgrade it had long desired. One of the first steps of the new administration was to repeal the 1997 privatisation law and allow 70% of a company to be sold to foreign investors — with just 15% reserved for workers. The government then signed up to the World Bank's programmes — effectively ending the country's financial independence.

Meanwhile, as the New York Times had crowed, "a war's glittering prize" awaited the conquerors. Kosovo has the second largest coal reserves in Europe, and enormous deposits of lignite, lead, zinc, gold, silver and petroleum.

The jewel is the enormous Trepca mine complex, whose 1997 value was estimated at $5bn. In an extraordinary smash and grab raid soon after the war, the complex was seized from its workers and managers by more than 2,900 Nato troops, who used teargas and rubber bullets.

Five years on from the Nato attack, the Kosovo Trust Agency (KTA), the body that operates under the jurisdiction of the UN Mission in Kosovo (Unmik) — is "pleased to announce" the programme to privatise the first 500 or so socially owned enterprises (SOEs) under its control. The closing date for bids passed last week: 10 businesses went under the hammer, including printing houses, a shopping mall, an agrobusiness and a soft-drinks factory. The Ferronikeli mining and metal-processing complex, with an annual capacity of 12,000 tonnes of nickel production, is being sold separately, with bids due by November 17. 

To make the SOEs more attractive to foreign investors. Unmik has altered the way land is owned in Kosovo, allowing the KTA to sell 99-year leases with the businesses, which can be transferred or used as loans or security. Even Belgrade's pro-western government has called this a "robbery of state-owned land". For western companies waiting to swoop, there will be rich pickings indeed in what the KTA assures us is a "very investor-friendly" environment. But there is little talk of the rights of the natural owners of the enterprises — the workers, managers and citizens of the former Yugoslavia, whose property was effectively seized in the name of the "international community" and "economic reform".

As the corporate takeover of the ruins of Baghdad and Pristina proceeds apace, neither the "liberation" of Iraq nor the "humanitarian" bombing of Yugoslavia has proved Chaplin's cynical anti-hero to be wrong.

Neil Clark is a writer and broadcaster specialising in Balkan affairs

But more outrageous than all the other Western imperialist warmongering scandals, the blitzkrieging American Empire is now supplying its Zionist Middle East stooges with new bunker-busting bombs for the unprovoked devastation of Iran's nuclear power industry, despite the illegitimate Zionist ethnic cleansing now possessing the world's fourth most powerful military regime, totally illegally supplied with its own nuclear weapons for intimidating the whole Middle East on the paymaster American Empire's behalf.

The escalating blitzkrieg destruction of Iran draws closer and closer because of Tehran daring to challenge this arbitrary Western-imperialist diktat that only the American Empire's chosen stooges are permitted to develop nuclear technology, or build the self-defence weaponry that all the major White imperialist powers dominating the Earth try to keep exclusively for themselves so as to maintain their supremacy by hook or by crook.

But the West's crisis disasters will plunge the planet into war anyway.

And by one revolutionary means or another, the vast mass of mankind in the Third World will ultimately make the First World pay for this warmongering-arms race devastation of civilisation. 

Build Leninism. EPSR supporters.

Letters

The cringing justification for why the SLP/Lalkar set have pompously baptised themselves CPGB-ML is in truth almost as unfathomable as their embarrassed silences about previous revisionist blunders. Writing in issue one of Proletarian they steadfastly continue to do what they do best — avoid explaining their opportunist adaptation to Scargill's social democracy and Arafat's bankrupt revisionist "two state" solution by hypocritically focusing critical attention on the traitorous antics of the other misnamed 'communists' around British imperialist Labour Party reformism.

With as much freedom of criticism as it is possible for fake communists to have in-and-around 'labour movement' organisations in 2003-4,the museum Stalinist Society's Proletarian set refused for the best part of ten years to expose (in front of the actual proletariat) any of Scargill's reactionary British national backwardness –—  and still do! Now Lalkar have conjured up their own tame Proletarian newspaper to hoodwink their hoped-for middle class audience.

However, "Lalkar anti-Scargill abuse remains a joy" (Economic Political Science Review EPSR 1237) mainly because it helps understanding of Lalkar's incurable inability to grasp the necessity for polemical struggle as the essential element for the development of revolutionary theory.

Lalkar/Proletarian's pretentious bragging speaks volumes:

"... our insistence on integrating the science of Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the working-class movement in Britain... "   

Notice that Lalkar doesn't struggle against reformist trades unionism, doesn't oppose national chauvinist sentiment, and doesn't denounce or fight anti-communism of Scargill, all of which was in evidence in the early 'Congresses' of the SLP. They 

"insist" on "integrating"... "Scargill' s misplaced, even reactionary, opposition..." 

with their own revisionist-bluff-'Marxism'.

To expect Scargill or any other tried and tested champion of trade union opportunism in the British working class to voluntarily "get rid of” their reactionary "baggage" after forty years in the service of Labour reformism without a fight has been a misleading, time wasting day dream. 

Entertaining the notion that Scargill's "British labour movement" anti-theory philistinism could be overcome by him accepting the "the sensible advice of Engels" together with the Sunday school preaching of the pretentious Lalkar set is nothing but traitorous opportunism.

Eight years of peaceful coexistence entryism in the SLP around Scargill's "pole of attraction", giving uncritical support to the national chauvinist program of electoral opportunism without any reassessment of how their particular daft version of Stalinist peaceful coexistence idealism landed them in such a spot, is only a little echo of the bag-carrying role played by all revisionist fake 'communist' parties, Trotskyite and Stalinist alike, in their idealist creeping service to 'bigger' reformist parties and middle class individualist fashion generally.

What the Lalkar set conveniently fail to remember or tell workers is when it was that they first noticed that Scargill and company had 

"been busy trying to rid the SLP of all serious theoretical thought..."

Let's remind the Lalkar set and the international workers movements as often and for as long as is necessary that it was before and during the SLP 'Special Congress' in London when Scargill was "busy" trying to silence the EPSR Leninist weekly. As Scargill (on the stage) was ignorantly denouncing Lenin for correctly advocating inner-party theoretical struggle, all the scattered Lalkar supporters in the hall applauded Scargill together with the "social democrats" who they now condemn! When their leading light was asked why they had compromised with this reactionary nonsense, he smirked 

"Lenin can stand it."

It's now clear that this cynical response was meant to imply that Lalkar's phoney 'Marxism-Leninism' would tolerate any amount traitorous opportunist compromise with anti-communism in pursuit of 

"integrating the science of Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the working-class movement in Britain..." 

Similarly, Henry IV of France declared in 1593 - "Paris vaut bien une messe" (Paris was worth a Mass) then renounced Protestantism. As will be seen below, respect for reactionary historical authority is already the hallmark of the new 'Proletarian' paper.

The voluntary self-abasement genuflecting that the Lalkar set indulged in throughout their time in the SLP around Scargill's "pole of attraction" doesn't have to be guessed at.

It definitely wasn't revolutionary Leninism that had to "stand it" in the SLP. It was the boastful pretentious opportunist phoney 'Marxism' of Stalinist peaceful coexistence "integrating" compromisers of the Brar set that failed to "stand it", or stand up to even one little British trade unionist.

Having supported the impossible reactionary 'two state solution' in Palestine the new 'Proletarian' paper is now slyly but painfully trying to straddle the fence again without any explanation of its 100% wrong Stalinist compromise stance,  

"...the days of this historical abortion, the Zionist state are numbered" 

they bluster. 

Dramatic posturing but the reactionary authority that Proletarian use for its new clumsy halfway turn is not revolutionary Marxist-Leninist science about imperialist bankruptcy, but Yosef Lapid, 'Israeli' justice minister and Meron Benvenisti former deputy mayor of Jerusalem arguing desperately for reform of the most visible military 'Israeli' fascist brutality, in order to better defend their fascist 'Israeli' state.

Using reactionary authority without correct revolutionary critical comment is clearly already a norm for Proletarian together with wrongly trying to persuade workers that imperialism, cornered and wounded by third world revolutionary resistance, will be an "easier" opponent:

"... wars of aggression were condemned by the Nuremberg Tribunals after WWII... we do not wish to be implicated in these crimes…

"... "Every defeat inflicted on British imperialism makes our enemy a little weaker and our task a little easier." 

Easier how?

Just read Lenin and examine any part of the revolutionary history of the nineteenth and twentieth century before swallowing this opportunist Proletarian peaceful coexistence crap about anything being "easier".

This easier claim is in contrast to Brar's excuse for what he really knows is Stalin's role in the revisionist history of the party. [Also uncritically citing the capitalist dominated "Nuremberg Tribunals" as an authority on what constitute "wars of aggression" in need of condemnation, is utterly traitorous in itself, but it is also another sneaky way of avoiding the wroth of the outraged Zionists and their supporters around the British establishment].

Look at one of Stalin's better comments from 1937, TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE REVOLUTION:

"It is necessary to shatter and discard the rotten theory to the effect that with every step of our progress which we make, the class struggle here is bound to die down more and more... " 

(From page 512 of Trotskyism or Leninism by Harpal Brar 1993). Nothing easy being suggested here is there? 

It's a shame Stalin and Brar didn't take their own advice before embarking on the peaceful coexistence trip, one sending arms to the imperialist settlers in Palestine the other supporting the revisionist "two state" imperialist genocide against the Palestinians.

Proletarian has yet again evaded comment on the origins of the revisionist turn in the Soviet Union that ended in its self destruction. So the actual proletariat are no wiser about any changes in the guru's thinking on this subject since 1993 when he said: 

"The answer to the question of what precisely were the reasons for the triumph of Khrushchevite revisionism in the USSR after the death of Stalin is not yet known".

The longer that everyone of the Brar set continue to dodge the EPSR polemic, refusing to make any serious assessment of imperialist economic crisis; or reassessment of Stalin's part in the revisionist turn to peaceful coexistence; Stalin's role in shipping arms to Palestine and their own traitorous eight year compromise with Scargillism and "two state" adaptation to Zionism among other things, — the deeper their problems will get.

Wanting to "win the big battalions" without inner party struggle in front of the proletariat, (even more often than just six times a year) will keep the Brar set exactly where their former comrades in the SLP are now — permanently hobbled by failed attempts at one rotten populists reformist stunt after another.

The case of the Leicester SLP is a good example. Playing to the gallery for plaudits and lashing up alliances with 'Stop the war coalition'; Palestine ("two state") solidarity; trades union careerism; divisive communalism; participation on state (police) sponsored 'anti-racism' platform; and the most abysmal insulting reformist electoral propaganda imaginable, — ALL UNDER THE BANNER OF THE SLP (ENDING IN TOTAL FAILURE WHEN THE BRAR SET WERE PART OF ITS NATIONAL LEADERSHIP!!) 

Build Leninism.JD

Part 2 

Since writing the above, criticism has been made and accepted that some of it isn't clear enough.

Also, that "a mountain is being made out of a mole hill" with reference to the word "easier". The fact is that without economic, diplomatic and military embarrassments, setbacks, retreats and defeats, especially defeats, for the ruling class at the hands of national liberation movements, communist revolutionaries, and more powerful capitalist states, — revolution in Britain is probably impossible. 

But even with the above defeats for 'our own' ruling class, some other specific conditions are needed for the proletarian dictatorship to have a chance. None of which are made "easier" by the defeats. In Lenin's time the three conditions regarded as necessary for revolution were: 

1)'When it is impossible for the ruling class to maintain their rule without any change:'...
2)When the suffering and want of the oppressed classes have grown more acute than usual.'
3)When, as a consequence of the above causes, there is a considerable increase in the activity of the masses.... Without these objective changes, which are independent of the will, not only of individual groups and parties but even individual classes, a revolution as a general rule is impossible'.

Lenin continues - ... if a revolutionary situation arises, prepare to create new organisations... That is not easy; to be sure it will demand arduous preparatory activity and heavy sacrifices...'

'... the arrest of a member of parliament for a courageous speech would have been useful as a call for unity of the proletarians of the various countries in their revolutionary work. It is not easy (original italics) to bring about such unity;' (Lenin -'The Collapse Of The Second International'.) 

Now, which of your "tasks " is going to be made "a little easier "? Does the above still apply nor not?

The further development of Leninist revolutionary theory among workers internationally is an impossibility, and just a "pious wish" (Lenin) without a cadre party capable of exposing opportunism at every step, not because of the haughty 'undemocratic' and 'unconstitutional' behaviour of the opportunists themselves, or their pompous manners and sectarian, but because they slyly bring the program and philosophy of "easier" "integrating"and "two state " imperialism into the working class, they promote subservience to national chauvinists..." like Scargill disguised as anti-imperialist bluster. 

Fantasies about unity with reactionary opportunism in the vain hope that it can be "educated" onto the revolutionary road or that Marxism can be blended merged, attached or "integrated" into prevailing bourgeois culture, is a foul distortion of revolutionary Leninism. J.D.

E P S R BOX

Leaving the world to be run by the greed of the capitalist monopolies can never stop resulting in periodic crises where trade-war destruction MUST rule, and to which the only antidote is Revolution and a strong workers state, --- as these essentials of Marxist-Leninist SCIENCE explain.

Only the crisis events of collapsing imperialist rule interpreted in this Marxist-Leninist light will educate a mass workers party of leadership to do the necessary tasks.

The Revisionist retreat from the Soviet workers state because of crawling to shallow Western glitz and shame at their own past bureaucratic mistakes has only proved the soundness of Lenin's 'State & Revolution' science about a very long period of proletarian dictatorship being the only way for the world to see-off monopoly imperialist warmongering, now back with a vengeance.

***********

It is often said and written that the main point in Marx's teachings is the class struggle; but this is not true. And from this untruth very often springs the opportunist distortion of Marxism, its falsification in such a way as to make it acceptable to the bourgeoisie. For the doctrine of the class struggle was created not by Marx, but by the bourgeoisie before Marx, and generally speaking it is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Those who recognise only the class struggle are not yet Marxists;  they may be found to be still within the boundaries of bourgeois thinking and bourgeois politics. To confine Marxism to the doctrine of the class struggle means curtailing Marxism, distorting it, reducing it to something which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is what constitutes the most profound difference between the Marxist and the ordinary petty (as well as big) bourgeois. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. And it is not surprising that when the history of Europe brought the working class face to face with this question as a practical issue, not only all the opportunists and reformists, but all the "Kautskyites" (people who vacillate between reformism and Marxism) proved to be miserable philistines and petty-bourgeois democrats who repudiate the dictatorship of the proletariat. V.I.Lenin

*********

"The last cause of all real crises always remains the poverty and restricted consumption of the masses as compared to the tendency of capitalist production to develop the productive forces as if only the absolute power of consumption of the entire society would be their limit." (Capital. Vol III. P568.)

*******

" For many a decade past", wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto of 1848, "the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crisis a great part, not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity - the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary...they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them."

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

Imagine White Supremicists spending the night burning effigies of other racial groups, firing off illegal weaponry and fêting racist killers as local heroes. Then imagine them a few hours later, dressed in their Sunday best and marching proudly through your city, town or village in the name of religion, civic pride and culture

Dark suits, bowler hats and Orange collarettes march in formation to the tunes of pseudo-military bands. Banners declare their district, their faith and their political allegiances. The mottoes embroidered on their banners and flags reiterate a notion of themselves as the "chosen", the "finest" and the "true".

In the watching crowds, parents hold children aloft, kids lick ice cream and the inevitable granny sports a Union Jack hat. Here, fundamentalist Protestant notions of the elect seamlessly meet political notions of unionist supremacism. 

During this annual militaristic ritual, anti-Catholic and anti-Irish hostility is expressed as carnival. The Bible and the crown march to the fife and drum.

And what's more scary? The unionist paramilitary flags and paramilitary mock British Army uniforms worn by some of the bands and colour parties? Or the normalisation of such provocative parading?

The ice cream treats and a day out for the family. For the BBC commentator it's all colour and spectacle; the English have their summer flower shows and Wimbledon tennis, and in the north of Ireland we have the Twelfth.

Of course, on the Eleventh Night the rituals are more blatantly brutish. The masked unionist paramilitaries, the gunfire show of strength by sectarian killers, the spectator mob, the bonfire and the ritual burning of Catholic effigies and portraits of nationalist politicians.

This year, some Belfast bonfires took to burning images of Sinn Féin's Bairbre de Brún, already dubbed by Ian Paisley's DUP, Barbara de Broomstick. For any thinking person, this surely must send a shiver down the spine. So now we can add to the ritualistic burning effigies of women as witches to the Celtic jersey-clad versions of Guy Fawkes, another unfortunate Catholic whose demise at the hands of a London mob set the bonfire fashion of revenge.

Anywhere else in the world, if a gang decided to dump a mountain of domestic waste in close proximity to housing and then set it alight in the middle of the night it would be seen as a public disgrace. Here, it passes as cultural expression (don't ask, I don't know why). This year, we were encouraged by the BBC to believe that the fact that the Fire Service was only called out to 55 Eleventh night bonfires that were threatening to engulf nearby property made it all acceptable.

In the run up to the event, as the gathering debris despoiled more areas, there was even some discussion into what might be considered an environmentally friendly Eleventh night bonfire. Come off it, no one's that gullible.

This year, the Eleventh fell on a Sunday and there was some discussion amongst the faithful about the significance. In a nutshell, is the burning of Catholic effigies on the Sabbath breaking the Christian work to rule? The doubters were reassured by the realisation that the bonfires would be lit after midnight and therefore not on Sunday. What a relief.

Now, tear yourself away from those tv images of festival and sunshine and all that cheerful looking orange... and imagine a gathering of White Supremicists spending the night burning effigies of other racial groups, firing off illegal weaponry and fêting racist killers as local heroes.

Then imagine them a few hours later, dressed in their Sunday best suits and marching proudly through your city, town or village in the name of religion, civic pride and culture. Well, it's not what you would call a tourist attraction. Indeed, it's not very attractive at all. Intimidation is a curious thing, because where it works well, there isn't any call for actual violence. The Orange Order has a long history in the use of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish intimidation.

As Brian Feeney pointed out in the Sunday Business Post, Orange marchers provoked Belfast's first sectarian riot on 12 July 1813, when they tried to force themselves down Hercules Lane, a narrow street of mainly Catholic-owned shops (the people of the Falls successfully defended the area).

Indeed, since the establishment of the Orange Order, it has been associated with sectarian anti-Catholic violence and to this very day the Orange marching season is accompanied by heightened sectarian tension and increased attacks on Catholics.

Any good Orangeman will tell of days gone by when Catholics watched the parades as well as Protestants, except very few Catholics remember things quite in this way. True, some were forced to witness anti-Catholic marches by Orangemen parading through their districts, being at the time too few and too afraid to object, but that's not the same as enjoying the view.

So, when the BBC commentator described this year's Twelfth as "passing off peacefully" or relatively peacefully, apart from Ardoyne, remember an Orange parade might pass off without incident but that's nothing to do with peaceful. 

Peace requires embracing difference, not securing segregation through sectarian exclusion and intimidation. •