Back issues

No 1229 20th April 2004

American slaughter in Falluja and murder of Palestinian leaders are aspects of Western DEFEAT desperation, not "almighty" strength. The Bush-Blair "no compromise" posturing, killing or gaoling more and more Arabs and Muslims while backing Zionland's extinction of all Palestinian rights, is being done to hide the splits and the fear of LOSING in the colonial-monopolist camp. Bush's thug-like but stumbling act draws only Hitler-level ridicule. The Jew-colonist savagery masks a RETREAT, not triumphalism. Anti-imperialist struggle is learning how to BEAT Western imperialism, leaving fake-'left' Quisling-collaborators with US "anti-terrorism" tyranny shamed by Bush's war's neo-NAZI echoes. The "two-state solution" fraud marks out the political cowardice. Marxism's "certainties" are what make it such a priceless revolutionary science. The "Islamic" problem" is Western counter-revolutionary nonsense. Only scientific anti-imperialism will eventually triumph in the Third World.

The NAZI-assassination butchery continuing against Iraq and the Gaza Strip, is the best proof yet of the colossal WEAKNESS of the imperialist re-colonisation cause.

And the Middle East disasters from Palestine to Afghanistan come at only the first step of crisis-hit US imperialism's world-domination needs (see EPSR box).

Bush's approval of Zionism's genocidal land-grab trick of turning Gaza into a settlement-free giant concentration camp for the Palestinians while virtually annexing the West Bank for permanent Jewish monopoly-capitalist possession, has egged on Sharon's death-squads (did they need it?) but was only an indicator of Washington's now desperate need to "prove that the USA is still resolute and competently tough".

But Iraq daily is still heaping up evermore colossal doubts about either aspect.

And Bush's cheap and brainless gesture towards Sharon's barbarism has only rendered the US position doubly useless, and doubly contemptible.

The Zionist NAZI massacres continue BECAUSE THEY HAVE T0, out of the entire, sick, doomed "logic" of the Western imperialist system, post-1945, stealing the land of the Palestinian nation away from them to give it to the Jewish monopoly-capitalists (as compensation and a silencer for the filthy treachery to the Jews of the 1930s when the build-up of NAZI Germany was deliberately encouraged by the West (Munich appeasement, etc) as a barrier to growing Soviet socialist influence during the Depression's devastating and incurable capitalist trade slump and mass unemployment.)

The WHOLE land of Palestine (now "Israel") was ENTIRELY populated by the Palestinian people, — WHO ARE STILL ALIVE, but festering in refugee camps or in the Zionist-controlled barbed-wire reservations called Gaza and the West Bank.

The notion of "a Palestinian state, side by side with the Jewish state of Israel" has ALWAYS been a complete joke, even when first pronounced by the "United Nations" stooges for US imperialism.

The very nature of the ethnic-cleansing expulsions of the Palestinians by UN decree to clear 60% of the land for Jewish occupation and colonisation, initially, made it absolutely certain that there could NEVER be "peace" thereafter.

Enforced local tactics notwithstanding, only Western minds of the utmost political cowardice and political ignorance, and of considerable petty bourgeois nastiness and treachery, could ever have peddled the disgusting hypocrisy about "a two-state solution" for long.

It is absolutely tell-tale and typical of the ENTIRE fake-'left' in Britain, all the way from the counter-revolutionary Alliance/Respect Trots and Greenies, all the way to the Stalinist-addled Lalkar and SLP, that this is Still their position.

This neatly maintains the same "Western" solidarity with Bush and Blair's "road map" fraud as the fake-'left' keeps intact by refusing to denounce its own past "condemn terrorism" stupidity, playing right into the hands of the imperialist "war on terrorism" brainwashing hoax (more on this later).

The only logic of this genocidal wiping out of the land of Palestine, effectively, is that the brutal Zionist colonising repression will have to go on UNTIL EVER LAST PALESTINIAN HAS BEEN KILLED.

And as the weekly EPSR has never ceased to regularly fully explain for the past 25 years, the phenomenon will be observed of rightwing Zionist terror going on, and on, and on to ever-more-unbelievable NAZI tyranny of assassinations, torture, collective punishments, mass killings, total humiliation of Palestinians, etc, etc, etc, — — in a word to the GENOCIDE which is the only "logic" of the original infamous imperialist-"UN" atrocity of giving armed Zionist colonisation the go-ahead in the first place.

But such historical "inevitabilities", (predicted by scientific Marxist philosophy of the vast epochal movements of class and national forces in the monopoly-imperialist era which govern the outcome of all civilisation's developments and struggle), are precisely what are so uncomfortable for every brand of bogus "Marxism" around.

Born of the congenital opportunism of living in the West, scepticism and cynicism always offer a far more convenient way of surviving on the 'left'.

But however hard to fathom, it is only the "certainties" of Marxism which have made it the potentially all-powerful tool of REVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS for the proletarian masses once imperialist world-domination has confused, terrorised, and shattered the world towards total paralysis and the brink of total disaster.

The sick treacheries of Bush and Blair in no longer even bothering to pretend "evenhandedness" between the Palestinians and the Jewish colonisation (an utterly fraudulent posture anyway since the Palestinians are 100% the VICTIMS (of genocidal expulsion from their homeland) and the Zionists 100% the VIOLENT PERPETRATORS (of this entire rotten land-theft saga since 1945)) are thus irrelevant anyway as far as the continued terrorist-tyranny by the Jews is concerned, since it is bound to continue unavoidably whatever else happens.

Every "peace initiative" there has ever been, or ever could be, along the lines of "reform, restraint, and compromise", etc, etc, is nothing but a total sham.

Bush's gunslinger smirk towards these latest cold-blooded Zionist butcherings, — endorsing the West Bank annexation intentions as they skulk behind the "let's just turn Gaza into one giant concentration camp" stunt, — was in fact fixed on and cemented by entirely different concerns, — the hopeless and divisive mess that the entire Western "war on terrorism" project(for a non-stop warmongering posture against the entire rest of the world until the nightmare economic crisis of imperialism is resolved (see EPSR box)) has now sunk into.

The NAZI blitzkrieg on Iraq is now DEEP IN TROUBLE instead of forcing the whole world to cower at the awesome power, ruthlessness, and effectiveness of the "shock and awe" punishment programme for the whole "axis of evil", for all "rogue states", or indeed for all who are "against us" (against the USA) by not being "with us" (i.e. virtually the whole planet bar a few scabby stooges like Blair, Berlusconi, and the fascist imbecile who runs Uzbekistan).

Bush smirks a) because his brain, frankly, doesn't run to much more imaginative limits, — which is fun but politically irrelevant; and b) because his regime is in total confusion about the nature of the whole crisis-problem they are dealing with, and about what is going wrong with their "solution" and why, and about what to do next, — but the last thing that he dare do is to let on about this total pandemonium and chaos.

Blair grimaces like an imbecile for the same reasons.

The EPSR, once again, has never ceased explaining for the last 25 years that the whole of postwar world history can only be properly understood if the relentlessly approaching greatest-ever crisis of warmongering, arising out of imperialist economic "overproduction" collapse, is grasped as the dominant driving force governing every longterm development.

ONLY when the unprecedented post-1945 imperialist world-trade boom is considered in its eventual CRASH and war destruction perspective can any real sense, for example, be made of the wretched Stalinist-Revisionist latter history of the Soviet workers state culminating in Gorbachev's infamous self-liquidation of it.

On another level, no sense can be made, e.g., of the "Islamic fundamentalist" colouring of these first stages of global anti-imperialist revolution unless the whole picture of eventual TOTAL imperialist warmongering debacle is borne in mind.

Individual events make up history, and are random, and in one sense are not completely predictable, i.e. in one sense remain unpredictable.

But those individual events are also simultaneously being coralled towards broadly predictable historical patterns, governed in accordance with Marx's philosophical science of civilisation's development.

For a while, any particular set of events might turn out any way.

Iraq, for example, and the "war on terrorism" might yet produce some more spectacular "shock and awe US triumphs" such as the fake-'left' have long been acclimatising to, seeing nothing but "imperialist-imposed peace settlements (i.e. defeats) on a long list of anti-imperialist struggles such as Anti-Apartheid; Sinn Féin/ IRA; Palestine; Cuba; China; East Europe; and latterly on "terrorism" and Iraq; etc, etc.

But it makes infinitely more sense to examine all these various outcomes ONLY in the light of the ultimate disaster into which all these temporary imperialist bullying dealings are eventually heading, and AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT PICTURE thereby emerges.

The Palestinians are only being taught one thing, — how to fight better.

The Irish national-liberation struggle ended with the admission that the bastard statelet of "Northern Ireland", nothing but a police-military dictatorship for Orange fascist tyranny, was FINISHED, — a massive blow to British imperialism which had fought to save it, but lost.

The Soviet workers states self-liquidation will one day be seen as a necessary step in the dismantling of the monstrous Revisionist "peaceful coexistence" and "peaceful roads to socialism" world psychoses which understandably brainwashed the whole planet at a certain period of history; and the eventual restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat there and elsewhere in East Europe will become regarded as the only obvious way in which the unprecedented international brainwashing phenomenon of anti-communism could have been overcome.

Currently on Iraq, the fake-'left' are wobbling like mad, now edging away from the rigid "formally correct" disparagement of "reactionary Islam" towards an opportunist grasp that "staying in the political swim" might require these "Marxist" frauds to "talk nicely" to any successful Islamic anti-imperialist struggle.

"Potential allies??" is the new note being struck about the previously denounced al-Qaeda for its "pointless and immoral terrorist killings and waste of innocent human life ....a war crime" (current Weekly Worker).

Attempts are made at some more formally correct "Marxist" tactics of a "united-front"-fight alongside the "legitimate Islamic grievances against the US-led world order" while simultaneously developing "the workers movement's own self-defence against these terrorist bombing operations like Bali and Madrid".

This scarcely believable posturing-nonsense reveals the depths of the confusion that the Western petty bourgeoisie has now been plunged into by imperialist defeat, which is taking shape ever-more-distinctly out of the incredible mess that the monopoly capitalist warmongering insanity has inflicted on the Middle East, and on world politics generally.

The total revolutionary disruption that a completely paralysed imperialist warmongering disaster would bring is as alarming a prospect for these fraud-'socialist' pedlars of the "left-reformist pressure" delusions, as it is for the rest of the infinitely varied bourgeois mentality.

They don't like the dictatorship of the proletariat which would have to take over from the collapse of the epoch of bourgeois imperialist dictatorship, and so they don't have any perspective for monopoly-capitalist warmongering DEFEAT.

But the Marxist inevitability of eventual imperialist disgrace, paralysis, and defeat is the ONLY sensible framework in which to try to unravel the chaos steadily gripping the world, and to most purposefully intervene in it.

For example, this particular new Gaza assassination phase of Sharon's "murderous toughness" is sensibly grasped in even bourgeois circles (in Palestine and elsewhere) as just monstrously sick bluster by the Jew-colonists to blur the image of the RETREAT from Gaza which Zionist turmoil has reluctantly decided upon as a result of Intifada terror-bombing ferocity and in the hope of appeasing it.

Even more demented warmonger-Zionists than Sharon would have defeated his retreat proposal in Cabinet but for this lunatic desperation "cover" which pretends that if the Zionist gaolers murder a Gaza concentration-camp inmate or two, then Hamas will not be able to jeer triumphantly at the whole Zionist colonisation project when the Jewish settlements in Gaza get scuttled later this year to try to abate the terrifying and demoralising effects on Zionland of the Islamic suicide terror bombing and other guerrilla war activities.

But it is DEFEAT for Jewish monopoly-capitalism's longterm colonisation-of-Palestine project which is alone the real issue here.

Building "Israel" was always nothing but a sick, fascist-warmongering catastrophe-in-the-making from the start.

It will stagger on only to TOTAL world-threatening warmongering disaster; and complete utter DEFEAT for this poisonous colonial-genocide project alone will provide a cure.

And it remains among the more speculative EPSR projections that it might still be Big Power imperialist warmongering itself which is forced to impose the first curbing military restraint upon the barking-mad Zionists as the warmongering chaos slips more-and-more completely out of Washington's control further on in the crisis.

The frightened Bush regime's mindless cynicism (in giving the nod to Sharon's illegal outrage of denying Palestinian refugees their Geneva War-based "right of return") has thus only deepened Washington's mire.

More hatred and fighting-anger than ever arises from the entire Third World at this atrocious anti-Palestinian tyranny, and yet at the same time the Zionist mad-dogs are more dangerously out-of-control than ever. Washington's confusion was well captured by Bushes press-conference idiocy, contrasting startlingly with Ozama's calm clarity and ever-sharpening political perspicacity:

Edited text of statement said to be by Osama bin Laden

This is a message to our neighbours north of the Mediterranean, with a proposal for a truce in response to positive reactions which emerged there.

What happened on September 11 and March 11 are your goods returned to you so that you know security is a necessity for all and we do not accept that you monopolise it for yourselves,and knowledgeable nations will not accept that their leaders risk security.

Be aware that if you describe us and our actions as terrorism, you should describe yourselves and actions that way as well. Our actions come in response to your actions of destroying and killing our people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. It is enough to witness the event that shocked the world, the killing of the elderly, wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, God have mercy on him, and we pledge to God to take revenge on America, God willing. Under what grace are your victims innocent and ours dust, and under which doctrine is your blood blood, and our blood water?

Reciprocation is just and he who starts is more unjust. As for your leaders, and those who adopt their strategy, who insist on ignoring the real problem of the occupation of all of Palestine and who exaggerate in lying and denying our right to defend ourselves and to resist, they have no self-respect and belittle the faith and minds of people.

Their fallacy increases the shedding of your blood instead of stemming it. A review of the deaths in our land and your land reveal an important truth, which is that there is injustice done to both us and you by your leaders, who send your sons, despite your objections, to our land to kill and be killed.

It is in the interest of both not to give a chance to those who shed the blood of nations for their limited personal interest and obedience to the gang of the White House.

This war earns millions of dollars for big companies, whether those who manufacture weapons or those involved in reconstruction, such as Halliburton and its sisters and daughters. And it becomes very clear who benefits from igniting the fires of this war and bloodshed: it is the traders of war, the bloodsuckers who run the policy of the world from behind a curtain.

President Bush and leaders in his sphere, big media institutions, and the United Nations, which entrenches the relationship between the veto masters and the General Assembly slaves, are all instruments in deceiving and abusing people. All of them are a fatal danger to the world, and the Zionist lobby is their most dangerous and difficult member, and we insist, God willing, on continuing to fight them.

Based on this, and to deprive war traders of opportunities, and in response to the positive reactions reflected in recent events and public polls showing that most European people want a truce, I urge the faithful, especially scholars, clerics and traders to establish a permanent committee to build awareness among Europeans of the justice of our causes, foremost Palestine, and make use of the vast media resources. I offer a truce to them [Europe] with a commitment to stop operations against any state which vows to stop attacking Muslims or interfere in their affairs, including [participating] in the American conspiracy.

Whoever rejects this truce and wants war, we are its sons; and whoever wants this truce, here we bring it. Stop shedding our blood to save your own and the solution to this simple but complex equation is in your hand. You know matters will escalate the more you delay: then do not blame us but blame yourselves. Rational people do not risk their security, money and sons to appease the White House liar.

**************

GEORGE Bush was laid bare to the world as a bumbling embarrassment yesterday when he could not think of an answer to a simple question.

His keynote address to the American nation, watched by tens of millions, saw the president at his cringe-making worst.

Apart from referring to Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of State, for 17-minutes all went well as he gave a prepared statement about Iraq in only his third prime-time solo appearance before reporters at the White House.

Then came the bombshell question which floored him.

Q: Mr. President. You've looked back before 9/ll for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/ll, what would your biggest mistake be and what lessons have you learned from it?

A: I wish yon would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it (Laughter from Press, long pause). Err John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, 'Gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way'.

You know, I just, err (long pause). I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, (holds his hands up with palms facing) but it hadn't yet.

(Long pause) I would have gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would (pause) have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein.

See, I happen to believe that we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we've sent (sic) up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth, exactly where they are. They could still be there (swivels head for emphasis). They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.

Even journalists familiar with the President's 'Bush-isms', a mix of misspoken words and grammatical errors, were taken aback by his latest ramblings and cast knowing glances.

Next came his most jaw-dropping reply: "I don't want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't. You just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one."

It later emerged Mr Bush exaggerated Libya's WMD stocks during his address, and the White House issued an apology saying the 50 tons of mustard gas mentioned were in fact 23.6 tons.

During one Forrest Gump moment Mr Bush admitted Iraqi dissatisfaction, stating: "They're not happy they're occupied. I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either."

Later, wrapping up the press conference, he said: "It's a pretty sombre assessment today. One thing is for certain; though, about me (pause) and the world has learned this (pause), when I say something, I mean it. And the credibility of the United States is incredibly important for keeping world peace and freedom."

Politics professor Robert T Starks, called Bush "an abomination to a great nation", after watching his performance on TV.

The 60-year-old political science professor at Northeastern Illinois University, branded Bush's answers "vapid, confusing and evasive".

AN editorial in the highly-respected New York Times said: "Mr Bush was grave and impressive reading his opening remarks, which focused on the horrors of terrorism and the great good that could come from establishing a free, democratic Iraq.

"No one in the country could disagree with either thought. But his responses to questions were distressingly rambling and unfocused."

The Chicago Tribune commented: "..the President, who spoke repeatedly about being on a war footing, hardly seemed sure-footed, even on questions that could scarcely be seen as overly aggressive."

The Daily News said: "Bush rambled at times and repeated himself frequently."

And political science lecturer Bruce Caswell, writing in the The South Jersey News, said: "All in all I thought it was a pretty sub-par performance."

Bush's brainlessness was well matched by the mindless thuggery of the USA's demented revenge seeking in Falluja:

The AC-130 gunships spray their 40mm cannon fire, the guns roaring like a chainsaw chewing through metal. The Sunni militiamen fire back, lighting up the American positions with mortars, rockets and bullets.

A marine smiles at the cacophony and the flashes of light as dawn breaks, the strains of Shoot to Thrill by AC/DC, screeching out from the loudspeakers of a Humvee, reverberate across the ghostly neighbourhood.

"You're not men. You hide behind women's skirts. Come out and fight," shouts a psychological operations officer over a loud-hailer.

Two Iraqis immediately do so — and a marine mows them down with his machine-gun.

This is a ceasefire, Falluja-style.

On the edge of the front line, a man in a white robe sweeps his driveway and tends his garden, yards away from another Arab, clad in black and white, shot dead by marine snipers hours earlier.

As the gardener removes some fallen branches from hedges around his home, the marines lose patience and fire a warning shot. The man bolts inside.

The marine snipers perch in a dilapidated breezeblock attic, wallpapered with pictures of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, and mourn their fallen friend, Corporal Blake Wofford.

Each wants a chance of revenge. "I think, Blake, this is for you. I hope this is the f***** who got you," says the sniper, who earlier shot the Arab clad in black and white.

Winning hearts and minds is on the back burner for the moment.

Ned Parker is an AFP correspondent embedded with US forces.

Locals in the deeply religious city of 200,000 people have told of countless incidents of civilians — including women, children and the elderly — killed by US snipers, cluster bombs and attacks from helicopter gunships and fighter planes. Their claims appear to belie American assertions that 95 % of those killed in the city have been insurgents.

As early as the first day of the operation, before the siege of the city had begun, an airstrike close to the al-Julan area killed nine civilians.

With tears in his eyes, Nasur Hamdani, the father of Ali Nasur, 4, described how his son lost a hand and a leg and was castrated by flying shrapnel from the missile while he was playing in his grandfather's garden. "Most people did not support the resistance before," he said. "Now the resistance are seen as true heroes. I have only one question for the Americans: what did my child do to deserve this?"

The same thoughts echoed across the neighbourhood as the besieged inhabitants did what they could to save one another. Shortly after Ali was wounded, Hazwan Raawi, a former army officer and a father of two, saw the Americans strike two houses in his street. The three Hussein brothers who had been sipping tea outside one of the buildings stood no chance.

Ammar Ali Hussein was a taxi driver and had three children: Raawi found pieces of his head splattered against a wall. His younger brother Taraq, a barber, lost a leg and bled to death, while the youngest brother Kaldun, who had only just got engaged to marry, lost half his face.

A pivotal moment in the battle came the following day, when another airstrike killed at least 40 Iraqis at the Abdul Aziz al-Samarrai mosque. The dazed citizens gave up all hope of burying their dead at the cemeteries that lie outside the city centre. Instead they either dug makeshift graves in their back gardens or carried their loved ones to hasty funerals in the football stadium.

Other victims of the fighting lay in no man's land towards the American lines, their bodies bloated by the sun and ravaged by packs of dogs.

If the object of Vigilant Resolve was to break the resolve of Falluja, then it has backfired. For every man who falls, several more take up arms. "I know of many people who have joined the fighters because they are so angered by what the Americans have done," said Mustapha Akhmed, 27, who escaped Falluja last week.

"The Americans have no mercy," said another. "A doctor who came from Basra to help the wounded, was shot dead by a sniper as he got out of an ambulance. Is this what they call liberating the-Iraqi people?"

And now Spain's bourgeois capitalist state, with as vicious an imperialist-tyranny record as any in Europe, is pulling out of this murderous madhouse.

And so desperate now is the USA for ANY support it can get to hide its naked infamy,from the UN or anywhere, — that sneers about "paella-eating surrender monkeys" were far less prominent than when France's opt-out was the hot imperialist gossip.

This warmongering catastrophe the world is being dragged towards has started drawing unprecedented ridicule from all quarters, including much scathing bourgeois criticism, very pointedly aimed at other bourgeois:

What does it take to get a New Labour politician to speak out on Iraq? I'm not talking about the likes of Blair, Hoon and Straw — key players so deeply implicated in the cruel tragedy of conquest and occupation that they have no option but to stay the course, even as it spirals into slaughter and chaos. But there are ministers and backbenchers with a history of commitment to human rights. What does it take to shock them out of their baffling silence?

Not the 600 or 700 Iraqis killed over the last fortnight in Falluja, it seems.

Maybe they accept the reassurance of the commander of the US marines besieging the city that his men are "trained to be precise in their firepower", and that "95% of those killed were legitimate targets".

Let's accept for the moment that the commander is right and accept that the AC-130 gunships and F16 fighter bombers unleashed against the people of Falluja are precise, that the 500lb bombs falling on the city come under the definition of judicious. Let's look at just a handful of the 5% of civilian casualties the Americans concede they have inflicted. These include the mother of six-year-old Haider Abdel-Wahab, shot and killed while hanging out laundry; his father, shot in the head; Haider himself, and his brothers, crushed but dug out alive after a US missile struck their house.

They include children who died of head wounds. They include an old woman with a bullet wound — still clutching a white flag when aid workers found her. They include an elderly man lying face down at the gate to his house — while inside terrified girls screamed "Baba! Baba!" They include ambulance crews fired on by US troops — and four-year-old Ali Nasser Fadil, wounded during an air strike.

The New York Times reporter who found the infant in a Baghdad hospital described him lying in bed, "his eyes wide and fixed on a spot in the ceiling". His left leg had been crudely amputated. The same reporter found 10-year-old Waed Jvda by the bedside of his gravely wounded father. "American snipers shot at us as we were trying to flee Falluja," said Waed.

Every one of these incidents has been documented by journalists, aid workers or medical staff. And there are plenty more. Even allowing for casualties caused by the Iraqi resistance, the dread catalogue of American-inflicted suffering and death is long and undeniable. At this point it's worth reminding ourselves that 5% of 600 is 30. But the evidence of the bodies alone gives the lie to the American account: at least 350 of the dead in Falluja have been women and children.

The Americans say they are engaged in a mission to bring to justice the perpetrators of the four security contractors — or mercenaries — killed and mutilated in the city on March 31. Locals see it differently. They describe their occupation, initially by troops of the US 82nd Airborne, as oppressive from the start. Almost as soon as they arrived, in April 2003, US soldiers killed 18 protesters during a demonstration. After six months of occupation, the 82nd Airborne had killed at least 40 civilians and police in the city.

In March, the 82nd Airborne were replaced by a Marine Expeditionary Force and, shortly afterwards, an American soldier was killed. On March 27, marines undertook a "sweep" through the city, described as "revenge" by Mohammed Albalwa, president of the city council. At least six Iraqi civilians, including an 11-year-old boy, were killed. It was in this heightened atmosphere that the mercenaries met their grisly deaths. No one can pretend that the assault on Falluja is anything other than retribution for the mercenaries — even members of the hand-picked Iraqi governing council accept it as such.

On all of this — a shameful and deafening silence. Politicians are not usually so tongue-tied. Remember Peter Hain, leader of the House, after bands of landless black poor invaded white-owned farms in Zimbabwe? The number of white farmers killed was a fraction of the toll of civilians who die every week in Iraq at the hands of coalition forces. Hain was swift to denounce Zimbabwe's government as "uncivilised". He spoke of his "horror" at the killings. Tyranny, he said, was "running riot in Zimbabwe" and "disfiguring the whole of the southern African sub-continent". So far, Hain has been silent about the horror wreaked by US firepower in Falluja and the disfigurement of Iraq by what has by any reckoning been a massacre.

And what about Chris Mullin, a former Tribune editor and now junior minister at the Foreign Office? Best remembered for his campaign to free the Birmingham Six, Mullin is frequently described as a friend of the underdog, with a commitment to human rights.

Sadly, these qualities have not been much in evidence recently. Last summer Mullin defended to me the kangaroo courts held in Belmarsh prison, at which anonymous witnesses testify against men imprisoned by the home secretary without charge ("Better than sending them back to their countries of origin where they would be killed,' he said). And though he was outraged by the denial of justice to the Birmingham Six, Guantanamo does not disturb him ("September 11 changed everything"). The underdogs of Falluja have yet to move Mullin.

Then there's Hilary Benn, international development secretary, who has spoken of Britain's responsibility to get Iraqi schools and hospitals up and running, to ensure a future for Iraqi children. But it isn't easy to square the rhetoric of international development with that of military occupation: the promise of a good education doesn't mean much to parents dodging US snipers to dig a hole in a sports field in order to bury their child.

The list of the shameful silent could go on: Angela Eagle, a longstanding leftwinger? Silent. Harriet Harman and Patricia Hewitt, former stalwarts of the old National Council for Civil Liberties? Silent. Oona King, who in her maiden speech cited the 1880 Match Girls' strike, has spoken passionately about the 35,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases and denounced the "slaughter and oppression" of the Palestinians in Jenin. Silent. Joan Ruddock, former chair of CND. Silent. Ann Clwyd, defender of the Kurds and the Marsh Arabs, who wrote: "Some will continue to argue that internal repression is not a matter of legitimate concern for other countries. I disagree. There are basic human rights that must be defended."

Are we to take it, then, that external repression is acceptable? That the human rights of the inhabitants of Falluja are not worth defending? What has happened to these people? Many of them don't even have ministerial jobs to protect. I have yet to hear any of them acknowledge that what is going on in Falluja is wrong. That killing children is wrong, blasting their houses is wrong, blowing up mosques is wrong, burying a family under a ton of rubble is wrong.

Today the siege of Falluja continues. US troops are massing outside the holy city of Najaf. In the south, the situation has been further inflamed by the British Army shooting 15 people dead in Amara on April 6 (silence there, too). In Baghdad's Sadr City, camouflaged Humvees tour the streets with loudspeakers warning people not to leave their homes. No one seriously believes things are improving in Iraq under occupation. How long before our MPs speak out?

Ronan Bennett is a novelist and screen writer. His novel Havoc in its Third Year is published by Bloomsbury in September

The mote and beam comparison keeps making imbeciles of the dwindling band of ministers and functionaries who seek to defend the military invasion and grisly occupation of Iraq. Paul Bremer is the blinkered reactionary in charge of the administration of that country. Bremer was described in a special Financial Times profile last week as "an imposing figure with a devastating intellect".

Last week, in the middle of the growing chaos in Iraqi cities, Bremer savagely denounced groups "who think power in Iraq should come out of the barrel of a gun". He was not apparently referring to the US and British armed forces who seized power in Iraq (and put him into his powerful post) entirely and exclusively by sustained use of the barrels of thousands of guns, not to mention helicopter gunships, guided missiles, cluster bombs and weapons of people destruction of every conceivable kind. Bremer, in short, is an "imposing figure" in Iraq only because he was able to rely on the greatest firepower on earth.

Again last week, during the uprising in Falluja, Bremer became very annoyed with the insurgents, led, he alleged, by Sheikh Moqtada al-Sadr. On Tuesday last week I turned on the television to see Bremer angrily protesting that Sadr "basically tried to take control of the country". In an attempt to apply Bremer's "devastating intellect" to that sentence, I would define "the country" as Iraq, Sadr as a man who lives in that country, and Bremer, a career diplomat who lives in the US, as a man who not only tried but succeeded in taking over Iraq by force of arms without recourse to the people there (or even the United Nations).

What advice can we offer Bremer and his fellow imperialists, who keep denouncing Iraqi resistance to the invasion and occupation of their country for the violence and duplicity that they themselves regularly deploy?

A few hours after the terrorist train blasts in Madrid, western media hurried to the scene and mainstream British television networks broadcast the incident live. On the other hand, no one has suggested holding even a minute's silence for the, at least, 10,000 civilians killed in Iraq by those who claim to have gone there to promote democratic values. For the bereaved families, it did not make any difference whether their sons and daughters were killed by Saddam Hussein or their "liberators".

Further evidence of this conceit can be seen in the escalating efforts of the Bush administration and the neo-conservatives to push through their Greater Middle East initiative. The people of our region now associate the term "democracy" with western greed for oil and incessant interventions in our internal affairs. They regard it as self-evident that the west is not after democracy in the Middle East. The history of the region tells them, that grassroots movements for democracy have all been suppressed by the west.

History shows that the west stood against democracy in Iran, but behind the dictatorial regime of Saddam. The reason was a fear of democratic governments coming to power in a domino effect throughout the region.

In 1953, the United States helped orchestrate the overthrow of Iran's popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. It later encouraged Iraq to go to war against Iran. It provided Iraq with sophisticated conventional and non-conventional weapons (except nuclear ones, which were the exclusive domain of Israel).

In its support of "Saddam's democracy", it attacked Iranian oil platforms and naval ships. Finally, the US shot down an Iranian passenger airliner, killing more than 290 innocent passengers, and covered up this atrocity by offering a medal — for his "heroic achievement" — to the captain of the ship responsible.

The same US sent Henry Kissinger to Iran to support the so-called democratic reforms of the shah and offered the Iranian government access to American nuclear power technology. As secretary of state, Kissinger advised Iran to build at least 10 nuclear power plants. It is the height of insincerity for the US to now use bullying tactics against the International Atomic Energy Authority over Iran. Despite all the pressure, the IAEA has declared that Iran is not moving in the direction of manufacturing nuclear weapons.

The US has not learned its lesson and is still paying for past mistakes. It arrested Saddam in a humiliating way and keeps him hanging like a sword of Damocles over the heads of Iraqis. America is now hunting Osama bin Laden. It used his group, al-Qaida, to coerce Iran and, in collusion with the Taliban, Iranian diplomats were murdered in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.

Keeping the people of the Middle East in the dark and prioritising short-term western interests will not produce the desired results. Support for the former shah and the orchestration of two coups d'etat (in 1921 and 1953) by British and US agents did not prevent the victory of the Islamic revolution. This time the west, especially the US, should look at the region with its eyes open.

When Sheikh Yassin was killed leaving a mosque in his wheelchair by an Israeli helicopter, the democracy and accountability of Israel to the UN was demonstrated to the world.

Condemnation of Israel's actions rarely goes beyond words. Western governments will not take a stand against the Sharon government's daily atrocities. But it is now taken for granted in the Middle East that if the condemnation concerns Muslims, they will go all the way to sanctions and even war.

Mohammad Ali Eskandari is press attaché at the Iranian embassy in London

A year ago today, with the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad, the pro-war commentators couldn't stop crowing about the ease with which the coalition forces had won a swift and righteous victory.

In the immediate aftermath, their triumphalist verdict was: the war had been won; the dictator was overthrown; resistance was crumbling; Iraq was assured of a benevolent, democratic future. As that peerless prophet William Rees-Mogg told his Times readers: "April 9 2003 was Liberty Day for Iraq, the day on which one of the foulest of the 20th century tyrannies was finally destroyed". It was achieved, he wrote, by "the engine of global liberation", the United States.

The Times's leader writer also hymned the victory: "Jubilant crowds emerged on the streets. Elated Iraqis threw flowers to greet American, troops ... After 24 years of oppression, three wars and three weeks of relentless bombing, Baghdad has emerged from an age of darkness. Yesterday was an historic day of liberation."

One of the Times's senior executives, Michael Gove, wrote of the effects that would follow "a massive infusion of western humanitarian aid", proclaiming: "Hopes are high that it will soon become the most democratic state in the Arab world." This transformation would be aided by the fact that British "troops are recognised as the world's most effective in winning battles as well as hearts and minds".

Rupert Murdoch's other cheerleader for war, the Sun, told its readers: "The spontaneous outpouring of joy in towns and cities across Iraq was the message to the world that America and Britain are liberating allies, not oppressing invaders." It spoke of the war as "a political triumph... for Tony Blair and George Bush", because "virtually alone on the world stage, and blocked at all sides by the treachery of the French, Russians and Germans, they had the fortitude to do what they knew was right" '

On April 13, Murdoch's Sunday Times saw it as "an easy military victory" and argued that the "remaining support for the regime has crumbled". Everything was just fine: "The Ark Royal is preparing to sail back to Britain. Yesterday's stop-the-war protest in London must rank as one of the silliest rallies in modern times."

The News of the World, Murdoch's fourth warmongering paper, equated the Baghdad looters with the so-called "TV polluters" in Britain, contending that the former would soon be elbowed aside, while reserving its vitriol for the latter: "What do the BBC and its friends want — Saddam back in power?"

The Daily Express believed the allied forces had won "one of the most remarkable military campaigns in recent history", adding: "Tony Blair's utter determination to see this battle through has been thoroughly vindicated." The Express columnists Richard and Judy informed us that the "weapons of mass destruction, or their components, will surely soon surface.

"Iraqi scientists ... will reveal details of the research and development of illegal weapons programmes." Next day the Sunday Express's star columnist, Robert Kilroy-Silk — who later lost his BBC presenter's role after revealing an anti-Arab bias — was certain the Iraqis "can be in no safer hands than the British and Americans. Both are successful democracies with proud records on human rights. Both can be relied upon to keep their word and act with altruism to a degree that would seem foolish to the French. And the Iraqis can be assured the country will be returned in better shape than before."

Anne McElvoy, delighted at the vindication of her belief that the war was "both morally and practically right", scorned those who had' predicted a "mother of all battles": They "are still waiting for their 'next Vietnam' ", she wrote sarcastically in the London Evening Standard.

The Daily Telegraph berated the war's opponents too. "While many of those who opposed the war have had the good grace to keep quiet, others are even now trying to insist that the whole enterprise has been a disaster."

Then there was dear Melanie Phillips in the Daily Mail, laying into "the anti-war lobby" and "armchair appeasers" for predicting disaster.

Though the Daily Mirror opposed the war, it generously offered space to one of the war's most vociferous supporters, Christopher Hitchens. He taunted the anti-war marchers and "half the newspaper columnists in England" for their forecasts of doom, confidently claiming that all was well in liberated Baghdad.

The Arab streets had not risen, "to spit in the face of Zionism and imperialism".

Anti-war demonstrators who claimed that "there would be heaps and heaps of slaughtered Iraqi civilians, and massive casualties among coalition troops" had been wrong. "Soon it will become evident to the naked eye that targeting was careful and the intentions honourable."

But at that point, the ignorant inability of all bourgeois commentary to have even the faintest idea of what they are talking about when they bandy around notions of "democracy" and the very nature and historical implications of warmongering imperialist crisis, etc, etc, causes interest in this dog-eat-dog handbagging to peter out.

"Democracy", — in the sense in which all bourgeois use it, — is just a joke, and is not even remotely any sort of possible "solution" (longterm or even shorter-term) in Iraq (or Afghanistan, or Palestine, or anywhere else, etc, etc).

The capitalist-imperialist world system, dominating all our lives, is falling ever deeper into an economic crisis of irreconcilable contradictions in which the Third World will no longer tolerate the grotesque and growing chasm between the richest communities on Earth and the poorest, and who will explode in revolution as the inter-imperialist trade war and slump conflict degenerates into ever-wider warmongering, and ever worsening poverty and despair for the world's masses.

This revolt is already beginning with the spread of ferocious resistance across the Middle East from Palestine to Afghanistan.

The early-stage "Islamic" character of this revolution is utterly irrelevant (and temporarily regionally and historically inevitable in the Middle East's case).

As consistently explained here, Hamas religiosity fades from influence, — as the original PLO secular "national democracy" compromise Revisionism faded from influences — AS SOON AS THE POLITICAL DEMANDS NO LONGER MEET THE SITUATION'S NEEDS, OR ANY LONGER CONVINCE ANYONE.

Utterly pointless is all "speaking nicely" by anyone to anyone else.

Harsh materialist philosophy revolutionary truths are what need putting forward, — constantly, — regardless of who might feel offended.

Exactly where and how is not clear, but revolutionary communist know-how will eventually triumphantly emerge right across the middle East and far, far beyond.

In many places on Earth, it will already be being argued-for right now, and those Marxist truths will steadily be confirmed by real events.

A breakdown of sectarianism to further the fight is already noted among Palestinians and Iraqis, — all SOLELY because of the historical pressures for ALL to get closer to the revolutionary truth about this world, now condemned by imperialist warmongering crisis.

It is this historical PROCESS to which all rational struggle should be oriented. Build Leninism. EPSR

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