Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This is the touchstone on which the real understanding and recognition of Marxism is to be tested. -V. I. Lenin 
Economic & Philosophic Science Review 
Subscriptions (£25 p a.) & circulation:  078679 96074     P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [ Post Office Regd.]          www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk                                           
No 1141 June 25 2002                                                                                                                      25p                                                                

Seminar Sat 2pm Pse bring rcpts.

The astonishing steady revelations of the scale of British imperialism's defeat and demoralisation in Ireland, plus a growing bourgeois acceptance that Afghanistan and the ludicrous "war on terrorism" are turning into a humiliating disaster for the terminal crisis of Western bullying world-domination, only confirm the Marxist view of the capitalist system's deepening economic catastrophe. As can be deduced from their own words in "free-market" press reports and World Bank analysis admissions, the crucial question is still whether the dictatorship of the proletariat rules, or the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. And despite the confusion that global petty-bourgeois Revisionism inflicted on the world (and still inflicts from every corner of the fake-'left' swamp of 57 Trot and ex-CP varieties), the epoch-making triumphs of planned workers state developments since 1917 (and still proving their worth in China e.g. despite the muddled grasp of anti-imperialism there) remain the only possible path forward for civilisation. As Marxist science makes plain, only national-liberation war and class war, as proved in Ireland and increasingly clear from other violent struggles in the Middle East and elsewhere, can drag mankind free from the disastrous mess that bourgeois and colonial domination have made of the world. In the light of the revelations, who were the real "terrorists" in Ireland? And similarly, it is only Western imperialist domination which will be found the violently-guilty party in the issues of Palestine, Afghanistan, Colombia, and al-Qaeda, etc, etc, etc, etc. The sick Bush joke "supporting" Palestinian statehood provided they first lay down and die, and then jump through hoops, can only strengthen the Intifada by recognising that justice is all on the Palestinian side.

The shocking admission on BBC television that the highest security authorities of the British State (MI5 and the Special Branch) have been organising assassinations of leading Republicans in the part of Ulster which is claimed as the territory of Britain, reflects monstrously on the imperialist system but tells an even bigger story about imperialism's defeat.

Far from it being another pretence of "British reasonableness" in completing the "smooth handover" of nearly the last territory of its formerly vast colonial empire, the steady retreat from Ireland is ripping the British Security Establishment apart.

It is its coincidence with the terminal crisis of the world imperialist system itself, and of the whole privileged domination role that Britain, France, and the USA, etc, have hitherto enjoyed in international economic and political control, that is the problem.

The most reactionary part of bourgeois ideology can no longer see just a continuation of the 'winds of change' decolonisation process (whereby monopoly-capitalism continued to rule in the same old way but merely shoved over a bit to accommodate a compromise settlement with the more amenable local nationalist leaders).

Sections of the British Establishment are becoming convinced by the general crisis of the capitalist system, and also perhaps by the closeness-to-home of the British ruling class's defeat in Ireland, that their whole privileged bourgeois world is about to come crashing down about them.

Hence the seemingly endless delays in Britain finally getting out of Ireland, a process clearly on the cards since the late 1960s, and hence the remarkable splits in the Top Security echelons of the British State, now producing these fascinating revelations that the only truly "terrorist" operations were all conducted by the British State itself.

In their despairing attempt to carry on fighting the long-lost colonial war in Ireland, the extreme reactionaries are on the same wavelength as Sharon Zionists who correctly fear that the whole state of 'Israel' (which has outrageously been implanted, cuckoo-like, on Occupied Palestine since 1948 by Western imperialist world domination) will come crashing down once the Palestinian nation is at last conceded the right to statehood (any kind of statehood) at last on their own country.

And these joke "anti-terrorist" diehards on the Irish question are like Bush-led US imperialism in their hypocrisy about whose "violence" is the real outrage and the real "threat to peace" and real "obstacle to democratic solutions". etc (as American blitzkrieg bullying goes on crashing round the planet in vain fascist warmongering attempt after vain fascist warmongering attempt to impose its own "new world order" which doesn't work and which nobody wants).

What these reactionaries share is that they cannot accept that they are already beaten.

Although the game has been up for a long time for the British colonial dictatorship in Ireland (the so-called "Northern Ireland"), the degenerate viciousness of the "No Surrender" colonist mentality, in a truly evil axis with hypocritical Security Dictators and killers, has gone on insisting on its "democratic intentions" and its "noble innocence" in spite of all the evidence to the contrary now coming out.

Like aspects of White Rhodesian rule and South African apartheid it is the fascist-warmongering anti-communist essence of bourgeois self-righteousness which finds it hardest to let go or admit defeat.

Even now, as parts of the state machinery and bourgeois propaganda service resolve to finally put the boot into the Establishment sectors which are encouraging last ditch wrecking resistance on the streets of North Belfast to the Good Friday Agreement, - other parts of that selfsame Establishment and propaganda hierarchy are trying to deflect the force of those revelatory blows.

Thus the morning after Panorama's sensational evidence that MI5 and Special Branch were behind the murder of leading Republican civil rights lawyer Pat Finucane in 1989, the Radio Four morning think-show had the plausible but ludicrous reactionary Ruth Dudley Edwards (or whatever) on, confidently discussing the "fascism" of Sinn Féin with her fellow "intellectuals".

Similarly, the previous week's 'Today's papers' had mentioned the Guardian's mind boggling advance on the Stevens Inquiry report (which will put the final nails into the Ulster Unionist dictatorship's coffin), but had for its discussion interview, elsewhere in the programme, the UUP gauleiter himself, David Trimble, not apologising for orange fascism's lifelong reliance on the RUC's Nazi-SS characteristics for its police-state supremacy over the regularly illegally-beaten or illegally murdered Irish, but ranting on about how Sinn Féin should be booted out of the "democratic process" forthwith for its mythical "guerrilla war preparations still in training in Colombia" and for its "criminal-terrorist raid on sensitive police files" at Castlereagh Barracks thus "proving Sinn Féin's contempt for democracy", etc, etc, etc.

The clones of Ruth Dudley (etc) in London and Dublin and in the imperialist media have equally used the astonishing Castlereagh "inside job" (as all the evidence points to) for further slandering Sinn Féin's name and attempting to halt British imperialism's GFA surrender deal (which totally accepts the long-term Sinn Féin perspective for the snails-pace dismantling of "Northern Ireland" and restoration of Ireland's unity, ending the hated and disastrously-failed Partition forever).

Despite all Sinn Féin's amused assurances that Republicans had not authorised the Castlereagh break-in, (and that the RUC "investigation" of SF responsibility was a stupid frame-up attempt at slandering the national-liberation struggle which would only come to grief), - still all the bourgeois British media carried on the disinformation game to blacken Sinn Féin's name in the run-up to the Irish elections.

The Provisionals triumphed regardless at the Dáil polls, - and now follows the attempted quiet clearing-away of the manure-heap of the farcical campaign to vilify Sinn Féin:

Senior security service and British police sources now believe that the extraordinary break-in at the Castlereagh complex in east Belfast was an "inside job" undertaken by renegade special branch officers, possibly with the help of agents working for an undercover army unit.

They strongly suspect that the theft of sensitive documents on St Patrick's Day - a spectacular breach at one of Northern Ireland's most fortified police bases - was not the work of Irish republican terrorists.

In the weeks after the March 17 raid, the security services pointed the finger at republican paramilitaries,  believing it was an audacious attempt to expose informants and embarrass the Police Service of Northern Ireland, formerly the Royal Ulster Constabulary. Republicans were outraged when police and soldiers swooped on 12 homes and business premises in Belfast and Derry, arresting six people, including the former IRA hunger striker Raymond McCartney and Bobby Storey, who security sources claim is the IRA's head of intelligence.

None was charged in connection with the raid. Police are, however, seeking to extradite Larry Zaitschek, a chef who formerly worked at Castlereagh, from the United States.

Northern Irish police sources said 75% of the investigation, headed by Belfast's most senior detective, Chief Superintendent Phil Wright, is still focusing on republican involvement.

But British security sources admit that they have had a change of heart. They say the raid on the small, temporary special branch office, which was used as a telephone contact point by informants and their handlers, bore the hallmarks of an insider operation.

The material taken is thought to include notebooks, giving details of officers and their contacts, and several officers are believed to have had to move house or increase their home security, although the motive for the theft is still unclear.

One theory is that disgruntled former or serving special branch officers, unhappy with the radical changes the force is undergoing as it adapts to peacetime policing, wanted to undermine those in charge.

Sir John Chilcot, a Whitehall secret services mandarin, is heading a separate inquiry into the national security implications of the raid, and could recommend that MI5 take over from special branch the lead role in intelligence gathering in Northern Ireland.

Police sources denied that any of the stolen papers related to a three-year investigation into alleged collusion between the security forces and loyalist paramilitaries in the 1989 murder of the solicitor Pat Finucane.

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, who is heading that inquiry, will complete his report next month and is expected to be highly critical of special branch.

Sir John has led two previous inquiries into collusion and is aware of the dirty tricks some police officers and army agents are prepared to play.

He believes that a mysterious fire that destroyed his offices at a key point in his first investigation in 1990 was "deliberately set" by agents working for the force research unit, a secretive section of the British army.

David Trimble has made no resounding appearances in the British media to offer a new opinion on the outrageous anti-SF slanders.

Neither has he had much to say about the astonishing fact within this story that 75% of RUC activity around the Castlereagh break-in is STILL being directed against Sinn Féin.

The Republican refusal to accept that the RUC's name-change to PSNI has made the force worthy of trust or respect, or deserving of Sinn Féin's approval by serving on the supposedly "independent political supervisory boards", - has never looked a wiser move, further consigning the SDLP class collaborators to the dustbin of history.

Trimble has also made no ringing denunciations of the MI5/Special Branch assassination activities.

One recorded comment (on the first Panorama programme's graphic reconstruction of these police-state murder conspiracies) was to say that it "all seemed like tittle-tattle" to him, and "nothing substantial", etc.

The classical "being driven mad" part (prior to "destruction") of Greek theistic mythology, would seem to be near completion.
	
The accumulating bourgeois media admissions of Sir John Stevens at the heart of "British democratic rule" could hardly be more overwhelming.

This murderous, truly "terrorist" record of state-assassinations of its political opponents, frequently ending the lives of people utterly 'innocent' of any Republican connection, represents capitalist admissions of imperialist-system rottenness & violence which would justify ANY kind of armed onslaught on its vicious dictatorship whatever, 	let alone justifying the honourable national liberation war and political-resistance movement fought against British colonial tyranny by Sinn Féin and the IRA. It merits recording as fully as possible by any serious anti-imperialist political movement:

MI5 knew virtually everything about police and army collusion with the loyalist terrorists who murdered Pat Finucane and other Catholics in Northern Ireland, a television documentary claimed last night.

The BBC Panorama programme also named a senior Ulster Defence Association paramilitary, Jim Spence, as the man who ordered the death of the Belfast solicitor in February 1989, with the encouragement of an RUC special branch officer who also helped the murder gang to escape.

The UDA man Ken Barrett, allegedly one of the two gunmen who shot Mr Finucane in front of his family in their north Belfast home, claimed that the loyalist godfather Mr Spence, now 41, commissioned but did not carry out the murder. 

"He [Mr Spence] would have arranged, if you know what I mean, or set it up, but he wasn't actually involved in the actual end product," said Mr Barrett, whom the Panorama team secretly recorded without his knowledge.

The allegations follow revelations in the Guardian that a three year inquiry, led by the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir John Stevens, has discovered widespread collusion between individual police officers, soldiers and loyalist terrorists.

In the first of two parts to the Panorama investigation, shown last Wednesday, Mr Barrett said a police officer had urged him to shoot Mr Finucane, alleging he was a top IRA man, a claim strenuously denied by the Provisionals and his family. In last night's programme Mr Barrett said he was incredulous when Mr Spence first suggested the lawyer as a target and felt it was too risky. But Mr Barrett claimed the special branch officer, whose identity Panorama knows but did not reveal, tipped the murder gang off, that their route to and from Mr Finucane's house was clear of security force roadblocks.

Mr Barrett said Brian Nelson, a UDA/army intelligence double agent, gave him a photograph of Mr Finucane a few days earlier and showed him where the solicitor lived.

Secret army files, to which the Stevens team has only recently had access, record that it was Mr Spence who suggested attacking Mr Finucane. Panorama claims MI5 had direct access to all these documents on a daily basis, including the crucial intelligence that a police officer colluded in the murder.

This claim was backed up by a former soldier of the army's undercover force research unit (FRU), who uses the pseudonym Martin Ingram. He told the Guardian yesterday that MI5 had unlimited access to all FRU files.

"The MI5 officer sat opposite the FRU's operations officer at the unit's headquarters, face to face with the files down the middle," he said. "All the reports came through to headquarters. There were no secrets between MI5 and FRU, they knew everything."

Panorama claimed that MI5, which signed statements during the first Stevens inquiry 12 years ago to say it knew nothing about collusion, has only recently given this information to the Stevens team.

Sir John said he had no comment on the allegations regarding MI5. He added: "We have still got people to re-interview on the inquiry, and we will continue to do that until I'm satisfied we've got to the bottom of what took place".

In 1992 Mr Nelson was sentenced to 10 years in jail on conspiracy to murder charges unconnected with the Finucane case.

Brigadier Gordon Kerr, then a colonel in charge of the FRU, who had recruited him as a double agent, testified at his trial, claiming he had saved countless lives by passing on 730 reports on 217 people targeted by loyalist paramilitaries.

In the Panorama programme Detective Sergeant Nicholas Benwell, who worked on the first two Stevens inquiries into collusion, said he could find only two cases where Mr Nelson's information thwarted attacks, but believed he had been involved in more than 50 crimes, including murders and attempted murders.

The detective also insisted instead that FRU personnel wanted attacks to take place or were content for them to happen.

"It's collusion by omission" said Mr Benwell, who also rejected the brigadier's claims that FRU knew nothing about UDA plans to shoot Gerard Slane, a Catholic whom loyalists wrongly believed was an IRA gunman, in 1988.

In a statement to a previous inquiry into collusion by Sir John, Brigadier Kerr said: "Needless to say, I wish to state categorically that any such suspicions are completely groundless."

But Mr Benwell said: "They knew Nelson had been targeting Slane. They also knew that he'd been to his intelligence dump and he'd got a photograph of Slane, which he'd handed to one of the most prolific killers in the organisation."

The Panorama reporter John Ware travelled to China to confront Brigadier Kerr, now the British military attaché in Beijing, but he refused to answer any questions.

The current Stevens team will question the brigadier in the next few weeks.

Back in 1988, Spence had told Barrett that Finucane had become a thorn in the side of the RUC. Barrett says Spence knew this because he had powerful friends in the force. At the time of the murder Spence, still in his twenties, was already a godfather of the loyalist murder gangs in west Belfast. According to Barrett, Spence was adept at "arranging the end product, if you know what I mean".

The 39-year-old solicitor was causing trouble for the security forces: he had successfully applied to the High Court for the release of the IRA's Belfast commander and persuaded the court to compel police officers to give evidence. He had strong nationalist sympathies, but he was first off a lawyer who used every legal avenue for his clients. In the end Spence's will prevailed. He introduced Barrett to one of his police friends who told him: "Pat was an IRA man . . . he was a bad boy, and if he was out they'd have a lot of trouble replacing him."

The officer certainly impressed Barrett. "He was a cool customer. This guy could do more or less anything." He was in Special Branch.

Spence was an asset to Special Branch. He was both a restraining influence against the wilder, sectarian elements in murder gangs and a man who took more care than most loyalists over the targeting of IRA suspects. Some police officers were not going to complain if, through Spence's influence, the Ulster Defence Association got more professional in its targeting.

Finucane was murdered on a Sunday. At 7.30pm on February 12, 1989, Barrett and an accomplice crashed through the front door. The powder burns on Finucane's face showed Barrett fired round after round into his victim's head and neck from 18 inches. Spence's police friend had advised that the sure way of knowing Finucane was at home was his car, a red Audi. Barrett also says Spence assured him they would have a clear run for the drive across Belfast and back.

The signal to the murder gang to go was given shortly after 7pm. The protective arm of Spence and the police was also extended to Barrett in the aftermath. Within days, intelligence reports from Special Branch informers within the loyalist murder gangs were coming in with the names, not just of Barrett but also of his accomplices. As Barrett says: "The hit went down; I wasn't arrested for the hit."

Special Branch had chosen to withhold all this evidence from the CID. "I had 20 detectives, very good detectives, running around north Belfast trying to pick up leads," says Detective Superintendent Alan Simpson, who led the murder investigation. But he got "no leads" from Special Branch.

Given the outcry at home and abroad over the murder and the early allegations of collusion, the failure of Special Branch to help its CID colleagues lock up the perpetrators seems astounding. Yet by piecing together what Barrett has told us with all the other key bits of the jigsaw, that failure begins to look deliberate.

By 1991 Barrett had fallen foul of his murder gang colleagues because he had stolen money from their protection racket to bet on the dogs. So he offered his services as a police agent to the CID. He sought a meeting with Detective Sergeant Johnston Brown and casually boasted to him about how he had killed Finucane. Barrett was not under caution so the confession did not count. But as Brown said: "As a starting point to launch a criminal investigation into murder, they don't come any better."

Brown was determined to pursue the case. Like Simpson he knew, liked and respected Finucane. Brown had an impressive number of scalps to his credit  -- both republican and loyalist terrorists. But Special Branch moved heaven and earth to stop him putting Barrett behind bars. A tape of Barrett's confession went missing. Special Branch threatened to have Brown transferred out of Belfast. When he persisted, it manipulated its informers in loyalist murder gangs to issue death threats to Brown and his family. This worked. In 1992 Brown backed off.

There the truth about collusion between police officers and the murder of Finucane would have rested had it not been for Detective Chief Superintendent Brian McVicker. He, too, had known and respected Finucane. 

When McVicker was appointed head of Belfast CID, he called a meeting to review the case. Brown told him about Barrett. McVicker recalls: "I nearly fell off my chair." But when McVicker sent for the CID file he found no mention of Barrett in it. He referred the matter upwards and it landed on the desk of Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the then RUC chief constable.

For the third time in 10 years Stevens, shortly to become commissioner of the Metropolitan police, was called back to Belfast. He had already twice investigated security force links to the Finucane murder; first in 1989, then in 1993.

His team soon discovered that Special Branch had misled them on several fronts: claiming not to have a Finucane file (it later showed up) and lying that its targeting book had been destroyed - it later resurfaced. Special Branch also misled the Stevens inquiry when it said in 1990 that "there was no intelligence" on the suspects who had shot Finucane. But in the view of the inquiry, one thing has become certain: over the years the relationship between some Special Branch officers and "untouchables" such as Spence had become far too cosy - as they learnt at first hand.

In the summer of 1999, as Stevens prepared the dawn arrests of Spence and Barrett, the powerful protective arm of Spence's police friends was again extended. When officers arrived at Spence's house at about 6am, they found him dressed and drinking tea. He had known they were coming. The same was true of Barrett when they arrived at his caravan.

When another Spence accomplice was shot dead (Spence thought he had been talking), Barrett panicked and went on the run, first to Liverpool and then to Birmingham, where we met him. Graffiti was springing up in Belfast's loyalist Shankhill accusing Barrett of being a "tout". When I broke this news to him he knew the loyalist community was being prepared by its godfathers for his execution.

Against our advice, Barrett flew back to Belfast and telephoned Special Branch asking, about his next move. But he was history. There was a price on his head. The officer tipped off Barrett's former associates, who were looking for him.

Fortunately officers from the Stevens inquiry were informed and arrived in time to give him a choice: co-operate or suffer the fate that perhaps 10 people had suffered at his hands.

Only if Barrett admits his part in the Finucane murder will he be able to strike a deal in exchange for evidence against the police officer friend of Spence, who he says asked him to shoot the solicitor, and perhaps Spence himself.

Barrett is still considering his options. But the most abysmal aspect of the scandal is how much MI5 knew about all this for years. As Stevens told me when I asked him why Special Branch and M15 had sat on such critical leads in the plot to murder Finucane for so long: "We've got questions for everybody in relation to that."

Panorama's Ware flew to China to ask Kerr about his past in the world of anti-terrorist intelligence gathering in Northern Ireland: Kerr once headed the Force Research Unit (FRU), which handles military intelligence informants in the province.

Kerr's self-confidence, bordering on arrogance, is born of the fact that he has the might of the Ministry of Defence, the Treasury solicitors and the Official Secrets Act behind him. For years these bodies have protected the history of the FRU from the scrutiny of newspapers such as The Sunday Times. 

Kerr's option of walking away from awkward questions was not one that was open to "Martin Ingram", the pseudonym given by The Sunday Times to one of Kerr's former underlings in the FRU. 

Members of the security services believed that Pat Finucane, the solicitor, had been a member of the IRA like three of his brothers and they were prepared to see him die. It is part of the military mindset to accept casualties, particularly enemy casualties, to achieve a strategic objective. However, it is not a logic that has a role within the framework of UK law, which covers Northern Ireland. Since it could not be legally justified the Ministry of Defence's stance was to attempt to silence anybody who mentioned it.

When The Sunday Times began to publish Ingram's material we were inundated with solicitors' letters and writs. There was an injunction whose existence we were initially forbidden from mentioning.

The Sunday Times was refused permission to inspect documents sworn by senior intelligence officials that outlined how my articles had allegedly damaged national security. As a result we were unable to challenge them although their threadbare nature can be seen from the fact that the Metropolitan police Special Branch, which was shown them, concluded that no damage to national security could be shown.

Then a former FRU soldier, whom the defence ministry believed to be Ingram, was arrested in Wales on his way to visit relatives and was taken to London. In custody he was shown transcripts of telephone conversations between myself and Ingram that had been taped.

As the paper battled against the gags and tried to challenge the unfounded claims that we had breached the Official Secrets Act, I was contacted by Special Branch and warned that if I did not give myself up for questioning under caution I would be arrested.

Months later the whole case collapsed. Special Branch told me that it had been unable to come near enough to showing damage to security to mount a prosecution. This did not stop it questioning 15 other former members of the FRU to try to establish Ingram's identity with a view to prosecuting him. Since then brave members and former members of the security forces have continued to come forward.

In January we relied on affidavits from Sergeant Johnston Brown and Constable Trevor McIlwrath, two CID officers with the RUC (now renamed the Police Service of Northern Ireland or PSNI) to name a man who had boasted that he had murdered Finucane and to describe how they had been pressurised by Special Branch officers to keep quiet about it. We also described how Ken Barrett had been recruited as a Special Branch agent after the confession. It was as a result of our disclosures that he handed himself into the protective custody of the Stevens inquiry.

Brown and McIlwrath have also given evidence to the inquiry. Ingram has given it details of previously unknown intelligence documents, the so-called "secrets books", which had not been declared to Stevens by the army and which were handed over only after hard persuasion.

Hugh Orde, the new chief constable of the PSNI, should take his courage in both hands and publish as full a version as possible. The British public has a right to be told what exactly was and was not done in its name. The alternative is another public inquiry like the one into Bloody Sunday, which has already taken four years and cost £120m.

If the Stevens report does not answer enough questions, the next step may be a truth and reconciliation process such as the one carried out in South Africa.

Beijing is a long way from Belfast. Perhaps that is why Brigadier Gordon Kerr is our defence attaché there. For he is about to be propelled back to the centre of a case which threatens to become a stain on the reputation of the British army every bit as black as Bloody Sunday.

As an intelligence colonel in 1987, Kerr recruited former soldier Brian Nelson as an agent, reporting to the secret force research unit (FRU). Nelson's job was to infiltrate the Ulster Defence Association. Kerr regarded Nelson as his jewel in the crown: he was, for a while, the brigadier's only loyalist agent. For the next three years, Nelson colluded with murder gangs to shoot IRA suspects. Month after month, armed and masked men crashed into homes. Sometimes they got the wrong address or shot the wrong person. The Belfast solicitor,  Pat Finucane was one of those murdered.

Kerr will travel to London soon to be interviewed by detectives working for Sir John Stevens, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. This is Stevens' third attempt in 13 years to get to the bottom of this murky pond. Some of his officers saw the brigadier's response to their first enquiry in 1990 as high-handed. "I find it incredible that I should be required to account for our handling of the case," he said at the time.

The brigadier has always said the purpose of "running" Nelson was to save lives. But I have yet to find a Stevens detective familiar with the case who understands the logic of this. Each week, Nelson met his army handlers. Their formerly secret files show they knew what agent 6137 thought his job was as he manoeuvred himself to become head of intelligence for the UDA.

May 88: "...6137 wants the UDA only to attack legitimate targets and not innocent Catholics." 
Nov 87: "Once all the information has been gathered and checked by 6137, it will be passed- on to the various UFF commanders for action"
Feb 89: "...6137 initiates most of the targeting... of late 6137 has been more organised and he is currently running an operation against selected republican personalities". 
Aug 88: "6137's appointment enables him to make sure... proper targeting of IRA members takes place prior to any shooting..."

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that both Nelson and his handlers shared a cold military logic: if the loyalist gangs were going to shoot people, it was better that they targeted the "right" ones. But sometimes they got the "wrong" people. Gerard Slane, 27, was shot dead in front of one of his three small boys. He had been given a two-year suspended sentence after a weapon was found near his outside toilet. Perhaps Slane was doing some one a favour; perhaps the weapon had - as he claimed - been dumped. But when Slane was killed, he was not involved in terrorism.

	So how will Kerr persuade the third Stevens inquiry that recruiting and running Nelson was all about saving lives? When Nelson stood in the dock in Belfast in 1992, while speaking up for him Kerr also said he had sometimes overstepped the mark. But a plea deal ensured no secret army files surfaced.  

	The files would have shown Nelson was out of control and his handlers sometimes encouraged it. In April 1989, Nelson tired of the UDA's failure to assassinate Alex Maskey, then an elected Sinn Féin politician, today mayor of Belfast. So he passed Maskey's targeting details to the Ulster Volunteer Force. April 4: "Although the UVF are not particular about their targets, they appear to be more aggressive. 6137 has traded this information for explosives... this 	trading avenue may well be used on a regular basis." It was. Nelson copied his targeting files to almost any murder gang that asked. 

Long after Nelson was arrested, targets listed on his files continued to be shot by loyalist gangs. When officers under Stevens pointed this out, Kerr dismissed the allegation as "political": The truth is that Kerr and his unit had left a deadly and shambolic legacy.

Kerr said the FRU and the RUC special branch did indeed use Nelson to "concentrate their targeting on known IRA activists"; to save the lives not just of innocent Catholics but also of the IRA. Because the IRA were "far harder" targets than innocent Catholics, his unit would have more time to prepare counter-measures with the RUC. The intention was they would head off the killings.

The special branch has, however, told the Stevens inquiry they had nothing to do with developing this strategy with the FRU, nor did they receive any life-saving intelligence from them that was detailed enough to respond to.  Kerr disputes this. But his ability to convince the Stevens inquiry could determine whether or not he faces criminal charges.

With such routine Nazi-SS murderous tyranny as the basis of its state-dictatorship strength, no wonder the colonising domination cultural tradition created by "Ulster Unionism" (all shades) is currently expressing its sick defiance of all reason by brandishing Zionist flags while inflicting wrecking vengeance on North Belfast and non-stop sectarian brutality on the local Irish minority, - cynically content to take the ex-colony to anarchic ruin rather than admit its past wrongs to Ireland, and give up its tyranny with good grace.

Zionist-fascism proper is no different, now exposed to the whole world for its brutal colonisation of the land of Palestine to set up its bastard imperialist state of 'Israel' under Western Cold War guidance in 1948 to guarantee monopoly capitalist ability to control Middle East oil ad infinitum against ANY Arab nationalist resistance or other regional opposition. Its monstrous butchery against the unarmed and stateless refugee-nation of Palestine, smashing the refugee camps with tanks, helicopter gunships, naval barrages, and jet-aircraft bombing runs in the most horrific collective punishment nightmares in all colonial history, - makes German imperialism's Nazi treatment of East Europe or US imperialism's savagery against Vietnam look almost mild by comparison.

Yet it is also dawning on the degenerate Zionist-colonist master-race mentality, as during Ulster Unionism's past murderous tyranny, - that it will all have been in vain in the end.

The less-depraved ciphers of the Zionist imperialist state are now abandoning the attempted colonisation, and going back to their homelands in Europe or the United States, faster than new fanatical Zionist thugs are arriving to give the Palestinians a further kicking and steal more of their land.

Sharon & Co possibly already realise that with the maturing of Palestinian resistance to being colonised now reaching non-stop Intifada proportions, that the game of stealing Palestine away from its Palestinian-Arab population is already up, and that the purely vengeful destructiveness now being inflicted on the refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank is the Zionist equivalent of Ulster Unionism's North Belfast 'dog-in-the-manger' mayhem.

Knowing when the imperialist system is staring down the barrel of historical defeat certainly seems the hardest thing of all for ailing Western bourgeois mentality to grasp. The most doomed nonsense in the whole of monopoly-capitalism's colonial-domination record must be this insane Washington driven "war on terrorism"; but while increasing ideological doubts are being heard (e.g. see last EPSR), the farcical project of "recolonising the world" or "repacifying the world" continues to drag official Western posturing ever deeper down into confused degeneracy. With such an ailing system seemingly incapable of any self-correction, total chaos for imperialism looms ever closer, - as implied in these capitalist press admissions about the ongoing delusions and nonsense attempting to justify the West's "hunt the terrorist" Afghanistan debacle:

In the heady days after the Taliban fell, western politicians developed a simple refrain. "This time we will not walk away," they promised. By that they meant no repetition of what happened after western-supported mojahedin forces gained control of Afghanistan a decade earlier. 

Foreign governments had cheered their allies' victory, but when the mojahedin factions fell out and destroyed Kabul in an orgy of artillery shelling, rape and murder, they turned a blind eye. 

But on the major issue of whether Afghanistan will be run by educated people with a vision of democratic development, the loya jirga was a disaster. The struggle between the modernisers and the old mojahedin leaders was won decisively by the latter. Men responsible for the mayhem of the early 1990s hogged the microphones to boast of their role in resisting Soviet occupation but ignored the more recent destruction they caused and the fact that ordinary Afghans despise them as reactionary warlords. They forced their fundamentalist views of Islam on to the assembly, demanding  - and getting from Karzai - the right to call the government "Islamic". A chief justice was appointed who believes in a strict interpretation of sharia law. The minister for women's affairs was denounced as "Afghanistan's Salman Rushdie".

The loya jirga also failed to enhance the power of the central government and extend it to the provinces. The thugs who run the cities of Herat and Mazar-i-Sharif rejected offers to join Karzai's government in Kabul, preferring to stay in monopoly control of their regional fiefdoms. How much western governments could do to stop these internal processes can be debated. But by refusing to send international peacekeepers out of Kabul to help Karzai to disarm the warlords the west is helping the forces of conservatism. By declining to make aid for regional government projects conditional on human rights progress, it is doing the same. Indeed, it is not even providing all the aid it promised, with or without strings attached.

The World Food Programme estimates that over half of all Afghan families are in need of emergency supplies, but it has received only 57% of the food it asked for from foreign  donors. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is also short of funds. Afghan refugees in Pakistan have been coming home in far higher numbers than the UN anticipated. Their mass return is not necessarily a sign of confidence in the "new" Afghanistan. Many lived in Pakistani cities rather than refugee camps, and complain that government-encouraged police harassment forced them to leave Pakistan. They come back to a country where homes are destroyed and livestock is dead. Yet the UNHCR had to cut food rations to the returnees by two-thirds last month. Now it is warning it may have to end all food handouts if foreign governments do not deliver he cash they promised. 

Removing the Taliban was not the primary purpose of he US air strikes on Afghanistan last autumn. Afghanistan debacle became a war aim relatively late in the day. The main goals were to capture Osama bin Laden and eliminate the danger of further al-Qaida attacks. But neither Bin Laden nor his main lieutenants have been found. A new audio tape obtained by the al-Jazeera TV station says they are alive and ready for more outrages. So the hunt for al-Qaida inside Afghanistan has failed, as Britain's decision to abandon its help for the United States and withdraw its marines next month demonstrates.

And the Bush administration now admits the threat may be greater than it was before it bombed Afghanistan. The New York Times last week reported senior US government officials as saying that a group of mid-level operatives have taken over from Bin Laden and have forged links with extremists in several Islamic countries. "This new alliance of terrorists, though loosely knit, is as fully capable of planning and carrying out potent attacks on American targets as the more centralised network once led by Osama bin Laden. Classified investigations of the al-Qaida threat now under way at the FBI and CIA have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the war might have complicated counter-terrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area," the paper wrote.

By this analysis the internal politics of Afghanistan are the only area where the United States can claim success from its decision to respond to the September 11 attacks with military force.  Forget, for a moment, the hundreds of civilians killed by bombs and the thousands who died of hunger during the disruption of aid supplies. Ignore the dangerous precedent of accepting one nation's right to overthrow a foreign government, however brutal, by bombing another country. The crude test of the operation depends on whether the fall of the Taliban outweighs the high costs. In the euphoria of last December many people felt it did. Can they feel so sure six months down the line?

But signs of regression are already emerging. Many delegates were concerned that when they left the spotlight of publicity and returned to the provinces they could be targeted. The fundamentalists are reasserting their authoritarian rule. In spite of its loud promises the west has begun to "walk away".

Like the ostrich, unrestrained imperialist power must think that by putting its head in the sand, no one else is going to notice Western neo-colonialism's vulnerability. But the writing is already totally on the wall economically.

In these remarkable admissions from the former chief economist of the World Bank and from the capitalist press, it is almost acknowledged (without requiring too much reading-between-the lines) that "free-market" anarchy is now totally destructive and out-of-control, and that China's proletarian-dictatorship economic management now has far more to offer world development for the vast majority of mankind:

WHEN the Thai baht collapsed on July 2,1997 no one knew that this was the beginning of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression - one that would spread from Asia to Russia and Latin America. By the end of the year what had started as an exchange-rate disaster threatened to take down many of the region's banks, stock markets and even economies. Yet IMF policies which are supposed to deal with such crises, not only exacerbated the downturns but were partially responsible for the onset.

When the crisis broke out, I was surprised at how strongly the IMF and the US Treasury seemed to criticise the countries  -  the Asian nations' institutions were rotten, their governments corrupt, and wholesale reform was needed.  How, I wondered, if these countries' institutions were so rotten, had they done so well for so long? The increases in incomes and the reductions in poverty in East Asia over the past three decades had been unprecedented. The difference in perspectives, between what I knew about the region and what the IMF alleged, made little sense, until I recalled that the countries of East Asia had been successful in spite of the fact that they had not followed the dictates of the Washington Consensus. In particular, governments had played a leading role in achieving economic success, the very opposite of the policy beloved of the IMF.

Trade was liberalised, but only gradually, as new jobs were created in the export industries. While the IMF emphasised rapid financial and capital market liberalisation, the East Asian countries liberalised only gradually. While the IMF emphasised privatisation, governments helped to create efficient enterprises that played a key role in the success of several of the countries. While the IMF paid little attention to inequality, the East Asian governments believed that such policies were important for maintaining social cohesion, and that social cohesion was necessary to provide a climate favourable to investment and growth.

When the crisis began, the IMF stuck to its preconceived ideas. They were so sure of their advice that they wanted to put more pressure on developing countries to liberalise their capital markets. Meanwhile, the leaders of the Asian countries were terrified. They viewed the hot money that came with liberalised capital markets as the source of their problems. In the end, only Malaysia was brave enough to risk the wrath of the IMF; and though Mahathir Mohamad's policies  - trying to keep interest rates low, trying to put the brakes on the rapid flow of speculative money out of the country - were attacked from all quarters, Malaysia's downturn was shorter and shallower than that of any of the other countries.

The crisis spread, first to Indonesia, and then, in early December, to South Korea Meanwhile, other countries around the world had been attacked by currency speculators. The IMF's response was to provide huge amounts of money (the total bailout packages, including support from G7 countries, was $95 billion) so that the countries could sustain the exchange rate. It thought that if the market believed that there was enough money in the coffers, there would be no point in attacking the currency, and thus "confidence" would be restored. The money served another function: it enabled the countries to provide dollars to the firms that had borrowed from Western bankers to repay the loans. It was thus, in part, a bailout to the international banks as much as it was a bailout to the country.

And in country after country in which the IMF money was used to sustain the exchange rate temporarily at an unsuitable level, there was another consequence: rich people inside the country took advantage of the opportunity to convert their money into dollars at the favourable exchange rate and whisk it abroad. The IMF itself had be come a part of the countries'  problem rather than part of the solution.

Gross domestic product in post-1989 Russia fell, year after year. What had been envisioned as a short transition recession turned into one of a decade or more. The bottom level seemed to be in sight. Privatisation accompanied by the opening of the capital markets, led not to wealth creation but to asset stripping. It was perfectly logical. An oligarch who has just been able to use political influence to garner assets worth billions, after paying only a pittance, would naturally want to get his money out of the country. Keeping money in Russia meant investing it in a country in deep depression, and risking not only low returns but having the assets seized by the next government, which would inevitably complain, quite rightly, about he "illegitimacy" of the privatisation process. Anyone smart enough to be a winner in the privatisation sweepstakes would be smart enough to put their money in the booming US stock market, or into the safe haven of secretive offshore bank accounts. It was not even a close call, and not surprisingly, billions poured out of the country.

Thus, at the time of the East Asia crisis, Russia was in a peculiar position. It had an abundance of natural resources, but its Government was poor. The Government was virtually giving away its valuable state assets, yet it was unable to provide pensions for the elderly or welfare payments. The Government was borrowing billions from the IMF, becoming increasingly indebted, while the oligarchs, who had received such largesse from the Government, were taking billions out of the country. The IMF had encouraged the Government to open up its capital accounts, allowing a free flow of capital. The policy was supposed to make the country more attractive for foreign investors; but it was virtually a one-way door that facilitated a rush of money out of the country.

Because the country was deeply in debt, the higher interest rates that the East Asia crisis provoked created an enormous additional strain. This rickety tower collapsed when oil prices fell. Due to recessions and depressions in South-East Asia, which IMF policies had exacerbated, oil demand not only failed to expand as expected but actually contracted. The resulting imbalance between demand and supply of oil turned into a dramatic fall in crude oil prices (down 40 per cent in the first six months of 1998 compared with the average prices in 1997). 

Oil is both a major export commodity and a source of government tax revenue for Russia, and the drop in prices had a predictably devastating effect. Given the exchange rate at the time, Russia's oil industry had almost ceased.

It was clear that the rouble was overvalued. This -- combined with the other macroeconomic policies foisted on the country by the IMF --  had crushed the economy, and while the official unemployment rate remained subdued, there was massive disguised unemployment. The managers of many firms were reluctant to fire workers, given the absence of an adequate safety net. Though unemployment was disguised, it was no less traumatic while workers only pretended to work, the firms only pretended to pay. Wage payments fell into massive arrears, and when workers were paid, it was often with bartered goods rather than roubles.

Despite this suffering on the part of the majority of Russians, the reformers and their adviser in the IMF feared a devaluation, believing that it would set off another round of hyperinflation. By May 1998, it was clear Russia would need outside assistance to maintain its exchange rate. In the belief that a devaluation was inevitable, domestic interest rates soared and more money left the country as people converted their roubles for dollars. Because of this fear of holding roubles, and the lack of confidence in the Government's ability to repay its debt, by June 1998 the Government had to pay almost 60 per cent interest rates on its rouble loans. That figure soared to 150 per cent in weeks.

The crisis mounted in the way that these crises so frequently do. Speculators could see how much in the way of reserves was left, and as reserves dwindled, betting on a devaluation became increasingly a one-way bet.

When the crisis hit, the IMF led the rescue efforts, but it wanted the World Bank to provide $6 billion of the rescue package. The total rescue package was for $22.6 billion. The IMF would provide $11.2 billion of this total, the World Bank $6 billion, and the rest would be provided by the Japanese Government.

This was hotly debated inside the World Bank. There were many of us who had been questioning lending to Russia all along. We questioned whether the benefits to possible future growth were large enough to justify loans that would leave a legacy of debt. Many thought that the IMF was making it easier for the Government to put off meaningful reforms, such as collecting taxes from the oil companies. The evidence of corruption in Russia was clear. The Bank's own study of corruption had identified that region as among the most corrupt in the world. The West knew that much of those billions would be diverted from their intended purposes to the families and associates of corrupt officials and their oligarch friends. While the Bank and the IMF had seemingly taken a strong stance against lending to corrupt governments, it appeared that there were two standards. Small non strategic countries such as Kenya were denied loans because of corruption, while countries such as Russia, where the corruption was on a far larger scale, were continually lent money.

In spite of strong opposition from its own staff, the Bank was under enormous political pressure from the Clinton Administration to lend money to Russia.  Most of us thought that the programme would fail long before the additional money had to be forthcoming. Our predictions proved correct. Remarkably, the IMF seemed able to overlook the corruption, and the attendant risks with what would happen with the money. 

Three weeks after the loan was made, Russia announced a unilateral suspension of payments and a devaluation of the rouble. The rouble crashed. By January 1999, the rouble had declined in real effective terms by more than 45 per cent from its July 1998 level. It was the start of a global financial crisis. Interest rates to emerging markets soared. Even developing countries that had been pursuing sound economic policies found it impossible to raise funds. Brazil's recession deepened, and eventually it too faced a currency crisis. Argentina and other Latin American countries only gradually recovering from previous crises were again pushed near the brink.

We felt that it would take days or even weeks for the oligarchs to bleed the money out of the country, it took merely hours and days.  The IMF would have made life easier all around if it had simply sent the money directly into the Swiss and Cypriot bank accounts.

It was, of course, not just the oligarchs who benefited from the rescue. The Wall Street and other Western investment bankers, who had been among those pressing the hardest for a rescue package, knew it would not last: they too took the short respite provided by the rescue to rescue as much as they could, to flee the country with whatever they could salvage.

By lending Russia money for a doomed cause, IMF policies led Russia into deeper debt, with nothing to show for it.

CHINA'S success over the past decade stands in marked contrast to Russia's failure. While China grew at an average rate of more than 10 per cent in the 1990s, Russia declined at an average annual rate of 5.6 per cent. By the end of the decade, real incomes (so-called purchasing power) in China were comparable to those in Russia. Whereas China's transition has entailed the largest reduction in poverty in history in such a short time span (from 358 million in 1990 to 208 million in 1997),  Russia's transition has entailed one of the largest increases in poverty in history in such a short span of time.

The contrast between China's strategy and that of Russia could not be clearer, and it began from the very first moves along the path to transition.

China's reforms began in agriculture, with the movement from the commune (collective) system of production in agriculture to the "individual responsibility" system. 

It was not complete privatisation: individuals could not buy and sell land freely; but the gains in output showed how much could be gained from even partial and limited reforms. This was an enormous achievement, involving hundreds of millions of workers, accomplished in a few years. But it was done in a way that engendered widespread support: a successful trial in one province, followed by several trials in several others, equally successful.

The evidence was so compelling that the central Government did not have to force this change; it was willingly accepted. But the Chinese leadership recognised that they could not rest on their laurels, and the reforms had to extend to the entire economy.

The most challenging questions that were posed by the Chinese were questions of dynamics, and especially how to move from distorted prices to market prices. The Chinese came up with an ingenious solution: a two-tier price system in which what a firm produced under the old quotas (what it was required to produce under the old command-and-control system) is priced using old prices, but anything produced in excess of the old quota is priced using the free market prices. The system allowed full incentives at the margin, which, as economists are well aware, is where they matter, but avoided the huge redistributions that would have occurred if the new prices were instantaneously to prevail over the entire output. It allowed the market to "grope" for the undistorted prices, a process that is not always smooth, with minimal disturbance. Most important, the Chinese gradualist approach avoided the pitfall of rampant inflation that had marked the shock therapies of Russia and the other countries under IMF tutelage, and all the dire consequences that followed, including the wiping out of savings. As soon as it had accomplished its purpose, the two-tier system was abandoned.

Meanwhile, China unleashed a process of creative destruction: of eliminating the old economy by creating a new one. Millions of new enterprises were created by townships and villages, which had been freed from the responsibility of managing agriculture and could turn their attention elsewhere. At the same time, the Chinese Government invited foreign firms into the country, to participate in joint ventures. And foreign firms came in droves - China became the largest recipient of foreign direct investment among the emerging markets, and number eight in the world.

It set out, simultaneously, to create the "institutional infrastructure" - an effective securities and exchange commission, bank regulations, and safety nets. As safety nets were put into place and jobs crested, it began the task of restructuring the old state owned enterprises, downsizing them as well as the bureaucracies. In a short span of a couple of years, it privatised much of the housing stock. 

The tasks are far from over, the future far from clear, but this much is undisputed: the vast majority of Chinese live far better today than they did 20 years ago.

MG ROVER has suffered a dramatic setback in its efforts to break into the Chinese car market after the head of its local partner company was sacked following a power struggle with the Government.

Yang Rong, the chairman of Brilliance Automotive, stepped down after the carmaker was effectively nationalised when government officials took control of its parent company, the Chinese Education Development Foundation. The foundation is a nonprofit organisation linked to the education department of the central bank.

Stewart McKee, a spokesman for MG Rover, said that the changes at Brilliance would have no impact on its operations in China "I think it is business as usual," he said. "We are well down the road with these plans."

However, shares in Brilliance China Automotive Holdings Ltd were suspended from trading in Hong Kong yesterday as the stock exchange sought further information about Mr Yang's departure on Thursday.

Jerry Lou, a Morgan Stanley analyst, who spoke to Wu Xiaoan, the newly appointed chairman of Brilliance, after the suspension, told Reuters: "The stock exchange is asking them to clarify all this newspaper speculation."

A Brilliance statement confirmed that Mr Yang would be replaced as chairman by his deputy, Mr Wu, while Su Qiang was appointed chief executive. The statement said that the changes would strengthen the company's management. Mr Yang's replacement came just one day after the company again denied speculation about alleged misconduct.

"The directors wish to state that the company is not aware of and has not received any notices that Mr Yang was under investigation for irregularities and the company has confirmed with Mr Yang that he was not under any investigation for irregularities," the statement said.

Mr Yang, 46, is known in the Chinese car industry as a man with legendary contacts and a detailed understanding of Western capital markets. The former central banker is worth £500 million.

When he took Brilliance to the New York Stock Exchange in 1992 it became the first Chinese company to be listed overseas. Since then he has formed partnerships with international companies such as General Motors and BMW.

But the exact ownership structure of Brilliance has long been a subject for debate. Analysts had speculated that Mr Yang controlled the foundation through his former associates at the central bank. In 1999 the Government ordered Mr Yang to transfer control of the foundation to the Finance Ministry.

Other analysts suggest that the Government is taking control of Brilliance because it is seen as a cash cow and interpret reports that Mr Yang is being investigated for asset stripping as a smear campaign intended to aid the nationalisation. Mr Yang has denied that he is being investigated.

The Beijing Youth Daily reported: "The Chinese Education Development Foundation is still the principal stockholder. It owns 39.45 per cent of the company stock. The co-operation with BMW will not be affected, and the negotiations will continue." There was no mention of MG Rover.

No matter what the real story, the public aspect of this saga highlights just how nebulous dealings in China's transforming economy can be.

Even if there is never an end to Beijing's Revisionist nonsense, failing to offer the slightest grasp in public of Marxist anti-imperialist science, the vital importance of the dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie) is nevertheless still proving its worth despite everything.

It would be pointless to pretend that all is well in the Chinese workers state or economy, or that Revisionist confusion in Beijing does not still jeopardise all of the massive gains of the proletarian revolution which have transformed China from the most abject poverty and colonial humiliation to near super-power status in just 50 years.

But the writing-off of this monumental historical transformation of China as being "nothing to do with socialism" according to the fake-'left', or as having "gone back to capitalism" according to other rival petty-bourgeois Western interpretations, is plainly nonsense, whatever the destiny of the present Communist Party regime.

There are pragmatic NEP-policy signs everywhere. Mr Yang sounds like a dangerous NEPman extraordinary, yet Brilliance has just been renationalised, according to the Times, or never left state quango control, according to the Chinese.

And having to own and look after your own house need not necessarily be any different from having to own and look after your own trousers. The Stiglitz 'privatisation' claim may be less than meets the eye.

Either way, and accepting that China's development still remains a matter for debate, - the exhaustive (and exhausting) analysis of globalised imperialism's undoubted loss of all control to economic anarchy, can be no longer in doubt, coming from the World Bank horse's mouth.

And the obvious comment is that they plainly haven't a clue about EXACTLY why the monopoly-capitalist system is going wrong either, - the huge list of different reasons for bits of disaster adding up to no explanation at all; because Stiglitz doesn't want to face the Marxist truth that inevitable 'surpluses' of capital from the exploitation racket are the problem, for which there IS NO CURE but world-war destruction by cut-throat rival imperialist powers.

And who alone can survive in a world of imperialist warmongering blitzkriegs? Only the most disciplined revolutionary struggles and regimes (China, Vietnam, Cuba, anti-Zionism, etc, most "terrorists"), which must all end up in proletarian dictatorship for final guaranteed success. The latest US imperialist insult to the Palestinians, the entire Arab people, and to the whole Third World, - telling the victims of Zionist colonial conquest that they must roll over and accept humiliating defeat and persecution, and elect new leaders who will embody this, before even a shred of "justice" or "self-determination rights" will be doled out to them by the "unchallengeable" imperialist military tyranny, underlines the same message of history.

Only class war or national-liberation war will ever get the monopoly-imperialist boot off your neck.

The West's delusion that the great Arab nation will never learn this lesson, but will simply curl up and die under the sheer weight of American and Zionist military terrorism,- is too stupid for words.

Despite facing near impossible odds and near-impossible conditions, the Palestinian Intifada is performing an ever-increasing miraculous armed resistance which is now sticking well into the throat of Zionist colonial tyranny.

It would win on its own from here. But Palestinian national-liberation will not be fighting alone against imperialism forever.

Powerfully-conscious socialist revolutions are the only way forward from this imperialist world-crisis debacle in which the colonial-fascist warmongering of the hypocritical "war on terrorism" is inextricably linked up with the fast-collapsing economic chaos and injustice. The Zionist mailed fist of imperialism, aimed at the heart of true Arab self-determination, is right in the middle of all the old crap that powerful Arab socialist revolution will have to sweep away. 

Build Leninism. EPSR.