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      www.epsr-marx-lenin.co.uk   [P&P Bulletin Publications PO B0X 50, London SW 17 9NL] [Post Office Regd.]
No 1144 July 16 2002                                                                                                                                          25p 

Another 'Black Monday' forces bourgeois ideology to start admitting that the hoped-for US economic 'recovery' is now closer to the brink of a 12-year stagnation/slump spiral downwards that Japan is still suffering. And as imperialism consequently begins beating the war drums louder than ever as the Great Diversion, and armaments spending escalates, so do the fake-'lefts' start posturing more energetically than ever to become, objectively, a more plausible block to workers revolution, regardless of their subjective motives. But their 'left propaganda' still cannot stop the undermining of imperialism, even though it might be destined for a last-ditch counter-revolutionary rescue attempt for imperialism at some stage. It is the objective, insoluble economic collapse of the imperialist system which will remain the decisive driving force, requiring only a massive expansion of Marxist-Leninist consciousness to turn to good use for ending capitalist anarchy completely. Fake-'left' attacks on imperialist Zionist warmongering still hinder bourgeois brainwashing but only to try to save it from total defeat. A conscious grasp of monopoly capitalist crisis will rout this fake-'left'.

The tidal wave of revolutionary anti-imperialism (which is building up worldwide as the monopoly capitalist racketeering and warmongering-aggression so clearly start demonstrating the out-of-date intolerable inequalities, inadequacies, and injustices of brutal 'free-market' anarchy), is inevitably beginning to force fake-'lefts' to posture more "outspokenly" than ever in order not to lose ground.

Serious civil wars or revolts are brewing on every continent against the American 'New World order' or against its catastrophic economic or political/social effects and permanent military tyranny, and "socialist", "democratic", or "protest" posturing of all kinds is having to perform increasingly energetically in order not to get left behind.

Although a pain in the neck themselves, and the obvious last resort for imperialism to turn to when all else has failed to sow enough anti-Leninist confusion so as to halt the march of proletarian dictatorship, the fake-'left' epidemic can only be viewed as a sign of how imperialism's difficulties are still steadily growing, and not remotely as a sign of a stop to those difficulties, or as a 'solution' for them.

The 'extreme' propaganda effects that the fake-'left' need to create in order to retain 'credibility' work much the same as 'democracy' itself.

The fraudulent "electoral government" game is easily the smartest self-preservation racket that the capitalist system ever came up with, but the hoax of "parliamentary democracy rule" will also be one of the things that will help trip up the bourgeois imperialist establishment completely in some countries in the end. Either the voting itself, or preventing people from voting, or attempting an armed coup to overturn the results of voting, could all serve occasionally as the catalyst for fullscale proletarian revolution.

Capitalism survives via the lies and outright deceptions of the "democracy" game for a long time, but can eventually get tripped up by trying to avoid the consequences of its own racket.

Fake-'left' propaganda is actually a part of that same game.

In some distant recess of the bourgeoisie's vast counter-revolutionary network and academic frontage, future "useful confusion" headlines will already be being toyed with, such as: "'You are preparing the ground for another Bolshevik Revolution' warns militant union leader"; and "'We are all Leninists now' declares left Labourite"; etc, etc.

The anti-Marxist philistines of the TUC, 'left'-Labour, and the SWP, etc, will be getting ever increasing media exposure for this sort of posturing bravado, but the irritation to a movement for genuine revolutionary understanding can be weighed against the self-inflicted damage to imperialism from letting these fake-'left' firebrands have their say in the capitalist press.

The "boycott Zionist aggression" movement being spread by academics who are themselves Zionists (i.e. people who believe that part of Palestine SHOULD be colonised by pro-imperialist Western Jews (with a ruling class mostly from the USA and Europe) in order to set up a pro-imperialist mailed fist (Israel))in the Middle East, forever threatening the vary [very – archive ed] throat of Arab nationalist interests) is a current example.

There is massive worldwide unease at the apparent 'democratic' indifference in the West to the murderous butchery and fascist persecution of the Palestinian people (whose land it is) being daily inflicted by the Zionist colonisers, who have all always been totally financed, sustained, and protected by the West since even before the criminal tragedy of the 1948 UN diktat to impose 'Israel' on Palestine's homes, gardens, villages, towns, roads, and water-supply was "voted for".

What better diversion from this dangerously-escalating and justified hatred of the West than a huge 'democratic' furore about the rights and wrongs of a partial academic boycott of 'Israel' proposed by a 'protest' movement.

The protesters are no doubt well meaning, and the coverage they are getting in the imperialist media reflects nothing on them necessarily, of course. And some of their propaganda demonstrates the point that erecting a fake-'left' barrier to genuine revolutionary understanding nevertheless does still add something to imperialism's difficulties:

'The Israelis continue to invade Palestinian towns and expand illegal settlements in the occupied territories. Ariel Sharon refuses to negotiate while "violence" (i.e. Palestinian resistance) continues. Our own government sheds crocodile tears at the loss of life while inviting a prime minister accused of war crimes to lunch and providing his military with F16 spare parts.

One of the non-violent weapons open to civil society to express its moral outrage is the boycott. Internationally this has been most successful against apartheid South Africa. It took many years but ultimately shamed governments and multinational corporations into isolating this iniquitous regime. The boycott called last year by Palestinian solidarity movements was against Israeli products. This too moves slowly; but only a couple of weeks ago it secured a ban on the sale of settlement-produced goods illegally labelled "made in Israel".

The international academic, cultural and sporting communities had played a major part in isolating South Africa and we have increasingly learned of individuals who thought that co-operating with Israeli institutions was like collaborating with the apartheid regime. A writer refused to have her play acted in Israel, a musician turns down an invitation to perform or an academic to attend a conference.

It was these individual ethical refusals which led us to make the restricted call for a moratorium on European research and academic collaboration with Israeli institutions until the Israeli government opened serious peace negotiations. We noted that Israel, a Middle Eastern state, was accepted as an integral part of the European scientific community while its neighbours were not. We canvassed a draft of the letter among colleagues in the UK and other European countries, and within days signatures of support came flowing in.

When the letter was published in the Guardian in April, it had over 120 names on it. A matching letter was published in France; its website now carries more than a thousand names. Another call was published in Italy, another in Australia. The Association of University Teachers adopted the moratorium call; the lecturers' union, Natfhe, an even stronger resolution. In similar vein an advertisement signed by Jewish Americans appeared in the New York Times calling for US disinvestment from Israel until peace negotiations were opened.

What is self-evident is that a cultural and economic boycott is slowly assembling. It is not one monolithic entity. It varies from the very modest resistance suggested in our initial letter, such as personally refusing to take part in collaborative research with Israeli institutions, to more public gestures of opposition. Such acts are painful, even though the target is institutional, actions often mean a breach with longstanding colleagues. It is thus important that the boycott is coupled with positive support for those Israeli refuseniks who continue to oppose the actions of their elected government. 

It is this that makes suggestions, such as that by Jonathan Freedland in last week's Guardian, that the boycott is in some way comparable to that imposed by Nazi Germany on Jewish shops, so grotesquely hyperbolic. It matches the many hate emails that those who have endorsed the boycott have received, accusing them of anti-semitism or even Holocaust denial. If the supporters of the Israeli government cannot distinguish between being opposed to Israeli state policy and being anti-Semitic, it is scarcely surprising that real anti-semites conflate the two.

Faced with this growing international movement, some have cried foul. Does the boycott not risk endangering those fragile academic links between Israelis and Palestinians that do exist? Yet these are in far greater danger as a result of the restrictions on movement which the Israeli government places on Palestinian researchers, and the repeated attempts to close down Palestinian universities. And no Palestinian has voiced this concern; on the contrary many among their academic community, such as those at the University at Bir Zeit endorsed the boycott call as helping to draw attention to the brutal restrictions on their academic freedom to teach, study and research.

The exaggerated attention to the "academic freedom" issues raised by the unilateral removal from an editorial board of two Israeli academics by one signatory of the boycott call is like focusing on a potential local mote to avoid the flagrant international beam.

This sudden institutional preoccupation with academic freedom is not without historical interest. During the height of the student movement of the late 1960s, university lecturer Robin Blackburn was sacked for a post-hoc endorsement of students who removed the London School of Economics gates. There was a resounding silence at this breach of his right to free speech. But it is strange to hear academic freedom invoked as an abstraction in a university world where much research is funded by corporate industrial interests, and where a biological research topic can be closed by a patent agreement. Only a couple of weeks ago two Harvard post-doctoral researchers were threatened with jail for sending cloned material from the lab in which they were working to one to which they were moving.

Unlike some of those whistle blowers who have called attention to the hazards of genetic engineering, no one is likely to lose their jobs as a result of being boycotted. At worst they risk isolation from the international academic research community. Those who have been threatened with dismissal, and worse, for supporting the boycott are those few courageous Israelis who have endorsed the call.

The choice today for civil society - and academics and researchers are part of civil society - is to remain silent and do nothing or to try to bring pressure to bear. Archbishop Desmond Tutu's statement of support for the boycott closed with this quote from Martin Luther King: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter".

Hilary Rose is professor of social policy at Bradford University; Steven Rose is professor of biology at the Open University.

But this 'revolt' is inevitably more show than substance, nonetheless.

In typical academic agnostic tradition, these 'protesters' won't get off the fence, either on the 'morality' question or on the 'practical solution' front. Like all bourgeois everywhere, enjoying a fat easy life out of the bogus 'democracy' system of imperialist international economic exploitation and warmongering bullying military tyranny, these gents make it clear right at the beginning that they have no intention of challenging the holy-of-holies of middle-class orthodoxy, - namely that ALL 'violence' is bad. Their only 'protest' is to monstrously imply an equivalence of 'violence' when what such bourgeois are supposed to do is to condemn "terrorism" far more decisively and absolutely than any 'balancing' activity:

The carnage in the Middle East continues; today a suicide bomber, tomorrow an Israeli strike on Palestinians with helicopters, missiles and tanks.

But the only real issue of course is that, as throughout history, the sole effective class-war and national-war means against absolute tyranny (the existence of 'Israel' means the stealing of the best part of the Palestinian homeland for keeps) is to fight total conflict. The 'violence' of the Palestinians, all of it, is 100% justified both historically and 'morally'. There is no other way.

The 'violence' of the Zionists, all of it, is 100% contemptible fascist brutality and criminal aggression.

Their 'solution' is even more corrupt, consciously exploiting any 'average common-sense opinion' on earth by going for the supposed "fifty-fifty mutual-tolerance compromise solution":

Yet every rational person knows that the only prospect of a just and lasting peace lies in Israel's recognition of the legitimacy of a Palestinian state and the Arab world's acceptance of a secure Israel behind its 1967 borders. That is what every peace plan proposes. But how to get from here to there? Is there anything that ordinary citizens, that is civil society, can do to bring pressure to bear to compel our governments and international institutions to move the peace process forward?

This is utterly cynical and sick Zionist gobshite, the total viciousness of imperialist global military tyranny in all its rotten glory.

All 100% of Palestine (as was until 1948) is 100% Palestinian, and always will be.

The colonialist limit these gents want everyone to call it quits at (Palestinians all confined to the West Bank and Gaza; Zionist colonisation getting all the rest up to the 1967 limits of their military conquests) would leave the Palestinian people with just 22% of their own homeland.

What a monstrous joke.

But there is even more harm than that in this sinister "even-handed 'peace' proposal" for the permanent humiliation, misery, and shame of the Palestinian nation.

These 'left' protesters have an even more vicious and demoralising purpose than their wretched condoning of the colonisation-theft of 78% of the land of Palestine from the Palestinian people, - and even more crucial than their predictable bourgeois orthodoxy in echoing the worldwide Western 'democratic' con-trick of getting the whole planet to "condemn violence" while the actual imperialist global military dictatorship gets on with brutalising everywhere into enforced submission, bit by bit.

Their big fraud is in so adamantly implying that there could not possibly be ANY OTHER SOLUTION than for the Arabs and Zionists to "share" the land of Palestine (as was) (Some "sharing", - 78% to 22%!!).

Utter total nonsense. It is the one 'solution' which could obviously never work in practice; (where would the ousted Palestinian millions with no more home to go back to end up, - on the already overcrowded West Bank and Gaza?  and with already not enough water, or land, or manoeuvrability there for any tolerable life even for the Palestinian natives of Gaza and the West Bank????; it is a nonsense 'solution', meaning certain continuing anti-occupation conflict for the rest of time).

But worse still, what does such a hopeless temporary ceasefire compromise imply about the world as a whole??????

It implies that history never solves ANY problems, and that intolerable grievances must continue for ever.

This is the most monstrous philosophical brainwashing assault that could be conceived against the working class.

Unless it takes the power by revolution, the working class will remain the working class forever, perpetually exploited by the private monopoly-ownership total control of economic, political and social life by the ruling class, and forever doomed to an ever widening gap between rich and poor as an ever increasing percentage of total wealth is cornered by an ever narrowing Establishment of the super-rich.

These polite 'protesters' are telling the entire working class to remain wage slaves forever, always subject to the capriciousness of the hire-and-fire jobs market, and in times of crisis of 'over-production' crash and slump, facing certainly FALLING living standards and fraught prospects and likely inter-imperialist trade-war warmongering for the indefinite future, - all on the bourgeois philosophical basis that "nothing ever changes".

It is a stinking lie, of course. And it is the dramatic transformations within the crisis itself that are the only ULTIMATE historical reality.

The whole pattern of national-liberation itself was set up by the great imperialist system crisis of the 1930s (and its ensuing inter-imperialist World War II), with the anti-colonial liberation wars-struggle (to end direct Empire control) all proceeding from the blows to imperialism which that crisis represented.

The neo-colonial control of the American 'New World order' is the obvious next stage of imperialist tyranny which will be brought down by the next ludicrous crisis of monopoly-capitalist economic anarchy and trade-war destruction (accompanied by imperialist warmongering bluster and bullying, and inter-imperialist score settling, as the Great Diversion to stop the international working class turning to the socialist revolution as the only possible way forward for civilisation now).

These bourgeois 'protesters' sit right in the middle of this Great Diversion with their condoning of the continued Zionist US colonial-military tyranny over the Middle East, the key to which is the subjugation of the post 1940 seized territories of Palestine, the bits which have outrageously been re-titled 'Israel'.

And what is this 'protest' diversion protecting???

It is hoping to satisfy anti-imperialist hatred, rapidly spreading all round the Middle-East, by taking this joke "halfway-house" stand against Western bourgeois orthodoxy.

For where all revolutionary consciousness is undoubtedly heading is towards challenging the ludicrous "right" of this Zionist colonisation called 'Israel' to exist at all.

There is not a scrap of sensible rational justification in it of any kind, and as soon as the rotten nonsense of the 1948 imperialist imposed colonisation tyranny is challenged in its entirety, the obvious ONLY solution (to the whole catastrophic business of ethnically cleansing the entire Palestinian nation from the main heartland of their OWN country), - becomes immediately crystal clear.

The Zionist colonisation (and UN 1948 tyrannical decision) must be rescinded forthwith, and the whole Palestinian people restored to the WHOLE of their rightful homeland.

And this is the consciousness, - the only sensible and rational one, - which is obviously on the advance.

And hence the objective historical role of all this middle-class 'peace mongering' is to stop all thinking and to con everyone with this non-existent 'compromise' daydream as rapidly as possible.

It won't work, and not because superior genuinely anti-imperialist propaganda can have a hope of counteracting all this diversionary bourgeois 'compromise' propaganda which the capitalist media are now promoting, - but because of the crisis itself, once again.

On the one hand, it is the growing crisis of confidence in the global imperialist economic and political system, (now a byword for destructive failure, corruption, inequality, and injustice), which is fuelling rising Palestinian anger at their miserable lot; which is in turn panicking Sharon Zionism to more and more vicious and desperate 'final solution' tyranny, even making the joke 'compromise' offer impossible from the Zionist side too.

And on the other hand, the panic within US imperialism at their system collapsing around them is driving Bush-Texan thug corruption towards ever insaner determination to blast its way out of global humiliation difficulties on the economic and political-control fronts, blasting half the world away with it if necessary. It is hardly capable of offering even the joke 'compromise' itself.

And as the crisis deepens and as conditions get steadily harsher for everyone, in all directions, so will Palestinian national-liberation determination relentlessly harden towards DEFEATING the Zionist imperialist illegal colonisation of its country COMPLETELY.

The more the crisis pushes the Zionist imperialist tyranny to persecute Palestinian resistance ever more brutally and ruthlessly, the more will Palestinian consciousness harden on TOTAL liberation as the only possible solution to their never ending misery.

And the unbelievable heroism of the suicide-bombing determination shows that the mood is steadily growing for the Palestinian nation as a whole to be prepared to fight to the death rather than submit to colonisation tyranny any longer.

And in the epoch of imperialist humiliating crises and of anti-colonial national-liberation triumphs, there can be only one possible outcome to this struggle.

This ludicrous anachronistic Zionist-US colonisation tyranny is utterly doomed.

This all places the bourgeois 'protesting' gents objectively in the camp of counter-revolution.

And it shows in other ways too.

Likening an anti-apartheid boycott of Zionist colonialism to the Nazi boycott of Jewish shops in Hitler Germany is not merely "hyperbole", or merely on a par with rival bourgeois-press accusations against the protesting gents of "anti-semitism" (a joke when both are Jewish AND Zionist believers in a state of 'Israel' on colonised Palestine soil).

This monstrous Guardian slander is the real Hitlerism, and it needs examining.

If you are going to tell a lie, tell a big one, said the Nazis.

The stupid shallow essence of this new fascist-imperialist warmongering game is to not simply disallow any discussion of the original disastrous UN decision to agree to the colonisation of Palestine by Western Zionism in the first place, but to resolutely refuse to recognise that any such question even exists.

The Maoist Revolution's historically-justified decision that Tibet and Formosa (Taiwan) were originally part of China and should be reincorporated into the healthy and competent workers-state established in 1949 (and a 'reasonable' decision too in the light of endless imperialist subversion of the workers states via 'dissident' provinces) has been ENDLESSLY challenged by the West, and still is. Even China's right to its OWN seat on the UN Security Council was challenged by US imperialism for more than 20 years, and systematically vetoed.

But Zionland's "right" since 1948 to COLONISE by Jewish conquest a completely foreign land (for nearly 2000 years), - now THAT mustn't be challenged dictates imperialism.

But how is this BIG LIE presented? In exactly the same way as imperialist aggression presented such warmongering matters in the system's last great collapse-crisis of the 1930s, - present it Hitler Germany style.

And who better to present this 'cause' for starting world war, (echoing the German 'grievance' demands for the return of Sudetenland and Silesia and Saarland, etc, etc, to their 'rightful German heritage'), - than today's most "liberal" capitalist press spin-doctors, contentedly flourishing under the US imperialist "New World Order" (Hitler's concepts for imperialist world-domination used almost identical words).

Freedland(er) is hurling poisonous fascist-imperialist garbage, not hyperbole.

The 1930s Jews were stateless specific VICTIMS of tyranny (among MANY specific victims of Nazi tyranny, - Slavs, Gipsies, Communists, trade-unionists, homosexuals, etc, etc, among them).

The issue now is a Zionist colonial STATE which is CREATING victims (the Palestinian nation).

Trying to invent a 'Jewish boycott' comparability in these two absolutely different historical contexts and in the service of Western imperialist warmongering-aggression is the German imperialist-tyranny's own BIG LIE technique at its very worst. And the Guardian's sick Goebbelsian feature-writing also needs telling that the only valid historical comparison is how most of the Western bourgeois world KEPT SILENT about growing imperialist warmongering tyranny and fascist ideological extremism in the 1930s, JUST LIKE most of the Western bourgeoisie are KEEPING SILENT about growing US imperialist (and Zionist) warmongering tyranny in this new crisis of the degenerate global-exploitation system. 

But the Guardian is not even the worst of the recruits to this international CIA brainwashing campaign. The doyen of 'liberal journalism' Harold Evans, has been leading this demented Goebbels-speak:

It is not anti-Semitic to raise questions about Jenin, no more than it is anti-press to raise questions about the reporting. It is not anti-Semitic to report and protest at ill treatment of Palestinians. It is not anti-Semitic to consider whether Sharon's past belies his promises for the future. It is not anti-Semitic to deplore the long occupation, though originally brought about by the Arab leaders who initiated and lost three wars.

It IS anti-Semitic to vilify the estate of Israel as a diabolical abstraction, reserving tolerance for the individual Jew but not the collective Jew; it IS anti-Semitic to invent malignant outrages; it is anti-Semitic consistently to condemn in Israel what you ignore or condone elsewhere; it is, above all, anti-Semitic to de-humanise Judaism and the Jewish people such as to incite and justify their extermination.

What wretched imperialist warmongering special pleading. It is merely preposterously puffing-up a more sly way of saying that Evans (and incidentally US imperialism and the CIA) does not think that the 1948 UN decision to allow the forcible colonisation by Zionism of the land of Palestine ought to be reopened for discussion.

As Aunt Sallies, he sets up some of the clumsier ways in which anti-Zionism can be expressed.

But what is the big deal here? Since 1917, every workers state which has ever existed has been forced to put up with exaggeration and vilification a billion times worse than some of the inevitable hyperbole with which world consciousness is beginning to understand the need for anti-Zionism in the present grotesque INTERNATIONAL warmongering crisis which sick and dying imperialism (with the American ruling class and the Zionists as the main pacemakers) is now trying to inflict on civilisation.

Evans’ deceitful expansion of the 'anti-Semitism' denunciation in the service of CIA/ Goebbels brainwashing will only help spread more really mindless anti-Jewish prejudices.

And what also needs naming as another unhelpful SOURCE of racism???

Where does this specious, double-think, Goebbelsian bilge come from???

Afrikaner devotees of the Springboks may have been firm backers of apartheid: depriving them of international rugby had a logic. Hitting a bastion of the Israeli opposition makes no sense. Fine judgements like that are essential. A boycott of goods produced in Israeli settlements on the West Bank or Gaza would be hard to oppose - indeed there is a domestic Israeli campaign on these very lines. But it brings new problems, even besides the unfortunate connotations of a boycott of Jewish goods. There is plenty of false labelling of settlers' produce as Israeli and, when an item is honestly identified, there's always a chance it was made in the West Bank by a Palestinian company. So right-thinking Islington shoppers could be depriving the very people they want to help.

In other words, sanctions and boycotts are a messy, contradictory business. Far better, in all but the most extreme cases, to deal with those nations we disagree with through dialogue and engagement, rather than ostracism and chilly exile.

From the great 'liberal' anti-apartheid-campaigning Guardian, of course, oh-so politically-correctly allowing this demented RACE PREJUDICE licence to one of its own Jewish feature-writers.

Sharon is fired up by exactly the same degenerate logic: "How can you, how dare you, criticise the Jews for ANYTHING", etc, etc.

With such "chosen people" self-righteousness, the Jews have sometimes been their own worst enemy.

And it is FASCIST to term it 'anti-semitic' to say so.

Growing revolutionary hostility to Zionist imperialist warmongering for 'solving' monopoly capitalism's crisis has forced the talented and deservedly much-praised fake-'left' Pilger to make some more interesting anti-Western waves:

The fanatics who attacked America came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. No bombs fell on these American protectorates. Instead, more than 5,000 civilians have been bombed to death in stricken Afghanistan, the latest a wedding party of 40 people, mostly women and children. Not a single al-Qaeda leader of importance has been caught.

Following this 'stunning victory', hundreds of prisoners were shipped to an American concentration camp in Cuba, where they have been held against all the conventions of war and international law. No evidence of their alleged crimes has been produced, and the FBI confirms only one is a genuine suspect. In the United States, more than 1,000 people of Muslim background have 'disappeared'; none has been charged. Under the draconian Patriot Act, the FBI's new powers include the authority to go into libraries and ask who is reading what.

Meanwhile, the Blair government has made fools of the British Army by insisting they pursue warring tribesmen: exactly what squaddies in putties and pith helmets did over a century ago when Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, described Afghanistan as one of the 'pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world'.

There is no war on terrorism; it is the great game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all.

HAVING SWEPT the Palestinians into the arms of the supreme terrorist Ariel Sharon, the Christian Right fundamentalists running the plutocracy in Washington, now replenish their arsenal in preparation for an attack on the 22 million suffering people of Iraq. Should anyone need reminding, Iraq is a nation held hostage to an American-led embargo every bit as barbaric as the dictatorship over which Iraqis have no control. Contrary to propaganda orchestrated from Washington and London, the coming attack has nothing to do with Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction', if these exist at all. The reason is that America wants a more compliant thug to run the world's second greatest source of oil.

The drum-beaters rarely mention this truth, and the people of Iraq. Everyone is Saddam Hussein, the demon of demons. Four years ago, the Pentagon warned President Clinton that an all-out attack on Iraq might kill 'at least' 10,000 civilians: that, too, is unmentionable. In a sustained propaganda campaign to justify this outrage, journalists on both sides of the Atlantic have been used as channels, 'conduits', for a stream of rumours and lies. These have ranged from false claims about an Iraqi connection with the anthrax attacks in America to a discredited link between the leader of the 11 September hijacks and Iraqi intelligence. When the attack comes, these consorting journalists will share responsibility for the crime. 

Imperialism and the global expansion of the western powers were represented in unambiguously positive terms as a 'major contributor to human civilisation.' The quest went wrong when it was clear that fascism was imperialism, too, and the word vanished from academic discourse. In the best Stalinist tradition, imperialism no longer existed. Today, the preferred euphemism is 'civilisation'; or if an adjective is required, 'cultural'.

From Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an ally of crypto-fascists, to impeccably liberal commentators, the new imperialists share a concept whose true meaning relies on a xenophobic or racist comparison with those who are deemed uncivilised, culturally inferior and might challenge the 'values' of the West. Watch the 'debates' on Newsnight. The question is how best 'we' can deal with the problem of 'them'.

For much of the western media, especially those commentators in thrall to and neutered by the supercult of America, the most salient truths remain taboos. Professor Richard Falk, of Cornell University, put it succinctly some years ago. Western foreign policy, he wrote, is propagated in the media through a self righteous, one-way moral/legal screen 'positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence'.

Perhaps the most important taboo is the longevity of the United States as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists. That the US is the only state on record to have been condemned by the World Court for international terrorism (in Nicaragua) and has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe international law, is unmentionable.

'In the war against terrorism.' said Bush from his bunker following 11 September, 'we're going to hunt down these evil-doers wherever they are, no matter how long it takes.'

Strictly speaking, it should not take long, as more terrorists are given training and sanctuary in the United States than anywhere on earth. They include mass murderers, torturers, former and future tyrants and assorted international criminals. This is virtually unknown to the American public, thanks to the freest media on earth.

There is no terrorist sanctuary to compare with Florida, currently governed by the President's brother, Jeb Bush. In his book Rogue State, former senior State Department official Bill Blum describes a typical Florida trial of three anti-Castro terrorists, who hijacked a plane to Miami at knifepoint. 'Even though the kidnapped pilot was brought back from Cuba to testify against the men,' he wrote, 'the defence simply told the jurors the man was lying, and the jury deliberated for less than an hour before acquitting the defendants.'

General Jose Guillermo Garcia has lived comfortably in Florida since the 1990s. He was head of El Salvador's military during the 1980s when death squads with ties to the army murdered thousands of people. General Prosper Avril, the Haitian dictator, liked to display the bloodied victims of his torture on television. When he was overthrown, he was flown to Florida by the US Government.  Thiounn Prasith, Pol Pot's henchman and apologist at the United Nations, lives in New York. General Mansour Moharari, who ran the Shah of Iran's notorious prisons, is wanted in Iran, but untroubled in the United States.

AL-QAEDA'S TRAINING camps in Afghanistan were kindergartens compared with the world's leading university of terrorism at Fort Benning in Georgia. Known until recently as the School of the Americas, it trained tyrants and some 60,000 Latin American special forces, paramilitaries and intelligence agents in the black arts of terrorism.

In 1993, the UN Truth Commission on El Salvador named the army officers who had committed the worst atrocities of the civil war; two-thirds of them had been trained at Fort Benning. In Chile, the school's graduates ran Pinochet's secret police and three principal concentration camps. In 1996, the US government was forced to release copies of the school's training manuals, which recommended blackmail, torture, execution and the arrest of witnesses' relatives.

In recent months, the Bush regime has torn up the Kyoto treaty, which would ease global warming, to which the United States is the greatest contributor. It has threatened the use of nuclear weapons in 'pre-emptive' strikes (a threat echoed by Defence Minister Geoffrey Hoon). It has tried to abort the birth of an international criminal court. It has further undermined the United Nations by blocking a UN investigation of the Israeli assault on a Palestinian refugee camp; and it has ordered the Palestinians to replace their elected leader with an American stooge. At summit conferences in Canada and Indonesia, Bush's people have blocked hundreds of millions of dollars going to the most deprived people on earth, those without clean water and electricity.

These facts will no doubt beckon the inane slur of 'anti-Americanism'. This is the imperial prerogative: the last refuge of those whose contortion of intellect and morality demands a loyalty oath. As Noam Chomsky has pointed out, the Nazis silenced argument and criticism with 'anti-German' slurs. Of course, the United States is not Germany; it is the home of some of history's greatest civil rights movements, such as the epic movement in the 1960s and 1970s. I was in the US last week and glimpsed that other America, the one rarely seen among the media and Hollywood stereotypes, and what was clear was that it was stirring again. 

The other day, in an open letter to their compatriots and the world, almost 100 of America's most distinguished names in art, literature and education wrote this: 'Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression. We believe that questioning, criticism and dissent must be valued and protected. Such rights are always contested and must be fought for. We, too, watched with shock the horrific events of September 11. But the mourning had barely begun when our leaders launched a spirit of revenge. The government now openly prepares to wage war on Iraq - a country that has no connection with September 11. 

'We say this to the world. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist. We draw on the inspiration of those who fought slavery and all those other great causes of freedom that began with dissent. We call on all like-minded people around the world to join us.'

What this useful propaganda lacks, of course, is as always any serious attempt to come to grips with the class-war reality of history.

The destruction of imperialism only ever comes across as the province of clever journalism.

In such clever circles, the dictatorship of the proletariat is usually either religiously ignored as 'Marxist gobbledegook' or its weaknesses/mistakes exploited as an academic-intellectual "we oppose tyranny of all kinds" fence-sitting clean bill of health.

Pilger is cleverer than most, and sometimes manages to avoid the cruder "we condemn Sept 11 terrorism" sick class-collaborative Western cringing that the entire rest of the fake-'left' have fallen for.

But the anti-theory philistinism remains as debilitating as ever.

"The United States is not Germany". Nonchalantly adding "of course" is fine for imbecile-level logic or geography, but dozens more historical comparisons between imperialist crisis 2002 and imperialist crisis 1930s need examining more purposefully. Assassination, subversion? Coup-making? Military expansionism? Secret-police surveillance at home? Foreign agents in every country? Global economic exploitation?? Contempt for international courts and world opinion? Blitzkrieg aerial destruction of defenceless regimes declared 'hostile'? An ideologically batty and arrogantly corrupt ruling elite? An insane international warmongering mission? Etc, etc, etc, etc???

Opportunists like Pilger can start to be taken seriously when they can be heard using their platform to argue for the rights of the dispossessed to fight with terrorism or any other weapons they can lay their hands on for combating intolerable tyranny, and when they can be heard hammering the rest of the fake-'left' for its miserable cowardice in going along with the West's Goebbels lying arrogance demanding that "terrorism be condemned".

It might be a long wait, but meanwhile imperialism will still not stop losing more than it gains from having to encourage these fake-'lefts' so as to hold the anti-Leninist line.

And with capitalism's catastrophic economic crisis news currently seemingly never-ending, the deliberate study and spreading of Leninist scientific understanding could not be more appropriate.  EPSR

Socialist Alliance 'lefts' fight a losing battle to defend Zionland's "right to exist"

The "two-state solution" meeting held by the CPGB, AWL & RDG in London last Wednesday was a travesty of solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people - instead, utterly specious and bogus posturing for "democracy" and "national rights" were used to - defend the Zionist colonisers!

Chiming in completely with the world bourgeois campaign to charge all opponents of the implanted warmongering Western colony as "anti-semitic", these SA 'left' fakers worked themselves up into a lather of "outraged" petty-bourgeois hysteria when the EPSR comrade present said that real Marxism would always acknowledge that the Palestinians and Arabs had a right to fight against their genocidal Western inspired tormentors in any way they wished, as every genuine national liberation struggle has, - even if so-called suicide bombing could not be deemed to be the ideal tactic.

The EPSR speaker from the floor also pointed out that the CPGB/AWL attitude towards Islamic Jihad and Hamas entirely fitted in with their wretched "condemnation" of the 11 September attacks on US imperialism. (Where the 'lefts' constantly display their extreme defeatism towards the world revolutionary prospects against big imperialism, and their very middle-class fear of revolutionary violence, which comes out in the form of sheer moralising, racist, arrogant Western hypocrisy).

"Islamic fundamentalist extremists would kill me three times over," the RDGer said, "because I'm a socialist, an atheist and bisexual!!" Which is a great potted personal history, but nothing like Marxism which demands an analysis of all the real mass movements chiselling away at capitalist imperialism, not individualist self-pity.

The EPSR comrade started out by pointing out that it was pointless talking about the future of the Middle East outside of the titanic crisis of capitalism now unfolding, and Washington's unleashing of a monstrous "war on terrorism" to divert attention from the worsening global "overproduction" crisis and attempt to stamp down on the anti-imperialist revolt surging through the Third World using B52 bombing and helicopter gunships.

There was no support from any of the 50 'socialists' and SA supporters present for such an obviously useful way of seeing the world for the working class. Instead, the platform speakers and a dozen from the audience poured out the most twisted and futile nonsense about the "Jews being a historically-constituted people having the right to their own self-determination equal to that of the Arabs and Palestinians", "Israel being a nation, which had to be accepted as a fact of life, and therefore bad strategy for the Palestinians not to accept it" and special-pleading moralising claptrap about "the Jews having suffered the Holocaust and being driven to find a homeland in Palestine, therefore having the right to then be treated as a nation because they wouldn't have been Zionist colonisers were it not for the Nazi Holocaust against them", and that "Arab anti-semitism is just as bad as European anti-semitism" (which is rich, because Arabs are Semites).

The only sensible comment was made by the most ardent defender of "Israel" present, Deborah Maccoby, the invited platform speaker from British Friends of Peace Now (affiliated to MAPAM and the Zionist Meretz party), who admitted that it was principally the Arabs on the receiving end, and that the only thing she "feared for Israel's survival was Sharon's policies" "because they could provoke a regional war with the Arab world which would end in the destruction of Israel".

Witnessing all these neurotic convulsions, the EPSR speaker couldn't resist mentioning his excitement at the growing academic boycott of links with Israeli universities (whether liberal or not) the sign of a huge hostile change in world public opinion towards the murderous occupation of Palestine (all of it). More hysteria!!

The EPSR comrade finally pointed out that the only reason that Islamic extremism has started to make the running in the Arabs' anti-imperialist revolt is that the Moscow-influenced revisionist parties became useless at inspiring a revolutionary fight. The only way to supersede the obvious philosophical weaknesses of Jihad and Hamas was to fight better, starting with building Leninism. 

No chance of that from these moralising petty bourgeois 'lefts'!  Chris Barratt

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

167 countries voted against the U.S. blockade of Cuba

FOR the 10th consecutive time, the blockade has been condemned: The UN General Assembly approved Resolution 56/9 entitled "The need to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade imposed on Cuba by the United States."  The resolution was passed by 167 votes in favor, representing 98.35% of the total of 170 nations entitled to vote in the General Assembly.

COUNTRIES THAT SUPPORTED OUR RESOLUTION

Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, 	Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, San Marino, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

COUNTRIES THAT VOTED AGAINST (3)

United States, Israel, and the Marshall Islands

• CUBAN Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque demanded the unconditional lifting of the anachronistic U.S. economic blockade in a speech given at the 56th ordinary session of the UN General Assembly

Pérez Roque recalled that for the first time in more than 40 years the United States government has authorized, as an exception, the sale to the island of a certain quantity of foodstuffs, medicines and raw-materials for production of medicines.

He explained that the gesture was made in the context of the destructive consequences of the devastating Hurricane Michelle's recent assault on the island.

He confirmed that as a result, Cuba will be able to pay U.S. suppliers directly in dollars, but due to the convolutions of the blockade, it is impossible for Cuban vessels to transport the merchandise from U.S. ports, the most convenient means.

'"The tangle of legal prohibitions imposed on Cuba by the blockade is so, complex that this obstacle cannot be over come, even with good will on the part of both countries," he asserted.

He indicated that U.S. or third-nation ships would effect the delivery.

Roque also highlighted that the U.S. offer was an unusual gesture, having occurred for the first time in 40 years of tense relations, and is appreciated for its justness.

The foreign minister stated that there is no hope for normal trade relations between the two countries in the future unless the anachronistic blockade is completely lifted.

Pérez Roque said that Cuba wants to see the elimination of that coercive policy, which he described as the main obstacle to economic development and responsible for the suffering and deprivations of millions of Cubans.

He affirmed that Cuba wishes to re-establish normal and mutually respectful relations with the United States and is prepared to do so, given that it does not hold any futile feelings of hatred or revengeful thoughts.

However, Roque reiterated that the island is not willing to concede its principles because it knows the price of its independence, for which it has fought for 130 years.

He declared that the elimination of the blockade and the end of the economic war against Cuba requires that the U.S. government take the following decisions:

To abolish the Helms-Burton Act which, among other measures, imposes heavy sanctions on third-country entrepreneurs trading with Cuba.
 
To abolish the Torricelli Act which, among other measures, prohibits access to U.S. ports to vessels from third countries that have docked in Cuba. It also prohibits U.S. subsidiaries in third countries from trading with Cuba. These are companies from which, up until 1992, Cuba purchased some $700 million USD worth of goods annually, primarily foodstuffs and medicines.

To eliminate the absurd regulation that any products imported by the United States must not be manufactured using Cuban raw materials. Is it really justifiable to demand a Japanese automobile plant to certify that the steel utilized in its exports to the United States does not contain Cuban nickel? Is it justifiable to demand that a Canadian candy producer does not use Cuban sugar?

To cease the morbid persecution undertaken internationally by U.S. embassies and agencies to deter any possibility of doing business with Cuba, and any attempt by Cuba to access new markets and receive credits.

To allow Cuba access to the U.S. and international financial system. If Cuba had access to the $53 billion USD of loans that the international and regional financial institutions have granted to Latin America and the Caribbean between 1997 and 2000, it could have received credits of over $1,200 million USD, under more favorable conditions than are currently available.

To permit Cuba to employ the U.S. dollar for its external transactions, not only with U.S. companies but likewise with third countries, something currently prohibited by blockade regulations. Cuba is forced to constantly exchange currency, thus incurring the consequent losses from exchange-rate fluctuations.

To authorize Cuba to freely purchase in the U.S. market like any other country. For Cuba, this would mean annual purchases of over one billion USD on only a quarter of its current imports, better prices, considerable savings on freight and insurance, and easier transportation.

To authorize Cuba to freely export to the U.S. market like any other country. That would not only benefit Cuba with access to new markets, but would also permit the U.S. to access Cuban products, such as the island's famous cigars or the meningitis B vaccine, the only one of its kind in the world.

To allow U.S. citizens to travel to Cuba freely as tourists. This would permit Cuba to receive no less than 1.5 million visitors and for travellers to familiarize themselves with one of the safest and most hospitable countries in the world.

To return Cuban assets frozen by U.S. banks, part of which have been arbitrarily stolen.

To authorize U.S. companies to invest in Cuba, where they will receive non-discriminatory treatment in relation to other foreign investors, with all the guarantees laid down by Cuban legislation.

To establish regulations for the protection of Cuban trademarks and patents in the United States in the light of international legislation regarding copyright. When that occurs, dishonest acts like the theft of the Cuban Havana Club rum trademark by a U.S. company will not be repeated.

To eliminate discriminatory measures preventing Cubans resident in the United States to travel freely to Cuba and economically assist their families on the island. Cubans are now the only group within the United States against whom this measure is applied.

To negotiate fair and honorable agreements for the compensation of close to 6,000 U.S. companies and citizens whose properties were nationalized in the first years of the Revolution as an indispensable sovereign step in the country's economic development. It was precisely the blockade which prohibited U.S. citizens receiving the corresponding indemnification. Cuba recognizes their rights and would be willing to come to an agreement, bearing in mind the serious economic and human effects inflicted on our country by the blockade.  

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

Providing medical aid in 85 countries

• More than 43,000 workers involved in this solidarity initiative now being developed with the Integral Health Program currently underway in 15 countries

Cuba's "solidarity without borders" is now expanding with the Integral Health Program that is under way in 15 countries, but its importance can be appreciated by the mere fact that over recent decades more than 43,000 Cuban workers have offered their intelligence and generosity to 85 countries throughout the world.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized the impact, both in economic and social terms, "but more so in the health sector," of the U.S. blockade against Cuba. 

She stated that the WHO would contribute to the secretary-general's report on the issue, describing the effects of the blockade, and giving examples what this means in terms of limitations on Cuban public health.

Minutes before her departure in a press conference at the José Martí International Airport, Brundtland summed up her two days in Cuba, saying that it had been a great pleasure and an interesting experience to hear the personal opinions of this country's leaders. 

She added that it was also useful to see the systematic efforts that are made here to improve the human condition and its development, with a lot of emphasis on health, and education.

Fidel Castro's announcement that Cuba would introduce a new medical concept - not to work on the basis of statistics, but to offer individual attention to each child's problems - was well received by the pediatricians due to its humanitarian nature.

Professor Enzo Duenas, president of the Cuban Pediatric Society, said that the comments made by the leader of the Revolution would help them to reach "higher levels" than those already reached in maternal and infant care in Cuba, and would serve as an example to other countries, as the WHO has recognized. 

AN extensive work program dealing with each of the main issues surrounding the most common child illnesses was analyzed in Havana by several hundred highly qualified scientific experts, whose discussions will lead to higher quality medical care:

A plenary session on international medical cooperation, given by Professor Eric Martinez, research director at the Ministry of Public Health, helped participants to understand that the principles that the Cuban health system is based on - solidarity, equality, ethics, gratitude and accessibility among others - constitute an essentially internationalist vision, which began in Algeria in 1963.

He demonstrated how all the medical collaboration undertaken by Cuban medical staff over recent decades, whether direct, or indirect, has benefited children.

A recent example supports this fact. Out of the 54 people who travelled to Ecuador to help combat the outbreak of hemorrhagic dengue, only four were pediatricians. However, as those who were dying from the disease were mainly children, the doctors specializing in other areas, nurses and engineers who were part of the brigade also became "children's doctors."

Pediatrics 2001 ended on June 15. It was held in the Havana Conference Center and included an inaugural session with comments from Fidel Castro and Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, director-general of the World Health Organization (WHO).

She referred to health centers in Old Havana, her meeting with family doctors, her visit to specialized medical services and mentioned the assistants of disabled patients and specialist services to improve the conditions of pregnant women at risk.

She described the Latin American Medical School, which she also visited, under the heading of "solidarity without borders," and as a place where they create human resources and abilities in the field of public health, particularly in rural communities, in developing countries.

She said that it was a truly impressive experience to see how in the Latin American Medical School there are students from many different countries who work together and exchange their experiences.

She praised the scientists who work at the scientific complex in western Havana and recognized the "great contributions" that Cuban scientists have made in important areas of public health such as advances in vaccines, in research on tropical diseases, biotechnology and pharmaceutical production.

Naturally, she also commented that it had been a great pleasure to have spent a lot of time talking with Fidel Castro during her two-day visit. She said that he has many concerns, all of which are profoundly relevant.  

She said that she was impressed by Fidel Castro's detailed knowledge on the numerous issues they discussed, and also by the way that his perspective on the health problems facing humanity today is very clear.

She reported that he spoke about AIDS in Africa; the economic blockade; the resistance that is being acquired to many antibiotics; and other global issues.

The WHO director-general asked about Cuba's experiences in reducing world poverty, of which there are many examples, because Cuba has a policy of systematically fighting inequalities, not only in relation to health but also in wider terms, including nutrition, which she described as important in the fight against poverty in this generation and to come. 

She added that the WHO has a general interest in stimulating cooperation between countries, and said that they are certainly very grateful to Cuba for making its human resources available and for carrying out training that also helps the fight against AIDS in Africa.

She mentioned that in small countries, such: as the Gambia, there are many Cuban doctors which she recognized as "part of the solution to build better health systems; and be able to do more to counteract the threat of AIDS in Africa.