= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = XX XX XXX XX XX X X XXX XXX XXX XXX X X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X V X X X V X X X X X X X XX XXX X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X XXX X X X V XXX X XXX XXX = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT MIM Notes 128 DECEMBER 15, 1996 MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the world's oppressed majority, and against the imperialist-patriarchy. Pick it up and wield it in the service of the people. support it, struggle with it and write for it. IN THIS ISSUE: 1. ANTI-IMPERIALIST PEASANTS AND SUPPORTERS ATTEND GLOBAL SUMMIT 2. STATE ATTACKS BROOKLYN POLITICAL ACTIVISTS 3. LETTERS 4. ENVIRONMENTALISM OR AMERIKAN-CHAUVINISM? 5. IMPERIALISTS GIVE SOCIALISTS A PUBLIC OPINION VICTORY: THE U$A OPPOSES "RIGHT TO FOOD" 6. EUROFOR: NEW IMPERIALIST TERRORISM FORCE 7. MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT (MIM) STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANTI- IMPERIALIST WORLD PEASANT SUMMIT 8. APEC SUMMIT: IMPERIALIST MEDIA WHITEWASH OPPRESSION; MASSES VOW TO FIGHT ON 9. PEASANT UNITY DECLARATION AGAINST IMPERIALISM 10. UHURU MOVEMENT FIGHTS PIG BRUTALITY, ATTACKS FROM STATE 11. PRISON AWARENESS WEEK CULTURE EVENT 12. UNDER LOCK AND KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND PRISONS 13. CULTURE 14. ENGLISH IMPERIALISTS FOLLOW U.S. IMPERIALISTS ON CRIME 15. A TROTSKYIST OVERHEARD ON THE "MARXISM SPACE" OF THE SPOONS COLLECTIVE 16. BASEBALL PLAYERS BREAK BANK 17. SICK SYSTEM KILLS MAN * * * WHAT IS MIM? The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is a revolutionary communist party that upholds Marxism- Leninism-Maoism, comprising the collection of existing or emerging Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-speaking internal semi- colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking Maoist internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.S. Empire. MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish- speaking parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM is an internationalist organization that works from the vantage point of the Third World proletariat; thus, its members are not Amerikans, but world citizens. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possible by building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in human history. (3) MIM believes the North American white-working-class is primarily a non- revolutionary worker-elite at this time; thus, it is not the principal vehicle to advance Maoism in this country. MIM accepts people as members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system of majority rule, on other questions of party line. "The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution." -- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208 * * * ANTI-IMPERIALIST PEASANTS AND SUPPORTERS ATTEND GLOBAL SUMMIT METRO MANILA, Philippines, 13 November 1996--While the U.S.-Ramos regime continued its preparations for the arrival of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC) summit, anti-imperialist delegates from 40 countries concluded a summit of their own--the first-ever Anti-Imperialist World Peasant Summit (AIWPS). Following three days of speeches, discussions, and cultural presentations, today was a day of mass action. The 60 foreign delegates and 40 Filipino delegates joined with Filipino workers, peasants, students, youth and others in an anti-imperialist march on the U.S. embassy. APEC is a forum whose leadership is contested. The US imperialists have strengthened their hand in directing APEC, parrying the Japanese imperialists' challenge. Both imperialist groupings are united, however, in using APEC as a forum for the advancement of trade liberalization in the Asia Pacific region by brandishing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and its implementing arm, the World Trade Organization (WTO), which requires its participating countries to remove barriers to free trade. The US and Japanese imperialists exacted commitment from the other APEC members to full liberalization by 2010 for countries with industrial economies and by 2020 for the others. In the Nov. 25 meeting, each APEC member country is expected to come up with a specific action plan to meet this goal.(1) The AIWPS, in contrast, was a people's summit. The delegates mainly represented anti-imperialist organizations of peasants and/or their supporters. The US delegation included (among others) William Hinton, representatives of MIM, and mass organizations devoted to solidarity work with the Filipino and Mexican people's struggles, notably including PESANTE, the Philippine Peasant Support Network. Other countries represented included Bangladesh, Ecuador, Mexico, Honduras, Germany, Belgium, Malaysia, Switzerland, Greece, Canada, Australia, Zimbabwe, Azania (South Africa), Norway, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, France, the Netherlands, Brazil and Japan. In addition to serving as an alternative to the hype around APEC, the AIWPS served as a counterforum to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)'s World Food Summit now taking place in Rome, Italy. Rafael "Ka Paeng" Mariano, chairperson of the Peasant Movement of the Philippines (Kilusang Magbubukid Ng Pilipinas (KMP)), a legal, militant federation of Filipino peasant organizations which struggles for national democracy, served as conference chairperson. The conference's global conveners were the KMP, the Movimiento dos Trabahadores Rurais sem Terra (MST, Brazil), the All Nepal Peasant Association (ANPA), the Bangladesh Agricultural Union (BALU), the Asian Peasant Women Network (APWN), and the Bangladesh Agricultural and Farm Labor Federation (BAFLF). The summit's theme was "Oppose APEC and imperialist globalization! Land, food jobs and freedom for all the toiling masses of the soil!" Panel discussions concerned the trends and impact of globalization, the effects of globalization on agriculture, the political and ideological offensives of imperialism (including the pseudo-environmentalist "sustainable development" paradigm), and case studies of peasant struggles and people's anti-imperialist resistance (including reports from representatives of struggles in Brazil, Mexico, Zimbabwe and the Philippines). Generally, the summit was an affair highlighting unity against imperialism, feudalism, and the imperialist ideological-political offensive known as "globalization" and represented by such entities as APEC. The summit ended on a note of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal unity. Yesterday's proceedings ended with a rousing, multilingual mass rendition of the Internationale. Today, AIWPS delegates marched as part of a large, anti-imperialist procession calling for the junking of APEC. Marchers chanted in Tagalog: "Imperialismo, Ibagsak! Pyudalismo, Ibagsak! Byurukrata Kapitalismo, Ibagsak!" (Down with imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism!), Spanish: "!El Pueblo, unido, jamas sera vencido!" (The people, united, will never be defeated!) and English: "Hey hey, ho ho, U.S.-Ramos has got to go!", "Long live international solidarity!" NOTE: Tentative Programme for the November 1996 People's Conference Against Imperialist Globalization (PGAIC), by the Philippines Organizing Committee for the PGAIC. * * * STATE ATTACKS BROOKLYN POLITICAL ACTIVISTS "Police arrested 35 people" in Brooklyn for "weapons possession, endangering the welfare of a minor and assault."(1) MIM condemns the constant hovering of the state over the activists allegedly belonging to what the bourgeois media calls the "Provisional Party of Communists." In the United States as so organized by the highest law of the land called the Constitution, it is not illegal to own weapons. It is written in black and white and now there are more people than ever able to read it. The fact that the government attacks activists for carrying out their constitutionally defended rights proves clearly what MIM has always said: there are no rights, only power struggles. Any so-called government official claiming it is illegal to own weapons, any judge and any legislator making this claim is acting unlawfully to restrict the rights of the people to bear arms. On this question, the National Rifle Association is correct. If all these gun control supporters want to make weapons possession illegal, they are supposed to amend the Constitution. They cannot just decide to pass their own local laws or abuse their judicial powers. The Constitution is very clear on that. In fact, the original point of making it a right to bear arms was to prevent the government from imposing tyranny on unarmed citizens (of course, these citizens did not include the ranks of oppressed nations who were enslaved at the time, nor did it include wimmin). The original defenders of the Constitution believed the citizens should be able to overpower the government, including its whole army.(2) In that way the government would not think of acting in a oppressive fashion against those defined as citizens, or so the founding fathers thought. The founding men were not very good at figuring out that property-owners had concentrated power to oppress, but they were correct that large professional government arms of coercion known to them as "standing armies" are a constant threat to the people. They believed that the coercive power of the government should be kept to a minimum so that the citizens could overpower it when they so needed. In the Cultural Revolution, Mao led the people to put into practice the idea that top government and party officials have to feel the heat from the people, including possible physical exposure as a price for having political power. Those unwilling to pay that price should just get out of politics and public service--something that the cops in St. Petersburg, Florida should consider. Part of the Cultural Revolution was the setting up of people's militias to replace or balance the role of the standing armies--especially in political matters where the role of the army was suspect. For example, the people of St. Petersburg are now rising up against cops and judges who see it as ordinary to kill Black people on sight. The people in their just struggle are shooting at the occupier troops and in essence telling them to get lost. If it had happened to white people, the framers of the Constitution would have agreed with those revolting against tyranny, even if that tyranny be by the majority. Today, the country supposedly recognizes that citizens of all nationalities have the same Constitutional rights. For its part, MIM does not care one way or the other about the Constitution. There is little progressive in arming the population of this imperialist country. However, the youth, and the people in militias and the NRA are right to cry out against the hypocrisy of this government, supposedly based on a Constitution but making a big stink in the newspapers about communists owning guns. This attack on the Brooklyn activists demonstrates that it is hopeless to frame our fight around going back to defending the constitution or other founding documents as some libertarians, professing to oppose the oppressive nature of the imperialist state, argue. Even if we had a constitution of entirely correct principals, this would not ensure a just society because those who are in power decide how to interpret these documents. Historically the founding documents in this country have been applied selectively to protect the "rights" of the oppressor nation while denying "rights" to oppressed nations and those who organize in the interests of the oppressed. Even with the granting of citizenship to non-whites, this continued as an attack on the Black Panther Party when they exercised this "right" to bear arms, and again is demonstrated in this attack on the Brooklyn activists. MISTAKE OF ANTI-FASCIST AIDS BOURGEOIS PROPAGANDA Now an anti-fascist activist named Chip Berlet of the Political Research Associates (http://www.publiceye.org/pra) has made a mistake and attacked the Brooklyn activists and associated them with the two organizations in Massachusetts. The Boston Globe dutifully exposed their names and set off a red-scare for people searching for communist front groups in Massachusetts connected to the ones in Brooklyn. As Chip Berlet should know, the government and the far-right in this country are not inherently good. Chip Berlet has done part of his anti-fascist work exposing the FBI's role in infiltrating and attacking the Black Panther Party, the Maoist vanguard in Amerika in the late 1960s. Berlet knows not only that the government in this country is not inherently good but that its law-enforcement arms puts much energy into fabricating evidence against people who challenge the government. Keeping secrets from them is necessary and privacy against them is something that we defend. Some of the same lunatic Moonie organizations and other militant rightists tail communists, kill them as in Greensboro, send death threats and send them propaganda mail to their houses and so on. Hence, Chip Berlet was wrong to start the red scare by telling the Boston Globe that two organizations in Massachusetts are associated with the weapons cache in Brooklyn. He called them "dangerous." Here we see that Berlet's fight against "cults" has reached its logical conclusion: anyone not within a narrow range of acceptable liberal politics is "dangerous." What Berlet has ended up doing is aligning himself with the forces of conformity. Even Berlet admits that these activists in Brooklyn have never used their weapons. So why does he draw attention to them as opposed to anyone else with a weapon? Everyone with a weapon is dangerous. Berlet should consider his personal motivations for gaining fame by overdoing the cult theme and drop the anti-cult angle. The police reference to endangering children and assault has to do with whispered rumors of child abuse by the activists in Brooklyn. The social workers played their usual reactionary role for the state by looking into this, endangering the people there by calling in the cops and then by partaking in the red scare in the national media. It turns out that medical authorities could find no evidence of abuse and that the supposedly abused child said she was OK. In any organization of 150 people there are going to be some parents punishing their children. It is hardly a matter worthy of a media red scare campaign. Now thanks to this whole setup the people in Brooklyn will be harassed by all kinds of kooks for being communists. Thanks to Berlet, some of that harassment extends into Massachusetts where the Boston Globe called some people about their alleged indirect ties to the Brooklyn activists. This same harassment is no doubt being carried out by news agencies and individuals across the country who have picked up this story and are now trying to get the scoop on "cults" in Massachusetts. The bottom line is that the bourgeois media and politicians call anyone with strong or independent opinions a "cult." We agree that there should be ideological information made available about the Moonies etc. so people know what they are really joining. That's as far as it goes though-- ideological battle. We have strong opinions ourselves and we make sure that people are aware of other similar strong opinions before they join us, because we don't want any would-be Trotskyists or Moonies in our organization. A vanguard party is supposed to be an organization of leaders, not a mutual hand-holding session of weaklings. If someone is physically prevented from leaving an organization--that is a crime like any other physical crime. It should be covered as a crime and not sensationalized as an action by a "cult." If everyone who employed corporal punishment on their kids were called "cult" members in this way, we would have a large fraction of the population arrested. This brings up an additional problem of "equal protection" under the law. The Boston Globe makes it clear that the cops basically hover over these Brooklyn activists and in the past have failed in their raids to find anything at all. Laws are not supposed to be enforced only against communists or alleged "cult" members. The Provisional Research Associates continually complain about "harangues" and "political tirades." This reveals their middle-class conformity yet again. Having strong opinions is not a crime and weak-minded people and infiltrator cops who go to such organizations are not oppressed when they are being harangued. The cops infiltrating these organizations have carte blanche, because of the furor whipped up by people like Berlet. How many of the complainers leaving the Brooklyn activist group were really just cops who made up their stories or actually started violent fights so that they could claim they were beaten? These liberals don't understand that for the truly oppressed politics is a matter of life and death. It's typical of the whining nature of this culture that now it's considered oppressive "coercion" to be harangued. These wannabe middle-class activists need to starve, go without a roof and clothing, get shot with u.s. weapons given to puppet allies and do without minimal drugs to fight basic infections and then they can know what oppression is. BIASED MEDIA COVERAGE About the only time that the bourgeois media covers the independent organizations of the people such as what they are calling the Provisional Party of Communists occurs when the cops tell them to do so. Two organizations allegedly tied to that organization have worked hard in Massachusetts for more than ten years, but the Boston Globe has not written any story about them. (See their www.globe.com web site with search index.) Now in passing the Boston Globe says that these organizations provide "small" and "incompetent" public services. Well--there is a story that should have been written 10 years ago. The story run by the Boston Globe does not contain a single quote from anyone arrested. It's all cops and mainstream liberals in the story. We urge our readers to write to the ombudsman at ombud@globe.com to complain about these ridiculous smears and the lack of fairness in not even quoting the people arrested anywhere in the story while attempting to interview people allegedly belonging to front-group organizations that Berlet told the Globe to look into. Copies can also go to news@globe.com We also call on the activists arrested to contact MIM Notes. Our pages are open to their side of the story, no matter our other differences. We will turn this attack by the state into a good thing. NOTES: 1. "Raid said to expose leftist cult in NYC," Boston Globe Nov. 14, 1996. p. a3. 2. Alexander Hamilton, "The Federalist Papers," (NY: New American Library, 1961), p. 67, 69, 70, 115, 257. * * * LETTERS INTERNET READER PRAISES STALIN ISSUE Dear MIM, Last night I read the "Stalin Issue" of your MIM Theory, and I am writing to say that it was fucking EXCELLENT! NEVER have I seen such a good and clear- headed assessment of old Koba. The luke-warm, white-washed bourgeois infiltrators on the Internet decide how much to CONDEMN the former USSR for having supported him, and of COURSE they never get into WHY what he did was necessary and GOOD. Personally, I consider him a GREAT leader. So, CONGRATULATIONS, Comrades! :) :) :) MIM RESPONDS: Nope, readers, we did not write this letter ourselves. We publish it here so that you can get your own selves a copy, just $4.95 to PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106. Find out what the capitalists/trotskyists never told you about Stalin. LATIN KING URGES REVOLUTION To whom it may concern: I was reading the "Campaign to hear the oppressed" and came across a paragraph about the "Latin Kings".... I am a member of the Latin Kings do death do me apart! This is to all proletarian and the members of the "Almighty Latin King Nation". We must organize our people in order to get rid of the system, the oppression. We as a Latin King Nation must serve as models in our ghettos. The United Snakes of Amerikkka calls all Latinos minorities not because there is only 28 million of us. But they call us minorities because they do not see us as equal. We are ** discriminated, abused, used, tortured, imprisoned and exploited ** to the fullest degree. One out of every five Latinos in AmeriKKKA is in prison, two out of every 5 is on parole, country jail or in prison. The system, Yes! The ruling class has forced drugs, poverty, poor education, high dropout from school, public assistance, poor heath care, illness, diseases, poor housing, low income jobs, discrimination in college grants, etc. See, this is the full force of society, all the abuse and much more. Latinos have been forced in every war to uphold the so-called freedom of the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa. All we seek is our ancient dream, because we are the continuation of all those who sacrifice their life for the cause. In honor of Aqueybana, Aqueybana II, Don Ramon Emeterio Betance, Marian Bracetti, Lola Rodriquez del Tio, Don Pedro Albizu Campos, Macheteros, FALN, Young Lords and Almighty Latin King Nation. One power, one people, one revolution. Amor de rey to all my bro's and sis's. Palante Siempre Palante!! PS. Could you send me the book called Settlers: The Mythology of the White Proletariat? MIM RESPONDS: Revolutionary greetings, comrade! There's lot's of righteous points in your letter, both about history and where we go from here. MIM and RAIL have documented not only the selective imprisonment of Latinos, but also their repression once inside. See the article in the current MASS RAIL, for example, to read about how Latinos are virtually the sole targets of the "anti-gang" extra-repression units in Massachusetts. When the guards get to pick and choose who to label and gang member, they select by nation. We are glad that you want to read Settlers, because it is important that the oppressed know not only their own history but also that of the oppressor. Clear lines need to be drawn between friends and enemies in the struggle so that we can unite all who can be united without watering down the politics of the essential national liberation. One thing that Settlers does not address is organization. It's author, Sakai, is basically an anarchist and though it's the best white-nation history around, it won't give much insight in the best way to oppose the settlers. MIM has found, by looking at history, that that best way is through organizing a democratic-centralist party. Thus we'd urge you to read the points of the Young Lords for a Latino model, as well as the successful revolutions in China and the USSR, to get at that necessary organization. Within the borders of the United States MIM is currently the vanguard party of the oppressed nations. Our Latino comrades produce Notas Rojas, a Spanish newspaper around which the Latino nations organize within MIM. But we see the importance of single nation vanguards and are working towards the formation of these. Without a vanguard party, leadership and organization, they'll beat us down one by one, group by group. * * * ENVIRONMENTALISM OR AMERIKAN-CHAUVINISM? In 1994, Clinton told Chinese President Jiang Zemin "The greatest threat to our security that you present is that all your people will want to get rich in exactly the same way we got rich." "And unless we try to triple the automobile mileage and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, if you all get rich in that way we won't be breathing very well." The majority of Amerika's wealth came from exploiting other peoples, but here Clinton was referring to the willy-nilly way in which Amerika saved some of its stolen super profits by running all over the environment. The capitalist world doesn't care if it destroys the environment because capitalism is only concerned about short term profits. In addition, the capitalist is only concerned about his or her private property, and the global environment does not belong to the individual capitalist. On November 24, the Boston Globe carried a front page article about the struggle of car manufacturers to produce a car that would be appropriate for Chinese roads, fuel and cost requirements. Beyond environmentalism, Amerika fears that increased oil consumption by China could increase funds flowing to states hostile to Amerika such as Iran, Iraq or Libya; and link China to these states. Also according to the Globe, China and other East Asian nations that are large oil- importers are expected to build deep-sea navies, which could lead to an arms race to control shipping lanes. All of this could potentially shake up the U.S. controlled egg cart in the western Pacific Ocean. Notably, the article reported that until 1993, China supplied oil to its neighbors, but has now become a net importer of oil. This is even more evidence of the way in which capitalist restoration in China has led it to completely abandon the self- reliance that was so important under socialism. Amerika hypocrisy is also clear in that its focus is on selling enviro-friendly cars to China, not for use here. True, Amerika's cars are cleaner to run than they were previously, and air quality in the U.S. has improved since the 1970s even though there are 50 million more cars on the road. But in 1996, where is the largest energy consumption? Right here, where increases in energy efficiency would have a huge impact. True environmentalist solutions (from larger to smaller) would include the elimination of capitalism, the redesign of society and the culture away from individual towards mass transportation, or the marketing energy efficient cars like those proposed for China all around the world, including here in the United Snakes. Even this smaller proposal is beyond the comprehension of the Boston Globe or most Amerikans, let alone banning the production of gas-guzzlers in favor of more fuel efficient alternatives. NOTE: Boston Sunday Globe Nov. 23, 1996, p. A1, A28. * * * IMPERIALISTS GIVE SOCIALISTS A PUBLIC OPINION VICTORY: THE U$A OPPOSES "RIGHT TO FOOD" In the third week of November at the UN- sponsored World Food Summit, the United States government made it very easy for justice-seeking people everywhere to understand why socialism is superior to capitalism. When bourgeois newspapers like the Boston Globe run headlines trumpeting "US opposes 'right to food'," our public-opinion building is made easy. The imperialists, who are forever bragging about the "rights" of their chosen people bought at the expense of the oppressed, opposed the rights most important to the oppressed, among them the right to food. The ruling and middle classes of most of the world's countries believe that the right to food is a human-right. They endorsed it at the World Food Summit. Only 15 countries objected out of the 186 that participated. For most of the world's people it is almost commonsense that those who deprive others of food are violating a human-right. The people know that the profit motive stands in the way of feeding the people. In contrast, the U.S. government statement said, "The United States believes that the attainment of any 'right to adequate food' or 'fundamental right to be free from hunger' is a goal or aspiration to be realized progressively that does not give rise to any international obligations nor diminish the responsibilities of national governments toward their citizens." MIM agrees only in the sense that it is the responsibility of those national governments to kick out the u.s. imperialists so they can feed their own people. Here within U.S. borders it is our responsibility to point this out and bring down the system that starves the world's people at a rate of 14 million a year. Instead of recognizing that social justice is necessary for all people to have food, Amerika went the other way at the summit advocating expansion of those genocidal food policies that fill its pockets. It said that "free trade" of "biotechnology" would decrease hunger. In fact, the destruction of Third World biodiversity in the name of lots of for-export monocrops has created more food for the imperialists (and their horses and dogs) while increasing the hunger for the people who grow, but cannot eat, these pesticide-heavy pest-attracting plants. The products of biotechnology are hugely expensive for Third World farmers because as soon as a white man in a white lab coat has altered a plant oppressed people have been selectively breeding for centuries, the "rights" of the imperialists to "intellectual property" supersedes the right of the oppressed to food. At the same time the U.S. government was opposing the right to eat, it was launching a media campaign for the Secretary of State's next trip to China. As usual the U.S. government promised to twist China's arms on questions of "human-rights." In other words, the U.S. government wants China to release the activists who advocate an open bourgeois republic in China to replace the phony communist system. The skewed priorities of the rich are to guarantee the "free speech" of the pro-capitalist minority in the world while denying a guarantee to the right to food. According to the imperialists, if one is rich enough to survive, one should have the right to advocate capitalism. The world's people already know that the imperialists have it all backwards. "Free speech" to say stupid things like "food is not a right" doesn't do any good if one is already dead from starvation. Absolute and non- negotiable human- rights exist for food, shelter, clothing, drugs and a livable environment. Things like the "intellectual property rights" that the U.S. government is going to bother China about are secondary. The vast majority of the world's people already know this and it is only the job of the vanguard parties to harness that correct sentiment in the most efficient way possible to make so- called human-rights reality. When a person's non-negotiable human-rights are violated, the use of force is justified to obtain those human-rights. That is the essence of dictatorship--organized force. Anything less than dictatorship to enforce such "human-rights" as they are called in the West amounts to admitting that those rights are negotiable. Currently the bourgeois dictatorship uses force to keep people from eating. Proletarian dictatorship simply takes the opposite stand. People who stand in the way of non-negotiable rights must be repressed ruthlessly until that day when it is as unthinkable to deny food as it is unthinkable to own a slave. NOTE: "US opposes 'right to food' at summit" & "US aide to press rights in China," Boston Globe Nov. 18, 1996, p. a2, and The Baltimore Sun, Nov. 18, 1996, p. 9A. * * * EUROFOR: NEW IMPERIALIST TERRORISM FORCE On Saturday November 9th, in Florence, Italy, the empires of Spain, France, Italy, and Portugal announced the formation of a joint 10,000 man rapid reaction force to intervene in crises in North Africa and the Middle East. The new force, called Eurofor, is headquartered in Florence. The alleged purpose of this force is humanitarian and peacekeeping missions.(1) Libya's leader, Muammar Qaddaffi, called the formation of Eurofor a "declaration of war by Europe" against the North African people. Qaddaffi utterly rejected Eurofor, correctly calling it a "new international terrorism". In response to this act of imperial aggression, Qaddaffi said he should intervene in the war between Britain and the IRA. "We could also have a force to intervene in the Balkans and another to intervene in the European states" he said.(1) On Sunday November 10th, Libyan Foreign Minister Omar Mustafa al-Montasser summoned the French, Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian ambassadors and demanded an explanation for the formation of Eurofor. Montasser said that Eurofor "could not be accepted in the 21st century". Meanwhile, Libyan Secretary for Unity Affairs, Jomaa al-Fezzani, met with diplomats from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to stress the importance of reaching a unified stance against Eurofor. He told the three diplomats that Libya "totally rejects it (Eurofor) because of the dangers it entails and which threaten the independence of the Arab Maghreb Union states." The Arab Maghreb Union is the five nations of Libya, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, and Mauritania.(2) Also on Sunday, Qaddaffi gave a speech to the Libyan people in which he said "Libya will probably begin to prepare a force to resist the European forces."(2) The Libyan response to Eurofor was clear, quick, and direct. By refusing to roll over and play dead when threatened with European imperialism and moving immediately to act against it, Qaddaffi may have temporarily foiled Eurofor. If successful in uniting the Arab Maghreb Union states against Eurofor, Libya may well be successful in preventing Eurofor from ever invading any of those five nations and preserving their independence. MIM supports the efforts of the Arab countries to resist imperialist domination. While we know that none of these Arab countries are socialist, they are oppressed by imperialism and their struggles deal blows to the imperialists. Qaddaffi's attack on Eurofor reveals the hypocrisy and double standards applied by the imperialists who think it is fine if they act as global cops protecting the wealthy. It is only through socialist revolution will we be able to replace the system of imperialist world domination with a dictatorship of the proletariat that acts to protect the interests of the majority of the people against the bourgeoisie. NOTES: 1. The Times, Nov. 13, 1996. 2. Reuters World Service Nov. 11, 1996. * * * **The following statement was submitted by MIM to the AIWPS secretariat** MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT (MIM) STATEMENT IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORLD PEASANT SUMMIT The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM), a revolutionary communist party based in North America, is honored to be one of the many anti- imperialist grassroots organizations represented at the Anti-Imperialist World Peasant Summit. MIM wholeheartedly supports this conference's theme, "Oppose APEC and Imperialist Globalization. Land, Food, Jobs and Freedom for all the Toiling Masses of the Soil!" Within U.S. and Canadian borders there is no longer a peasant class--with the exception of Puerto Rico which remains semi-colonial and semi-feudal. Nonetheless, there is a strong basis for solidarity between the oppressed peoples within U.S. and Canadian borders and the world's peasantry. The Black, Chicano, and indigenous peoples of North America struggle side by side with the world's peasantry for land, food, jobs, freedom and national liberation. Like the peasantry, the indigenous peoples of North America struggle against multi-national corporations which seek to dispossess them of their land for profit's sake. Like the peasantry, the indigenous peoples of North America struggle against imperialist governments which give these multi-national corporations the green light to plunder the land. As a concrete example, the Mohawk First Nation of North America, Mexican peasants in Guerrero, and Filipino peasants have all struggled against the creation and expansion of golf courses onto their lands. Likewise, the Lakota First Nation of North America and the Filipino peasants of the Cordillera region both continue to struggle against the destructive multi-national mining corporations. The Black and Latino peoples, too, are joined with the peasantry against imperialist domination. Their history is one of struggle against dispossession and for the control of their land. Even now, in urban areas, the Black and Latino peoples struggle against dispossession and state repression. Chicano and Asian-descended people who toil the land to feed North America surely know that the world's peasants are their brothers and sisters in solidarity and struggle against national oppression. These groups, which are internal colonies of the U.S. empire, are united with the world's peasantry in the struggle against imperialist domination. The struggle against imperialism goes hand in hand with the struggle against oppressor-nation chauvinism. Oppressor-nation chauvinism has a material basis in the extraction of superprofits from the world's neo-colonies. As a result, the majority of the imperialist nations' populations cannot be realistically expected to rise up against imperialism at this time. Nonetheless, MIM will continue to work among all sectors to unite all who can be united against imperialism. Among white people, we look to the youth in particular as a strata whose class, national and gender interests are malleable. We organize oppressor nation youth along internationalist lines to fight imperialism from within the belly of the beast. The advanced elements from the oppressor nations know that the future of humanity lies with the international proletariat and peasantry. Oppressed peoples of the world unite! Long live the anti-imperialist struggle! Long live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism! * * * APEC SUMMIT: IMPERIALIST MEDIA WHITEWASH OPPRESSION; MASSES VOW TO FIGHT ON Before and during President Clinton's participation in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit the amerikan media flattered the u.s.-Ramos regime in the Philippines, calling it an "aspiring Asian Tiger"(1). USA Today cited the 7% growth in the Philippines' GNP as proof of the effectiveness of President Ramos' economic policies.(1) These lies and half-truths mask the fact that the u.s.-Ramos regime exists to defend and extend the political and economic system which robs the people of the Philippines of their sovereignty and keeps them in poverty. Even USA Today admits that for the poor in the Philippines "[t]hings are still the same: no good."(1) More than 75% of the people in the Philippines live below the government-defined poverty line.(2) EXPLOITATION AND POVERTY About two-thirds of the 7% growth in the GNP in the Philippines came from overseas workers--that is, workers who could not find jobs in the Philippines.(3) More than 113,000 workers lost their jobs in 1995 and the first quarter of 1996 as a result of government policies catering to imperialist dictates. BAYAN International estimates that at least 40% of the total labor force is unemployed.(2) The share of the GNP accounted for by domestic agriculture and industry actually decreased in 1996.(3) The u.s.-Ramos regime's economic strategy depends on remittances from overseas workers, who face extreme exploitation and oppression. The much touted "growth" in the Philippine economy is actually a desperate attempt to rustle up cash at the expense of the people. It does not develop Philippine agriculture or industry to serve the needs of the people (only the development of self- reliant socialism could reliably do that). As we reported in the last MIM Notes, the u.s.- Ramos regime is so desperate to put forward a healthy and "growing" image that it forcibly evicted as many as 500,000 squatter families from Metro Manila.(4) According to USA Today, "the government has erected walls around some slums and bulldozed others... [t]o keep such eyesores from APEC bigwigs."(1) In a statement, the League of Urban Poor for Action said: "The APEC summit today is a swearword for the urban poor and the entire people. The shameless government cover-up of their inhuman poverty is the backdrop to the otherwise opulent reception of the foreign delegates, who will only see a sanitized Metro Manila."(3) Urban poverty in the Philippines is a result of concentration of land ownership and subsequent peasant evictions and IMF-dictated anti-labor policies. By seeking to cover up or bulldoze away the urban poor, the u.s.-Ramos regime is admitting that it cannot solve the contradictions in Philippine society. AMERIKAN MILITARY BASES AND "COVERT OPERATIONS" The APEC summit also provided the amerikan military with an excuse to base fighter planes at Clark Field again. A nation-wide movement to remove the amerikan military bases from Philippine soil closed the air base and Subic Bay naval station (where the APEC summit was held) in the early nineties. The 17 u.s. jets at Clark Field participated in "covert operations" during the summit.(3) MIM Notes 121 documented how the u.s.-Ramos regime used APEC summit to step up the military harassment and repression of political activists.(5) The Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), a militant legal organization of trade union activists, reports that u.s.-Ramos regime also revived the hated Civilian Armed Forces Geographical Units (CAFGUs), paramilitary units designed by Ramos which are internationally notorious for their human rights abuses.(3) The CAFGUs and similar organizations are an important part of the u.s.-designed "total war" being waged against the revolutionary movement and the people of the Philippines. ANTI-APEC DEMONSTRATIONS REFLECT STRENGTH OF THE MASSES Of course, the imperialist media's whitewash campaign has not fooled the masses in the Philippines. Organizations like the KMU or the KMP (Peasant Movement of the Philippines) have been carrying out anti-APEC and anti-imperialist agitation throughout recent months. Many demonstrations targeted the summit itself. The KMU Correspondent describes a militant rally which took place in late August: "The rally denounced the continuing domination of U.S. imperialism in the country. A power dance symbolic of the two contending forces of U.S. imperialism and of the Filipino people was presented amidst hushed silence. The lone voice of a woman singing the patriotic lyrics of a pre-war poem was heard. "As the last line was rendered, "and with a bullet you shall break the old fetters!," a thunderous applause broke, the U.S. flag burned and fiery speeches followed. "The rallyists vowed to fight on."(3) NOTES: 1. USA Today, Nov. 20, 1996. 2. The Truth About the Ramos Regime, BAYAN International, August 1994. 3. KMU Correspondence, September-October 1996. 4. MIM Notes 127, Dec. 1, 1996. 5. MIM Notes 121, Sep. 1, 1996. * * * PEASANT UNITY DECLARATION AGAINST IMPERIALISM 2nd draft (the most current draft available to MIM at press time) We, participants to the ANTI-IMPERIALIST WORLD PEASANT SUMMIT representing peasant and farmworkers' movements from Asia, Latin America and Africa and farmers' organizations and solidarity movements from Europe, North America, Japan and Australia are gathered today to reaffirm our collective and resolute stand to fight imperialism and unshackle the persisting feudal fetters of peasant enslavement. Landless and poor peasants, farmworkers, indigenous peoples, subsistence fishermen and rural women comprise sixty percent of the world's labor force. With our sweat, brawn and caring hands, we produce food for humanity and raw materials for industry. In spite of our significant contribution to our national and the world's economy, it is not us who reap the fruits of our labor. Instead, we suffer from abject poverty and hunger. Most of us have no lands, no security of tenure, no housing facilities, no medical care, no education. Our rights are trampled upon. Our children are out of school and at their tender age are pushed to work in order to survive. Since the linking of most economies to the world capitalist system, the role of the peasantry has been to produce raw material exports for the ever- expanding industries of the North. Imperialism maintained landlordism and feudal social relations in colonies and neo-colonies to keep the local landlords and comprador bourgeoisie their reliable partners in extracting surplus from the peasantry. Imperialist economic designs were carried out on a global scale by imperialist states and agencies in connivance with servile third world governments run mostly by local landlord-compradors. Today, the crisis of overproduction and cut throat competition among imperialist powers--mainly, the United States, Japan and European Union--put them in a frenzied rush to reconquer neo-colonies under the emblem of "free trade/free market" and "globalization" even as they scramble against each other to consolidate their own national and regional markets and penetrate each other's secure markets. Through multilateral treaties such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade-World Trade Organization (GATT-WTO) and regional free trade blocs such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Southern African Development Community (SADC), European Union, MERCOSUR and so on, the exploitable resources of third world economies are forcibly opened to the operations, control and manipulations of imperialist states and their own transnational conglomerates. This is made possible also through structural adjustment programs imposed by multilateral imperialist financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. This kind of so-called economic interdependence through "globalization," trade liberalization, privatization and deregulation simply means greater integration into the clutches of international monopoly capital. Along with this plunder, imperialism tries to conceal its economic aggression and subversion of national interests by deceiving people to look at problems from a blurred supraclass viewpoint and standpoint. Their propaganda machines churn out concepts like "sustainable development" and "empowerment of civil society" which constricts analysis of the development problem to pure environmentalism, confines people's participation to the narrow NGO frame of lobbying or intervention in parallel forums and co-opts the so-called "civil society actors" into being mere bitplayers in the whole imperialist gambit. Thus, the solution to the people's miseries is reduced to the village level or "bio-districts," isolating it from the socio- economic political terrain and negating the structural causes of underdevelopment and maldevelopment. The consequences of this renewed imperialist offensive are disastrous to us, peasants, to the working class and all oppressed peoples and nations. These spell massive landlessness, worse forms of feudal and capitalist exploitation, evictions, unemployment, urban and overseas migration for the displaced rural folks. For the entire economy, rapid deindustrialization and bankruptcy of local enterprises lead to workers' retrenchments, wage freezes, "flexibilization" of labor and trade union repression. With deregulation and privatization, state social services are almost absent while military budgets increase and heavy taxes are imposed. Likewise, prices of prime commodities shoot up while income levels drop. In the homegrounds of imperialist countries, it is the working class, oppressed minorities and the small family-based farmers that bear the brunt of the current capitalist crisis. The state is cutting social and welfare benefits for the people, unemployment is on the rise, workers' rights are attacked, state violence against and discrimination [against] migrants is rampant, and small family farms are eaten up and displaced by large-scale corporate farms. Faced with this situation, peasants, workers and peoples take on the road of militant mass actions, general strikes, land occupations, peasant uprisings and people's revolutions. But in the face of people's discontent and resistance, imperialism and its local agents among third world states always respond with overt and covert forms of political repression and counter-resistance. These repressive measures take different forms ranging from massive arrests and detention, indiscriminate bombings and hamletting of rural villages to economic embargo and direct military aggression against sovereign nations by the U.S. and U.N. or NATO "peacekeeping forces" under the guise of "anti-terrorism" or "preserving democracy". As imperialism wantonly penetrates national boundaries to bleed profit from its people and land, the exploited and oppressed are also brought together to face a common enemy and share common aspirations and struggles. We, the participants of this Anti-Imperialist World Peasant Summit, therefore resolve to: * pursue the democratic aspiration of landless peasants and rural workers for land by persisting in the struggle against domestic feudalism which imperialism has supported to suit its global economic interests; * reaffirm our collective and resolute opposition to any and all imperialist machinations and instrumentalities and persevere in our struggles for national liberation and class emancipation; * build a strong anti-imperialist unity among the oppressed toiling masses. We shall link up, develop and forge strong solidarity relations between and among us and with other anti-imperialist and progressive organizations to further advance the world's anti-imperialist movement; * oppose all forms of subjugation against women and national minorities and vow to pursue their particular struggles within the context of liberating the exploited classes and oppressed nations; * resist all forms of political repression and imperialist military aggression. Take courage from the heroic sacrifices mad by our befallen comrades. We also vow to free our comrades behind bars, the political prisoners, and seek justice for all victims of human rights abuses; and * as advocates of the peasants' struggle for land and the right of nations to be free from foreign domination, we from religious groups and cultures, academ[ia], professional sector, youth and students and other democratic sectors of the middle class, pledge to direct our skills, resources and time to continue supporting the cause of the oppressed and be one with them in the struggle. United, we shall become a formidable force determined to build a prosperous society together with all the working peoples of the world and put an end to imperialism. As proof of this anti-imperialist solidarity, we hereby affix our signatures on this 12th day of November, 1996 in Quezon City, Philippines. MIM COMMENTS: The Anti-Imperialist World Peasant Summit (AIWPS) secretariat produced two draft documents for participants to discuss, redraft and sign. The above 2nd draft also reflects the input of many AIWPS delegates. MIM signed the other document, the Position Paper for the World Food Summit, "End World Hunger and Poverty, Oppose Globalization and Renewed Imperialist Domination!" Unfortunately, MIM was unable to sign the "Peasant Unity Declaration Against Imperialism," despite our unity with its general thrust (which is anti-imperialist and anti- feudal) and virtually all of its contents. As a demonstration of our overall unity with the statement, we reprint it here with a response to clarify our disagreements. MIM refused to sign because the statement includes a generally incorrect passage asserting that imperialist country workers and farmers "bear the brunt of the current capitalist crisis," which is simply not the case. MIM did not argue to replace this paragraph with one correctly stating that these workers and farmers "reap the fruits" (more accurately, a share of the fruits) of imperialist superexploitation. After all, the presence of imperialist-chauvinist revisionist parties from the imperialist countries would have ensured a deadlock. Instead, MIM sought a compromise position which would have left the statement silent on this question by removing the contentious passage. MIM's compromise position was rejected, so MIM was unable to sign the statement. The passage whose inclusion prevented MIM from signing is the following from paragraphs 9-10 of the above statement: "For the entire economy, rapid deindustrialization and bankruptcy of local enterprises lead to workers' retrenchments, wage freezes, "flexibilization" of labor and trade union repression. With deregulation and privatization, state social services are almost absent while military budgets increase and heavy taxes are imposed. Likewise, prices of prime commodities shoot up while income levels drop. "In the homegrounds of imperialist countries, it is the working class, oppressed minorities and the small family-based farmers that bear the brunt of the current capitalist crisis. The state is cutting social and welfare benefits for the people, unemployment is on the rise, workers' rights are attacked, state violence against and discrimination [against] migrants is rampant, and small family farms are eaten up and displaced by large-scale corporate farms." MIM recommended that the words "For the entire economy" be dropped from the ninth paragraph, and asked that the tenth paragraph be scrapped altogether. For activists in the imperialist countries, the question of the nature of the class forces in the imperialist questions is a dividing line. Those in the imperialist countries who are genuine Marxists, and thus scientific socialists, recognize that one of the most basic facts about the class forces in the imperialist countries is that the majorities in the imperialist countries do not suffer economically from imperialism, and in fact are bribed with a share of the superprofits extracted from the neocolonies by the imperialists. Those in the imperialist countries who claim to be Marxists and deny this basic fact are in fact revisionists. This question is of the same level of importance in the imperialist countries as the question of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial nature of the Philippines is in the Philippines. The difference, however, is that the correct position on the basic political-economic nature of the Philippines has hegemony within the broadly-defined Filipino left, while MIM still has much work ahead of it to win hegemony for the correct position on the basic political-economic nature of the U.S. settler- empire and the imperialist countries generally within these countries. To this end, MIM distributes a number of reading materials supporting our position, some by MIM and some by non-MIM authors. Readers interested in studying this question are encouraged to write to MIM with questions and/or requests for reading materials. Those who are interested in understanding the basis for MIM's position in the Marxist classics can start by looking at what Lenin said was the basis for the opportunism which split the Second International. * * * UHURU MOVEMENT FIGHTS PIG BRUTALITY, ATTACKS FROM STATE In St. Petersburg, Florida, members of the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement have been leading the attack against the pigs whose two white officers, Jim Knight and Sandra Minor, recently murdered 18-year-old Black youth, TyRon Mark Lewis. The courts found these pigs innocent of murder. In response to this pig brutality the people have been taking to the streets in protest and riot. And in response to these protests, the pigs and the city government are threatening to take the Uhuru Movement to court for inciting a riot. Police Chief Darrel Stephens believes Uhuru political speech -- which encourages Black revolutionary struggle against the white power structure-- "contributed to the atmosphere" of racial tension and violence. He says their speech fomented both nights of rioting. From MIM's point of view the injustice fomented the righteous rebellion and it's typical of the slavemaster attitude to blame his injustices on the oppressed. This case deals with an important issue for activists--free speech. MIM understands that there is no such thing as free speech: there are only power struggles and those in power have "rights" and those oppressed by people in power have no rights. Members of the Uhuru movement repeatedly warned the city of St. Petersburg that their attacks against Blacks were going to lead to violence. They correctly predicted the interests of the people in fighting the pigs and the state. And they understood that increased repression will lead to increased resistance. For this, and for organizing a revolutionary movement and calling on the people to get involved, the Uhuru movement leaders may be arrested and thrown in prison. Activists should take a lesson from the Uhuru movement whose spokespeople correctly understand the importance of acting just inside of the legal system at this time in our fight. They carefully worded statements so that they never directly threatened to commit or incite violence. According to the law, it must be demonstrated that violence occurred as a direct result of speech in order for that speech to be considered "inciting a riot." "We said it, just like (Uhuru member) Alvelita (Donaldson) said in March 1996. She said it twice. The city's gonna go up in flames if y'all don't stop making war against African people in this city." But even this caution on the part of the Uhuru movement leaders is not enough to avoid pig repression that comes down against activists organizing against imperialism. Shortly after the murder of the youth, several Uhuru members were arrested on minor charges and the Uhuru headquarters was tear gassed. NOTES: St. Petersburg Times, Nov. 20, 1996, P. A1. * * * PRISON AWARENESS WEEK CULTURE EVENT On November 22, RAIL and MIM held the final event of Prison Awareness Week at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. It was designed to be a Revolutionary Cultural event and fundraiser for the MIM books for prisoners program. While the event did not meet up with our expectations in terms of turnout and fundraising for a variety of reasons, we did have an active struggle over the importance of producing revolutionary culture and the meaning of the works presented. One RAIL comrade performed a song by Bob Dylan about George Jackson and his murder by prison guards at San Quentin prison in California. This sparked a discussion about why MIM calls all prisoners political prisoners. George Jackson was imprisoned for a small time crime--the theft of $70. Within the walls he became a revolutionary leader, and joined the Black Panther Party. He wrote 2 books that were very influential to the revolutionary movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. George Jackson was causing Amerika too many problems with his anti-imperialist organizing so they had him killed. When MIM says that all prisoners are political prisoners, we do not mean that all prisoners were arrested for openly political acts or are openly political. What MIM looks at, however, is the unjust political system that calls some people and their actions "criminal", and calls other people who harm their global neighbors to greater degree "chairman of the board" or "President of the United States." A system that enforces poverty for a targeted population has no legitimacy to complain about the lack of morality in people breaking the imposed rules. Furthermore, MIM would call the daily war against the Third World, be it in the form of IMF imposed starvation, Clinton raining bombs on Iraq, or Union Carbide poisoning the people of India the largest crimes in the world. Stealing seventy bucks doesn't even come close to this level of "crime." The next performance was Doctress Neutopia who read an essay about her being denied access to the UMass computer system last year. Doctress Neutopia is a post-modern Internet activist, known for starting a pacifist religion and promoting "lovolution" over revolution. The December 1 issue of MIM Notes covered a talk by the Doctress that was ostensibly about human rights in Turkey. As MIM has already spelt out its differences with Doctress Neutopia, we chose to instead focus at the event and in this article on issues that come up more often: the role of intellectuals and the future of socialism. Last year, Doctress Neutopia had an Internet account at UMass to use for research purposes, although she was no longer affiliated with the school. When she took some copyrighted news articles from one part of Usenet (a network of discussion groups within the Internet) and posted it to another, she had her Internet access revoked. UMass pays for access to some wire service news reports from ClariNet, and the Doctress spread a few articles around the world for free. ClariNet, the owners of the information, demanded "justice", so UMass pulled her plug. MIM has no doubt that the Doctress was turned in to the owners of the material because some vigilante didn't like her politics, and that the University found her politics distasteful and therefore choose the most severe of the possible penalties. But that doesn't mean that we want to get caught up in arguments about her "deserving" Internet access. There are no rights, only those things we can organize to seize and maintain. We expect nothing from Amerika except its eventual defeat. As MIM as explained previously, copyrights and the ownership of ideas is a reactionary part of capitalism that holds back progress. ClariNet has useful information, but withholds access to it to only those who pay for it. This keeps information away from those who can use it productively. This is why MIM Notes is given free to those-- principally prisoners--who can not pay for it. MIM Notes is not copyrighted for a similar reason. Some libraries restrict the photocopying of archived literature in order to protect the publishers copyright. While some capitalist publications might want to withhold information, MIM would like to see our information spread as widely as possible, so we explicitly do not copyright material and encourage people to copy it. Neutopia is correct that in a just society people would have equal access to the tools of mass communication, including the Internet. So in that sense, a criticism of Amerika's Internet policy for excluding the great majority of the world would be correct. At best, it's opportunism of the worst sort for someone with a Ph.D. to scream oppression because they have to pay for Internet access. Part of the Doctress's defense is that she gets "only" $900 a month from her father so that she can sit around and develop reactionary lovolution philosophies with her time. The Doctress responded to this criticism by demanding Internet access for the world. When RAIL hammered Doctress Neutopia to admit that food, safe water and getting imperialist nations out of their country were important, she meekly said of course, and then added "and Internet access", with the emphasis on the Internet access. Fundamental behind Doctress Neutopia's line is an intellectual elitism. She believes she deserves to sit around all day and philosophize about future societies, archologies and the lovolution. She wants peasants to slave in the fields all day so she can jet around the world to criticize revolutionary movements where she can't even speak their language. A RAIL comrade explained the Maoist view that the division of labor in society is social. This comrade posed a rhetorical question, asking if the Doctress thought that some people dug ditches and plowed fields, and others sat around in coffee shops talking about philosophy because of biological differences. The Doctress exposed her belief in biological determinism answering that some people are big and like physical work, and some people don't. MIM does not waste time developing reactionary philosophies that lead the people of the world down dead ends. Instead we organize for socialist revolution to liberate the people of the world from the oppression and exploitation of imperialism. One of the most important stages in global liberation will be the former parasites of the united states and other imperialist countries paying reparations to the Third World. Such a scenario would offer great material aid to the Third World, and lower the standard of living for Amerikans to something globally sustainable. For an Amerikan to do physical labor all day and end up with the Doctress's "oppressive" $900 a month might be quite lucky indeed. * * * UNDER LOCK AND KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONERS AND PRISONS UNWANTED SEXUAL ADVANCES BEHIND TEXAS PRISON WALLS PLEASE LISTEN A women was sexually assaulted and harassed by her boss...not such "new" news in today's society...but to be punished for reporting it is - a punishment resulting in prolonged imprisonment...sad but true...it happened to me! The incident that occurred could have happened to anyone, in prison or out. Obviously, though, I am a much more "captive audience" if you will. Had I been an employee in the average corporation, I would have been considered a hero for blowing the whistle. An inmate, however, is still portrayed as the villain, not the hero. I want to "tell all" simply because I don't ever want another female or male to go through the degradation I have been subjected to by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. This is what I have to say. I am an inmate in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Gatesville, Texas. I have a twenty year sentence for drugs and I have been locked up since February 1992. With my good behavior and status, I had a pre-approved parole date for February 1994. (Contrary to the article published in the Gatesville newspaper). Until, that is, I started working for a certain ranking captain - Captain Franco. Subsequently, my life got thrown into a series of injustices. My dark past and my struggle to find myself are the very reasons I landed in prison. As devastating as prison can be, I honestly thought this was to be my new start. I could put the past behind me and begin with a clean slate, something I was looking forward to very much. Since I have been in prison, I have been subjected to worse things, done to me illegally, by figures of authority than what I did to get sent here in the first place! I believe I can show the public a whole new light on what prison is all about. After all, I was the average citizen for several more years than I was a convicted felon. I too used to think prison was where people went to get their lives straightened out...not ruined! Sure - prison should not be fun, but the people running these places are more corrupt than most inmates. Honestly, its a free- for-all: sex, drugs, abuse, even stealing. They are protected in doing these things because the system does not want the public to know what really happens behind these walls. In August 1993, just months away from my freedom and paying the final debt to society for my mistakes, I was sexually assaulted by my supervisor, who was a Ranking Captain with 10 years in the Criminal Justice System. I was a Trusty, which is a difficult status to obtain in the Texas prison system. Upon reporting the incident, I was subjected to some very harsh and cruel treatment and transferred to a different facility where no help was available. Instead of the captain being punished, it seems as though I have been given a whole new sentence for a crime I didn't commit. I begged for some relief due to troubled sleeping patterns and severe nightmares of the assault. I also began acquiring several disciplinary cases which in turn caused me to lose my date to go home. All of this was a direct result of asking for help with a situation I wasn't sure how to handle. My reputation as a model inmate with Trusty status was flawed forever, never to be obtained again. I was told I would get a polygraph but had to force the issue until finally six months later I was granted one in which I passed and Captain Franco failed. It was then another six months until Captain Franco was fired. However, I was not restored to my original status...just harassed and retaliated upon even more than before. At this point I filed a civil lawsuit. I was at my wit's end as to how to stop all the harassment by Captain Franco's peers. The punishments grew more frequent and more severe following the lawsuit. All I wanted was justice and to be allowed to go home to my three children. Now that things are down to the wire on the civil suit, I've been locked down and stripped of all personal property, including family photos and any means of outside news. I am having to sneak this letter out and hope that it will be mailed. They have attempted to strip me of my dignity and self respect. I've been ostracized and belittled among other inmates. It has been hard to keep focused on my goals and to keep a positive picture of freedom one day. My hope for justice has been my strength; this letter as my appeal for public knowledge and support. Officers constantly say nasty comments about me to other inmates in hopes that they will hurt me mentally or physically. I am a nervous wreck just trying to keep this from affecting me any further. It is a daily struggle. I truly believe this could be a good story. Several people can testify to hair raising incidents! Men and women alike! I am honestly voicing my opinion when I say that the Texas Prison System is run by the "real criminals". I'm sure with all the proof and documentation I have, this story could open an ugly curtain on Texas prisons. It would also set the record straight about the incident that has had a domino effect on my life. My civil suit is still pending. Captain Franco has been a hard man to locate. An attempt has been made to serve him papers regarding the civil suit. His last known whereabouts were at a U-Haul in Killeen. That, however, has proven to be a dead end. His comrade Lt. Rhea, the main investigator who was the acting Internal Affairs man, tried to cover everything up and sweep it under the rug. Much to my dismay, he was running for the sheriff of Gatesville when the authorities tried to serve him papers. Everything came back to me saying they could not locate these men. The last knowledge I have of Mr. Franco's whereabouts was that he fled to Tennessee and has not been heard from. As you know, he is basically protected by immunity of Code of Color of State. However, I still expect him to be at the trial to answer for his behavior as well as my prolonged stay in a corrupt prison. But it seems I am fighting a losing battle against deception and cover-ups, while I continue to fade into non-existence in the Texas prison system. I am forced to represent myself in litigation since I have twice been denied council by the local Federal Courts. I am a Pro Se litigant with very little knowledge of the law. In 1994 there was a Federal case [Women Prisoners Vs. District of Colombia] in which they ruled that regulations were to be in order in the hiring of correctional officers. These regulations were to weed out all sexual deviants and to identify without a doubt those individuals capable of holding a position in a correctional institution. As I look around at the employees of this institution, I realize that the State of Texas is more concerned with building prisons than they are screening their applicants. With the nation's largest prison expansion program, less focus has gone into the hiring of capable individuals. Instead they allow inexperienced, sheltered country folk, (whose county has won the bidding for new prisons, therefore new job opportunities) to be put in positions of power with authoritarian status. Generations of correctional officers fill the system. They protect their own at all costs. It is somewhat a code of honor it would seem. They have run things in this manner for years...the last thing they need is a convicted female felon who believes in justice and insists on being heard. I am deeply concerned that you may never get this letter. Whether you are interested or not in investigating my story, please at least acknowledge receipt of my letter. Otherwise I will be left to assume my mail has been tampered with as usual. Anxiously Awaiting a Reply --A Texas Prisoner, 12 October 1996 ARIZONA: CHAIN GANGS, SLAVE LABOR AND STARVATION Dear Comrades: I really enjoyed M.I.M! Your articles were right on target, this administration needs to be put between the cross-hairs!! The September issue on KKKlinton was a bulls-eye! I want you to know that I will put your newsletter into circulation here in the Arizona State Prison, ... Here in Arizona, prison chain gangs and slave labor are the common practice. I've been incarcerated just over 10 years and in the last few years Arizona prisons have done everything in their power to provoke riots and unnecessary discontent. Who are the real crooks? As of November 1, 1996, a $2.00 a month appliance charge will be deducted from inmates' money account, money that is usually sent in by our family members for personal hygiene items, etc. I hope they choke on that $24.00 a year debit. I believe they are trying to put money back in accounts they have previously stolen from. There is an unsubstantiated rumor that there are a lot of Federal indictments ready to be handed down against the corrupt Arizona Government starting at the top with Governor Fife Symington, and everyone under his umbrella. Let's hope so. Also, the administration has been cutting back on the required portions of food and diets will be cut back from 2250 calories to 1800. They are starving us. No-one has had any new clothing since over a year ago, they say they can't afford to even provide us with socks, yet they won't let our families send us clothes. In the meantime, they are financing and building tents to house more prisoners, and an internal departmental report claims the inmate population is subsiding. Something is contradictory here. Arizona is notorious for slush funds, their "black hole" money pits where a lot keeps going in and "disappears" before it gets a chance to be used to finance something. Somebody is making out good in this state, but that is another story in itself. Well, when times get hard its easy to oppress the oppressed, and that's how the ball and chain gets its evil rest. Thanks for having open ears. Keep up the good work. --An Arizona Prisoner, 23 October 1996 NEW YORK CENSORS MIM NOTES Dear MIM, This is to acknowledge that MIM Notes September 1 & 15 and August 1 & 15 of 1996 arrived here addressed to me. However, the facility media review committee has censored and denied me the receipt of the September 1 and 15th issues. Presently I am appealing the decision to central office and I am also contemplating a federal court challenge to the practice, since I have been consistently experiencing the same with other publications. As you suggested, in the coming days I will be posting you articles about the conditions in the prison here. Thanks for your attention and courtesy. Yours in Struggle --A New York Prisoner, 2 November 1996 Letters of Protest can be sent to: Central Office , Attica Correctional Facility, PO Box 149, Attica, NY 14011. MORE ARTICLES ABOUT DEATH ROW NEEDED Dear MIM, I would very much like to continue receiving your great paper. I appreciate you letting me have access to such a great Mat. filled with so much info. I would live to see more articles dealing with Death Row issues. I have been on Florida's Death Row for 8 1/2 years with a full evidentiary hearing coming up in January. I hope to prove what I have stoodfast over 9 years that I'm totally innocent. Evidence was withheld, witnesses were forced to lie and it's all coming back to bite the state's ass now. Keep up the great work! Florida just executed a good friend of mine on 21 October 1996 at 7:09 pm. John Earl Bush. --A Florida Prisoner, 25 October 1996. MIM RESPONDS: The death penalty in Amerika is an extremely important issue. Especially since most of the people killed are from the oppressed nations, even though they represent a small percent of the population within Amerikkkan borders. The death penalty is another tool the oppressive imperialist state uses to control and legally kill people. Under Lock and Key prints the letters of prisoners and their concerns. So please write and send UL&K articles about death row, the conditions, current prison events and struggles. Some of the most accurate and telling information comes from within the walls. If you want to read about it, write about it. --RCG1 23 November 1996 PRISONERS CONTINUE TO STRUGGLE IN FLORIDA Comrades, Our struggle here in Florida continues, but each day the Brothers in Arms are becoming more and more discouraged. The fight moves us ahead one step and the system knocks us back another two. In Palm Beach County, Florida, things are really out of hand. Our captors have cut back on the quantity of food we get, and they are now illegally charging us to stay in jail so we can not afford to buy snacks or even hygienic supplies. As of now I owe the jail over $100.00 and it grows daily. The courts won't hear my civil action to fight the charges, because the Sheriff won't serve the papers on themselves and their fellow corruption squad who runs the jail. Even the white, redneck politicians aren't safe here either. Just this week, the court ordered a candidate for state senate jailed for thirty days for saying a judge was corrupt. How can the poor or minority people be treated fairly if a white, rich politician's right to free speech is taken away? At least I'm getting my copies of MIM Notes again. Our racist state controlled media won't share a portion of the truths we can find in your paper. Though our hope is diminished, it is not gone. We must stand and fight the racist, corrupted government, courts, and oppressors of all people. Continuing in Struggle! --A Florida Prisoner, 5 November 1996 NEW JERSEY PRISONERS PRACTICE TEACHINGS OF MAO AND MALCOLM X "If you ever think about me and if you ain't gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don't want myself on your mind. Let me say peace to you if you're willing to fight for it." Fred Hampton Chairperson, Illinois BPP. Revolutionary Greetings & Clenched Fist Salute.... As a politikal konscious New Afrikan here immured in one of NJ's kkkorruptional slave plantation, infamous known as trenton state prison. First, let me say that, i've received your Aug. lst & 15th and Sept. lst & 15th issues. 4 in all to be exact and along wit' a letter from one of your RAIL komrads' a week thereafter. The prisonkrats (pigs) no doubt, thoroughly molested (screened) them on de way through "enemy checkpoint" (mailroom) because, it was given to me 5 days from the initial date it was received, so, no doubt it was thoroughly molested(screened). I'm not surprised that MIM NOTES wasn't konfiscated, disapproved, and/or returned, something that happens often when it komes to any such "revolutionary ideas", etc. However, i'm already on de prison- kkkrats "STG" files along wit' a number of other komrads' who subscribe to revolutionary ideas/practices/ideology. As a result, we're konstantly being singled out & harassed & being yanked wit' our mail. All we've done was to set up study groups, P E klasses, kultural klasses (history) etc.. As Mao Tse-Tung said;" To overthrow a political party, it is necessary, first of all, to create public opinion, to do work in the ideological sphere." Thus, that is exactly what we tend to strive towards, by disseminating revolutionary ideology partikularly to lumpen klass here. As Bro. Malcolm said; "I, for one, believe that if you give people a thorough understanding of what it is that confronts them, and the basic causes that produce it, they'll create their own program; and when the people create a program, you get action." We started by exposing the oppression and inhumane konditions as well as, like i said, set up a study group of cadres and the prisonkrats have/are stepping up the repression. As komrad George once said; " Power responds to all threats. The response is repression". But ,as i say, "the more the repression, the more the resistance".!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Keep the papers koming. I'll kontinue to stand firm, faithful and no doubt, full of fight. In struggle, In resistance, --a New Jersey Prisoner, 28 October 1996 HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN TRIGGERS TRANSFER TO FEDERAL PENITENTIARY Dear MIM Distributors, While incarcerated at Waupun State Prison in Wisconsin, I submitted to you a manifesto for publication wherein said manifesto calls for a boycott of Wisconsin for Human Rights. Though I am serving no Federal time, Wisconsin banished me to ADX Florence, United States Penitentiary. I would greatly appreciate it if you would place my name on your mailing list. Thank you very much. Struggle. --A Wisconsin Prisoner in Colorado, 24 October, 1996 PIG CENSORSHIP OF MIM THEORY 4 Dear Comrades I've recently received a contraband slip from this pig infested administration telling me that I can no longer receive the literature that is sent to me by you. The pigs even had the audacity to tell me in bold letters to "remedy this situation to avoid further problems." I am enclosing a copy for your review. What these pigs fail to realize is that I do not allow them to dictate what I can and can't receive so as they choose! I fully intend on bringing this matter to the attention of the head swine: Ronald Duval,(porky himself) whom is referred to as Superintendent at this racist/repressive institution. In the interest of preserving the latitude of receiving your literature on a regular basis as I have. I think it would be in the interest of the struggle to have you also put the pigs on notice that their reasoning is off center? I know for a fact that once the pigs read the personal letter you enclosed with the literature, it became the determining factor in their repressive decisioning. (smiling) Keep the free flow of the revolution on a move!!! In strength and struggle, --A Massachusetts Prisoner, 2 November, 1996 Letters of Protest can be sent to: Ronald Duval, Superintendent, PO Box 100, South Walpole, MA 02071. YOUNG MEN INTERESTED IN THE STRUGGLE If there is no struggle, there can never be any progress. I have no mercy nor compassion for a society that will crush people and then penalize them for not being able to carry the weight. Dear Comrades, Power to the people. As I walk around inside the belly of the pale- man's beast, I have begun to see the oppression placed on us by the united snakes of Babylon. I am now in a desperate struggle to educate myself and others about what is going on in Amerikkka. I just received my first copy of MIM Notes and I must say that I never knew that so many different people were involved in the struggle. I am only 25 years old, but I am very eager to learn because I found that there are those younger than me who are deeply involved in the struggle. Plus I hate and I'm against oppression no matter what form it appears in. There are a few of here who are trying to prepare ourselves both mentally and physically for the struggle as well as for the revolution, but we are young so therefor we lack knowledge of the struggle which is why we've turned to you for guidance. We know very little about the struggle or about revolutions. We only know what we have been fortunate enough to hear or sometimes read. We need your help in setting up a study group, we have the people but we lack the materials and the literature to educate ourselves. I noticed in the letter sent with my MIM Notes, where you stated that you could provide study materials, literature and books to prisoners who were willing to learn. We would very much appreciate a chance to take advantage of your offer, but due to our incarceration we are unable to pay for what you send. We realize that there are a lot of prisoners who you donate books, literature and other study materials to, but if there is any way that you could fit us in we would truly appreciate it, as well as study it to the best of our ability. And we promise to teach others with the hope that we may make a difference in the struggle for Liberation. I have been chosen as group leader, so all study materials can be sent to me to keep down cost. We've learned to share so we can work with whatever you send. We just need your support and donations. Please keep in mind that none of us are over the age of 25 years old, so this is all somewhat new to us. We don't know any names of famous people who've been involved in the struggle nor do we know the names of any of their books. Don't get me wrong, we are familiar with the Black Struggle, but we've learned that it's a peoples struggle and this is what we want to familiarize ourselves with. We want to start at the beginning and go from there. We will keep you updated on you progress as we grow with monthly or by-monthly letters.... In Struggle Stiff Resistance! --A Texas Prisoner, 7 October 1996 MIM RESPONDS: This letter speaks to the tremendous need for more resources for MIM's Books for Prisoners program. We will send what literature we can to this comrade but we operate at a loss and need donations of money and revolutionary books. These comrades in Texas, and many others like them, need the materials to educate themselves so they can help to build the revolutionary movement. Those fortunate enough to be on the outside should contribute generously. CALIFORNIA CENSORS MIM NOTES Dear Representative; I write to you concerning the banning of your fine publication at the institution which I am confined... In their disapproval, the authorities cite sections of the Director's Rules found in California Code of Regulations, Title 15, which have been recently changed to allow wider discretion to ban publications which they view as '"disruptive" from their point of view. I am currently pursuing the Inmate 602 Appeals process, and intend to pursue this issue into court as a violation of free speech and religion, if necessary. I wish to send someone in your organization Xerox copies of my work, to keep you posted on the circumstances. Do you have any litigation personnel within your company whom I might be put in contact with? I believe also, as publishers of a news periodical, the company and inmates such as myself should consider joining in civil litigation to end this intrusive ban ability which the Department of Corrections has chosen to implement. There are many cases where the press have been erroneously denied their reporting function, so this just isn't an issue of "prisoner rights" as to what they can receive while incarcerated. Obviously, I believe, and have so alleged, that the banning is political in nature because of the content and political and religious views portrayed within your publication. As you can see from the institutions responses, the ban is based upon such content they view as being "anti-government" and "anti-law enforcement". This is wrong, and must be stopped. ...The official institution address is: California Correctional Center, P.O. Box 790, Susanville, CA 96130-0790, telephone (916) 257-2181 Inquiries should be directed to the Warden's office for response. The personnel who do the actual "reviewing" and "disapproval" are the Mailroom Staff. Solidarity, --A California Prisoner, October 15, 1996 MIM RESPONDS: We are glad to hear you are fighting this censorship and we agree with you that this is a winnable battle. We receive many letters like this from comrades behind bars who are having their MIM Notes and other MIM literature censored and we are currently putting together a short guide to help prisoners taking on these legal battles. It will include information on where to look for similar cases, legal resources, and suggested strategies. If anyone has information that would be useful to include in this anti-censorship resource guide for prisoners, please send it to us. ***WHAT NON-PRISONERS CAN DO TO SUPPORT PRISONERS*** *1. Struggle with, work with, finance and join MIM. The best way to support prisoners is to overthrow the system under which capitalists profit from the exploitation of prisoners. History shows that the best way to do this is to build a Marxist-Leninist- Maoist party. The oppressors will not give up their power without a fight. *2. Finance MIM's prison work. Our biggest bill each month is postage. Most of the prison comrades who read MIM Notes have no way of paying for it. So if you have money, send what you can afford. Every cent helps, and stamps are as good as cash to us. *3. Distribute MIM Notes and Notas Rojas. Bring the voices of prisoners and their supporters to as large and wide an audience of people as possible. Contact MIM for bulk rates and distribution tips. *4. Start or join a prison support group. MIM can provide advice and resources to help you build public opinion for prisoners and their struggles. *5. Fight censorship, beatings, torture and other fascist outrages. Under Lock and Key often features the addresses of prisoners' friends and enemies. Work with the friends and let the enemies know you're watching. (Don't expect to win the fascists to the side of humanity, however. See #1 in this list). *6. Stay in touch. Keep us informed of pro-prisoner work you do. Our readers might find it educational or inspirational. ***WHAT PRISONERS CAN DO TO BUILD MIM*** *1. Start a study group. This is the best way to share materials and ideas. In groups, prisoners can better benefit from the limited resources MIM has. *2. Get MIM Notes and MIM Theory into your library. This allows one copy of the paper to be seen by many comrades. *3. Contact people on the outside. MIM needs comrades and allies everywhere. Maybe you know people on the outside who want to subscribe to MIM Notes or distribute it. *4. Share materials. If MIM sends books or periodicals, please make sure that as many people as possible get a chance to read them. *5. Write MIM at least every three months. Otherwise, you will be dropped from our mailing list. There are many cases where your keepers throw out MIM Notes, so we need to know that you actually get it. Also, comrades are moved around a lot, especially those who are known to be political. Please let us know of any address changes as soon as you know them. *6. Make MIM Distributors an official distributor. Many prisons require registration before MIM can send books or other materials. Usually we can comply with these bogus rules. It helps immensely to have someone there do the reasearch and send us the proper forms. *7. Send money or stamps. Our biggest bill each month is postage. Most of the prison comrades who read MIM Notes have no way of paying for it. So if you have money, send what you can afford. Every cent helps, and stamps are as good as cash to us. Please make all checks payable to "MIM Distributors." *8. Write for MIM Notes or Notas Rojas. Prisoners write almost all of Under Lock & Key. We don't care if you know how to spell or write good English or Spanish. Write on any topic you like, it does not have to be a prison story. *9. Translate. If you can read and write English and another language fluently, let us know. Any translation work you do will help us make Maoist ideas accessible to more people. *10. Fight censorship. When you know of censorship of books or newspapers, investigate. Write to MIM to confirm what has happened, then see what you can do about it. *11. Keep in touch after your release. Many comrades stop doing political work after their release. Write to MIM as soon as you know where you'll be so we can hook you up with comrades on the outside. * * * CULTURE ROMANCE OR RADICAL? A new song by the band Stabbing Westward is hitting it big on the airwaves. In August the band opened for the Sex Pistols along with Gravity Kills. At a Massachusetts concert the band's lead singer said, "I don't understand not playing with the Sex Pistols. Who wouldn't open for the Sex Pistols?" in reference to the fact that another band turned down the chance. So Stabbing Westward looks up to the Sex Pistols which indeed did not get shown up by Stabbing Westward or Gravity Kills being some poor rehash of its old self. The Sex Pistols of 1977 and 1978 were the epitome of punk rock. Now, without their old bass player, they still sound like their records of the old days and they didn't play any love songs at their Massachusetts appearance this August. What the Sex Pistols do say about love in their songs is scathingly sarcastic. However, Stabbing Westward's song brings us back to the decadent romance culture with a vengeance. "What I was died with your belief in me. . . I don't know what's true emotion. HOW CAN I HAVE SEX WITHOUT YOU!". This last sentence is yelled staccato and screams for our militant submission to the romance culture. According to Stabbing Westward's lead singer, he doesn't know emotion or sex without his lover. In any kind of popular music in the imperialist countries, a central criterion is can the music entertain without relying on and reinforcing the romance culture? For MIM, Stabbing Westward's energies are misplaced and sold-out to the romance culture. There is much that needs to be said and done with a vengeance, writing more love songs is not one of them. It is typical in the decadence of imperialism that the strongest feelings of the youth concern the romance culture. The system reinforces the idea that there seems to be nothing of importance to engage the youth with otherwise. The imperialists have no forward-looking agenda to tap the energies of youth, except offering bought off complacence into the oppressive culture. Because the imperialist education and media system does not allow youth to learn of or gain contact with the life-and-death struggle of the international proletariat, romance culture seems like the only alternative. MIM sees, as a principal contradiction within the white nation, an antagonism between youth and imperialism. The limited offerings from imperialism are a short lived existence of environmental degradation and world-wide oppression. To the pent up anger and vengeance of Amerikan youth, MIM says to organize with the internationally oppressed, and build a real movement against imperialist limitation and oppression. * * * VH1'S "RIGHT ON" CULTURE LIKE MIM WOULD DO IT, OR CLOSE TO IT VH1, an Amerikan music video cable channel recently broadcast a documentary called "Right On," about Black music of the 1970s. This program approaches music the way MIM would like to see more people approach culture generally: as a product of and a response to current political realities. Naturally, VH1 shares the limitation of other big Amerikan cultural producers in that it refuses to engage the politics it exposes, but this program still takes a giant step ahead of other Amerikan media productions by emphasizing and explaining the necessary role of politics in shaping culture. The program talks about R&B and Soul developing into their greatest popularity in the context of the Civil Rights Movement of the late 1950s and '60s and through the early 1970s. One band leader talks in the film about how he came to music having been a member of the Black Panther Party, so at first everything he did was political. Gladys Knight recounts how she and her generation of music artists remember MTV, Music Television, when MTV stated as policy that it would not have Black artists appearing on the station; this segregation of the music industry naturally shaped how Black artists related to the industry. Berry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, recalls his trepidation about putting out such a political album as Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" All the artists and executives interviewed for this documentary remembered Marvin Gaye as one of the strongest song writers for talking directly about ghetto life and Amerikan political backwardness in relation to Black people. Gaye convinced Berry Gordy to produce "What's Going On?" on the Motown label saying he wanted to put out an album which would force people to think about themselves and their material conditions in relation to the world around them. MIM applauds both Marvin Gaye's style of cultural production and this VH1 production for opening an analysis of that production. We don't see either one of these things as a substitute for organized political activism. Individual song-writing cannot compete with the organization of a vanguard party for building up the masses' theoretical level and their level of activism. But we do see a place for culture in revolutionary propagandizing. Music, art, poetry and film can popularize political messages in a way that a newspaper can't, and so it is important for people who have access to those media to use them for political purposes. * * * RADIO STATION PROFITS FROM OPPRESSION BOSTON, MA--The second week of September found WAAF (107.3 FM) radio disc-jockey "Rocko" returning WAAF to its tried-and-true strategy--gay-bashing and "Jap"-bashing. On September 15, within a few minutes of his saying so, dozens of callers called Rocko to guess which band was the band that "really sucks," "that you would hate," and that is gay which started its first American tour in 1979 that same day. To describe how bad the band was, Rocko kept saying, "no, it's more gay than that." None of the radio-callers corrected Rocko for gay-bashing; they all just wanted the free Pearl Jam tickets for guessing the band correctly. WAAF is the most consistently hard-rock station in Boston, so listeners in that niche have little choice on the radio but to put up with this kind of spew. It may surprise readers to know that there are many political and social calculations that go into positioning for the markets of major radio stations. In its ancient rivalry with WBCN (104.1), WAAF has always started with a base of young men that WBCN cannot attract, because WBCN plays less driving rock. The WAAF strategy over the years goes through cycles. In the down cycle, which WAAF is in again as we speak, it emphasizes pornography on the radio by bringing in strippers and phone-sex workers to the station. At this time, in the low- cycle, we also hear "Opie and Anthony" bash the Black and Latino parts of town again and again. The up-cycle happens when WBCN moves so far into dance music and top 40 that WAAF gets a larger share of the rock music audience. When the same owner who owns the "classic rock" station bought WBCN, it forced WBCN to put Howard Stern on in the morning for libertarian "shock- jock" remarks. This left WAAF as the only "new rock" station other than WFNX (101.7 FM). When the competition is weaker WAAF behaves itself better, keeps its mouth shut and plays more music. WFNX currently has a full-page ad in its affiliated newspaper the Boston Phoenix. It prominently features the anarchy symbol of a slashed "A." The image of the "lawless" willing to play "bootleg" music has great potency in the music world. In reality, WFNX is moving in on the grunge/alternative rock scene and there is no profound anarchism behind its station, unless one thinks that playing a mish-mash of music is anarchism. Meanwhile, after taking a beating from WAAF and going to talk radio with Howard Stern, WBCN initiated a "rock revolution." This change of music programming allowed WBCN to go after the grunge and hard-rock crowd WAAF had had to itself for a while. Now we have WAAF moving to solidify its young, white male base again by turning itself into radio-sex instead of phone-sex and by bashing any "minority" group it can find. * * * ENGLISH IMPERIALISTS FOLLOW U.S. IMPERIALISTS ON CRIME There is a prison-building craze in England despite record levels of imprisonment. While politicians could not agree on anything else regarding crime and rights, the legislature did agree in this session to build and allow more private prisons: "Criminologists, including David Faulkner, the former Home Office head of criminal justice policy, warned that the measures would add 25,000-30,000 to the record 57,000 prison population. A further 22 private jails will be needed to house the increase." Despite being at record levels, the English imprisonment rate is under one quarter what it is in the united states. England also has only a fraction of the u.s. rate of street violence involving guns, knives and the like used by the common people. Gun control advocates point to the success of gun control in Europe in stopping ordinary crime as defined by the police. We at MIM believe that neither gun control nor gun ownership can solve the sickness of imperialist society; only the gun ownership of the peoples oppressed by u.s. imperialism will finally help the people of the imperialist countries to overcome their sicknesses of crime, drug abuse and parasitism. The English ruling class and mainstream newspapers like the Guardian are able to discuss crime more rationally than counterparts in the united states: "The Archbishop of Canterbury, the retired Lord Chief Justice, senior judges and criminologists have all warned that Mr. Howard's American-style proposals are based on 'flimsy and dubious evidence' and will not cut crime. They point to Home Office research showing that a 25 per cent increase in the prison population is needed to cut crime by 1 per cent." In the united states when nationalism comes into play, it's white nationalism opposing the 20 percent of the population of First Nation or Third World heritage. In England, the dominant nation is much less threatened internally because minorities are smaller, though white nationalism is certainly prevalent and targeted against both internal minorities and oppressed nations around the world. When nationalism comes into play, sometimes it is the nationalism of the sort that says England is superior to the United States: "Mr. Howard's sentencing package has already attracted warnings from the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey, of the dangers of 'revenge-driven punishment that we see in wild frontier societies'. It will spark a constitutional clash with senior judiciary and Peers." The above "wild frontier societies" would include the united states. We believe this quote hits the nail on the head. In any class society, the ruling class is vicious toward the lower classes and labels a portion criminal to keep the lower classes as docile workers. However, in settler societies such as the united states, white South Africa and Israel, a white nationalist viciousness adds to the viciousness of the ruling imperialists. In such a situation, there is no rationality in discussion of crime whatsoever and the oppressor nation is perpetually ripe for fascism. NOTE: Guardian (England) Oct. 23, 1996. * * * A TROTSKYIST OVERHEARD ON THE "MARXISM SPACE" OF THE SPOONS COLLECTIVE A Trotskyist said, "I posted some stuff a while back that Sharon Smith of the ISO did in her talk at Marxism 96. She argued that class consciousness in the US today is higher than at any time since the 1930's. She argued that this was the result of the naked corporate greed, and the huge and increasing gap between rich and poor. She quoted people saying things like 'Jobs ? There's plenty of jobs around. I've got three !'." In response, a Filipino wrote on November 15 on the "Marxism-International" list, "I'm not sure if there is a 'revolutionary potential' of the western proletariat -- much less, the left academics in the west of different strains (neo-Marxist, western Marxist, pomos, and all). There is too much talk, no action. Where is Marxist praxis? "A revolution is going on today in the Philippines, which includes revolutionary talk and revolutionary action. "Marx said: 'All philosophers have hitherto described the world; the point is to change it.' "I'm sorry, I'm not convinced of the revolutionary potential of the proletariat in Australia, New Zealand, U.S., Canada, or Western Europe. There is revolutionary KINETIC in the Philippines now, today. A revolution is going on. "The test of the pudding is in the eating." MIM agrees with the Filipino comrade. The Trotskyists constantly attack Stalin for abetting "nationalism," but here we have the gross nationalism of the oppressor nation being expressed by the Trotskyists as pride in the class consciousness of the workers in the imperialist countries. If this is advanced class consciousness in the united states, then Hitler can hardly wait to see the revolution. These Trotskyists have no sense of reality and they advocate the demands of the labor aristocracy thus attempting to lead Marxists down a false path. Not surprisingly, the same Trotskyist author has taken up MIM's question in the Iron Law of Degeneration for the imperialist countries: Was it Stalin's fault or the fault of a class? The Trotskyist finds that a man dead since 1953 is to blame, just like the bourgeois media still does as if Stalin were with us today, not just in Russia, but also in Eastern Europe and the imperialist countries. These Trotskyists bought into the Cold War Stalin as all- powerful bogeyman theory. On a related note, a Filipina interviewed on NPR said, "I think we take politics so seriously because life is so hard here. We're more involved than Americans, because in general they're content." MIM has done extensive work exposing the privileged status of the amerikan working class, which leads to docility and sometimes outright reaction (see MIM Theory 1 and MT10). Allies of the international proletariat should not flatter the amerikan working class by giving credence to its narrow demands or ignoring its chauvinism. Rather, they should be upfront about the privileged status of the white working class and unite all those who oppose the violence of imperialism and the extreme exploitation of the broad masses of humanity to overthrow imperialism. NOTES: Marxism-International (To get there via gopher on the INTERNET go to jefferson.village.virginia.edu, choose publications, discussion lists, Spoons and Marxism- International.) * * * BASEBALL PLAYERS BREAK BANK The New York Yankees won the World Series in 1996. The Yankees were the highest paid team in baseball. The Atlanta Braves who the Yankees defeated in the World Series had the highest pay in their League. In the playoffs, the Yankees beat the Baltimore Orioles, which had the second highest payroll. Not every year will the highest paid teams win every playoff series, but at $11.7 million for a payroll compared with the Yankees' 61.5 million annual payroll, the Milwaukee Brewers don't stand much chance. Teams like the Pirates, Expos, Brewers and Tigers all pay less than $20 million. They are doing the other teams a favor by staying in existence as fall-guys. Their only chance is to discover new talent before other teams snatch it up. To win requires a wealthy owner--or a city willing to put tax money into building nice stadiums that attract lots of fans to pay tickets for salaries of millionaires. Professional baseball players average $1.1 million in salaries as of 1996. True, there is a minority of players that receives salaries more like that of upper-crust labor aristocrats or managers, but in general, the ballplayers are bourgeoisie, because they own the means of production-- not in baseball, but in other businesses. Virtually none of the organizations in the united states calling themselves "Marxist" could keep from supporting the baseball players' strike. They don't understand that at $1 million a year, a person is being paid in the means of production. The players can put that money into stocks or bonds and then live off of dividends and interest their whole lives. In the imperialist countries, the so-called Marxists are far removed from labor. They think everyone could be paid a million dollars if capitalism didn't exist. At the same time, they cannot find the strength to support the real proletarian movements of the Third World. NOTE: USA Today Nov. 14, 1996, p. 5c. * * * SICK SYSTEM KILLS MAN John Passalacqua, "35, died of a heart attack last year a few hundred yards from a fire station equipped with life-saving equipment. . . . A police dispatcher first routed the call to the Boston Police Department. A second call was forwarded to an EMS dispatcher, who never alerted firefighters." The root cause of the tragedy was the crazy capitalist system which allows cut-throat competitive practices even in life and death matters: "The city's rescue agencies have been feuding for the past year as the Fire Department has pushed aggressively to respond to more emergency calls. With the number of fires declining, the department is looking to expand its other services." The article goes on to explain that the Fire Department nearly took over the EMS and the mayor stopped it, but EMS workers are still afraid for their jobs. "Members of each agency allege the other is trying to monopolize calls to the detriment of the public." That's the illness of imperialist parasitism. When the capitalist system is on the upswing, people look forward and progress with the system. In the current system, people fear for their job security and this cost Passalacqua his life, because EMS workers took 19 minutes to get to him. Under socialism everyone is guaranteed a job. These destructive political tangles pitting health agencies against each other would not exist. There will still be power struggles, but not that kind. Eventually under communism, all antagonistic power struggles we be completely abolished. NOTE: Boston Globe Nov. 26, 1996, p. B1.