I N T E R N E T ' S M A O I S T BI-M O N T H L Y = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = 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 177 January 1, 1999 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. AMERIKA'S WAR AGAINST THE OPPRESSED RAGES ON: KALIFORNIA PRISON GUARDS SHOOT PRISONERS 2. ROBBER BARONS RING IN THE END OF THE CENTURY AS THEY REIGNED AT ITS BEGINNING 3. TROTS CALL THEM LAYOFFS, MIM CALLS IT CLASS MOBILITY 4. LETTERS 5. INDONESIAN REPRESSION IN EAST TIMOR CONTINUES 6. REVIEW: THE NEW FINANCIAL CAPITALISTS: KOHLBERG KRAVIS ROBERTS AND THE CREATION OF CORPORATE VALUE 7. CAMPAIGN TO EXPAND MIM NOTES DISTRIBUTION 8. ADDRESSING HIV GLOBALLY REQUIRES DICTATORSHIP OF PROLETARIAT 9. DON'T BE FOOLED BY U.$. MILITARY CUT BACK 10. COMRADE TAKES INITIATIVE TO GIVE HEALTH AID TO PRISONERS 11. PRISONERS' HEALTH WATCH: PRISONERS, INFORMATION AND HIV/AIDS 12. SCIENCE OF THE PEOPLE DESPERATELY NEEDED 13. OBSCURING REALITY: WORKERS WORLD CLAIMS NBA PLAYERS ARE OPPRESSED 14. NEW YORK DATA BACKS NEED FOR STUDENT-PRISONER ALLIANCE 15. ANN ARBOR PIGS PROTECT AND SERVE WHITE HYSTERIA 16. ESCAPED DEATH ROW PRISONER FOUND DEAD 17. BOOKS ON BLACK REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISM IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE 18. UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONS AND PRISONERS * * * 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 * * * MIM Notes 177 January 1, 1999 AMERIKA'S WAR AGAINST THE OPPRESSED RAGES ON: KALIFORNIA PRISON GUARDS SHOOT PRISONERS In a practice unheard of in every other U.$. state, Kalifornia prison guards shoot prisoners with assault rifles to stop fights. This policy has resulted in 12 deaths and 32 seriously injured inmates since 1994. In all other states, six inmates were fatally shot by guards during the same period. A report published in the Los Angeles Times revealed that only one of the 44 murdered or seriously injured inmates was armed with a weapon or inflicting serious injury to another inmate at the time. No korrections officers were being threatened, nor were any inmates trying to escape during any of the shootings. More than three-quarters of the shootings were deemed proper by the department of korrections review board and only three Department of Corrections thugs were given any sort of discipline. Two were given reprimands and one was given an 180-day suspension. "It's just the way they've been trained," said Lanson Newsome. Newsome is a former deputy commissioner of Georgia state corrections and now a consultant who has reviewed dozens of Kalifornia prison shootings. Training guards to simply kill inmates is an explicit sign that the system intends to kill. While the shootings occurred at prisons up and down the coast, none of the recent shootings occurred at Corcoran State Prison, where seven prisoners were shot dead between 1989 and 1994. During those five years Corcoran was the deadliest prison in the u.$. Prisoncrats tried to paint Corcoran as an aberration. However during the same time period Kalifornia DOC thugs murdered 24 inmates and wounded 175 statewide. A majority of the shootings occurred during fist-fights and other altercations in which inmates were unarmed. Because the number of deaths had dropped from 24 between 1989 and 1994 to 12 from 1994 to 1998, state (in)corrections director Cal Terhune said, "I am very pleased in the direction that it has gone." "We're going to continue to push...to really make the use of lethal force the absolute minimum, as a last resort." But, he also said, "Unfortunately, we are doing it at absolutely the worst time, we've had an upturn in gang activities, [and] skirmishes." In other words, because there are fights in prison the pigs should be allowed to continue blasting away until they are quelled. Kalifornia has 33 prisons with 159,000 inmates. The pigs are notorious for instigating brawls between prisoners. Antagonism exists between individuals and groups of prisoners. These antagonisms are predominantly caused by imperialism. It is to the benefit of the pigs when the masses fight against one another because it lessens their organized struggle against the oppressor. And as prison comrades point out in this issue of Under Lock and Key, prison guards and pigs generally instigate violence between the masses. DOC thugs have no qualms about placing prisoner rivals in situations where hostilities can easily explode into violence. This is why MIM sees that violence between prisoners is state sanctioned brutality and murder. The state's prison guard union contends that guns are a necessary equalizer because Kalifornia has the lowest prisoner to guard ratio. They are basically asking for more prison guards and free license to brutalize prisoners, in what amounts to more money and political power for the guard's union. Some other states increase brutality against prisoners under the guise of stopping inmate fights. Emergency response teams armed with pepper spray and wood bullets are used by many states. One Ohio incorrections pig said, "We've never had an officer killed, and I can't recall any [officers] who were severely injured while breaking up a fight." The Ohio corrections department houses 50,000 inmates, the fifth-largest number in the u.$. Even in Texas, a prison system notorious for its brutal treatment of inmates, officially, only one prisoner was shot and killed in the last four years. Officially, this was in response to an escape attempt. MIM knows from reports from prisoners that masses are killed by prison guards in other ways -- denied medical care, fake accidental deaths and fake suicides -- nonetheless, it is important to note that even the notoriously cruel prisons in Texas do not official sanction shooting prisoners with such frequency. All of Kalifornia's 26 maximum security lockups are supposed to follow the same policy that allows deadly force only as a "last resort." But, the Los Angeles Times' investigation found that the policy only exists on paper and most Kalifornia prisons make up their own policy. For example, despite state policy, some of the pig's gunners didn't fire a warning shot before firing the fatal shot. State policy also says that officers must have a "clear shot," however gunners routinely fire into a tangle of combatants. The LA Times found that in at least 10 cases over the past decade gunners have missed the intended target and killed or injured the wrong inmate. None of the 24 fatal shootings from 1989 to 1994 were found improper by department review boards. And, though four of the 12 fatal shootings and six of the injuries since 1994 have been found "not in compliance," discipline has amounted to two reprimands and one suspension. This goes to show that we can't count on the system to police itself. Kalifornia guards added fire power after the rise of militant Black inmates and prisoner groups in the 1960s and 70s. The guards' union that built up around this policy of brutal repression has become one of the most powerful political forces in the state. Around that time an integration policy designed to make rival prison inmates get along was developed at Tehachapi security housing unit. Guards began mixing rival gang members into the same small exercise yards. The policy backfired. Or did it? Exacerbating divisions between prisoners justifies the prison system's bloated budget and ability to crack heads. The policy baited gang members into fights, which the guards put down with deadly force. The Times said this policy created a "siege mentality" amongst the guards. The guards' role in the policy is to exploit prisoner divisions and bust heads as much as possible. According to official reports, four inmates were subsequently shot by guards from 1989 to 1993. One prisoner who witnessed a shooting said, "It was like that guard took aim on an animal. Just like he was hunting. Aimed at his head, his temple, and fired." In 1992, a few Corcoran staffers decided to try an approach similar to the Ohio emergency teams. They managed to successfully break up fights without firing a shot. "The higher ups in Sacramento heard about it and said, "You will not do that again.' You will not put staff in jeopardy," said Steve Rigg, a former lieutenant who revealed abuses at Corcoran to the FBI. The liberal reformism contained in the L.A. Times article doesn't get around the fact that prisons themselves are a form of violence. Though the Times doesn't say what percentage of murdered prisoners were oppressed nationals, Amerika mainly makes use of prisons in its war on its internal colonies. Only by solving the broader problems of national oppression can the problem of brutality in Amerikan prisons be solved. Until then, the status quo will always be brutality in prisons. * * * HAPPY NEW YEAR: ROBBER BARONS RING IN THE END OF THE CENTURY AS THEY REIGNED AT ITS BEGINNING by MC45 Exxon and Mobil have agreed to merge, reuniting the two largest sections of the former Standard Oil Company of robber baron John D. Rockefeller. You remember the robber barons. They were the men you leaned about in high school Amerikan history classes. The frontiersmen of capital, conquerors of raw materials and the stock market, the men who built businesses in the time before anti-trust laws in the United Snakes. We studied the robber barons as heroes in high school, as the men who possessed everything that made Amerika great -- ambition, cutthroat competitiveness, and greed. They had what made this country grand, the kind of drive that can only be born of an exaggerated self- interest. We also studied the robber barons as people who, under unrestrained capitalism, pushed toward building their companies into ever-more complete monopolies. Capitalism can think of no better way to control production relations than competition so the Amerikan state -- which Marx called the executive committee of the Amerikan bourgeoisie -- enacted anti- monopoly laws and split up the growing monopoly of Standard Oil. But Marx and Engels had firmly established the principles of capital's tendency toward monopoly by the time Standard Oil was split in 1911. Only five years later in 1916, Lenin profoundly expanded our understanding of these principles to include the extension into imperialism -- the domination of monopoly even across state borders. So the recombination of Mobil and Exxon 87 years after their split demonstrates only capitalism's ability to prolong its own life and the suffering it causes the earth and its population. More important than greater monopoly, in the united snakes we are seeing the inevitable end to a near-century of pretension that anti-trust laws were ever anything but a stopgap against imperialism's tendency to stifle and destroy itself. Big, big numbers Mobil brings imperialist interests to Qatar, Western Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Nigeria, Guinea and Turkmenistan and other countries. At the end of 1997, it was exploring in or extracting resources from 25 countries -- this included interests in 19 refineries in 10 countries. Mobil netted $3.3 billion in 1997, with $26.5 billion in capital employed. This means it spent $26.5 billion on sustaining and expanding its production of oil, gas and chemical products, and shows that the smaller of these two industrial giants had $26.5 billion to bully the Third World into giving up raw materials for extraction.(1) Mobil operated roughly 15,500 service stations worldwide in 1997. These service stations contributed to sales of 4 million "tons of product" (including gas, oil and chemicals). (2) The service stations also employed some of Mobil's 42,700 employees around the globe. The executives of both Exxon and Mobil have crowed about the way their holdings "complement" each other. Exxon currently owns pieces of 31 refineries in 17 countries. These countries include Angola, Congo, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Azerbaijan and Trinidad and Tobago. MIM says Exxon and Mobil have complementary roles in grand theft from all the countries they do business in. If there were any justice in the Amerikan prisons system, the CEOs of these two corporations would be serving time for the felony robbery and mass murder -- using armed force and war to preserve their access to other countries' raw materials. Exxon had twice as much capital "employed" as Mobil did in 1997, and spent $52.9 billion to explore, drill, refine, move and market its goods. Its operations included 33,000 service stations internationally, which employed some of its 80,000 employees.(2) As they agree to merge, the companies together have 123,000 employees around the globe.(3) The argument Exxon and Mobil give for their combination, which is subject to review by u.$. government and international trade authorities, is that competition has grown, and prices for their goods have dropped so much that they must combine forces to stay profitable.(3) MIM agrees, in theory. While the particular merger between Exxon and Mobil does not matter to the future of capitalism, it is true that multi-national corporations and all others must grow or die. This is the underlying threat of "free" market competition -- there would be no drive to compete if all companies could stay in business forever regardless of their profit-making successes. Given that forming a monopoly -- a company that owns an exclusive share of its industry and therefore is not subject to the pressures of market competition -- is supposedly illegal in Amerika, it may seem strange that Exxon and Mobil are allowed to make the argument "well, yeah, we want to monopolize, but we kind of have to!" Why should a government body that's supposed to ensure competitive business listen to an argument like this? It is a classic example of Marx's definition of the state under capitalism -- the Amerikan government is the executive committee of the Amerikan bourgeoisie. This means that the government cannot just outlaw monopoly on the basis of free competition. Its job is to back up the Amerikan big bourgeoisie as the dominant economic force in the world. U.$. economic interests laid out for the Africans During a recent visit to Africa, Amerikan Secretary of Commerce William Daley accompanied 15 large u.$. corporations on a mission to the Southern African Development Community (SADC), a regional economic grouping of Southern African countries. Daley spoke about the importance for Africans of welcoming u.$. investments, talking as if signing away natural resources by the ton and national sovereignty by the court order is the best possible future for African peoples. Daley threatened the Southern African countries, saying that Amerikan multi-nationals can always exploit some other group of people instead of those in Southern African countries. Encouraging these governments to open their borders to u.$. capital, he said "I think it is important to remember as you ask it, these companies have all kinds of options. Every area in the world wants their business." Blatantly stating the need for lower or no taxes, and for other legal exemptions for Amerikan corporations, Daley suggested that "the question the leaders of South Africa and the other SADC nations need to ask is this: What will it take to attract more trade and investments?"(4) The head of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), another regional economic organization, echoed Secretary Daley's admonition to make Africa more attractive to u.$. companies. He said that "although COMESA is not directly involved in re- establishing amicable negotiated peaceful settlements to the various crises in our region, we recognise the urgency and importance of finding workable and long- lasting solutions."(5) Of the COMESA member states, Angola, Namibia and Zimbabwe all have troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Eritrea and Ethiopia have a border dispute.(5) COMESA is encouraging them, as William Daley is encouraging the SADC, to open their borders to the level of foreign bidding on the Nigerian economy. Over the past ten years, foreigners have invested roughly U$ 830.92 million in Nigeria as part of a debt conversion program.(6) The overwhelming portion of this money -- $303.64 million, or 36.54 percent of the total -- was funneled into manufacturing. By contrast, agriculture got slightly less than $14.5 million. This debt conversion program began in 1988, as a means of resolving some of Nigeria's international debt, which the government lists as $28 billion in 1998.(6) Yet the debt conversion program highlights the opposition of interests of the imperialists and their lackeys in the Nigerian government on one side, and the Nigerian people on the other. While more than 36 percent of money in this program went to manufacturing, a mere 19 percent of Nigeria's workforce is engaged in industry, commerce and services combined. Nigeria's agricultural sector, which employs 54 percent of the country's working people,(7) has received less than 2 percent of these investments. The priorities of a government that makes room for these gross imbalances are clear: outside investors dictate Nigeria's domestic economic decisions. MIM does not know if Mobil's Nigerian holdings were financed with part of this batch of debt-conversion cash. We do know that this one debt-conversion scheme is a fine case study for the way Amerikan MNCs attack the resources of the world. The important point to understand is that Mobil and Exxon operate as two of the First World multi-nationals around whose interests Nigeria's and so many other countries' domestic economic policies are structured. MIM points to the possible recombination of Exxon and Mobil as a further step toward the ultimate atrophy and death of the imperialist beast. Notes: 1. www.businesswire.com/cnn/mob.html,http://www.mobil.com /bns98/ 2. Mobil Corporation Press Release http://www.mobil.com/bns98/ 3. New York Times, 2 December, 1998. 4. "Americans Want to Trade with 'New Africa,' Daley Says," United States Information Agency 2 December, 1998. 5. "COMESA States Urged To Stop War," PanAfrican News Agency, 3 December, 1998. 6. "Foreigners Stake 830.92 Million Dollars In Nigeria Economy," PANA 1 December, 1998. 7. CIA World Factbook 1997. http://www.odci.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ * * * TROTS CALL THEM LAYOFFS, MIM CALLS IT CLASS MOBILITY by MC45 The new Exxon Mobil company, if allowed to form, will employ less people than the two companies combined currently do. Part of the corporations' argument for merging is that as a joint company they will be able to cut costs and this will help them make bigger profits. For some of the employees this will mean looking for new jobs. A New York Times article from November 30 takes a knee-jerk defend-amerikan-jobs approach to the prospective downsizing of the two companies' industrial staffs. The article paints a picture of these First World industrial workers being laid off with no place to go and no way to support their families, promoting the mythology of the 1980s that Amerikan workers are losing their jobs as the gap between CEOs and company employees widens. Because this is the same position that many Trotskyist and other left-posing groups take, MIM takes the time to rebut this argument here. Talk of workers being "downsized" focuses on the shrinking number of industrial jobs within u.$. borders. But more important than the question of what individual blue collar workers do with the rest of their lives is the question of what is happening to the u.$. class structure. For years, MIM has pointed out the facts that while the proportion of Amerikans working industrial jobs is going down, the percentage of Amerikans pushing paper for money is going up. As a group, Amerikan workers are moving into cleaner and better paid administrative jobs, and are making more money as a result.(MIM Theory 1) Even those workers who do not find better jobs after being laid off have both savings and stocks in their employer companies to fall back on.(2) The New York Times points out that the workers at a Mobil plant in Texas "are either balding or going gray" and interprets this as a sign that the company "has been more concerned about how to get rid of workers than how to attract them." But MIM sees the graying of Amerikan workers as part of the overall trend in this country's economy -- which includes a higher proportion of people with college and higher educations than ever before. Young prospective workers at Mobil are not faced so much with a lack of jobs as they are with opportunities for higher status work.(3) MIM has not seen much information about what will happen to gas station workers. Since many Mobil stations are side-by-side with Exxon stations, some of these redundant jobs will likely be cut. As described in MIM Theory 1, white people who have such low paying menial jobs often only have them for short periods of time. (Immigrants and the oppressed nations are forced into these jobs for a long time.) This transitional use of low-paying work by whites keeps lower-paid whites from forming a class, as they will each individually be doing something much better shortly. Analyzing the potential Exxon-Mobil merger from the proletarian perspective must mean looking from an international perspective. The people of Nigeria, Mexico, Malaysia and many other countries will suffer the brunt of Exxon Mobil's new profit-sucking power. In Mexico, manufacturing workers made 16 percent of the u.$. manufacturing worker wage in 1989. This is because "the absolute gap between rich countries and poor countries has steadily expanded to this state."(1) MIM focuses its efforts on the struggles of the most oppressed by analyzing broad economic and political trends, not by trying to isolate First World struggles in every corporate development. Notes: 1. MIM Theory no. 1: A White Proletariat? (Spring, 1992). 2. New York Times, 30 November 1998. 3. http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/education/tab lea-01.txt * * * LETTERS Dear MIM: I extend my revolutionary love to MIM, all who audaciously, indignantly defy the standard of life as determined and defined by the savage and barbaric individuals who facilitate positions in government, and oppressive government around the world. I'm in receipt of two papers, asante sana (thank you very much). In my initial missive requesting a subscription I stated I'd be sending some stamps to aid in the cause. There are no certainties in these dismal crypts, but it will be taken care of shortly. If it is three or four, know it was what could be afforded at the moment. I don't consider myself learnt in any particular area; my experience is being "the students". As I read MIM notes, one quickly realizes, they (I) have a long way to go. What is revolution, what is the goal? To answer my own question...Revolution is a science and not a conclusion. It cannot be packaged...nothing uniform about it. I say "it", not as an entity, but as a blind force, et. Cetera. Our goal is to ravage, destroy, annihilate, eliminate the present government as we "know" it to be; those who facilitate it; and the Duponts, Bill Gates, Fords, Kennedys, et. al. All the institutions (schools, bible class (church, prison, welfare, media, et. Cetera) which brain wash and program. Knowing this is rudimentary, basic and essential, but is empty without know how and history of successful and unsuccessful class struggles. We cannot do what Marx, Lenin, Che, Castro, Mao et. al. did to liberate their people, we can only use their philosophies, ideologies as building principles, Right? In response (per se) to Islam and Afghanistan, in your letters column [MIM Notes #171, October 1, 1998] "A reader" stated "Furthermore, the author erroneously dismisses Islam as nothing more than a religion and not the targets of the attack..." I infer from the context the reader believed the real attack was on Islam all the hype was a disguise, I'm not disagreeing. Is this "Islam" more than a mere religion. First I am a "Muslim"... member of the Melanic Islamic Palace of the Rising Son, a "non- orthodox religious" sect. Something I've noticed is we (muslims) fail to understand the ROLE of Islam in the struggle for Liberation. Islam is a vehicle, not a stationary designation. There is no perfect religion. Once you give definition, or define by labeling, that which has been defined by a label now has distinct limits. This perfectness would contradict the cosmocal laws of nature i.e., everything is in a perpetual state of motion, evolution. ... Daily I see individuals abandoning their respective cultures, heritage in the name of Islam. This "God" is not restricted to one geographical location. The omnipotent omnipresent is circumscribed by a 1400 year old tradition? All pro/phats where staunch nationalist who brought an universal message, but sent to a specific people. This continent enslaved ones with the false interpretations of the Bible. So many are breaking those chains, to only be shackled to the "interpretations" of Islam. The key is to know thy self. If one is not in tune with self they'll never be able to push a Revolution. At the moment we have taken on the ways of this whore called liberty. "Islam" is a guideline, of discipline, morals, ethics, humbleness, love, righteousness, justice, peace, truth. All the things we fight for. We must be what we fight for. And that's the Role Islam fulfills in this revolution. It detaches our mind from the illusions, receptive materialistic garbage of this great whore. ... We (muslims) are bigger than "Islam"? We are the sons and daughters of Allah. The only difference from saying "Islam" and "Submission of ones will to the "Creator" is predicated on the linguistics. Islam is a vehicle. A mere religion (way of life). One must be themselves, in the spirit of the creator. The first and most important struggle is with self. If we master self we can master the environment we have been granted. One needs no books technically, nature is the best of examples (a pro/phat), study it!! As controversial as this may be it requires expounding. The MIM is a revolutionary voice and must interpret phenomena for the masses. ISLAM IS A VEHICLE! Excuse me if I stepped out the boots of the students, I want you to send me the 10 step program (enclosed is a stamped self-addressed envelope). Also I would like some books on G. Jackson, Marx, Lenin, Mao, BPP. I appreciate your paper! Please be patient with me don't never separate my intentions from the outcome, act. I'm 23 but if you teach me I can teach others my age. They appear more susceptible to a young bro, it is easier for them to relate. MIM responds: We have much unity with this letter writer. But as we stated in response to the letter in the October MIM notes that s/he quoted, "In relation to the centrality of Islam, like the writer says Muslims and Communists come at this question from different directions. But in this case we both categorically oppose u.$. efforts to dominate other countries." MIM agrees with those Muslims who see Islam as a guide for revolutionary organizing. But still we don't consider the idealism of any religion necessary to a materialist understanding of the world. This letter writer is correct in drawing some parallels between Islam and other religions. All religions are based in some form of mysticism that replaces a materialist analysis with blind faith. This only serves to discourage people from understanding the world and believing that people are the only ones who can change the world. Religion often encourages people to wait for a higher power to make change rather than seizing the power for themselves. This is the insidious nature of idealism and one of the reasons we oppose this kind of idealism. But even with these ideological disagreements, we see that right now many Muslims are an ally of proletarian revolutionary organizing. And we do not make religion a dividing line question between anti-imperialists. MIM seeks to work with all anti-imperialists regardless of religious beliefs as a part of the proletarian-led United Front against imperialism. And we hope that Muslims like this comrade will join in the struggle to teach other Muslims the importance of fighting for revolution. * * * INDONESIAN REPRESSION IN EAST TIMOR CONTINUES by MC17 Reports in late November that 44 people were killed in East Timor by the occupying Indonesian military broke the relative calm in the country since the downfall of Indonesian President Suharto. In recent months it appeared that Indonesia was focusing its military might and political concentration inside its borders in an attempt to restore control and as a result the constant repression against East Timorese, who have fought for independence since the 1975 Indonesian invasion, seemed to lessen. Many have suggested that the downfall of Suharto may give East Timor a chance at independence. Indonesian officials deny that there was a massacre but according to a church group, the army surrounded the village of Alas and then moved in and burned 36 houses, killing many and forcing others to flee. In response to this latest attack by the Indonesian military, the East Timorese people protested in the capital of Dili. Several thousands students occupied provincial government buildings demanding withdrawal of all Indonesian troops. The UN has been sponsoring talks between Portugal, the former colonial ruler of East Timor, and Indonesia. These talks were called off after the recent massacre but then rescheduled to resume after an Indonesian human rights group promised to investigate. Portugal is in no position to pose as an ally of East Timor as its former colonial master. East Timor needs independence and the right to self determination. It is not a child whose kind mother (Portugal) and evil father (Indonesia) need to negotiate its future. Only a complete withdrawal of all Indonesian troops and a turning over of all control of institutions in East Timor to the people of East Timor will bring peace. Anything less will not satisfy the peoples just demand for national self-determination and independence. Note: The Economist, 28 November 1998, p.42. * * * REVIEW: THE NEW FINANCIAL CAPITALISTS: KOHLBERG KRAVIS ROBERTS AND THE CREATION OF CORPORATE VALUE by George P. Baker and George David Smith Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998, 257 pp. reviewed by MC5 Two rent-a-nerds have written a book claiming to have a new argument why finance capital is not parasitic and in fact plays a very productive role in the economy. The book that came out this year is based on a study of the 1980s mergers and acquisitions craze with a focus on the investment banking firm known as "Kohlberg Kravis Roberts" which is just the names of three partners in the New York and California based business. The ghost of Lenin Karl Marx came up with a scientific distinction between "productive" and "unproductive" labor. It is a little different than the popular concept. Russian revolutionary V. I. Lenin believed that the popular concept of unproductive labor was quite relevant when capitalism came to be dominated by finance capital in the age of monopolies. MIM believes we are still in the stage of capitalism Lenin called the "final stage." The book we are reviewing is substantially an argument with Lenin's ghost without naming him. Lenin held that capitalist imperialism was the decadent phase of capitalism, the stage where capitalism could bring no more progress to the world, only world wars. According to Lenin, "coupon-clippers" in imperialist countries were people who lived without working by owning stocks, bank notes etc. Baker and Smith admit that even parasite-friendly Amerikans have never viewed finance capitalists like J.P. Morgan or Michael Milken with the same respect as business leaders like Thomas Edison or Henry Ford who seem to be connected with invention and massive reorganization respectively. "The essential populism of American culture is uncomfortable with financial schemes, which have so often been associated with venal fraud and scandal, or worse, unfruitful labor. In the common caricature, the great practitioners of high finance have made their money without producing goods, extracting 'paper profits' as if by sleight of hand, wringing fortunes from transactions that have no direct connection to anything productive. This view is hardly limited to the uninitiated; it is shared among highly sophisticated business people."(p. 2) Baker and Smith seek to champion the finance capitalist. Sycophantic business pulp fiction Not only does this book squarely address Lenin without naming him, it also claims to know that most business writing is shallow cheerleading of no intellectual depth or consequence. For this reason we call Baker and Smith "rent-a-nerds." They are not the kind of intellectuals who sit in ivory towers. They are the kind that go to the highest bidder and perform the functions of corporate public relations departments but with more intellectual depth than usual. Baker and Smith are fairly accurate in their self- assessments. They do a better job than most business writers. They have some background. On the other hand, MIM is disappointed that the premier ivory tower of political economy - Cambridge University Press - published this book, because it really does not engage the issues it raised. For example, if leveraged buyouts linking management to ownership by giving executive managers stock in the company are so important, then why did Japan do so well economically? Japanese companies have always had abysmal profit rates and their executives are paid a fraction what U.$. executives make. Baker and Smith raise this subject in one sentence (p. 36) and they fail to address it with relevant facts from both the U.$. and Japanese economies. A book mainly based on the press releases of a single investment bank still has a cheerleading feel to it, no matter how many connected issues are raised, because the evidence that Baker and Smith concern themselves with simply cannot address the subjects they raise. For MIM, this is a basis of some celebration, as another example of the incompetence of the ruling class and why capitalism is likely to fall sooner than later. From the point of view of Baker and Smith and most business writers, changing one or two executive managers makes a big difference. It is one of the essential ingredients -- retaining or changing the executives-- that KKR looks at before conducting a leveraged buyout of a company. Thus much of the book is talking about how to be more competent members of the capitalist class -- paying more attention to loopholes in the tax code, deciding how many workers to lay off and coming up with a composition of the company's debt structure -- how much in junk bonds, how much in bank loans etc. Rebutting journalists Baker and Smith attempt to rebut Susan Faludi who won the Pulitzer Prize for writing about corporate raiders like KKR. A study of companies bought out by KKR between 1977 and 1989 shows that employment increased; capital spending increased and research and development increased three years after takeover.(p. 37) The unscientific nature of this argument comes out in that Baker and Smith felt no compulsion in the book to come up with statistical generalities about companies that did not get taken over with leveraged buy outs. (A leveraged buy-out occurs when a capitalist successfully offers to buy a company with money he or she borrowed from others. In the case of KKR leveraged buy-outs, it also means that the new capitalist in control gives an ownership stake to executive management and allows management to run day-to-day affairs without interference. Managers are given the goals by finance capitalists, but how they achieve them is up to them. The goal that guarantees management performance is paying off the debts incurred in the purchase of the company at its new higher stock price.) Hence, we do not know if employment, capital spending and research and development increased even faster in companies not taken over. They only pointed to a study done elsewhere that shows that layoffs are less frequent after leveraged buyouts than in the industry as a whole (p. 218) and that research and development may or may not have suffered after leveraged buyouts (p. 219). Baker and Smith themselves had no evidence to bring to bear. That's another reason we call these business school professors "rent-a-nerds." New arguments? We do not believe the authors succeeded in presenting anything new. They claim that the leveraged buyout the way KKR does it has never been seen before, but that is just more marketing hype. Always the hired prizefighters of the ruling class glorify the most obvious of profit-oriented decisions as if they were the brilliance of God. In the case of this book, the extended press release includes a chapter on the glories of working for KKR. The two most important arguments that Baker and Smith make are these: 1) Ownership and control separated in Amerikan corporations such that executives and stockholders had conflicting interests. Baker and Smith were not the first to argue this as they acknowledge. 2) The leveraged buyout was not a short- term profit orientation, but a long-term strategy increasing stock prices. What is unique about this book is its portrayal of diverse labor unions, journalists and executives as being opposed to finance capitalists. There is a strong element of truth to this. Most interesting of all is the claim that executives managed to run the ship without paying attention to shareholders -- the exact opposite of what people studying Japan conclude about the U.$. economy. According to Baker and Smith, it was the leveraged buyout that made executives more accountable to shareholders. Before KKR came around, executives supposedly sought aggrandizement of their own power through conglomeration and decadent perks, not profits for shareholders: "Rank managerial opportunism was reflected in the erection of monumental corporate headquarters, the purchase of executive airplanes, stretch limousines, yachts and resorts, and the sponsorship of lavish trips and celebrity sporting events that did nothing to contribute to the bottom line."(p. 14) According to Baker and Smith, the law made it difficult for shareholders to exert direct influence in companies. In fact, even boards of directors were usually just the creations of CEOs before the mergers and acquisitions trends of the 1980s. By buying a company and then giving managers stock in the company, KKR supposedly healed a schism in the capitalist class. Such executives were more willing to lay off workers or do what it takes to pay off corporate debts and see themselves to profitability. Without any proof or evidence about companies not involved in mergers and acquisitions, Baker and Smith claim that KKR strategies that influenced the whole business world are what laid the basis for prosperity in the 1990s. "In a more fundamental historical sense, KKR's legacy is this: its management buyouts breathed new life into a moribund system of financial capitalism, which in turn stimulated a new era of sustained economic growth, vibrant securities markets, and at this writing, nearly full levels of employment."(p. 206) As MIM has detailed in "Imperialism and its Class Structure in 1997," the U.$. boom of the 1990s is dependent on a massive transfer of surplus-value from the Third World, especially the increase from East Asia and Latin America. The paper-shufflers simply like to claim credit. Capitalism as a system KKR is essentially correct about how capitalism works. Capitalism is a system, not a collection of sentimental people. If one executive will not obey the dictates of profit, another will come along and replace him or her. Hence, the intentions of the individual executive hardly matter. For a period of time, KKR was able to make huge profits from reflecting this truth more accurately than other capitalists. Then conditions changed. Capitalists about to lose a fight may agree to be bribed out by the other side, which is what KKR generally tried to do: bribe the executive already there. Other capitalists afraid of losing power or money will side with labor unions, local communities threatened with business closings and journalists against "sharks" and "corporate raiders." This coalition also succeeded in passing laws and regulations that made leveraged buyouts more difficult. The money for junk bonds and this sort of acquisition pretty much dried up by the early 1990s. "During the 1980s, the mere specter of the corporate takeover was prodding more and more executives to undertake internal reforms-- in some cases for no better reason than to defend against unwanted buyers."(p. 43) Although this had struck Baker and Smith as news (p. x), Marx had already elaborated this economic law 150 years ago. * * * CAMPAIGN TO EXPAND MIM NOTES DISTRIBUTION MIM Notes is initiating a campaign to expand distribution of our newspaper in 1999. As the end of the century approaches we must stress the importance of summing up the lessons of the 20th century for communists and of applying these lessons to the advancing struggle against imperialism. Independent media of the oppressed is crucial to building a movement that can take on imperialism. Right now we don't come close to competing with the New York Times or the other daily newspapers across this imperialist country. But with your help we can expand our distribution and advance the fight towards the day when we can take on and defeat the imperialist mouthpieces. If you live in a city where there is no regular MIM Notes distributor, your help is crucial. But even if you live in a city where there are already distributors, your help will expand our outreach into more communities in your city. We ask that our distributors help with the cost of printing and shipping the paper if possible but whether or not you have the money we need your help. Distributors can sell the paper on the streets and at political events and you can leave copies of the paper free at colleges, in community centers, in laundry mats, at libraries, in coffee shops, in bookstores, and anywhere else that they won't get thrown away and people will pick them up. Our goal for 1999 is to expand distribution of MIM Notes and increase the necessary funding by 25% of the current total. We can't do it without your help. Contact your local distributor or send us the form below to help out. ------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------- Yes, I will help expand the distribution of MIM Notes! [ ] I'm already a distributor but you can send me ______ more papers. Total of ________ papers. [ ] I want to start distributing papers in my city. Send me ______ papers. [ ] I'm interested but I want more information about distributing MIM Notes. [ ] I want to support MIM Notes distribution financially. Enclosed is $_____. Name______________________________________ Address ____________________________________ City _______________________ State__________ Zip__________ * * * ADDRESSING HIV GLOBALLY REQUIRES DICTATORSHIP OF PROLETARIAT by MC5 A study published in November, 1998 estimated that triple combination therapy for the world's HIV- positive individuals would cost $65.8 billion per year. "In 1997 an estimated 5.8 million people were infected with HIV. On average there were 16,000 new infections each day during this year. In total, one in every 100 sexually active adults aged 15-49 years were living with this virus. Ninety percent of these individuals lived in developing countries, in particular, in sub-Saharan Africa."(1) "Triple combination therapy" (also referred to as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART)) includes the use of a new class of drugs called "protease inhibitors" that came out in 1996. While these drugs are not a cure they promise a life without any AIDS or detectable HIV if the disease is caught early enough. Since these drugs appear to be able to sustain life indefinitely, they can also be a bridge while final cures are developed. The problem is that HAART costs $10,000 to $14,000 a year - much too much for the Third World and indigenous people. Research sponsored by the sinister "United States Agency for International Development" attempts to explain to Third World policy-makers that they should not support HAART, because the per capita income of their peoples will not sustain it and because it will take money away from other health efforts including prevention. Nonetheless, Costa Rica's Supreme Court has ruled that the government must provide HAART to those who need it. Thailand is also endeavoring to provide HAART and Brazil has actually put aside the money for it. "While the pharmaceutical companies recognize that this price is not affordable in most developing countries, they are also concerned that offering ARVs [antiretroviral drugs - MC5] for a discount in developing countries could create arbitrage opportunities (purchasing ARVs at a lower price in developing countries and reselling them in developed countries) that might potentially reduce their profit levels. They are also concerned that there will then be demands by health insurance providers and activists in developed countries to reduce their prices to levels in developing countries. Some countries such as Costa Rica have been able to negotiate a price equivalent to approximately $7000 per patient per year for invirase, HIVID and AZT. While this is less expensive than the market price in developed countries, it still represents nearly three times Costa Rica's per capita income ($2610)."(2) While the cost of AZT in the 1980s was originally over $10,000 a year, it is now $3000.(2) There is some hope that as time goes on and new drugs are invented, old ones will become cheaper. Many will talk about the fact that the Third World is not receiving proper care for HIV. What distinguishes us Marxists from the rest is that we believe there is a non-negotiable "right" to food, shelter, clothing, medicine and a non-toxic and non-militarist environment. It is only the political trickery of the bourgeoisie to foist on the oppressed and exploited the idea that life itself is negotiable. In one sense, we Marxists are simply the most extreme believers in "human rights." Maoist socialism will not be perfect, but failures will not be on account of the drive for profit. We are willing to say that we are for organized force against those who believe the right to profits or property is higher than the right to food, shelter, clothing, medicine and a non-toxic and non-militarist environment. We Marxists calls this priority of serving humyn needs through the use of organized force where necessary "dictatorship of the proletariat." Currently we live under capitalist dictatorship. In the imperialist countries, the middle classes focus only on those humyn rights of interest to the middle- classes, generally the right to "free speech." Fed, clothed and sheltered already, these middle classes fail to see their role in propping up the imperialist system that denies the world's majority of people its basic humyn rights to live. Beyond the fact that we are more thorough in our conception of "human rights" what distinguishes Maoists from human rights activists is that we dedicate ourselves to applying the science of Marxism- Leninism-Maoism to achieving those human rights goals. Scientific question number one is to find the social group most likely to fight for a thorough conception of humyn rights. Since the proletariat is the class of people with "nothing to lose but its chains," it is the class with the most to gain from dictatorship for humyn needs. We call such dictatorship, "dictatorship of the proletariat." The "dictatorship of the proletariat" is the socialist stage on the way to communism. Contrary to popular belief, neither socialism nor communism is "equality." That is one alleged "right" we are not in favor of. We are not for total equality, but equality of the minimal non-negotiable rights makes socialism and communism much more egalitarian in effect than capitalism. One problem with dictatorship of the proletariat is that after the initial socialist revolution, some relatively easy questions are resolved and then a bourgeoisie re-organizes itself, right inside the communist party leading the dictatorship of the proletariat. Mao's contribution was to fight to preserve the vehicle of achieving humyn rights we call dictatorship of the proletariat through a method of "Cultural Revolution." Many realize that with dictatorship of the proletariat in a few rich countries, the whole world could be fed, because the food already exists and just needs distribution. The same is true for many pharmaceuticals including those involved in HAART. The possibility exists to deliver these drugs to all who need them. The bourgeoisie says if it did not make tremendous profits on drugs too expensive for the poor, then no one would be spurred on to invent new drugs. MIM believes that at this time in history, inventors should be rewarded with exceptional monetary rewards if their inventions contribute to the abolition of classes. Certainly inventing anti-HIV drugs qualifies. However, once a new drug is invented, the motivation to make profit in its manufacturing should be eliminated. If there needs to be innovation in manufacturing, then there can be rewards for that too, but there is no need for the kind of profits and restriction of sales seen today. Executives making tens and hundreds of millions a year for their alleged innovations are unnecessary. It was Mao who led a scientific movement of the masses in the Cultural Revolution that earned the contempt of the bourgeois intellectuals of the West and China. Those bourgeois intellectuals hoped to utilize the scientific side of dictatorship of the proletariat as an excuse to restore capitalism. Mao realized such was possible as long as the masses themselves avoided science. The masses need to make up for the bourgeois intellectuals who no longer find themselves motivated under socialism and they need to surpass those bourgeois intellectuals. In the West, natural and preventive medicine does not receive its proper emphasis because no one profits from it except for those with careers in preventive medicine. The big profits in imperialist countries come from inventing and administering new drugs to cure diseases that could have been prevented. Although China was very poor, Mao realized very well that preventive medicine is cheap, and so China doubled its life expectancy and surpassed the United $tates in urban maternal care for instance. The inventions in the rich countries have come at the expense of the cheap labor of the Third World. It is not just a question of 400 years of African slavery. Today, the Third World continues to do a disproportionate share of the manual agricultural, mining and industrial work that makes a life of science and engineering possible. Without food, shelter and clothing taken care of first, there can be no scientists. The effects and importance of such "productive labor" prior to scientific labor can be examined and analyzed scientifically, as MIM does in its latest essay, "Imperialism and Its Class Structure in 1997." The pharmaceutical companies have invented expensive drugs to treat HIV with the help of scientists and paper-shufflers fed, clothed and sheltered by Third World labor. Prevention does not work in the Third World as well as it should because the masses have learned to distrust their imperialist-backed governments and the medical authorities who seem to be lackeys of multinational pharmaceutical companies. In addition, in the Third World as in the United $tates, there is the debilitating effect of religion backed by the ruling class. This religion opposes sex education and needle exchange for drug-users and thereby contributes to the health problem. The health of children needing sex education or drug-addicts will not be sacrificed for "freedom of religion" under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Adults attempting to defraud children of their lives in the name of religion will be shot. After a few such shootings, it will be much easier to prevent HIV infection and the cost to society will be much lower. In conclusion, the "dictatorship of the proletariat" starts with a sense of political priorities, but it is not just a new brand of moralism. The Cultural Revolution will consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat by relying on the masses for scientific advance and innovation thereby providing for the needs of the people without handing power over to the bourgeoisie, especially its scientists, engineers and managers. The dictatorship of the proletariat will also be a tool to see to humyn needs whether it be by planning production priorities or punishing religious reactionaries seeking to spread infectious disease. Notes: 1. Robert S. Hogg et. al., "One world, one hope: the cost of providing antiretroviral therapy to all nations," AIDS 1998, vol. 12, p. 2203. 2. Steven S. Forsythe, "The affordability of antiretroviral therapy in developing countries: what policymakers need to know," AIDS 1998, vol. 12 Supplement 2, p. s15. * * * DON'T BE FOOLED BY U.$. MILITARY CUT BACK by MC53 At the end of November when the U.$. imperialist machine was poised to massacre additional Iraqi people, the Pentagon sent a report to Clinton which argued for the cut back of military spending for nuclear weapons. The Republocrats portray proposed cutbacks as painless reduction which helps the U.$. to save money. However, the recommendation was not to cut back the entire military budget, recruitment of imperialist soldiers and spending on warships and missiles. Much like recent corporation job cutbacks, the imperialist military seeks the most efficient method to oppress and control the majority of the world's people. Job cutbacks in manufacturing areas have not meant job loss -- instead parasites have more white collar jobs. Cutbacks in the nuclear arsenal of the United Snakes of Imperialism has not meant less oppression of Third World nations -- instead funds are used to advance the so-called war against drugs and terrorism which the U.$. uses as a guise to smash struggles of the people. Pentagon pigs have stated that continuing the current level of expenditures for the nuclear arsenal would be a waste. Further, they argue that Congress should allow the cutbacks to provide the imperialist military with "more flexibility." The Pentagon stated that the money "sapped money from efforts to combat 'newer threats' like terrorism and ethic wars." The imperialists concede that the weapons stockpiling was more than adequate to defend the U.$. but now they need to put money into fighting revolutionary movements and the growing anti-imperialist organizing around the world. With conventional war machinery or nuclear arsenals -- the victims of the attacks are the masses of oppressed nations. This is why we put the battle against nuclear weapons proliferation and anti-militarism in general in the context of building the foundations for revolution against imperialism in general. Just because the imperialists say they are switching methods of oppression does not mean that they are stopping the oppression. Work with MIM against militarism and imperialism's varied methods. Note: New York Times. 23 November 1998. * * * COMRADE TAKES INITIATIVE TO GIVE HEALTH AID TO PRISONERS Mobilization of prisoners in the struggle against imperialist oppression, specifically the use of prisons as a means of social control and national oppression, is on the increase. United Struggle from Within (USW) is the MIM-led anti-imperialist mass organization of prisoners fighting against oppression. Prisoners are developing the organization into a vehicle to coordinate struggles against censorship, brutality and other forms of oppression against prisoners. Prisoners are mobilizing together within USW to increase study and understanding of history, current events and the path to genuine liberation of the people. Part of the United Struggle from Within is the prisoner-created Serve the People Prisoners' Legal Clinic. Through the legal clinic, prisoners are working together with comrades on the outside to spread legal information and education. Several issue of MIM Legal Notes have been published as part of these efforts. Over the course of 1999, USW will focus much of these efforts on fighting the censorship which is rampant in kkkoncentration kkkamps through the U.$. An Illinois prisoner has taken the initiative to start her/his own Prisoners' Health Watch. The health watch is not part of the MIM-led USW organization, but is an excellent example of independent organization among prisoners to meet their own needs. MIM Notes will print Prisoners' Health Watch articles alongside other comrades' articles on prisoner health issues because we believe that the Prisoners' Health Watch is a much- needed program for prisoners. The Illinois comrade has articulated the importance of collecting information on the exact problems faced by prisoners. To this end, s/he has collected extensive amounts of research pertaining to the medical attention which prisoners have received. S/he has also stated clearly that the Prisoners' Health Watch should provide suggestions that are up to date and that will make a difference to the conditions under which prisoners live. S/he has emphasized the need for articles which explain how to determine an illness and other 'how to' articles. MIM salutes this comrade's efforts to address health issues faced by prisoners. MIM Notes also welcomes other prisoners to follow this Illinois prisoner's example and submit your own articles on health issues to Under Lock & Key. Please note that unless otherwise requested, articles will be edited for political and medical purposes to best meet the needs of prisoners. If you would like to discuss the Prisoners' Health Watch with the Illinois comrade, let us know. The letter on this page was written for the purpose of distribution to medical professionals. Look for upcoming columns of the Prisoners' Health Watch addressing the issues of "Asbestos and Prisoners;ī "10 ways to beat a cold in prisonī and other articles in MIM Notes pertaining to politics and health like coverage of the Treatment of HIV infected prisoners in South Carolina gulags. * * * PRISONERS' HEALTH WATCH PRISONERS, INFORMATION AND HIV/AIDS There has been some misinformation circulating about HIV/AIDS and prisoners. It's a shame that the medical profession does not pay attention to the needs of prisoners. It alarms me because if many f the illnesses are properly treated inside prisons, ex- prisoners would not be passing on many of the diseases they catch in prison, which is a method of how HIV/AIDS is being transmitted in society. The American Correctional Systems does not want informative HIV/AIDS, T.B., or Hepatitis information available because they want prisoners to be in the blind about such diseases. There is no doubt that passing out such information would curtail these types of diseases. I am wondering does society really have an idea of exactly what goes on inside prisons? Evidently they don't, and this lack of knowledge is weighing heavy against prisoners because they have no avenues to gain adequate medical treatment, and often die for minor illnesses that a poor person would be cured for in society. [The] article entitled "HIV/AIDS Behind Barsī by David S. MacDougall, printed in the "Journal of the International Association of Physicians in AIDS Care,ī April 1998 issue, for the most part touched on the substantial problem with some good suggestioned as to prevention and issuing informative data. However, about three quarter ways through the article, it referred to the very organizations that use prisoners as "guinea pigsī without prisoner being aware of exactly what experiments they are conducting on prisoners. Isn't this some type of crime? Infected needles are being used to withdraw blood, when the solution given to determine if a prisoner has T.B., prisoners are not being injected with HIV/AIDS, and Hepatitis, Why? To test new drugs! Abt Associations, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, American Correctional Association, along with Illinois, intentionally gave prisoners HIV/AIDS, T.B., and Hepatitis. The cause and affect was being watched, while prisoners were at danger. [The AP news article pertaining to the Illinois Supreme Court's resurrection of a lawsuit by a prisoner showing HIV infection by the state] clearly indicates what happened. [And] the Illinois law makers knew of the problem. Illinois State Representative Cal Skinner, said, "Extrapolating the study's findings to the Illinois adult male inmates individuals over 100 men a year are receiving what I can 'an unadjudicated death sentence' each year." This was an understatement because 200-350 prisoners die yearly of HIV/AIDS, and Hepatitis. We are explored without our knowledge just because society and the medical profession has turned their eyes and turned off their ears to this alarming problem. Majority of the drugs society uses are tested on prisoners before they reach the market for society. Prisoners are not aware because prison administrators want them ignorant. Prisoners are exposed to Asbestos' and Lead Poisoning. Each of these diseases are taken back to society. Until society as a whole takes notice of this problem, and prisoners start refusing to accept withdrawal of blood, T.B. tests, or any treatment that involves a needle without seeing the actual needles, or knowing what they are being shot with, will they receive adequate medical care. The voice prisoners need is to shock the public to understand that we are not crash dummies or guinea pigs. MIM adds: As the related articles in this issue articulate, MIM sees that a dictatorship of the proletariat is necessary to genuinely meet the needs of all people, including prisoners. The author of the above letter is correct in the recommendation that prisoners take care to know what officials are putting into their bodies. However, even the suggestions above do not mean vigilance on the part of prisoners will result in adequate medical care. For example, as many prisoners have reported to MIM, prisoners now have to pay mandatory medical fees to receive any medical attention -- which more often than not is inadequate. Prisoners have also reported that they are denied necessary medications for diabetes and severe mental illness. And as the article on page 4 shows, the oppressed are denied access to medication like HAART which can help to sustain the life of HIV infected individuals. Most importantly, imperialism systematically denies the needs of the oppressed, including prisoners, through oppressive living conditions, resources wasted on decadence instead of cures and exploitation. * * * SCIENCE OF THE PEOPLE DESPERATELY NEEDED In early December, a panel of four scientists appointed by a federal court reported findings that there is no evidence silicone breast implants cause disease. This scientific finding received top reporting in the news media in this decadent country where health problems such as those that might result from enlarging wimmin's breasts are of top priority. (1) This news comes shortly after the United Nations' demographers released their update of world population projections on October 28 which demonstrated the devastating toll of AIDS leading to dramatically lower projections in sub-Saharan Africa.(2) But this information barely made it into the news compared to the excitement over the breast implant findings. While money and resources are being spent researching ways to make all wimmin's breasts look exactly like the barbie doll image that we've all learned is perfection, thousands of children are dying of starvation. In south Asia over 50% of children under age five suffer from malnutrition and the average in the Third World combined is 36%.(3) People are dying for lack of clean water and sanitation throughout the Third World but still breast size is more important to first world wimmin and men. There is no logic to a country of wealth, training and resources wasting scientists on research relevant only to the vanity of current cultural demands of beauty. This disgusting focus on the health consequences of mutilating wimmin's bodies underscores the failure of capitalist medicine. First the imperialists create the conditions of poverty by destroying the economy of Third World countries, installing dictators to act as imperialist puppets and moving in the multinational corporations to exploit the people. When starvation and disease result from these conditions the imperialists blame it on the "backward" countries and point to how great and advanced medical research is in the "advanced" countries (the ones that control the economy and wealth that is produced). Under a dictatorship of the proletariat there will be a logical use of medical research devoted to the most pressing problems of the people. Researching a cure for AIDS will take precedence over investigating the effects of silicone breast enlargements. And medical advances will be made available to all the people of the world, not just the few privileged enough to buy a longer and healthier life. Notes: 1. The New York Times, 8 December 1998 2. Washington Post, 2 December 1998, p.A29. 3. Progress of Nations UNICEF 1993 report. * * * OBSCURING REALITY: WORKERS WORLD CLAIMS NBA PLAYERS ARE OPPRESSED by MC53 The Workers World Party's (WWP) newspaper claimed that the NBA "players are considered the owner's property - they can be bought and sold like chattle, although at a much higher price." Further, the article entitled "Basketball's real billionaires" by WWP leader Monica Moorehead urges readers and NBA fans to side with NBA players and oppose the owners' call to put a "strict ceiling on how much a team can pay the most productive players."(1) It is no wonder that the WWP and other apologists for the parasites residing within the wealthiest country in the world have resorted to organizing such 'struggles'. With the kkkountry's unemployment rate at a historical low and the majority of workers in Amerikkka receiving placement in higher-paying and more technological jobs, revisionists are left scrambling. Even liberal commentators on NPR's "All Things Considered" admit that thousands of pink slips from Boeing, Exxon, Mobil and Kellogg will not affect the standard of living of the majority of America. NPR commentators stated what MIM has documented for years: the workers being laid off or fired from manufacturing jobs in Amerikka are well taken care of by placement in higher paying and even less productive spheres of paper pushing.(2) But even if the majority of the workers within imperialist u.s. borders were exploited, there is no justification for claiming that the NBA players are exploited. The Marxist definition states that an exploited worker is receiving less than the value of his or her labor. This means that s/he is producing more than s/he is receiving and so the capitalists are getting rich by stealing part of the product of his/her labor. There is no way to argue that basketball players really produce millions of dollars a year. Playing basketball is not even productive labor, it is parasitic entertainment funded by the wealth this country steals from truly productive workers around the world. MIM does not oppose entertainment but we do oppose capitalist apologists who try to claim that millionaires are some how exploited just like the starving Third World workers. And we also oppose spending billions of dollars on entertainment so that Amerikan couch potatoes can sit drinking beer and getting fat spending the money this country stole from the international proletariat. The call to support the enslaved and oppressed millionaire NBA players is one manifestation of the WWP's demands that the majority of the world's people sweat - and even die - for the benefit of the imperialist nation labor aristocracy. In MIM Theory #10, MIM reviewed the WWP political economy in great detail. We showed that it's call - even for those making less than the NBA stars - to raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour cannot come from thin air. Specifically, the demand can only come from increased super-exploitation of Third World workers. MIM disagrees with this call for increased exploitation of the world proletariat and instead urges people working with the WWP to organize for Maoist revolution and reparations paid back to oppressed nations throughout the world instead of calling for an even higher standard of living for imperialist nation middle classes. In another section of the same issue, the WWP paper contradicts itself by running an article on historical materialism. The section explains the difference between materialist analysis and idealism. Historical materialism means that revolutionaries should look at the concrete reality of relations under imperialism, sum up the material conditions and history, and base ideology and strategy on what has been most successful historically to end oppression. The WWP claims to support Marxism and scientific socialism without looking at the fact that imperialist nation workers support higher wages and benefits for themselves at the same time they vibrantly campaign to cut welfare, stop bi-lingual education, and only allow Mexicans to cross the militarized U.$. border when it is picking season. The WW ignores the fact that the majority of Amerikkkans became hot and heavy, salivating at and supporting the U.$. movement to kill more Iraqi masses in November. Those claiming to be socialist or Marxist and at the same time support the fattening of parasites are not merely benign leftists with simple disagreements with MIM. These are people and parties which choose outright to support an alliance of the parasites with imperialism AGAINST the majority of the world's people. This makes genuine communists look bad in the eyes of the oppressed. It continues the history of the white left supporting struggles of the oppressed only as a token and only as a means to gain more for the settler nation middle classes. Communists who ignore the historical advancement of the Chinese people led by Mao are similar to the utopian socialists which the WW says it is not. Calling oneself communist and not practicing Maoism and proletarian internationalism is similar to thinking that reality is or could be a manifestation of dreams. Material reality is that the vast majority of the world is oppressed by imperialism and is already battling U.$. hegemony. And material reality is that stroking egos of settler nation workers is not going to mobilize them to stop watching TV and start fighting for genuine equality. Notes: 1. Workers World, 3 December 1998, p. 4. 2. National Public Radio. "All Things Considered." 5 December 1998. 3. MIM Theory #10 is an essential piece of reading for communists in the imperialist nations as well as critics of MIM's stance on proletarian internationalism. $6 from the address on page 2. It includes lessons from the COMINTERN, The Black Panther Party, 1968-69 and DuBois in History. * * * NEW YORK DATA BACKS NEED FOR STUDENT-PRISONER ALLIANCE Credit is due to Derrick Z. Jackson for writing on the trade-off between prisons and education in the Boston Globe. His article was just on New York State. "Since 1988, state funding for colleges has plummeted by $615 million. Spending for prisons has gone up by $761 million." "By 1996, annual spending for incarceration, $1.6 billion, surpassed the $1.3 billion in the budget for colleges." In a typical state budget, the two biggest items are education and prisons. Already successive University of Michigan presidents have spoken out. It is time for university presidents and students everywhere to speak out. There is also a link to the drug problem, a vicious cycle. "In New York, harsh mandatory sentences have pushed the cost of keeping nonviolent drug offenders locked up to $680 million a year, a haunting contrast to the $615 million drop since 1988 in college spending." White people are 75 percent of New Yorkers, but they get caught for only 5 percent of drug offenses. The proletariat is opposed to the U$ penal regime, because the ruling class simply uses it to keep the oppressed classes and nations in discipline. The United $tates has the world's highest imprisonment per capita, contrary to rhetoric about a "free country." That is proof of the imperialist government's hatred of the masses. Nonetheless, some people will side with us on this question for less than politically pure reasons. Tuition has risen in SUNY colleges from $6,303 in 1998 to $11,478. There are material reasons for New York students and their parents and also SUNY researchers to ally with the prisoners. People going to college are generally petty- bourgeoisie, not proletariat. At this time though, MIM believes it would be better for the petty-bourgeoisie to go to college than to let the ruling class implement its hatred of the Amerikan people. In 1988 it was only 13.5 percent of white median family income to put a student in SUNY. Today it is 25 percent and that number is 42 percent for Blacks and Latinos. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this is that the Rockefeller Foundation is behind the funding of the study these figures came out of. It appears that the ruling class itself is already afraid of feeling the heat: "'Unfortunately, the politicians' pandering to people's worst emotions about crime and fear- mongering has won the day.'" MIM has been saying this for years. The movement against the prison craze now has a firm basis in alliance amongst the proletariat, lumpenproletariat and students, their parents and researchers. Although some in the oppressed nations would like to see their communities rid of the people that are now in prison, we believe the majority of the oppressed nations support our struggle. MIM gladly supports the student petty-bourgeoisie to get a cheaper college education, because in exchange we cut into the state's repression. In contrast, most money struggles in the imperialist countries do not produce any gain for the oppressed and exploited. Note: Boston Globe, 2 December 1998, p. a27. * * * ANN ARBOR PIGS PROTECT AND SERVE WHITE HYSTERIA Early in the morning on December 3rd, Ann Arbor police cars were seen rapidly converging on a Black man crossing a west side street. At first, the cops talked with the man who cooperated and suddenly two cars of police were throwing the man against the cop car. Immediately a few more pig mobiles rushed to the scene. The pigs did not find a weapon on the man or any illegal substances during the first search. But they violently pushed him around, clearly using unnecessary force and searched him again. The man yelled that he had not done anything and the pigs said that 'you must be in the wrong place at the wrong time then' in a mocking manner. The pigs had been looking for a "Black man, shaved or short hair in his late 20s, early 30s" who was a suspect in a 'home invasion' earlier in the evening. The pigs held the innocent Black man for close to an hour before bringing the female accuser to the scene. The Black man stood, surrounded by pig mobiles, in the summary one-man line up. Remember, it was still quite dark and shadowy despite pig flood lights. The womyn said that it was not the man who had assaulted her earlier and the pigs let the innocent Black man leave. Before leaving, one of the white pigs stuck out his hand to his prey. Statistically, one out of every three Black men ages 18-35 are locked up, on probation or parole. Black men are more likely to receive prison sentences and are more likely to have longer sentences than whites who commit the same or similar crimes. Even when the government admits that whites commit a greater proportion of the crime, as in the case of crack usage, it is still members of the Black nation who are thrown in prison at a higher rate. For instance, the U.$. government statistics state that 52% of crack users are white, but only 4.1% of the people charged which crack use are white and 88% are Black. The statistics showing that Blacks and other oppressed nationals are targeted by the cops and unjustly treated by the entire criminal INjustice system do not relay a mere coincidence. We argue that the massive round up of the oppressed into prisons is a effective imperialist method to thwart the development of the masses into a strong revolutionary force. The oppressed do not stand for continued inequalities and oppressed nations under Amerikkka's control have shown their potential organizing power. This power is a threat to the wealth of the settler nation. And prisons serve as a primary tool to ensure continued settler existence as parasites. MIM calls on progressives in Ann Arbor and all other cities in the U.$. to take the attacks of the oppressed through police and prisons seriously. There is no threat which exists which more violently oppresses members of the Black, Latino and First nations. Ann Arbor is a suburban town with a very low crime rate. In 1998, only two people were murdered there -- and that was not until November in a double homicide. An older white couple discussing the murder talked about how they had moved to Ann Arbor because it was safe, but that they had developed a fear of what might happen because of the recent murders. MIM does not take human life lightly. We seek to stop murder through the most effective way possible -- revolution. The vast majority of murders and deaths throughout the world are a direct result of imperialism. And even in the case of the two murders in Ann Arbor, increased police, hysteria among white folks, and more patrolling will not help to end murders between individuals. Increased policing ends up with more oppressed nationals being targeted by pigs. Revolution, on the other hand, has been proven to eradicate drug addiction, resolve inequalities between groups of people, lessen power struggles and violence and stop crimes which are related to poverty. Most of all, revolution is the only solution for eradicating the biggest murderer of them all -- imperialist butchers. Books for Prisoners: Copies of John Gurley's "China's Economy and the Maoist Strategy" are available to any prisoners willing to start a study group and organize at least one theory journal article involving the material. Copies of "The Geopolitics of Hunger" are still available. And limited copies of Kitty Warnock's "Land Before Hanour: Palestinian Women in the Occupied Territories" are available for prisoners willing to write a book review and essay for MIM Theory. * * * ESCAPED DEATH ROW PRISONER FOUND DEAD by MC53 For the first time in 64 years, a prisoner on death row, Martin Gurule escaped from a Texas prison on November 26. One week later, Gurule's body was found. The Harris County medical examiner stated that Gurule had died from accidentally drowning in a swollen river. Despite the 500 person hunt for Gurule, it was two corrections officers -- allegedly off-duty on a fishing trip -- who accidentally found Gurule.(1) MIM writes that Gurule was found dead as a result of an accident only to report what the mainstream press has stated. We do not take what the imperialists, pigs and the imperialist mouth piece media say for granted. However, regardless of the manner in which Gurule was found, we know that prisoners are beaten and killed by their slave masters throughout Amerikkka, and Texas is the biggest prison state in the United Snakes. One result of the escape is increased justification for making Texas an even more draconian prison state. Governor George Bush has mandated an investigation into the escape. Such investigations by the state typically result in forcing prisoners to endure harsher conditions. Following the discovery of Gurule's body, prison spokesman, Larry Fitzgerald stated "We have a clean record of all our escapes now. We have all our people back in custody."(1) Of course the pigs don't care about the death of Gurule as it will save the state money in one of its executions. Texas is murdering prisoners legally through the death penalty faster than any other state. The climate in Texas and in the majority of Amerika is to increase the frequency of death sentences and legal executions. In fact, by Christmas of 1998 the U.$. will have executed its 500th prison inmate since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.(2) Historically, the death penalty has been used to legally lynch Black nationals. Liberals generally agree that Blacks were lynched in the south prior to the civil rights movement even when a crime did not occur and even when a Black person did not commit the crime. Liberals also generally agree that pre-civil rights era, Black men were lynched for fictitious rapes of white wimmin. In 1998, 42% of the people on 3,300 people on death row in Amerikkka were Black despite the fact that Black nationals are only 12% of the population. In Philadelphia, where Mumia is being held as a prisoner in the war against the Black nation, Black nationals have been sentenced to death eight times more than whites since 1978.(3) The death penalty is used to protect the white nation and as a tactic of genocide against oppressed nations. 82% of prisoners executed since 177 were sentenced because of a death of a white person -- even though the number of murders of whites and Blacks were about equal.(3) MIM doesn't support increasing death sentences to even this out, but this aspect of the death penalty shows how it is white justice which is sought in Amerikkka. The death penalty in Amerikkka serves the interests of the settler nation government and majority. It is not used as a mechanism to put to death the more vicious murderers. In fact, Bill Clinton, one of the world's most vicious murderers, used the death penalty to kill a mentally retarded man just prior to his election as a means to gain support and dispel the "Democrats are soft" image. Putting humans to death because of their crimes and killing humans during revolutionary war to stop their continued oppression of masses are decisions which should only be in the hands of the oppressed. Only when the oppressed are genuinely represented in government can the government make a decision about human life which sincerely protects society. Notes: 1. CNN. 5 December 1998. 2. The Economist, 28 November 1998, p.29. 3. Amnesty International "Rights for All" campaign information. * * * STUDY, STRUGGLE AND BUILD OPPOSITION TO IMPERIALISM! BOOKS ON BLACK REVOLUTIONARY NATIONALISM IMMEDIATELY AVAILABLE "The Making of Black Revolutionaries" by James Foreman. [$15] "Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton" by Bobby Seale (before he sold out). [$15] "The Black Panthers Speak" by Philip S. Foner [$12] "Maoism and the Black Panther Party" by MIM. [$2] "Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson" by George Jackson. [$7] "Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement" by Ward Churcill and Jim Vander Wall. [$20] "Revolutionary Suicide" by Huey P. Newton. [$10] "To Die for the People" by Huey P. Newton [$10] The above prices reflect increased printing costs as many are photocopied books. The prices include postage inside the United Snakes. If received before December 15th, orders for above literature will be sent within one week upon receipt. YOU CAN PURCHASE THESE BOOKS FOR DONATION TO A REVOLUTIONARY PRISONER: these are among the most requested books by prisoners to MIM and RAIL. Better yet, you can buy the book for yourself and a comrade under lock and key and study together. * * * UNDER LOCK & KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONS AND PRISONERS EXPOSING BRUTALITY IN PRISON I'm in Ad Seg. [after being] attacked and assaulted while both of my hands were handcuffed behind my back. Lt. X grabbed me around my throat and started choking me until I fell to the cement pavement in the dark hallway of the prison... He [then] slammed me up against the chain fence, kicked and stomped me in my back, then he jumped up and started hollering use of force! ...I was then surrounded by 9 more white racist pigs.... ...In Ad Seg. they are literally starving the prisoners...they are only putting a dab of this and a dab of that on the trays, a lot of times we don't get the same amount that [general population prisoners] get on their trays. You can see all the prisoners' rib cages back here... I have asked all of them to help ourselves, we must stage a hunger strike to get the prison administration's attention, as well as the media, as to what is really going on back here. ...Right now my back is in constant pain [from the attack]...but they refuse to give me treatment... Hopefully they will put my $3 back so I will be able to pay for my high blood pressure medication, it's the last $3 I have to my name, and I didn't know that until yesterday. Here on ALLRED, this all white race hating unit, they got this stuff they call food loaf. They use it primarily for abusing the prisoners, and for punishment. Will you look into the way the food loaf is to be used. A guard told the rank that an inmate assaulted him with a food tray, when the food tray fell off the bean slot, they put him on food loaf. They use this food loaf as a tool against all Latinos and Africans... Each white, race hating officer tried his best each day to get 2 to 3 inmates on food loaf, it's a new game they all are playing against the inmates... Yes, they are watching the mail real hard around here. Today my letter came back. It's the 7th time I have sent out mail and it came back. They want more postage because I show the continent of Africa on the face of my envelope and color it in with the colors of red, yellow and green. They will send it back and ask for a surcharge. Well, I don't know what a surcharge is, will you please look into that. In the struggle until I die, -- A West Coast Prisoner. Prisoner Gassed and Attacked I've received your newspapers for the month and was indeed pleased to learn about the jive attack in the Middle East. The devils will continue to attack the oppressed and keep the masses ignorant. I'm not a bit surprised about the devils actions. Then you got this white voting class, praising Bill KKKlinton's fake ass moves. It was a trick to take us off the real criminals. At Allendale Koncentration Kamp these pigs attacked a young God because he demanded to speak to someone higher up! It was medical problems, so it ended up that they gassed him four times and shocked him five times. All this because he refused to put his hands inside the cell. We flooded the mutha fukah down. Kicked the doors until we couldn't kick no damn more because the shit was dead WRONG! Later the punk ass pigs tried to act like they didn't want to do it? Yeah right.... Stand Up, -- A South Carolina Prisoner, 23 October 1998 Virginia Conditions ...It's like this. Prisoners in Virginia had their chance to setup and voice their oppositionary grievances when Ron Angelone (the Director) took office and started charging us $5.00 to see the doctor and $2.00 for medication. He took office in 1993/94 and made us send home all of our personal clothing and some of our electronics and some other things including typewriters. When he put a limit on the things that we could order and our visitation hours. When he canceled beneficial programs -- I mean something should've been done then. It is too late to argue about that now. Of course these changes took place over a period of time. I don't know what would've happened had he done it all at one time. So with that said, but also acknowledging that things are a lot worse in other prisons and those conditions are right around the corner for prisoners in Virginia. We have to be concerned with how our lives and living conditions are being regulated. People have either given up, or haven't been paying any concern toward things, have the go with the flow attitude, fight unsuccessfully in spurs with the administration, or end up handling matters solo. ...Things could be better if there were a trustworthy bond amongst us. I think our egos keep us from putting faith in others because it takes away that in us which is secondary and places priority at the top of the list. Here in Virginia they haven't had to result to transferring men and women out of state in the past few years. They did for a while, but they've gotten private contractors to house inmates and have built a few new ones including two Maximums and two Super Maximums... The mailroom and personal property allows us to have all our religious literature, but we have a problem with our Chaplain. He's jive and arrogant. He thinks yoga is a threat to the institution. The only thing we're not really allowed to have is hardcore pornography. From my dealings with them and my legal mail, I've had no problems. I've been receiving it at my door unopened. As far as MIM literature is concerned, I think you'll have a good run until the wolves get a whiff of it. Healthcare and the food are about the only things that I can think of that I have a problem with -- that and education. The doctor here, Dr. Barnes, has a tendency to purposely neglect the health of his patients. They're making money off us and they are not tending to our problems. Recently this kid I know got stabbed either 13 or 21 times with an ice pick. The doctor saw him and said that he was all right, even though he got stabbed in the mid and upper body. A while later, he got the sergeant to send to get X-rayed. They found that one of his lungs was punctured. Two guys are building legal suits against him [the doctor] now. Vegetarians catch hell. The regular meals are mediocre. Before my neighbor and I started grieving the kitchen managers, they were serving us 5 different kinds of beans daily, for lunch and dinner, as main courses. Now I believe they're a little mad because we've been getting peanut butter for dinner and cheese for lunch, or they'll switch it up. For instance on the 11th they served peanut butter for lunch and cheese for dinner. On the 12th they served peanut butter for lunch, and cheese for dinner. On the 13th they served peanut butter and cheese for lunch, and cheese for dinner. On the 14th they served peanut butter for lunch, and cheese for dinner. On the 15th they served beans for lunch, and cheese for dinner. On the 16th they served peanut butter for lunch, beans and cheese for dinner. I'm in the process of pushing papers now to have this changed. But my partner gave up on me. He was the only one that could attest to the fact that they discriminate against us by not feeding us as they do the rest of the population. The issue of education is very important to me because I would like to be able to work and pay for may to take college correspondence courses. From what I've heard, we won't be allowed to do much of anything at the Supermaxs. Education should be priority number one. This is supposed to encourage a positive change but it's doing nothing but keeping us high on an illusion. Respect, -- A Virginia Prisoner, 17 August 1998 Brutal SuperMax Conditions ...Last year sometime Virginia built three super maximum security prisons: 1) Sussex I & II, and 2) Red Onion State Prison, which are now operational. 3) Wallens Ridge which opens sometime this year or in the early part of 1999. This place reminds me of some of the harsh treatment that I read about in the MIM Notes that dudes in Texas, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania have been receiving. Red Onion, the institution that I'm housed at and Wallens Ridge are level 6 prisons, the worst of the worst. Sussex I and II are level 5. Red Onion is like a SHU in the sense that the whole institution is special housing. ...Upon arriving at this place last month, certain dudes have suffered from attempts by the administration to degrade their manhood and lower the standards of principles of anybody who "gets out of line". The whole workforce with the exception of three (from what I've seen) is white. The c/o's (correction officers ...who've been assaulted in the past set-up different dudes for a beat down. The c/o's asked them to strip-down, squat, cough and turn around. Then with their back toward them [the pigs], bend over and spread their ass cheeks. Nobody here that has been in a maximum security prison in supermax status ever had to go through that. So naturally the prisoners (the one's targeted) questioned the procedure and instantly got shot with taser guns, stun guns, maced, hit with electric shields and/or got straight up surrounded, attacked and dragged across the compound naked by the cocky, redneck racists. A brother of mine went on a hunger strike trying to make the administration transfer him to another spot. He's known for beating down c/o's. In fact a few of his victims work here and they have threatened his life. The medical officials have to check and record the blood pressure and vital signs of dudes who go for a certain amount of days without eating. He's refused food for six days now. Last night the goon squad suited up because he refused to be seen by the nurses. The c/o's came up with a game to try to get him out of the cell, and at the same time cover their asses, so that they could be justified for their actions. They say that he wasn't going for it so they maced him, shot him with a taser gun, hit him with an electric shield, and ruffed him up with some body blows. Did they do all of that because he didn't want to see the nurse and they had to go in and get him? Were they, eleven men [c/o's] scared of a man 5'8'', 160 pounds? Or was this beating done in retaliation for assaulting their partners? All of the above! This is just the beginning. With all of the guns around here and the tension in the air, who knows what's next?! -- A Virginia Prisoner, 7 October 1998 West Virginian Working Conditions In response to inquiries made from MIM Work conditions: Usually a prisoner will be held at a pay of $5.25 per month, as long as possible. If that individual has a high school degree or GED, then eventually they will be posted to making 12 cents per hour or grade 4 pay as it is called. This can take up to six months to achieve. Standard grades run from 4 up to 1 pay. Grade one pay is at 36 cents per hour. If an individually has a fine to pay, they are automatically put in UNICORE to pay into FRP (Financial Responsibility Program). -- A West Virginia Prisoner, 2 August 1998 Texas Conditions ...As for the conditions here within the Texas slave camps, things are only getting worse, and from what I see unless those on the outside take a stand and get involved, they will get even worse. They are not only making us pay $3 for medical care, they are even now speaking upon making pay for room and board, and the fact still remains they are no way and no how going to pay us for our labor. All this boils down to is making our family pay, so not only do we suffer our family does also.... -- A Texas Prisoner Blacks sentenced to institutional death So the vast majority of the creative black minds in america who are males are locked up in prisons during their most productive years. In the years when most Euro-American males are present in universities, colleges, and training institutions, gaining skills that are necessary to ensure that they can run the world the way that they have been running the world, our future leaders, future learners, future advocates, future directors can be found in the prisons of america locked away, unable to think, under the daily watchful eye of sick minds who would rather see them dead than learning. Those who show the greatest promise of thinking, self- direction, understanding comprehension are the least likely to ever get paroled. When they get paroled, they are stigmatized in such a way that they can never get the effectiveness in this society that they need to utilize what they know. They have been essentially removed not by physical death, but by institutional death... Power to the People. -- A Michigan prisoner, 25 November 1998 Speak Out in Solidarity against Oppression I myself am a proud member of the Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation. It is for the struggle my people have gone through and go through now. In the few MIM articles I have read, I have observed many of my brothers and sisters being locked up. Even here in the heartland of Iowa I and others can relate to their situation. There is something about the whole system in America that chooses to oppress us. People need to start waking up and I believe your newspaper is speeding the process up. ... I would like to send a strong show out to my King Brother in the New Jersey prisons, for he speaks much truth... "Any person who denies his or her membership to this nation is a coward and therefore not of my nation." I hear you bro. As Latinos we were blessed with a crown from birth. Now let's united and fight for this crown -- Amor de Rej of Corona. -- An Iowa Prisoner, 28 November 1998 A Call for Unity ...I would like to address all so-called gangs and gang members of Amerikkka and all around the nation, whether you're Black, Brown, or Yellow, to listen, or read this proposal and accept the truth as it is! What is the truth? The truth is that we genocide each other and it must stop! We as the oppressed people of Amerikkka are under attack. We're not under attack by the government alone, but the worst part is we're under attack amongst ourselves! I myself along with you are a gang member I've banged and I've done my share of genociding (not just that alone). I realize that truth now and i feel like a fool!! Just as Malcolm X once said; we've been bumped aside! Yet, unlike most once I've realized the truth i didn't lay my flag down! No! I chose to spread the truth. Black Liberated Unity (BLU). Unity is what we need and what i want to stress. Most of the crimes Blacks and Mexicans commit are against each other and ourselves... If the unjust government kills wrongly so Blacks and Mexicans or Latinos throughout the country, as an outgrowth of their racial brutality, the minority will correctly express their outrage. However, if within the same year we kill 10,000 of each other the resulting silence is deafening! It is just as if we feel it's o.k. and natural to kill each other. Well! It's not! Many of my homies have tried to ridicule me for my beliefs. They don't want a peaceful unification with their believed to be enemies for two reasons: 1) It's all they know about and they've been victims to the divide and cover up scene put down by J. Edgar Hoover and his piglets, they have become content with it and have made it their way of life (gangsta lifestyle). 2) Because they say one of their believed to be enemies killed one of their homies. When in fact the government and J. Edgar Hoover were and are the ones behind all our homies dying and us killing each other the way we do. I expose these truths to them along with the fact that we can't be revolutionized against our oppressor when we're busy going to war with each other. This is a contradiction to what Crips, Bloods, 5%, Disciples, Latin Kings, Vice Lords and any other revolutionary organization stand and was organized and originated for. We can't uplift our communities and our people if we keep destroying it in the process. I'm a Texas political prisoner incarcerated in the Texas Department of Criminal Injustice now, and i feel from what i have learned this is the most organized slave plantation in the U.S. As far as unity among the oppressed is concerned, Mexicans are led to hate Blacks, each other and the system...they'll kill each other and Blacks, but never will they rebel against the government, arch deceiver, the slave master, the oppressors. The same apply to us Blacks... For instance: they took away the weights, TV's and took away educational privileges... Nothing was done. The same for segregation offenders. They don't allow offenders with aggravated sentences to have their sentence good time added to their flat time which would lead to an early release, still nothing was done. We do free labor and have to pay for our medical expenses, still nothing was done. The list goes on and on. It's time that we unite and represent the true cause. Settle our differences and let the past be the past and look at the present problem with each peacefully and in private. Then direct all our energy, mentally, physically with our anger and resources towards the true enemy. -- A Texas Prisoner. Officers threaten and abuse prisoners ...First of all, there's this sgt....[who is] a gang member, he belongs to a prison gang called TS, this he told me from his little piggy mouth! ...I belong to a political organization called Nuestra Raza, it's considered a prison gang by the gang intelligence at the T.D.C. system. I've got proof that I'm NR, they have it on my gang file, but still this officer thinks I'm T.C.B. ...I told them in the grievance that my life is in danger because the G.I. locked me up in between the two gangs that are at war, TS and T.C.B. Both think I am on the other side, making me the enemy to both sides, now both sides want to kill me....Now I got this sgt... trying to kill me, because he thinks I am a T.C.B. member, and he's spreading that rumor here to get me hurt, every time he comes to this section he messes up my house by shaking it down. A lot of my things come up missing every time. Every time I try to write a grievance to report this it never goes through, I've tried everything but he's got a lot of friends here on this unit like he said, he's connected to another prison "officers" gang called the "Blue Bandannas." They've killed inmates all over the system by beating them to death. They got "Blue Bandannas" here on this unit, they are all officers, they carry these bandannas with them and they show it to you and try to scare you...I saw a Blue Bandanna beat and choke my ex-cellie in the hallway, but nothing was done. These pigs always get away with everything! -- A Texas Prisoner Exposing Human Rights Abuses First I would like to commend you and your staff for the great head-strong determination and direction of your movement. It is always a pleasure and honor to read your literature... ...I was listening to the radio one day and Slick Willie (Clinton) made a very clear statement to the people about human rights over in another country. It just bothers me to see our government so concerned about other countries when right here in the United States are some of our most prominent political prisoners, activists and civil rights protesters who've been wronged in trying to seek justice in this injustice state. Although you have stated the ways I can be of assistance, I still find these options hard to conquer without placing myself in harms way. -- A Texas Prisoner MIM responds: There are a number of things that our prison comrades can do without putting themselves in great additional harm. Of course, any work with MIM, including just receiving MIM Notes, is going to bring potential repression because the pigs don't like the ideology of the oppressed. But some of the things that our prison comrades can do that won't add to this danger include writing articles for MIM Notes and MIM Theory. Write about conditions in your prison, ask us for some research material and books to write theory articles on. Contact friends on the outside and ask them to become MIM Notes distributors. Pass on your copy of MIM Notes to other inmates. Start a study group with other prisoners if possible. And even if you can't start a study group you can read and study yourself and arm yourself with the tools of knowledge for revolution and liberation.