This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
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THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT
MIM Notes 94
November 1994
Electronic Edition
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Get MIM Notes 94 from the Maoist Internationalist
Movement (MIM), and get the latest in Maoist news
and analysis - put a revolutionary weapon in your
hands.
This issue exposes the destruction brought upon
the people of the Philippines by President Fidel
Ramos - a tried and true U.S. lackey who fought
for Amerika in the Korean and Vietnam wars. It
also calls out the destructive role of
nongovernmental organizations in Peru, the U.S.
imposition of its will in Haiti, the psychiatric
medication of millions, prison brutality, and
more. Throughout, Maoist news and analysis always
brings you back to the role of revolutionaries in
overthrowing this rotten system and finding a
better way - socialism and communism.
MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the
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MIM Notes 94 includes:
CONTENTS
1. NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY FIGHTS U.S. IMPERIALISM
2. DON'T VOTE: BUILD THIS MAOIST PARTY
3. ACTIVISTS PROTEST MICHIGAN NUKE PLANT
4. PSYCHO-IMPERIALISTS MEDICATE MILLIONS
5. IMPLANTING "DEMOCRACY" IN HAITI - U.S. STYLE
6. IMF AND NGOS: FALSE ALTERNATIVES FOR PERU
7. PAPER TIGERS
8. FILM REVIEWS: QUIZ SHOW, TIME COP
9. NORTH AMERIKAN YOUTH AND WOMEN MAKE PLEDGE
10. UNDER LOCK & KEY
11. LETTERS TO MIM
REVOLUTIONARY LINE IS DECISIVE:
NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY FIGHTS U.S. IMPERIALISM
The President of the Republic of the Philippines,
General Fidel Ramos, recently completed a tour of
Europe in support of his Medium Term Development
Plan (MTDP). Although Ramos touts the MTDP as the
magic formula which will eliminate poverty from
the Philippines and industrialize the country by
the turn of the century, the MTDP will actually
only bolster the exploitation of the Filipino
people by U.S. and other imperialists.
The U.S.-Ramos regime has also intensified its
military attacks on the Filipino people. The
numbers of reported massacres and forced
evacuations by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP) more than doubled in the two years of the
Ramos presidency. The AFP continues to pursue its
strategy of "total war" - striking at the Maoist-
led New People's Army (NPA) by eliminating the
people who support it.(5)
PHILIPPINES 2000
The MTDP - also known as the "Philippines 2000"
plan - calls for removal of nationality
restrictions on ownership, unlimited profit
repatriation, unabated foreign borrowing, and the
suppression of workers' rights in order to
maintain the "industrial peace". The idea is that
with the right incentives imperialists will build
"regional growth centers" and bring
industrialization to the Philippines.
"Philippines 2000" is really the continuation of
the semi-colonial policies of Ramos' predecessors,
Corazon Aquino and Ferdinand Marcos. These
policies created the illusion of development by
using huge foreign loans to finance unproductive
industries like the tourist industry or
unnecessarily increase the capacity of raw-
material processing mills. But industries
producing basic metals, chemicals and capital
goods remain conspicuously absent from the
Philippines, and light industry remains completely
dependent on imported components.
Unlike Marcos and Aquino, though, Ramos has shed
all pretensions of agrarian reform. His policies
protect big landlords and industry and emphasize
export crops over food crops. Under the MTDP over
118,000 hectares of irrigated land are slated to
be converted into "industrial corridors" -
displacing 130,000 families. The amount of land
planted with rice and corn has shrunk from 5
million hectares to 1.9 million. These crops have
been replaced by export crops like rubber, mango,
cassava and cotton.(3)
Ramos' plan has done nothing to relieve poverty in
the Philippines. Accumulated unemployment (which
takes underemployment into account) remains at at
least 40% of the labor force. Seventy-five percent
of the population lives below the (government
determined) poverty line; 40% cannot afford to eat
three meals a day, and 78% of children below
school age suffer from malnutrition.(3)
U.S. ECONOMIC INTERESTS IN THE PHILIPPINES
The Philippines has long been a dependable semi-
colony for U.S. imperialism, providing raw
materials, cheap labor and a market for U.S.
goods.
U.S. imperialists directly control enterprises in
the Philippines worth over $1.66 billion and
account for more than half of the foreign capital
invested in the Philippines. U.S. companies
regularly repatriate more than 80% of their
earnings.(2)
The U.S. gave the Philippines $557 million worth
of loans and grants in 1990.(1) The Philippines
also receives large loans from U.S. front groups
like the International Monetary fund (IMF), the
World Bank, and the Asian Development Bank. The
total accumulated foreign debt of the Republic of
the Philippines is $34.4 billion. Annual debt
service alone amounts to $4.4 billion - 8.8% of
the Philippines $52.6 billion GDP. In effect,
every Filipino is mortgaged for $529 in order to
prop up an economy which does not serve them.(3)
These loans come with strings attached, of course.
The IMF recently asked Ramos to raise the price of
oil products and transport fares in order to
transfer the costs of restructuring the
Philippines' debt onto the impoverished people.
Ramos complied, but was forced to back down in the
face of a nationwide *welgang bayan* (people's
strike) protesting the price increases (5)
THE UNITED STATES AND THE AFP
The United States has had a large military
presence in the Philippines protecting its
interests there and throughout Southeast Asia for
more than 100 years. Until recently, when a
nationwide mass movement forced the Philippine
Senate to evict them, 15,000 U.S. troops had been
permanently stationed at the Clark and Subic Bay
military bases. During the Vietnam war, these
bases served as the staging ground for the sorties
which dropped 25 million tons of explosives on
Southeast Asia.(2)
Although the official closing of the bases means
direct U.S. intervention in the Philippines has
declined somewhat, indirect intervention remains
high. The United States continues to support the
AFP as the main force implementing the U.S.
strategy of "total war" against the Communist
Party of the Philippines and the NPA.
"Total war" targets the peasants and farm workers
who support the NPA and its serve-the-people
programs. As one NPA member put it, "Because the
people's army were like fish and the masses like
the water they could swim in, the ... regime aims
to drain off the water and to kill the fish."(6)
The Ramos government has carried out more village
bombings and forced evacuations in Ramos' first
two years in office than occurred during the
entire Marcos dictatorship. Over two million
peasants have been displaced by the AFP since the
"total war" was launched.(5)
>From 1987 to 1990 the United States gave the
Republic of the Philippines $1.3 billion in
military aid.(1) U.S. aid accounts for 83% of the
AFP's budget, and the AFP depends almost
completely on the United States for its heavy
equipment.(2)
Virtually every high-ranking officer in the AFP
has undergone advanced training in the United
States. The Joint U.S. Military Advisory Group
(JUSMAG) trains Filipino officers in the use of
the U.S. supplied machinery and also in counter-
insurgency tactics. JUSMAG also recruits Filipino
allies for the U.S. in the armed forces. As one
JUSMAG officer put it, "We're building
relationships, making friends that will last a
lifetime. And these are the people that will be
running the AFP for many years to come."
In 1986 the U.S. spent $2.2 million on such
programs for 460 officers.(2)
THE PEOPLE'S RESISTANCE IS RESOLUTE AND VIGOROUS
But Amerika and the Ramos regime remain paper
tigers. They cannot relieve the economic and
political crisis in the Philippines because they
are the source of the crisis.
The oppressive conditions in the Philippines
combined with the CPP's application of the Maoist
theory of protracted people's war combining armed
struggle, agrarian revolution, and mass-base
building allowed the NPA to grow from nine rifles
to 8000 rifles and the CPP's mass base to reach 11
million people.
Subjective errors have cost the revolutionary
movement the most. Deviations from the Maoist
theory of people's war led to a weakening of the
CPP's influence among the mass movement, a
reduction in the CPP's mass base and the death or
imprisonment of many comrades. But the CPP has
publicly named its errors and begun an intensive
rectification campaign.(7)
United behind the correct line, the revolutionary
movement outlasted Marcos. United behind the
correct line, the revolutionary movement will
outlast Ramos and eventually defeat U.S.
Imperialism.
LONG LIVE THE PEOPLE'S WAR IN THE PHILIPPINES!
FORWARD TO VICTORY!
NOTES:
1. The Statistical Abstract of the United States,
1992.
2. James Goodno, "The Philippines: Land of Broken
Promises," London: Zed Books, 1991.
3. BAYAN International - Philippine Institute for
Global Liaison, Advocacy and Solidarity
(PIGLAS), "The Truth About the Ramos Regime,"
1994.
4. Jose Maria Sison, "The Continuing Struggle in
the Philippines," New Progressive Review, 1988.
5. Liberation International, Jan-Feb 1994, p. 11.
6. Liberation International, Sep-Dec 1993, p. 20.
7. See MIM Notes, 1/94, 2/94.
FIDEL RAMOS IS A FASCIST AND AN AMERIKAN BOY
The current President of the Republic of the
Philippines, General Fidel Ramos, has served the
United States interests in the Philippines since
he graduated from West Point in 1950. He is
popularly referred to as an "American boy" or
"Amboy."
Ramos fought for the United States in both the
Korean and Vietnam wars.
Ramos was one of the "Rolex 12" - one of the 12
with whom Ferdinand Marcos planned the imposition
of martial law in 1972 (Marcos gave each of the 12
a Rolex watch, hence the name). He commanded
Marcos' abusive and corrupt national police force,
the Philippine Constabulary (PC).
Ramos was the chief proponent and implementor of
the U.S. designed "total war" policy. He created
the Barrio Self Defense Unit (BSDU), a para-
military vigilante group which attacked democratic
and nationalist organizers. The BSDU became so
infamous that it continually had to change its
name: it became the Civilian Home Defense Forces
and then the Civilian Armed Forces Geographical
Unit.
Ramos donned the cloak of an anti-Marcos hero when
it became clear that the United States wanted to
dump the dictator. He was chief of staff of the
AFP under Corazon Aquino and responsible for
wrecking peace talks between the National
Democratic Front and the U.S.-Aquino regime.
Ramos received U.S. endorsement and funding in the
1992 elections. Still, he only got 23.5% of the
vote.
Ramos has allowed the U.S. to continue to use its
former military bases against the will of the
people and the Senate of the Philippines.
And Ramos has made it clear that a renewed
declaration of martial law would suit him just
fine. Much of the rhetoric around Ramos' Medium
Term Development Plan has emphasized the need for
a strong, military state. After Ramos raised the
prices of oil products last January, he secured
"special powers" for himself from the Philippine
Congress to deal with the self-created "energy
crisis", paving the way for the imposition of
martial rule.
NOTES: BAYAN International - Philippine Institute
for Global Liaison, Advocacy and Solidarity
(PIGLAS), "The Truth About the Ramos Regime,"
1994. Liberation International, Jan-Feb 1994, p.
11.
* * *
DON'T VOTE, BUILD THIS MAOIST PARTY!
You may have noticed that MIM does not waste a lot
of space talking about Amerikan elections.
Oppressed people everywhere and the
revolutionaries who work in their interest are not
distracted by the billion-dollar, smoke-and-mirror
campaigns of imperialism.
One cannot simultaneously be a revolutionary
working to end oppression and vote to uphold the
reactionary Amerikan system. The internal
oppressed nations of Amerika know this - hundreds
of years of history show that no matter who's in
power under capitalist patriarchy, Blacks, Latinos
and indigenous peoples are denied any real change.
For oppressed people, voting in a bourgeois
democratic capitalist society is nothing more than
a sport - choosing the face of your oppressor. For
white women, the labor aristocracy, and of course,
white men, the choice between a Democrat and a
Republican does make a difference.
People do vote in their best interests (when they
vote) and progressives who try to register people
of oppressed nations are wasting everybody's time.
The majority of white Amerikans support or
participate in the electoral system. The system
overall represents their interests, though it
favors the rich among them. Still, their choices
are limited and they are constantly grumbling and
protesting by not voting.
If some candidate throws Amerikans a bone - a
tough crime bill with lots of new prisons, some
protectionism against foreigners, or war or two -
then they may get temporarily excited and go pull
some levers. But their elections are not what
changes the direction of the country. They
rubberstamp the decisions made by international
patriarchal capital, and they get paid to do it.
Revolutionaries act on the belief that people are
bigger than individual votes, and that
improvements within the Amerikan system are made
at the cost of increased exploitation of the
oppressed. Every day wasted on these elections
means millions more death sentences for the
oppressed.
* * *
ACTIVISTS PROTEST MICHIGAN NUKE PLANT
At the gates of Fermi II, police brutally arrested
over twenty activists on October 2 that were
protesting the re-opening of the nuclear power
plant in Monroe, Michigan. The facility was shut
down last December when a blade from the turbine
system snapped, breaking four other blades and
gouging a hole in the housing. The result of this
accident was a fire and subsequent flooding.
Detroit Edison, the owners of the plant, released
1.5 million gallons of radioactive water into Lake
Erie.(1)
Like all nuclear power plants, the dangers of
operation come from mismanagement, outdated
equipment and accidents. In addition, the spent
fuel rods and radioactive waste must be stored
indefinitely. This poses a catastrophic threat to
the communities that have to deal with the dangers
of leaks through weakened storage caskets or from
accidents during transportation, or total
abandonment by the storage company.
ANOTHER FERMI
In 1966 Fermi I had a partial core meltdown. The
facility was built not only to create energy, but
to produce weapons grade enriched plutonium for
building atomic weapons.(2) Fermi I was then
sealed shut for future generations to deal with
and Fermi II was built.
Fermi II began operating in 1986. Before that
accident Edison ignored warnings of shaky turbine
quality because of the expense of the repairs.(2)
It hasn't generated electricity since the accident
and repairs cost $35-50 million. Now the plant has
been repaired somewhat, the nuclear fuel rods are
being put into the plant and they are planning to
start up at low power with several turbine blades
missing.(1)
REPRESSION IN AMERIKA
The weekend's rallies, benefit concert, speeches
that culminated in the direct action at Fermi II
were organized by a coalition of Earth First!
activists, The Student Environmental Action
Coalition, the Zebra Mussel Alliance, Greenpeace
and Citizens Resistance Against Fermi II (CRAFT).
Over twenty activists were arrested on Sunday.
Standing on the shoulder of the road, barely on
the road itself, a woman was told to move by a
cop. The pig pushed and she started to move,
turned around and barely bumped the cop who then
grabbed her tried to drag her away. She sat down
in protest. A man from across the street headed
toward the scene, but a cop intercepted him. Then
the cop pushed him down, more cops joined and
dragged him back to the other side of the street
where they forced this guy to stay down and
repeatedly beat him. A woman ran across to help
him and was dragged back. After five or six pigs
beat him, he was taken off to jail. His wife got
in the car. She started to make a U-turn to head
toward the jail, and a cop stopped her. Then her
car was surrounded by cops. Apparently, they
thought that she was breaking the law and dragged
her out of her car and arrested her.
The faulty premise with demonstrations against
corporations in general is that the protesters
believe that pressure on the capitalists will
deter them from continuing with degradation of the
environment. This reliance on the owners of
production to reform their ways will not bring
about policy that serves the people.
At the rally, the cops were there to protect the
interests of the people that pay government
representatives large amounts of money. While MIM
sees that the contradiction between capitalism and
the planet's health growing steadily, MIM believes
that we must have control of development. We
cannot expect capitalists to act in any other
interest than to protect their profit margin. This
is why the most effective strategy cannot be civil
disobedience. Pleas to the government or big
business to altruistically change their actions
have never resulted in change.
In order to protect the environment, the
government must be representative of the people -
the people who are not driven by individual
profit.
NOTES:
1. The Metro Times (Detroit) 9/29-10/4/94, p. 6.
2. Jam Rag - The Fifth Estate "Anti-Nuclear Power
Special Edition".
* * *
PSYCHO-IMPERIALISTS SAY "DON'T AGITATE, MEDICATE!"
by MC17 & MC44
October 6 was National Depression Screening Day.
Fliers entitled "Depression is a disease, not a
weakness," hanging all over Boston's Chinatown
listed the symptoms of this latest, highly
profitable psychiatric disease: "poor sleep,
depressed mood, loss of energy, change in
appetite...."
(Not missing an opportunity to peddle psychotropic
drugs in non-English speaking communities, the
flier was also translated into Chinese.)
On Oct. 3, TV's Lifeline News program featured a
story about depression. Citing figures that
millions of Amerikans suffer from depression and
only about 40% get treatment, this show urged its
viewers to call the 1-800 number on their screen
if they thought they needed help for this
"disorder."
Don't worry, the program assured, it's not the
fault of capitalism, or this fucked up society,
there is something wrong with *you.* A chemical
imbalance is leading to your strange emotions of
despair, and you can be cured. The latest craze,
Prozac, is an increasingly popular drug touted as
a miracle cure for depression. If Prozac doesn't
work, some prescribe the more potent (and more
dangerous) Lithium. With enough drugs anyone could
be fooled into believing that capitalism is great,
destruction of the earth is no big deal, and all
problems come from within.
And medicating everyone seems to be the goal of
the psychiatric establishment. In one sense the
treatment is individual - as in the dosage and the
particular medication - but in a more profound
sense the project is social. The greater the
social ills, the more people who will need
medication to function. The question becomes,
then, function as what?
DRUGS AS SOCIAL CONTROL OF THE OPPRESSED...
According to Peter Breggin, founder of the Center
for the Study of Psychiatry and an activist
against the use of drugs in psychiatric treatment,
"more than a million children in America are being
drugged with Ritalin to make them more docile in
school and at home. ... Inner-city schools already
play a major role in pushing and sometimes
coercing families to take Ritalin, a drug
pharmacologically related to amphetamines and
cocaine."(1)
In the same statement to the Congressional Black
Caucus in 1992, Breggin argued that the rise of
psychiatric medication for children amounted to
"blaming little black children for the problems of
society, such as racism, poverty, hunger,
inadequate or absent health care, the decline of
the schools, unemployment, police brutality, a
destructive welfare system, and despair over the
future."(2)
Since "hyperactivity" seems to occur
disproportionately in oppressed populations, the
cause can only be social. The humane cure then,
must be to change the material conditions which
make oppressed nation children's live unbearable.
The imperialist cure is to medicate them into
submission.
Foisted upon the oppressed nations at school
(Ritalin) or on the street (crack), drugs numb the
mind against legitimate feelings of anger and
persecution, and the desire for revolution.
...AND OF THE OPPRESSOR
Among the millions of masses of the white nation
who take Prozac for depression, social control
takes a different form. The parasitism of living
off the super-exploited labor of the Third World
is indeed alienating and depressing. But the goals
of mass medication - profit-making and social
efficiency - mean making an oppressive society
more palatable to both the oppressed and the
oppressor.
Revolutionaries say no to drugs as a cure for
capitalism. Revolutionaries say no to capitalists
and psycho-fascists. You're not crazy, you live in
the heart of imperialist Amerika, the biggest
murderer in the history of humanity. If that
depresses you, and it should, work and struggle
with MIM. Subordinate yourself to the will of
international proletariat - not the psychiatric
establishment.
NOTES:
1. Peter Breggin, quoted in Pat Shipman, *The
Evolution of Racism: Human Differences and the
Use and Abuse of Science*. Simon and Schuster:
New York, 1994. p. 244.
2. Ibid.
* * *
"IMPLANTING DEMOCRACY" THE U.S. WAY:
AMERIKAN OCCUPATION COMES TO HAITI
by MC12
OCTOBER 10--Last time the United States held an
election in Haiti, under President Woodrow Wilson,
5% of the people voted, and 99.9% of them approved
the U.S.-drafted constitution.(1) This time, while
the goals are no different, the mechanisms have
changed - and a lot of people can't get it out of
their heads that the United States is there to
"restore democracy."
To hear these people tell it, Amerika has been
trying to do that all along, but the Haitians just
can't get it together. The Washington Post
represented this idea well on October 9, when they
listed the "chronic obstacles to democratic rule"
as "Haiti's overwhelming poverty, its recurrent
violence, its political instability."(2) The
United States is not part of that list, somehow.
When Amerikan troops came upon a jail full of
political prisoners who had not even gotten a
trial under the military dictatorship, they left
them in jail, worried that letting them out might
complicate the task of "maintaining order."(3)
See, the Amerikans try and try, but there is only
so much they can do to further the "implantation
of democracy."(2)
TOUGH TEST FOR "DEMOCRACY"
Now the U.S.-Haitian rulers are in a tough spot.
They have to install a new government (referred to
as "restoring" the Aristide government), but make
sure their old friends stay in control. U.S.
officials, like Alexander Watson, the assistant
secretary of state for Inter-American Affairs, are
worried. He said: "Still unproven is [Aristide's]
ability to work in a democratic process that is
based on striking compromises and gaining a broad
base of support. He isn't the kind of guy who
likes to make deals."(2)
Broad base? Aristide got two-thirds of the vote,
Watson can't mean majority support. The definition
of "broad base," like the definition of
"democracy," is dependent upon agreement with
military and business leaders who control the
Haitian population and provide labor to their
bosses in the Amerikan corporations. That's what
he means by "make deals."
To help with the difficult task of "implanting
democracy," the U.S. will keep its 20,000 or so
troops in Haiti through the installation of
Aristide and the new parliamentary election, just
to make sure things don't get out of hand - like
they did when Aristide got elected. Then a smaller
force will stay there for at least 16 months,
until Aristide's term is safely over.(2) By then
the CIA will have spent at least $1 million on
"political actions" to influence the "democratic"
process, so that process may be trusted to produce
the desired result.(4)
And during the "transition" period before the
"honorable retirement" of Cedras and two other
leaders, paramilitary forces continued to
terrorize and kill popular activists, sometimes by
the blunt method of driving trucks or buses
directly into crowds. U.S. troops showed up to
help clean up the mess.(5)
CIA TRIES AND TRIES
Things were never supposed to get to the point of
U.S. military occupation. U.S. aid went to both
Duvalier dictatorships - from Kennedy to Reagan -
including money to help build U.S. assembly plants
in the 1970s. That new economic development helped
wages decline 56% during the 1980s. U.S. support
continued right through the post-Duvalier
government, which got $2.8 million in military aid
while gunning down demonstrators in the streets.
Then U.S. planners thought they could get a former
World Bank official elected, so they allowed an
election, but repression failed and two-thirds of
the voters courageously chose Aristide.(1)
Even then, the U.S. wanted military leaders to cut
a deal with Aristide and settle. They helped
create FRAPH, a right-wing death-squad
organization directly responsible for hundreds of
deaths, to help bring "balance" to the political
process. The money going to FRAPH leader Emmanuel
Constant was - like all CIA money - supposedly for
"information," and now everyone acts as if the CIA
had no influence over its actions.(6)
In defending supporting FRAPH, U.S. officials said
it was, in the Times' phrase, "part of a
continuing effort to gather information from all
ends of the Haitian political spectrum." Just more
evidence of how deeply infected the Haitian system
is with the CIA virus.(7)
This was not isolated or accidental support. In a
show of balance, the New York Times stuck a
reminder into one of its stories: "The New York
Times reported last year that leading figures in
the Haitian military and police were on the CIA
payroll, and Government officials acknowledged
then that the Haitian intelligence service, which
had been trained by the agency [CIA], had turned
to drug running and political violence."(7) They
didn't remind readers that one of those military
leaders on the CIA payroll was Cedras himself.(8)
The Nation reported that the CIA wanted more than
information. Constant said that the U.S. military
encouraged him to form FRAPH in the first place,
and that CIA and military officers were present in
the military headquarters during the anti-Aristide
coup.(7) Before Constant suddenly retired from
FRAPH, he was "burning up the wire to his friends
in Washington," according to a Latin American
diplomat.(9)
The official story is sometimes so obviously bogus
that the bourgeois media just looks stupid
upholding it. For example, the New York Times
reported that, "The CIA ... poured money into the
[Haitian] army hierarchy for an antinarcotics
intelligence program, despite the fact that high-
ranking officers went into the drug business
themselves."(9) So, if the money from an
"antinarcotics" effort is being used to build the
narcotics trade, what makes it an "antinarcotics"
effort? Nothing except the constant repetition of
the name by the bourgeois press and its willfully
ignorant followers.
Before the scandal broke - and was buried - over
the FRAPH funding, the New York Times reported
that, "One Aristide advisor said asking Haiti's
police to disarm attaches is like asking one fox
to guard another."(10) If that's true, than what
is it for the U.S. to claim to disarm, reorganize
or "professionalize" the military and police -
which they created and trained?
In some ways not much has changed since Woodrow
Wilson's time in Haiti. One Amerikan official
recently said: "The rules are we're there to
supplement the efforts of Haitian authorities, but
if they prove incapable, we're ready to do it
ourselves."(10) The question is, what is it that
the Haitian authorities were "incapable" of doing?
At press time it appeared that Aristide would come
back to "rule" under conditions imposed by the
U.S. military. While MIM has supported Aristide as
the democratic choice of the Haitian people, we
can't support a puppet regime of the United States
- in other words, Aristide's government under
these conditions.
Democracy in imperialist colonies can't be
achieved without real independence, and so far
history demonstrates that real independence only
follows from socialist-led national liberation
struggles. That is the task before the proud
Haitian people today - and it's the greatest task,
against the greatest enemy, that they have faced
in more than 200 years of struggle.
NOTES:
1. Paul Farmer, *The Uses of Haiti*. Common
Courage Press: Monroe, ME, 1994, pp. 19-23.
With introduction by Noam Chomsky. This is a
good book of background on U.S. domination of
Haiti through then end of 1993.
2. Washington Post 10/9/94, p. A36.
3. ABC News 10/3/94.
4. New York Times 10/2/94, Sec.4, p. 16.
5. NYT 10/10/94, p. A1.
6. This story was broken by The Nation in its
10/24/94 edition, then confirmed by government
sources to the Washington Post (10/7/94) and
New York Times (10/8/94).
7. NYT 10/8/94, p. A1.
8. NYT 11/14/93, p. A1.
9. NYT 10/6/94, p. A8.
10. NYT 10/2/94, p. A1.
* * *
HEAD OF IMF VISITS PERU
On August 25, the prominent bloodsucker of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) was back in
Peru. Heavily protected by army personnel,
Mitchell Camdensus visited Ayacucho accompanied by
the tyrant of Peru. They observed the developments
of the IMF financed counter-insurgency plans and
programs. Camdensus described the exploitation and
oppression of the people who do not earn even
subsistence wages in those projects as "government
successes." He also labeled as a success the
repayment of Peru's six billion dollar debt to
foreign banks, at the expense of the hunger and
misery of Peruvians. What are these "successes"?
# The deep recession, decline and destruction of
national production.
# Unemployment and reduction of the real standard
of living.
# Exorbitant taxes to raise funds and pay the
foreign debt.
# Total neglect of people's health and education.
# Destruction of the peasant agrarian economy.
# Widespread torture, disappearances and killings
of civilians and prisoners of war being
committed with impunity by police and armed
forces.
DOWN WITH THE IMPERIALIST TOOL IMF!
FOR LAND, SALARY AND NATIONAL PRODUCTION!
FOR PEOPLE'S RIGHTS AND PEOPLE'S WAR!
FOR THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF PERU!
Reprinted from La Nueva Bandera, Vol. 1, Number 3
September/October
1994. 30-08 Broadway #159, Queens NY 11106.
E-mail: lquispe@nyxfer.blythe.org.
NON-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS (NGOS): BUFFERS OF
THE OLD ORDER AND TRAFFICKERS WITH THE NEEDS OF
THE PEOPLE
Reprinted from El Diario, Lima (source: La Nueva
Bandera, Vol 1, Number 3)
MIM is reprinting this article on NGOs from El
Diario because this is an important way that the
United States is involved in imperialist ventures
in Peru and throughout the world. Many leftists
believe that NGOs are potential progressive
alternatives to revolutionary work. This article
begins the work of debunking this myth about NGOs.
MIM hopes to do future articles about NGOs in
other countries: If you have any information about
NGOs anywhere, please send it to us for use in
these future articles.
CLASS CHARACTER OF THE NGOS
NGOs within the framework of the old state, are
associations, centers or private institutions
which carry out "non-profit" activities. As such,
the economic base of the NGOs are part of the
superstructure of our society.
As institutions created and protected by the
decadent state, the NGOs serve only to defend the
existing system of economic relations. It is a
fact that virtually all NGOs collaborate with the
dominant class through the government in place.
NGOs contain and placate sectors of the population
with the specific goal of winning them over to
reformism and counterrevolution, and thus trying
to contain and stop the advance of the People's
War.
Our assessment is based on a document published by
Peru's National Association of NGOs. It reads, "we
are working at regional levels, supporting
macroeconomic programs." They collaborate directly
with the old State, unconditionally serving the
government in its plans to reinvigorate
bureaucratic capitalism. The same document states:
"It is necessary to determine where the role of
the State ends and where the NGOs work begins. The
NGOs cannot and should not do it all. Nor should
the State. The equitable distribution of tasks is
not a simple thing. No doubt it is indispensable."
Despite these admissions, NGOs pretend to be the
promoters of development. These above statements
expose the reactionary class character of the NGOs
before the people. The fact of the matter is that
NGOs squander the foreign technical cooperation
and aid with the support of the State in exchange
for trying to put the population to sleep and
attempting to isolate the people (too late) from
the path of People's War led by their political
vanguard, the PCP; which in perspective is
advancing the conquest of power countrywide and is
currently evolving in the level of strategic
equilibrium.
INTERNATIONAL FUNDING IN EXCHANGE
FOR REACTIONARY TASKS
The influx of funds to the NGOs in Peru comes from
other NGOs in the U.S., European social democracy,
revisionism, and the World Bank among other
financial sources. But these "grants" do not come
without defined objectives. Quite to the contrary,
they seek a direct economic benefit from these
donations (to obtain new profits or to maintain
their investments), at the same time to maintain
and/or to change a political situation in
accordance with their interests.
In Peru, the promoters and managers of these NGOs
are in their majority the big wheels of the
reactionary parties (Libertad, PPC, AP, APRA,
SODE, CAMBIO 90, Nueva Mayoria, Perez de Cuellar,
etc), the reformists and revisionists of all
stripes (UDP, PUM, Unidad, PSR, Trotskyites, MDI,
MAS, Patria Roja, Bolsheviks, etc.) to which must
be added the sellers of happiness after life
(Evangelicals, Catholics, Lutherans, Mormons,
etc.). These politicians and clergy have been
using funds provided by the International
Technical Cooperation, ensured by the landowning-
bureaucratic State through its inefficient and
incapable National Planning Institute, which is
the state organism charged with registering these
private beneficiary institutions with external
resources.
In exchange for contributing to the decadent
State, NGOs have a green light in the distribution
of funds in the manner that suits them best. This
is how their executives, advisors, and their
associates are the highest paid in the country,
including constant pleasure trips abroad under the
pretext of attending international events, thus
selling information, begging for more "aid' or
seeking funding of some desktop investigation.
Are all NGOs' activities "non-profit"? No. In
reality, they act like any commercial enterprises,
obtaining fat profits and earnings which are
wasted and enjoyed by a few bosses and big wheels
of the NGOs, leaving a minimal "utility" or "loss"
which then becomes the liability of the
institution.
Such is the level of corruption in the NGOs, and
the notoriety with which they act with the funds
they receive. For example, the pro-government
daily El Comercio (page 2, Suplemento Dominical,
10/27/91) states with regard to the allocation of
$10 million dollars destined to Peru by the U.S.
AID: "Four million for the state, and the
remaining 6 million dollars shall be for one
single NGO. Then follows the manner in which it
will use this money, which for us is not a small
sum." It also states: "Therefore, they agree that
these organizations don't impair their objectives
and [they] become simple instruments for a few to
be able to receive high remunerations, much higher
than they would normally receive in the public
sector as well as in the private sector." This
confirms how these resources are managed, and how
funds are distributed in the payment of salaries,
criticism that comes from their own lips.
Another daily on October 13, 1991, states that AP
congressman Ruiz "...has officially requested that
an investigative commission be formed to examine
in depth the manner in which the hundreds of
thousands of dollars which are annually received
by the NGOs are used, every time they come working
in areas which need help." "In some of these NGOs,
their main goal is to pay elevated salaries to
their members, which are based on the need for
investigation, attention or study of national
problems; they worry more about obtaining
extremely high remunerations. It is said that
there are currently salaries which surpass five
thousand dollars a month."
For the masses, the fundamental problem is not in
the management of the funds. It is to unmask their
counterrevolutionary role, since they work for the
international monopolies and the old reactionary
state. They work against the future of the class
and the people who are building the New State in
Peru.
THE NGOS AND THE LIBERAL CURRENT
The leaders of the NGOs, like good charlatans,
adjust their "analysis of categories" and their
work according to the situation. Following their
chameleon-like policy, they adapt themselves to
the needs of their masters: The European Social
Democracy, The U.S. and Canadian NGOs, the
revisionists, AID, International Development Bank,
IMF, The World Bank, etc. The businessmen of the
NGOs have been worried because the liberal current
is marking time for the imperialist powers,
revisionists and European countries, who fear
seeing cutbacks in their ample budgets originating
in these countries. However, they have easily
found new ways to stay afloat and to obtain
financing from other sources as well as to finance
themselves....
In the same manner, these institutions, like good
defenders of the current system of exploitative
relations, are adapting their strategies and
actions to the reactionary policies which are
being implemented by the genocidal Fujimori, such
as the marches for peace in the poor neighborhoods
(e.g., Villa El Salvador), marches for peace in
the wealthy Miraflores barrio, the organization of
counterrevolutionary urban patrols and the
collaboration with information to the National
Police and the Armed Forces.
THE NGO'S MAIN FIELDS OF ACTION
... It is estimated that there are more than three
thousand organizations working throughout the
country. Nevertheless, the problems of the old
state have increased: hunger and unemployment
gallop through the streets and factories,
epidemics menace the population through the three
regions and 23 departments, children are dying of
malnutrition, education has become elitist,
factory production has declined (factories and
workshops continue to close), the judiciary is
more corrupt each day, the police and armed forces
are more demoralized each day, the tyrants CCD
"parliamentarians" cannot even maintain their role
as buffoons (nothing that they do can awaken the
people's interest); Fujimori and his lackeys of
executive power (ministers) have been exposed
(even by the same wife of Fujimori) as bribe-
takers and servile stocking suckers of
imperialism, principally the U.S., without
national dignity, deflowered by the Yankees. Faced
with this panorama of injustice, the New State in
construction rises up clean and shining, in whose
Bases of Support life is crystaline, without
pestilence, selfishness and most importantly
without corruption. The glorious PCP leads the
People's Republic of Peru in formation and its
Central Committee is the center of its leadership.
No NGOs or reactionary thesis or "investigation"
will prevent the triumph of the revolution which
is the only solution to all the ills that today
plague the Peruvian people.
* * *
PAPER TIGERS
WASHINGTON D.C. POVERTY BOOMS
Household income fell about 13% in the last year
in Washington, D.C., according to the Census
Bureau. During that single year, the proportion of
people living below the official poverty line
jumped from 20.3% to 26.4%. The poverty rate is
the highest since the Bureau started keeping
figures on the city, 14 years ago.
To be considered "poor" by this measure, a family
of four must have a total income of less than
$14,763. Compared to most places, D.C. has a high
cost of living.
The dramatic change reflects rich and middle class
people leaving the city, but also a worsening of
conditions for the people remaining in the city.
Some 40,000 people have left the city in the last
four years, most of them earning more than $30,000
per year. That decrease in well-off people by
itself would drop the average income in the city.
But the absolute numbers of poor people increased,
too. In the last year 22,000 more people began
receiving food stamps, and 800 more people started
getting Aid to Families with Dependent Children
(AFDC). Since 1989 the number of people on AFDC
increased from about 18,000 to more than 27,000.
Almost all the poor people in the District are
members of oppressed nations - mostly Black and
Latino.
- MC12
Notes: Washington Post 10/8/94, p. B1.
PIGS STEP ON NEW IDEAS
UMass, Amherst - At the new student Convocation
Ceremony on September 10, security guards at the
student-funded Mullins Center hassled activists
distributing literature, assaulting one. The
Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) was
distributing MIM Notes, the Alliance for Student
Power (ASP) was distributing The Liberator, and
the Cannabis Reform Coalition (CRC) was
distributing flyers in support of their
organization and marijuana legalization. These
three separate organizations each wanted to
introduce the new students to politics at UMass as
quickly as possible, hence Convocation. The
enthusiasm new students expressed towards MIM, the
ASP and the CRC was likely a factor encouraging
the pigs to act.
At first, the activists distributed literature
where the students were congregating, outside the
doors, waiting to get in. The ease with which we
distributed literature spurred the Mullins pigs to
order us back across the street. But the bulk of
the students were already on the Mullins side of
the street. So we protested and tried to move
back. One Mullins guard told a CRC activist that
the Mullins Center was not public property,
because they lease it from the state. Therefore
the first amendment didn't apply.
A Mullins pig attempted to seize a stack of
temporarily unattended Cannabis Reform Coalition
literature and bring it into the building.
Luckily, a CRC activist was able to liberate the
lit from the guard. A CRC activist was also
physically assaulted by a Mullins Center pig who
pushed him all the way from the doors to across
the street.
When students starting to walk to Convocation
along the Mullins side of the street, the
activists returned to that side of the street, but
further up the street, not on the Mullins
"property". The Mullins guards returned, pushing
the activists further and further up the street.
When one CRC activist starting yelling about the
Mullins Center, a real kop took his ID and called
it in.
The three organizations were able to distribute a
good amount of literature, but we would have been
more successful closer to Mullins. But the bigger
question remains: Is the Mullins Center trying to
set a precedent for restricting the flow of
information at their events?
The Mullins Center example is a more proof of
MIM's point that there are no rights, only power
struggles. The Mullins pigs repressed these three
groups *because they could*. Sometimes we can win
a victory by getting the enemy to follow their own
rules, like the First Amendment. But this is just
a short term, or tactical, victory.
We must base our strategy on building our own,
independent power of the oppressed. We will use
this power to destroy that of the old order as we
replace it with the new. Building our own media
and our own distribution network to serve the
people is building independent power. So defending
our ability to distribute is an important battle.
NO "FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION" IN SOUTH KOREA
For years, South Korean university students have
admired Kim Il Sung, the leader of their
compatriots in the North. When the sorrow
following his death sparked riots, calls for
repression began coming from all sides. There is a
fear that "leftist radicalism" is "taking over the
student movement." Major Seoul dailies that had
once supported the students' freedom of expression
now condemn them. The independent paper Hankuk
Ilbo declares: "No society tolerates an internal
enemy that seeks to destroy its institutions from
within."
The moral of the story is: bourgeois democracies
can afford some freedom of expression as long as
people are expressing the right things. Once the
progressive elements start having influence,
repression is in order.
Notes: World Press Review 10/94, p. 24.
SPARTS SIDE WITH MILLIONAIRES
The September 16 issue of the Spartacist League
newspaper Workers Vanguard demonstrates the
Sparts' potential as a vanguard of imperialist
nation unity. Masquerading as Marxists, the Sparts
devote a full page of their newspaper to
championing the baseball players' strike. The
Workers Vanguard begins by arguing that the
players are exploited, and mixes this coverage
with reporting on the struggles of Azanian workers
in South Africa. This inane comparison belittles
the struggles of genuinely oppressed Third World
peoples by equating them with the struggles of
property-owning sports heroes.
The Spartacist League goes beyond many social-
democrats and revisionists by attempting to
organize the oppressed and exploited for the
interests of the imperialist nation petty-
bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie. The Sparts pose left
by making the ridiculous call for baseball players
to defend "the incredibly oppressed Haitian women
who stitch baseballs for a dime an hour." In
practice, the Sparts have one goal: greater
imperialist unity and greater oppression.
The Spartacist League is a vehicle of class
collaboration. The imperialist nation labor
aristocracy, petty-bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie,
are all renamed exploited workers by the
Spartacist League. According to the Spartacist
League, anyone hired must be exploited, or they
wouldn't have been hired. The Sparts hope to unite
doctors (supposedly hired and exploited by
hospitals), baseball players (supposedly hired and
exploited by club owners), accountants (supposedly
hired and exploited by banks), chief executive
officers of public corporations (CEOs like Lee
Iacocca, hired by boards of directors and
salaried) and everyone else who can claim to be
hired by someone else. By counting almost
everybody in the imperialist countries as a
"worker," the Spartacist League is an excellent
vehicle for imperialist nation unity.
The Sparts report that "much is made of the
average player's salary of nearly $1.2 million,
but the majority of players get barely a third of
that during their brief (five-year) 'career' in
the 'bigs.'" The Sparts want oppressed people to
feel sympathy for baseball players who have such a
rough life being paid as well as or better than
most lawyers for engaging in a leisure time
activity.
The Sparts are far removed from a correct analysis
of class struggle: "what the baseball bosses
really want is a return to the days of the reserve
clause, when ball players were semi-slaves to be
exchanged like bubble gum cards. The current
strike, which has really stuck it to these
aspiring slave-owners, is a good thing for the
working class." These assholes don't even know
what slavery is.
Reading the Sparts' demagogic bologna, one would
think there is no petty-bourgeoisie, no labor
aristocracy and almost no bourgeoisie for that
matter, when in fact these classes constitute a
majority of the population within U.S. borders.
The Spartacist League, like all Trotskyist
organizations, is far removed from the interests
of the international proletariat. This is why no
one has ever made a revolution through Trotskyism.
- MC5
Notes: Workers Vanguard 9/16/94, p. 3, 11.
ROOSEVELT'S "ROUGH RIDERS" RAGE AGAIN
Our tears go out to George Bachrach, the self-
described "liberal" who lost the Democratic Party
primary election for Governor of Massachusetts to
Mark Roosevelt, the "New Democrat," who supports
the death penalty and "three strikes you're out"
as the answer to crime, just like Governor Weld.
With the Republican Weld facing Democrat
Roosevelt, as usual the bourgeois elections will
be boring, dominated by slight perceptions
regarding differences of approaches, all
historically proven to fail with regard to crime.
MIM has pointed out already [MIM Notes 93, October
1994] that even Bachrach, the supposed candidate
of the left, jumped on the bandwagon to "fight
crime" by putting more people in prison, more than
Amerika's leading status as prison-state of the
world would indicate.
Since Roosevelt would like to stress his
similarities to Weld on crime, except for
"domestic violence," where like Bachrach, he
thinks Weld is not "tough enough," he is stressing
his differences over the planned casino desired by
the Wampanoag nation. According to Roosevelt, his
opposition to the potentially billion-dollar
annual revenue casino is the central issue
separating him from Weld, who Roosevelt paints as
a corrupt politician with no ethical strength to
resist the lobbying of "special interests" with
great money.
Hence, the Democratic Party candidate for governor
has made opposition to Wampanoag self-
determination a centerpiece of his campaign.
Currently, the United States government does not
even recognize the Wampanoag as a "tribe" entitled
to that level of negotiating status by law.
MIM believes the Wampanoag are entitled to the
status of nationhood and to the land they are
claiming within Massachusetts borders. If they
want to have a casino within their territory and
invite in white foreigners and others, that is
their business. Roosevelt's campaign is
inappropriate because it ignores that the
Wampanoag are compromising with Massachusetts
government just to discuss the issue. It is not
appropriate for Roosevelt to oppose the casino
flat-out and instead, he should be discussing
relations between the people of Massachusetts and
the Wampanoag.
During his campaign to defeat two bourgeois
opponents for the nomination of the Democratic
Party, Roosevelt ran television ads bragging that
he is a great-grandson of President Theodore
Roosevelt. What better proof of the minority
nature of the ruling class could there be? The old
president's great-grandson is a contender for an
important political office. What is even better is
that Roosevelt's opponent went to the same college
and graduate school - Harvard College and then
Harvard Law School. To top it all off, Weld is
married to a great-granddaughter of the same
Theodore Roosevelt, graduate of Harvard and 26th
president.
Note: Boston Globe 9/2194, p. 25.
APACHE NATION ATTACKED WITH NUCLEAR WASTE
The Northern States Power Company has targeted the
Mesclaro Apache Nation (in the US state of New
Mexico) as the "temporary" storage site for the
radioactive waste produced by the company.(1)
"Apache people, as a group have been diabolically
and deliberately excluded [from the decision]...
Many tribal members are opposed to siting nuclear
waste storage on our homeland, for they believe it
will be a violation of our sacred lands and sacred
mountain, Sierra Blanca."(1)
The Apache government is bought off by the company
and its illusionary promise that the storage site
will help develop the nation and bring economic
prosperity. Whether the leadership receives direct
kickbacks from industrial capitalists or whether
leadership sees no alternative development option,
the ultimate control lies in the hands of the
oppressor nation developers and the Amerikan
government. There has been no direct consultation
of the people and the proposal has happened
without the general consensus of its enrolled
members.(1)
Apache activist, Rufina Laws said, "I believe that
the Bureau of Indian Affairs is unconditionally
cooperating and is in collusion through the
continued use of an incredibly unjust document,
the Tribal Election Code, upon which the Chino
Administration operates..."(1) Wendell Chino, the
tribal president for three decades, appoints the
Election Board which oversees the tribal
elections, as well as the future (rubber stamping)
vote on the issue of the site. Chino defends the
election process by saying that it is in
accordance with Amerikan democracy.(2)
Chino advocates the dump: "The storage of spent
fuel is a 21st century industry with the attendant
complement of high-tech, high-wage jobs not often
available to Indian tribes."(2) However, high-paid
waste dump operators are imported from the
company. They are not people from the oppressed
nations where the sites are placed.
Oppressed nations attempting to develop within the
confines of imperialist capitalism must first
choose the path to take. Two-line struggle between
Mao and Liu Shao-ch'i was in part between swift
development without an underlying political and
ideological base or development with a dialectical
materialist analysis. Efficient modernization
alone did not lead to progress in China and
economic prosperity for a few within the First
Nations will not lead to self-determination.
With the international division of labor the way
that it is, oppressed nations are repressed from
developing into a competitive force. Mao argued
that development without the consideration of
politics would only lead back to a semi-colonial,
semi-feudal status for China. Without
consideration for the long term ecologically sound
and non-economically exploitative development
pattern, the status of the First Nations will not
be one of self-sufficiency or independence from
the domination of the white nation. Dependency
upon capitalist political or economic kickbacks or
promises of prosperity does not equal self-
determination. The Mescalero Apache Nation must
not rely on the economic development promises of
radioactive imperialist pigs.
NOTES:
1. Albuquerque Journal 5/2/94, p. A9.
2. Albuquerque Journal 5/10/94.
* * *
FILM REVIEW: QUIZ SHOW
This movie details a story of the 1950s through
which many Amerikans gained some of the cynicism
necessary to view mainstream TV. Based on the true
story about a fixed TV game show, Twenty One, the
moral to the story is one that revolutionaries are
familiar with: you can't trust big business and
you can't beat big business through the legal
system.
This is a movie for well-off Amerikans to learn
from, but for the oppressed peoples of the world,
corruption in a game show is tame compared to the
murder and destruction big corporations engage in
on a global scale. The logical conclusion to the
lesson that you can't beat the big corporate
owners at the small time fixing of a game show is
that you certainly can't beat them in the
legal/electoral arena on questions of
environmental destruction, exploitation, and
murder.
The best part of this movie was the conclusion
that a Harvard law student with his good
intentions and prestigious position, can't defeat
corporate Amerika with it's money and power. If
you want to change the world, revolutionary
science is the only way to do it.
- MC17
FILM REVIEW: TIME COP
Jean Claude VanDamme played the good cop in this
movie about time travel and political corruption.
A good picture of the willingness of politicians
to go to any length to achieve their goals, this
film fell far short of a thumbs up rating on a MIM
scale of revolutionary politics.
The bad senator tries to use time travel to make
himself wealthy enough to buy the presidency. He
is willing to murder and steal to achieve his
ends, and he succeeds in buying off much of the
time police force to help him out. But he is the
only corrupt politician in the movie. When he is
eliminated, everyone can live happily ever after.
A far cry from the reality of capitalist politics,
this movie preaches the typical liberal dogma that
we just need to get rid of a few bad politicians
and then things will be ok. Revolutionaries know
better and are clear that it is the system that
breeds the bad politician, not the genetic makeup
of their parents.
Go see this movie for the action and adventure,
not for the politics.
* * *
NORTH AMERIKAN YOUTH AND WOMEN MAKE PLEDGE
by MC5
The conclusion of the 1994 MIM Congress in August
brought to light that North American youth have
made a remarkable pledge to the international
proletariat: to make up the ground lost by the
older generation's revisionism.
The CPUSA is now well-known to have frittered away
the lives of many one-time revolutionaries by
falling into absolutely decrepit revisionism.
Thanks to the collapse of the Soviet Union, now
the CPUSA's descendants - the Committees of
Correspondence - sit around debating if Leninism
(not Maoism of course) has any relevance at all.
Of the 1960s generation, the Black Panthers were
smashed and the descendants of SDS often seem
half-baked when SDS managed to leave anything
behind at all. Today, MIM celebrates the
generation of punk, grunge and rap, not the
generation of the original Woodstock and we pledge
that this generation of youth will make the
difference, and succeed where our predecessors did
not stay the course or failed to have a realistic
approach. MIM will do this where a commitment of a
whole life time to mundane tasks may be necessary
without even seeing socialism.
With grim and ceaseless dedication, a new
generation seeks to put the Maoist parties of
North America on the map - with little help from
anyone over 40. While the Third World proletariat
has heard of the "collapse of communism" and the
supposed invincibility of "the American way," let
it also hear that the youth of North America
already know better.
MIM does not wish to overestimate our
accomplishments or brag at the expense of the
international communist movement. Nonetheless, MIM
is proud of some things we believe to be
unprecedented in the international communist
movement.
One is our ten year success in recruiting youth
and putting youth in responsible positions. In
many parties throughout the world, the tradition
is not to recruit a comrade until properly
seasoned and beyond age 25. Prior to that time,
youth take roles in youth leagues, where among
other things, they do not observe democratic
centralism. MIM means no disrespect to those
parties with this tradition, but North American
youth have decided to dedicate themselves to MIM
and take up responsible posts in order to make
good on the ground lost to revisionism and
counter-revolution.
MIM and its predecessors have always had teenagers
for editors and people in their twenties as
ambassadors to foreign communist parties - in
addition to other highly honorable youth who do
not join the party but take up a practice as MIM
Associates.
Where Amerikan culture is summed up by "What does
the billboard say? Play, play and forget the
movement" some North American youth have given up
their play time to live under strenuous rules of
democratic centralism. Yet, when we look at our
young Third World comrades giving their lives in
armed struggle against U.S. imperialism, how can
we deny that North American youth should also make
sacrifices?
Something else we are proud of at MIM is that we
have managed the leadership transition problem.
History shows in all the major communist parties
in the world, the death or imprisonment of
communist leaders is a great moment for the
revisionists to make their move and kill the
communist movement from within. Meanwhile, MIM has
had teens and twenty-somethings move in and
through the leadership again and again. It is not
accomplished without difficulty, but it is
something we are gaining ever greater experience
in.
To accomplish these great things would be enough,
but MIM has also managed without a personality
cult. Admittedly in our first years we were too
anarchist in not crediting individual leaders at
all - so comrades did not even have pseudonyms,
because there was complete anonymity. Yet, now we
do hold comrades responsible and give them credit
for their lines.
In China, where individualism was never popular,
the personality cult of Mao was almost a good
thing opposing Confucianism. In comparison with
the situation in North America where Anglo-Saxon
individualism is so rampant, we have had to stress
processes affecting the whole party and the need
to follow leaders.
The MIM youth know that they must study and train
even more arduously than their counterparts in
China and the old Soviet Union, because of the
failure of their elders. For some comrades so
young, it is unreasonable to ask that they have
already read "a dozen or so" or "a few dozen"
Marxist classics as Mao advised even when he
opposed book-worship. Yet, the MIM youth take
responsible positions and pledge to make up the
ground. When questions of theory come up, they do
not shirk them, because it is only with science
that it is possible to stand one's ground firmly
as a communist and answer the many challenges that
arise, especially for communists in North America.
For this reason, the vast majority of youth in MIM
were able to rebuke the anarchist wind raised by
several comrades at the 1994 Congress. For all
youth in the party, the anarchist wind raised anew
the issue of how to defend MIM's cardinal
principles without fail both in recruiting and in
internal struggle against revisionism when that
becomes necessary.
In short, it is a great burden to shoulder for the
youth and the whole party seeking to play catch-up
so that we can join our comrades in Peru and the
Philippines in a more equal way. Walking into MIM
is to walk into arduous struggle. It can be hell,
but we know it is the hell bequeathed to us and we
cannot wish it away. The hellfires we walk through
are still as yet nothing compared with the gunfire
liberation struggles in the Third World face.
Without the benefit of enemy gunfire, we must
temper ourselves even more through criticism and
self-criticism or we will surely wilt under real
fire if we don't fall into reformism first.
As for youth, the same applies for the people who
happen to have a female biology in MIM. The
bourgeoisie says that women and youth cannot rule,
but MIM disproves it on a daily basis. For some
time, MIM has had a leadership composed of at
least two-thirds women, not by quota, but thanks
to arduous struggle.
We did not get here by taking classes with social
workers or by studying Gloria Steinem on self-
esteem. Instead, as fierce as the struggle against
revisionism, there is a struggle against pseudo-
feminism. Again, in the battle against pseudo-
feminism, we have learned that there are rewards
of struggle. The biological women of MIM have
countered both the decadent ideology of leisure
time in North America and the related notion that
women should sit back and enjoy patriarchy. In
this struggle, the MIM comrades have not forgotten
for a single minute that they lead a relatively
privileged life - a male life - compared with the
women of the Third World.
The MIM youth and women have pledged to go through
hell's fires - leadership transitions, obeying
democratic-centralism, criticism and self-
criticism, fighting pseudo-feminism and steeling
themselves in theoretical study. When they are
done with the devil, they will be ready like Mao
said "to storm Heaven itself."
* * *
UNDER LOCK & KEY
AFRIKAN NAMES SPARK STRUGGLE
GREETINGS OF LIBERATION!
I was moved like everybody else this Thursday
morning 8/18/94, so my little study group was
split up. There's only one person on this set that
studies ndugu (brother) Hannibal! Who is breathing
on me with that New Afrikan Independence Movement.
I'm writing to let you know that they've placed
metal stripes on the doors' sides and bottoms.
This is done to stop us from assisting each other
in legal matters and political studies. This may
have stopped us for now from passing literature
and other things, but they haven't stopped the
"poor righteous teachers" from putting the light
on young ndugus like myself.
On August 9th, the goons ran in on one of my
Muslim ndugus and a European, who showed support
for my ndugu! The pigs came in and asked X if he
wanted rec. There's a catch to it: they called him
by his slave name (S/N). So he didn't answer them.
Later that day, about two hours later, he asked
one of the pigs what's up with his rec. The pig in
reply said X had refused his rec. Note: he never
refused; he just didn't answer that S/N. So he
kicked on the door and they ran in on him.
In the process of this, the other prisoner kicked
on his door telling the pigs, "If you're going to
roll on him, you have to roll on me." So they
ended up stripping both of them down in four-way
restraints. X was also put in a bodystrap to
prevent him from moving, with a hockey mask on his
face. They are brutalizing us at this camp.
All of this was done just because my ndugu won't
answer to a S/N. Here at this camp, even if you
change your name "legally," as they call it, they
will not recognize it. Myself and many of my
ndugus have liberated ourselves from these
colonized names, but they are not recognizing them
just so they can keep beating us physically and
mentally. I say mentally because several ndugus
have deteriorated since entering MCC.
POMAJA SISI SIMAMA NGUVU KU VITA WA WATI!
TOGETHER WE STAND; POWER TO THE PEOPLE'S WAR!
- In struggle,
an Indiana prisoner, 8/19/94
P.S. I also received the MIM Notes. As always, I
enjoyed it. Keep it coming!
D.C.-AREA GUARDS RAPE WOMEN PRISONERS
...[I]n a class-action suit filed against the
Corrections Department,... 10 anonymous female
inmates and former inmates...allege that they were
regularly subjected to abuse and mistreated
because they are women....[A] 21-year-old
testified that she was in jail for a kidnapping
conviction and in the infirmary because she was
vomiting, when a lieutenant tried to make her
perform oral sex and then ordered her into the
bathroom and forced her to have sexual
intercourse.
When she complained, jail officials "acted like
they didn't want to talk to me," the 21-year-old
said. She said she was not taken to D.C. General
Hospital for medical care and testing until almost
24 hours after the assault....
A current inmate in the Correctional Treatment
Facility, a women's prison at Lorton [Virginia],
testified that a corrections sergeant touched her
breasts and vagina and asked her to kiss him.
She said she complained to several authorities,
but he continued to be assigned occasionally to
her part of the prison.
The inmate, who is in prison for assault with a
deadly weapon, also testified that when she went
into labor during her pregnancy she was taken to
D.C. General in handcuffs. After her baby was
born, she said, both her legs and one of her arms
were chained to her hospital bed.
A third inmate, who is in prison for armed robbery
and assault, said she felt coerced to have sex
with a guard in exchange for rides to her aunt's
house during four monthly furloughs....
- Washington Post, 6/13/94. Clipping provided by
Claustrophobia, the newsletter of the Anarchist
Black Cross-D.C., P.O. Box 77432, Washington,
D.C. 20013.
D.C.'S WOMEN PRISONERS ABUSED WITH INADEQUATE
MEDICAL CARE
The District provides "deficient and "inadequate"
obstetric and gynecological care to female
prisoners, a California expert on prison health
care testified yesterday, as women continued to
present their case in a class-action suit against
the D.C. Department of Corrections.
Benjamin Major's assessment followed two days of
testimony by inmates, including a woman who said
she gave birth in her cell last July before
medical personnel arrived and another who said she
waited 18 months for a biopsy after complaining of
a painful, leaky breast.
The suit, filed in the name of 10 inmates and
former inmates, says female prisoners' civil and
constitutional rights are being violated by
conditions in the D.C. jail, the Correctional
Treatment Facility and the Lorton Correctional
Complex. The plaintiffs allege that women are
sexually harassed and assaulted, denied
appropriate medical care, kept in unsanitary
conditions and allowed to participate in fewer
educational and recreational programs than men....
The suit asks U.S. District Judge June L. Green to
impose 53 pages worth of requirements on the
department. The plaintiffs say that would remedy
problems of discrimination and reduce sexual
misconduct.
Since testimony began Monday, five inmates and
former inmates and two experts have testified
about conditions in the D.C. penal system. All of
the inmates are testifying anonymously because
they fear reprisals.
Major, an obstetrician and gynecologist who is in
charge of prenatal care for women in the
Sacramento County jails, testified that Pap smears
- which test for abnormal cervical cells - were
not done in nine of the 70 D.C. cases he reviewed,
although department policy requires such tests
within a month after an inmate is admitted.
Major said some pregnant inmates were not given
proper food, vitamins and classes, and he faulted
the lack of counseling for the deaths of two
inmates' babies shortly after birth. Major said he
also found that the prison staff recorded women's
symptoms on charts with drawings of men with the
genitals crossed out....
Earlier, an inmate testified that she gave birth
in her cell at the Correctional Treatment Facility
after being in labor for more than 12 hours.
The inmate, who is serving two to six years for
cocaine possession, said corrections officials
sent her - in handcuffs and leg irons - to D.C.
General Hospital when she first went into labor on
the night of July 14, but a hospital doctor said
she was not yet ready and sent her back to prison.
The next morning, she was taken to a court
appearance, but the labor pains were so intense
she could not walk, she said. Court officials sent
her back to the prison facility, where she asked
for medical care. By the time a prison physician's
assistant arrived, the baby had been born.
"[I was] mad. I know I could have stayed at D.C.
General," she said. "They should have kept me
there." Amato said the baby was born only a half-
hour after the inmate returned from court.
The inmate with breast problems said she missed
two appointments with a specialist because she and
her jailers were late leaving Lorton. She said she
waited four more months for a breast biopsy
because the medical staff made four scheduling
mistakes.
The inmate, who is serving 14 years to life for
second-degree murder and two other charges, also
said she is HIV-positive and has lost 70 pounds
since 1992. When Amato asked why she did not ask
for care during prison officials' daily medical
rounds, the inmate replied that she was afraid
other inmates would see her records because they
are kept in an open cart during the rounds.
- Washington Post, 6/16/94. Clipping provided by
Claustrophobia.
VIRGINIA ABOLISHES PAROLE,
DECLARES WAR AGAINST OPPRESSED
The Virginia legislature passed a new crime bill
on September 30, abolishing parole and increasing
sentences for "violent offenders" by 500%. The
construction costs for the 27 new prisons and more
guards to control the soon to be increased prison
population are upwards of $1 billion, but the
lawmakers forgot to stick around to figure out how
to pay for the increased fascist police state.
After some initial stalling tactics by the
Virginia Democrats, the bill passed with flying
colors through the Virginia House and Senate with
little opposition. The opposition that did exist
was mostly from the Black lawmakers who rightly
declared the law to be racist. Democrats patted
themselves on the back for helping to pass a
slightly less costly bill that only increased the
sentences for violent offenders by 500% rather
than the 700% that Governor George Allen had
originally proposed.
Democratic lawmakers were also so proud that they
included provisions for less costly "alternative
incarceration" as well as allowing elderly
prisoners the possibility of early release! This
valiant bipartisan effort at locking up more
oppressed nation youth in Virginia than ever
before is just one more example of how there is no
difference between Democrats and Republicans; both
are equally promoting the interests of the
oppressor and mowing down the oppressed on their
way to their re-election campaigns.
George Allen had the laughable gall to claim that
now as a result of this bill "Virginia has ...
restored integrity and honesty and accountability
to our criminal justice system."(1)
The opponents of this bill had little opportunity
to publicize their views at the town meetings and
fora organized by Governor Allen, who even got the
Department of Motor Vehicles workers to work
overtime stuffing envelopes inviting Virginians to
a pro-bill rally. At the rally, Allen lied to the
public about the real effects of his bill,
claiming that some well-known victims would have
benefited from the bill, when actually those
crimes would not have been covered. Allen later
apologized for the "misinformation."(2)
James Austin, the executive vice president of the
National Council on Crime and Delinquency, said
about the crime bill: "All it is is a theory.
There's no evidence in the world that shows this
is going to reduce crime even as much as [Allen]
says it will."(1)
In the weeks before the "abolish parole" crime
bill was passed in Virginia there was an uprising
at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarrett,
Virginia, where small fires erupted and 170 of the
2,440 prisoners were evacuated for several hours.
But the whole incident was over in a matter of
hours, with all the prisoners "safely" returned to
lockdown. Most of Virginia's prisoners have been
on lockdown since that time, and officials were
concerned about the climate in prisons with the
impending crime bill in the Virginia legislature.
Officials were not sure whether the disturbance
had anything to do with the proposal to toughen
sentences and abolish parole, "they acknowledged
that tensions have been running high."
Opponents of the crime package called the plan
"Allen's Attica." It remains to be seen if there
will be another full-scale prison uprising on the
level of the Attica rebellion where prisoner
demands were well worked out and collectively
presented. In any case, slamming the bars behind
more and more oppressed nation youth for "violent
crimes" (imperialist rape and plunder are not
included in the definition of violent crime for
this new bill) will only increase the rage of the
oppressed, and kindle new revolutionary fires.
- MC31
Notes:
1. The Washington Post 10/1/94, p. C1.
2. The Washington Post 9/20/94, p. B1.
AMERIKA: PRISONS FOR THE PEOPLE
The United States is putting the people under lock
and key at an ever-increasing rate. New statistics
compiled by the Sentencing Project show that the
rate of incarceration in Amerika increased
dramatically from 1989 to 1992-93.(1) At the same
time, the U.S. Justice Department has released
figures showing that a majority of federal
prisoners (58%) are doing time for drug charges,
and 18% of federal inmates are non-U.S. citizens.
Combining the most recent numbers - 1993 for
prisons and 1992 for jails - the Sentencing
Project calculated that the United States has 1.3
million people behind bars, more than 600,000 of
them Black. The overall rate of incarceration for
Black men was 3,822 per 100,000, or 3.8%. For
whites the rate was 306 per 100,000, or 0.3%.
The United States had a 22% increase in the
incarceration rate between 1989 and 1992-93.
The overall rate for the United States in 1992-93
was 519 per 100,000. The United States spends
about $26.8 billion on incarceration per year -
$11.6 billion to incarcerate Black men.
Selected incarceration rates:
U.S. Black men: 3,822
Russia: 558
South Africa: 368
U.S. whites: 306
Singapore: 229
Hong Kong: 179
Poland: 160
Canada: 116
England/Wales: 93
France: 84
Germany: 80
Japan: 36
India: 23
While still much lower than the United States,
prison rates in many European countries have
increased in the last decade. For example, the
Netherlands' incarceration rate doubled in the
1980s.
The study refutes common assumption that great
increases in imprisonment result from increased
violence. From 1980 to 1992 there was a 155%
increase in new court commitments to state prison.
Drug, property and public order convictions
accounted for 84% of that increase; the other 16%
of the increase was attributed to increased
"violent" crime convictions.
At the same time, a new Justice Department report
shows how much the increase in federal prisoners
is connected to drug charges. The percentage of
federal prisoners who are behind bars for drug
charges rose from 38% in 1986, to 58% in 1991, to
62% now.(2)
About 70% of first-time convictions, 85% of non-
citizens, and 66% of women in federal prison are
in for drug charges. Twenty-one percent of state
prisoners are in for drug charges.
The Justice Department also said 18% of federal
prisoners are non-citizens.
Noting that many countries report higher rates of
certain crimes than the United States, the
Sentencing Project concludes: "While it remains
possible that crime rates account for part of the
difference in rates of incarceration, the
magnitude of the difference between the U.S. and
other nations is so great that overall crime rates
cannot account for the disparity."
MIM concludes: The United States pursues massive
incarceration in a systematic policy of repression
and exploitation aimed chiefly at Blacks, Latinos
and poor immigrants. "Crime" is at most a
secondary consideration in the overall purpose of
this oppression - and stopping violence is
completely irrelevant - although it is a very
important ideological justification in the
dominant culture.
MIM says the real criminals are those who exploit
billions of people at the barrel of a gun, destroy
their land and attempt to rob them of their
humanity. Locking up millions of people is but one
brutal aspect of this great crime against
humanity.
- MC12
Notes:
1. The Sentencing Project, "Americans Behind Bars:
The International Use of Incarceration, 1992
1993." 918 F. St., N.W., Suite 501, Washington,
D.C. 20004.
2. Washington Post 10/3/94, p. A18.
NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS
The Connecticut Department of Corrections has a
history of playing catch-up, and is slowly moving
toward the twenty-first century with a quickening
pace of brutality and policies of chaining men to
their beds.
The practice of chaining men to their beds is part
of the new wave terror tactics being used to
maintain total control through fear. Men are being
chained down for periods of up to 24 hours. I was
chained to my bed for 27 hours for attempting to
snatch the badge off one of the pigs. Others have
been chained down for only kicking their steel
doors. Just a few days ago, another prisoner was
left chained with handcuffs behind his back and
leg irons, solely because he refused to take the
paper off his window. He was left like this for
most of the day, without being fed. I was again
chained down for refusing to return a Styrofoam
food tray.
With the building of the super-max, which was
modeled after the infamous Marion Control Unit,
the violence against prisoners has escalated. The
use of chemical mace is on a steady rise. Incident
after incident has been documented since the
opening of the Special Management Unit (SMU),
which is the training grounds for the super-max.
The pigs have become more and more brutal. The
guards intentionally broke a prisoner's arm about
ten days ago, after he was alleged to have broken
the arm of a medic. The medic had reportedly been
badgering him through the food slot in the door.
We could clearly hear his screams after the Goon
Squad entered his cell.
Statements by the pigs could be clearly heard
asking him, "How does it feel?" as they purposely
bent his wrist until they broke it. I have in
recent months written to the civil rights
division, to demand an investigation into the
racist brutality taking place.
The administration is singling out Latinos and
Black Nubians for their brutal attacks. White
prisoners have thrown liquid substances on
officers, which automatically subjects you to
being chained down, but not for whites. Understand
that I am not advocating that any prisoner be
chained; my issue is stopping the racist violence
and brutality being committed against my New
Afrikan brothers.
We must struggle to understand the necessity for a
United Prisoners' Front to wage our war against
these oppressors who hold us captive. Conditions
will have to worsen before many will reach the
point when they realize they have absolutely
nothing to lose but the chains of oppression.
There can be no change without struggle.
- In solidarity,
a Connecticut prisoner, 9/13/94
EIGHTEEN YEARS FOR A GRAM OF CRACK
With all respect, my comrade brothers and sisters,
I want to thank you for the reading material I
have been longing for. The material will be used
and read. I am a 28 year-old African American
doing time for having in my possession less than a
gram of "crack." I am serving a prison term of 18
years and four months. I was sentenced as a career
criminal by a racist court system. My standing is
for the oppressed. I hate to see or hear about our
people being cast down as an inhuman race. I
believe that no one should be in any kind of
poverty....
- an Indiana prisoner, 8/19/94
PRISONERS DIE, PIGS BECOME HEROES
I have received the June '94 copy of MIM Notes,
please keep me on the mailing list to receive
future copies.
The environment here at (Comstock) Great Meadows
C.F. is the same as Attica. The pigs brutalize,
terrorize, torture and murder their victims
without a worry in the world. Commissioner Thomas
A. Coughlin III is a sick monster, he gets off on
all the lawsuits and civil complaints that flood
his headquarters in "Albany N.Y.", the cap*city.
He hasn't done shit in response to what crimes a
senseless pig can do to a man when that pig is out
of control. There are make-shift investigations
that always come up empty, prisoners die and pigs
become heroes.
I'm beginning to not blame the pigs so much for
their "Go get em and smoke em" attitude. Because
if I allow a pig to continuously shit on my
carpet, and not do anything to stop him then I
don't deserve the carpet.
The victims (us) must now come to grips with our
own selves. We must dig deep into our souls and
release the Guerrillas and Dragons that are housed
within, and start using these strengths to correct
our situations. As a Black slave, I've felt the
whip, the floggings, burning at the stake, the
hangin's, only to come out of it a little more
stronger and a lot more deadlier. I'm trying my
best to turn the oppressive future of slaves
around. But I can't do it by myself.
Comrades "ATTENTION" Please prepare for War!!
The Day of the Dragon is near.
Please print this letter in a future issue of MIM
Notes.
The study group has got together and put up the
enclosed stamps so that we can receive the
following books if they are available: *Soledad
Brothers - Prison Letters of George Jackson, Soul
on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver, Agents of Repression,*
and *MIM Theory - Diet for a Small Red Planet*
We would appreciate it very much.
Power to the People!
- New York Prisoner
PRISON AWARENESS WEEK
UMASS AMHERST, NOVEMBER 14-19
Monday, Nov. 14, Political prisoners in the U.S.
today.
Tuesday, Nov. 15, Panel discussion: Racism and
criminal justice.
Wednesday, Nov. 16, Films and lecture: The Attica
prison rebellion.
Thursday, Nov. 17, Leonard Peltier. Film and
lecture: *Incident at Oglala.*
Friday, Nov. 18, 4pm. Supermax Control Units. Film
and discussion: *Beyond the Wire.* Discussion led
by MIM.
Friday, Nov. 18, Multicultural Performances and
Dance, a benefit for projects that support
prisoners. Performers to be announced.
Saturday, Nov. 19, Conference. Keynote speaker:
Ward Churchill.
Conference includes:
Panel discussion on the effects of the "War on
Drugs" on prison policy and the rates of
incarceration.
Presentations by Families Against Mandatory
Minimums, Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts,
American Friends Service Committee, Arise for
Social Justice and other organizations.
Sponsors of the week: Alliance for Student Power,
Cannabis Reform Coalition, Maoist Internationalist
Movement (MIM), Office of Third World Affairs,
Anti-Racism Coalition and other organizations.
All events in the Campus Center or Student Union
at UMass. Ask at the information desk for the room
numbers. All times, dates and events are
tentative. For more information or an updated
schedule, write to MIM, PO Box 712, Amherst MA
01004-712
* * *
LETTERS TO MIM
FORMER PANTHER WRITES IN
Greetings Comrades,
I received a copy of the latest issue of the MIM
Notes. Thanks! Sending it to me is like preaching
to the choir but some times the choir goes to
sleep and needs to be woken up (smile). I am
particularly pleased to read the writings of the
youth as I am a former member of the Black Panther
Party and the Red Book of Mao was our basic
political text.
Anti-imperialism is more important today than it
ever was before as imperialism causes the great
migration of working class people from the over-
exploited countries. If the wealth had been more
evenly distributed in those countries instead of
being grabbed by the imperialist countries that
subdue them in the historical wars, they would not
be immigrating to the industrial countries of
Europe and the USA.
Again we see how the monopoly sugar companies of
the USA have choked off Cuba from the open markets
of the world. They don't want Castro deposed per
se, they want to keep Cuban sugar off the world
market. Anti-imperialists must stand against the
economic embargo and allow the workers of Cuba to
share equally in the distribution of the world's
wealth.
The invasion of Haiti will only result in the
extended colonization of the Haitian workers who
will be subjected to new neo-colonial leaders
appointed by the USA. They will be paid to bolster
up an army to keep the workers of Haiti from
forming free workers groups to struggle for their
rightful share of the wealth of the world. They
will be colonized on the island and forbidden to
follow the wealth that was stolen from their
labor. They will be forbidden to compete fairly
within the world market even if they stay in their
own country because it will compete with the elite
workers of the imperialist/capitalist countries.
Forgive me for preaching to the choir. But be sure
that my voice is to be counted to support the
workers of the world and to damn colonialism, the
product of imperialism/capitalism. I am 58 years
of age and have more than 18 years in the prison
camps of this country for struggling against
colonialism. Let the youth know that I haven't
been broken and they must stand firm in our
struggle against colonialism - it is the cause of
the beast we know as racism. Power to the People!!
- In love and struggle,
Washington State prisoner
MIM Responds: Thank you for writing; we are
certainly excited to hear from you as a former
Black Panther Party member who hasn't relented in
the struggle against Amerikan imperialism, even
after 18 years in the Amerikan gulags. We are
honored you have written to us to express your
thoughts.
It's true that because of imperialist
exploitation, people of Third World countries (the
majority of the world's population) are suffering
daily hardship and some of them attempt to escape
exploitation by immigrating to industrialized
imperialist countries. In addition, many exploited
peasants of Third World countries attempt to
escape by moving to urban centers within their
country. In a real way, we can see this
development with the massive border patrol
campaign against Latino immigrants, as well as
witnessing the huge shantytowns that have
developed in numerous Third World cities, such as
Lima, Sao Paulo and Bombay.
Under capitalism, there can be no such thing as
fair competition in the world market. The nature
of "competition" under capitalism leads to the
formation of monopolies that dominate whole
industries and nations. These capitalists extract
surplus value from the masses of people and that
creates vast differences between the imperialist
countries and the Third World. These differences
are so great that the principal contradiction in
the world today is between imperialist nations and
oppressed nations. The only way that "wealth [can
be] more evenly distributed" is through socialism,
and to establish socialism, we must destroy
imperialism, principally Amerika.
Historically, the Amerikan sugar companies
extracted sugar from Cuba and kept the country in
semi-feudal, semi-colonial status. When Castro
overthrew the Batista regime in 1959, many thought
this exploitation would end. Yet, because of their
dependence on Soviet social-imperialism, Cuba
developed a sugar-based export economy. This has
stymied Cuba's development. If Cuba had been
building socialist self-reliance, the Amerikan
economic embargo would not be a critical factor,
as it is today.
STUDENTS FOR A FREE SOUTH AFRICA
LAUNCH NEW CAMPAIGN
The 1994/95 academic year has been declared the
year of "From Political Freedom in South Africa to
Global Economic Resistance" by the Students for a
Free South Africa (SFSA), University of
Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The SFSA was founded in 1984/85 under the
inspiration of professor Dr. Dennis Brutus, a
native of Southern Africa, former Robben Island
political prisoner with Nelson Mandela, current
president of South Africa, and an internationalist
organizer against racism, sexism, class oppression
and champion of human rights.
With the achievement of bourgeois political
reformist democracy and subsequent African
National Congress (ANC) dominated government under
the leadership of Dr. Nelson Mandela, SFSA has
shifted its primary focus on a global working
class struggle.
The South African political reforms have not
touched or addressed the primary contradictions
that led to the National Democratic and Socialist
Transformation in South Africa. That is the
indigenous people's right to their national land
and the non-racial working class-oriented
socialist transformation.
The progressive nature of the historic acquiring
of political power (sic) and authority by the
Black petty-bourgeois nationalist (i.e.
"Africans", "Coloureds" and "Indians") and their
subordination to international monopoly finance
capitalists led by the Anglo-American corporation
and De Beers Diamond multi-industrial
transnational conglomerate, has made the class
question in South Africa a concrete and component
part of the struggle against the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, etc.
The IMF and World Bank, dominated by the US are
aiming at "neocolonization" of Africa through the
"Anglo Nationalist Collaborative" (ANC) of South
Africa.
The apartheid regime had supplied arms to factions
in Rwanda and the Mandela-led bourgeois reformist
government has made it clear that South Africa is
still going to export arms to African and other
countries that want them.
Hence on January 26, 1994, the Campaign Against
Global Oppression (CAGO) was formed as a
subcommittee of SFSA. It is a working class-
oriented entity that is aimed at political,
economic, cultural and social education of
students and their community grassroots allies
against racism, sexism, cultural and religious
bigotry in general, and capitalism, imperialism
and neocolonialism in particular.
In the Pittsburgh, western Pennsylvania region we
aim at campaigning against World Bank/IMF as part
of the IMF & World Bank "50 Years is Enough - US
Campaign".
The anti-IMF and World Bank struggle is part of
the global political agenda for a comprehensive
working class-oriented and thus anti-imperialist
in substance. The emergence of the Anglo-National
Congress of South Africa (ANC) as the dominant
political tendency within the neocolonial regime
of post-colonial South Africa necessitates an
intensified ideological organization of students,
ecumenical activist and internationalist
organization along class lines - International
Proletariat Agenda from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
to Johannesburg, Azania; from Capetown to Cairo in
Africa; from Kampala, Uganda to Kingston, Jamaica,
etc.
The SFSA has its 1994/95 theme: "From Political
Freedom in South Africa to Global Resistance: A
Revolutionary Working Class Agenda into the 21st
Century".
Student and youth alliances are being formed in
Pittsburgh, PA, Capetown, South Africa, Gaborone,
Botswana, etc. to raise a revolutionary working
class organizational consciousness among the Black
Masses: employed, unemployed and unemployable.
We are doing this without jeopardizing the
alliance of progressive democrats and
revolutionary socialists here and in Southern
Africa.
- Please contact the following for further
information: Mongezi Sefika Nkoma and professor
Dennis Brutus....
Mongezi Sefika waNkomo
Coordinator
Campaign Against Global Oppression (CAGO)
Students for a Free South Africa (SFSA)
Africana Studies Department
3T Forbes Quad
University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Telephone: (412) 648-7556/40
Fax: (412) 648-7214
email: brutus@ums.cis.pitt.edu
OVERPOPULATION DEBATED
MIM's analysis of imperialist population designs
provoked the following exchange among Internet
readers:
READER 1: Ah, at least one critic has realized
that overpopulation is not just about numbers. We
can now understand why Japan has lots of people
but is not overpopulated. It is on the right side
of the power dynamic, can buy the raw materials it
needs for nothing and sell its products back at a
grotesque profit. We can also see why Punjab,
which has a higher yield per acre than Iowa cannot
provide enough. Its labor power is exploited and
debt forces export. This is only a vague sketch of
the problem, but the point is clear: it's
exploitation, not babies, that makes the Third
World poor.
READER 2: Unfortunately, this is malarkey. Of
course Japan is overpopulated. If you look into
the externalities of the cost of Japanese
population size, you will see that the depleted
fishing industry, deforestation, pollution, and
lowered quality of life for many in the world are
*directly* attributable to Japanese financial
imperialism. In any reasonable books, that means
that Japan is overpopulated.
MIM responds: We agree with Reader 1. Reader 2
simply assumes the Japanese demand for more
material goods is a result of overpopulation.
Instead, it is the wealth that Japan possesses, as
a *result* of imperialism that causes its vast
levels of consumption. This is also true of the
United States.
OPPOSE DRUG BUSTS
Dear MIM,
I just read the article from September 94 MIM
Notes about Woodstock II. When I visited
Revolution Books, and got the "It was right
then..." flyer, I too wondered about the RCP's
grip on reality. But, hey, I'm neither a Maoist
nor am I particularly interested in Woodstock, so
let the RCP get it jollies however it wants.
What got me about your article was its ("Third
World?") stance on the war on drugs: you claim
that the main victims are in the Third World, and
that the cops tolerate drug use among "Amerikans."
There is, obviously a (large) grain of truth to
this, and of course, white upper class
suburbanites often treated with more respect than
Latin Americans, or Blacks in the U.S. (for
instance, look at the difference in crack and coke
laws).
But MIM's statement that the cops leave
concertgoers at many concerts, including Grateful
Dead concerts, alone, is patently false: true we
are not napalmed and invaded like Latin Americans,
but Grateful Dead "heads" have often been
subjected to numerous DEA infiltration and
harassment. Most heads also know someone (or two,
or three) who is in jail for god knows how long
(often 99+ years) for LSD possession/sale. In
fact, it appears that the DEA, and other
government agencies are especially targeting
Grateful Dead concerts. Maybe MIM likes this,
since the Dead haven't done anything political
since they gave a benefit concert for Black
Panther Party prisoners in 1979, and most heads
are white middle-class Amerikkkans, but it is a
well known fact.
Have a nice day,
- St. Stephen
MC12 responds: MIM does not like the repression of
whites by drug laws. Many potentially progressive
or subversive people are busted under these laws.
And, like speeding, these selectively-enforced
laws are just opportunities for the pigs waiting
to happen. Our main emphasis is on the repression
of the victims of imperialism, but St. Stephen is
correct to point out that the police state has
victims among white youth as well. The October
issue of MIM Notes featured "Hemp Rally in
Boston," which explained this position further.
WHY LINE?
Dear MIM:
I have heard you say again (and again) that a
communist group's power is in its *line*. You even
published a pamphlet called "What's Your Line,"
where you critique other left groups' lines. But -
and I am a little ashamed to admit this - the
issue of line confuses me:
1. What *is* line and what does it comprise? Does
MIM's line encompass, say, scientific issues? Is
there a Maoist form of biochemistry? (I know that
sounds stupid, but didn't Zhadnov and Lysenko
argue something of this nature - no pun intended?)
Assuming that line just deals with *social* and
*historical* issues, to what extent must MIM have
a line on these issues: again, MIM probably should
have a line on post-Stalin USSR, but about the
transition from feudalism to capitalism? Or are
only modern issues touched on?
2. *Why* is line important? Why does the fact
that, say, Trotskyites support Trotsky now and
you, Stalin, make a difference *now* ? Should not
the real issue be what each group is doing *now*?
I mean, the Socialist Workers Party and the
Communist Party-USA and the Democratic Socialists
of America are obviously not revolutionary, but is
this because of some poor objective view of
reality, or because of their quantifiable mistakes
*today*? Couldn't MIM's emphasis on *line* and
*ideological purity* be construed as a way for
RADical ACADemicS to abstain from current
struggles and battles and retire to the ivory
tower and merely talk about these struggles with
other RADACADS?(1) Doesn't this contradict Marx's
"Theses on Feuerbach," and the "German Ideology" -
as well as place MIM in the camp of the *idealist*
you are always harping about (contemplative
materialism is what I think Marx labels it)?
I don't ask these questions to be hostile; indeed,
I am genuinely interested. Thank you,
- Theoretical critic
MC12 responds: Thanks for writing.
Marx called "contemplative materialism" that which
"does not understand sensuousness as practical
activity." In other words, Marx, in his "Theses On
Feuerbach," argued that the process of thinking
was itself a practical process, so there was no
such thing as abstraction divorced from social
reality. He concluded: "The philosophers have only
*interpreted* the world, in various ways; the
point, however, is to *change* it."(2)
The writer believes that MIM's repetition of the
phrase "line is decisive," from Mao, puts us in
the camp of these philosophers whom Marx
condemned. In the argument, however, the writer
begs the question: if these non-revolutionary
political groups you mention are making
"quantifiable mistakes today," then what is the
cause and origin of those mistakes?
MIM agrees with Mao that "line is decisive"
because it is the line of these groups that has
caused them to adopt a nonrevolutionary political
practice. There is a material reality underlying
these practices - the superprofits flowing into
imperialist society - but it is their political
line that directly determines the political
outcome. In other words, the international
proletariat demonstrates a resounding disinterest
in Trotskyism *because* Trotskyist *line* does not
hold any promise for ending their oppression.
A party's line on Trotsky or Stalin is not
important in isolation: they are both dead, and
the social reality in which they struggled has
changed forever. But a line on the struggles
within the Soviet Union does *not exist* in
isolation; it exists only in the social reality of
today's struggles. MIM has never seen a party that
sided with Trotsky against Stalin in historical
analysis, and yet they had a correct political
practice now. How could they? Trotsky liquidated
the national liberation struggles of the oppressed
nations, rejected the necessity of the United
Front as "class collaboration", and advanced a
productivity-first analysis of imperialism and
revolution. All of these questions remain at the
heart of today's revolutionary practice.
MIM could decide never to talk about the lines of
other parties on these historical questions, and
instead only criticize their current practices,
but that would be to abandon political leadership:
to keep our underlying analysis to ourselves,
thereby retarding the political development of
those with whom we struggle.
To clarify, MIM would not say that "a communist
group's power is in its line." That is different
from "line is decisive." The power of any
communist movement resides in the oppressed masses
themselves. The correct line flows from this power
source and, when organized and concentrated with
the mass line, it serves the oppressed in their
struggle for liberation.
As for scientific areas such as biochemistry,
these are not irrelevant either. All ideas have a
class foundation, and all ideas exist within
social reality. For example, Darwinism - the
scientific idea of species evolution - was crucial
for reducing the social power of Christianity and
paving the way for capitalist development. Science
laid a foundation for the bourgeois era: it was
the basis for Nazi eugenics and nuclear weapons;
it also led to the scientific study of society and
scientific socialism.
MIM does not devote itself to daily examination of
scientific discoveries, falsities and debates. But
we do know that science in general reflects the
class nature of the society in which it develops.
In a socialist system, humanity will benefit from
a lot of the scientific development that took
place under capitalism, but we will also have a
lot of bogus ideas to debunk as we forge a new
science for the people.
Finally, the day you see MIM "abstain from current
struggles and battles and retire to the ivory
tower and merely talk about these struggles" with
academics - that day you should start a new Maoist
party. Instead, we jump into every current
struggle we can, and our efforts - which are at
present ideological and political - in turn
*change* the social reality in which we live. We
don't write and lobby for laws in Congress, but we
do build public opinion in support of the
international proletariat - and prepare the ground
for the seizure of power by the oppressed.
NOTES:
1. This is a reference to RADACADS, the
organization in Boston from which MIM developed
in the 1980s.
2. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, *Selected Works
In One Volume*. International Publishers: New
York, 1968 (1845), pp. 28-30.
--
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# # # # # # # P.O. BOX 3576 ANN ARBOR MI 48106
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