August 18 2007
On August 4th, the Democrats in Congress caved in and gave president Bush a victory in updating the FISA laws.(1) This is as MIM expected and it reflects the true state of the Euro-Amerikan oppressor majority.
The FISA laws supposedly govern how the U.$. federal government spies on spies. FISA stands for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Controversy surrounding the program exists, because it can involve spying on Amerikans and people merely "suspected" of espionage or terrorism.
Till recently, Democrats in Congress asked Bush for information on his past warrantless spying program in exchange for an update on the FISA law, supposedly to deal with technology questions.(2) Some other arrangement has now come to replace the old conflict, with Senator Leahy from Vermont agreeing to the temporary update of the FISA law that will expire six months from August 4th.
The standard in the FISA subject matter is to spin questions to hell, with exaggerations by omission. Bush talks about a small fraction of what he is concerned with in FISA work. That is what a professional politician does and there is no way to overcome that difficulty within the bourgeois media as it exists today.
MIM would like the people who read its web page to know better than what the imperialist media say, because otherwise our anti-war movement will actually believe that Third World dictators do something that Amerikans do not. If we had a nickel for every time we have heard U.$. imperialists defend spying on Amerikans with contacts with foreigners while criticizing Chinese social-fascists for spying on Chinese with contacts with foreigners, we would be rich. The party needs to be aware of that in a general way, but there is no way to win that battle in front of Amerikan public opinion. The people who believe otherwise only pave the way for further repression and refinement of the FISA laws.
MIM has said that it stands for civil liberties and we have a web page agitating for it. We have also organized rallies before for civil liberties. Nonetheless, we need to be clear that it is not our first priority.
The principal contradiction is our first priority and MIM can be counted on on that point, to give credit where credit is due and not get whipped up into some petty-bourgeois frenzy. So if Ward Churchill had not attracted the support of the ACLU we still would have supported him for the substance of what he said about 9/11. We need to make sure that in our own ranks and circles there is no one harboring white nationalist illusions about civil liberties in the u$a.
Recently MIM said that we share the old Weather Underground perspective that if the imperialists did not spy on U.$. citizens that would just mean more spies in the Third World. That would just mean more reparations owed by imperialist country people for that spying further down the road.
Not only do we share that perspective, but MIM would say no one else inside u.$. borders has done more on the principal contradiction than MIM. So when we may feel persynally or emotionally otherwise, it is good to remember what the principal contradiction is, nice and simple.
Recently, MIM is being subjected to some middle-class interrogatories. We repeat: legal residents of the united $tates are exploiters. There is nothing one can do within the current economic system to change that. It is not a lifestyle question. Some of our critics need to think it all the way through--the difference between the united $tates and China for instance when it comes to the class structure.
People should save their breath and interrogate the white nationalist ACLU types. What is the source of repression is the question we have always asked. Only the international proletariat has a solution that brings an end to the class struggle that causes repression. In that solution of advanced communism, MIM would shut up, imagine that. There would be no need for adding gigabytes to our web page, because the cause of political problems would have been addressed. Free speech becomes irrelevant once the class conflict has been resolved.
This is our message to the neo-colonialist ACLU types: We do not want our minority proletarian camp bound to your hopes about the white majority. We know those hopes to be false. There is no Euro-Amerikan majority for civil liberties for the anti-imperialist camp on equal terms with the imperialists. 59% support interception of phone calls to "suspected terrorists."(3) The more concrete the information about the suspicions--"communist" or "Islamic," we can be sure the number would be even higher.
This is a question we need to get clear on because House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the question will come up again before February 4. We know it will not be in August that the question comes up because Congress is on break then. Another big date is the report of General Petraeus to Congress on September 15th regarding Iraq. So perhaps after August but before September 15th is the earliest that this question could come up. Friends of the MIM should clarify themselves on how civil liberties questions are secondary to Third World oppression questions, and do it before September 15, just to be sure no one is going to be fooled by the Democrats.
Another hot question right now with the stock market gyrations is the housing market. MIM already pointed out that it is connected to the migration question. In this one instance, Euro-Amerikans are doing in their own economy by sabotaging the subprime mortgage market with hostile talk to sojourners. This could be a last chance to get clear on the subject of the temporary housing market crisis before Iraq consumes public attention after September 15. U.$. imperialism is spinning towards a major downward slide internationally.
Notes:
1. Associated Press, http://www.star-telegram.com/national_news/story/191962.html
2. Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus, "How the Fight for Vast New Spying Powers Was Won,"
Washington Post 12Aug07.
3. http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070813/EDITORIAL/108130003