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.
I N T E R N E T ' S M A O I S T BI-M O N T H L Y = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = XX XX XXX XX XX X X XXX XXX XXX XXX X X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X V X X X V X X X X X X X XX XXX X X X X X X XX X X X X X X X XXX X X X V XXX X XXX XXX = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT MIM Notes 136 APRIL 15, 1997 MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the world's oppressed majority, and against the imperialist-patriarchy. Pick it up and wield it in the service of the people. support it, struggle with it and write for it. IN THIS ISSUE: 1. ANTI-CRIME HYSTERIA ON CAMPUS BOLSTERS NATIONAL OPPRESSION 2. EXPANSIONIST AGGRESSION AGAINST PALESTINIANS INCREASES 3. LETTERS 4. MASSACHUSETTS PROPOSES MORE REACTIONARY BILLS ON PRISONS 5. HYSTERIA THREATENS USE OF INTERNET FOR OPPRESSED 6. AMERIKAN IMPERIALISM CONTINUES AGAINST EAST TIMOR VIA INDONESIAN HAND 7. IMPERIALISTS PREPARE FOR NUCLEAR WAR 8. NDFP CONDEMNS PHILIPPINE ARMY ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS; CALLS RAMOS' PEACE INITIATIVES PSYWAR GIMMICK 9. MIM CELEBRATES THE 28TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY 10. ITALIAN ANTI-IMPERIALIST CONTINUES FIGHT FOR RELEASE 11. REVOLUTIONARY CULTURE: SLINGBLADE REVIEW AND POEM 12. HETEROSEXIST WIN AT PENN STATE 13. CIA PRETENDS TO CLEAN UP ITS ACT 14. PSEUDOFEMS TAIL IMPERIALIST MOUTHPIECE 15. CLINTON WANTS MORE DIRECT BOURGEOIS CONTROL OF JUDGES, LESS OF ELECTIONS 16. SETTLER GOVERNMENT SET TO EVICT DINEH FIRST NATION 17. STONEY POINT STRUGGLE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION CONTINUES 18. BOWING TO WORLD BANK ANDHRA ENDS PROHIBITION 19. PSEUDO-ENVIRONMENTALIST DEBATE FALLS SHORT 20. THE AGENDA OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS 21. UNDER LOCK AND KEY: NEWS FROM PRISONS AND PRISONERS * * * WHAT IS MIM? The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is a revolutionary communist party that upholds Marxism- Leninism-Maoism, comprising the collection of existing or emerging Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-speaking internal semi- colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking Maoist internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.S. Empire. MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish- speaking parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM is an internationalist organization that works from the vantage point of the Third World proletariat; thus, its members are not Amerikans, but world citizens. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possible by building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance of communism in human history. (3) MIM believes the North American white-working-class is primarily a non- revolutionary worker-elite at this time; thus, it is not the principal vehicle to advance Maoism in this country. MIM accepts people as members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system of majority rule, on other questions of party line. "The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution." -- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208 * * * ANTI-CRIME HYSTERIA ON CAMPUS BOLSTERS NATIONAL OPPRESSION The so-called "anti-crime" movement continues to spread to college campuses. Campuses across the country are spending more on their own police forces and gates and fences to keep out people. In the arsenal of the delirious fascist anti-crime movement is the increasingly regularized statistical reporting of campus crimes. Every time the statistics come out, the rednecks prey on parents' fears by asking for more cops, guns and steel doors on campus. Opportunist fascists amongst college administrators also take advantage of the hysteria to prevent students from linking up with people "outside the university community" and in fact regularly arrest "outsiders" "trespassing" at universities, all of which have some of their tuition and overhead funded by federal tax-dollars. This is despite the fact that no study has shown that having a campus police force (and the associated costs of insuring it for instance) reduces crime rates. Not only is prison- building eating into state budgets that should go to education, but also, once the public and private universities do get some state funds, the money again goes to "fighting" crime, not education! USA Today has run numerous stories on this question, but none have addressed what proof there is that cops on campus improve the crime situation. No article has ever shown that there is a single effective thing that can be done within this rotting system. Instead, the repeated drone of USA Today that never even raises that question is "Activists' groups said the government's figures were false because many crimes are reported to deans instead of the security offices." It is bad enough that the United $tates is the world's leading prison state per capita, but the imperialist media is not alone in its agitation for counting more things as crime. People alleging to fight gender oppression believe that entire bureaucracies should be built at universities to work with cops on the fight against rape. Students need to confront the fascist anti-crime delirium gripping this country. They need not travel to the prisons or the state courts: the battle starts right on campus. NOTE: USA Today 17 March 1997, p. D1. * * * EXPANSIONIST AGGRESSION AGAINST PALESTINIANS INCREASES by RC68 written 30 March 1997 On Monday March 17th, Israeli armed forces and construction crews invaded the Palestinian land known as Jebel Abu Ghneim and began leveling it to replace it with 6,500 new Israeli homes. Palestinian protesting and resistance have not ceased since that day. This outrageous act of expansionist aggression against the Palestinian people has been met with worldwide contempt and Amerikan support.(1) On Friday the 21st the U$ vetoed, for a second time, a UN resolution to stop Israeli construction plans in Palestine.(2) This vote came only hours after an act of desperate resistance by the Palestinian Hamas in which one Palestinian on a suicide mission killed three Israeli settlers in Tel Aviv. Israel and the United Snakes label this an act of terrorist aggression because the bomber killed civilians. But Israeli soldiers have been firing on Palestinian civilians all year long. How come the New York Times does not call this terrorist aggression? The bourgeois media double standard is clear as they tail the u.s. state department line. Hamas had temporarily suspended military operations despite disapproving of the "peace" process. These newest acts of U$-backed Israeli expansionist aggression have put the Palestinian people under a heightened state of siege and the collaborationist Palestinian Authority (PA) is helping Israel. The Hamas is an anti-imperialist force fighting for the self-determination of the Palestinian people against Amerikan backed Israeli occupation. Fighting also broke out in Hebron the same day in March. Palestinians threw rocks and Molotovs at Israeli occupation troops. The Israelis fired at the Palestinians with fully automatic assault rifles and tear gas. The Israeli soldiers charged at the demonstrators and arrested three people. Palestinians bombarded the soldiers with rocks forcing them to release the prisoners. Palestinian police did their part to quiet the rebellion by attempting to keep Palestinians away from Israeli occupied areas. Others instead evacuated people who had been tear gassed by the Israelis.(2) One Palestinian policemen chose to join the stone throwers and was ordered to leave by his "superiors". The next day fighting worsened and over 100 Palestinians were injured.(3) Similar incidents also occurred in Bethlehem, Nablus, and Ramallah. As usual, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is blaming the break down in the peace talks and the renewed Palestinian resistance on Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. On March 23, the Israeli cabinet urged the Palestinian Authority to crack down on militant Palestinian groups. To prove Netanyahu wrong, Arafat and the collaborationist Palestinian Authority have done their best to curb Palestinian resistance and show their Amerikan and Israeli masters what good Arabs they can be. The day before the Israeli cabinet meeting, Palestinian police arrested Hamas leader Ibrahim Maqadmeh and detained him for several hours. The Palestinian police also arrested five other Hamas members the night of the 21st.(3) On the 23rd, Palestinian police formed a human chain and fired into the air to protect Israeli occupation troops from understandably angry Palestinians during the clashes at Hebron.(4) These actions make it crystal clear who Arafat and the Palestinian Authority really serve. Netanyahu and Clinton should give their dog Arafat a nice bone. On March 26th, the United Snakes decided to launch a mission to save the "peace". This is some of the most audacious and hypocritical Orwellian doublespeak imaginable. As RAIL has previously pointed out, if the U$ really was concerned with peace, it would stop arming Israel and stop protecting Israel in the UN. The Amerikan "peace" mission has three objectives, to seek a clear statement from Arafat to Palestinian militants to cease resistance to Israeli expansionist aggression, to urge Netanyahu to ease tensions, and to restart negotiations between Arafat and Netanyahu. What the United Snakes means by saving the peace is a continuation of Israeli expansion and a cessation of Palestinian resistance. The Palestinian people are not fooled, even if most Amerikans are. The Palestinian response to Amerikan plans was more protesting and burning U$ and Israeli flags.(5) The Amerikan envoy, Dennis Ross, met with Arafat in Morocco on the 27th. The next day he also met with Netanyahu in Jerusalem.(6) As of the 31st, the White House had to admit that no breakthroughs had been made.(7) In fact, there is now considerable division amongst the Amerikan and Israeli imperialists and the collaborationist PA as to what course to take. Israel continues to use brute force while the U$ and Arafat prefer more diplomatic methods. While on the one hand the United Snakes wants to ensure that stability is reestablished for Israel, Amerika also wants to be the only outside force involved in the discussion, thus preserving Amerikan interests. Arafat is also seeking help from the outside. He has now started calling the Israeli invasion a declaration of war on the Palestinians. Although this is true, Arafat is saying this for reasons of political opportunism, seeking to put diplomatic pressure on Israel to force a stop to the recent provocations.(8) If this trick works, it could put the "peace" talks back on track. It is likely, however that no amount of Israeli aggression, Amerikan intervention, or Arafat's treachery are going to stop the revived militancy in Palestine. The Palestinian people already knew not to trust Amerika or Israel to respect Palestinian independence. Now they also know better than to follow Arafat since the sellout PA has shown its true colors. It is now clear to all Palestinians that the only people that they can rely on to secure their liberty are themselves. The people of Palestine will not gain self- determination until Israeli imperialism is overthrown and Palestinian sovereignty over their homeland is restored. NOTES: 1.MIM Notes #135. 2. CNN 21 March 1997. 3. Washington Post 22 March 1997. 4. CNN 24 March 1997. 5. CNN 26 March 1997. 6. CNN 28 March 1997. 7. NPR News 31 March 1997. 8. CNN 30 March 1997. * * * LETTERS RC DISAGREES WITH MIM RETRACTION Dear MIM Notes: I disagree with MIMs retraction of the statement "JUNK APEC". I do not think that the reason is a good one. It's true that the right also opposes free trade, but I do not think that we have to worry about them rallying around MIM and RAIL. I would also argue that the right is far from asleep in this country. In fact it is active and organized. But my main reason to disagree on the question is that it is not consistent with the rest of MIM's line and practice. The right opposes integrationist ideas, but we've never worried about waking them up by opposing integration for our own better reasons. And there is a strategic advantage to be gained by doing informational work based on the true nature and results of NAFTA, GATT, and APEC. Our most controversial line is that the white working class is not truly exploited because their wages come from super profits stolen by the imperialists. Now that we have a real live example that people are familiar with, we can use it to explain what we have been saying all along. I doubt that by doing that we would find much if any unity with first world chauvinists than we have in the past by opposing integrationism. In struggle, --a RAIL comrade MIM RESPONDS: This comrade is right that the danger is not in the Right rallying around MIM and RAIL. If that were expected, we could truly expect to LEAD a progressive movement against APEC, GATT or NAFTA. But in fact we do not have the power in this country at this time to lead such a movement and so any propaganda put out opposing free trade will only be drowned in the reactionary Amerika-first free trade propaganda already put out by the labor aristocracy. The very fact that the Right is already active an organized around this issue, as this comrade points out, speaks to the danger of adding fuel to their fire in anti-free trade organizing. We recognize that certain demands may be progressive when coming from revolutionaries but are reactionary when coming from national chauvinists, and when the revolutionary movement is not the stronger of the two, as is the case in Amerika today, revolutionaries must take care not to unleash an even stronger reactionary movement. The comparison to integration is a useful one. While the APEC demand that MIM rejected was to junk APEC, the anti- integrationist demands of the white nation include closing the borders, stealing the land from the oppressed nations, and building a white empire. It is exactly the reactionary anti-integrationist demands which are unleashed in an anti- free trade campaign in this country. But MIM, on the other hand, takes on integrationism in the context of opening the borders, giving back stolen land to oppressed nations, and supporting national liberation struggles. There is no danger that these demands will in any way reinforce the national chauvinism of the powerful anti-free trade and anti- integration movements in this country. The key here is to look at the material forces unleashed. The letter-writer is saying the KKK also opposes integrationism, but that doesn't stop us there from also opposing integrationism for different reasons. The letter- writer is correct intellectually-speaking, but we have made an additional calculation: let the KKK put forward our line and MIM put forward its line. On a global scale the KKK is going to lose by succeeding with putting forward nationalism. In addition, we within the u.s. borders make the maximum possible contribution to global revolution by raising the revolutionary nationalist banner, because the oppressor nation cannot win a straight-up fight against the world's majority of people. This has a lot to do with the principal contradiction as we define it being between the oppressor nations and the oppressed nations. When it comes to GATT, we are still saying: Third World workers should oppose GATT. However, what force are WE mobilizing in the imperialist countries? By opposing GATT, we risk becoming pawns of neo-colonialism. Look at what happens to the people who will be the main force within u.s. borders: we will be encouraging the oppressed nations to line up with bought-off workers against the Mexicans and Japanese in particular. It's not that the Black Panthers were in danger of not seeing through the KKK on integrationism. There is no danger there, but with the GATT and NAFTA issue and the Prop. 187 issue, where we saw 60 percent of Blacks and Asian-descended people go for Prop. 187--we are at risk of having the internal colonies really join up with the rednecks with no difference. This would muddy the principal contradiction. When deciding which demands we want to organize a united front around, it is important to always evaluate both the demands and the organizing potential of the demands. For instance, we could come up with ideologically correct free trade demands which would have the practical effect of furthering a fascist movement. When MIM puts forward demands around which we build a United Front, we are careful to pick the winnable battles. We do not want to put our energy into a movement which will be usurped by the strong reactionary Right. * * * MASSACHUSETTS PROPOSES MORE REACTIONARY BILLS ON PRISONS The Massachusetts congress will soon be voting on a number of new bills to enhance the criminal injustice system and further oppress prisoners. Among the most noteworthy of these bills is one that will require prisoners to pay $5 a day for every day they stay in prison and one that creates prison industries enterprises. Amerika sends more Blacks to prison than to college, in spite of the fact that it would be less expensive to send prisoners to college instead of jail. The state of Massachusetts, one of the top imprisoners of Blacks relative to whites, has proposed to charge the prison population for the privilege of being locked up: five dollars a day. House Bill No. 3709 would require all prisoners in Massachusetts to pay this rent or go into debt and pay it upon release. Five dollars may not sound like much but imagine you serve a mandatory ten year sentence for drugs, at $1825 a year, that's $18,250 you owe the state upon release. Now you are a convicted felon, and you need to find work when very few people will hire someone with a criminal record. The state would be authorized to snag up 25% of a convicts salary so it would take eight years to pay back this debt. And that's eight years of earning less than minimum wage while former prisoners are trying to support themselves and often a family as well. Adding a spouse and children to this scenario only makes things worse. Prisons already take young men and wimmin away from their families, often destroying relationships as a result. Now they are going to add a huge debt to these families as a reward for sticking together through the imprisonment. Families that endure the imprisonment do not need additional hardship. This bill will contribute to divorce, and make life after release even harder in a society where an ex-prisoner can not get a job, find housing, and often is without any social support. SLAVERY IS LEGAL IN PRISON The Massachusetts government wants to create prison industries enterprises (PIE) to make it easier to profit off of prison industry products and other work prisoners are forced to do for slave wages. The PIE's will also allow the prisons to act as profit making financial institution which can invest its money much like a corporation. Part of the bill proposing the creation of these industries says that the prisons can "expend any part of inmate earnings to satisfy the victim and witness assessment." The remaining earnings are distributed as follows: "For those inmates employed by companies participating in the federal Private Industry Enhancement (PIE) program, so-called, twenty percent shall be deposited into the Victim and Witness Assistance Fund; the remainder shall be allocated as the commissioner sees fit among the following uses; to offset the costs associated with the inmate's incarceration, for purchases within the institution by the inmate, and for deposit into an interest-bearing account." Inmates not participating in the PIE must give 10% of their income to the Victim Fund, 10% to costs of incarceration, and they get to use 40% in prison and 40% is saved for when they are released. But this is not all. There is a clause in the bill that says that at the commissioner's discretion, if the prisoner is a "sexually dangerous person" or is serving a life term, 50% of the earnings can be taken away for cost of incarceration and the remaining 50% given to the Victim and Witness Fund. Keeping in mind that the US constitution says that slavery is legal in prisons, this bill is consistent with the purpose of the US criminal injustice system. Inmates earn far less that minimum wage in prison jobs: The average wage for prison labor in this country is between $.23 and $1.23.(1) And now Massachusetts is going to take away even more of their small salary. This bill will also make it possible for private businesses to employ inmates and to contract with private companies to manage prison-based businesses. While wages paid by these companies must be market rate, the commissioner can deduct from the wages "financial contributions sufficient to qualify said business under the eligibility requirements" which in the end means the prisons can take what they want of the prisoners wages. It is worth noting that in addition to losing all or most of their wages to the prison system, prison laborers are not protected by the FAIR Labor Standards Act or by OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration) which means that conditions of work in prisons are virtually unregulated.(1) FIGHT THE CRIMINAL INJUSTICE SYSTEM It is no accident that slavery is legal in prisons and that the majority of prisoners are from oppressed nations. Prisons in Amerika are used for social control. These new Massachusetts bills will just further the ability of the government to control the overwhelmingly poor population that is sent to prison along with their families who will follow them into debt. We need to fight against reactionary legislation like this but we have to keep a revolutionary anti-imperialist perspective. Even if these bills are defeated, the criminal injustice system in Amerika will still hold more people per capita than any other country's prison system. This is a system that can not be reformed away: only by overthrowing imperialism can we create a true justice system that serves the people, not the imperialists. NOTE: 1. American Friends Service Committee public testimony on March 26, 1997. * * * HYSTERIA THREATENS USE OF INTERNET FOR OPPRESSED by MC45 A Minnesota prisoner already serving time for molesting children is being threatened with an extended sentence. The pigs say he uses the Internet and the prison's computers to plan more molestations. Much discussion around this case has centered on the extent to which computers and the Internet can be used to break the law.(1) As the state builds up the case that the Internet can be used to commit crimes, and to commit them anonymously, these cases can become legal justification for limited privacy on the Internet. While these public cases are about sexual abuse, the state's general interest in limiting secure and anonymous access to the Internet is to prevent the oppressed from using the Internet as an organizing tool. In this Minnesota case, the prisoner allegedly used the Internet in unspecified ways to compile a database of potential girl-child victims to molest. He also used an anonymous remailer in Finland to exchange e-mail. The pigs have no proof that he used the Internet to distribute this list, yet they publicly suggest the possibility that he could do this.(1) MIM agrees with the ACLU analysis of this case and the pertinent law to a point. The ACLU said: "It's a fallacy that the Internet allows you to do illegal things that you couldn't otherwise do. ... There's nothing you can get off the Internet that you can't get in the local library."(2) While we agree the Internet does not house a special brand of information unavailable elsewhere, we would not so quickly dismiss its power as an organizing tool. The net makes being in contact with activists across continents and oceans as cheap and easy as being in contact with activists within a given city. But unlike what the pigs claim, this is a qualitative difference in information distribution, not in the information itself. One early penal response to this type of case came from the United States Parole Commission, which holds the honor of being the first parole authority (no states have done this) to attempt to control crime on the Internet. The Commission has said that it will take steps anywhere from "prohibiting offenders from owning a computer to installing monitoring equipment on their computers that will keep tabs on where they roam on line."(2) To assure revolutionaries that they have good reason to be concerned about these new regulations, a u.s. parole commissioner said that this regulation is directed at people "with histories involving either pedophilia or hate crime activity, the illegal use of explosives, those kinds of things."(2) MIM and all our prison correspondents know that our work is frequently described as that of a "hate group" by prison officials trying to keep prisoners from reading our publications. The logic for calling us a hate group is that we hate oppression and work to end the supremacy of groups over other groups. For this we are classified as hating white people, men, and Amerikans. MIM responds to this charge: if the shoe fits, either take it off and join us in the struggle against oppression, or acknowledge that those who defend oppression are the real hate criminals and quit slinging mud in our direction. NOTES: 1. New York Times. 28 March 1997, p. A15. 2. New York Times. 5 January 1997, sec. 4, p. 5. * * * AMERIKAN IMPERIALISM CONTINUES AGAINST EAST TIMOR VIA INDONESIAN HAND by MC17 This year, the US congress has allocated an additional $4.5 million in aid to the Indonesian dictatorship, with $100,000 expected to be aimed at military training alone.(1) Indonesia occupies East Timor, an occupation infamous for the brutality and oppression the East Timorese have undergone. With over 1/3 of the population massacred since the Indonesian invasion in 1975, the ongoing resistance of the Timorese people is testimony to the will of the oppressed to fight for their lives. In the 22 years of the occupation, repression has been a daily reality for the East Timorese people. In spite of this, a strong resistance movement continues to fight for self-determination. In February, at least 137 East Timorese people are believed to have been arbitrarily arrested, and up to four people shot, following days of unrest in the Uatulari sub-district in Viqueque. The prisoners are reported to be extremely frightened and hold grave fears for their own safety. As with all East Timorese prisoners taken by the Indonesian regime, torture and even death are very likely.(2) A Republican in the US congress, Patrick Kennedy, is sponsoring a bill to cut off an estimated $26 million in military aid because of Indonesia's human rights record.(3) At the same time, the United Snakes is planning to sell Indonesia at least 9 more F-16 military airplanes. Congress is threatening to postpone delivery on human rights grounds, citing the situation in East Timor and Jakarta's July 1996 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. Nevertheless, the deal is still scheduled to go through.(4) Clinton banned the selling of small arms to Indonesia on the grounds that it was these that are used against the East Timorese people but his political manipulations and hypocrisy are clear in light of the other military aid still being given to Indonesia. In all, the United States has sold more than $1.1 billion in weaponry to Indonesia since its 1975 invasion of East Timor; the sales have gone on in Republican and Democratic administrations alike, regardless of the rhetoric espoused by the President at the time. According to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, from 1992 to 1994 (the most recent years for which full data is available), Indonesia received 53% of its weapons imports from the United States. If the proposed sale of the F-16s goes ahead as planned, the Clinton Administration will have approved roughly $270 million in arms sales to Indonesia in just over 4 years, or an average of over $67 million per year. This represents more than twice the level of arms sales to Indonesia concluded during the Bush Administration, and allowing for inflation, it represents the highest level of U.S. sales since the second Reagan term or the early Carter period.(5) There is a growing movement in the United Snakes fighting against Amerikan imperialism and its Indonesian arm oppressing East Timor and supporting the East Timorese right to self-determination. This pressure is certainly the cause of the sudden u.s. congress interest in human rights violations that have been obvious since 1975. While any cuts in U.S. aid to military dictators around the world represent progress for the nations fighting for self- determination, historically it has not been effective to lobby the u.s. congress to achieve these gains. While we put pressure on the u.s. government to cut off support to imperialism world-wide, we must recognize that imperialism will not be reformed and any such victories are only meant to pacify protests. The people of East Timor and the other occupied nations of the world deserve our support here in the belly of the beast and we have a responsibility to continue this fight with the understanding that we will not win until imperialism is overthrown. NOTES: 1.http://amadeus.inesc.pt:80/~jota/Timor/TimorNews/Mar97/Ind o.not.concerned.with.US.proposal.to.stop.aid 2. http://www.peg.apc.org/~etchrmel/Urgent.htm 3. WORLD NEWS FROM RADIO AUSTRALIA, Tuesday 18th March, 1997, 7.15pm 4. http://amadeus.inesc.pt:80/~jota/Timor/TimorNews/Mar97/Indo. mil.cr iticises.move.to.cut.american.aid 5. http://amadeus.inesc.pt/~jota/Timor/TimorNews/Mar97/US.arms. transfers. to.Indo.I * * * IMPERIALISTS PREPARE FOR NUCLEAR WAR by MC49 **"I have said before that all the reputedly powerful reactionaries are merely paper tigers. The reason is that they are divorced from the people. Look! Was not Hitler a paper tiger? Was Hitler not overthrown? I also said that the tsar of Russia, the emperor of China and Japanese imperialism were all paper tigers. As we know, they were all overthrown. U.S. imperialism has not yet been overthrown and it has the atom bomb. I believe it also will be overthrown. It, too, is a paper tiger."** -- Chairperson Mao Zedong, 18 November 1957 **"Riding roughshod everywhere, U.S. imperialism has made itself the enemy of the people of the world and has increasingly isolated itself. Those who refuse to be enslaved will never be cowed by the atom bombs and hydrogen bombs in the hands of the U.S. imperialists. The raging tide of the people of the world against the U.S. aggressors is irresistible. Their struggle against U.S. imperialism and its lackeys will assuredly win still greater victories."** -- Chairperson Mao Zedong, 12 January 1964 The U.S. government (USG) stopped making nuclear bombs in 1989, but it has by no means given up on the idea. Public pressure around serious safety and environmental problems, combined with the disappearance of the Cold War excuse for warmongering, forced the shutdown. Since, the USG has honed its pro-war propaganda line, and is hoping to resume nuclear bomb production by 2003. The imperialists, principally the U.S. imperialists, are currently waging a hot war -- World War III -- against the world's oppressed nations, including the U.S. empire's internal colonies. Nuclear blackmail has been a key part of the imperialists' strategy in this war. Despite USG fear- mongering about "Third World terrorists" and the like, the USG is the only government to ever actually drop nuclear bombs onto civilians' heads. In 1945, the USG dropped nuclear bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. John Hershey's book, Hiroshima, provides some idea of the horror of this USG crime against the people. And that's the whole point. The USG's goal was not to stop Japanese reaction, but to terrorize the world's peoples into submission. This remains the goal of the USG's nuclear weapons program. Fortunately, it is people, not things, which are decisive. We fully expect that the world's oppressed majority will destroy imperialism before imperialism destroys humanity. In 2003, the USG hopes to be ready for sustained production of up to 50 nuclear bombs a year, in order to maintain a stockpile of about 6,000 terror-bombs. To reach this goal, the USG's Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in Los Alamos, New Mexico is scheduled to outfit a new bomb- manufacturing plant and train skilled technicians of death. LANL's role in the USG's nuclear terrorism is given the false appearance of civilian endorsement by the University of California's willingness -- a willingness bought and paid for by the USG -- to play an oversight role. Likewise, the USG's warmongering is cloaked by such euphemisms as "defense" and "national security," and by such mechanisms as putting the nuclear terror-bomb-making under the jurisdiction of the "Department of Energy," possibly the only federal USG agency as sorely misnamed as the "Department of Defense" and the "Department of Justice." The USG plans to spend $40 billion to keep its terror-bomb stockpile in tip-top shape, and it plans to mask this as an "Energy" expense. The money will go to new scientific instruments, industrial plants, terror-bomb components, and terror-bombs. Also with an eye towards its 2003 goal, the "Energy Department" wants LANL to demonstrate the ability to make a fully certified plutonium pit in 1998. A plutonium pit is the nuclear trigger that sets off fusion reactions in terror-bombs. Rocky Flats nuclear plant in Colorado built all of the USG's plutonium pits until public concern over serious safety and environmental problems forced the plant to shut down in the early 1990s. Only four people within U.S. borders are currently capable of fabricating a plutonium pit. All four work at LANL. Most of us humans like humanity. We want peace. But we are going to have to fight to get it. NOTE: Los Angeles Times, 19 Feb 1997, p. A4 Also see: John Hershey's Hiroshima, Bantam Books, New York, 1986. * * * NDFP CONDEMNS PHILIPPINE ARMY ATTACKS ON CIVILIANS; CALLS RAMOS' PEACE INITIATIVES PSYWAR GIMMICK Press Release 23 March 1997 The National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) condemned today the recent operations of the Philippine military against the residents of Sta. Cruz, Zambales. The military's ruthless strafing and bombing of the community has forced residents to flee their homes. Through Fidel Agcaoili, chairman of the NDFP's Reciprocal Working Committee on Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (RWC on HR and IHL), the NDFP declared this attack on civilians as a clear violation of international humanitarian law and the Ramos regime's self-declared ceasefire, the so-called Suspension of Offensive Military Operations (SOMO). "It is indeed ironic that these operations are taking place while the panel of the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) is supposedly negotiating peace with NDFP," Agcaoili said. He added: "More ironic is the fact that the two parties are currently negotiating a comprehensive agreement on respect for human rights and international humanitarian law." The two panels resumed talks last March 18 in Breukelen, the Netherlands. Human rights advocates said that troops from the Army's 68th Infantry Battalion had been conducting military operations in several villages in Sta. Cruz to flush out guerrillas of the New People's Army (NPA). On March 19, it was reported that two Huey helicopter gunships hovered above the village and dropped eight bombs. During these operations, several villages were cordoned off and local residents were prevented from leaving their homes. One resident who managed to escape and the first to report the incident to human rights groups said that Army soldiers took his watch, his money, and the family's food supply. A number of residents were also arrested and interrogated and were forced to admit that they were NPA supporters. Soldiers also reportedly opened fire at the villagers' houses. Reports on the casualties are yet to be known pending results of a human rights fact-finding mission. Agcaoili: "The barbarity by which government soldiers attack the civilian population belies once again the sincerity of the Ramos regime in wanting to conduct negotiations with the aim of attaining a just and lasting peace in the country. It shows that its peace initiatives are nothing but a mere psywar gimmick. How can the Ramos regime claim it is serious in negotiating peace when it cannot even abide by its unilateral ceasefire declaration nor its signature on international covenants?" Earlier, Luis Jalandoni, chair of the NDFP Negotiating Panel, had also called the Ramos government's SOMO as "false and hypocritical", after government soldiers launched several surprise attacks on NPA guerrillas in Kalinga and Sorsogon. He said that the NDFP had received reports of repeated military operations by the Armed Forces of the Philippines in various parts of the country, even as GRP President Fidel Ramos has announced a further extension of the SOMO earlier this month. The SOMO is supposed to end on April 6. "Such perfidious acts of the GRP under cover of a deceptive SOMO are totally contradictory to the spirit and letter of carrying out goodwill and confidence-building measures in accord with The Hague Joint Declaration of September 1992," Jalandoni said. Agcaoili warns the Ramos regime that the NDFP "considers these grave breaches of international humanitarian law as provocations and threaten the very continuance of the peace talks." SOURCE: http://www.geocities.com/~cpp-ndf/sison12.htm * * * MIM CELEBRATES THE 28TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY 29 March 1996 MIM enthusiastically salutes the anniversary of the New People's Army (NPA). Soon after its own re-establishment on Dec. 26, 1968, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) organized the NPA on March 29, 1969. The NPA started with 60 Red fighters armed with only nine automatic rifles and 26 single-shot rifles and handguns. The NPA has grown significantly since then. The CPP established the NPA under the guidance of Marxism- Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought and along the general line of the new-democratic revolution. Under the absolute leadership of the Party and its Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line, the NPA wages a protracted people's war, made possible and dictated by the chronically crisis-ridden semicolonial and semifeudal conditions of the Philippines. By waging the Protracted People's War, the NPA correctly follows the guidance of Comrade Mao Zedong, who said, "We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun." Imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism ruthlessly oppress the Filipino people. The oppressors repeatedly demonstrate that they will not give up their power without a fight. The masses can only liberate themselves from oppression by organizing themselves under the leadership of a communist party to seize power through armed struggle. Only by fighting until total victory can there be a just and lasting peace. Under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the Commanders and fighters of the NPA have expanded and consolidated their mass base for carrying out the national-democratic revolution through protracted people's war. With the support of the broad masses of the Filipino people, the CPP and NPA can expect to lead the intensification of guerrilla warfare and the mass movement in due time. Comrade Mao Zedong said, "The correctness or otherwise of the ideological and political line decides everything. When the Party's line is correct, then everything will come its way. If it has no followers, then it can have followers; if it has no guns, then it can have guns; if it has no political power, then it can have political power." The NPA's history has shown this to be true. From 1987 to 1992, an incorrect political-military line dominated the NPA's work. This adventurist line called for a strategic counteroffensive. It dichotomized military work from political work. The NPA's incorrect abandonment of mass political work led to a diminishment of the NPA's mass social base. The NPA's incorrect abandonment of political study consolidated these errors. Under the influence of the adventurist line, the NPA failed to educate, mobilize, and arouse the masses. The NPA became isolated from the masses. Many heroic fighters were martyred as a result of these errors. Since 1992, under the leadership of the CPP, the NPA has been undergoing a rectification campaign. The goal of this campaign is to reaffirm the Party's Marxist-Leninist-Maoist principles, rectify errors, and rebuild strength which was diminished as a result of the erroneous line. Today, the NPA studies the classics of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao, and opposes the adventurist line. This movement has been an overwhelming success, and it demonstrates the universal significance and importance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. The NPA's continued and growing success demonstrates the continued relevance of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as a tool for liberating the oppressed. MIM wishes continued success to the NPA and the national democratic revolution it advances. MIM contributes to this success in the best way it can-by preparing the masses of North America to make anti- imperialist revolution. LONG LIVE THE NEW PEOPLE'S ARMY! LONG LIVE THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF THE PHILIPPINES! VICTORY TO THE FILIPINO PEOPLE'S WAR! LONG LIVE MARXISM-LENINISM-MAOISM! * * * ITALIAN ANTI-IMPERIALIST CONTINUES FIGHT FOR RELEASE by MC53 The government of the United Snakes of Amerika has imprisoned, detained and tortured Silvia Baraldini for over 14 years. Amerika has denied four petitions from her and the Italian government to transfer Silvia to an Italian prison. Silvia is a staunch anti-imperialist revolutionary activist and as her lawyer has said, "Her fourteen year imprisonment and her forty three year sentence were imposed not because of what she did but because of what she believes." MIM and RAIL have been building up an anti-imperialist, anti-settler colonial campaign to expose the fact that Amerikan prisons are used as a tool for social control. This campaign comes from the understanding that Amerikan prisons serve to protect the interests of the settler imperialist government of the united snakes. Silvia Baraldini's case shows that the Amerikan government uses prisons to suppress the struggles against settler and imperialist domination. Learn more about the case of Silvia, support her in her struggle to be released, and fight against imperialism and for the eventual overthrow of this increasingly repressive state of imperialist warmongers. Prisons are primarily used as a method for national oppression. The majority of prisoners in Amerikan gulags are Black despite the fact that the Black nation is a small percentage of the united snakes. Amerika has increased the capacity of the gulags to house more prisoners and continues to perpetuate the oppressive material conditions of the internal colonies, immigrant laborers and urban poor. It is because of conditions of poverty, piss-poor education and lack of real opportunities that street crimes are committed. So the Amerikan government polices the streets looking for offenders of small crimes while the real criminals guilty of aiding military dictatorships and guilty of sending arms to slaughter peasants fighting for self-determination remain within the government and corporate offices. Silvia Baraldini was a radical in the 1960s and 1970s fighting to expose the Amerikan government's agenda of imperialism and national oppression. She acted with the interests of internationalism at root, fought against South African apartheid, worked to expose the illegal workings of the FBI's COINTELPRO, and supported the Black Panther Party and the Puerto Rican independence movement. It is no surprise that the Amerikan government would move to repress Silvia's radical actions. That is exactly why we must overthrow the government and its militarily which works against struggles fought for self-determination. Silvia was accused of having aided members of the Black Liberation Army in a conspiracy against the United Snakes. In reality, she participated in the escape of Assata Shakur, a Black revolutionary in exile in Cuba. She was convicted of this and convicted of an attempted robbery that never took place. She received forty years for this. She also received another three years added to the sentence because she refused to testify against Puerto Rican independence activists. Silvia's supporters emphasize that none of these acts were committed involving weapons or with any injury resulting to anyone. Her tremendously long sentence is solely because of her political beliefs. While imprisoned in Amerika, Silvia was one of the wimmin used in the experimental control unit in Lexington. Through the Wire, a documentary MIM and RAIL show at political educational events, shows the conditions of the control units. Beyond the general use of prisons as a method to repress national liberation, Lexington was an experimental torture prison constructed to sap the revolutionary energy out of the wimmin held. (Write to MIM for help in setting up a showing of Through the Wireas an educational event.) MIM opposes the way that prisons are used in general in the United Snakes. That's why we expose who's in there and why. We also support the struggles of prisoners to use the legal system to fight winnable battles. The parole guidelines specify 40 to 52 months imprisonment for the crimes which Silvia was convicted. She has served more than 167 months. Silvia is facing a parole board hearing in July 1997. MIM wants people to look at this case and all imprisonments to see why we need revolution. As you are doing that, help out the supporters of Silvia to make campaigning for her return home a winnable battle. Check out: http://www.justice-for-silvia.org/ for the most recent information. The Release Silvia! Committee to Return Silvia Baraldini to Italy at 3542 18th Street #30, San Francisco, CA 94110 sent us information to be publicized and is the snail contact for more information. The committee is asking that people write letters to request that Silvia receive parole addressed to: Commissioner John R. Simpson, US Parole Commission 550 Friendship Blvd., Suite 420 Chevy Chase, MD 20815 But mailed to her attorney: Elizabeth Fink, Esq. 294 Atlantic Avenue Brooklyn, NY 112201 * * * REVOLUTIONARY CULTURE REVIEW: SLINGBLADE The film Slingblade by director/actor Billy Bob Thorton takes a pretty good stab at the social concept of sanity and just what constitutes murder. Beginning in a mental institution, Karl, the middle aged main character who is being released, tells that he was put there because at eleven he killed his mother and the man he thought was her rapist, but who was really her lover, with a sickle type blade. The response from the head doctor on his day of release is that Karl seems "cured" and besides, the funding ran out for him to stay. Objectively looking at Karl's early actions, was it so "insane" for him to kill a man whom he thought, from the banging and screaming, was raping his mother? Was it so strange for him to next murder his mother after she had locked him up in a dirt floored shed his whole life, fed him made up stories and then proceeded to yell at him for murdering her rapist/lover? Psychology showers itself in definitions of sane and insane yet fails to look at the social access to power that creates our social beings. Those that accept the status quo are sane. Those who have been socially relegated to a disempowered position and thereby can't be a part of that status quo are deemed insane or delinquent. In the film, Karl, portrayed as a mentally disabled man, makes friends with eleven year old Frank. Frank, moves into his garage and gets a job with Karl who is an ingenious engine mechanic. His capacity as an ace mechanic gives us a glimpse of the social reality behind mental retardation. In current society the unequal distribution of goods and necessities is based on an un-regulated competition economy and ideology. When someone doesn't do certain things as well or learn as fast as everyone else, they are considered "retarded". The fact that Karl was trapped in a shed his whole childhood life, was forced to bury his infant brother alive, and was imprisoned for seemingly saving his mother from a rapist is not taken into consideration. He's still considered retarded. The society calls his mechanical genius a fluke, and ignores that he was only allowed contact with lawn mower engines in the shed, contributing to his ability. This movie shows why socialism is a more rational system than capitalism. Socialism uses the state ownership of production and distribution to break down the competition and individualistic mindset that holds back peoples potential. At the same time it encourages people to help each other with the realization that no one benefits unless all can benefit. As we build communism, we build a society that will unleash the potential of all people. When people in the town began to find about Karl's past, they said things like "I would of killed the bastard too", referring to his mother's lover. This exposes exactly what it means to be "sane" since the majority of the town would have done exactly what Karl did if they had the chance but for much less rational reasons, like not liking the man. Later in the film Karl's friends try to set him up with the "other slow" womyn in the town, managing to show how the romance culture is the mainstay for Amerikans lives. Romance was the last thing on Karl's mind and he spent the majority of his days working and talking with Frank. Frank's mother was dating an abusive drunk who beat up anything from his wheelchair bound "friend" to Frank. From night after night of apologies for being violent, Frank's mother allowed the boyfriend to move in. The boyfriend got more abusive and threatened to kill Frank. The rest of the town went on with their individual business, in true amerikan style. Seeing no choice for the mother or Frank, Karl decided to give them his money, send them to the mother's friend's house and kill the boyfriend with a lawn mower blade. This part of the movie plays into the helpless image of wimmin that the patriarchy propagates. MIM would have preferred to see Frank's mother decide to take control of her life and move in with her friend on her own. While abusive relationships like this one are certainly very difficult to get out of, Amerikan wimmin do have the resources to escape and do not need other men to make them escape. It is the patriarchy that reinforces this helplessness of wimmin and encourages them to see themselves as unable to act. Though Karl's action will not change the world that created the abuse, it is still a rational response considering the social conditions. The problem with Karl's response is that it assumes abuse is an individual problem rather than recognizing that removing one problem man will not eliminate the patriarchy. Instead of individualizing the abuse and ending up in the pigs prisons or mental institutions, the oppressed need to organize. In reality, the distinction between a "healthy" relationship and an abusive one is very blury under the patriarchy where violent sex is considered erotic and power games are the norm. The only real way to end gender abuse and oppression is by overthrowing the patriarchy. THIRD WORLD WAR by an RC Strugglin with arms from Peru to the Philippines Changin Nightmares to Dreams the ends justifies the means Where the ballot or the bullet is bullshit They just put their finger to the trigger & Pull it & try to pull shit, off with the barrel of a gun Cuz that's where power stems from not which candidates run Before you lay the gun down, you gotta pick it up Fight fire with fire before your home flames up In Peru its Gonzalo they follow Cuz watchin their children starve is hard to swallow 24 hours a day, enslaved he's teenaged feeling middle aged No minimum wage, no raise, dying for a days pay Imperialism got him locked in a cage Neo-colonialism creates hate & rage No future in sight No voice for the choiceless Till they stand up & Fight No choice for the choiceless Not seen or heard So voice for the voiceless We bleed the Third World No choice for the choiceless World War 3 ain't on your TV Just their views of news & shit-coms & Disney Makes you dizzy, so you can't see what's goin on Right under your nose A silent Vietnam Across the globe countries explode Culture erodes while we grow old Heads role in the land you stole Life is hell under capitalist control & You just want to know who's gonna win the superbowl? They suppress the oppressed with your support So I say wake up! or get tried in their court People in the Third World are dying in a Third World War Settle the score, arm the poor U.N. & U.S. Playin chess with armed forces Got the Third World in check securing the theft of Natural Resources With Dictators & Puppet Regimes Put in place by United Snakes schemes From CIA hit men to comprador Death squads They kill their own just to beat the odds Everyday from the USA Death is imported & The Daily News they choose not to report it Corporate Capitalists, Cash flow fills their need Death Grows where they sow their wicked seed Board rooms filled with Hitler clones Committing Genocide wi' money sittn' high on Thrones Just demons behind a desk fighting paper wars Against people slavin for him, Livin on Dirt Floors & Scrap metal walls so revolution calls While we spend their stolen Money in the shoppin malls fuck that You shoulda' asked before you crept in Now you better make the bed you slept in or never sleep again No future in sight No voice for the choiceless Til they stand up & Fight No choice for the choiceless Not seen or heard So voice for the voiceless We bleed the Third World No choice for the choiceless First Work Villain better stop killin in the Third World before shit unfurl First Work Villain better stop killin in the Third World before shit unfurl First Work Villain better stop killin in the Third World before shit unfurl First Work Villain better stop killin in the Third World before shit unfurl MIM responds: Overall this is an excellent revolutionary song but the one thing it is missing is the Maoist message that we need to organize systematic revolutionary struggle. In fact, the First Work Villian is not going to stop killing in the Third World but instead the people of the Third World will be organized into revolutionary organizations that fight winnable battles until we overthrow imperialism once and for all. These lyrics stop short in that they call for arming the masses but don't point to the direction for our organizing. As we have seen throughout history, taking the correct line and strategy in organizing means the difference between victory and defeat. * * * HETEROSEXIST WIN AT PENN STATE by MC45 In a conciliatory move towards anti-gay politics, a combined student-faculty oversight board at Pennsylvania State University approved the formation of a student group called Students Reinforcing Adherence in General Heterosexual Tradition (STRAIGHT). An all-student judiciary board initially denied STRAIGHT the right to organize as a University-sponsored group -- a decision MIM supports and which demonstrates again that Amerikan youth have a better understanding of oppression than their elders and will be more progressive. Groups like this anti-gay group at Penn State cite the First in defense of their right to organize. But MIM and the student board at Penn State know that anti-gay politics are already fully sanctioned by the Amerikan government and society. These groups don't need extra protection. In this case, STRAIGHT was approved in spite of the University's policy against discrimination, which includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The student board used the University policy as the basis for its decision, but the student-faculty board decided that "STRAIGHT exists to articulate a viewpoint, not to engage in improper conduct." Within the white nation, youth have the least developed interest of white nation supremacy and oppression and are more willing to support reparations to oppressed groups. The student board decided that no pro-heterosexual group is needed to support the heterosexual lifestyle. Superstructural supports ranging from legal provisions like marriage to social pressure like movies and music already drum up straightness as the only romantic option. While STRAIGHT claims that it is not anti-gay, but pro- straight, MIM and honest progressives everywhere know this to be a lie. Reactionary Amerikans like to yell "persecution" when the oppressed try to gain equal rights, and STRAIGHT's only reason for existence is to protect an already over-protected lifestyle. All progressives should work with MIM and RAIL to unabashedly support better than equal rights for the oppressed at the expense of the oppressors. NOTE: The Chronicle of Higher Education. 21 March, 1997, p. A44. * * * CIA PRETENDS TO CLEAN UP ITS ACT by MC17 In March the CIA purged a number of agents who the mainstream media described as "unsavory". This action merits comment because we know there is no significant difference between those agents let go and the ones still on the payroll. Regardless of the individuals involved, the main purpose of the CIA is to wage war on the world's nations by means of covert operations involving economic warfare, rigged elections, assassinations and genocide. Its goal is to maintain U.S. control over Third World peoples and economies. The New York Times reported: "After decades of cavalierly recruiting foreign agents, including killers, torturers, terrorists and other assorted miscreants, the agency has belatedly stopped to see if the caliber of their work for America outweighs their sordid records. In many cases the answer appears to be 'no,' and the agents have been dismissed."(1) The explanation that the Amerikan government is suddenly cleaning up and putting the history of murder behind it is at best naive. Whether the reason for the dismissals was to make the agency more efficiently run or the result of political power struggles does not matter significantly. Possibly these particular agents did not use enough discretion when carrying out the Amerikan sanctioned murders. Lack of discretion could be too much for the Amerikan government to contend with as it tries to keep clean the name of bourgeois democracy and disguise its agenda of imperialist hegemonism. Altogether, the CIA fired some 1,000 foreign informants, about a third of its total roster. The review of foreign agents and establishment of recruiting standards was pressed by John Deutch during his 20-month tenure as CIA chief. The New York Times wrote that "While the standards are not as tight as they could be, they represent a significant improvement over the ethical vacuum that existed. Mr. Deutch deserves the thanks of his countrymen for insisting on their adoption." But really there is no such thing as a cleaner, kinder CIA. The history of the CIA is a history of attacks against Third World peoples, installation of Amerika-friendly dictatorships, murder, theft, and deceit. It makes no difference if a few agents were tossed: those who prove useful to further imperialist aims will be retained, often because of the murder and torture they carry out as this is an essential part of the CIA's work. The fact that some congressional oversight committees have revealed that the CIA knowingly paid killers and torturers will not change the nature of this imperialist agency. The CIA has privatized its covert operations removing them from the public eye. When Carter purged CIA thugs, they remained in the business of imperialist domination though picking up jobs in the private sector politics, arms and narcotics businesses. To think that individuals booted from the thuggery in the public sphere no longer will carry out work of thugs, or to think that the CIA is now committed to peaceably gathering information instead of murdering the masses is to ignore reality. NOTES: 1. The New York Times, 4 March 1997, p. A22. 2. The New York Times. 3 March 1997, p. A12. * * * PSEUDOFEMS TAIL IMPERIALIST MOUTHPIECE by MC206 The February issue of "Off Our Backs" (OOB) contains a clear example of pseudo-feminist apology for imperialism. The article "Albright takes helm at state dept." shows two of the reasons pseudo-feminists end up doing imperialist public relations. One: Pseudo-feminists only pay attention to who is speaking or acting, and not what is being said or done. Two: Pseudo-feminists approach the oppression of wimmin from a supra-class and supra-nationality position, and therefore miss the real causes for the oppression of the majority of world's wimmin -- those in oppressed nations. Any analysis refusing to address imperialism cannot truly address the oppression of wimmin. OOB writes that Albright is now "the highest ranking woman ever to serve in the federal government... Albright spent the last three years in as the U.S. representative to the United Nations. Although she was required to hold up a number of questionable positions on human rights in the UN Security Council, she does know a considerable amount more about the global oppression of women and other groups than her predecessors at the State Department." OOB doesn't say exactly what "questionable positions on human rights" Albright upheld as u.s. attack dog in the UN. MIM, however, recalls that Albright was a strong supporter of continued economic sanctions against Iraq, which were responsible for widespread hunger, disease, and a vast increase in the infant mortality rate in Iraq. Albright also used the her position in the UN to hypocritically attack other countries for their poor "human rights" records, while apologizing for or denying u.s. crimes, from genocidal invasions to the exploitation of prison labor. Further on in the article, OOB gets specific: "[Albright's] most recent comments on the international situation were on the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan stating that decrees regarding women would 'essentially deprive women of all rights, except the right to remain silent, indoors, and invisible.' Now that's the kind of analysis the U.S. needs in formulating its foreign policy." That's rich. Somehow, just because Albright poses left on one issue, we are supposed to forget the CIA's long involvement in the proxy- war fought in Afghanistan, and the resulting suffering imposed on the people of Afghanistan, men and wimmin. OOB completely buys into the lie that Albright is a "human rights activist" who will tailor foreign policy to higher, altruistic goals. This lie enables the imperialists to put a "left" gloss on their sanctions, bombings, invasions, and wars. But of course the real motive forces behind u.s. foreign policy are still securing "stable investment climates" in the oppressed nations and ensuring that Amerikan imperialism remains competitive with other imperialist powers. So -- whether or not Albright is Secretary of State -- Amerikan foreign policy preserves a system which oppresses the vast majority of the world's wimmin and men. * * * CLINTON WANTS MORE DIRECT BOURGEOIS CONTROL OF JUDGES, LESS OF ELECTIONS "According to figures compiled by the Alliance for Justice, a Washington-based interest group, 34.1% of Clinton's judges have been millionaires, compared with 32.5% of President Bush's judges, 21.4% of President Reagan's and 3.9% of President Carter's."(1) The average net worth of the 25 people Clinton is trying to get Congress to approve in 1997 for the U.S. District Court and Court of Appeals is $1,798,670.(1) "By contrast, the average net worth of Clinton's 1996 judicial appointees was $1,024,188, a record at the time."(1) In the small world of the wealthy, one of Clinton's nominees is married to someone who raised over $2.5 million for Democrats. We pity President Clinton in his difficult job: there are only so many millionaires and only a small percentage of those have law degrees. It must be difficult to find enough appointees like the one who rents her house to Hollywood at $13,800 a year and has the address of "Beverly Hills 90210."(1) Many Amerikans think we do not live in a class dictatorship, but the rich fund the campaigns of the Clintons of the world who then pick the judges. And of course Clinton is no different in essence than Bush, Reagan, and the whole lot of bourgeois politicians. These figures from the Alliance for Justice show that the rich reward each other with judge posts. Only the naive believe we have achieved a society where true individualism reigns, where membership in a group (like the group "millionaires") does not matter at all. Meanwhile, the bourgeoisie has been so kind as to make a backhanded admission of its dictatorship. By a vote of 61-38 the Senate turned down a law that would have allowed states to set spending limits in state and local elections and would have amended the federal constitution to let Congress set spending and contribution limits for federal elections.(2) President Clinton favored the minority position. Journalists have speculated that an ordinary law setting campaign spending limits would be overturned by the Supreme Court. The bourgeoisie has argued on its own behalf that it should have the "free speech" to spend its money as it pleases. Setting campaign spending caps limits the free speech of those who would like to buy more TV commercials etc. This is an admission that "free speech" depends on wealth. Those who cannot afford to buy million-dollar TV spots do not do not have the same access to "free speech" as those who can. (And, of course, those who choose to speak out against the abuses of Amerikan imperialism or speak up for revolution have their "right to free speech" militarily suppressed.) In France, bourgeois rule has a slightly different flavor. The bourgeoisie there has rejected the argument against campaign spending caps, because the French capitalist class believes that bourgeois rule can be more indirect as long as the bourgeoisie has the property and means to bribe the labor aristocracy with superprofits. The French bourgeoisie rules by letting the labor aristocracy speak out on a more equal footing than in the United $tates, where workers are already on a more equal footing with the capitalist class than in the workers of oppressed nations are with their capitalist class. MIM is happy to let the bourgeoisie have one stance or the other but not both. If there is more free speech when people are allowed to spend money, then it also follows that when people are prevented from spending money, their free speech is also limited. That does not happen only under the proposed spending-cap laws, but it happens to most people because they don't have money. The whole issue is an embarrassment to the bourgeoisie. Currently the class believes that it must defend its rights by arguing that yes, free speech does depend on money, so let the bourgeoisie spend it. On the other hand, if free speech does depend on money (and MIM agrees it does), then what does that say about the people with no money? The current system is not class-neutral: it supports the liberties of the bourgeoisie. Under the dictatorship of the proletariat, people will not be allowed to make tremendous sums of money from owning things in the first place, and those who happen to come upon large financial gains will not be allowed to spend more money than a set amount accessible to the average person. NOTES: 1. USA Today 17Mar97, p. 3a. 2. USA Today 19Mar97, p. 8a. * * * SETTLER GOVERNMENT SET TO EVICT DINEH FIRST NATION by MC53 written 30 March 1997 In Black Mesa, Arizona, the people of the Dineh First Nation face forced eviction and relocation from their land. The people of the nation were given a choice by the imperialists. Either they sign the Accommodation Agreement by March 31st or the people will be forcibly removed from their land by US Marshals on April 1st. About 250 traditional Dine families still live on the land. Clearing the people from this land clears the road for Peabody Western Coal Company to extend its mining operations in the area. "They resisted relocation because they live self- sufficient traditional lifestyles, and relocation to a totally different surrounding and culture would mean the end of their own culture." Already the Peabody Western Coal Company through its operation of the world's largest strip mine has robbed the First Nation's land of much of its natural resources and created heavy pollution. Livestock have been killed and water has been contaminated as a result. The Dine residents of the land suffer from health problems due to the large amounts of coal dust. After previous relocations, which affected 11,000 Dine and 100 Hopi members, many of the people could not afford to pay their mortgages in the relocation settlements and became homeless. The designated area for resettlement was part of a land fraud involved in a Congressional investigation. The area is contaminated by 1.5 million tons of uranium ore that was processed and left in contaminated waste piles covering 72 acres. The settler position on this relocation of the Dineh nation claims that the United Snakes government is helping to resolve a "Navajo-Hopi land dispute." This land dispute was manufactured by the Amerikan government's forcible relocation of one people onto another's land and is just another ploy in the genocidal war against the First Nations that has been going on since the settlers arrived. "The Sovereign Dineh Nation, and its political arm, Dineh Alliance, have rejected the Accommodation Agreement outright. Acception of the Accommodation Agreement will mean a violation of Freedom of Religion and of Speech for the traditional Dine." "We stand unified one with another in our opposition to this unjust and unfair law that was created to remove us from the land by any means and at any cost." "The voice of the people must be heard for justice on Black Mesa to ensure the protection and survival of the people. The struggle is to protect sacred land, religion, and the survival of a traditional way of life from corporate interests. Relocation is genocide." Forced relocation has been the means for expansion since the beginning of the settler nation's history. Even without knowing the precise aspects to the Accommodation Agreement, MIM opposes the u.s. government's use of force to back First Nation peoples into a corner. Each First Nation has the right to self-determination to control its own land, to develop its own economic base, to teach its history in its own school system and to carry on its own traditions and culture. MIM supports the Navajo people of the Dineh nation and Hopi nation in their struggle against imperialist expansion. We also call upon self-proclaimed leftists to investigate the struggles of First Nations for their land before implementing back to nature commune type activism. Some settler nation activists who oppose various aspects of the current system think that it is possible to go off to some piece of land and create a self-sufficient utopia which escapes the evils of the amerikan empire. The struggles of the First Nations to control their land should serve as an example that settler expansion through any means and for whatever reason is stealing land and contributing to the genocide of entire nations. It is not possible to build a utopian society without first destroying imperialism. Fight with MIM and RAIL to stop imperialist expansion and to support national liberation of the oppressed nations to gain reparations and self-determination. NOTE: Information taken from a press release at: http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/emerg/Dineh.html For further information, contact: Sovereign Dineh Nation - Dineh Alliance P.O. Box 1042, Hotevilla, AZ 86030 * * * STONEY POINT STRUGGLE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION CONTINUES by MC53 In late March several trials against activists from the Stoney Point Nation began in Ontario, Kanada. All of the trials spring from a 1995 confrontation between First Nation activists and the Kanadian state. In the Summer of 1995, the First Nation activists re-occupied land that was taken from them in 1945 by the Kanadian government. In particular, the activists occupied a military training base and part of the Ipperwash Provincial Park. One young activist is charged with dangerous driving and assaulting police for driving a school bus at police as they beat First Nation activist Bernard George on 6 September, 1995. George, who is from the Kettle Point Nation, was re- occupying Stoney Point Nation when OOP pigs attacked him with batons. The young activist drove the bus towards the pigs in order to stop their attack. Another case involves Glenn Morris George, a Stoney Point Nation member who attempted to remove tire-slashing barricades set up by the Kanadian police on Stoney Nation territory. "This case is not about justice," the defense attorney for George said. "One side controls the laying of criminal charges, the other has nothing to say about it. So, while it is illegal to block a road and it is illegal to slash tires, that is not for consideration here." These charges are part of the Kanadian government's quest to deny the Stoney Point Nation its land -- in this case using so-called legal means. They make it clear that courts only serve to protect the rights and privileges of the settler nation. These courts charge the oppressed masses with the "crime" of struggling for self-determination and ignore the fact that the real criminals are the pig occupying forces. And as MIM Notes readers well know, the Kanadian government has not shied away from using openly violent means to keep the Stoney Point Nation off of their land. On September 6, 1995 police attacked unarmed men, wimmin and children at Stoney Point and murdered Anthony O'Brien "Dudley " George.(See MIM Notes 105) A public investigation of the murder of Dudley George is scheduled to begin April 1st. Previously, Ontario Premier Mike Harris ignored calls for a public inquiry into the murder of Dudley despite evidence contradicting police lies that activists fired the first shots. At a news conference March 3rd, lawyers for the family of Dudley released leaked documents that say a policeman fired the first shot. They also released a Sept. 5 ministerial briefing note, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that calls into doubt the provincial government's claim that it had no part in the decision to assemble 200 pigs to attack the demonstrators. The 1995 re-occupation was a response to the Kanadian government's genocidal actions towards the Stoney Point people. In 1942, the Kanadian government forcibly removed the Stoney Point people and their houses from their land. The Stoney Point Nation was literally picked up and placed upon the land of the nearby Kettle Point First Nation. Although this "relocation" was supposed to be temporary, the Kanadian government has denied the Stoney Point Nation's right to its land ever since. According to the "Stoney Point People's Support" web site, "The media have portrayed the Stoney Point people as a break away group without any legitimate claim to the land. They have attempted to portray the conflict between Kettle Point and Stoney Point as an internal issue." Of course, the idea that the struggle for stolen land is somehow an "internal issue" misses the point. If the Kanadian government had not forced the Stoney Point People off of their land in the first place, there would be no "issue." The Kanadian government uses this as a diversionary ploy to explain its interference in and domination of First Nations. The Kanadian and Amerikan governments have no business managing the affairs of the First Nations, or deciding who speaks for the First Nations. Only the First Nations themselves should have the authority to manage their own affairs and choose their own representatives. Imperialist military intervention and economic oppression and blackmail keep the First Nations from realizing self-determination. Anti-imperialist revolution -- including armed struggle -- will ultimately be necessary to liberate the First Nations. Note: http://www.execulink.com/~hkoehler/stonsups.htm * * * BOWING TO WORLD BANK ANDHRA ENDS PROHIBITION by MCB52 Wimmin's organizations responded with mass protests when the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh repealed the ban on liquor the organizations had fought hard for. The government elected on promises that it would end the state's profiteering on the sale of liquor is now responding instead to World Bank demands that it increase its revenue. MIM Notes #130 contained a review of a film documenting the wimmin's struggle against the state selling liquor in Andhra. Though hardly thought of as a wimmin's issue by pseudo-feminists who ignore the majority of the world's wimmin, these organizers found it imperative to stop the state's hypocrisy -- "public service" announcements against liquor at the same time that the state reaps profits from the liquor. The wimmin used literacy programs to education and politicize and the state subsequently canceled these. The wimmin's organizations then proceeded to build up mass marches and take direct action blocking liquor from their communities to get the state to ban liquor. Finally, they won their demands and the state lost its money from the poison. The reversal of the popular demand is the result of the comprador state's desire to get in with international capital. "The government's step to do away with prohibition is nothing but bowing down to pressure from the World Bank and a complete reversal of the state government's electoral pledges of 1994, which brought it to power," said K Ratnamala, an activist of a wimmin's organization. The organizational power of the wimmin of southern India is immense, especially because of their constant reference to imperialism as the enemy of the world's wimmin. Note: Asia Week. 2 April 1997. * * * PSEUDO-ENVIRONMENTALIST DEBATE FALLS SHORT by MC206 An article in April's Scientific American has caused quite a stir among Amerikan pseudo-environmentalists. In their article, "Can Sustainable Management Save Tropical Forests?", Richard Rice, Raymond Gullison, and John Reid argue that forest management -- a conservation strategy which calls on large capitalist logging forms to restrain from cutting too many trees and invest in planting seedlings -- cannot work, because it is not profitable for loggers. They offer several alternative strategies, all of which amount to waiting around doing nothing until Third World economies catch up to First World economies.(1) Die hard supporters of forest management have criticized this article, saying that it focuses on only one type of logging.(2) Both of these camps are trapped within the framework of imperialism. The forest management advocates try to make environmentalism profitable (an impossible task), while Rice, Gullison, and Reid simply give up and admit profits come before everything else. As a result, neither camp can stop the destruction of the natural resources in Third World countries, and both camps end up doing public relations for the imperialists.(3) Rice, Gullison, and Reid argue that multi-national companies "face a choice between cutting trees immediately and banking the profits or delaying the harvest and allowing the stand to grow in volume and value over time." They then show that the first strategy offers a 17 percent annual return, while the second strategy offers at most a 5 percent return. The logging companies obviously figured this out long ago, since less that one-eighth of one percent of all commercial logging involves "forest management." So Rice, Gullison, and Reid are absolutely correct that talk of "forest management" under imperialism is a pipe dream. At the same time, Rice, Gullison, and Reid provide much of the information needed to show that their own alternative plans will not work. For example, Rice, Gullison, and Reid suggest that "green labelling" -- where consumers pay more for products made using "sustainable" methods -- is a viable conservation strategy. But according to their own numbers, "current patterns of unsustainable logging can be as much as five times as profitable as a more sustainable alternative. Yet consumers appear willing to spend, at most, 10 percent more for certified timber than the price they would pay for uncertified products. The gap is enormous." Rice, Gullison, and Reid also suggest banning or heavily regulating logging in tropical forests, after earlier pointing out that Third World governments do not have enough funds to support adequate regulation. MIM would also point out that many Third World governments are more than willing to sell logging rights to foreign logging concerns in exchange for foreign currency. The destruction of the environment of the oppressed nations is a direct result of the economic and political system of imperialism, which places the profit and prosperity of a handful above the long-term interests of the vast majority of the world's peoples. In the words of the Communist Party of the Philippines: "It is pure hypocrisy and chicanery for anyone to speak of environmental concerns without criticism and repudiation of the monopoly bourgeoisie and imperialism."(4) The best way for people living within u.s. borders to help stop the destruction of the world's environment is to support the liberation of oppressed nations from imperialism and make anti-imperialist revolution here in the belly of the beast. NOTES: 1. R. Rice, R. Gullison, and J. Reid, " Can Sustainable Management Save Tropical Forests?" in: Scientific American, April 1997, v. 276(4), pp. 44-49. 2. Weekend Edition (Saturday), 22 Mar 97. 3. See, for example, "Mainstream groups earn imperialist credentials," in: MIM Theory 12, 1997, pp. 39-44. 4. "On the Issue of the Environment in the World and in the Philippines," in: MIM Theory 12, p. 55. * * * THE AGENDA OF THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS The majority of the people of the world would say that the struggle to gain asylum for Prof. Sison and his family or the struggle against death for Mumia Abu Jamal are more important than details of the oldest and biggest trees in Ann Arbor, MI. But not Agenda. Agenda's masthead proclaims it 'Ann Arbor's Alternative Newsmonthly.' Though MIM Notes is published twice a month and distributed across the continent and around the world, we submitted articles pertaining to Sison and Mumia to Agenda so that they could reach an even broader audience. Both articles were rejected. And though we asked for an explanation, Agenda has not given one. Instead as the April issue hit the streets, we saw that Agenda chose to devote the cover and two inside pages to an article detailing that "Ann Arbor, however, is known for her trees." The story primarily covers the "democratically created hall of arboreal fame." While caring about the longevity of trees and Ann Arbor's progressive policies to limit the destruction of trees is meaningful if you want to adjust to imperialist exploitation and murder world-wide and find some nice things to think about, we urge people to take a more global and anti-imperialist perspective on local, national and international events. What good are progressive policies toward the environment in one city, and old, big trees, if the Amerikan government and Amerikan multinational corporations are destroying whole forests around the world in the name of increased profits, leaving the people without land to farm and without homes. And in comparison to the destruction of millions of lives through the prisons system right here in this country, prioritizing a story praising local government for saving a few trees is an insult to the oppressed peoples of the world. This government continues to use prisons as a form of social control against the masses most willing to change the system and Mumia's case should make it obvious to the editors of Agenda that the prisons and the courts are used to repress leaders speaking out against the general conditions of oppressed nations within the united snakes. The u.s. is using similar repressive tactics to pressure the government of the Netherlands to deport Prof. Sison and his family because of Sison's past leadership in the revolutionary war against bureaucrat capitalism, feudalism and Amerikan imperialism in the Philippines. The threatened deportation is a tactic of the psychological warfare being waged against the toiling Filipino masses in their struggle for national democracy and liberation. For a self-proclaimed alternative paper to choose to write about Ann Arbor's trees given the alternative of news on the above topics fights the bourgeoisie's war for it. Turning away from struggle and supporting seemingly easy causes like saving a few trees in a rich town like Ann Arbor does nothing to fight against the government or imperialism in general. It is good that Agenda is honest and does not call itself anti-imperialist, but with this choice of stories, MIM has to ask what exactly Agenda is providing an alternative to? Another, though much shorter, piece in this month's issue hypes the Detroit newspaper strike and urges the readers to re-energize the boycott of the two daily papers. MIM works in the interests of the international proletariat and is building revolution first to liberate oppressed nations against imperialism, we don't fight struggles aimed at earning higher wages for the labor aristocracy within the imperialist countries. People on the streets have said that they have no time to support the struggles of prisoners or support the fight of the Filipino masses in their armed and legal struggles against Amerikan imperialism, specifically because they are working to gain higher wages for the newspaper strikers -- workers benefiting from imperialism. Agenda reiterates the point that it too is not interested in fighting against imperialism and settler colonialism. MIM publishes our own papers to ensure that information about struggles against oppression get printed. We've never thought that the bourgeoisie and imperialists would give the proletariat and the oppressed nations space in their papers. But don't be fooled into thinking that self-proclaimed alternative papers intend to be an alternative to the news that the bourgeoisie puts out or in this case, does not find fit to print. * * * UNDER LOCK & KEY CENSORSHIP IN AMERIKAN PRISONS WASHINGTON PRISONER FIGHTS STATE CENSORSHIP POLICY Eldon Vail, Assistant Director Division of Prisons Washington Dept. of Corrections P.O. Box 41123 Olympia, WA 98504-1123 Dr. Mr. Vail: I am appealing a 3/1/97 Offender Mail Rejection notice for MIM Notes. The notice was signed by Sgt. Sutton and the reason given was: "Rejected by Director of Prisons. Advocates to Seize Power Through Armed Struggle'." I believe the publication is being rejected for its political content, not merely because of the slogan cited on the rejection notice. The publication does not direct prisoners to take up arms against their captors. The publication does not contain specific instructions as to how prisoners could thus arm themselves. It does not contain plans to escape, nor does it describe procedures for constructing weapons, bomb, incendiary devices, etc. There are no articles in the publication which specifically incite prisoners to rebel against their captors. The publication is no more radical than the Declaration of Independence, which also advocates the seizure of state power, by armed struggle if necessary. To claim that the publication's slogan (buried in fine print in the info box on page two) presents "a threat to legitimate penological objectives" is to imply that preventing prisoner from reading political material that runs counter to the political beliefs espoused by the DOC or its employees is a "legitimate penological objective." If you or the Director of Prisons, of the DOC think that prisoners may feel directed to manufacture weapons and begin the seizure of state power -- merely because they read such a slogan -- is to stretch credulity far beyond the bounds of sensibility. I have read the slogan "Go Seahawks!" a thousand times. It has yet to incite me to watch a Seahawk football game, much less root for the team. I ask they you reconsider the rejection of MIM Notes or explain to me precisely how you think the slogan in question is a legitimate threat to the penological objectives of TRCC or the DOC. -- A Washington State Prisoner, 6Mar97 Letters of Protest can be sent to: Eldon Vail, Assistant Director, Division of Prisons, Washington Dept. of Corrections, P.O. Box 41123, Olympia, WA 98504-1123 CENSORSHIP IN FLORIDA CONTINUES Comrades, Despite my last letter to you, the censorship of MIM Notes, along with two other publications, continues. While my appeals to get the paper and requests for a reason why it's being denied go unanswered. I've now been told that issues 127 and 128 were sent to me "by mistake" and may be taken as contraband. And, while I had been told issues 125 and 126 were sent to the "Captain" for approval, our mail room staff claim to know nothing about them. I mailed you the form saying they'd been denied and put in my property. Today I learned you are not alone. After much complaining property brought me my previously denied publication, which I thought were MIM Notes. Unfortunately, what they brought me was not MIM Notes, but 2 items from the Justice Department, 3 issues of Workers World and two issues of Weekly News Update on the Americas. All had been denied me without notice, nor reason, until approved by the administration. I would please ask you to call or write our Jail Director Halsteadt, and ask her to stop the random censorship of a legitimate newspaper, and to have y previously seized copies of MIM Notes returned to me, or provide both of us a legitimate reason of why (exactly) they can not be since, I've received other issues of the same paper.... In Struggle, but with hope! --A Florida Prisoner, 9 Jan 97 Letters of Protest Can be sent to: Jail Director Halsteadt, Palm Beach County Jail, 3228 Gun Club Rd., West Palm Beach, FL 33406, or call her at: (561) 688-3000. LATINO PRISONERS ALSO CONTINUE THE STRUGGLE IN FLORIDA First of all let me make my brothers aware that here in Florida they have taken the movies and the weights from us. And they are building and have built a "Close Management Cell Block" in most of the prisons. I find myself in such a predicament. Locked up 24 hours a day with 3 showers a week and only two hours of sunshine a week. But we are also in our struggle with the red necks that run the Florida prison system. They have made rules about letting us only receive on newspaper subscription and one magazine subscription. Well I have 3 magazine subscriptions and the "Miami Herald", but I'm stopping the Miami paper in order to receive MIM, and I'm losing money my family paid for my magazines. But I'm keeping faith that someday we shall overcome these pigs in these close management units. They mace us with gas and they handcuff us, plus put shackles on our legs when we leave the cell all the time.... The money that was paying for the movies and weights is our money that they made from the inmate canteen, but the taxpayers complained that we had it made and that the weights were turning out "super-prisoners". Now they charge us for medical care, for legal copies. It is so bad that the weaker prisoners are giving up hope. ... I'm Cuban and I served in the US Marine Corps in this country and they treat me like shit. Also I'm HIV positive and they are denying me the new AIDS medication called Protease inhibitors. [They say it's] because it costs too much but, there are white prisoners who are receiving this treatment here in this prison.... So keep the fight going and may we overcome the pigs and their injustice system. Respectfully, --A Florida Prisoner, 21 Jan. 97 MAIL TAMPERING IN NEW YORK People of MIM, ...I have been meaning to write you. In fact I did write to you once, but the pigs intercepted it, opened it, and sent it back to me. They told me that business mail must not be sealed. Needless to say, I tried to argue against their policy. According to several law cases, the prison officials are not supposed to stop outgoing mail without following a set standard of procedure. But, because many of the prisoner in this prison system are uneducated in the law or plain old spineless, these pigs get away with murder, yes even literally. Needless to say, I went everywhere over everybody's head trying to find justice in this so-called justice system, and ran into nothing but brick walls. It's really hard to veat these people, but I and prisoners such as I will keep trying.... --A New York Prisoner, 6Dec97 PRISONER GIVES CENSORSHIP ADVICE Dear Brothers and Sisters: I am writing this letter to let you that I have received the December 1st and 15th issues of MIM Notes, and also, to comment on several letters I read concerning the censorship of the paper by prisoncrats around the country. As a prisoner who has been involved in litigation against prison administrators for nearly thirty years, I would like to suggest that you urge any prisoner denied access to MIM Notes to first exhaust their administrative remedies, and then pursue their compliant in their local federal district court. The law is quite clear as to what publication review committees may reject, and the content of the paper does not meet that standard. Also, it is more than a tad expensive for the prison's lawyers to defend a lawsuit, especially when the con learns to use the federal rules of civil procedure to obtain discovery materials; not only do you cost the state money, but additional benefits can be derived by publicizing the petty actions by these prisoncrats, while tying them up with answering your written interrogatories and submitting to oral depositions. These people (?) are used to being in control, and they get very uptight when they are put on the defensive. Lastly, it should be noted that if enough convicts sue a particular warden, his supervisors will eventually take notice that even by their standards, he is doing something wrong, and they may decide to order him to back off. I would strongly recommend that every prisoner should obtain a copy of the Prisoners' Self-Help Litigation Manual, and study it from cover to cover. A revolution cries out for each individual to step forward and make those advances for the cause that each person is capable of accomplishing. Every person confined within these walls is capable of being a royal pain in the ass to every employee of the prisons system merely by continuously bringing complaints of illegal behavior to the attention of the court system. From censorship to disciplinary matters, the system rarely follows the law -- it is up to us to challenge the system each and every step of the way, to ensure that our constitutional rights are not taken away arbitrarily by those who are supposedly teaching us to "respect the law". Finally it is important for each and every one of us to realize that we should immediately refuse to accept any job assignment which furthers the objectives of the prison system. The gulag system itself would come to a screeching halt if we refused to work as plumbers, painters, carpenters, electricians, and cooks. While they may force me to push a broom, I refuse to share my knowledge with my captors, and I will do nothing that a free-world civilian should be doing. I will do everything within my ability to confront the system till my last dying breath, and then, hopefully, I will have inspired at least one person to continue to follow in my footsteps. -- An Illinois Prisoner, 7 Jan 97 HOW TO FIGHT PRISON CENSORSHIP: A GUIDE FOR PRISONERS Prisons in Amerika exist as institutions of oppression with more resources than progressives currently have. The courts are also on the side of the oppressors and the criminal injustice system serves imperialism. With this in mind, it is easy to see why it is hard for progressives to win court battles, and why it is particularly hard for prisoners to win. But based on experience, MIM still considers legal battles to be potentially winnable and we are distributing this resource guide because we know that some cases have been won by prisoners who have done the necessary research and leg work. With that said, we recognize that the only way to destroy imperialism is through revolution and we encourage our comrades in prison to work with us in more than just legal struggles. If your subscription to MIM Notes, or other literature or letters sent to you in prison is being censored, this guide is written to help you. There are not enough progressive lawyers working with us to help everyone fight these battles, but as a prisoner you have the information and resources you need to fight censorship on your own. If you are not already educated about the law and court battles, you will need to do a lot of research, but this is a worthwhile cause and if you win this battle you will be helping both yourself and other prisoners. FIRST STEP: FIND OUT WHY YOUR LITERATURE IS BEING CENSORED The prison administration has to tell you why they are withholding your mail. Insist that they tell you what regulation, statute or law your mail violates. They have to detail specifically how your mail violates the rules. Once you have this information, look up the regulation they claim you are violating. Violations could be of several types: prison regulations, state regulations, federal regulations, or constitutional law. There is a Federal code of regulations book and a State code of regulations book that you should be able to reference in your law library. One note on regulations: There is a regulation in all prisons that says prisons can censor material if they have a "legitimate security interest." Many censorship cases of MIM Notes involve fighting prisoncrats who have defined MIM Notes as a security threat. We need to force them to explain this and we need to fight this classification. If you are not experienced in using the library or if you are intimidated by doing this research on your own, now is the time to try to find legal help. If there are jailhouse lawyers in your prison, ask them for help. If you have your own lawyer, go to him or her, or try to find a friendly lawyer who will help out. We encourage you to learn to do this research for yourself even if you don't have any past experience; it will serve you well in the future. Overcoming intimidation about the legal research may be difficult at first, but it does not take any special knowledge or education to learn how to fight your own legal battles and we have many comrades who serve as inspirations having trained themselves as jailhouse lawyers from scratch. Everyone planning on doing legal research should check out the Prisoners Self Help Litigation Manual if it is in your prison's legal library. This is the BEST resource for prisoners and has general sections on research as well as more specifics on fighting legal battles. Read all sections in this manual that are relevant to you. (If this is not in your library, prisoners can buy it for $29.95 (includes postage and handling); non-prisoners $39.95 plus p & h; Oceana Publications, Inc., 75 Main STreet, Dobbs Ferry, NY 10522, (914) 693-1320. SECOND STEP: RESEARCH RELEVANT CASE LAW At this point you need to search for relevant cases or laws regarding the regulation the prison claims you are violating that would support your claim that the prison is wrong. If your case goes to court you will have to decide whether to file in federal or state court (see below), but at this point you should research both federal and state case law. The following are some of the best resources: 1. Prisoners Litigation Manual: This has federal case law. 2. Federal Practice Digest 4th edition. Go to "P" for prisons. Look for information on censorship. This will give info on cases already decided on this issue. This digest will refer you to Federal books for more information on the cited cases 3. Shepards Citation: similar to above, gives info on federal cases relevant to your topic. 4. CJS: National digest of law. Lists federal cases relevant to your topic. 5. American Jurisprudence: similar to CJS. 6. State digest: This would be named the California digest or the Massachusetts digest or whatever your state's name is. Go to "prisons" and check out relevant state cases. THIRD STEP: EXHAUST ALL POSSIBLE REMEDIES WITHIN THE SYSTEM The next thing you have to do is exhaust all possible remedies within the system. It is important that later you are able to demonstrate that you tried to go through these channels before taking the case to court. This means you have to follow the grievance procedure in your prison or write to the relevant authorities. When you write up your grievance you want to make an argument about why the regulation the prison claims your mail violates does not apply to you. Citing other cases that support your argument about this regulation is a good thing to do too. Be sure you keep copies of everything! FOURTH STEP: DECIDE WHERE TO FILE YOUR CASE You need to decide whether to file your case in state or federal court. There are two main things on which you should base this decision: 1) Where is the case law strongest and 2) Which judge is most favorable to prisoners rights. You may also want to consider how fast the court system will deal with your case. You need to do some research into these issues. Talking to jailhouse lawyers and lawyers on the outside who are in your state is a good help. You should have already looked out relevant court cases (cases similar to yours) to see what recent decisions have been in favor of prisoners rights. You can cite relevant federal law and supreme court cases in state court and you can sometimes cite relevant state law in federal court where federal law does not address an issue. To look into judges you can read "Lawyers Weekly" to find out recent info on judges decisions, but the best resource is going to be jailhouse lawyers, lawyers, and local organizations in your state like the ACLU or the National Lawyers Guild. FIFTH STEP: TRY TO GET LEGAL HELP At this point you have done a lot of research on your own and it's a good idea to try to get some help from people more familiar with law if you can. This is where MIM can try to help. We have compiled a list of jailhouse lawyers and a few lawyers on the outside willing to help other prisoners. If you exhaust the resources below and still can't find the help you need, write to us and we will try to put you in touch with someone who can help. But before you contact us, try the following: #Jailhouse lawyers in your own prison. Ask around and see if anyone there can help you. #Your state American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) #National Lawyers Guild chapter in your state #Other organizations in your state that do progressive legal work for prisoners (ask other prisoners for info on these resources in your state if you don't know of any). #ACLU's National Prison Project (located in Washington DC) Law schools in your state (these sometimes have programs to help prisoners with research) Note that MIM will not be handing out lists of jailhouse lawyers to prisoners who have not done any research on their case on their own because there are not enough people with legal experience and too many prisoners who need legal help. MIM would rather have legal resources go to the cases that prisoners are most likely to follow through, do research on, and win. (You are welcome to make a case for why you need legal help if you can not do this research yourself.) SIXTH STEP: FILE YOUR CASE If you are filing in State court contact the Clerk of Superior Court in your county, or look at the State Rules of Court or The Prisoners Litigation Manual to find out the process you need to follow. If you are filing in Federal court you need to write to the Clerk of US district court in your district and ask for Civil Rights complaint forms. The court will send you a whole packet of stuff and a letter indicating the process. The Prisoners Litigation Manual gives more details on this. SEVENTH STEP: THE LEGAL BATTLE BEGINS In both state and federal cases the defendant will generally file a motion to dismiss the case by writing some legal defense of their actions. You must respond to this with your own memorandum describing why they are wrong and what case law you have backing you up. If you do not do this, there is a good chance your case will be dismissed by the judge. See The Prisoners Litigation Manual for more information on where to go from here. Note on the importance of follow through Your court case may be a long legal battle and it is important that you follow through on this. Once you have filed a case, what happens has repercussions for other prisoners, not just for yourself. If your case is dismissed because you decided not to respond to the prisoncrat's request to have it dismissed, they will then cite this example in future cases and the judge may be more likely to follow this example and dismiss future similar cases. And even if you do fight the case through to the end, if you don't do a good job of it and lose the case because of lack of adequate research, prisoners filing similar cases may lose because of this precedent you set. For this reason, it is important to do the best job you can in fighting prison repression through the courts. This resource guide is produced and distributed by MIM. We are compiling information on relevant cases, particularly those that succeed in fighting civil rights violations so that others can benefit from your work so please send us copies of any information that you think would be useful to other prisoners. * * * MIM ON PRISONS AND PRISONERS MIM seeks to build public opinion against Amerika's criminal injustice system, and to eventually replace the bourgeois injustice system with proletarian justice. The bourgeois injustice system imprisons and executes a disproportionately large and growing number of oppressed people while letting the biggest mass murderers - the imperialists and their lackeys - roam free. Imperialism is not opposed to murder or theft, it only insists that these crimes be committed in the interests of the bourgeoisie. MIM does not advocate that all prisoners go free today; we have a more effective program for fighting crime as was demonstrated in China prior to the restoration of capitalism there in 1976. We say that all prisoners are political prisoners because under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, all imprisonment is substantively political. It is our responsibility to exert revolutionary leadership and conduct political agitation and organization among prisoners - whose material conditions make them an overwhelmingly revolutionary group. Some prisoners should and will work on self-criticism under a future dictatorship of the proletariat in those cases in which prisoners really did do something wrong by proletarian standards. ***WHAT NON-PRISONERS CAN DO TO SUPPORT PRISONERS*** *1. Struggle with, work with, finance and join MIM. The best way to support prisoners is to overthrow the system under which capitalists profit from the exploitation of prisoners. History shows that the best way to do this is to build a Marxist-Leninist- Maoist party. The oppressors will not give up their power without a fight. *2. Finance MIM's prison work. Our biggest bill each month is postage. Most of the prison comrades who read MIM Notes have no way of paying for it. So if you have money, send what you can afford. Every cent helps, and stamps are as good as cash to us. *3. Distribute MIM Notes and Notas Rojas. Bring the voices of prisoners and their supporters to as large and wide an audience of people as possible. Contact MIM for bulk rates and distribution tips. *4. Start or join a prison support group. MIM can provide advice and resources to help you build public opinion for prisoners and their struggles. *5. Fight censorship, beatings, torture and other fascist outrages. Under Lock and Key often features the addresses of prisoners' friends and enemies. Work with the friends and let the enemies know you're watching. (Don't expect to win the fascists to the side of humanity, however. See #1 in this list). *6. Stay in touch. Keep us informed of pro-prisoner work you do. Our readers might find it educational or inspirational.
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