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 146 SEPTEMBER 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. TORTURE OF TRANSFERRED PRISONERS BY TEXAS GULAG GUARDS EXPOSED 2. AMERIKAN MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL GRAVY TRAIN STEAMS ON 3. LETTERS & REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE 4. ANTI-DRUGLORD HYSTERIA, A US-RAMOS REGIME SCHEME 5. IMPERIALIST INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DEAL DOPE 6. CUBA CHARGES AMERIKA WITH BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS ATTACK 7. WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON THE DEATH PENALTY? 8. SHUSWAP GET PRISON TERMS FOR DRAWING RCMP FIRE 9. BALTIMORE POLICE KILL UNARMED MAN: CITY USES BLACK POLICE FOR COVER 10. AMERIKAN JURY DECIDES AGAINST INDICTING MURDEROUS MARINE 11. U.S. IMPERIALISM: MERCHANT OF DEATH 12. AMERIKA DRAGGING FEET IN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO BAN LANDMINES 13. WEAPONS DESTRUCTION DANGEROUS TO OPPRESSED POPULATIONS 14. THIRD PARTIES LOSE IN ENGLAND BIG-TIME 15. ALIENATION OF YOUTH MASKED THROUGH LEGAL DRUGS 16. MEN WANT MONOPOLY ON IMPERIALIST TRAINING 17. NEW INDIAN PREZ NO FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE 18. MASTERS OF ILLUSION: THE WORLD BANK AND THE POVERTY OF NATIONS 19. PIRAO SUFFERS SETBACKS 20. UNDER LOCK & KEY * * * 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 * * * TORTURE OF TRANSFERRED PRISONERS BY TEXAS GULAG GUARDS EXPOSED In August a videotape of guards in Texas beating inmates was made public. On September 18, 1996 this videotape was made by the guards at the Brazoria County Jail in Texas for training purposes. This video reveals excessive force used against the prisoners, and the surfacing of this video (approximately one year after the incident) has forced authorities to act as if they cared. Since segments of the video appeared on NBC news on August 18, 415 Missouri prisoners have been removed from the Brazoria County Jail. The Missouri officials have also canceled a $6 million dollar contract with the Capital Correctional Resources Inc., the private company that runs this particular Detention Center. This whole incident has received a lot of coverage in the mainstream press. Just like with the Rodney King beating, the brutality of the Texas guards is being treated as an isolated incident. By acting like this kind of thing does not happen when the cameras are off, politicians and the mainstream media are able to pretend outrage and act as though the problem is being addressed. Even the transfer of the Missouri prisoners out of the Texas jail is just a token gesture: check out the story in this issue of Under Lock and Key (page 11-12) about the Missouri prisoner who was beaten into a coma in a Missouri prison. Conditions in prisons across the country are literally a threat to the lives of the prisoners. Since Texas began selling off the space in their prisons to other states, many prisoners who were transferred to Texas have written to MIM Notes that conditions in Texas are even worse than those in their own state. Texas has almost tripled the size of its prison system since 1991, spending $3 billion on nearly 100,000 new beds.(1) Texas has thousands of empty beds they are now using to profit from by contracts to house other states' prisoners. This is not the first case of state officials being forced to act on the warlike environment of Texas jails and prisons. Where there is prisoner violence, there is most likely excessive pressure coming from outside forces, namely the guards. Where there is a lack of institutional security, there is probably an abundance of "precautionary" brutality. This is how we look at the removal of inmates by Oregon and Utah from Texas allegedly "because of security concerns." Montana issued a critical review of a facility in Texas after "one inmate was killed in a brawl with other prisoners and two others escaped."(2) The states and officials themselves do not care about the conditions of prisoners except when the local communities protest. Wary of mass activism, local and state officials are quick to quell protests by token measures, such as bringing the prisoners back to their state. This does nothing to change conditions in Texas prisons, local state prisons, and fails to change the injustice system one iota. The videotape which sparked the recent pseudo concern for prisoner welfare was originally intended to be used for training purposes for the guards to be shown how things are done in Texas. The video shows the guards in riot gear dragging and kicking the medium-security prisoners. A stun gun is used on several people, along with tear gas for no apparent reason. One dog was ordered to attack a prisoner. The incarcerated human beings are forced to crawl on their stomachs away from their cells while the guards ransack their living spaces under the pretense that they were looking for drugs. It is obvious that these guards do not care about the well-being of the prisoners, the search for drugs was just an excuse to brutalize prisoners. Guards directed racial slurs toward the prisoners as they lie defenseless on the concrete and the guard dogs lunge and snap at their backs. At least three bites from the viciously trained dogs are caught on this half hour video. This incident has forced other states to pretend concern for the prisoners they have sent to Texas and some even claim they are investigating the conditions. In response to this incident, the spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Correction said that in recent trips to Texas, state officials had found no mistreatment of prisoners. He pointed out that the "only" complaints the officials heard from the prisoners were related to the food, lodging and "being away from home."(1) This twisted definition of torture fits right in with the mainstream response to the tape exposing this brutality: if it's not caught on videotape, it's not torture. As a result, the Massachusetts DOC is saying that edible food, heat in the winter, contact with family and friends, medical care, and access to education are luxuries that prisoners should not come to expect. It's important that we take this opportunity to mobilize people who are outraged at this blatant brutality. This kind of torture is common in Amerikan prisons and while we can fight against specific instances of violence, we need to be clear that it is not possible to reform the criminal injustice system into a justice system. Only by overthrowing imperialism can we establish a justice system that serves the people. NOTES: 1. Boston Globe, Aug 19, 1997. P.B1. 2. Kim Bell St. Louis Post-Dispatch Jefferson City Bureau. * * * AMERIKAN MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL GRAVY TRAIN STEAMS ON In July, the U.$ House of Representatives approved $248 billion in military spending for the fiscal 1998 budget.(1) For comparison, the Gross National Product (GNP) of India in 1992 was $252 billion, and the GNP of El Salvador in 1994 was $9 billion.(2) The amount approved was $4.4 billion more than the Amerikan military itself requested.(1) $331 million of the extra money is "start up money" for nine more B-2 ("Stealth") bombers. The military already has 21 B-2 bombers, which were designed to drop nuclear bombs. Military officials claimed they do not need and cannot afford the planes. "Can't afford" and "don't need" are obviously relative terms, as the military would rather have different types of weapons. Completing the planes will end up costing $27 billion. Congress is buying planes the military claims are unwanted for a number of reasons. One aspect is a possible disagreement with the military about future strategy. More importantly, members of congress are scared that cutting the B-2 will upset the capitalists who profit off the bombers and the labor aristocracy that builds them. Too many military budget cuts could cost them their re- election. The B-2 is a huge project with pieces produced in just about every Congressional district. Lenin wrote that imperialism is parasitic capitalism. He also taught that imperialism means war. These two aspects of imperialism come together today in Amerikan imperialism. The enormous super- profits Amerikan imperialism stole from oppressed nations over the last fifty years enabled the imperialists to buy off the bulk of the working class within Amerikan borders. To some extent, this requires a measure of redundancy, inefficiency, and irrationality. At the same time, more and more of the economy is concentrated in unproductive sectors, like the military, advertising, retail, and services. As a result, we see workers in Amerika willing to fight to preserve jobs producing weapons of mass destruction. According to Ruth Sivard, $50 billion would solve the sanitation problems of the Third World.(3) Poor sanitation accounts for two-thirds of the premature deaths in the Third World. Amerika wants to spend five times this figure just in one year. This is another reason why MIM works to overthrow u.$. imperialism: In order to stop the theft of resources from oppressed nations and give the resources Amerika stole from oppressed nations back, so that they might be used to better the lives of the world's oppressed majority. NOTES: 1. Boston Globe, 30 July 1997, p. A9 2. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1996. 3. Ruth Leger Sivard, World Military and Social Expenditures, Washington DC: World Priorities, 1987/88, p. 14; Sivard, 1993 edition p. 42. * * * LETTERS & REVOLUTIONARY STRUGGLE ***The following dialogue took place in response to flyers that RAIL distributed around the case of an activist, Richard Picariello, who was arrested and brutalized by the MIT police for the crime of sitting in the student center. The September 1 MIM Notes contains an article which was the basis for the text of the flyer.*** DEAR RAIL, As an avid Amnesty International supporter, I'm always quick to jump to the defense of anybody unfairly treated by law enforcement officials. However, your constant use of the slur "pigs" in this notice not only brings you down to the level of those who stereotype and insult, but ruins your credibility as an intelligently concerned citizen, and makes you sound a bit flaky. No doubt these officers acted too harshly and should be punished, but you're doing Mr. Picariello a disservice by turning what otherwise is a fairly well-written announcement into a diatribe of scurrilous gibberish. To gather support for Mr. Picariello, your task is to appeal to as wide a range of people as possible. Most people are turned off by slurs of all types -- are you trying to offend a large group of people who otherwise would come to Mr. Picariello's aid? Best regards, -- AI supporter in Boston RAIL RESPONDS: We believe that it is correct to use the term pigs when referring to those who systematically and viciously brutalize the people. It helps to make our political point that this is not just one anomaly. If you're interested in the history of this term you should check out some of the Black Panther Party literature from the 1960s and 1970s. They explain in some detail why they chose to use this term. We hope to make a clear political point to people and we don't think it would be correct to appeal to people by watering down the seriousness of the incident or watering down the systematic nature of the pigs by speaking politely. Here's an analogy: if you see someone walking backwards about to fall off a cliff do you speak politely to them about the potential impending danger or do you yell "hey, stop!" Some situations necessitate strong language because of the urgency involved. We witness police brutality daily in the communities of the oppressed in this country and although white college students may think this is just one small unfair incident, repression from the police is part of systematic brutality against specific populations of people. We don't think that putting incidents like this one in a larger context of society and making clear our opposition to the role of the pigs in our society makes it "gibberish". On the contrary, if it gets people like yourself thinking about why such language is necessary that is a good thing. We will not allow people to sit complacently by thinking that one small incident of police brutality is bad but polite conversation will solve the problem. The situation with the pig occupying forces in this country is a daily threat to the lives and livelihood of Blacks, Latinos, First Nations and people who are politically active in this country. Such a threat calls for strong language and strong denouncements. In spite of your disagreements with our language we do hope you will support this case as you are right that we hope to mobilize as large a force of people as possible. And we appreciate you taking the time to tell us your disagreements. Only by struggling over these things will we learn from our work and move forward. HELLO AGAIN, RAIL FOLKS -- And thanks for writing back with your explanation of why you chose to use the language you did in your original e-mail. I would still, however, urge you to consider using more conventional language in your future announcements that are sent out to the larger community. Your someone-backing-off-a-cliff analogy doesn't work because, while it's important to wake people up that things like this are happening, it still remains counterproductive to then turn people off by the words you choose to use. Your description of what happened to Mr. Picariello was far and away the most compelling aspect of your announcement. I would urge you to follow that shocking tale up with some evidence that you are putting together a serious, intelligent, persistent effort to win him some justice. Sell it as a cause that every decent citizen ought to feel mobilized and proud to join. Rather, you followed your description of that day's events with some bitter name-calling. Certainly, your anger is justified -- but it's just a fact of life that when organizing large groups of people some measure of tact is in order. Good luck in your struggle -- RAIL RESPONDS: The language we use is not just intended to wake people up to the fact that cases like this one exist, it is intended to make a larger point about society. This is the point that the letter writer above does not respond to. It is true that sometimes using kinder language will get more people's support, but we were not using the word pig just to call the police names. Instead we were making a political point about the role of police in Amerikan society. Police serve to enforce the criminal injustice system by keeping the wealth and resources for white privileged Amerika and keeping the same resources out of the hands of the oppressed nations and political activists. We do not think that cases like this one are unusual. On the contrary, it is common for the police to harass and brutalize the people: this is their job. By using the term pigs, we are making a statement about the role that police play in imperialist society. This larger message is important because we do not believe that fighting individual cases like this one is the solution to ending police brutality. Instead we fight these battles because they are important but we always put them in the context of the larger problems with imperialist society and the need to overthrow imperialism if we are to achieve justice for all people. In the mean time we do hope to work with people like this Amnesty International supporter because we hope to unite all who can be united in these battles against imperialism. * * * ANTI-DRUGLORD HYSTERIA, A US-RAMOS REGIME SCHEME ***MIM prints the following essay from the New People's Army (NPA) in the Philippines in order to further illustrate how Amerika's so-called "war on drugs" is actually an international war on oppressed people. Furthermore, imperialist agencies like the u.$. CIA and DEA claim to be leading the "war on drugs," but in actuality these agencies and their lackeys abroad are the biggest druglords around.*** The much avowed anti-drug crusade that was declared by President General Ramos as "primary threat to the security" in his SONA (State of the Nation Address) last 28 July in the Congress is a political offensive and calculated psy-war campaign under the baton orchestrated by the CIA and the US embassy; and, with the blessing of General Ramos himself. This is one of the desperate attempts to prolong the reign of power of Ramos and his ilk. This is all part of a grand scheme. Just like Ramos' plan to pass a few fascist laws like the "national ID system," "anti terrorist bill" and others, the US-Ramos regime also plans to legalize extra-judicial killing ("salvaging"). The Philippine National Police (PNP) and Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) are inutile in the implementation of laws and as protector of the people. Instead, it allows criminality to worsen and take[s] advantage of the unfavorable political and social situation that arises. It is the desire of the Ramos-DeVilla clique to destroy its political enemies by implicating them with the drug syndicate... PSYWAR AND TERRORISM CAMPAIGN ...The reason is clear why the ISAFP PSC [Intelligence Service of the AFP - Presidential Security Command] - National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA) [is] keeping the arrested drug lords Rey Parena, Atty. Ruiz, and Art Sampana of Luzon Pen. These people are being used by military intelligence to vilify the political enemies of Ramos and his clique. This is also a show to lead the people to believe that the military intelligence is doing something against the drug syndicate... In fact, ... military officials are not only involved in the drug syndicate but they are also into kidnapping and arms smuggling... In the Cordilleras, Ilocos and Cagayan Valley, the troops of the PNP Cordillera Regional Command (CRECOM) under Chief Rogelio Aguana and the CPLA (vigilante-gun-for-hire) of Conrado Balweg openly harvest marijuana in the marijuana plantations of Ilocos Sur, Benguet, Ifugao, and Kalinga. These marijuana plantations are being guarded by the Citizen's Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU [a paramilitary death squad]), CPLA and AFP troopers. It is not coincidental that where there are military camps, there are also marijuana plantations. In order to "kill two birds with one shot," the PNP CRECOM promote that the military launches operation against marijuana plantations or "counter insurgency operations" against the "NPA who plants marijuana." This is being publicized in the media as "confiscated plants" and are supposedly burned. The military dubbed this as so-called, "Operation Greengold." The truth is that, Operation Greengold of the PNP CRECOM is not an operation to bust marijuana plantations; instead, it "legalizes" the harvest and transport of marijuana by the military for the open market throughout the country. Harvested marijuana plants are transported by military helicopters and sold in the local market. CIA CONTROL AND DRUG CARTEL Prohibited drugs like cocaine and heroin come from Los Angeles, California, USA and from Hong Kong- Taiwan. These are smuggled to the "ports of entry" under the direction of the CIA and Drug Enforcement Agency(DEA) and this is the reason why these drugs are openly sold to people in high societies and in the localities. Some personalities like Congressman Jinggoy Roxas and screen actor Miguel Rodriguez, died of overdose of these prohibited drugs. In Manila, according to Senator Juan Flavier: "(police) precincts and the barangays (district or village center) are used as the centers of distribution and sale." This is because the oldest son of Manila Mayor Lim is the head of the drug syndicate in Manila. In San Juan, the son of Vice President Joseph Estrada is the primary pusher among his fellow actors and, in Quezon City, Ace Vergel, another former screen actor, who is a big time pusher is also under the wings of high ranking military officers. It is true that the proliferation of prohibited drugs is a "threat to the nation." The truth is that, the drug problem is actually a threat to the security of some government officials who [vie] for the control of the drug business and the rivalry between the military officers and the police. The people cannot be fooled to expect anything from the rhetoric of the regime to go after the drug syndicate; in the first place, this is a creation itself by the US-Ramos regime and the CIA. -- New People's Army Cagayan Valley * * * IMPERIALIST INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DEAL DOPE MIM Notes has extensively covered the San Jose Mercury News exposure of the CIA role in bringing drugs into the U.$ in order to fund imperialism's illegal wars. We have also covered the howls of indignation from every other bourgeois media outlet aimed at the San Jose Mercury News, and the continual cover-up and burial of follow-up stories by author Gary Webb. You wouldn't know it from the Amerikan media, but as a result of the Truth Commission, a neo-colonial amnesty program for the criminals of the apartheid period, but the South Africa government's intelligence service has been exposed for dealing drugs too. The South African spooks were manufacturing "Ecstasy, mandrax and other drugs in secret labs and then ... [flying] them to London, raising cash their for other secret ops."(1) The story did not appear in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. Apparently, these media outlets don't want to add more evidence to the popular consciousness that drug dealing is precisely the kind of thing that intelligence services do. The Associated Press wire service covered the arrest of Wouter Basson, "the criminal government scientist at the heart of the affair." But only a few local papers picked up the story. When the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune wrote of Basson's arrest, they were more interesting in the possibility that he sold chemical weapons information to Libya and other "rogue states" not entirely under Amerikan influence. COUNTER PUNCH, AN ALTERNATIVE NEWSLETTER, WROTE: "Basson's revelations about systemic, officially sanctioned torture and mass killings of Blacks (and white anti-apartheid activists) was less newsworthy than the possibility that South African military technology may have been allowed to fall into the hands of states the US had branded as international outlaws. "Those asking themselves the obvious question: how much did the South African secret service and the CIA collude, should recall that it was a CIA tip that put the police onto Mandela, enabling them to arrest him and put him away on Robben Island all those years." MIM received the Counter Punch newsletter from an ally who thought we would find it useful. From this issue, we learned several things we had not known before, including this story. There are many different media sources and story ideas out there. We need more people to write stories for MIM Notes and our other publications which help to build support for revolution. But it also helps in our exposure of imperialist treachery when friends send information to be covered in stories. it when people send us story ideas. So send in those stories! NOTE: Counter Punch, July 1-15 1997, p. 3. PO Box 18675, Washington DC 20036. Counter Punch "tells the facts and names the names." * * * CUBA CHARGES AMERIKA WITH BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS ATTACK by MC234 On August 25, to a United Nations meeting, Cuba presented pictures of an alleged u.s. operation to plague the island with a crop-eating pest and called for an international investigation.(1) "This is the first time the Biological Weapons Convention is dealing with a complaint under a 1991 provision which lets a nation that believes it has come under biological attack seek a meeting to investigate." The Biological Weapons Convention was signed in 1972.(1) "Cuba says a U.S. government crop-dusting plane for anti-narcotics operations sprayed a substance over Cuban potato fields last October that led to the appearance of a crop-eating insect."(1) The United Snakes denies the charge, and is currently trying to explain to the other countries investigating what an Amerikan State Department anti-narcotics plane was doing flying low over Cuba emitting smoke.(1) This would not be the first time Amerika has used dirty tricks against its smaller state capitalist neighbor. Biological weapons were used against Cuban agriculture during the Cold War, and the CIA hired the Mob (who were upset anyway that Castro shut down the Cuban casinos) to kill Castro.(2) The thrips palmi infestation was discovered in December, and the plane was seen over the area on October 21. "The State Department acknowledges such a plane flew over western Cuba during a flight from Florida to the Cayman Islands in October, but says it emitted smoke to identify its position to a Cuban commercial airliner."(1) "Cuba countered that smoke emissions are not used in standard aviation practice and asked Washington why its aircraft did not seek guidance from air traffic control instead. It said the crew of the Cuban plane said they saw a liquid, not smoke, being emitted."(1) Cuba presented evidence "including photographs, maps and laboratory reports on the bug.(1) The Convention recessed until 27 August to study Amerikan documents about the plane and the migration patterns of the thrips palmi. The Convention does not have a mechanism for verification, and some so-called experts Reuters talked to say that the thrips palmi can be easily carried by the wind. Whether Amerika is innocent in this one case, or whether it picked the biological equivalent of the pigs beating a man in the stomach where he won't bruise, the oppressed masses of the Third World know that Amerika regularly tramples its own "ethics" against its enemies. Cuba is a state-capitalist country, not a socialist or communist one, and was a Soviet neo-colony for many years. MIM supports Cuba against u.s. imperialism because Cuba is a victim of imperialist aggression and colonialism even though Cuba is not a socialist state. MIM opposes Amerikan aggression everywhere, but we don't mislead the people into believing that Castro has established socialism in Cuba.(3) The lack of a verification mechanism in the biological weapons convention shows the weakness in relying on agreements with (or among) bourgeois states for lasting justice. Amerika can poison the oppressed and get away with it because its own rules allow it to do. While exposure of atrocities in bourgeois forums is politically useful, the most effective struggle against imperialism comes from Maoist revolution: MIM calls on the people of Cuba and people around the world to join us in organizing for the day when imperialist aggression will be defeated for good. NOTES: 1. Reuter 25 August 1997. 2. Mark Zepezauer, The CIA's Greatest Hits, 1994, Odanian Press, Box 32375 Tucson AZ 85751. 3. Send $6 to MIM to order a copy of MIM Theory 4: A Spiral trajectory; the failure and success of Communist development for more on this issue. * * * WHAT ARE YOUR VIEWS ON THE DEATH PENALTY? by a prisoner in the Michigan gulags August 17, 1997, on a Christian Sunday night, the television program Prime Time showed a special about a black man named Antonio James, who had spent 16 years in Louisiana's death row for an armed robbery/murder. Accordingly, Antonio James has always maintained that he was not the shooter in the crime and never participated in the murder of the victim of victims, but did admit to being at the scene. Prime Time cameras showed Antonio James in his death row cell; him spending his last visit with family members and his lawyers. They shoed him having his last meal (a seafood dish) with the warden and some prison guards. They showed the last moments of his life as he was led from his cell to (the room of death) to be strapped on a gurney for lethal injections and all the while proclaiming his innocence. They showed the guard who came out to the prison gates to inform James' family, friends and supporters, as well as the victim's family, friends and supporters that "Antonio James expired at 12:27 a.m." At that point i turned off my television (here in my prison cell) in disgust, anger and sadness. By the way, Antonio James was 41 years of age when he was murdered by the state of Louisiana. This is a moving story but it is not an isolated one. Unfortunately, this takes place all the time in Amerikkka and it is happening more and more frequently as we see this new "tough on crime" attitude swept the nation by overzealous politicians. In thinking about Antonio James' case you have to ask and wonder "did he really not do it?" And if he didn't commit the actual murder of another human being, "did the state take an innocent man's life?" And then you ask, "did the prosecutor withhold important information which could have cleared this man in the eyes of the jury?" Sadly, it is too late for Antonio James to ever know the answer but it is not to late for you (the public) to say it is time to stop state sponsored murders. Murders committed in the name of "The People." These murders... these state executions are not committed for justice but to enhance political careers. To instill a false security in the public's mind that they are safe with the accused executed. But what about the person who were murdered/executed wrongfully? How do you five back a life taken? How? And then there are other questions and issues to consider. Like Joyce Ann Brown (a black womyn who sat in prison in Gatesville, Texas for 9 years leaving a young daughter behind) for an armed robbery she did not commit and later proved innocent by competent attorneys who discovered that the prosecution covered-up truth, evidence and proceeded to give the jury misinformation so they could win a case. Or what about the four black men who sat in an Illinois prison (death row) for 18 years only to be discovered that they did not commit the crime. The examples can go on but there is no need to do that because the point has been made. That point being "we cannot allow this type of judicial injustice to continue." Today, we also find more and more wimmin going to death row for alleged crimes involving the murder of their children or for protecting themselves against an abusive relationship. More often than not, these cases are not properly represented by competent attorneys an thus wimmin languish in prison for years. The kill-crazy mentality of state and federal government officials has got to stop and only "WE" can make this happen. Only "The people" can demand that all executions are hereby stopped and will no longer be tolerated. Since the U/$/ Supreme KKKourt has reinstituted the death penalty state and federal prosecutors have sought the death penalty with a vengeance. And the politicians have worked overtime selling fear as justice to the people. We are only as strong as we want to be. And these injustices happen only because "WE" (as a collective) allow it to happen. MIM adds: We agree with this comrade that the death penalty under imperialism must be opposed. Not only is it used to execute innocent people but it is also used unequally: punishing Blacks and Latinos disproportionately while ignoring the biggest murderers, thieves and rapists -- those running the imperialist government of Amerika. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in 1994 (most recent year available), 49% of those on death row were white, 41% Black, and 7% "Hispanic" (non-Black). Since 12.5% of the population within u.$. borders is Black and 4.3% is "Hispanic," this means that Blacks and Latinos are imprisoned at rates 3.3 and 1.6 times that of whites respectively. MIM is fighting for a society where no people are oppressed by other people. On the way to that society, communism, we need a stage of socialism where the proletariat is in power: a dictatorship of the proletariat. This stage of society will involve some repression since we recognize that the imperialists will not just give up their power peacefully. We also know that bourgeois culture has trained people in crimes against the people and while we are changing this culture we will still need to deal with these problems with force. And we do recognize that death is a part of revolution so we do not take the pacifist tact of opposing all killing. In revolutionary China the people executed some of the former landlords who had been particularly murderous and the death penalty was not eliminated from use by the criminal justice system. The proletariat will use the death penalty and prisons with the purpose of eliminating the need for such a system. Rather than kill our enemies, we will struggle to convince them that crimes against the people are wrong and there are good reasons to change. This comrade is correct that we can stop the death penalty. But there is a reason why many Amerikans support the death penalty: they have an interest in perpetuating the criminal injustice system which serves to protect the wealth and status of white Amerika. That is why MIM does not issue general calls for "the people" to unite to overthrow the system; "the people" are divided into different groups based on their relation to the current power structure. Instead, MIM talks about organizing the oppressed nations and white nation youth to make socialist revolution in alliance with the proletariat in oppressed nations abroad. While individuals from every social group can join the revolution, we should not base our hopes on mobilizing groups which mainly benefit from the status quo. To do that would be like trying to swim up a waterfall. MIM strives to continue the battle against imperialist sponsored murder while putting it in the larger context of the imperialist system. * * * SHUSWAP GET PRISON TERMS FOR DRAWING RCMP FIRE by MC45 Thirteen members of the Shuswap Nation surrounded by British Columbia, Kanada have recently been awarded prison terms for being victimized by a state siege of their land two years ago. The only thing mitigating these unjust prison sentences is that these brothers and sisters have already been held captive by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police(RCMP) before their trials -- in considering the amount of time each person has left to serve on their sentence the Kanadian injustice system credits people double the time they have already served. Two Shuswap defendants in the same case were convicted but because they have just recently given birth were not sentenced to any prison time. The four defendants who received the longest sentences were all convicted of "mischief causing actual danger to lie" and possession of weapons. The other 11 people were convicted of mischief to property. Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty, a group which has covered much of this case with essays and press releases, referred to the Shuswap defenders as "standing on natural, international and constitutional law."(1) MIM adds that most importantly, the Shuswap were standing on proletarian law, which says that all nations, big and small have the right to national self-determination and that none should be subject to occupation or exploitation by other nations. MIM supports the struggles of First Nations against imperialist domination because the struggles of the oppressed for national self-determination are the first step in demolishing the international beast of imperialism. HISTORY OF THE SIEGE What the white nation calls crimes were committed when 30 First Nation nationals and their supporters occupied a ranch at the Sundance ground of Ts'eten, which the settlers call Gustafsen Lake, claiming the land as the site for the Sundance. The RCMP surrounded the land with armored personnel carriers and within days, mounted what one soldier described as the largest Kanadian land battle since the Korean War.(2) The basis for the siege had been most recently established six years earlier in 1989 when a Shuswap Faith Keeper informed Lyle James, a rancher with grazing rights at Gustafsen Lake that the site would be used for the Sundance. Every year following, the Sundance was held on that land for ten days. In 1991 a Shuswap elder took the land issue to the Hague, and in 1992 and 1993 took it to the United Nations, trying to have the land -- which was unceded by the Shuswap -- returned to the nation.(3) In what was reported as the protesters trading shots with armed Royal Kanadian Mounted Police,(4) one chronology of events says "two police officers accidentally ran their vehicle into a tree branch and panicked assuming themselves to be under attack and fled the scene firing widely. Although there was no attack, the RCMP gave a press conference ... and claimed that the officers had been ambushed and pursued. This non-existent attack was used to justify the introduction of the military into the area."(3) YOU CAN'T JUDGE NATIVES IN THE OCCUPIERS' COURTS Some defenders refused to offer a legal defense beyond the fact that because the land is native, the Kanadian courts have no jurisdiction.(1) MIM agrees with this stance; this case is a reminder to the settlers than Kanada and Amerika have no legitimate claim to the land they occupy. Lyle James got into trouble because settlers who make deals with other settlers and with settler governments for the use of First Nation land are inherently trampling on the First Nations' land rights. The land is always contested and it is only a matter of time before this contest escalates into a physical dispute. The initial Gustafsen Lake standoff was one in a string on Indigenous-Kanada disputes in 1995-96. Also in September of 1995, Kanadian pigs opened fire on a group of protesters occupying Ipperwash Provincial Park in Ontario, killing one and wounding others. The Mohawk Nation supported the people at Gustafsen Lake and at Ipperwash with their own highway blockade and press statements.(4) Five months later, the Nisga'a won a small land settlement from British Columbia.(5) The settler governments and courts have an extreme military advantage, but their moral stance is weak and so is their strategic position. The surviving First Nations in occupied north America understand that the land belongs to them and that the imperialists hold no power of law which the oppressed are bound to respect. While the oppressed are still militarily weak, MIM will continue to build public opinion in favor of their just struggles for self-determination. Continuing to expose the imperialists' brutal role in the lives of the colonized nations, we are building independent institutions of the oppressed -- our first tool in the decisive overthrow of imperialism. NOTES: 1. Settlers in Support of Indigenous Sovereignty (SISIS) Bulletin 7 July, 1997. 2. http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/court/reasdef.ht ml 3. http://kafka.uvic.ca/~vipirg/SISIS/GustLake/chrono. html 4. MIM Notes 105 October 1995. 5. MIM Notes 113 1 May, 1996. * * * BALTIMORE POLICE KILL UNARMED MAN: CITY USES BLACK POLICE FOR COVER by an MC After Baltimore police killed a Black man in cold blood on August 11, many Black nation members in the city and around the country were outraged. But the fact that the officers were Black has been used to quell popular anger over the murder. This illustrates one of the real dangers in the white nation's use of Black mercenaries to do its dirty work. It obscures the bloody oppression of Blacks on the level of nation, and makes it easier to deflect the masses' anger into reformist and pragmatic goals instead of towards the movement for national liberation. Four Black Baltimore police surrounded a Black man holding a knife, and ordered him to drop it. After a short standoff -- watched by a crowd of onlookers and someone with a video camera -- one pig suddenly shot him dead. On the videotape, according to the Washington Post, "the man appears passive, almost sluggish, his arms dangling at his sides." But the Post did not see what the eagle-eyed pigs allegedly saw -- a subtle development in the situation, according to the shooting officer's lawyer, who says there was a "slight movement of the left foot, and [he] appeared to be gripping the weapon more tightly, flexing up his muscles and gritting his teeth." Or, according to the officer himself, "when he gave the impression he was going to charge, I fired." This contradicts the statements of the other witnesses, one of whom said the man "didn't do anything . . . He was like in a daze." The victim, James Quarles, was a street vendor at the market where the shooting took place. He always used a knife to open packages of goods. He was holding a package of athletic socks in one hand and a knife in the other when police arrived in response to a panicked phone call. Police said his slow manner, and supposedly blood-shot eyes, indicated he was on drugs -- but the medical examiner found no trace of drugs or alcohol in his body. The murder of Quarles is the latest in a recent surge of killings by the Baltimore police. Their own records show they have fatally shot 26 people since January 1995, and wounded 45 more. Other recent cases include the killing of a 22-year-old driver during a traffic stop, and the murder of a 64-year-old womyn supposedly wielding a knife in her own kitchen. The Post reports that some Black pseudo-community leaders say that if the police had been white there would have been a violent rebellion by Baltimore's Black population. The local Uncle Tom leader of the NAACP said although it appears the shooting was "very questionable," and that "it appears the officer lost control and acted inappropriately," he doesn't think people should jump to conclusions and demand a murder charge until "all the facts are in."(1) The recent incident, and the situation in Black cities like Baltimore in general, demonstrate the problem with Black police forces doing the state's dirty work. Over the years, many progressives have made the mistake of demanding Black representation on police forces instead of organizing against the police force in the first place. The white nation imperialist state picked up on this right away and started filling many positions in police forces with Blacks. In 1995, although Black's made up only 7.8% of police and detective supervisors, they were 11.2% of public police and detectives, 15.4% of sheriff's, bailiffs, and other law enforcement officers, and 28.2% of correctional officers. Since 1983 there has been a decline in the percentage of supervisors who are Black (it was 9.3% then), while the Black proportion of the other non-desk jobs has increased substantially.(2) It is a front by the white nation imperialist state. It wants the Black kops out on the streets making oppression seem less nation-targeted and buffer it from the masses' fury. The imperialists have seized on Black mercenaries on a large scale, and for good reasons. They satisfy the demands of pseudo-leaders in the civil rights movement for "representation." Hiring Black pigs helps provide public relations cover, as in this Baltimore case, because people can say the pigs aren't "racist" and can ignore systematic national oppression. Increasing Black pigs provides better-paying jobs for a large group of working- class Blacks, boosting some into the middle class, which undermines political will for genuine self- determination for the Black nation. As long as the Black nation does not develop its own institutions to solve its own problems, the state will always be able to develop some popular support for these efforts. People do want someone to call to break up fights or stop drug dealers -- and to stop the police, too. On the videotape, the shooting officer appeared to be distracted by the crowd two seconds before he fired the fatal shot. Pigs would prefer to murder unquestioned. Pigs fear hostile oppressed nation community presence and action, because injustice enrages the masses; the Los Angeles and St. Petersburg Rebellions are just two shining examples. The community's involvement in this incident -- as opposed to just closing the doors and dropping the curtains -- made the trigger-happy pig nervous. This community watchfulness when pigs are harassing and murdering in Black nation neighborhoods is a good and necessary action for protecting themselves and policing the pigs. Point seven in the Black Panther Party's Ten Point Program states in part, "we believe that we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality."(3) The Black communities should be free of brutality and oppression. But this will never be granted or reformed into being by the supremacist imperialist state. Members of the Black nation shouldn't be fooled by the black mercenaries employed by the imperialists. The Black nation must organize to seize self- determination and national liberation for themselves by following the powerful heritage of the Maoist vanguard of the late 1960s, the Black Panther Party, and learning from its mistakes. The road to freedom is proletarian feminist revolutionary nationalism. The task of genuine revolutionaries is to develop independent institutions of the oppressed, to delegitimize the actions of the imperialists' occupying armies, and use these institutions to build a revolutionary movement toward genuine national liberation and self-determination. Historical experience has shown that Maoist-led national liberation struggles are the best way to accomplish these difficult tasks. Notes: 1. Washington Post 23 Aug 1997, p. B1. 2. Statistical Abstract of the United States 1996, p. 407. 3. Philip S. Foner, ed., The Black Panthers Speak. NY: Da Capo Press, 1995. Available from MIM for $10, see address on pg.2. * * * AMERIKAN JURY DECIDES AGAINST INDICTING MURDEROUS MARINE A Texas grand jury decided not to indict a u.$. marine who shot and killed a young man herding his family's goats, despite the facts that the Marine lied about the shooting and failed to call for medical assistance quickly. The marine and three of his buddies were patrolling the illegitimate Mexican-Amerikan border as part of a program using military troops to do the job of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) when he shot Esequiel Hernandez, Jr. District Attorney Valadez said "They believed the Marines were telling the truth when they said ... [the dead man] fired the first shot." As MIM Notes 143 reported, there is no evidence that Hernandez fired his WWI-era rifle. Hernandez probably did not even know that the marines were there, and the fatal bullet wound provided evidence that he was looking away from the marines when he was shot. Valadez explained, "The grand jury believed the Marines were following the rules of engagement." The military suspended use of its troops on the border until further notice. But whether or not the military returns to INS duties, the "rules of engagement" along the border are militarized and are becoming more violent. People crossing the border in search of work are routinely brutalized, molested, and, of course, arrested and deported. The laws which force so many people to try to cross the border clandestinely are designed to preserve the low wage level in Mexico as well as the low wage level among undocumented workers within u.$. borders. The borders were created by armed conquest and are defended by armed force, and the INS is part of that armed force. MIM struggles to build a movement to overthrow u.$. imperialism and create a proletarian, socialist government. One of the first acts of this government would be to open the borders. * * * U.S. IMPERIALISM: MERCHANT OF DEATH by MC53 During the so-called Cold War, militarization was backed with the rhetoric of the need to protect democracy from the communists. Now, the u.s imperialists continue militarization under the guise of the war on drugs and gangs and youth; to protect Amerika's illegitimate borders; and to back fascist dictatorships combating alleged terrorism. Along with militarization to continue Amerika's war against oppressed nations, Amerika is increasing its profit from the trade of weapons. This fits well with the growth of direct war waged through comprador dictatorships with less direct u.s. military presence in Third World nations. While weapons are used to attack the masses, Amerikan workers and weapons contractors benefit from the profits from death machine sales and u.s. imperialism maintains control through puppet dictators. A recent u.s. government report shows that the United $nakes pulled far ahead in 1996 to dominate the international weapons market. "This was the sixth consecutive year in which the United States led the field in arms deliveries, in part reflecting American success in winning contracts for arms sales in the Middle East in the aftermath of the Gulf War."(1) The annual arms survey by the Congressional Research Service showed that while the market for weapons increased five percent last year, the u.s. imperialist portion of the market increased 23 percent in the same time. That means that u.s imperialists and their defense contractors sold $11.3 billion in weapons in 1996. Together with England and Russia, the u.s contractors sell about two-thirds of weapons world wide. The war against the people of Iraq in part served to increase profits for defense contractors and help fill the defense industry's pockets. But seeing that the burst following the war has ebbed slightly, the United Snakes has changed its policy regarding the sale of the most advanced weapons to Latin American countries and has now opened up yet another market this year. While the reports maintain that the 19 year old ban of advanced weapons sales to Latin America countries was due to human rights concerns, the reality is that the United Snakes continued to send arms to Latin American dictators as they fought against rebels during the 1970s and 1980s. It is a ruse to conclude that the ban was to protect the people from human rights violations when the United Snakes was (and continues to be) one of the more fierce violators of human rights by funding dictators and training mercenaries and army leaders in their war against the peoples of Latin America.(2) Regardless of what type of arms imperialists sell to Latin American countries or which countries are the main suppliers, the primary victims of the weapons sales are the masses. While the u.s. imperialists may maneuver to ensure that the best puppets receive the most advanced weapons, this is just a continuation of u.s policy of supplying its puppets in the war against the people. The lifting of the ban on advanced weaponry does open up the market for contractors like the Lockheed Martin Corporation and the McDonnell Douglas Corporation which can now take over the sales of aircraft from other merchants. The lifting of the ban merely helps these contractors and u.s imperialists increase the market. For instance, the weapons market decreased from $54.3 billion in 1990, to $37.2 billion in 1991; and increased to $42.2 billion in 1992 after the Gulf War. The world market had decreased to $30.3 billion by 1995 and the u.s share of this market barely edged out Russia. "Weapons manufactures in the United States benefited last year from well-established defense alliances with Middle Eastern and Asian nations."(3) While the manufactures have lobbied for greater freedoms to sell advanced weapons of death, u.s imperialism benefits by the assurance that its puppets are well armed and capable of conquering mass rebellions and revolutions. While it is possible that the weapons could lead to an arms race among Third World governments, the alleged war on drugs, against revolutionary movements and against protesting peasants and workers shows that these weapons will help continue the propped up illegitimate governments and leave imperialism maneuvering room for economic exploitation of the Third World masses. Notes: 1. New York Times 16 Aug 1997 p. A3 2. New York Times 2 Aug 1997 p. A1. 3. New York Times 16 Aug 1997 p. A3. * * * AMERIKA DRAGGING FEET IN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO BAN LANDMINES Kanada is leading an international effort to ban anti-personnel landmines, and Amerika is the leading imperialist to resist joining. China and Russia are also reluctant to attend the talks to prepare the ban on the production, use and sale of landmines.(1) After much international pressure, on August 19 the Clinton administration finally agreed to join the talks and sent negotiators to Geneva for the talks. Amerika wants to exempt the use of landmines in Korea, which presumably would still allow their production and then illegal use elsewhere.(2) The proposed ban would only eliminate mines intended to harm people; mines for military purposes such as anti-tank mines would still be allowed. Many military analysts quoted in the bourgeois papers argue that "antipersonnel mines play a peripheral role, at best, on the battlefield." According to U.$. Army Lieutenant General Robert G. Gard, "[t]hey have a very marginal utility.... The collateral suffering caused to civilians by these weapons of mass destruction far outweighs their military function." In Viet Nam, Gard refused to deploy landmines because "they caused civilian casualties, alienated the local population, and in any event were far more likely to kill a u.s. soldier than an enemy."(1) While it's a good thing that Gard didn't deploy the weapons, this is misphrasing the issue, first by implying that the intention of landmine placement is not the targeting of civilians, and then by getting into a reactionary debate about how to most effectively control a colonized population. First, the purpose of landmines, especially in modern anti-guerrilla wars, is to harm the civilian population because the civilian population can't be distinguished from the guerrillas because they are the same thing. Secondly, some of the more far sighted imperialists recognize that weapons like landmines further alienate the colonized population and make the imposition of more efficient neo- colonialism more difficult. Finally, landmines stay dangerous long after the end of the initial conflict, creating physical and political problems for decades. MIM sees the banning of landmines as a progressive act that will keep from escalating an already horrible toll on the people. But we have no false hopes that the imperialists want to stop their bloody oppression of the people; they merely want to do it more effectively and with a kinder gentler face. (And a weapon being illegal has never stopped the imperialists from using it when they needed it, anyway.) Even if landmines are banned today, there will still be 112 million landmines sown in 71 nations. According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, landmines kill or maim 24,000 people a year, most of them civilians and often children. Mines from World War I and II still injure or kill scores of people a year.(1) NOTES: 1. Boston Globe, 15 August 1997, p. A2 2. Springfield Union-News, 19 August 1997, p. A1 * * * WEAPONS DESTRUCTION DANGEROUS TO OPPRESSED POPULATIONS It should be a good thing that chemical weapons are being destroyed as a result of the Chemical Weapons Convention. But since capitalism values profit and not safety, the weapons are being destroyed in dangerous ways. A military contractor named EG&G Defense Materials is running the first furnace within U.$ borders to destroy poison gasses at the Deseret Chemical Depot, on the edge of the Mormon ranch town of Tooele. EG&G fired its safety officer when he came up with a list of 3,000 safety violations. To pick just one, the sensors on the smokestacks don't work when exposed to heat; meaning that EG&G and the Army have no idea what is coming out of the stacks when the furnaces are in operation. The Army estimates that there is a 1 in 200 chance that a forklift is going to drop or puncture a rocket, which contain enough nerve gas to kill 100,000 people. A forklift has already dropped a 1 ton container of sarin gas. According to the conservative math of the Army, a catastrophic accident would kill 1% of the people 60 miles away, 50% of the people 30 miles away, and 75% of those 15 miles away. The Tooele plant has been plagued with leaks internal to the plant. Tooele is 50 miles west of Salt Lake City and less that distance east from the Skull Valley First Nation Reservation. "Here, stored in rounded bunkers ... are 13,616 tons of chemical weapons, accounting for 44 percent of the nation's arsenals of mustard gas, Lewistie, the psycho-active agent BZ, GB (sarin) and VX nerve gases." The gas is in "56,000 M55 rockets, more than one million artillery shells, thousands of mines, cluster bombs...." Some weapons date back to World War I, others are much newer. This is big business, with $10 billion in new plants scheduled to be built in the next 5 years. Globally, the market in destroying these weapons is valued at nearly $75 billion. "The nerve agents stored at Tooele and the other sites are the most lethal in the world. VX, for example, has a toxicity ten thousand times that of its agro-industrial cognate, malathion. And unlike sarin gas which dissipates quickly, VX is designed to persist in the environment at lethal levels for weeks. All the military nerve agents are closely associated with chemicals used in intensive agriculture and in fact were developed by Shell, Monsanto, FMC and DuPont under contract to the Army. A deadly dose of VX is about a millionth the size of a grain of salt. Victims of VX and sarin poisoning die a wretched and painful death, typified by excessive salivation, uncontrollable weeping and urination, followed by seizures and massive internal bleeding." That such weapons were developed and stockpiled in the first place speaks volumes about the reactionary nature of the capitalist war machine. Such weapons cause huge amounts of human destruction, yet show no ability at all to distinguish between combatants and non-combatants. To the imperialists, such a distinction is irrelevant because of the political necessity to crush an enemy population. The plants planned for Anniston, Alabama and Pine Bluff, Arkansas are in areas more than 50% Black. The siting of toxic facilities on the land of the oppressed is nothing new. First their land and labor was stolen, and now, the continuation of genocide for the profit of imperialism. The Atomic Energy Commission justified nuclear tests in the Southwest by calling the residents "a low-use segment of the population." President Eisenhower was even more blunt: "We can afford to sacrifice a few thousand people out there in the interests of national security." Weapons of mass destruction serve no positive political purpose and should be destroyed. But they should be destroyed in a way that increases the safety of the people, not in a way that continues the past practice of enriching military contractors while jeopardizing the people's health. Before, the contractors got rich making the weapons and the Army aimed them at the oppressed. Now the contractors are making a bundle by ignoring safety issues and threatening the lives of the oppressed and the less influential residents of North America. NOTE: Counter Punch, July 1-15 1997, PO Box 18675, Washington DC 20036. Counter Punch "tells the facts and names the names." * * * THIRD PARTIES LOSE IN ENGLAND BIG-TIME The election of the Labour Party in England by an overwhelming majority meant savage losses by the so-called alternative parties and put them on par with their pitiful Amerikan electoral cousins. The Green Party suffered so badly it only polled over 1000 votes in 10 seats it was running for in Parliament. (The total population of the so-called United Kingdom -- including England, Scotland, Wales, northern Ireland -- is 58.5 million.) The point of Labour's victory after 18 years of Conservative Party rule is to offer an alternative to organizing from the far left. The capitalist- class is always taking a risk of being on the wrong side of certain issues in such a way that the communists (in the worst case for the capitalists) seize on the issues and monopolize them. For this reason, when a communist is working alone on a big issue which is a matter of justice, s/he can be sure the bourgeoisie is getting a nervous feeling. Eventually, the bourgeoisie and the middle-classes move in to co-opt the issues taken up by those building institutions independent of ruling class institutions. The typical middle-class activist only works on an issue so as to attract ruling-class attention with properly self-censored language. In this way, the petty-bourgeois liberals concede the heart of most political questions to the bourgeoisie and never challenge the ruling class's political control. It is only the proletariat that will work on an issue to its logical end and raise political consciousness, because that is the only way the proletariat can win. In England, we see now that the middle-class voter is the vast majority of voters. The supporters of the various so-called socialist groups and Greens abandoned ship the moment a "new" Labour Party appeared. The so-called alternative organizations and the Labour Party are appealing to the same base of the labor aristocracy and traditional petty-bourgeoisie. Meanwhile, a magazine called Red Pepper is an example of the mixture of middle-class and proletarian issues. It has generally focused on how Tony Blair is a Clinton-clone and a spineless non- socialist. In the June, 1997 issue, MIM can hardly object to Gary Younge's article saying that England's flag should be abandoned for a new one, because of its colonialist and militarist past. He is complaining about the celebrities such as Jarvis Cocker, Naomi Campbell, Liam Gallagher and Geri from the Spice Girls appearing in photos clothed in the Union Jack. We only object that Younge let Amerikans and French off the hook too easily in order to vilify England's imperialism. Those flags are also symbols of oppression. Another excellent article was by what MIM calls an internationalist social-democrat named Job Rabkin. Rabkin says England should not join the likes of Buchanan and Le Pen as the Communist Party USA advises in its alliance with non-monopoly capital. The graphic for the article is typical left-wing fantasy with 330 million Europeans and 330 million having jobs in the "New Europe." This typical bit of oinking on behalf of the middle-classes of imperialism is so exuberant that it forgets it is assigning work to infants, retirees and the infirm. At some point the middle-classes are going to have to realize that we should not just want more people employed; instead we want to eradicate parasitic jobs predominant in the First World and want those unemployed to be leading productive lives in study, art etc. Even more important is that there should be a movement to end the parasitic consumerism at the expense of the Third World, not as a matter of altruism, but as a matter of peace and understanding the flaws of the capitalist-system. Though we disagree with his core concerns of the middle-classes, Rabkin advocates for jobs, welfare and public services in an internationalist way by opposing those chauvinists such as Le Pen afraid of European Union. Rabkin wants cross-border alliances. As such, Rabkin is more of a potential ally than the CP-USA, DSA and other chauvinist scum. In England, provincialists of the Socialist Labour Party and the Greens campaigned against the single currency plan for the European Union. In contrast, we at MIM believe there is no progressive role for economic nationalism and most other kinds of nationalism in imperialist countries. These provincialist fools are paving the way for a national socialist movement, which is what the Nazi movement was called. On the other hand, despite some fairly decent articles, Red Pepper is mostly dedicated to the middle-class. We receive a special insert upholding the peace agreements in Guatemala, Palestine and South Africa as successes that should be followed by the Six Counties of Ireland. As higher percentages of wimmin seek to imprison men instead of thoroughly attacking patriarchy, Red Pepper calls for more incarceration for alleged rape by complaining about the decline of rape conviction. On the other hand, we should admit that Red Pepper does pay some attention to prison issues in a middle-class way by demanding of the new Labour government early release for non-violent offenders, an end to phone tapping, support for undocumented immigrants, a ban on CS spray and long-handled batons and an end to anti-Terror and public order laws used against protests. Under the new regime in England, it is important to understand the vacillation of the middle-classes. That shines through in the election results in which a Clinton-clone carried the day and now has a 69 percent approval rating. We urge the English, Scottish and Irish comrades to rally around MIM as an unwavering proletarian pole to sort out the inevitable maneuverings of the imperialists and the middle-classes in the new government. NOTE: Red Pepper, No. 37, pp. 7, 13, 18-20. SELLING THIRD WORLD WORKERS SHORT LIST OF ORGANIZATIONS SELLING THIRD WORLD WORKERS SHORT: Committees of Correspondence Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) League of Revolutionary Struggle (LRS) Progressive Labor Party (PLP) Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) Socialist Party Socialist Workers Party Solidarity Spartacist League Unity & Struggle Workers World Party (etc. many more and their counterparts in Europe, Australia and Japan) LIST OF THOSE WHO EVEN TRIED TO JUSTIFY IT: Doug Henwood, magazine editor (rebutted in MT#1) Victor Perlo, Communist Party-USA (rebutted in upcoming MT article available now to comrades outside the U$A, $5) LIST OF THOSE WHO GOT IT RIGHT African People's Socialist Party (APSP) J. Sakai, anarchist author H. W. Edwards, unknown author (Help us add to this list!) The silence is deafening. In 1985, Third World workers averaged 48 cents an hour in pay**. So why do so few people calling themselves socialist or communist calculate the total of imperialist exploitation? Why do they seek to sell the Third World workers short instead of giving them their due? The imperialists sell them short because they profit and live off the exploitation of Third World workers. The comprador puppet leaders of Third World regimes sell the workers short, because they are on CIA and multinational corporate payrolls -- much more lucrative than anything their own people can afford to pay them. The nationalist anti-puppet bourgeoisie sells them short, because the national bourgeoisie also wants to exploit Third World workers, just not quite as much as the imperialists and compradors or so they claim when they are out of power. The bought-off workers known as labor aristocracy - - a new kind of petty-bourgeoisie -- sell Third World workers short, because a calculation would show that Third World workers are exploited so much that it adds up to several times more than the capitalist class of the imperialist countries rake in each year. The rest of the gravy from exploiting Third World workers goes to the bourgeoisified populations of the imperialist countries. When bought-off workers have political representatives making excuses for parasitism or evading the issue entirely, those representatives are "labor bureaucrats." The list of labor bureaucrats above is long, because the vast majority of political organizations seek to represent the capitalist- class and the petty-bourgeois majority in the imperialist countries. There are no two ways about it: those who do not admit that the U$A, Japan, Germany, France, England etc. are parasites are selling the Third World workers short. That's what MIM's third cardinal principle means. We do not allow anyone to join our organization who is selling Third World workers short. People who cannot face up to facts once presented -- that the Third World workers are exploited so much that imperialists live and gain all their wealth off just that exploitation with the rest going to buy-off the oppressor-nation workers -- such are not even half-way Marxist and they do not belong in a real communist organization. If such revisionists, chauvinists and their lackeys in the Third World come to power, the Third World workers will still be exploited. Isn't it time you ended the deafening silence and forced your organization to take a stand or affiliate with MIM? If you are not in an organization affiliated with MIM, send in your name or your organization's name saying, "Yes, I/we want to be counted with those not selling Third World workers short. There is no excuse for the failure to calculate the total exploitation and the lack of effort to rebut MIM. List us as endorsing your position on this when you update this ad." NOTE: Adrian Wood, North-South trade Employment and Inequality (Oxford, ENGLAND: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 400. * * * AVAILABLE NOW! "IMPERIALISM AND ITS CLASS STRUCTURE IN 1997" This is an unofficial booklet available now for discussion outside the U.$.A. We continue the work started by Lenin of eradicating the influence of the labor aristocracy, a new petty-bourgeoisie in the international communist movement. To do this we must know how extensive the petty-bourgeoisie has become so as to avoid becoming its spokespeople unintentionally. This booklet reviews the concept from Marx to Mao, examines current evidence for the integration of finance capital, the existing trade blocs, the new trends and sources in surplus-value extraction that have bailed out the capitalists and the evidence that there is no surplus-value extracted from the bought-off oppressor-nation majorities in the U.$.A., Japan, Germany, France, England, Italy, Netherlands, Switzerland, Belgium, Sweden and Australia. We challenge our readers in the imperialist countries to read and support or rebut this booklet and we promise to publish serious replies. Available to residents outside the U.S. borders only! $5 for xerox copy from the address on page two. * * * ALIENATION OF YOUTH MASKED THROUGH LEGAL DRUGS by MC53 All the patriotic Amerikan hype in the alleged war on drugs rings hallow in the face of repression against oppressed nations internationally and within the illegitimate borders of the United Snakes. Militarization and the proliferation of prisons shows that the war on drugs is merely a cover to murder and imprison the oppressed. As the sector of the white nation with the most to gain from revolution, white nation youth also have become a target in the alleged war against drugs and gangs. Locking up youth who are organized and individual youth who rebel fits well within with the plan to protect Amerikan interests. Besides increased harassment and imprisonment of youth because they are not working in the interests of Amerika, youth are targets for Amerikan pacification. If a youth is angry as a result of patriarchal control or the alienation of living in a society which reeks of wealth stolen through genocide and domination, according to Amerikan psychology the youth has something wrong with him or her. MIM urges youth to take up the struggle against systematic oppression and wage revolutionary struggle. But we are battling against Amerika which is attempting to either buy off youth or pacify them. Last year, Amerika pacified 217,000 13 - 18 year olds through Prozac alone. Under socialism, drugs will be used to help adults and children with severe chemical imbalances which inhibit their ability to become productive members of society. But depression diagnoses and other pseudo-scientific diagnoses run rampant under the current system. This is because the medical industry makes money off of such mis-diagnoses. The real cause of many of the so-called psychological disorders is the alienation that people experience an imperialist society which provides useless parasitical jobs and a meaningless existence that is focused on material wealth and power over other people. The adult market for Prozac and anti-depressants decreased by 5% last year and is seemingly saturated. But the market for anti-depressants given to youth is wide open and being pried further by zealous drug companies. Overall, Prozac sales were $1.73 billion in the United Snakes last year. And the sales to youth 13 to 18 years old increased 46% in 1996. This is even prior to a formal F.D.A. clearance of anti-depressants for children. Drug companies want a formal clearing so that they can directly market their drugs for youth. Eli Lilly, the company which makes Prozac, has submitted data recently to the F.D.A. in an attempt to receive a formal approval for this drug for use on youth. In addition, SmithKline Beecham, the company which produces Paxil and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Company as well as the American Home Products Corporation are all preparing studies and research to persuade the F.D.A. to approve anti- depressants formally for youth. Last year about 600,000 children in the United Snakes were prescribed anti-depressants. The Prozac prescriptions for 6 - 12 year olds increased 298%. Youth under 18 years old do not even have the legal power to say that they do not want to take such pacifiers. These pacifiers are forced upon them to hide the disgust-filled reaction to patriarchy and domination. Many youth are labeled with various psychological problems because of their class or nationality as well. When a female youth is sad or confused because her father raped her, she should organize against patriarchy, she should not be forced to take a happy pill. When a Black youth is pissed that he saw his brother shot by the pigs, he should organize against settler nation domination, not take a quiet pill or face prison. Pills will not indefinitely cover up the inequities and systematic domination under imperialist patriarchy. As the contradictions continue to unfold, we will organize youth and the masses in general to turn their anger and disgust with the current system into rational, well-thought out and organized actions against the oppressors. NOTE: The New York Times 10 August 1997, p.A12. * * * MEN WANT MONOPOLY ON IMPERIALIST TRAINING by MC45 Now that 31 wimmin have begun training at Virginia Military Institute(VMI) -- the second formerly men's-only military academy to lose a lawsuit to restrict admissions of wimmin -- graduates of VMI and the Citadel (which started enrolling wimmin last year) are planning to found a new men-only school. VMI and the Citadel lost their rights to exclude wimmin because they are public institutions. The new school planned by the VMI and Citadel alumni will be private. This proves what MIM has always said: wimmin or no, gays or no, the Amerikan military is an imperialist and patriarchal institution. So the military men have lost the right to keep state institutions free of wimmin-folk? Doesn't matter. Luckily the state still protects their right to have more wealth than the majority of the world's population -- enough wealth to consider spending some of it, and a whole lot of time, building their own school when the state schools won't cut it anymore. While MIM opposes discrimination, we do not support struggles fought to allow wimmin, gays, or oppressed nationals to serve in an oppressive military. The Amerikan military forces currently occupy south Korea, keeping the Korean peninsula divided and enforcing the famine in the north. Amerika props up Israeli displacement, confinement and murder of Palestinians on their own land. The U.$. military backs up the oppressive u.s.-Ramos regime in the Philippines and slows the inevitable victory of the People's War against imperialism. MIM considers all of these activities to be much greater gender oppression than the exclusion of wimmin from a couple of imperialist state-run colleges. MIM calls out to young wimmin in the imperialist countries: if you want to fight gender oppression, come work with us. Struggle alongside the forces of the Third World sisters and brothers, expose and agitate against imperialist interference in the Third World and help bring an end to all gender oppression, not just the discrimination you see here at home. NOTES: New York Times 18 August, 1997, p. A8. * * * NEW INDIAN PREZ NO FRIEND OF THE PEOPLE The neo-colonial government of India has chosen a new president -- a ceremonial leader where the prime minister is more influential. Amid the celebrations of India's fifty years of so-called independence from English colonialism, there has been much hullabaloo following the choice for president, Narayanan. He is a "dalit," the Hindi word for "oppressed" which refers to those groups formerly considered "untouchables." Does the rise to power of this man mean that India has in fact become an egalitarian place? No. Anti-imperialists know that despite his caste background Narayanan is a friend of the imperialists and an enemy of India's masses. According to the New York Times, Narayanan "declared his elevation as proof that 'the concerns of the common man' have finally taken precedence in the nation's affairs." In fact, he is hardly a common man. He started out as an impoverished dalit in the southern state of Kerala facing oppression based on class, nation and caste. His initial roots make him the perfect bourgeois model to show that 'the oppressed only have to work hard and as a result can pull themselves up by their bootstraps.' But statistically speaking, fairy godmothers don't reach down to India's majority. Narayanan is an exception who rose from his caste because of his collaboration with imperialism. After some schooling abroad, Narayanan played an important part in anti-progressive organizing by India's ruling class. First, he joined the foreign service and was a diplomat in Burma, Thailand, and in 1976 in China. (While China was Maoist, India severed ties; it was only after capitalist-roaders took power that India sent Narayanan in to make peace.) He also served in the United Snakes. Narayanan's role as a henchman for the government then turned to internal anti-communism. He was chosen by the country's ruling party, the Congress Party, to run for one of the seats in the representative body reserved for people of "scheduled castes" against a phony communist from his home state. Even though he lived far away in the country's capital, New Delhi, he still won. That was a victory for the Congress Party, which has a hard time maintaining dalit support. The bourgeoisie uses this story as propaganda -- to convey the myth that anyone can become president if they just study hard. The imperialist mouthpiece New York Times referred to the pro-capitalist Indian Express as having "expressed the hope that Mr. Narayanan's arrival as President would quell the turn toward caste-based politics. It said in an editorial that the appointment 'advertises the fact that social mobility is no mere directive principle -- it can be an actual fact.'" This sort of tokenism is a trick that the bourgeoisie uses a lot. 'If some individuals can rise to the top, surely any individual can.' This is a lie. Just because one individual dalit who is particularly useful to India's political elites helps to operate the imperialists' businesses and rises up does not mean that any dalit with drive can become the leader of the state. It certainly does not mean that the oppressed have seized power. Nearly 350 million of India's 960 million people still live in deep poverty. Improving the conditions of 350 million requires more than tokenism. It requires a whole new system that produces for the good of the masses rather than the upward mobility of the few. India must be freed of the tethers of the imperialists who limit the potential of the oppressed to solve their common problems. NOTES: The New York Times, July 26, 1997, p. 3. * * * MASTERS OF ILLUSION: THE WORLD BANK AND THE POVERTY OF NATIONS by Catherine Caufield (NY: Henry Holt and Company, 1996), 432 pp. Book review written by a MIM comrade Upon the recommendation of Dennis Brutus, MIM reviewed Masters of Illusion. We recommend this book as if it were an extended and thorough journalistic account of the World Bank from its beginning. Learning about the World Bank from this bourgeois source should be eye-opening to anyone considering communism. The World Bank is an institution funded by the industrial countries to lend money for large projects in the Third World that no commercial bank would loan money for. The plurality of its staff is Amerikan economists. Environment not counted Catherine Caufield correctly points out that bankers and economists by training and predisposition naturally incline to giving the environment short shrift. If there is no price on polluting or even killing, then economists do not usually take pollution or premature death into account. As a result with is large capital for large projects, the World Bank is behind some of the world's most destructive economic projects. Throughout the Third World, bourgeois ideas of development have come along with environmental catastrophes sponsored by industrial country "experts" and bankers. Caufield provides the details and shows how difficult it is for the World Bank to change. Agency of neo-colonialism The World Bank is to neo- colonialism what the missionary was to colonialism. Unwilling to work with local experts and government officials in the Third World, the World Bank provides the funding to establish entirely new agencies that fill the role that governments usually do in industrial countries. "By the early 1970s, more than half of all its loans went to autonomous agencies it had helped to establish in scores of countries."(p. 60) For this reason, some have seen the UN as a competitor of the World Bank, because both organizations set up their own branches in the Third World and both have pretensions of being world governments. THEORETICAL PROBLEMS While we recommend this book sheerly on a journalistic level, it has numerous theoretical flaws. The most grating flaw is to read this book as an indictment of the intelligence of bourgeois economists and Third World government officials, as if becoming a wealthy country the way these economists want is just a matter of applying the expertise of a handful of people. MIM has to agree with Caufield that the Harvard, MIT and Oxford trained economists at the World Bank are especially stupid, because they tend to have little creativity and confuse their theories with the scientific and mathematical methods they learned in graduate schools. However, the ultimate underlying problem is the system arranging economic education and rewarding it to be removed from practical reality. Otherwise, these economists would notice that capitalism has a far bigger record of failure than socialism. Based on the reports of World Bank staff, Caufield's report never rises to the level of thinking of systems that influence the behavior of large numbers of people. Hence, she lightly reports that bank insiders believe they undercut themselves by having quotas of loans to make. These quotas reduce their bargaining power with regard to the strings attached when it comes to working with government officials in the Third World. We are asked to be concerned that the "true rate of erosion in the Bank's bargaining power was more like from 50 to 35 percent [of what they want-- ed.]."(p. 103) This is despite the fact that no systematic evidence comes forth to show that increasing the Bank's power would be good for anyone but the Bank. Even more neo-colonial in outlook is her comment that the Peruvian people were victims of demagoguery when some protested ceding control of the economy to the World Bank. (p. 136) Here the obsession with intelligence applied to rational policy merges with neo-colonialism of the sort that says the Peruvian people should just accept the supposedly more intellectually sound leadership at the World Bank. Elsewhere Caufield sides with the bankers wondering if investments in education, housing and health pay off.(p. 125) Typical of her whole atheoretical approach to development is her statement quoting one World Bank officer on why education projects fail : "'The best and the brightest' in government end up in the finance ministries and not in the education ministry." (p. 295) LENIN VINDICATED If the reader reads Lenin's "Imperialism" before reading this book, the reader will see Lenin's theory vindicated by the facts throughout the book. Most interesting is the picture of commercial banks in the Third World, begging to make a loan, so that they can collect interest, and then having multi- lateral agencies like the World Bank clean up after them. According to Lenin, the capitalist system develops into finance capitalism and the finance capitalists must find some outlet for their surplus capital. It turns out that the World Bank annual meeting is a great chance for commercial bankers to meet Third World clients.(pp. 136-7) Observing one such meeting gives the reader the sense that Lenin had about what imperialists with surplus capital lying around have to do. Even the World Bank itself feels pressure to release capital to the Third World, and its top leaders have adopted a sham planning system to reach their goals of loans made. Seeing this, the far right has labelled the World Bank a socialist plot. Caufield caters to this militia-type rightist throughout the book. In reality, the World Bank is not just an "adjustor" for Third World economies: it is a central actor in rationalizing the flow of capital from the industrial countries (imperialist) to the Third World. According to one Kidder Peabody executive, the World Bank "earned its keep" during crises of the private sector.(p. 143) While some right-wing militia types may not like being involved in multi-nation organizations like the World Bank, the truth is that Amerikan corporations are even more involved abroad than the World Bank and they are the ones requiring the World Bank to go on. In this way, taxpayers of the imperialist country middle-classes subsidize the failures of the bankers. After all in 1977, the top nine U.$. banks received more than half their profits from loans to the Third World.(p. 128) Moreover, "By 1982 Citibank's loans to just five of its Latin American clients amounted to twice its net corporate assets."(p. 129) On account of these profits sometimes the private bankers complain about the World Bank's stealing business, but on the other hand, the World Bank is bailing out the commercial banks and spurring economic infrastructure projects that the commercial banks would be afraid to undertake. Nor is it just U.$. capital at stake. The Bank of Tokyo has the equivalent of 80 percent of its net assets at stake in Mexico. (p. 138) From the point of view of these banks, the World Bank may be a failure, but not relatively speaking. The bankers themselves know what it is like to have to find large profitable outlets for their capital or accept losses, and they cannot think of any better way to do what the World Bank does within the existing system. If the World Bank is eventually replaced, it will be by an institution that is very similar. The World Bank is also a means of outlet for the overproduction of capital goods in the imperialist countries: "Most of our money doesn't go to the South, it goes straight from Washington to Pennsylvania, where they manufacture the turbines, or Frankfurt, where they produce the dredging equipment."(p. 242) For this reason, the World Bank has its patrons in the super-elite. Despite all the efforts of the bankers both multi- lateral and private, the capitalists fail to export away their crisis. "In 1994, for example, the developing world received $167.8 billion in foreign loans and paid out $169.5 billion in debt service - - a net transfer from the poor to the rich nations of $1.7 billion."(p. 335) This is a small token of the imperialists' worst nightmare -- surplus capital lying around with no profitable place to invest it. This sort of mechanism is typical of why imperialism is always in crisis. ADJUSTMENT FAILURE Caufield has the facts showing that World Bank economic policies imposed on Third World countries do not work. So-called adjustment loans have failed. Such loans go to countries willing to change their economic policies to the likings of the World Bank. In Mexico where the money has been dumped by the international banking community, economic growth is only keeping pace with population growth. Thus Mexico has stabilized for now to the likings of the banking community, but it has not accomplished anything worthwhile to the proletariat by following the imperialist-dictated course: "In 1992, average wages were - in real term - half what they had been ten years earlier. . . Investment in health, education, and basic physical infrastructure was cut roughly in half, with predictable results. Between 1980 and 1992, infant deaths due to malnutrition almost tripled."(p. 153) The poorest 20 percent of Mexico receives less than 5 percent of the income. "The country's richest man, Carlos Sim, had more money than the country's 17 million poorest people combined."(p. 153) In conclusion, we do not agree that hiring more staff at the World Bank or increasing the number of ecologists there is going to help the systematic problems underlying the World Bank. It should be abolished like many other imperialist entities that block the initiatives of the toiling classes for their own economic well-being. * * * PIRAO SUFFERS SETBACKS The MIM-led People's Internationalist Rear-Area Organization suffered a series of logistical setbacks in the past month. Attempts to complete the second and third stages of permanently funding Maoist Sojourner, the MIM-led newspaper for Third World exiles failed. The political commitment of all concerned in the Maoist Sojourner project remains strong. We expect that despite logistical difficulties we will find another way to accomplish our goals. In the imperialist countries, where Maoists utilize peaceful methods of struggle, the risks of struggle do not entail as much sacrifice of blood as in oppressed nations where there is armed struggle. Hence, suffering setbacks is a sign also of struggle. Those not seeking to take advantage of every opportunity for the revolution will suffer no setbacks. In a military situation we want to be 90 to 95 percent sure of winning each offensive battle because blood is at stake. In a non-military situation, the struggle is more painstaking and requires a different kind of proletarian discipline. PIRAO is more like the wave of the ocean crashing on the rock than the anti-aircraft weapon fired at the imperialist helicopter. We know that the ocean wave must win over the rock and create sand, but the effort must be continuous. * * * UNDER LOCK & KEY MISSOURI PRISONER BEATEN INTO COMA Greeting Comrades, I write this letter requesting your assistance, not for myself but for a fellow comrade who was damn near beat to death. ... The key aggressors are: Lt. Vance, Sgt. Cavanaugh, C.O.[Correctional Officer] Malone and C.O. Aducchi. ... On Monday, March 3, 1997 at approximately 9:30 a.m. prisoner X proceeded to see the doctor for serious medical conditions. While at the doctor's office, X was told by the doctor that no medical assistance could be offered while he was in prison, due to the high cost of treatment. X then left the doctor's office and went back to his cell. About ten minutes later, he entered the doctor's office again producing a knife (homemade). He told the nurse to get out of the office. He then grabbed the doctor and told him that unless he helped X he was going to stab him. About that time, the officers mentioned above rushed into the office, ordering X to drop the knife and let the doctor go. After several seconds, X did drop the weapon, leaving EVERYONE unharmed. After the guards collected the knife and the doctor left the office, Lt. Vance ordered [the other officers] to get X. It should be noted that X did not present any type of resistance or hostility once the knife was dropped. C.O. Malone and Aducchi began swinging batons at X's head like they were hitting a baseball. Sgt. Cavanaugh kicked X in the face while X was on the ground. The kick caused blood to spatter. Then Lt. Vance grabbed X's head in a choke-hold and rammed X's head into the steel sink, busting X's head open. [There was] blood everywhere from X's face and head. At this time X laid unconscious on the floor but he was still being beaten by the guards. X was eventually left alone, bleeding, with no medical assistance. Only when several other inmates began crowding around the guards, making threats, did a medical staff call for an outside ambulance, due to the seriousness of the head trauma. Upon doing some investigation on the injuries he received, I did find the medical report. X suffered from: a ruptured spleen, 6 broken ribs, and 38 stitches in his head. X presently lays in a coma from the beating, in a hospital (prison) with severe head trauma. The very next day all four guards are back at work, and no investigation was ordered. There is a guard who will testify to this incident if it ever goes to a court of law, to prosecute the four guards who almost murdered an unarmed man. I have reviewed the policy on use of force in a life threatening situation. It states any and all force shall be used to UNARM a person threatening the life of another. But X was already unarmed when he received his beating. Upon talking to various officers, they admitted that X dropped his knife and he should have simply been handcuffed and taken to the hole. ... Letters demanding the suspension of the four guards and an investigation of the incident can be directed to: Mrs. Dora Shriro, Director, Missouri Department of Corrections, 2729 Plaza Drive, P.O. Box 236, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0236 In Struggle, -- A Missouri Prisoner, 10 March 1997 MIM RESPONDS: Comrade, thank you for educating us and MIM Notes' readers about this attack against X by the Missouri prison pigs. It helps in the work that is necessary in building the foundation for revolution - the work of building public opinion against the proliferation of prisons and the systematic torture and repression against the masses which results from imperialism and settler nation domination. This example once again shows that the Amerikan prison pigs are not going to meet the needs of the masses in prison. And the example should lead people to analyze the best path toward ending the denial of basic medical care and the ending of pig brutality. Comrades under lock and key must study the proven methods for liberation of Marxism- Leninism-Maoism and organize. We must be careful not to take on losing battles. Individuals taking up armed resistance as X did will be met with further repression and as we have seen, such isolated acts of resistance often set the pigs off to commit murder, in the end bringing no justice for the oppressed. Similarly, activists on the outside must study and organize. Many liberals on the outside still maintain that justice for the masses in prison and oppressed masses in general can be achieved by working within the Amerikan system. This has not once proven to be a path which liberates the oppressed. So while we print this comrades' request for readers to write to the prison director, we have learned from historical struggles that the only way to end the injustice is to tear down the Amerikan system in general, including the Amerikan prison system and fight for people's victory through revolution. The suspension of specific pigs will not change the Amerikan structure which systematically oppresses the masses, it will only leave the door open for the next generation of pigs to fill in. PRISONER DENIED PROTEASE INHIBITORS I'm in close management and I'm locked up 24-7 and get two days of yard with 3 hours of yard time, and 3 showers a week. I'm HIV positive and I'm having problems trying to get the new life saving drug called protease inhibitors because they don't want to give it. It's very expensive, but at the same time, there's a white dude here that is receiving the life saving cocktail called protease inhibitors. If I get this new medication then I have a chance to live longer. I have filed two lawsuits on the medication because they refused me but it's FDA approved and Prisoner L is getting it. There's no reason why I can't get it.... In struggle, -- A Florida Prisoner, 16 April 1997 MIM RESPONDS: This letter demonstrates the lack of access to medical care that is a problem in prisons in the United Snakes. In this case, even within the prison, national oppression is playing a role in who gets medicine. Because medical care is a for- profit industry in Amerika, there is no such thing as a right to lead a healthy life. Those with wealth (predominantly whites on the outside of prison) can buy access to drugs that save their lives, while those without money die of preventable diseases, or in the case of HIV, die sooner for lack of medical care. PRISONER DENIED ACCESS TO MEDICAL RECORDS I am an inmate at the Fishkill Correctional Facility [FCF] and I have a serious problem concerning my health. I was given a shot that they claim was a TB[Tuberculosis] shot. And all of sudden my life has changed for the worse. Since then I have been experiencing life threatening symptoms such as: numbness of the head, feet and hands; a massive amount of weight loss; sores in my mouth; face burns; and hands sweat heavy. The back of my head has a dent in it that is still sinking in on me. Both sides of my face are also sinking in on me. I weigh no more than 175 pounds, if that. The medical department is tampering with their scales, because they keep putting in my records that I weigh 198 t0 202 at times. All the above symptoms are all true but the medical department at FCF keep denying it. I can prove all my complaints but the medical staff just looks the other way and just all out lies to cover up what they did to me. I have my medical records which the medical staff are putting in a lot of foul stuff. For example [they say] I've got a mental problem, but that's another way they are trying to cover up this problem. I am also having a problem getting my mental health record from this facility. They tell me the only way they can give them me, is if they send them to somebody on the outside.... -- A New York Prisoner, 10 April 97 PRISONERS WORK WITHOUT PAY AND BILLED FOR BASIC NEEDS DEAR MIM, Georgia Prisoners are now mandated to pay a medical co-payment of $5.00 per visit for any and all medical and dental care which prisoners of the Georgia Department of Corrections make. This law was passed by the Georgia General Assembly and enforced as of December 1, 1996 (OCGA 42- 5-55). Under this new law, a visit which is initiated by a prisoner to any prison physician, medical staff for examination or treatment the prisoner is required to pay $5.00 medical co-payment. It matters not that a prisoner in Georgia should be poor or without funds, he or she will be and are billed for the $5.00 medical co-payment. However, upon the first visit to the medical or dental section, all prisoners are charged $15.00 and $5.00 for each visit there after. If you are hurt in some manner with respect to a sport's injury, the prisoner will be charged full fees as if you were free and had to seek medical care. On the 1st of June 1997, the Georgia Department of Corrections cut 28 prison dentists and dental assistants, citing fewer requests by prisoners for dental treatment since a $5.00 co-payment is required. ...Fact is, the workload is very high level and there is not, nor has there ever been enough dental care that could be accessed in Georgia. The Department has also just made a new medical contract whereby it can be said that medical staff will also be cut in the same manner. This all started when the Governor of Georgia, Zill Miller had ordered former Corrections Commissioner, Dr. Allen L. Ault to "find a way, even if he had to charge inmates for medical services, so that correctional personnel could receive an additional 5% pay [raise] over what they were being paid."... Georgia prisoners are not paid for any work performed. They are paid no attention and placed in the hole if they do not work as ordered. Thus, it is the indigent prisoners that are effected most cause they have no family or friends to pay or send in money so that the medical co-payment can be paid. Thus forcing indigents to become imprisoned to the Department for medical costs. Also, it is the families and friends who are actually billed because they are the ones who work [and get paid]. They send in their money to the prisoner for personal up-keep (which Georgia does not pay for), but the prisoner isn't allowed to use the funds due to the medical co-payments. This is what is called poll or love tax. The families pay state and local tax for the very reason of supporting government. Part of those taxes go to the Department for the up-keep of prisoners and prisons -- that means medical care as well. But with the new law, those people sending money into prisons are actually paying twice for the same services. There is still more: Any prisoner in Georgia who has a minimum balance of $11.00 at the end of each month will be assessed a monthly account management fee of $1.00. There is even more: As of June 15, 1997 the business office of each prison within Georgia has been instructed to take and hold $10.00 from each prisoner's account to establish a "Contingency Fund" to pay for any debts incurred during the prisoner's incarceration. ...The Georgia Board of Corrections, Rule (25-4-4- .01) states in part that "In no instance shall one inmate, his family, or other individual be required to pay any portion of the fee or expenses for the inmate's medical or dental treatment." This rule has been added to Georgia law OCGA 42-5-2-(G) and is still on the books. ...There are a number of these rulings and I have initiated a civil action to try and force Georgia to pay its prisoners or not bill them. ...It will be a dog-fight for anyone but the only answer is the courtroom. It seems the only thing Georgia officials understand. Prisoners must take corrective action and fight for their civil rights, if they don't who knows what we will face next. -- A Georgia Prisoner, 9 June 1997 MIM RESPONDS: The author of this letter shows a clear understanding of the laws and history relating to prison medical care. This comrade has been able to expose the imperialists breaking their own rules in order to line their pockets. This letter demonstrates the comrade's hard work, good research and serious dedication. This prisoner is right to take this battle to the courtroom but we have to be clear in exposing that there are no guaranteed "rights" for the oppressed in Amerika. Instead we recognize that inherent rights do not exist under imperialism and the dictatorship of the bourgeois, privileges which the oppressed gain, are won only through power struggles. Legal battles are one reformist way to win small gains for the oppressed. While engaging in these battles we must also expose the oppression and hypocritical rules of the imperialists. This helps put pressure on the system and aids in our legal battles while also building public opinion for ultimately overthrowing the system. This is one of the main goals of MIM Notes. BLACK PRISONER SENT TO S.M.U. AFTER FILING COMPLAINT ...I'm at a place in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania called SCI]-Greene [State Correctional Institution] Special Management Unit (S.M.U.). I've just finished doing two years being locked down at Huntingdon. This program is like that Camp Hill, a modern day psychological deteriorating tool used mainly for black inmates like myself who petition the courts - - both federal and state -- to have our problems heard. I was transferred here not long after I filed a legal petition over a problem with an officer at the previous jail. I was being constantly racially harassed, provoked and given misconduct reports (write-ups) for two years of verbal offenses (answering back). During this time I was told I'd be transferred on three different occasions to a place like the present one -- as a tactic to intimidate me. In the summer of 1994, I was attempting to have a lump on the inside of my eyelid removed. The condition is commonly known as a sebaceous cyst. I used all the institutional procedures available to have this problem resolved but the Huntingdon administrators refused, ignoring my complaints and procedures until I contacted an outside lawyer. Then I was sent to an outside hospital. I believe this is why I am being held in the SMU and continued to be locked down now. I still have the eye problem and am currently addressing it to those in the medical department. The prison staff convinced the media that they're correcting a problem inmate here. It looks more like old-fashioned racism to me. There are 22 of us on this block. 18 are black. About nine of us are being targeted for harassment and retaliation for filing legal petitions with the courts. I don't have one write-up for laying a hand on anyone for the past two years, nevertheless [I am here]. The Warden and two white lieutenants and a sergeant are here who used to work at Huntingdon. This doesn't seem like a simple a coincidence to me. The Common Pleas Court has one Judge who is a very close personal friend with the Warden. When an inmate is locked behind a door for 23 hours a day and sometimes for the full 24 with the exception of a 5 minute shower or an hour in the yard exercising, hand-cuffed from behind his back - - how much harm can he do to anyone? Here at Greene, the big game is called level phases. They slowly advance us black inmates at a turtle's pace while the few white inmates go through all the phases in a short time -- as if by "magic". All these various phases and levels were created by the warden together with top management people at the Corrections Department. These are the people who need to be challenged about how racist system works. These are the people responsible for treating us unjustly. These are the people who need to change this rotten system so that we are treated humanly and fairly and paroled or moved onto another destination.... May the struggle find justice continue to grow stronger. -- A Pennsylvania Prisoner, 2 June 97 MICHIGAN PRISON PIGS: SMOKE-FREE HYPOCRITES Dear Comrades in Struggle; We (Prisoners in Michigan) are experiencing more oppressive and reactionary attacks by Michigan's so-called political and prisoncrat officials. It has been reported that by January 1998, all the death KKKamps in Michigan will be "cigarette smoke free". Now, some would advocate this a "good thing". They will say that this will save lives, prevent deaths and establish a healthier environment. However, i see it differently. The prisoncrats have been selling prisoners cigarettes ever since there was a death kkkamp in Michigan. Now all of a sudden, they have this conscious-raising change of heart? i don't' think so. This is just another move by politicians to make themselves look good, at the expense of those prisoners who smoke and have no other enjoyment in their miserable condition of confinement, other than a cigarette. Michigan's Attorney General, Frank Kelley, has joined other attorney generals who are suing the tobacco industry for monetary damages on behalf of Michigan citizens who've been hospitalized or died as a result of tobacco indulgence. Frank Kelley knows it would politically make him look bad to have a suit against the tobacco industry while his prison/death kkkamps sold cigarettes. Kelley knows he can't stop or restrict the free citizenry from smoking, but he knows he can strong-arm prisoners from smoking, by having tobacco banned within the death kkkamps. Meantime the Michigan Department of KKKorputions has made BILLIONS off the backs of past and present prisoners who bought cigarettes from the death kkkamp stores. Prisoners became addicted to tobacco and view this plant as the only real means of personal gratification left to him/her in here. The PPWC [Political Prisoners of War Coalition] finds this hypocritical, mean-spirited and irresponsible. Whether tobacco is right or wrong is not the issue for PPWC. Whether one should or should not smoke is not the issue for PPWC, and therefore we won't get ourselves bogged down on these issues. Whether you like or hate smoking, we are simply pointing out that it is a damn shame that prisoners are again being used as pawns and sacrificial offerings for the political pursuits of politicians and prisoncrats. If these politicians are so concerned with the health of prisoners then why don't they offer us better health care employees and services? If these prisoncrats are so concerned with the health of prisoners, then why did they sell tobacco in the first place? And why have they forced prisoners to buy simple medication such as aspirin, cough drops, eye drops, Tylenol and the like? The PPWC advocate political awareness and re- education among prisoners and the general public. We advocate this so that one can see bullshit for what it is and then take collective action to sling the bullshit back at those who are trying to rub it in your face. Tomorrow it won't be about tobacco. Tomorrow it will be coffee, or typewriters, or ink pens, or whatever they decide to take next. Meantime, what are WE going to do about it? In the trenches. -- A PPWC Prisoner in Michigan, 8 April 1997 MIM ADDS: We oppose all smoking because we know it is bad for the health of the people but we agree with the PPWC that this issue of banning smoking in prison is not about health but about power struggles with the administration. In this case we encourage our comrades inside to live as long as possible so that they can contribute to the revolution for a long time. As a release from the oppression of prison we encourage prisoners to take up a martial art rather than smoking. We must resist the imperialists attempts to weaken our bodies and minds. SMOKING IS MORE THAN A HEALTH ISSUE Dear MIM, ...Right now this other brother is fighting this no smoking policy the ADOC [Arizona Department of Incorrections] has. The DOC has decided to include burning of sacred herbs in our cells. Fucking stupid pigs, act like it is a health hazard. So now we American Indians have to sneak around and do the ceremonies in secret to make sure the pigs don't catch us. Just like the old day, huh?! Please ask around and see if anyone is willing to help us fight this free of charge. I would like to send out an urgent message to all the Indian Communities who are fighting and killing each other over this new gang beef. "Divide and Conquer" was their plan. Don't live up to their plan. We are too strong for that. One nation, One fight, Stop Spilling your brothers blood and unite! -- An Arizona Prisoner, 8 May 1997 GULAGS DENY SOCIAL SECURITY AND FORCE MEDICAL CO- PAY Dear Friend: ...Since my last letter to you the state legislature here has enacted a co-pay law for "non medical emergencies." There are no exceptions to paying. I am almost (75) years of age and been incarcerated for (17) years. I'm denied my Social Security Benefits, "money I worked for and paid into Social Security" because I'm a convicted felon. It's my understanding that the law states "one can't receive Social Security Benefits" while incarcerated, because the state provides all my needs. "I'm trying to find the statue, Public Act, or Case law containing that specific language, it's imperative to have. Your aid in this matter will be sincerely appreciated. Enclosed you'll find a copy of the Social Security Act which says in essence one's basic needs are to be provided free. My understanding this is a Public Funded institution-money my social security from my social security. So why should the state be permitted to also charge me for medical service which is suppose to free during my period of incarceration.... -- A Michigan Prisoner, 4 May 1997 TEXAS PIGS ATTACK SICK PRISONER Dear MIM, ...Lately I've been having problems with the pigs that work here. On the 12th of May a sergeant and a lieutenant has a five man team run into my cell and assault me while I lay sick in my bed. Of course they were in full riot gear and made it look real good for the video camera's benefit, telling me to stop resisting. Due to an overdose of psychiatric medication, I couldn't even control my bladder, let alone my arms and legs. As a result of the attack I suffered some minimal damage to the tendons in both my thumbs. But I didn't find this out until June 20th -- more than a month after the incident! I would have found out sooner if the medical department had bothered to check me out right after the assault, which is the policy. There was no medical exam, no pictures of the bruises and cuts that I had suffered or anything!... Yours In Struggle, -- A Texas Prisoner, 23 June 1997 * * * 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 ñ 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
Return to MIM Notes Page
Return to MIM Homepage