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THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT

MIM Notes 95

December 1994

Electronic Edition

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Get MIM Notes 95 from the Maoist Internationalist 
Movement (MIM), and get the latest in Maoist news 
and analysis - put a revolutionary weapon in your 
hands.

This longer issue includes articles sorting out 
the political differences in the international 
movement to support the revolution in Peru, the 
announcement of two new MIM-founded organizations, 
an urgent action call from Turkey, prison news, 
letters to MIM, reviews, and much more.

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. Struggle with it and 
write for it.

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MIM Notes 95 includes:

CONTENTS

 1. PEOPLE'S WAR, NOT CAPITULATION, IN PERU
 2. NEW MIM-LED ORGANIZATIONS
 3. BIG BIOLOGICAL FEMALE BOURGEOISIE
 4. LABOR ARISTOCRACY NEWS
 5. TURKISH ARMY BURNS KURDISH VILLAGES
 6. NATIONAL GUARD REINFORCES PUERTO RICAN POLICE
 7. AMERICAN MILITARY PLAYS, BUT WON'T CLEAN UP
 8. APACHE NATION ATTACKED WITH NUCLEAR WASTE
 9. REVIEW: NEW BOOK ATTACKS BIOLOGY AS DESTINY
10. U.S. ROLE IN CHILE WHITEWASHED
11. HAITIANS ATTACKED AND BETRAYED
12. "EVERY DAY IS THE DAY OF THE DEAD"
13. MOTHERS KILLING CHILDREN
14. ANTI-IMPERIALIST GAYS AND LESBIANS
15. WHITE PATRIARCHY UPHELD
16. WAR ON WELFARE HITS SENATE
17. PROP 187: AMERIKAN CHAUVINISM
18. AMERIKAN VOTING IS NOT FOR PROLETARIANS
19. GETTING JOBS AT THE BERLIN WALL OF THE WEST
20. IMPERIALISTS CONTEND IN IRAQ
21. ANN ARBOR'S "ONLY" RAPIST STRIKES AGAIN
22. BURMA REVOLUTIONARY UPDATE
23. DENG'S STATE-CAPITALISM MEETS ROBIN COOK
24. UNDER LOCK & KEY
25. LETTERS TO MIM

* * * 

PEOPLE'S WAR, NOT CAPITULATION, IN PERU

MIM continues to strengthen its relationship to 
the People's War in Peru. Exiles from Peru around 
the world and even some people in Peru itself are 
now aware of MIM's existence and are glad for it. 
We join together to expose the attempt of the 
Peruvian regime to coax the people to lay down 
their arms.

There is not a single news organization or 
political organization that claims that the armed 
struggle in Peru has ended as the Peruvian regime 
wished. Non governmental organizations continue 
with reports of armed actions of the people in 
Peru. Now a bourgeois press agency called 
Interpress Service reports (or threatens) that the 
peace negotiations in Peru will be ended by the 
Peruvian regime because they have failed. 

When the great leader of the Peruvian revolution, 
Chairperson Gonzalo, apparently entered into 
discussions with the Peruvian regime, the regime 
made use of his imprisonment to put forth a 
message to the people that distorted Gonzalo's 
words. This may have fooled a small minority of 
people for a period, but the masses of Peru saw 
through Fujimori's tricks. If comrade Gonzalo was 
telling the people to lay down their arms, then 
how come Fujimori doesn't let Gonzalo speak to the 
whole people, openly and with witnesses as to his 
health? Seeing this, the majority of the 
revolutionary Communist Party of Peru (PCP), 
opposed entering peace negotiations at all. 
Comrade Gonzalo has been in prison since September 
1992, and the regime does not let him speak to the 
people.

>From this, the people of the world learned that 
once again, the bourgeois regimes trifle with the 
masses' profound desire for peace. How 
consistently the imperialist and imperialist-
backed comprador regimes prove themselves. They 
are incapable of peace. They only use peace 
rhetoric in order to slaughter the revolutionary 
masses more easily. Only worldwide communism can 
bring peace and the Peruvian people are waging 
People's War with a grim determination to bring 
about that goal. 

THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNIST MOVEMENT

Inside Peru, the minority tired of armed struggle 
surrendered to the regime. Such liquidationist 
elements always exist. Especially in a 
revolutionary movement so deep and broad as in 
Peru, there must be a handful.

Outside Peru, liquidationist lines in the 
international communist movement also arose, 
perhaps with added momentum with Fujimori's 
psychological warfare. Some wanted entire 
organizations dedicated not to leading revolution, 
but to human-rights and popular front. These 
comrades failed to distinguish amongst Maoists, 
revolutionaries, revisionists and human-rights 
activists. MIM is strongly in favor of organizing 
the non-revolutionary elements in as progressive a 
fashion as possible, but this is impossible when 
the leadership itself is unclear about the 
difference between revisionism and Maoism. The 
non-revolutionary element which is very large in 
the imperialist countries can only be led by 
genuine Maoists. Downplaying the need for 
struggle, as always, the Right Opportunist Line 
held that all the political organizations in the 
imperialist countries are basically the same.

The Right Opportunist Line received aid from other 
sources. The ultraleft also held that it might as 
well organize all the different political 
organizations together because none engaged in 
armed struggle yet, so there is no qualitative 
difference amongst them. So for both the right 
opportunists and ultraleft organizing in the 
imperialist countries in support of the Peruvian 
revolution, a popular front arose to organize 
Maoists, revolutionaries, revisionists and human-
rights activists equally. In practice, this meant 
the domination of revisionism in international 
work in connection to Peru. The prestige of the 
great Peruvian revolution paid for with the blood 
of the Peruvian people went into backing 
revisionism in the imperialist countries. Peruvian 
exiles sickened by this could not help but wish to 
upgrade their relations with genuine Maoist 
organizations like MIM. They did not wish to let 
the revisionists attract new revolutionary forces 
to their banner by using the prestige of the 
Peruvian revolution.

Nationalists from Peru and right-opportunists from 
the imperialist countries also share a common 
agenda in denying that the principal contradiction 
is between the imperialist countries and the Third 
World. For them, the principal contradiction is 
between the world and Peru. They see no 
possibility for organizing revolution in the 
imperialist countries and abandon comrade Gonzalo 
on the need for vanguard parties and revolution in 
other countries as the best contribution to make 
to the revolution in Peru. Hence, the nationalists 
give the right-opportunists yet another excuse for 
not struggling, and for simply organizing the non-
revolutionary elements to support the revolution 
in Peru. In some literature of the revisionist-led 
RIM, it was put forward that saving the life of 
Comrade Gonzalo was the task "above all else." 
Elements with this line denied the need of 
building vanguard parties in countries outside 
Peru and also acted as if the principal 
contradiction were between the socialist camp in 
Peru and the international imperialists. Such a 
right opportunist line has always existed abroad 
and will continue to be the main problem in 
organizing work.

Further complicating matters in the international 
communist movement is an ultraleft line, nicely 
complementing right opportunism. According to the 
ultraleft, armed struggle is always the immediate 
task at hand, even in the imperialist countries. 
These ultraleftists give no heed to Maoist 
science, no matter how many times it proves itself 
valid. In connection to the situation in Peru, the 
ultraleft tried to sow confusion and attempted to 
stab the legacy of Lenin, Stalin and Mao in the 
back by acting as if these great leaders did not 
enter into negotiations with reactionaries of all 
sorts - imperialists, compradors, bureaucrat-
capitalists and right-wing national bourgeoisie. 
These elements, though secondary to the right 
opportunist elements, implied that Comrade Gonzalo 
would be automatically wrong to enter into peace 
negotiations. They attempted to restrict Gonzalo's 
freedom of action and sought to undermine his 
leadership from abroad by going further in 
attacking the peace negotiations than necessary. 
Instead of simply opposing the laying down of 
arms, the ultraleft attacked Lenin, Stalin, Mao 
and Gonzalo for engaging in or supposedly engaging 
in peace negotiations. Comrades who put forward 
this line should criticize publicly the idea that 
peace negotiations are always bad or they prove 
their infidelity to the principles of Marxism-
Leninism-Maoism.

DISENTANGLING REVISIONISM AND MAOISM: RIM VS. MIM

The Peruvians abroad continue to write criticisms 
of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement 
(RIM), which is led by the crypto-Trotskyist 
Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) USA. Before 
the arrest of Comrade Gonzalo, the Central 
Committee of the Communist Party of Peru had 
already issued a written criticism of the RCP's 
work. Many Peruvian exiles with an up-close look 
at the RCP and RIM agreed with the criticism and 
went further and recognized MIM as the genuine 
Maoist leadership within U.S. borders.

Before the psychological warfare campaign of the 
Peruvian regime against the people of Peru that 
distorted the meaning of Comrade Gonzalo's work, 
MIM had already received verbal word of the idea 
that the Communist Party of Peru was going to 
criticize the RCP, USA and boost its relationship 
with the MIM to a higher official status. From the 
Peruvians we spoke to around the world, it was 
already clear that the revolutionary Peruvian 
people already knew the difference between MIM and 
the revisionist RCP.

The latest criticism of the RCP in print is now in 
the La Nueva Bandera of the MPP-USA. The MPP-USA 
calls on the Central Committee of the PCP to 
reorganize the RIM with itself or other genuine 
Third World-based revolutionaries at the center. 
The dominant role of the RCP left the RIM in the 
hands of brazen opportunists according to the MPP-
USA.

MIM WITHDRAWS FROM IEC

For some time, the International Emergency 
Committee (IEC) has masqueraded as a non-sectarian 
organization battling to defend the life of 
comrade Gonzalo. In practice, MIM has found it 
impossible to work with this organization. We no 
longer wish any association with this sectarian 
outfit. Our name should be removed from the list 
of signatories to the IEC Call.

In addition, the IEC has been a central actor in 
the confusion surrounding right opportunism and 
the popular front line. While England has no 
vanguard party, the IEC headquarters itself there. 
There could be no starker evidence of the 
bankruptcy of the right opportunist line on 
international work concerning Peru.

NOTE: La Nueva Bandera #3, September/October, 
1994.

* * * 

MIM ANNOUNCES NEW MIM-LED ORGANIZATIONS:
THE PARTY AND THE MASSES

As MIM grows in functions and ideological depth, 
it becomes appropriate for it to create non-party 
organizations that it leads in order to connect 
the party to various kinds of mass work and to 
connect the masses to the party. For the last five 
years, MIM has worked with a category of people 
called MIM Associates - people who don't disagree 
with MIM's cardinal principles and who are 
considering joining the party.

Now MIM is creating two formal organizations and 
invites people to join the Revolutionary Anti-
Imperialist League (RAIL) and the MIM Supporters 
Group (MSG). 

REVOLUTIONARY ANTI-IMPERIALIST LEAGUE

MIM itself is rooted in movements that arose to 
support armed struggles against U.S. imperialism 
and movements opposing the militarism of U.S. 
imperialism. More radical activists in work 
concerning Southern Africa, Central America and 
the Middle East founded MIM out of the recognition 
of the need for organizations that connected all 
the issues and did not water down the truth. It is 
only appropriate that MIM now forms an 
organization dedicated to the vision of a world 
without imperialism - the RAIL.

RAIL is for anyone who supports self-determination 
for all peoples including the necessity of armed 
struggle against imperialism. There are no 
requirements for joining RAIL except that RAIL 
members recognize that RAIL will be led by MIM and 
RAIL members do not attempt to hide this in their 
work with RAIL amongst the masses who are not 
enemy. In practice, accepting MIM leadership will 
mean that RAIL chapters do not accept the 
leadership of other organizations and worked out 
lines. 

Voting members of RAIL must not disagree with 
MIM's cardinal principles. (See the What is MIM? 
box on page 2.) It is Ok if voting members do not 
have a position on these principles, but they must 
not disagree with them. For example, People 
opposed to the principle of a vanguard party, or 
the idea that MIM is the vanguard party or to the 
idea of that state-capitalism exists cannot be 
voting RAIL members. 

RAIL may have non-voting members who actually 
disagree with MIM's cardinal principles as long as 
they recognize that MIM leads RAIL and as long as 
they have been informed of other organizations 
that might better suit them. There are at least 
two reasons why there might be non-voting RAIL 
members. One is geographic laziness. Some people 
who disagree with MIM cardinal principles will 
want to work with RAIL because it is close by - a 
local phenomenon. A second reason for such non-
voters to exist is that some will be impressed 
with RAIL somehow in practice while not being sure 
that practice is principal or that RAIL principles 
are sound. RAIL non-voters in effect agree to 
follow RAIL voters and MIM. They also contribute 
to the energy and consciousness of RAIL and 
recognize that it is possible to make 
contributions to RAIL work without agreeing with 
the cardinal principles. MIM will have the final 
say in whether a person can be a non-voting member 
of RAIL, because some people are not worth the 
trouble of working with. In general though, it 
should be possible to contribute to revolution and 
to hold hopes for those who may yet learn from 
practice why MIM's cardinal principles are 
correct. 

Voting members of RAIL will have a say on what 
projects are done and how they are implemented. 
Whether RAIL chapters have majority rule, 
consensus or autocratic fiat for a decision-making 
process will depend on what each chapter wants. 
Ideally RAIL chapters will choose their own topics 
for work and organize it themselves. RAIL chapters 
that want more than the right to choose their 
subject areas and how they implement MIM line 
should cease calling themselves RAIL and go 
independent of MIM with their own line.

All RAIL events will allow the expression of the 
MIM view. MIM does not expect RAIL members to be 
like party members, but MIM will have the final 
decision on interpreting whether or not a RAIL 
person or chapter is following MIM line at least 
more than that person or chapter is following 
other lines. 

For RAIL, MIM proposes that the people recruit 
Dennis Brutus as their president. Dennis Brutus is 
one of the top poets of Africa and he broke rocks 
with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island after being 
shot in the back by the regime for his work 
opposing white colonialism in South Africa. Having 
worked many years with MIM to expose U.S. ties to 
apartheid South Africa, and nearly deported from 
the United States for doing so, Brutus exemplifies 
the kind of work we would like to see RAIL doing. 
To persuade Dennis Brutus to be RAIL president, 
write to Dennis Brutus, Black Studies Department, 
Forbes Quad, University of Pittsburgh, PA 15260 
Explain to Brutus how much work you would like to 
do with RAIL, what could be accomplished and why 
he should be president of RAIL. Those of us who 
know immigrants with the proper anti-imperialist 
perspective should get these immigrants to take 
leadership in the RAIL.

MIM SUPPORTERS GROUP

A second organization called the MIM Supporters 
Group (MSG) is for people who are definite 
sympathizers of Mao Zedong and who accept the 
vanguard leadership of MIM on all political 
issues. MSG members are non-party members with a 
higher level of commitment to MIM and Maoism than 
RAIL members. 

All members must not have a worked out line 
against any of MIM's four dividing line questions. 
They are interested in studying towards a greater 
understanding of and unity towards these lines. 
They agree that working with MIM or MSG is the 
most advanced work they could be doing in this 
country.

Members are required to maintain regular contact 
with their MIM contacts and with the local MSG (if 
a local one exists). They attend local study 
groups if such exist, or work towards forming one 
if there is not one already active. Members defend 
MIM line in public to the best of their ability, 
sell MIM Notes and MIM literature where possible, 
and recruit members.

Members will donate at least 1% percent of their 
annual income or raise at least $20 a month, 
whichever sum is greater, for the party or its 
organizations. That financial commitment can also 
be achieved by buying supplies including 
literature for the party to distribute directly or 
by selling literature worth that amount. The party 
will be empowered to decide if a certain method of 
meeting the financial requirement is acceptable. 
The point is not necessarily to take someone's 
money and send it away to some distant centralized 
operation, because doing that requires the highest 
level of commitment and trust in the party. 

HIERARCHY OF COMMITMENTS OUTSIDE OF MIM

There will always be people who are ready to join 
RAIL or MSG but not MIM. Likewise, there will 
always be Maoist-sympathizers who do not wish all 
the rigors of party membership, including its 
often fiery inner-party struggle, sexual practice 
policies, residential policies, financial policies 
and mass work requirements. These new 
organizations are created for both people avoiding 
commitment to MIM and for people considering 
joining MIM. The point is not to create a 
justification for avoiding membership but to 
prepare comrades for that membership and all that 
it entails. 

Those wishing to propose the formation of other 
mass organizations following MIM leadership are 
encouraged to write to us. One hope in 
establishing these organizations is that it will 
provide some structure for working with MIM while 
also serving as a natural chain of progression in 
commitment to MIM. In the future, MIM will recruit 
as members only those people with lengthy pre-
party experience, either as a member of RAIL, MSG, 
or similar future organization. 

People with some experience working with MIM and 
who believe the MSG requirements are too light 
should take the next step and join MIM itself. 
There comrades can dedicate themselves to 
revolution with the most commitment possible. New 
comrades can tackle ever larger burdens of work 
and exert leadership in ever wider fields. There 
is no doubt the energy is needed in the party 
itself in order to go toe-to-toe with the 
imperialists in every arena of struggle.

HIERARCHY OF COMMITMENTS WITHIN MIM

Within the party, there are members on probation 
for violating discipline. There are also non-
voting members not on probation but nonetheless 
not meeting sufficient requirements of inner-party 
struggle to vote in party congresses. The 
principle of non-voting is that those somehow 
lacking in knowledge or practice relevant to 
making party decisions should not have a vote in 
making party decisions. Those without time to 
participate in fiery inner-party struggles should 
be non-voting members if they can meet the other 
requirements. MIM recommends that people generally 
try to meet MIM requirements botho  tmake a 
contribution to the revolutionary cause and to 
keep from degenerating politically as individuals. 
MIM requirements are designed to the best of our 
ability to serve as benchmarks of what is required 
to keep from degenerating.

Within the voting ranks of the party there are 
ministers in charge of various areas of work. 
These ministers may also have assistants or 
deputies. Typically the party delegates authority 
to ministers to handle certain tasks.

Extending on that principle, the party also has 
its top leadership posts. The personal 
requirements for those leadership posts are the 
highest of all. A large part of leadership is 
assertiveness, but in MIM an even larger part of 
leadership is fulfilling ever more stringent 
requirements.

THE THEORY AND THE PRACTICE

Of course, in the ideal world, everyone has the 
theoretical understanding (science), ideological 
commitment (values, will), millions of dollars to 
supply the party, military experience and 24 hours 
a day of free and awake time to be the perfect MIM 
leader. The world is not ideal, so MIM does its 
best to organize itself to prevent political 
degeneration and to promote advancement of 
proletarian internationalist consciousness. 

>From this announcement, MIM would like to make it 
clear that there is a place for everyone to make a 
contribution to the revolutionary struggle. If 
someone desires to contribute somehow to the 
Maoist cause, then that person should not let 
anything stop him or her from making that 
contribution. 

At the same time, this announcement should serve 
to demystify the masses with regard to MIM's 
structure. Hierarchy in the party is useful and 
necessary for many reasons. One reason for 
hierarchy that should not be forgotten is that 
ranging from the non-voting RAIL member to the 
party's top leader, there is a step by step 
hierarchy of commitment to making Maoist 
revolution. 

* * * 

BIG BIOLOGICAL FEMALE BOURGEOISIE

In the Statistical Abstract of the United States 
1994 are newly published figures on the female 
bourgeoisie not available in the same book for 
1993.

The figures show the breakdown by biological 
gender of those holding gross assets of $600,000 
or more. They show that 1.43 million biological 
women within U.S. borders own $2.071 trillion in 
net worth and that 1.99 million biological men own 
$2.733 trillion in net worth. Hence, in this elite 
category that comprises less than 2 percent of the 
U.S. population, women hold over 41 percent of the 
wealth.

Gross asset figures don't count liabilities. Net 
worth accounts for the possibility of debt and so 
is a figure lower than gross assets.

This table published by the U.S. government is a 
good attempt at tabulating the bourgeoisie, the 
class of people that controls the means of 
production. In U.S. society such private wealth is 
very important in belonging to the capitalist 
class. Elsewhere as in the ex-Soviet Union, 
capitalists controlled the means of production 
without privately owning them. There are some such 
government officials in the United States as well 
who belong to the capitalist class without 
privately owning the means of production.

MIM has long opposed a simplistic reduction of 
gender issues to class. Currently a very popular 
notion in so-called socialist feminist circles is 
that women are basically synonymous with the 
proletariat. Erroneous figures published by the UN 
speculating on female ownership of the means of 
production have added to this problem.

>From the figures above, we see that there is a 
huge material basis for bourgeois feminism. 
Bourgeois feminism is highly contradictory and 
mild. It seeks only that women can be individuals 
too with the equal opportunity to become 
exploiters.

Bourgeois feminists exert tremendous influence on 
the mass media, aside from owning a large part of 
it. In addition to the bourgeois feminists, MIM 
also targets the pseudo-feminists based in the 
gender aristocracy. See MIM Theory 2/3, Gender and 
Revolutionary Feminism.
- MC5

NOTE: Statistical Abstract of the United States 
1994, p. 482.

* * * 

LABOR ARISTOCRACY NEWS

Partly correcting its own distorted and social-
democratic leaning coverage of labor issues in the 
1980s and 1990s, the New York Times has finally 
run a news story about the labor aristocracy which 
does not pander to it. Of course, the New York 
Times never mentions the phrase "labor 
aristocracy" or "imperialism."

The Oct. 17, 1994 article titled "Statistics 
reveal bulk of new jobs pay over average" is the 
most accurate from a research point of view that 
MIM can remember. The political implications are 
not worked out, but a reasonable person could put 
the implications together.

"The notion that Americans are working more for 
less pay is firmly embedded in public rhetoric.... 
No doubt many Americans are losing ground 
economically. But in fact most of the 5.5 million 
jobs the economy has added in the last two and a 
half years are in occupations that pay more, not 
less, than the average, which is now about $15.50 
an hour."

The article even explains such difficult issues as 
the rise in benefits, the nature of the services 
sector and the misleading nature of statistics 
purporting a decline in the wages of average Joe. 
However, best of all, the New York Times explains 
how this is all true while it could be that the 
lot of the bottom half got worse.

MIM would have pointed to the bottom 20 to 30 
percent which is predominantly national minorities 
and women, instead of the bottom half, but the New 
York Times is at least trying to deal with how one 
part of the middle class can get better off while 
another chunk of the population sees its living 
standard go down. People fooled by bourgeois 
democracy have a hard time letting go of the idea 
that the oppressed constitute a majority, because 
to let go of that idea undercuts some of the 
rationale for majority white rule over national 
minorities and the whole idea of "democracy" 
within North Amerika. When people start to think 
that the majority are oppressors, they start to 
realize why "democracy" is not always such a great 
thing. Here we have "democracy," but we also have 
the highest per capita imprisonment rate in the 
world because the labor aristocracy and 
imperialists share a common agenda against 
"crime."

Poverty rates are on the rise, but this is true of 
the bottom 15 to 17 percent of the population by 
income. People on the bottom can and do become 
worse off while the majority gets better off. This 
is the secret of the labor aristocracy alliance 
with imperialism. It is also the reason that the 
white nation - Amerika - as a whole is not 
revolutionary and has no progressive "thrust of 
its own" to borrow the words of the Revolutionary 
Communist Party which disagrees with us. MIM 
believes the bottom 10 to 30% of society should 
ally itself with the Third World proletariat as 
its true political ally for change. Appeals to the 
middle class to form a majority alliance have no 
material basis for hope as a way out of the 
problems created by imperialism.

ACCURACY ON THE LABOR ARISTOCRACY HARD TO ACHIEVE

Economist Lawrence Chimerine wrote to the New York 
Times to attack its article "Statistics reveal 
bulk of new jobs pay over average." However, his 
attack was more substantial for what it omitted on 
the subject of U.S. living standards. The author 
made two obvious and limited points and concluded 
that "the bottom line is that while living 
standards in the United States may be slightly 
better than during the 1980's, they are on average 
improving only marginally at best, lagging far 
behind the gains that were made in earlier 
decades. This is partly because a large fraction 
of the new jobs that are being created provide 
relatively low compensation, despite the opposite 
impression left by your article." 

Such is a very limited claim because its only 
argument is that growth in the past was even 
faster. It amounts to saying the feeding trough 
hasn't expanded as quickly as in the past.

Unfortunately, Edward S. Herman, whose work with 
Noam Chomsky we distribute, also wrote a letter to 
the New York Times and his letter was downright 
inaccurate and should not have been allowed by the 
New York Times at all. He claims that the article 
focused on average income changes when it should 
have used the median to account for the 
possibility that the very rich are absorbing all 
the gains. However, the article actually addressed 
this very point and proved for example, that the 
working class as traditionally conceived (by the 
"left") is hardly significant anymore as a 
fraction of the U.S. population.

What Herman misses is that the losses are confined 
to the bottom 20-30 percent of the population. 
Yes, it is true that the percentage of people in 
poverty is up since 1989, but this concerns the 
people in the bottom fifth. It cannot remotely say 
anything about the top 70 percent of Amerika. If 
Herman had looked at the various percentiles as 
MIM did in MIM Theory 1 [A White Proletariat?, $3 
from MIM], he would have found that the position 
of people on the median actually improved in the 
supposedly abysmal 1980s. 

Myths about living standards are promoted 
especially by the social-democratic left and 
revisionists - sometimes out of sentimentality and 
sometimes to lead people to work for ballot-box 
coalitions of the middle classes and the poor. The 
worst of the social-democrats and revisionists 
dogmatically refuse to believe that socialism or 
something like it can't win in the Amerikan ballot 
box, so they play loose with the facts and ignore 
the world's majority - the Third World laboring 
masses - who need a reliable ally against U.S. 
imperialism. It doesn't matter how many times 
their strategy of the ballot box fails, they 
continue promoting it.

Whether it is the ballot-box or "Rainbow 
coalition" building or any strategy of trying to 
win an Amerikan majority to do something 
progressive, the strategy has failed except as a 
ruse to raise white working class living 
standards. In the end, it is just a part of 
cementing the white working class to the 
imperialists by camouflaging sell-out with leftist 
noise. 

NOTE: New York Times, 10/24/94, p. a16.

* * * 

TURKISH ARMY BURNS KURDISH VILLAGES

The U.S.-backed Turkish army recently began a 
massive operation targeting the population of the 
province of Dersim (Tunceli) in Turkish-occupied 
Kurdistan. The army has burned over 37 villages 
and confiscated over 21 tons of winter food 
supplies since the end of September.(1,4)

The Turkish army has been unable to slow the 
advance of progressive guerrilla forces in the 
area directly, and is now attempting to "kill the 
fish by draining the pool" - defeat the 
progressive forces by forcibly breaking their ties 
with supporters. The Turkish military is following 
the population regroupment strategy developed by 
the U.S. in Vietnam.

U.S. aid is more than ideological. The U.S. has 
given Turkey about half a billion dollars in 
military aid each year from 1988 to 1991.

TURKISH ARMY DOES NERO ONE BETTER

Turkish army officers have called this operation - 
nicknamed "Operation Rome" - the largest military 
operation in modern Turkish history. The number of 
troops in the province has doubled to 40,000. The 
army estimates that 3,500 guerrillas operate in 
the province.(1)

More than 240 villages have been forcibly 
evacuated, which has created 5,000 new refugees. 
When villages are burned, villagers are given no 
warning and are not allowed to salvage any of 
their possessions.(2)

The army has destroyed water pipes and wells in 
the villages, and the lack of fresh water has led 
to an outbreak of cholera in the area.(3) The army 
has also burnt down entire forests in order to 
flush out the guerrillas.(1)

Throughout "Operation Rome" the Turkish Army has 
tried to blame the PKK or the villagers themselves 
for the village-burnings (according to the army, 
the villagers burnt down their homes so they could 
get relief aid from the government). But even the 
Turkish "Minister for Human Rights" acknowledges 
that the army is responsible for the burnings.(4) 
When the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister visited 
Dersim and offered relief aid to gathered 
refugees, the refugees resoundingly booed him.(5)

Dersim has been under a "state of emergency" for 
the last 10 years and a "state of special 
emergency" for  the last two. Residents are banned 
from taking sheep herds into the mountains. Food 
is strictly and minimally rationed, and the army 
confiscates surplus food. Free movement between 
villages is impossible.(6)

PROTRACTED STRUGGLE

The Turkish state has denied the Kurdish nation 
self-determination throughout this century. Its 
genocidal policies against the Kurds have ranged 
from bans on Kurdish culture - including the 
Kurdish language - to militarily enforced pogroms. 
(See TKP-ML statement.)

In 1984 the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) 
launched armed struggle in order to establish an 
independent Kurdish state. The PKK has widespread 
popular support in Kurdistan. (See MIM Notes 
79,85.)

"Operation Rome" is nothing new. Since 1992, the 
Turkish army has principally attacked the 
guerrillas by attacking their popular support. 
Over 1,500 villages have been evacuated and over 2 
million people displaced in the last few years.(7)

The army also recruits local people into counter-
revolutionary vigilante squads by paying them $200 
a month, which is above above-average pay in 
Kurdistan.(8)

In all of Turkish-occupied Kurdistan there are 
200,000 troops, 80,000 police, and 40,000 paid 
vigilantes.(9) The PKK has about 10,000 guerrillas 
in the area.(10)

THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE ADVANCES

The Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army 
(TIKKO), led by the Maoist TKP-ML (Turkish 
Communist Party - Marxist-Leninist) have joined 
the People's Liberation Army of Kurdistan (ARGK - 
the PKK's armed force) in fighting the Turkish 
army.(3) The TKP-ML supports the Kurdish people's 
right to self determination.

The ARGK's last offensive - launched in June after 
the Turkish armed forces violated a cease-fire - 
was very successful.(10) According to a Kurdish 
official, the Turkish army lost 7,547 soldiers in 
the last few months, while 1,269 members of the 
ARGK were killed. Abas Tas, the European 
representative of a Kurdish nationalist group, 
said, "Contrary to what Turkey pretends, the Kurds 
are making advances."(11)

NOTES:
 1. Reuters 10/4/94.
 2. Action on Turkey, 10/19/94.
 3. Workers World Service.
 4. Infoladen Omega 10/14/94.
 5. Reuters 10/14/94.
 6. Infoladen Omega 10/27/94.
 7. AP 10/22/94. Reuters, 10/12/94.
 8. AP 10/22/94.
 9. AP 10/22/94. Reuters, 10/4/94.
10. MIM Notes 85 2/94, p. 6.
11. Agence France Presse 10/20/94.


URGENT CALL TO ALL PROGRESSIVE FORCES
OF THE WORLD:

STOP THE KURDISH GENOCIDE AND THE OPERATIONS OF 
FASCIST TURKISH STATE WHICH INTENDS TO CREATE A 
NEW PALESTINE!

July 10. 1994

The fascist state - the puppet of imperialism - of 
Turkish comprador, feudal and reactionary classes 
has for a long time transformed the anti-guerrilla 
military operations to an intensive anti-Kurdish 
operation in Turkey-Kurdistan. Thousands of towns 
and villages are evacuated by force. Ten-thousands 
of villagers who are driven from these habitation 
areas, are treated as slaves and are being 
collected in camps or they are being driven to 
another areas a migratory communities. These 
people who have lost all their living possessions, 
are imprisoned to a tragic heart rending life.

The freedom struggle of Kurdish people going 
forward together with a tragedy of humanity. The 
most barbarous fascist brigades of the army of 
Turkish state, which has over one million 
soldiers, are sent to Kurdish areas and they are 
setting on fire, knocking down and destroying 
everything. During the fascist military offensives 
of the state up to now a lot of elders, children 
and women are massacred. The soldiers are 
humiliating the peasants in the villages and are 
realizing sexual abuses against women under the 
name of "controlling and investigating." All 
economical and social life is being destroyed 
consciously and systematically and the country is 
being transformed to an area where it is no more 
possible to live for the people. All properties, 
vehicles for working, farm animals and the houses 
of the villages are set on fire and are destroyed 
by soldiers. At this moment, all the ecological 
creatures and the forests of Turkey's Kurdistan 
are set on fire. Shortly, living and moving 
everything is being burned and killed. The self-
determination right of Kurdish people who live 
under the dire circumstances, is wanted to be 
disappeared by a barbarous massacre in from of the 
eyes of all "civilized" world.

DERSIM (Tusceli) city where the largest and the 
strongest military operations are going on, is an 
area where uncountable genocides are carried out 
up to now. It is an areas where around 60,000 
people are massacred and ten thousands of people 
are driven to other districts by Turkish State, in 
1938. The volcanic caves of this area are still 
full of the skeletons of the people who were 
massacred at that time. This area, Dersim 
(Tunceli) is very famous also that it is a castle 
of the progressive people who have struggled and 
are still struggling against the reactionary 
regime. The people of the Dersim has lost lots of 
his sons and daughters (revolutionaries, 
intellectuals) during his resistance against 
fascist dictatorship. .... This is the reason that 
the ferocity of the state in condensed in this 
area of Turkey-Kurdistan. The fascist state forces 
who are foolished because of the military 
offensives of the guerrillas of TIKKO (Liberation 
Army of Workers and Peasants of Turkey) under the 
MAOIST leadership of TKP(ML) Communist Party of 
Turkey (Marxist-Leninist) are attacking, as 
retaliation, against unarmed civilians and are 
setting on fire the forests of the area. The 
military strategy of the state which is applied in 
the practice under the name of "sovereignty of 
area" means in fact, to drive the people from the 
area and to massacre them.

Below the names of the villages of OVACIK and 
Hozat districts which are attacked and are set on 
fire with all their farm animals, houses and goods 
since August.

[14 names]

Below some (found out) names of the families of 
the villagers whose houses are entirely set on 
fire:

[39 names]

Below the names of some villages of MAZGIRT 
district which can become face to face with the 
same results as above villages (The state prepares 
itself to evacuate and to set on fire also these 
villages).

[9 names]

All the world humanity is in a shameful calmness 
against this the deceit of "struggling against 
terrorism." Do you hear those cryings of 
villagers?

"Our houses are set on fire. Our winter foods are 
destroyed. A part of our animals are killed, some 
of them are lost in the field. We have not money 
to carry ourselves to another place and no one 
helps to us!"

The young people of the world! You must not keep 
yourself calm against this barbarism. Protest it. 
Because, uncountable amount of your young brothers 
who are struggling for a beautiful new life and 
for the freedom of their country, are being killed 
by the fascist military forces in Turkey and 
Turkey-Kurdistan.

The women of the world! ... A lot of women 
guerrillas who are carrying out guerrilla warfare 
in the mountains against fascist oppressions, are 
waiting for your internationalist solidarity....

Ecological Organizations! We invite you to Turkey-
Kurdistan, come and see! At that place, the 
natural cover is entirely being destroyed. The 
forests are being burned with all their living 
creatures. Ecologically this excellent part of the 
world is being destroyed ferociously.

Democrats, progressives, intellectuals, artists, 
authors and scincnticians of the world! Do 
something against this ferocity! Support the 
justified struggle of People's Guerrilla Army-
TIKKO. Protest the dirty war of the fascist state 
and their deceit of "democracy." Don't forget that 
there is no way but to carry out the people's war 
to be liberated from this kind of fascist 
barbarism in our country. Our struggle is a part 
of the freedom struggle of the progressive 
humanity of the world. The people's war leaded by 
our Party, obeys completely the rules of the 
revolutionary war. It gives a big importance to 
[not] cause any danger for unarmed civilian 
targets and for the personalities who are not 
taking place in the war. Our Party wants from the 
enemy to behave in the same way, not to attack 
against innocent civilians. We want you come and 
see in its place that how the fascist Turkish 
Armed Forces have transformed the war to an 
irregular and inhumanity-barbarian shape. Force 
the fascist Turkish government and help us to 
defend the civilian targets and unarmed Kurdish 
peasants.

Blame and protest the burning and destroying 
actions and massacres which are being carried out 
by the fascist state!

TKP(ML)-IEB COMMUNIST PARTY OF TURKEY (MARXIST-
LENINIST) INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS BUREAU


* * * 

NATIONAL GUARD REINFORCES
PUERTO RICAN POLICE STATE

by a MIM Associate

Amerika's National Guard is currently functioning 
in Puerto Rico to support the maintenance of its' 
colonial police state. As drug-related crime is 
reportedly on the rise, Puerto Rican governor 
Pedro Rossello is welcoming the U.S. military 
intervention of the National Guard. Rossello also 
insists that this intervention is representative 
of the common interest of the Puerto Rican 
masses(1).

Amerikan colonialization of Puerto Rico has had 
devastating economic consequences; 63.3% of the 
Puerto Rican population lives below the poverty 
line.(2) This situation undoubtedly has 
contributed to the increase of the crime rate. The 
Rossello-Amerikan regime believes that the 
solution to this crisis is the increased 
intervention of colonial forces - the National 
Guard.

The National Guard is part of the U.S. military. 
The U.S. militarily occupies Puerto Rico - 
thirteen bases occupy 20% of the land. 
Traditionally in Amerika, the job descriptions for 
federal military and the "civilian" pigs are kept 
separate. The weak state of the neo-colonial 
police against the masses requires breaking that 
tradition.  

"The gravity of crisis in our streets ... makes it 
appropriate for us to explore today situations in 
which the National Guard may be able to fight 
crime without endangering democracy..." said 
Congressman Charles Schumer, D-NY.(1) 

"Fighting crime" has proven to be excessively 
repressive and very anti-democratic in Puerto 
Rico. "...Searching apartments in public housing 
projects with out warrants" has been typical of 
Amerikan police actions. "Searches have been 
extended to children's school bags and lunch 
boxes."(1) 

Nkechi Taifa, legislative counsel of the American 
Civil Liberties Union insists that U.S. military 
intervention has resulted in the occupation of 
Puerto Rican housing projects and is responsible 
for the unwarranted murder of at least one 
youth.(3) 

Taifa insists that "law enforcement in Puerto Rico 
is ... based on race and class."(1) Police 
repression is a means of denying the Puerto Rican 
masses self-determination. 

It is not possible for the U.S. to intervene in 
Puerto Rico without violating democratic 
principles. Puerto Rico is a colony of the Untied 
States. The U.S. must intervene constantly in 
order to maintain this colonial relationship. 

The National Guard is assisting neo-colonial 
forces in the suppression of the Puerto Rican 
masses. This exists in a very physical force 
(persecution and threat of persecution) and in a 
monitoring sense (through unwarranted searches of 
Puerto Rican homes and personal properties). 

There is no such thing as consent to military 
occupation by an imperialist power. The only thing 
the National Guard is representative of is 
imperialism.

NOTE: AP 10/5/94.


* * * 

AMERICAN MILITARY PLAYS,
BUT WON'T CLEAN UP IT'S MESS

by MA314

The U.S. has formally abandoned it's military 
bases in the Philippines, but has left behind an 
environmental nightmare. By Amerika's own 
standards - that of the Environmental Protection 
Agency - this is a disaster of Superfund 
proportions. Superfund sites are among the most 
highly contaminated sites in the U.S., posing dire 
threats to not only human life, but entire eco-
systems.

Amerikan occupation of the Philippines was 
directly carried out through the Clark Air Force 
and Subic Bay Naval bases. Since their recent 
closure, the U.S. has ceased to outwardly oversee 
the "welfare" of its neo-colony. Instead, 
directions are carried out through the puppet of 
their choice, currently Gen. Fidel Ramos (trained 
at the U.S. army school - West Point).

The Department of Defense (DOD) has conducted a 
superficial investigation into the nature of the 
toxic waste sites at Subic and Clark. The report 
was incomplete, omitting information on many 
potentially contaminated sites. The U.S. released 
the DOD study to the Ramos government only after 
persistent requests. 

In August, the Unitarian Universalist Service 
Committee (UUSC) released a study based on the 
DOD's study.  Making a more honest analysis than 
the Department of Defense, the UUSC study called 
for an comprehensive site assessment and clean up 
at the former bases in the Philippines. 

As of this time, no action has been taken to 
correct the situation. The World Bank has approved 
a loan to the Ramos government for $40 million - 
likely to go to pay Amerikans to clean up their 
own mess - which would only serve to aggravate the 
Filipino peoples' burden of debt. It's just like 
the oppressor to turn around and charge the 
oppressed for its imposition.

Amerika's failure to address the pollution problem 
has made it worse. The passage of time allows 
chemicals to migrate into the water supply. They 
spread out, dispersed by the rains, re-entering 
the food chain through contaminated soil;  and 
with the completion of each cycle, carcinogens 
such as asbestos, creosote, and various toxic 
metals become further embedded in all sources of 
life. 

The environmental destruction of the U.S. military 
should be corrected by and at the expense of the 
U.S. government, as soon as possible. Each day of 
delay means more extensive and long term 
environmental damage to the Philippines. 

Unfortunately for the Filipino people, the U.S. 
has no interest in preserving the environment or 
the people of the Third World. Pay-back for the 
self-serving disregard with which the U.S. 
military conducted its exploitation of Filipino 
land will come some day. That's why the Communist 
Party of the Philippines is leading a revolution 
against the U.S. and it's Ramos puppet.

NOTES: BAYAN International, The Truth About the 
Ramos Regime, 1994. Bloom et al. (UUSC), An 
Environmental and Health Impact Report on Known 
and Potentially Contaminated Sites at Former U.S. 
Military Bases in the Philippines, 8/94. MIM Notes 
94 11/94, p.1, 8.


* * * 

APACHE NATION ATTACKED WITH NUCLEAR WASTE

The Northern States Power Company has targeted the 
Mesclaro Apache Nation (in the U.S. state of New 
Mexico) as the "temporary" storage site of 
radioactive waste from nuclear power plants across 
the country.(1) With the increased need for 
storage space of spent fuel rods and other waste, 
the nuclear power industry is proposing to destroy 
the First Nation land at bargain prices.

The Tribal government is bought off by the company 
and its illusionary promise that the storage site 
will help develop the nation's economy. There has 
been no direct consultation of the people and the 
proposal has happened without the general 
consensus of its enrolled members. "[The] Apache 
people, as a group have been diabolically and 
deliberately excluded [from the decision].... Many 
tribal members are opposed to siting nuclear waste 
storage on our homeland, for they believe it will 
be a violation of our sacred lands and sacred 
mountain, Sierra Blanca."(1) 

Whether the Tribal leadership of First Nations 
receive direct kickbacks from industrial 
capitalists or whether leadership sees no 
alternative development option, the ultimate 
control lies in the hands of the oppressor nation 
developers and the Amerikan government. The 
Amerikan government has left the First Nations 
with few development options - cigarettes, 
casinos, gas stations and now nuclear waste - all 
of which force reliance on bourgeois markets and 
make self-sufficiency impossible.

The true representation of the Apache people is 
questioned in general, and in this case 
specifically, the people of the Apache Nation have 
not had a say in which path they want to take 
toward development.(1) Apache activist, Rufina 
Laws said, "I believe that the Bureau of Indian 
Affairs is unconditionally cooperating and is in 
collusion through the continued use of an 
incredibly unjust document, the Tribal Election 
Code, upon which the Chino Administration 
operates...."(1) Wendell Chino, the tribal 
president for three decades, appoints the Election 
Board which oversees the tribal elections, as well 
as the future (rubber stamping) vote on the issue 
of the site. Chino defends the election process by 
saying that it is in accordance with Amerikan 
democracy.(2)

Chino advocates the storage by saying, "The 
storage of spent fuel is a 21st century industry 
with the attendant complement of high-tech, high-
wage jobs not often available to Indian tribes.(2) 
Waste dump operators with the high paying jobs are 
imported from the base of the company. They are 
not people from the poor areas or oppressed 
nations where the sites are placed.

Oppressed nations attempting to develop within the 
confines of imperialist capitalism must first 
choose the path to take. Two-line struggle between 
Mao and Liu Shao-ch'i was in part between swift 
development without an underlying political and 
ideological base or development with a dialectical 
materialist analysis. Efficient modernization 
alone did not lead to revolution in China and 
economic prosperity for a few within the First 
Nations will not lead to self-determination.

The international division of labor restricts the 
national bourgeoisie from developing into a 
competitive force. Mao argued that development 
without the consideration of politics would only 
lead back to semi-colonial, semi-feudal status for 
China. Without consideration for the long term 
ecologically sound and non-economically 
exploitative development pattern, the status of 
the First Nations will not be one of self-
sufficiency or independence from the domination of 
the Amerika. Dependency upon capitalist political 
or economic kickbacks or promises of prosperity 
does not equal self-determination. The Mescalero 
Apache Nation must not rely on the economic 
development promises of the same country that 
forced them onto the reservation in the first 
place. 

NOTES:
1. Albuquerque Journal. 5/2/94, p. A9. 
2. Albuquerque Journal 5/10/94


* * * 

NEW BOOK ATTACKS BIOLOGY AS DESTINY

Review:
The Evolution of Racism:
Human differences and the use and abuse of science
by Pat Shipman
Simon and Schuster: New York, 1994.
319 pp.

by MC12

By a paleoanthropologist, this new book brings 
debates and discoveries about human evolution to a 
non-academic audience. Readable and informative, 
*Evolution* runs from Darwin, through eugenics and 
Nazism, right up to the Human Genome Project and 
the Violence Initiative. Still, it's not as good 
as Stephen J. Gould's (less current) *The 
Mismeasure of Man*, which has a better analysis 
for political purposes.

Her biggest weakness is a naive liberal quest for 
value-free science, and bemoaning the fact that 
biological theories get caught up in the politics 
of the day. For her, power struggles belong 
outside the realm of science, and scientists can't 
do good science if they are going to be held 
accountable for the political implications of 
their work.

DARWIN BEATS THE CHURCH

While Charles Darwin's *The Origin Of Species* 
(1859) struck a progressive blow against the 
hegemony of the Church, it did not undermine 
hierarchy among humans. It was falsely used 
(though not against Darwin's will) to explain 
differences in wealth and power between different 
human populations. Darwin himself thought non-
Europeans were not fully human.(1)

One of the first widespread misuses of Darwinism 
was in its application to human society - for 
which Darwin had not offered any evidence, for 
there was none. In Germany this idea was developed 
by Ernst Haeckel, in Britain by Herbert Spencer, 
who coined the term "survival of the fittest" and 
applied it to all aspects of social life. This 
thinking - Darwinian evolution reflected through 
bourgeois ideology - obviously continues to the 
present.

The term "eugenics" (breeding to improve the human 
race) was introduced in 1883 by Darwin's cousin, 
Francis Galton. "Could not the undesirables be got 
rid of and the desirables multiplied?" he 
asked.(2)

By the time Darwin died in 1882, he was convinced 
of the necessity of eugenics; and he was 
rehabilitated by the Church: "Once berated as an 
enemy of morality and religion, Darwin was now 
sanctified and transformed into an icon acceptable 
to all aspects of society," writes Shipman. 
Darwin's son Leonard went on to be president of 
the Eugenics Society in England from 1891 to 
1928.(3) Darwinism had "adapted" to capitalist 
society.

Eugenics got a big boost in Amerika and Germany 
just after 1900 with hundreds of thousands of 
dollars donated to research by big capitalists 
(Carnegie and Krupp).(4) Their goal was to collect 
records on individuals and families for the 
purpose of sterilization and matchmaking to 
improve their "race" (synonymous with nation, for 
them).

So they collected records for everyone they could 
find, on such "genetic" traits as: "insanity, 
epilepsy, alcoholism, pauperism, criminality, 
tuberculosis, goiter ... feeblemindedness ... 
nomadism, athletic ability, shiftlessness and 
thalassophilia (love of the sea)." All of these 
were assumed to have hereditary causes.(5)

This research in turn contributed to laws 
restricting immigration, and formed the basis for 
the first IQ tests, which were intended to 
identify the "intelligence" required for every 
different position in society - and then force 
children into those positions. Finally, the 
research led to forced sterilization, with the 
Supreme Court's blessing and laws in many states.

In both the United States and Germany, Shipman 
makes virtually no effort to connect these 
biological and medical theories to imperialism and 
the motivations of the capitalist class and 
patriarchy; without that analysis it becomes too 
easy to justify eugenics and genocide as 
"mistakes" based on primitive scientific 
understanding. In fact, the scientists were coming 
up with ways to justify actions that reflected the 
demands of the politically powerful at that time.

WHY THE "RACES" AREN'T

Visible (phenotype) traits used to define current 
"races" are not linked to each other at the 
genetic level. Someone can have the hair of one 
"race," the eyes of another, the skin of a third, 
etc.  So "races" identified by visible features 
would be different from those based on blood 
types, for example.(6)

Evolutionary biology now recognizes that a species 
is any group capable of reproducing together, and 
"the action [of evolution is] at the species 
level," where genotype (underlying genetic 
traits), not phenotype, is what matters.(7) And 
contrary to popular belief, evolution is *not* the 
process of species becoming "more adapted" or 
"better" than they were before. While individual 
species adapt, life on earth is no better adapted 
overall.

In other species, races are frequently the 
precursors to splitting off new species; 
population separated geographically for long 
enough eventually develop enough differences to 
loose *interfertility* with the others. Since the 
early 1960s there has been a consensus in biology 
that, "Because the races are fully interfertile, 
because different races frequently live together 
in the same regions, and because humans are so 
mobile, pure races do not exist and the races 
cannot diverge into separate species."(8)

But genetic studies still threaten the oppressed 
in Amerika. The predominant recent example of this 
is the Violence Initiative, which tried to 
identify genetic "causes" of violent behavior, 
with the intention of identifying potentially 
violent children and "treating" them preventively. 
Shipman devotes the last part of her book to this 
controversy.

The proponents and followers of this research make 
the very common error of looking at a behavior 
that appears common in a certain group and 
assuming it has a genetic basis - rather than a 
social and economic one. If MIM behaved this way, 
we would be looking for a gene for imperialism or 
parasitic social behavior, and we would conclude - 
with strong circumstantial evidence - that white 
Amerikans have a genetic predisposition to oppress 
other people.

Frederich Goodwin, the highest ranking 
psychiatrist in the government (head of the 
Alcoholism, Drug Abuse and Mental Health 
Administration), said in 1992: "If you look, for 
example, at male monkeys, especially in the wild, 
roughly half of them survive to adulthood. The 
other half die by violence. That is the natural 
way of it for males .... There are some 
interesting evolutionary implications of that 
because the hyperaggressive monkeys who kill each 
other are also hypersexual, so they copulate more 
....

"Now, one could say that if some of the loss of 
social structure in this society, and particularly 
within high impact inner city areas, has removed 
some of the civilizing evolutionary things that we 
have built up and that maybe it isn't just a 
careless use of the word when people call certain 
areas of certain cities jungles, that we may have 
gone back to what might be more natural..."(9)

In other words, without proper "social control," 
Black males "revert" back to a "nature" of 
behaving like monkeys! Goodwin's statement was too 
outrageous (it wasn't even true of monkeys). So, 
after much protest, he was demoted - to director 
of the National Institute of Mental Health!(10)

A University of Maryland professor, David 
Wasserman, was among those promoting this 
research. He tried to organize a conference called 
"Genetic Factors in Crime," for which he received 
federal funding, which he advertised with this 
text: "Genetic research ... gains impetus from the 
apparent failure of environmental approaches to 
crime - deterrence, diversion, and rehabilitation 
- to affect the dramatic increases in crime, 
especially violent crime .... Genetic research 
holds out the prospect of identifying  individuals 
who may be predisposed to certain kinds of 
criminal conduct ... and of treating some 
predispositions with drugs and intrusive 
therapies."(11)

Apparently, for Wasserman, "environmental 
approaches" don't include self-determination, 
employment, education relevant to Black people's 
lives, etc. So it can be concluded that these 
approaches have failed! This also raised enough of 
a stir (including by anti-psychiatric medication 
psychiatrist Peter Breggin, some NAACP chapters 
and others) to cancel the conference. But the 
research continues.

Shipman does a good job of presenting the debates, 
but her opinion of them is liberal and idealistic. 
She is upset that "objective" research is being 
stifled because of the "volume" of the debate and 
the knee-jerk reaction to anything that could have 
racist implications. Readers of *The Evolution of 
Racism* should be prepared for some annoying anti-
"politically correct"ism, as well as a useful 
presentation of the facts and issues.


NOTES:
1.  Shipman, p. 1.
2.  Ibid, p. 111.
3.  Ibid, p. 121.
4.  Ibid, pp. 123-132.
5.  Ibid, p. 125-6.
6.  Ibid, p. 148.
7.  Ibid, p. 154.
8.  Ibid, p. 195.
9.  Ibid, pp. 237-8.
10. Ibid, p. 238.
11. Ibid, p. 246.


* * * 

U.S. ROLE IN CHILE WHITEWASHED

For some reason the New York Times ran an article 
evaluating the life of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in 
Chile. It appears there is a move afoot to 
rehabilitate his name, because the New York Times 
article raised the question of what overall 
evaluation Pinochet deserved in his life.

Pinochet is still the commander of the military in 
Chile, and won't retire until 1997. From 1973 to 
1990 he was also the president of Chile, thanks to 
his own efforts and the U.S. military forces that 
helped him to power on September 11, 1973. 
According to the New York Times, he is due respect 
for being the oldest military leader in the world.

The New York Times said his opponents were 
"leftists" and human rights groups activists. 
Also, the New York Times mentioned that Pinochet 
overthrew a "leftist" government headed by 
Salvador Allende Gossens, but it did not mention 
that Allende was the elected president of Chile. 
Nor did the New York Times mention the U.S. role 
first in funding Allende's opponents in the 
campaign and then in embargos, subversion and 
finally, military action.  

When Pinochet came to power, he massacred at least 
20,000 people, many of whom were rounded up in a 
stadium for execution. The movie *Missing* is 
largely based on this real-life story.

Pinochet, the CIA and the U.S. military are facts 
of life that prove the necessity of communism. 
Here Allende won his election through "democratic" 
means, but it turns out that U.S. imperialism is 
only for "democracy" when its side wins. When it 
loses, it seeks to twist the arms of entire 
nations into voting for capitalism and U.S. 
interests or supporting dictators that accomplish 
that purpose.

Opportunists seeking political careers and the 
naive speak of "freedom" and "democracy," 
supported by the United States contrary to the 
facts. In Chile, the blood of the people is on the 
hands of Pinochet, the U.S. government and the 
"democratic socialists" who told the people the 
ballot box would work.

NOTE: New York Times, 10/6/94, p. a9.


* * * 

MORE BLOWS FOR THE HAITIAN MASSES:
HAITIANS ATTACKED AND BETRAYED

In Haiti, the U.S.-installed Aristide has turned a 
deaf ear to the thousands of demonstrators 
demanding reparations for the crimes of the coup 
leaders and their supporters. The U.S. military is 
protecting these war criminals and repressing the 
mass movements in the name of "democracy".

Aristide has ignored the demands for justice from 
thousands of Haitian demonstrators, and has 
focused on building support from other bourgeois 
factions for further imperialist penetration. On 
November 8, the Haitian parliament formally 
endorsed Aristide's cabinet and his agenda to 
further prostrate Haiti to the IMF, to the World 
Bank, and to foreign capital.(1) 

POPULAR MASS ORGANIZATIONS MOBILIZE

Over one thousand demonstrated in the streets of 
Grand Goeve on October 27. Father Jean Pierre 
Louis warned in the preceding mass against an 
overemphasis on reconciliation and said it is not 
possible without justice. Songs and posters 
presented the demands for the disarming of the 
army and paramilitary, investigations of the 
crimes committed in the past three years, 
reparations for the victims and a cleaning out of 
the public administration.(2)

During the demonstration the people of the town 
demanded electricity and the arrest of judge Weber 
Milord - a top army officer in the area that has 
carried out widespread repression.

On October 23, members of the Konbit Komilfo (KOD) 
protested at the home of Brevil - a soldier known 
for brutal repression - and demanded his 
surrender. U.S. soldiers then arrived to tell the 
crowd to disperse. The soldiers refused to arrest 
Milord or Brevil. 

U.S. SHOOTS FOR LONG-TERM CONTROL

The U.S. plan to install a neo-liberal economic 
program depends upon the retention of officials 
that were formerly leaders of the coup. Jean-
Claude Dupreval was named the army's Commander-in-
Chief. At Cedras' departure ceremony, his 
successor promised to co-operate with the "foreign 
invitees".(3)

"The U.S. wants exclusive rights to train the new 
officers through a program of the International 
Criminal Investigation Training and Assistance 
Program - an institution founded by the FBI in 
1986 and run by the Justice and State 
departments."(4) ICITA's purpose is to fortify the 
development of emerging democracies in the western 
hemisphere; its history in Panama, Guatemala and 
El Salvador is a solid indicator of its definition 
of fortification.

The current army will be replaced by two "new" 
forces, the army with 1,500 and the police corps 
with 7,000 to 10,000 officers. This does not 
necessitate the removal of old supporters or a 
change in the old structure.

The U.S. has been offering the masses cash for 
guns.(3) Amerika claims a desire to prevent civil 
war, but rather aims to make the U.S.-imposed 
structure more difficult to challenge.

The Assemblee Populaire Nationale said, "We cannot 
support or serve as a relay for the American 
imperialists who come to occupy the country."(4) 
The Assemblee correctly believes that it is up to 
the people to isolate the soldiers and punish 
them. Any "rectification" of the Haitian military 
that is controlled by the U.S. will continue to be 
selective and superficial.

U.S. REPRESSES MASS MOVEMENTS

The U.S. forces are not standing idly by as the 
protesters demand justice; they have actively 
taken part in the repression of mass 
organizations. They have collaborated with Haitian 
officials and "are even violating people's rights 
themselves."(2)

Chavannes Jean-Baptiste, the founder of the 
Mouvman Peyizan Papay [Peasant Movement of Papaye] 
(MPP), said in a speech after returning from 
exile, "This is not a victory.... Don't celebrate 
and think that the U.S. army is here to liberate 
us. It is part of the same strategy as the coup." 
U.S. soldiers responded to this speech with 
threats.(4)

Amerikan "free speech" didn't come with the 
imperialist troops. When a local radio station 
criticized Haitian army officer Col. Clairjeune, 
the U.S. army ordered it shut down, because 
Clairjeune is a friend of Amerika. "U.S. troops 
and Clairjeune have also carried out joint 
missions, such as the arms search of the house 
belonging to a pro-democratic government 
official."(10)

The function of the US military is to stop the 
mass demonstrations. A U.S. intelligence figure 
official expanded upon the purpose of prolonged 
occupation: "... to prevent the Haitian population 
from taking politics into its own hands and [to] 
forestall danger of radical mass mobilization. 
With regard to mass mobilization, simple ... you 
can't let it happen. There is no such thing as a 
demonstration while [the US military troops] are 
there."(5)

ARISTIDE KOWTOWS TO THE DOLLAR

As always, in exchange for loans, the 
International Monetary Fund and World Bank are 
requiring Haiti to reorient its economy to serve 
the imperialist's interests. Aristide's agreement 
to further prostrate Haiti to the U.S. has made 
him popular in imperialist circles. Aristide has 
business support and promises of foreign aid for 
at least the next two years.(3) 

The IMF and the World Bank have required tariff 
reductions and open markets.(3) The $600 million 
this year in aid requires the privatization of 
industry, slashing the budget deficit and 
bureaucracy, and removing most price controls.(6)

One such bit of "aid" is a $13 million jobs 
creation program - where 25,000 to 50,000 Haitians 
will work for $1 a day for two months.(4) Once 
again the cheap labor power of the Haitian masses 
will flood the pockets of multi-national 
corporations with bloody super-profits.

To a large degree, Aristide has even been cut out 
of the picture by the imperialists. U.S. officials 
will have direct control over most of the money 
that comes from aid. The money will go to the 
private sector or local leaders chosen by the U.S. 
government.(4)

Now the U.S. can choose the specific 
beneficiaries. One company, Brown and Root Inc., 
for example, built roads, landing fields and bases 
for U.S. troops in Vietnam. Brown and Root made 
$100 million in Somalia, and will make another $25 
million building four U.S. military bases in 
Haiti.(7).

It is no surprise that Aristide has only shallowly 
addressed the demands of the Haitian people. Their 
just demands are in direct opposition to 
Aristide's new master - foreign capital. 

MIM supports the fight against the continued 
repression of the mass movement in Haiti. As the 
old regime gets a face lift, and as the U.S. spews 
democracy rhetoric, the Haitian people are still 
struggling. The first step toward democracy is the 
removal of foreign parasites and their lackeys. 
Reconciliation must entail reparations to the 
Haitian people by the imperialists for destroying 
the Haitian political structure and for aiding in 
the deaths of their leaders.

NOTES:
1. New York Times 11/9/94, p. A3.
2. Haiti Info 11/5/94
3. The Economist 10/22/94, p. 54.
4. The Haitian Information Bureau 10/22/94 - Haiti
   Info v.3, #2
5. The Nation 10/394, p. 344.
6. NYT 10/30/94, p. A1.
7. The Progressive 11/94, p. 9.


* * * 

"IN LATIN AMERICA, EVERY DAY
IS THE DAY OF THE DEAD"

November 2, Amherst, MA - A UMass student made a 
powerful demonstration against U.S. imperialism in 
Latin America by burning the headless bodies of 
Presidents Reagan, Bush and Clinton, Lt. Col. 
Oliver North and National Security Advisor Anthony 
Lake in effigy. 

November 2 is the Day of the Dead, and the 
demonstration was designed to commemorate Latin 
American victims of U.S. imperialism. In Latin 
America, the Day of the Dead is a cultural and 
religious ceremony to honor the dead.

The student, with gold painted face, green cape 
and feathered headdress, represented the Quetzal 
bird - the guardian angel of Tecu'n Uman who died 
fighting the Spanish conquistadors in the 16th 
century. 

The headless bodies of the chief Amerikan 
imperialists were arranged in a circle, each 
sharing the same hollow pumpkin head. Quetzal 
danced around the burning bodies, exposing the 
crimes of the imperialists and calling for 
solidarity with Latin American and Third World 
struggles. Laying a black cross and flowers for 
the martyred, Quetzal called out to their fellow 
revolutionaries "Keep going, [because if you do] 
you will not be dead." 

Quetzal threw the blood of dead Latin Americans on 
the burning bodies, and gave each the bloody heart 
of a dead Latin American killed by Amerika's 
foreign policy. This was doubly symbolic - Quetzal 
said it redeemed the souls of the martyrs and it 
proved that the imperialists have no hearts.

Quetzal did not make a distinction between deaths 
caused by Amerikan interventionist bullets and 
deaths from starvation and disease caused by 
exploitation. For each death, the murderer is the 
same Amerikan system - and for each death their 
blood debt grows larger. 

The five Amerikan leaders were picked because they 
were recent figures, and Quetzal was quick to 
point out that many other Amerikan leaders could 
have been choosen.

One of the most powerful lines from Quetzal was: 
We must remember the dead, "not just on the day of 
the dead. Because in Latin America every day is 
the Day of the Dead."

Speaking for the dead, and for the youth of Latin 
America - who Quetzal predicted was a generation 
that would learn from the past and succeed where 
their fathers and mothers had failed - Quetzal 
warned "We will be back. We will."


* * * 

MOTHERS KILLING CHILDREN:
A SYMPTOM OF CAPITALIST PATRIARCHY.

Recent celebrated cases of mothers killing their 
children seem "unthinkable" to the Amerikan 
public. They were more willing to believe that the 
Smith children were abducted by a strange Black 
man than the truth that their mother killed them. 
In fact, most children murdered are victims of 
their parents. Every year 700 mothers kill their 
children. This violence is a symptom of the 
capitalist patriarchy that reduces children to 
possessions of their parents.

For most practical purposes, parents own their 
children and have almost absolute power over them. 
Society recognizes parental property rights to 
such an extent that only the grandest tales of 
abuse win public attention. And society is 
powerless to prevent children's murders until it 
abolishes those property rights.

Just as white nation chauvinist pseudo-feminists 
prefer enacting repressive laws against Black men 
to abolishing the patriarchal gender relations 
that make all sex rape, advocates for children 
that focus on abducted children prefer chasing 
down individual men to abolishing the patriarchal 
family set-up that keeps children at the complete 
mercy of their parents.

The actions of the mother in the Smith case 
clearly reveal her position in gender and national 
hierarchies. Pseudo-feminists want to believe that 
biological women are always victims, without any 
power to oppress. But in relation to her children, 
Ms. Smith was gendered male by her power over them 
in patriarchy. And she used her privileged gender 
aristocrat status to accuse an imaginary Black man 
of her own violence. She did not care whether an 
innocent Black man died in the electric chair, 
only that she avoid accountability for her abuse 
of power over her children.

The only thing that will prevent the brutal 
murders of children is a revolution which releases 
them from their current status as private property 
and recognizes instead their status as human 
beings.

NOTE: New York Times 11/5/94, p. 9.


* * * 

ANTI-IMPERIALIST GAYS AND LESBIANS
MARCH IN THE PHILIPPINES

Some 100 gay and lesbian members of the 
multisectoral Progressive Organization of Gays in 
the Philippines (Pro-Gay) marched June 26 to 
protest the IMF-imposed expanded value-added tax 
(VAT) law and other pro-imperialist economic 
agreements.

Carrying placards with messages such as "Reject 
Philippines 2000," the Pro-Gay activists said 
their struggle was not distinct from the Filipino 
people's struggle for freedom and democracy as 
their problem is rooted in poverty and also sexual 
discrimination.

According to the protesters, the Philippine gay 
liberation movement is demanding access to social 
services like education and health, the right to 
work without sexual discrimination, the right to 
enter into a mutual relationship to marry, the 
right to have a family or adopt children and raise 
them, and the right to political leadership.

They also claimed the right to be part of the 
struggle for social change and to be respected 
regardless of social status, religion, race or 
sexual preference.

- reprinted from Liberation International (LI), a
  publication of the National Democratic Front of
  the Philippines 7/94, p. 6. LI can be reached at
  P.O. Box 19195, 3501 DD Utrecht, the
  Netherlands.


* * * 

WHITE PATRIARCHY UPHELD

This past October, Baltimore judge Robert E. 
Cahill sentenced Kenneth Peacock to 18 months in 
prison for murdering his wife, Sandra. Peacock, a 
white man with 2 brothers who are police officers, 
found his wife in bed with another man and shot 
her in the head 4 hours later.

Judge Cahill said he wished he could let Peacock 
go free and commented: "I seriously wonder how 
many men married five, four years would have the 
strength to walk away without inflicting some 
corporal punishment. " From the bottom of his 
patriarchal heart, this Amerikan judge defends 
male rights to property (women).

The day after Peacock's sentencing, another 
Baltimore judge sentenced a woman to 3 years for 
killing her husband after 11 years of abuse. The 
Women's Law Center in Baltimore has protested 
Peacock's sentence in Maryland's Court of Appeals 
on the basis of gender inequality. This pseudo-
feminist strategy can, at best, win more 
privileges for First World biological women at the 
expense of the rest of the world - including over 
2 billion Third World biological women. 

Reforming the Amerikan court system legitimizes 
it. Reforms give the court system credit for being 
able to correct its own errors of discrimination. 
But these errors are committed in the service of a 
government defined by social inequality. The 
revolutionary-feminist solution is to build a 
revolutionary party and people's power to 
overthrow the old state.

- MAZ10

NOTE: NYT 10/21/94, p. A9.


* * * 

WAR ON WELFARE HITS SENATE

by MA313

November 7 - In the political musical chairs game 
for a seat in the U.S. Senate, candidates have 
been professing their intent to crack down on the 
welfare system. McCurdy, senate candidate in 
Oklahoma, admits that the Congressional delegates 
have recognized that conservatives attitudes 
towards welfare reform are necessary "... to 
further their reelection." Bob Carr, Michigan 
senate candidate, lumps receiving welfare with 
lying and cheating, and states that each are 
evidence of the moral degeneration of society. 
Bashing the welfare system and those who use it 
musters support from the white labor aristocracy 
who want to blame the poor for taking their "hard-
earned" tax dollars which could be used to further 
their own gluttonous consumption.

Governor Thompson of Wisconsin, who has assaulted 
the welfare system for the past eight years, is 
seen as creating an exemplary model for the rest 
of the country to follow - regardless of the fact 
that child poverty has risen in his state. 
Wisconsin has recently passed a bill that promises 
to abolish the welfare system as we know it by 
1999.(1) Although no new plan has been outlined, 
one can probably expect the same basic substance - 
meager handouts in exchange for humiliation, 
degradation and victimization for its recipients.

Persons receiving welfare are trapped by 
bureaucratic restrictions and minimal financial 
support. A welfare budget amounts to 2/3 of what 
the government deems to be the poverty line. 
Eighty-five to 95% of this might go to pay for 
rent and utilities. Food stamps are rationed in a 
manner which allows for an average of $0.40 per 
meal per person, or $1.20 per person daily.(2) 
This does not even buy a burger at McDonalds. 
Personal decisions, such as where to live, may 
also be denied. Members of the Boston welfare-
rights group ARMS (Advocacy for Resources for 
Modern Survival) write: "To comply with conditions 
of our recipient status, we can not make any 
personal decisions ourselves. We must consult the 
Welfare Department first, and the final decision 
is theirs. The state is a domineering, 
chauvinistic spouse."(3)

Despite the meager state handouts, politicians 
speak of welfare as a system capable of generating 
significant benefits to those who use it. Stories 
in the media about "Welfare Queens" and welfare 
fraud initiate public support for treating welfare 
recipients like criminals. New York unveiled a 
plan last spring to fingerprint all persons 
receiving welfare benefits with a computerized 
machine.

By focusing on welfare as a significant burden to 
the U.S. economic system (in reality, welfare 
accounted for 3.4% of state budgets)(4), attention 
is painlessly diverted from the larger picture - 
the oppressive U.S. imperialist system which 
requires exploitation of the poor in this country, 
as well as internationally, to prosper. Political 
candidates know that the welfare issue is a topic 
from which they can easily accumulate support, 
since Amerikans love a justification for racism 
and a reason to discriminate against the poor. The 
Amerikan public thinks that welfare is a system 
abused by lazy criminals who want to 
"undeservingly" take a piece of the Amerikan pie.

Although the present welfare system does not begin 
to solve Amerikan economic corruption and 
inequality, it is clear why politicians focus on 
the issue. It presents an easy target for 
victimization of a population with virtually no 
political voice. The response they receive from 
the public proves where the majority of the 
Amerikan population places its loyalty - with any 
group that promises more for them.

NOTES:
1. New York Times 10/20/94.
2. Anderson & Collins, Race, class and gender: An
   anthology, Belmont, CA: 1992, p. 263.
3. Ibid, p. 250.
4. NYT 10/19/91, p. 1, 9.


* * * 

PROPOSITION 187:
AMERIKAN CHAUVINISM DEMANDS POCKET CHANGE

For some time, reactionaries have fanned the 
flames of national chauvinism and racism by 
asserting that illegal immigrants are a drain on 
the economy. Now a report from the Urban Institute 
on 1.44 million illegal immigrants in California 
in 1992 shows that all the hoopla is over pocket 
change - $1.09 billion a year. 

That is how much California pays for the services 
to illegal immigrants beyond what it receives in 
estimated taxes from the illegal immigrants. More 
than a third of that or $368 million is from 
Amerika's prison craze - locking up 15,100 
immigrants in prisons and calling that a "service" 
to the immigrants. 

California voters passed Proposition 187 on 
November 8 in what is typical Amerikan politics. 
Proposition 187 "would deny all social and health 
services except emergency care to illegal 
immigrants, kick their kids out of public schools 
and require teachers, doctors and others to report 
'suspected' illegals to immigration authorities." 

MIM does not care to argue over whether California 
government or the U.S. government should pay for 
the services provided for the immigrants. 
Proposition 187 does not affect that more subtle 
issue. It's just about looking for scapegoats for 
a minuscule sum of money. The $4 per person in the 
United States or $40 per person in California is 
nothing compared with how much food and garment 
bills would increase when doubled, tripled or 
quadrupled for lack of immigrant labor. MIM stands 
behind the statement that the entire U.S. owes 
reparations to the Third World, including 
immigrants now moving to California.

There is no rational argument behind Proposition 
187, just very strong emotion. That emotion is 
built into U.S. settler history. The Democratic 
candidate for governor lost a 20 percentage point 
poll lead over this issue and now trails by 13 
percentage points for merely opposing Proposition 
187. Her loss proves that a bourgeois candidate 
cannot mess with the imperialist alliance with the 
labor aristocracy - even for a paltry $1.09 
billion. 

Other polls show that whites give the highest 
level of support for the Proposition, but 
surprisingly, some Blacks and people of "Spanish-
origin" - "Hispanics" - also support Proposition 
187. Even many immigrants themselves cannot see 
fit to opposing Amerikan arguments over 
immigration. What this demonstrates yet again is 
that the parasitism of U.S. imperialism infects 
the whole continent. Good portions of the Black 
and Latino nations themselves have been bought off 
to such an extent that they are ready to vote for 
vicious anti-immigrant legislation. The United 
States is a nation of immigrant hypocrites that 
have a piece of the rock and don't want to share 
it with other newer immigrants. 

Cheerleaders for the bought-off working class of 
North America will make excuses for the anti-
immigrant legislation and say it is just "false 
consciousness." While it is true that the ruling 
class always does succeed in confusing the 
oppressed classes in ordinary times, the fervor 
surrounding Proposition 187 goes beyond "false 
consciousness." The bought-off working class 
actively supported Proposition 187 and it has 
become the most important item on the California 
electoral agenda. When Amerikans get "angry" and 
want "change," they seek pocket change. 


NOTE: USA Today, 10/18/94, pp. 1-2.


* * * 

AMERIKAN VOTING IS NOT FOR PROLETARIANS

Voters have always been disproportionately non-
proletarian in North Amerika. Vast majorities of 
the unemployed and poor do not vote. The anti-
immigrant Proposition 187 is a demonstration of 
the existence of national chauvinist and labor 
aristocracy politics.

It was no surprise that 64% of the white nation 
voters voted for Proposition 187 to cut-off 
education and non-emergency health services to 
immigrants and their kids. Initially, majorities 
of "Hispanics" also supported Proposition 187. 
After weeks of struggle, a progressive 
nationalism, principally Mexican nationalism, 
arose to oppose proposition 187. Still, in the end 
result, 31 percent of "Hispanic" voters still 
voted for Proposition 187. These voters want to 
keep "a piece of the rock" for themselves and 
exclude others from the rock..

Also important and confusing across the continent 
in a variety of contexts is the existence of Black 
and Asian middle-classes including labor 
aristocracies. Fifty-six percent of Black voters 
supported Proposition 187 and 57% of Asian voters 
did too. 

These voters are symbolic of the alliance of those 
middle classes with the white nation imperialists 
against Third World peoples trying to immigrate. 
Though it may be confusing, in the context of 
NAFTA, GATT and immigration, MIM stands opposed to 
any Black, Brown, Yellow or Red faces that the 
imperialists may throw at us in order to tighten 
the screws on immigrants.

As for other social groups, both men and women 
gave a majority to the anti-immigrant Proposition; 
even though two women candidates for California 
office opposed Proposition 187. This shows that 
even with women in power in the U.S. Senate, they 
cannot lead a gender movement against white nation 
interests. 

As for the age breakdown, this was a little more 
promising. The older the voter, the more anti-
immigrant the voter was. In the 18 to 29 voter 
group, the vote was 50 percent to 50 percent. MIM 
holds that the youth of the white nation more 
closely approximate proletarian interests than 
does the white working class. These numbers are 
further proof; although, even here, the white 
youth voted in a majority for the Proposition. We 
hope to pull the youth out of voting altogether. 
The white youth who did not vote and who voted but 
opposed Proposition 187 are the pivot of the 
progressive movement within the white nation.

NOTE: USA Today 11/11/94, p. 8A.


* * * 

GETTING JOBS AT THE BERLIN WALL OF THE WEST

Anti-immigrant fervor being whipped up by national 
chauvinists can only end with one logical result - 
the creation of an ever-stronger Berlin Wall on 
the border with Mexico. To boost his own 
popularity and the popularity of Democrats with 
the labor aristocracy majority of Amerika, Clinton 
has increased border patrols in southern 
California. There are also new border patrol 
programs in Texas. The new program to cover just a 
six mile area in California cost an additional $25 
million and includes a 12 foot high steel 
fence.(1) The total "drain" on services that 
illegal immigrants amount to in the whole United 
States is only $2 billion.(2) It doesn't take a 
genius to see that even by the labor aristocracy's 
own twisted propaganda, patrolling is more 
expensive than the "drain" created by illegal 
immigrants. 

The labor aristocracy is blind to the costs of a 
Berlin Wall solution, because the jobs patrolling 
the border - that produce nothing for anyone - go 
to people in the labor aristocracy or people who 
would otherwise be in the labor aristocracy. The 
labor aristocracy would rather spend billions 
policing the border than $2 billion actually 
curing infectious diseases and educating children 
in school, which is the largest expense being 
debated. Eleven hundred people patrol the San 
Diego area alone.(1)

In this struggle, there is an internationalist 
faction of the bourgeoisie which is actually a 
better ally than the labor aristocracy and other 
middle classes. The internationalist bourgeoisie 
concretely benefits from superexploiting the 
Mexican workers and doesn't want its access to 
such labor cut-off completely.  However, it is not 
likely to complain about the Berlin Wall or other 
such measures too loudly, because they act to 
increase leverage over the Mexican workers who do 
make it into the United States. The threat of 
bringing in the INS is the favorite tactic of the 
internationalist bourgeoisie making superprofits 
off of Mexican workers. 

On the other hand, the internationalist 
bourgeoisie also understands that the illegal 
immigrants create a business economy that 
otherwise would not exist if it were up to the 
Berlin Wall-type fascists. Creating a Berlin Wall 
is the opposite of what NAFTA supposedly intended 
and this would irritate the internationalist 
bourgeoisie in favor of the dream of "free trade" 
within capitalism. 

MIM is also in favor of "free trade," because 
borders are a waste of resources and an impediment 
to people-to-people understanding - peace. Borders 
also block the economic potential of the people of 
the world. Our difference with the bourgeois 
internationalists is that we know real free trade 
without borders is only possible in a communist 
world. The capitalists use things like border 
patrols to increase their exploitation and 
profits. As long as capitalists are allowed to 
make profits, there will be incentives to pit one 
nation against another in order to exploit large 
groups of people. 

NOTES:
1. New York Times 10/6/94, p. D21.
2. USA Today 10/19/94, p. 2A.


* * * 

IMPERIALISTS CONTEND IN IRAQ

The Boston Globe has managed to be astutely 
critical of imperialism in its October 17, 1994 
editorial. The only drawback of its analysis of 
imperialism in Iraq is that it only meant to apply 
to French imperialism. 

As President Clinton sent troops to Iraq this 
month, the rightist dominated French executive 
branch of government issued a criticism of 
Clinton. Not usually noted for their pacifism, the 
French rightists said that Clinton's order "was 
not unconnected to [domestic] politics." 

Now the Boston Globe is firing back. "France and 
Russia have been the most overt, the most 
shameless. Their attempts to make Saddam's case 
for him - to save his skin by lifting the U.N. 
sanctions - originate in a long sequence of 
backstage deals and promises. 

"The French oil companies Elf Aquitaine and CFP-
Total have acknowledged more than 40 meetings with 
Saddam's accomplices since the end of the last 
Gulf war. Last June Iraqi oil officials went to 
Paris to sign an agreement for the rebuilding of 
Iraq's Nahr Umar oil field, and later that month 
28 chief executives from French companies such as 
Renault, Citroen, Alcatel-Alsthom and Electricite 
de France visited Baghdad to discuss investments 
in diverse Iraqi enterprises, from automobile 
plants to Saddam's notorious chemical industry.

"For 10 days last April, Saddam conducted a 
murderous offensive against the population of 
southern Iraq. Specialists suspect Saddam's 
cleansing of the Shiite Muslims who live in the 
southern no-fly zone established by the coalition 
allies was a butchery performed to make the region 
safe for the French oil companies. 

"Hence the venomous remark of the French defense 
minister, Francois Leotard - that Clinton sent 
U.S. troops to the region for reasons of domestic 
politics - should be seen as an egregious example 
of the pot calling the kettle black." 

As is usual, we get the most accurate and 
insightful news and analysis from the bourgeoisie 
of our country when it is criticizing the 
bourgeoisie of other countries. Our media and 
politicians don't have the guts or truthfulness to 
explain that the United States leads the world in 
per capita imprisonment, but when it comes to 
criticizing other countries, they can be pretty 
good at it.

Something else that this demonstrates is the 
impossibility of a world government while 
capitalism still prevails. Supposedly, France, 
Russia and the United States are all on the same 
side in Iraq through the U.N. The U.N. acts more 
and more as a proto-world government inspired by 
bourgeois internationalism - the belief in the 
freedom of all peoples to have the opportunity to 
make a profit off each other. While the U.N. acts 
to safeguard capitalism internationally, we can 
see that underneath the imperialists will still 
have contending interests, because the way to make 
the most profit is not to copy your competition, 
but instead to backstab your competition and do 
something different to find your own niche. As 
long as there is capitalism, there will be a 
motive for imperialist contention even in Iraq 
where it might appear to be taboo. For this 
reason, the bourgeois internationalists seeking to 
compete with proletarian internationalists can 
attempt to fool the world with talk of 
international order and peace, but they cannot 
succeed. Only communism can bring peace.


* * * 

ANN ARBOR'S "ONLY" RAPIST STRIKES AGAIN

Another woman has reported being raped and 
liberals are lining up behind the police for 
protection. The police believe that the most 
recent publicized rape - October 13th - was 
committed by the same man as in three previous 
assaults on the West side of Ann Arbor, MI. 
Liberals and University students have been 
clamoring about the rapes and about the sudden 
fear they feel while walking down the street.(1)

The pseudo-feminist trend in recent years has been 
to educate women about the common occurrence of 
rape committed by acquaintances. The annual "take 
back the night" march, seminars and posters about 
the higher statistics of rape committed by 
acquaintances rather than by strangers, and 
support groups specifically attempting to include 
victims of acquaintance rape all have apparently 
failed to alleviate the fear of the man behind the 
bush.

The above examples of education focus attention 
upon the single male perpetrator as opposed to 
focusing the fight against patriarchy at the 
roots. The emphasis on acquaintance rape misses 
the boat of analyzing the existence of power 
struggles in all relationships and concludes that 
there can be equal relationships without coercion 
if the man is reformed enough. This leaves pseudo-
feminists denying systemic causes as they fight 
individual men.

MIM includes all sex in our definition of rape 
because we know that even "the best sex" does not 
exclude coercion. Individual relationships cannot 
escape the fundamental power struggles that exist 
in our society. 

Targeting one rapist in the community serves the 
purpose of focusing the problems caused by a 
patriarchal system on one man. One man is the 
problem and catching the one rapist is the 
solution. Intensification of the manhunt, 
increased policing of the campus, and spreading 
fear through the newspapers all sum up to ignoring 
the fundamental cause of rape.

Reactions as reported in The Michigan Daily's 
article "Manhunt for Rapist Intensifies" range 
from heightened fear to advocating more police 
action. This would make it appear that the cops 
are on the side of women's liberation or that the 
police are "doing their job" and protecting women.

A specific situation like this highly publicized 
rape clarifies where the liberals align themselves 
- with the police in the case of Ann Arbor. This 
is an admission that they are not truly interested 
in abolishing the patriarchal system that is the 
real impetus and perpetrator of violence against 
women - systematic rape, starvation or poor 
material conditions.

NOTE: The Michigan Daily, 10/17/94.


* * * 

BURMESE REVOLUTIONARY LIKES MIM NOTES:
MASSES STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCIST REGIME

Dear Friends at MIM Notes, 

I am really encouraged by your newspaper, which I 
got unexpectedly from a friend from America. It is 
like a light in our world. I would like to get 
your newspaper or other revolutionary materials as 
much as possible. I will send money soon.

I am also a revolutionary. Our camp is inside 
Burma near the Thai border. We have our guerrilla 
forces, which are not big yet. We are trying to 
survive by ourselves now.

I enclose some of our pamphlets in English. We 
usually publish in Burmese only.

The People's Liberation Front (PLF) is also an 
active member of the Democratic Alliance of Burma 
(DAB). If anybody wants to know more or visit us, 
please contact us. 

We will welcome you warmly. Keep in touch.

Yours sincerely,

 - a People's Liberation Front (Burma) activist,
   August 10, 1994

MIM REPLIES: Thanks for both the kind words and 
the information you enclosed with your letter. MIM 
takes this opportunity to comment on the situation 
in Burma (Myanmar), relying largely on the 
literature you sent.

The struggle of the People's Liberation Front in 
Burma is currently against the State Law and Order 
Restoration Council (SLORC). SLORC became the 
government on September 18, 1988 when General Saw 
Maung and the armed forces declared martial law, 
and killed more than 1,000 demonstrators. 

MIM supports the struggle of the Burmese masses 
and their organizations against the fascist SLORC 
government. At the same time, we recognize that if 
the proletariat does not take leadership of the 
anti-SLORC movement, the Burmese masses will find 
themselves suffering under a new arrangement of 
exploitation once SLORC is ousted.

PEOPLE'S LIBERATION FRONT
AND THE DEMOCRATIC ALLIANCE OF BURMA

The People's Liberation Front described their aims 
in a April 19, 1990 statement: "1. To unify the 
resistance forces, especially among the youth, for 
the overthrow of the military dictatorship; 2. To 
cooperate with all democratic forces for the 
establishment of a democratic system of government 
with guarantees for all the human rights; 3. To 
strive for the establishment of a genuine federal 
union; 4. To endeavor for the harmony of all the 
indigenous nationalities and minorities in the 
country; and 5. To stand on the side of the common 
people in their struggle for freedom, justice and 
fair distribution of Wealth."

The PLF statement says that the PLF is an active 
member of the Democratic Alliance of Burma (DAB). 
DAB's principles are: "1. To overthrow the Burma 
military junta; 2. To stop the civil war and bring 
back peace; 3. to establish democracy; and 4. To 
establish a genuine federal union. [this last 
means incorporation of the oppressed nationalities 
and national minorities.]" 

TIMELINE

Both Britain and Japan, principally Britain, 
colonize Burma between 1824 and 1948. World War II 
creates an opportunity for the Burmese masses, as 
for the Chinese and many other oppressed peoples, 
to rebel. 

On January 4, 1948, Burma (but not its ethnic 
minorities) gains independence under the 
leadership of the Anti-Fascist People's Freedom 
League (AFPFL).

>From 1948 to 1958, Prime Minister U Nu of the 
AFPFL heads the Burmese government. His government 
practices bourgeois democracy and creates what an 
unsigned document sent to MIM by the PLF calls "a 
socialist welfare state." This document says that 
the AFPFL government faced revolts by Communists 
"who lacked the people's support" and 
nationalists. MIM does not know enough about these 
revolts to comment significantly on them. But we 
do not believe that socialism and bourgeois 
democracy are compatible; true socialism requires 
the dictatorship of the proletariat.

In September 1958, the Burmese Army seizes power, 
under the leadership of General Ne Win. In 1960, U 
Nu, now of the Union Party, wins power back in an 
election. U Nu takes office in April 1960 and 
proposes a federalist system to placate Burma's 
national minorities.

Proving that a progressive government requires a 
People's Army if it is to survive, Gen. Ne Win 
leads a coup in March 1962. Gen. Ne Win deposes U 
Nu and establishes single-party military rule, 
which continues today.

In July 1973, the People's Liberation Front (PLF) 
is formed by five activist students of Mandalay 
University. Rangoon University also has at least 
one underground anti-government cell. The cells at 
both schools circulate anti-government pamphlets.

In the summer of 1987, Ne Win plays for 
international support by relaxing state control 
over trade in rice and other agricultural products 
(but gives no guarantee that the lifting of 
restrictions would last). This is accompanied by 
phony political reforms. 

On September 5, 1987, the government declares 80% 
of Burmese currency worthless, which sparks mass 
rebellion in Rangoon and Mandalay, and inspires 
many students to flee to the hills to join the 
insurgent forces.

On October 1, 1987, the People's Liberation Front 
of Burma issues "A Communique From Burma." 
condemning the Ne Win government and its abuses. 
The communique says that the ethnic minorities 
suffer worst, that 30% of Burma is under insurgent 
control, and that: "Our party aims to represent 
more than a single ethnic group or class. We are 
working for the rights of all the oppressed people 
of Burma. Our aim is democracy..."

The PLF Communique says that "The Communist Party 
of Burma, operating in the north of the country, 
has been unable to gain popular support, and has 
lost the backing of China, which now seems to 
prefer more profitable dealings with the Burmese 
government. China ... has turned a deaf ear to the 
suffering of the Burmese people." 

MIM would add that the Communist Party of Burma 
(CPB) had also turned a deaf ear to the people, as 
it is clear from other sources that the CPB upheld 
the anti-Maoist, social-fascist (socialist in 
words, fascist in deeds) Deng Xiaoping regime in 
China. With Burma's main "Communist" Party 
upholding fascism, and with a fascist government 
which sometimes called itself "socialist," it is 
no wonder that the mass movement against the 
fascist Burmese government is led by a national 
bourgeoisie and not by communists: the phony 
socialists and phony communists have succeeded in 
giving communism a bad name for many Burmese.

In July 1988, waves of anti-government 
demonstrations force Gen. Ne Win to resign from 
his Party Chair post. In 1990, the PLF Central 
Committee describes this as the military junta 
"brutally crushing the country-wide movement for 
democracy."

In 1989, the Dengist Communist Party of Burma 
(CPB) collapses. Likely, the embarrassment of 
supporting Deng Xiaoping became too great once 
Deng's "Communist" Party of China proved its 
similarity to SLORC by shooting at unarmed, pro-
"democracy" students in June 1989.

On May 27, 1990, the Burmese government holds its 
sham elections. The opposition party National 
League for Democracy (NLD) wins overwhelmingly, 
but a new government is never formed. MIM Notes 42 
said at the time that "[t]here was little chance 
of the elections being democratic as the country 
has remained under military rule since [1962]." 
MIM called the elections "a ruse to allow foreign 
investors such as Japan to restore suspended trade 
and investment."

Following the phony elections, in May and June 
1990, the Burmese military arrests many elected 
representatives from the NLD. The opposition forms 
a government-in-exile, the National Coalition 
Government of the Union of Burma, on the Thai-
Burmese border.

On November 17, 1993, the SLORC government 
expresses its willingness to hold talks with the 
jungle-based armed organizations. 

On December 1, 1993, DAB Chairman General Saw Bo 
Mya sends a letter to SLORC Chairman General Than 
Shwe for official DAB-SLORC talks. SLORC replies 
that it would not talk with either DAB or the NDF, 
but would talk only with individual armed 
organizations. (The NDF is the alliance of ethnic 
armed forces.) 

>From January 11-14, 1994, DAB holds an emergency 
meeting, at the end of which their Central 
Committee releases a statement rejecting SLORC's 
divisive approach to talks and saying that DAB 
fights for a true peace. Here DAB defines its 
objective as: "Establishment of a genuine federal 
republic based on democracy."

CONCLUSION

We thank the writer for providing us with 
information about the PLF and DAB, but we still 
seek information on Maoism in Burma. 

MIM is also looking for information about the 
nature and extent of the U.S. role in Burma. We 
are aware that Pepsi, Amoco and Unocal have played 
a role in propping up Burma's fascist ruling 
regime, but we seek a deeper understanding. 

We encourage both the original letter writer and 
all others, including Burmese exiles in this 
country, to provide more information and join us 
in the struggle to liberate humanity with the most 
successful means possible - Marxism-Leninism-
Maoism.


* * * 

DENG'S STATE-CAPITALISM MEETS ROBIN COOK

The bourgeois media announced last month that 
prisoners executed by the state-capitalist regime 
in China may be having their organ's harvested for 
sale abroad or for use by party officials. China's 
neighboring countries, Hong Kong and Taiwan 
announced a ban on all organs imported from China 
for fear of participating in this human rights 
abuse. Amnesty International expressed its concern 
that profitability of organ harvesting from 
China's estimated 10,000 executions a year would 
prove to be a "obstacle in limiting the use of the 
death penalty".

China's actions under Deng appears to confuse the 
bourgeois media. On the one hand, China is 
applauded for its venture capitalism and for 
allowing companies like Boeing, AT&T, and Motorola 
into their country. On the other hand China is 
still portrayed as a brutal, authoritarian, 
Communist government. While groups like Amnesty 
attempt to reconcile China's communist past with 
its capitalist future, MIM understands that 
China's draconian and repressive policies only 
arose with capitalist restoration when Deng and 
co. seized state power after the death of Mao. 

Maybe other capitalist countries like Amerika are 
simply worried that China can isolate a human 
organ market that their brand of capitalism can't 
touch.

NOTE: Boston Globe 10/25/94.


* * * 

UNDER LOCK & KEY

INDIANA CENSORS MIM NOTES

State of Indiana
Department of Correction

Notice and Report of Action taken on 
correspondence

Package is a danger to the safety of an 
individual(s) or security of the institution.

 - received from Westville Correctional Center, 
9/26/94


TEXAS CENSORS ANTI-RACIST MIM NOTES ARTICLE

Publication denial notification

MIM Notes 7/94 #90 has been reviewed and denied in 
accordance with Section 3.9 of the TDCJ-ID Rules 
and Regulations for the reason(s) checked below:

Publication contains material that a reasonable 
person would construe as written solely for the 
purpose of communicating information designed to 
achieve a breakdown of prisons through inmate 
disruption such as strikes or riots.

Page 9 contains material of a racial nature which 
could lead to prison disruptions if distributed on 
the units. (Qualifies for clipping. Page 9 [1 
page].)

 - Mail System Coordinators Panel, Texas Dept. of 
Criminal Justice, 9/12/94

MC49 responds: The material the pigs say is "of a 
racial nature" is "Captive in Scioto KKKounty," by 
an Ohio prisoner. This article exposes 
institutionalized racism in Scioto KKKounty and 
its Southern Ohio Correctional Facility.


GOV. ALLEN'S PROPOSAL IS A CRIME!

The Virginia legislature is voting now on a 
proposal to cement shut all the cracks in its 
current program of repression on the poor and 
minority underclass.  The governor's proposal 
eliminates parole for all but a few crimes and 
requires the construction of 27 new prisons to 
contain the consequent multiplying of inmates. The 
result of this billion dollar state enterprise is 
to keep a mostly Black and Latino, mostly poor or 
working-class population defined by birthmark as 
"criminal" locked behind bars for an average of 
three to seven times as long.  In essence, this 
plan would give the go-ahead to target a class of 
people already branded as disposable and 
undesirable for genocidal removal.

CLASS POLITICS OF PRISON

We believe that this proposal, the politically 
attractive but humanly devastating "lock-em-up" 
mentality (as seen on television commercials 
nationwide under the buzzword of "tough on crime") 
must be seen in the perspective of a capitalist 
imperialism in order to be resisted effectively.  
First of all, prisons are not, and have never 
been, a means of "reducing crime".  Even a recent 
NRA study showed that, although the U.S. prison 
population more than doubled from 1980 to 1990, 
the number of violent crimes (murder, rape, 
robbery, and assault) stayed relatively constant.  
The very popularity of the concept of abolishing 
parole is due to the realization the United States 
prison system is a failure at its stated purpose 
of "rehabilitating" errants.  The truth is that 
prison inmates are simply not given opportunities 
for education or job training, or any means of 
making a healthy transition back into the outside 
world.  Instead, they are warehoused in 
overcrowded cells, facing boredom, resentment, and 
an atmosphere of violence and abuse that guards 
both create and encourage among inmates.  Is it 
any wonder that some convicts go back and commit 
crimes again after being released?

Prisons do not prevent crime in any way.  Neither 
by rehabilitation or by deterrent factor.  The 
U.S. presently has the highest imprisonment rate 
of all nations in the first world, as well as the 
highest crime rate.  In order to justify his plan, 
Gov. Allen is resorting to the weak argument, 
"well, if you keep criminals locked up, then 
they're not out on the streets committing more 
crimes."  But prisons do not prevent crime even in 
this inefficient and illogical way.  Most behavior 
that is branded as "criminal" takes place in poor 
inner-city neighborhoods and is a direct response 
to the situations and conditions that these 
neighborhoods produce.  The majority of crimes 
that are punished with prison terms are non-
violent property offenses - theft, vandalism, 
burglary, and use or sale of drugs - crimes that 
are obviously motivated by the class situation of 
the perpetrators.  And even the majority of 
violent crimes are motivated by class conflict, 
frustration at poverty, inequality, and racism.  
The violence doesn't come from the poor; what is 
punished as "crime" is, for the most part, the 
oppressed people reacting (in one of the only ways 
available to them) to a systematic program of 
class warfare by the middle and upper classes.  In 
these neighborhoods, more than one out of four 
males is in prison; a difficult situation for any 
community to sustain itself.  And under the no-
parole program, those numbers will be even higher, 
further destabilizing communities and lighting the 
fuses that explode into crimes.  The state has a 
monopoly on legal violence to such a degree that 
even attempts at self-defence by oppressed peoples 
are criminalized.

One argument that must be refuted in order to get 
to the roots of injustices in the prison system is 
that usually invoked by liberal critiques, that 
the criminal justice system is merely an emotional 
release, a way for society to enact vengeance on a 
person who breaks its rules.  While it is true 
that emotional "sob stories" of victims are 
certainly exploited by the ruling class as an 
effective way of gaining consent for a tougher-on-
crime approach, this viewpoint hides the most 
repressive functions of prisons. While the 
governor and attorney general are relying on 
isolated stories of individual victims to give 
their genocidal plan a more "human" face and 
convince people despite all the evidence that 
prisons are in the best interest of minorities and 
poor people, the judicial and penal systems are 
fine-tuning their structural program of racist and 
classist repression.

RACE POLITICS OF PRISON

In "A Brief History of the New Afrikan Prison 
Struggle", political prisoner Sundiata Acoli 
begins, "The Afrikan prison struggle began on the 
shores of Afrika behind the walls of medieval pens 
that  held captives for ships bound west into 
slavery.  It continues today behind the walls of 
modern U.S. penitentiaries where all prisoners are 
held as legal slaves".  To understand the present 
functioning of prisons in America we must 
understand their historic role in the suppression 
of post-slavery New Afrikan autonomy.

The first prison in the US was established in 
Philadelphia in 1790, but as long as Afrikans were 
held as outright chattel, the prison populations 
remained white. However, within five years after 
the end of the civil war the percentage of Black 
prison inmates went from 0 to 33. Once imprisoned 
these black men were held in segregation and hired 
out by the State.  In the factories , plantations, 
chain gangs and workhouses, the role of Afrikan as 
slave was maintained despite the Civil War and the 
Emancipation Proclamation.  How did this occur?  
Through the imposition of white law, created and 
applied in an outrightly racist manner by the 
architects and engineers of slavery.  Acoli 
writes,

"Immediately after the Civil War and at the end of 
slavery, vast numbers of Black males were 
imprisoned for everything from not signing slave-
like labor contracts with plantation owners to 
looking the "wrong" way at some White person or 
for some similar "petty crime".  Any 
"transgression" perceived by Whites to be of a 
more serious nature was normally dealt with on the 
spot with a gun or a rope...provided the Black was 
outnumbered and outarmed".

Thus "law and order" and its prisons were used in 
post-Civil War America to reinstate the social 
order of slavery and defend that order through a 
reign of terror.  These conditions continue today  
when 2/3 of Virginia's prisoners are black though 
only 20% of Virginia is black.  Governor Allen 
pretends that his law will protect "minorities" by 
locking-up more "minorities" in a state that 
already exceeds the national average for 
disproportionate imprisonment of Black people.

The cops in their cruisers and helicopters, the 
racist courts, and the brutal, dehumanizing 
prisons are part of a centuries old struggle by 
the white supremacist USA to repress Afrikan 
autonomy in this land.  We must question the 
authority of white law to lock-up Black people who 
were never given franchise in this country, whose 
every struggle toward self-determination has been 
met with brutal repression.  Governor Allen's 
attempt to end parole must be understood as an 
intensification of the marginalization and 
oppression of Black people.

THE INDUSTRY OF PRISON & THE PRISON INDUSTRIES

Following the logic of all activities in 
capitalist society, the imprisonment of a socially 
inscribed criminal class is made a profitable 
enterprise.  With prisons numerous jobs are 
created in construction the service sector, and 
management.  Thus in the context of "post-
industrial" America and its economically decaying 
settlements. prisons are a perfect growth 
industry.  Prisons provide solutions to two 
problems facing capitalist organization of 
society:  what to do with the growing and 
threatening urban underclass and what to do with 
the towns suffering a lack of industrial 
employment.  Their answer has been to put the 
underclass in prison and hire the working class to 
build the new prisons, guard the prisoners and 
along with middle class professionals, provide 
various "services" from food to psychiatric 
therapy.  On top of all of this, the ruling class 
can turn a profit.

Thus in rural Florence, Colorado, there is the 
recent case of citizens lobbying for the placement 
of a new $200 billion prison complex holding 2,500 
people in four different prisons, including a 
control unit ("Administrative Maximum").  All over 
the country, with law and order on the march, 
prisons mean economic opportunity.

Of course, this situation also reinforces class 
and racial stratifications and antagonisms 
necessary to maintain capitalism.  With the 
increased imprisonment of an urban, Black 
underclass having been signified as criminal. and 
the day to day repressive operations of these 
prisons being carried out typically by white 
members of a privileged working class, American 
capitalism reinscribes white solidarity across 
class lines while fragmenting possibilities for 
class solidarity....

We oppose the Virginia plan to abolish parole, 
because we see it as an intensification of the 
ruling classes war against poor and oppressed 
people.

 - by Anarchist Black Cross
   P.O. Box 77432, Washington, DC 20013


FREE DR. MUTULU SHAKUR!

A campaign has been initiated around the case of 
Dr. Mutulu Shakur, a New Afrikan prisoner of war 
incarcerated at the US Penitentiary in Marion, 
Illinois. Dr. Shakur, a co-founder of the Black 
Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America 
(BAANA) and the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture, 
led the Lincoln Hospital Detoxification Program, 
which pioneered the use of acupuncture in the 
successful treatment of narcotics addiction. He 
was arrested in California several years ago after 
an international manhunt conducted by the FBI's 
Joint Terrorist Task Force, which painted him as 
the leader of a failed attempt to expropriate 
funds from an armored car in Nyack, NY by the 
Revolutionary Armed Task Force. Mutulu had been 
driven underground by this frame-up, and his 
family and friends were put under surveillance and 
harassed as the FBI tried to find out where he 
was.

Dr. Shakur is serving a 60 year sentence, not for 
any crime he committed, but for his life-long and 
uncompromising commitment to and leadership of the 
liberation struggle of his people. He has a long 
history of solidarity work for African liberation 
struggles. In particular, he was closely involved 
with the Zimbabwean liberation struggle against 
the white settler colonial "Rhodesian" regime. He 
was invited by ZANU to the Zimbabwean Independence 
Day celebration in 1980, and participated as an 
international monitor and observer of Zimbabwe's 
first free elections to report back to Africans in 
the U.S. that same year.

In 1968, as a member of the Revolutionary Action 
Movement and activist in the struggle for 
community control of education in Ocean Hill-
Brownsville, a Black community in Brooklyn, NY, 
Shakur was a co-founder of the Republic of New 
Afrika, a beginning effort to define the Black 
struggle inside the U.S. as a national liberation 
movement to free the land.

Later, he was the Coordinator of the National Task 
Force for COINTELPRO Litigation and Research, a 
group which investigated and exposed the illegal 
counter-intelligence program conducted by the FBI 
and the US government. This program was designed 
to disrupt and destroy the Black Liberation 
Movement, the American Indian Movement and other 
forces for radical social change in the US. The 
Task Force was instrumental in exposing the extent 
of the illegal FBI activity and frame-ups in 
numerous cases of repression around the country 
through its own independent investigative efforts, 
beyond what was dribbled out by the government in 
Freedom of Information and discovery motions and 
Congressional hearings.

In addition to his precedent-setting work with 
acupuncture as a tool for drug de-toxification, 
Dr. Shakur worked on a petition brought to the 
United Nations by the National Conference of Black 
Lawyers concerning the human rights violations and 
genocidal conditions suffered by people of African 
descent in the US. All of these above-ground 
political activities were targeted for repression. 
Lincoln Detox, for example, was shut down, and one 
of the participating doctors killed, and the 
government introduced methadone maintenance as a 
way to keep heroin addicts hooked and dependent on 
their government drug suppliers, instead of 
allowing them to become drug-free and politically 
conscious through the acupuncture program.

The U.S. conspiracy against Dr. Shakur has 
intensified since his capture, because he has 
continued his struggle inside prisons. He has 
focused on setting up prisoner programs to 
eliminate the prison-fostered fratricide between 
African, Latino, Asian, Native and white inmates. 
He has tried to develop a social, cultural and 
political understanding among incarcerated Black 
youth. He is the author of a "Code for the Thug 
Life," a program to eliminate the random violence 
that exists within the Black colony in America. 

As a result, in April he was suddenly and 
unreasonably transferred from the penitentiary in 
Lewisburg, PA to Marion, the highest-security 
prison in the US. There, he is locked down 23 
hours a day, and gets 2 hours a week of outdoor 
recreation. The Bureau of Prisons claims the 
transfer was for administrative, not disciplinary 
reasons - in other words, even though he had no 
infractions, the BOP wanted to isolate him from 
contact with other prisoners because of the threat 
of his revolutionary example and practice. The BOP 
has since told him that he'll be moved again, to 
the newest and most "secure" (read: repressive) US 
penitentiary in Florence, Colorado.

It's clear that Dr. Mutulu Shakur is being 
punished for his political beliefs. To support 
him, write to him: Dr. Mutulu Shakur, #83205-012, 
USP Marion, PO Box 1000, Marion, IL 62959. Or 
contact the December 12th Movement International 
Secretariat, P.O. Box 1283, Lincolntown Station, 
New York, NY 10037; (212) 234-7788, which is 
coordinating international contacts on his behalf. 
You can also write to the Malcolm X Grassroots 
Movement, P.O. Box 19211, Los Angeles, CA 90019, 
which is taking up his case.

 - reprinted from People Against Racist Terror
   (PART)'s Turning the Tide, 9/94. PART can be
   reached at P.O. Box 1990, Burbank, CA 91507.


PRISONERS REFUSE TO BE DIVIDED OR CONQUERED

Here's a little input on what's taking place on 
this location: we went on lockdown 8/31/94, 
because a pig put his hands on a convict, so the 
brother ran a set off on the pig. We got off 
lockdown again on 9/14/94 because a race riot was 
about to jump off in the cell house I'm in. 

Well, let me give you a little background on this 
cell house. D Cell House used to be a regular cell 
house until 7/92, when we had a major lockdown of 
the whole prison. But when the major lockdown was 
over in 6/93, the prison changed. 

In 1/93, the oppressors started moving all the 
people in D Cell House who they thought were 
troublemakers. They moved 95% of the gang leaders 
and members to this cell house. What they thought 
was gonna happen was the gang members (People, 
Bloods, El Rukns, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, Folks, 
Crips, GDs, BDs and Latin Disciples) were gonna 
kill each other, but that never did happen. They 
all became one and started study groups to learn 
history, law and whatever they could get their 
hands on. 

So in 6/93, they started putting Klan and skinhead 
members in D Cell House, hoping something would 
jump. But it didn't; everybody got together and 
kept studying. So on 9/14/94, tension started 
getting thick, because the oppressors have been 
labeling dudes as snitches. And then no one was 
trusting anyone. The people of color stopped 
trusting people not of color and vice versa. 

So shit was about to jump. But the Muslim brothers 
said, "We ain't gonna let this shit jump" over 
what was nonsense. We (I'm a Muslim myself) knew 
it was the institution behind the labeling, so we 
stepped in and took control. But they still have 
this cell house locked down for nothing. That's 
where we are at as of now.

Please put this in your paper, so people can see 
how people with power play people without it!

 - a Californian prisoner in Indiana, 9/22/94

P.S. My mother finally got a subscription to MIM 
Notes. Long live the struggle.


ADMINISTRATIVE "ACCIDENTS"

... Since the "grand opening of the Security 
Housing Unit (SHU) at Pelican Bay in 1988, several 
stabbings and physical assaults have occurred 
which resulted from the unit control officers' 
opening cell doors within the same unit pod of 
opposing prison and ethnic groups.

These are considered "accidents," but all too 
often, these "accidents" only occur between rival 
gang members, prison groups and ethnic groups. 
These so-called accidents can only occur by the 
deliberate and intentional actions of the control 
booth officers due to the prisoners involved.

On the one hand, the prison administration 
segregates us under the guise of deterring prison 
violence on the main lines. Yet on the other hand, 
the administration creates the violence under 
controlled conditions. They now determine who is 
going to attack who and when.

Some prisoners are intelligent enough to 
understand this, and when it's their turn for the 
doors to open on them, don't play into that cross. 
These acts are acts the prison administration 
doesn't report to the masses, yet uses to support 
the need for greater prison restrictions and 
legislation behind the scenes. The prison system 
creates the exact conditions necessary to 
perpetuate its existence.

 - by a California prisoner, 7/23/94. Reprinted 
from the Coalition for Prisoners' Rights (CFPR) 
Newsletter, 9/94. CFPR can be reached at P.O. Box 
1911, Santa Fe, NM 87504-1911


ANOTHER AFRIKAN

Another gunshot blast; another last breath
Another Black-on-Black crime; another senseless
  death
Another drive-by hit; another bullet strays
Another playground becomes a warzone; another
  innocent child lays
Another time to mourn; another Mother must be
  strong
Another funeral procession; another funeral song

Another Rock sold; another pipe of crack smoke
Another hustle to pay for another toke
Another busy corner on another busy night
Another Sister sells her body for the five-minute
  hype
Another drug bust; another Benz confiscated
Another Black Warrior incarcerated

Another Afrikan locked in an eight-foot cell
Another Afrikan subjected to amerikkka's caged
  hell
Another Afrikan pushed to the brink
Ah, but another Afrikan with lots of time to think
Another Afrikan learning to understand
The plots and schemes of the master plan

Just another pawn in the oppressor's game
Another tool for this evil system, white supremacy
  is its name
Another tool used to boost the cracka's ego
Another tool used to maintain the status quo
Another fool used for the Afrikan Community's
  annihilation
All the while strengthening white supremacy's 
domination

Another Afrikan did hard time
But released with a new conscious of mind
Another Soul denounces being amerikkkan
And embraces the Spirit of being Afrikan

Now understands the importance of Afrikan Unity
And realizes we must rebuild the Afrikan
  communities

Another Afrikan knows amerikkka: we can't trust
Her survival is dependent on criminalizing Us
Another Afrikan realizes no matter who the
  president
We must be Free and Independent
Another Afrikan takes the vow of Freedom or Death
And fights for Afrikan Liberation until the last
  breath

- reprinted from Crossroad
  9/94



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.


* * * 

LETTERS TO MIM

REVOLUTION IS FRIGHTENING

I have the September issue, which I know is a 
while ago... 

The first thing that scared me a little about the 
paper was the title, and the icons. I didn't 
really understand what it was all about at first, 
but then I turned the page, and there was the 
description, which helped a lot. And although my 
knowledge of history and the communist movement is 
a little bit shaky, I think I can understand the 
general points.

I agree with many of the general principles of the 
movement, but still, the newsletter frightened me 
a great deal. After all, I feel very small in the 
whole scheme of things. The word "revolution" is 
one that I am not exactly comfortable with, which 
I think is easy enough to understand. Of course I 
feel that there are many things that need to be 
changed, and I agree that the statistics mentioned 
in the newsletter are alarming. But to tell the 
truth, I am not convinced that Socialism or 
Communism are really the answer to all of this. 
The biggest problem is that I sometimes fell like 
there are really no answers.

Thank you for the paper. Enclosed is a dollar to 
pay for it, which I promised 

-Student in the East

MIM Responds: Thank you for the dollar, and thanks 
for getting back in touch. You are right, 
revolution is a frightening thing. But it's also 
wonderful. It means a total change in the way we 
live our lives. Throwing out the old order and 
building a new one will mean improvements in the 
material lives of the majority of the world. And 
it's the communist-led revolutions that have had 
the most success 

Revolution is also frightening (but not so 
wonderful) to those who have something to lose. In 
this country, the majority here has much to lose 
from revolution and the payment of reparations to 
the Third World and the internal colonies. 

We need to overcome our fears and struggle to make 
the best society possible, with the best possible 
means.

Everywhere in capitalist society, people are 
supposed to feel alienated and powerless. You are 
feeling the effects of this alienation. We need to 
struggle against this alienation and the nihilism 
it produces. Only the people can make revolution, 
so we need to arm ourselves with revolutionary 
theory, and struggle as hard as we can to put our 
ideas into practice.

Contact MIM about joining a study group in your 
area. 


TURNING ANGER INTO REVOLUTION

Dear MIM:

Today, October 5, 1994, this flyer caught my eye. 
I attend a majority white school called X. The 
statement that "The United States is a free 
country" has never once been true to me.

I'm a black eighteen year old young lady who has 
grown up in X around mainly black people. And I 
see how much anger my black brothers have stored 
up inside themselves. The fact that blacks get 
much longer jail terms for doing the exact crime a 
white might commit, that brothers get much longer 
terms if they commit a crime against a white as 
opposed to a black and the many other injustices 
that we as blacks have to deal with, makes me 
upset and more than that it makes me eager to make 
a change. I would like to know more about your 
organization and what I can do to be a part of it.

-Student reading MIM posters 

MIM responds: It sounds like we already have quite 
a bit of base agreement. Nation is the principle 
contradiction and your brothers' anger is 
justified. Bourgeois democracy which has power in 
Amerika was never intended to extend to its 
internal colonies. Thus we do not define 
"political prisoner" in the narrow way that 
Amnesty International or others do, but rather 
take into account the presence of internal 
colonies and recognize prisons as a tool of 
oppression. 

We are glad you are ready to channel your anger 
against the system into abolishing it. The youth 
are key to creating change because they see 
through the lie that Amerika is altruistic. Not 
yet subdued into blind acceptance, they refuse to 
accept its oppression without challenge. In a 
sense, they have less to lose because their place 
in society is in flux. Those who are members of 
oppressed nations have much to gain by revolution.

We can get you in touch with MIM comrades in your 
area and you can join in the building of public 
opinion which is the focus of the vanguard's role 
at this time. Creating study groups of Maoist 
literature, distributing MIM Notes, arguing line 
with the masses, bringing speakers to your area: 
all of these are good practice for 
revolutionaries. MIM encourages people to struggle 
with us about our line and join in the creation of 
it.


SPREADING MAOISM IN AMERIKA'S PRISONS

Dear MIM,

At the present time I am a prisoner in the state 
of Washington serving a 10 1/2 year sentence for 
crimes committed against the establishment in 
1991.

Recently I became aware of your publication "MIM 
Notes" and was impressed with what I read. 
Unfortunately, the paper belonged to a fellow 
convict and before I was able to obtain all the 
information that I wanted he was moved to another 
unit, hence my letter to you now.

I would greatly appreciate being added to your 
mailing list so that I may receive your 
publication. As I said before, I am a prisoner and 
lack funds to pay you, but would be delighted to 
submit my thoughts and view points for possible 
publication. If my contribution in words and 
thoughts is sufficient payment then so be it.

Respectfully submitted, 

-Washington State prisoner

MIM Responds: Thanks for getting in touch. We know 
that Maoism is being spread throughout Amerika's 
prisons in just the way you describe - prisoners 
are passing around information and building 
revolutionary consciousness. MIM will make sure 
that you get added to the mailing list. After a 
few months, it's a good idea to write again and 
confirm your address because the pigs keep 
comrades moving around so our list needs to be 
updated frequently. 

We strongly encourage you to act on the advice 
printed on the prison pages for what prisoners can 
do to help build MIM: start study groups, share 
materials like your fellow prisoner did, fight the 
prison's restrictions and keep in touch with those 
of us on the outside. Writing for MIM Notes is 
also extremely important. The bourgeois press 
produces thousands of pages a day spouting the 
views of the oppressor nation, but there are few 
places that express the views of the oppressed. 
Amerika wants the ones it locks up to be silenced 
because their words disprove the lie of altruistic 
equality in this "free country." 

MIM believes the oppressed should be heard, and we 
act on that conviction by putting their opinions 
into print. We encourage you to write again and 
describe both your experiences and your politics 
to become a part of the discussion that builds 
public opinion for revolution and creates the 
correct line. Do not let lack of money keep you 
from getting involved - you have an important role 
to play.


BOOKS FOR PRISONERS

Dear Comrades,

Thanks for the information on the Black Panther 
Party. here's some reading material for our 
brothers under lock and key. Thanks again.

Signed,

Comrade in the Southwest

[Enclosed: Malcolm X: The FBI Files; Soul on Ice; 
To Kill a Black Man; Black Power; 100 Amazing 
Facts about the Negro with Complete Proof; 
Historic speeches of African Americans; The 
Autobiography of Malcolm X; The Struggle: A 
history of the African National Congress; The 
Wretched of the Earth.]

MIM Responds: Yours is a great example for 
everyone who has appreciated our literature and 
wants to help spread the word. MIM's books for 
prisoners program is important but our resources 
are scant. We urge anyone who has books they can 
spare to take action to aid Amerika's prisoners in 
their political development. 

Don't have any books to send? Send money or 
stamps.


WHITES DON'T LIKE THE SYSTEM

In a recent article on Elections (November 1994) 
you said: "The majority of white Amerikans support 
or participate in the electoral system." I don't 
believe this: from what I've heard, read, seen, 
etc., most citizens do not register to vote. Even 
fewer actually do vote. I do not remember what the 
racial breakdown of this was, but I remember that 
most whites also do not vote. Could you please 
cite the study or research that you base your 
statement on? 

-St. Stephen 
November 1994

MC12 responds: The critic raises a small point 
over a general principle, so we should talk a 
minute to address it. There is a very common 
perception among Amerikan leftists that the 
problem with Amerikans is that they don't 
participate enough, or don't care enough about 
politics. MIM argues instead that the more they 
participate the worse it gets.

The assumption of much of the Amerikan left is 
that the political system does not give Amerikans 
what they want. Either whites just don't know 
what's good for them (the theory goes) because of 
media and cultural brainwashing, or they are 
trying to buck the system but just can't because 
the rules favor incumbents - or some other excuse. 
Ideological blinders prevent these people from 
understanding that the majority of Amerikans 
benefit from this system - its economy and 
politics.

This is often considered "pessimism," but MIM 
prefers revolutionary science to feel-good 
pandering, so we take the truth wherever it leads. 
For example, MIM also acknowledges that 
significant numbers of non-whites are also 
benefiting from this system. We also avoid too 
many feel-bad days by thinking about the rest of 
the world, in which the vast majority of people 
are oppressed by imperialism. Unlike Amerikans, 
they have demonstrated over and over that they 
recognize imperialism for the oppressor it is, and 
are willing to fight to rid the world of its 
scourge.

By the way, in the 1992 presidential election, 
104,552,736 voted, according to official results, 
or 55.9% of the voting-age population. Unless non- 
whites vote at a much higher rate than whites, 
there is your majority. In 1988, 67.9% of eligible 
whites said they were registered.

NOTES: World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1994, p. 
613-5. 1991 Statistical Abstract of the United 
States, p. 268.


MIM IN SCHOOL?

I'm in high school still, hadn't heard but vague 
statements made about Haiti, and then we've been 
spending the last few days in history and 
economics talking and reading about Haiti. In 
fact, we're having an enrichment today, and I'm 
expected to be the head of the Aristide supporters 
... but, I have a four page essay due on Monday in 
which I am supposed to speak of the link between 
politics and economics in Haiti. So far, I see a 
very clear link, but not one that will fill four 
pages. So, I need more knowledge ...

-Interested student on Internet 
September 1994

MIM responds: There is indeed a very clear link 
between politics and economics in Haiti - as there 
is everywhere! In Haiti, the official political 
system has largely been the product of U.S. 
economic interests as enforced at the barrel of 
Amerikan military weapons. President Aristide 
posed a threat to that system, so the Amerikans 
and Haitian military and economic elites got rid 
of him in a coup. When there was a stink over 
that, they agreed to put Aristide back under U.S. 
and U.N. military occupation - to make sure he 
won't threaten with that system any more.

This student wrote in response to an offer of a 
free collection of MIM Notes articles on Haiti 
over the Internet. MIM articles may be useful to 
students even though our politics are suppressed 
by many teachers; our articles are footnoted, 
which helps students who use them put forward 
their best defense. For a free electronic Haiti 
pamphlet, send e-mail to mim@nyxfer.blythe.org. A 
copy on paper costs $5.

To buy a one-year e-mail subscription to MIM 
Notes, send $12 to: "MIM Distributors," PO Box 
3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-3576. MIM Notes is 
available to members of the New York Transfer News 
Collective, an alternative computer news and 
information system networking activists and 
organizations all over the world. NYT also offers 
Internet accounts. For information write to 
nyt@nyxfer.blythe.org or NYT New Collective, 39 
West 14th St. #206, New York NY 10011.


SUPPORTS IRAQ

My name is X from the All-African People's 
Revolutionary Party. I want to ask MIM: what is 
your position on the current Persian Gulf crisis? 
We want every one to know that we support the 
Iraqi people including Saddam Hussein in their 
struggle against American Imperialism.

-African revolutionary 

MC12 responds: Thank you for writing. MIM also 
supports the Iraqi people, but not their comprador 
ruling class or Saddam Hussein. The war against 
Iraq is not over; it remains a central part of the 
Amerikan war to control labor and resources in the 
Middle East and the Persian Gulf region. For that 
reason, we think it's appropriate to quote from 
our article on this question from March 1991. This 
article followed an article on Revolutionary 
Defeatism, in which MIM explained our position in 
favor of Amerika losing the war. MIM's position is 
that communist-led national liberation struggle 
and People's War are the best tools for liberation 
in oppressed nations. Imperialist-style wars 
against Amerika or other imperialist powers are a 
dead end don't benefit the oppressed.

>From MIM Notes 50: 

"Marxists should know that the 'Defend Iraq' 
slogan plays into the hands of the Iraqi 
bourgeoisie. By so doing, the Marxists also disarm 
real struggle against U.S. imperialism, because 
Saddam Hussein cannot mobilize the masses to 
struggle against imperialism. ...

"To avoid opportunism in any war situation, the 
real Marxist must examine things on a class basis. 
Iraqi workers and peasants have no interest in 
dying to protect Saddam Hussein or the rest of the 
current Iraqi government.

"One should scrutinize three concepts in thinking 
about class analysis and war:

"Governments and ruling classes: MIM defends no 
current governments or ruling classes in the 
world.

"Nations: MIM defends Third World peoples against 
First World peoples. MIM defends the Iraqi masses 
against U.S. imperialism. This concept overlaps 
with the concept below of classes.

"Classes: MIM opposes workers or peasants fighting 
each other. Working masses should only fight for a 
dictatorship of the proletariat in alliance with 
peasants.

"The Iraqi military is not going to win this 
conventional war that they are fighting on 
bourgeois terms against the Amerikan imperialist 
powers. The only way the Iraqi people can succeed 
in achieving true liberation is by reorganizing to 
fight a peoples war."


AN OPEN LETTER TO THE BETTER ANARCHISTS

by MC49

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is 
aware that in North Amerika today, there are a 
growing number of people who simultaneously uphold 
anarchism and revolutionary national liberation 
struggles. Two leaders (gasp!) of this trend are 
Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin (author of "Anarchism and 
the Black Revolution") and Cooperative 
Distribution Services (distributor of works by J. 
Sakai, E. Tani, K. Sera, Butch Lee, Red Rover and 
more). The influence of these leaders (gasp! 
gasp!) can be seen in most of North Amerika's 
anarchist press, as well as in grassroots 
organizing being done by anarchism's best in 
support of the oppressed nations.

MIM notes that the bulk of the better anarchists' 
work centers around North Amerika: splitting the 
white nation and supporting the struggles of the 
Black, Latino and First Nations. Supporting the 
EZLN in Mexico is also clearly high on the better 
anarchists' agenda.

MIM says good things are good, but we want what's 
best. To truly support national liberation (or for 
that matter, to truly uphold a universal ideology 
like anarchism or Maoism) is to be an 
internationalist. To be an internationalist, you 
have to broaden your horizons to include the whole 
globe, not just half a hemisphere.

Once you look at the whole globe, the first thing 
you'll see is China. One fifth of the world's 
people live there. It's history is something any 
supporter of national liberation has to take 
seriously. If you can't go beyond one-liners 
copped from the imperialist media and the Beatles, 
then you shouldn't speak at all. But since you've 
already decided to engage in progressive politics, 
why not go all the way?

The first thing a good anarchist will notice when 
they study China is that anarchism has been an 
utter failure there. Check it out: read "Anarchism 
in the Chinese Political Culture/Anarchism in the 
Chinese Revolution" on pp. 228-233 of the April 
1994 issue of the Journal of Contemporary Asia, 
then get back to us.

Some other things you'll see when you study China:

# Life-spans doubled under Mao, thanks to
  innovations in health care, education and
  production. Who controls the state is a life-or
  death matter which anarchists ignore while they
  idly *wish* the state would disappear.

# Mao had mass support and remains popular among
  the Chinese people (though not necessarily among
  Chinese immigrants to the U.S.) today. Perhaps
  anti-Maoist anarchists think these millions of
  people were all stupid for rejecting anarchism
  in favor of Maoism? MIM says anarchists could
  learn a thing or two from these masses.

# The current regime in China is not Maoist,
  communist or socialist. Deng Xiaoping was the
  number two target of the Cultural Revolution.
  The current regime is socialist in words,
  fascist in deeds.

# The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, led
  by Mao Zedong, was centered around a concern
  prevalent among anarchists. Anarchists are fond
  of saying that "power corrupts." MIM disagrees
  that this is always so, and points to Mao as an
  example of someone who seized power and used it
  to serve the people. But it is true that the
  seizure of state power by revolutionary
  communists does create the material basis for
  the rise of a new bourgeoisie within the ruling
  communist party. Mao's greatest contribution was
  his recognition of, exposure of, and battle
  against this new capitalist class. This battle
  was the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
  which kept the new bourgeoisie at bay from 1966
  until Mao's death in 1976. MIM recognizes this
  as the highest advance of communism in human
  history.

So hit the books, anarchists! MIM sells numerous 
books on China. Once you start studying China, it 
should be only a matter of time before you choose 
either outright anti-communist reaction or Maoism. 
Some have already made their choice and abandoned 
anarchist idealism for Maoist materialism. We 
expect to see some more of you soon.


CORRECTIONS

In MIM Notes 94, November 1994, MIM incorrectly 
reported that over 20 people were arrested at a 
demonstration outside the FERMI II nuclear power 
plant. The correct number is 16.

In the review of her work in MIM Notes 92, 
September 1994, MIM misspelled ani difranco's 
name.
-- 
## ##  ###  ## ##    MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT
# # #   #   # # #    P.O. BOX 3576 ANN ARBOR MI 48106
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