MIM Notes ***

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 1

MIM Notes

JUne 1, 2004, Nº 303

The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

Free

INSIDE: Calling Nader * France's last coal mine * Una Página en Español...

www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext

Uncle $am undertook a series of

dizzying moves to confuse the public

about Iraq in mid-May. Of course there

are the prison torture cover-up tactics,

with 1600 photos including murder and

rape not released, but here we want to

talk about how the government is trying

to pacify the public by leading it toward

its own fondest illusions.

The first move was by imperialist Colin

Powell, the Secretary of State, who said

that if the new Iraqi stooge regime coming

in on July 1 wants, U$ troops will leave.

Powell also said that he was sure they

would not leave,(1) but only some papers

and outlets covered that aspect.

Powell admitted that the new regime

of July 1, 2004 will be a U.$-lackey

regime: "Well, I think we have some say

in who should be receiving governmental

authority. We now have governmental

authority under the Coalition Provisional

Authority. Before we yield that, we have

to have some level of confidence of the

individuals to whom we are giving the

country back are prepared to act in the

best interest of the Iraqi people."(2) That

is not to mention that U$ military forces

will continue to operate, arrest people and

award contracts. It's such a dismal area

that even the U.$. Government

propaganda radio program admits that

Iraqi sovereignty will have flaws.(3)

Powell also acknowledged that 82% of

Iraqis want U$ troops to leave now.(2)

Moreover, Powell admitted that his UN

speech with photos of supposed WMD

sites in Iraq in 2003 was a load of manure:

"`When I made that presentation in

February 2003, it was based on the best

information that the Central Intelligence

Agency made available to me,' Powell

said yesterday on NBC's `Meet the

Press.'

"`It turned out that the sourcing was

inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases,

deliberately misleading. And for that, I am

disappointed, and I regret it,' he said."(4)

The CIA and military intelligence are also

taking a beating on the Iraqi prison torture,

so this is a question of which of these

factions of butchers is going to claim

successfully to be innocent angels.

Colin Powell admitted that the Iraqi

torture photos reminded him of the My

Lai massacre in Vietnam. On 16 March

1968, Amerikan soldiers massacred 300

unarmed Vietnamese civilians, most of

them women, children and elderly.

Yet after conciliatory statements by

Bush and Powell and after some cosmetic

orders to stop torturing prisoners, the truth

still came out: U$ troops are to stay in

Iraq "indefinitely," according to Assistant

Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz. He

Bay Area activists have pledged to shut

down the Biotechnology Convention

scheduled for June 6-9 in San Francisco.

The slogan of the protest is: "No War on

Iraq, No War on the Commons!" Many

anti-war organizations, such as Direct

Action to Stop the War, are taking

leadership roles in this protest. According

to their press release, "Organizers define

the commons as everything needed to

support healthy life on earth; from air,

water, and food, to public spaces, culture,

and genes."(1)

MIM supports organizing that prioritizes

basic survival rights--such as the right

FOX, CNN, NBC,

ETC. SHOULD

BE TRIED AS

CRIMINALS

Amerikan "Freedom

of Press" overrated

Amerikans claim they support invasions

like the Iraq war to foster "freedom"--

yet they turn a blind eye to the absence

of basic survival rights like healthy food

and clean water for billions of people.

These backwards concerns prioritize

individualist "freedoms," despite the fact

that the U$ press is only "free" relative

to the excessively repressive regimes that

Amerika supports around the globe.

Two years following the September 11th

attacks and 6 months after the recent

invasion of Iraq, 7 in 10 Amerikans still

believed that the ousted Iraqi leader

Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.(1)

Even though the Bush administration had

long admitted that it had no evidence for

claims of a connection, the government

fed media did such a good job propagating

such lies that the idea easily stuck in the

racist Amerikan mindset. After the United

$tates declared victory in Iraq and after

almost two months of searching for

Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)

in a U$ occupied land to no avail, 9 out of

10 people still believed Saddam had or

was close to having WMDs.(2)

The fact is, while many Amerikans

openly acknowledge that the war is good

in that it will bring cheaper oil to the

United $tates, it would have been

impossible to gather majority support

without linking an attack on the United

$tates or at least the threat of a future

attack by Saddam. The U$ chose the safe

route and utilized both. As a result over

10,000 people have died, hundreds of

thousands have become refugees and the

U$ has a new colony.(3)

The propagation of false threats and

lies about current events in order to stir

up support for militarism is a crime against

the people of the world. The Soviet Union

recognized this, passing a law after WWII

making it a serious crime to promote

militarism.(4) The people behind Fox,

NBC, CNN and all major media outlets

in the United $tates would have been put

on trial based on the crimes that they

U.$. admits troops to stay in Iraq, again

Charles Graner, an Army reservist who works as a guard at SCI-Greene Supermax prison

in Pennsylania when he's not torturing overseas, shown with the body of an Iraqi

prisoner murdered at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. We exposed torture at SCI-Greene in

1998, including naked beatings videotaped by guards, all while Graner was working

there (see MIM Notes 302).

Activists attack biotech convention

to healthy food and basic medicines--

over the "right" to profit. Science should

not be bought and sold by the imperialists.

It should serve the people.

The anti-biotech activists appropriately

link the biotech companies to the war on

Iraq. They start off strong: "From the

beginning of the anti-war movement,

Direct Action to Stop the War has targeted

the corporate interests behind the war --

that's why we shut down the San

Continued on page 4...

Continued on page 8...

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 2

What is MIM?

The Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM) is the collection of existing or emerging

Maoist internationalist parties in the English-speaking imperialist countries and their English-

speaking internal semi-colonies, as well as the existing or emerging Maoist Internationalist
parties in Belgium, France and Quebec and the existing or emerging Spanish-speaking
Maoist Internationalist parties of Aztlan, Puerto Rico and other territories of the U.$. Empire.

MIM Notes is the newspaper of MIM. Notas Rojas is the newspaper of the Spanish-speaking
parties or emerging parties of MIM. MIM upholds the revolutionary communist ideology
of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and is an internationalist organization that works from the

vantage point of the Third World proletariat. MIM struggles to end the oppression of all
groups over other groups: classes, genders, nations. MIM knows this is only possibly by
building public opinion to seize power through armed struggle. Revolution is a reality for

North America as the military becomes over-extended in the government's attempts to
maintain world hegemony. MIM differs from other communist parties on three main
questions: (1) MIM holds that after the proletariat seizes power in socialist revolution, the

potential exists for capitalist restoration under the leadership of a new bourgeoisie within
the communist party itself. In the case of the USSR, the bourgeoisie seized power after the
death of Stalin in 1953; in China, it was after Mao's death and the overthrow of the "Gang

of Four" in 1976. (2) MIM upholds the Chinese Cultural Revolution as the farthest advance
of communism in humyn history. (3) As Marx, Engels and Lenin formulated and MIM has
reiterated through materialist analysis, imperialism extracts super-profits from the Third

World and in part uses this wealth to buy off whole populations of oppressor nation so-
called workers. These so-called workers bought off by imperialism form a new petty-
bourgeoisie called the labor aristocracy. These classes are not the principal vehicles to

advance Maoism within those countries because their standards of living depend on
imperialism. At this time, imperialist super-profits create this situation in the Canada, Quebec,
the United $tates, England, France, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Italy, Switzerland,

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Israel, Sweden and Denmark. MIM accepts people as
members who agree on these basic principles and accept democratic centralism, the system
of majority rule, on other questions of party line.

"The theory of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin is universally applicable. We should

regard it not as dogma, but as a guide to action. Studying it is not merely a matter of
learning terms and phrases, but of learning Marxism-Leninism as the science of revolution."

- Mao Zedong, Selected Works, Vol. II, p. 208.

Editor, MC206; Production, MC12

Letters

MIM Notes

The Official Newsletter of The Maoist Internationalist Movement

ISSN 1540-8817

MIM Notes is the bi-weekly newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement. MIM

Notes is the official Party voice; more complete statements are published in our journal,
MIM Theory. Material in MIM Notes is the Party's position unless noted. MIM Notes
accepts submissions and critiques from anyone. The editors reserve the right to edit
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been directed at communist parties and anti-imperialist movements. MCs, MIM comrades,
are members of the Party. The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) is an anti-
imperialist mass organization led by MIM (RCs are RAIL Comrades). MIM's ten-point
program is available to anyone who sends in a SASE.

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WWW: <http//www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext>

Dear MIM Notes:

The unions got together this year and

held a single demo for May Day in

Montreal. The overwhelmingly white

crowd (I saw few Black faces and not a

single recognizably East Asian or Native

American one) must have been in the low

five figures. Very little literature was to

be found: only one group had a table, and

two or three others were handing out

leaflets.

The focus of the rally (and the subject

of the only leaflets that I received) was

clearly the Charest government, whose

planned cuts in social services in Québec

are unpopular. Issues of importance to

people other than the local labor

aristocracy were hardly represented at

all. A number of people did carry signs

calling for the removal of Kanadian troops

from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Palestine, but

well over 99% of the signs were about

the demands of bourgeoisified workers

in Québec.

Tailing the thousands of labor

aristocrats--figuratively but also literally

tailing them, at the very end of the

parade!--were the various self-styled

communists and socialists, none of them

especially red: the World Socialist Web

Site (Trotskyite), the Parti communiste du

Québec (something like the CP=U$A),

the Communist Party of Canada (Marxist-

Leninist) (ditto), the Parti marxiste-

léniniste du Québec (apparently a local

branch of the CPCML), and some

organization that supports Cuba and Che

Guevara. I had wanted to talk with the

Parti communiste révolutionnaire

(comités d'organisation), which calls itself

Maoist and which seems to be the closest

thing to MIM in Canada--the best of a

bad lot, shall we say. They must have

been present, as they had announced their

intentions to show up and had spray-

painted "Let's embrace communism!" in

French on the sidewalk, but I didn't see

them. Pity. I had wanted to engage them

on the subject of the imperialist-country

working class, which they regard as

proletarian (and exploited) while admitting

here and there in their program that these

"proletarians" are in the main strongly

allied with the imperialists that supposedly

"exploit" them.

I had hoped to get enough material for

an article. Too bad there's so little of

political interest to report.

--Comrade in Montreal,

1 May 2004

MIM received a copy of this letter

along with a petition containing

signatures calling for shutting down

the SHU control units. Information and

copies of this petition can be

downloaded from MIM's website at

www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/agitation/

prisons.

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

I have never written to anyone in your

position before. This is my first time. But

I feel you may be able to help this situation

or at least you need to be aware of some

very awful problems in our prison system

in California.

Our son unfortunately is in Corcoran

State Prison SHU confinement. He has

been trying to tell us in letters about how

awful they are treated, however, when

he does write, he is punished even more

by the guards there. He has been locked

up like this for over 1 year, in a small cell

23 hours a day, no contact with anyone,

no phone calls, food is slid thru the door,

no exercise, it has caused him to recently

be hospitalized with a mental breakdown.

We just went to visit him (no contact) 1

hour over a phone and we drove 6 hours

to get there. He said that he is sure they

have been poisoning his food, he said that

after he would eat, he would lose his

breath and could not breath right, then

feel real funny in his head. He has stopped

eating anything with gravy in it.

I have been looking on the internet and

reading some very very disturbing things

about SHU in the prisons, these letters

are from other family members and also

from former inmates. These facts are

true I now believe my son. If you just

type in California Prison SHU on the

search engine, you will see what I mean.

Is there anything you can do? Please,

this is cruel and inhuman punishment.

With all that is going on in Iraq with

prisoners there, our own sons and

daughters have worse punishment here!

Please help!

--Sincerely,

Mr & Mrs [name removed]

San Marcos, CA

May 11, 2004

Report from Montreal May Day

Parents describe son's treatment in California prison

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 3

The British monopoly capitalist

newspaper Independent reported that

progress toward UN goals set at the year

2000 Millenium Summit has been much

slower than planned. 40 experts working

for the World Economic Forum (WEF)

gave world leaders a score of between 3

and 4 out of 10 for progress since 2000.

MIM is not surprised, because global

capitalism is not organized to meet

planning goals--even those of a bourgeois

organization like the UN. Capitalist

development does not work for the

exploited, who make up 90% of the

world's population; capitalist charity also

does not work.

"The proportion of hungry people is

likely to increase in the Middle East, sub-

Saharan Africa and south Asia by 2015.

A `devastating' 800 million people go

regularly without food around the world,

including a third of pre-school age children

in developing nations, the WEF said.

More than half the world's countries will

fail to provide universal primary education

by 2015, following a shortfall in the

financial donations required to hit the

target.

"The HIV/Aids epidemic is

`outstripping the bubonic plague of

medieval Europe as the most deadly

pandemic in history.' The first report by

the WEF's Global Governance Initiative

also warned that there was little evidence

that the world was making a `serious

effort' to cut greenhouse gas

emissions,"(1) the Independent said. The

Independent should have added, "so much

for the victory of global capitalism and

the notion that capitalism works."

The Amerikan public has a seriously

skewed view of how much "aid" it is

giving the world. Most of the "aid" is

simply military purchases for foreign

governments and military-related

contracts for Amerikan corporations

relabeled as aid.

What aid that does get through destroys

Third World agriculture. Even in

education, non-profit organization Oxfam

has pointed out that the United $tates gives

a total of a paltry $300 million for

education aid in the Third World where

education is most lacking. In contrast, the

United $tates approved $87 billion for the

Iraq War.(2)

The World Bank has joined in the

criticism of the rich countries, as an effort

to remake its image of oppression and

restriction of Third World economies: "`I

suggested humorously the other day that

if you spend $900 billion on development

you probably wouldn't need to spend more

than $50 billion on defense,'"(2) said the

World Bank president James Wolfensohn.

He was alluding to the global $900 billion

spent on the military each year, half by

the United $tates.

The original goals set in 2000 aimed "to

halve world poverty by 2015 through

education, empowerment of women, a

reduction in child mortality and beating

HIV/AIDS and other diseases."(2) In this

process, the World Bank is now taking

up the pose of acting as the global

Keynesian: capitalist pump primer.

The UN asked for 0.7 percent of the

national income of the richest countries

for UN goals, but only five countries

answered.(2) In point of fact, even this

approach will fail, because corruption and

politics enter at two stages. The aid-givers

turn it into contracts for their own

countries' businesses. The U.$. puppet

regimes that are the aid-receivers siphon

off the money into Swiss bank accounts.

Only socialist revolution ending

exploitation can bring humyn

development. If the imperialist country

people could get their governments off

the backs of the Third World people, there

would be no need for charity.

Notes:

1. http://news.independent.co.uk/world/

politics/story.jsp?story=513620

2. http://www.reuters.com/locales/

newsArticle.jsp?type=businessNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4931205

In April 2004, France closed its last coal

mine where 400 workers had been

working. At their peak, French coal mines

employed 300,000 people.(1) As

capitalism matured and turned into

imperialism, such work was no longer

necessary.

The BBC pointed out that historically

there was a strong socialist and

UN development goals are fading, as usual

communist influence in the mines. Miners

were also active in the resistance war

against Nazi occupation. All that is the

past. Karl Marx considered miners part

of the "productive sector" of workers

producing "surplus-value" that underlies

all profits, interest and rent (this last one

as conceived by economists). The

closing of France's last coal mines means

that is one less source of profits for the

French imperialists as pointed to by Marx.

Today, the French government has

pensioned off those who worked 20 or

more years in coal mines. According to

Marx, such pensions and various paper-

shuffling jobs without a basis in the

productive sector would eat into profits

and cause economic crisis. Imperialism

can meet this crisis either by expanding

through war into the Third World to

further exploit people there or by a self-

destructive process in the home country

involving war and repression.

The existence of a mere 400 coal miners

also proves that even if these workers

had not been overpaid, there is insufficient

France closes its last coal mine

Continued on page 5...

As usual, the United $tates is supporting

backward rulers in a Third World country.

The New York Times admitted on April

25th that Uncle $am has provided $22

million in military aid to the King of Nepal

to combat the People's War underway

there.

King Gyanendra dismissed Nepal's

prime minister--another schemer--19

months ago. The Maoists are demanding

a republican form of government. The

king has also promised to restore civilian

rule in a year while saying that past

political leaders in parliament were too

corrupt and inept to rule.

Lately the New York Times and BBC

have been agitated about what is

happening in Nepal. The BBC seemed

to threaten openly that England would pull

out its support if the king did not

modernize the government to be a

republic.

Like the bizarre cult around the Dalai

Lama in Tibet, the king is now the

beneficiary of religious beliefs. The Hindu

god Vishnu is supposedly incarnated in

Nepal's king. King Gyanendra came to

power because of the June 2001 suicide-

massacre of the rest of his family,

including the previous king. This massacre

is a mystery to the people, as described

in previous MIM Notes issues (e.g.

MN288).

The New York Times is also talking

about the son of the current king. "Crown

Prince Paras," says the Times, "is widely

distrusted. A notorious drinker, he was

known for carousing in Katmandu

nightclubs and for being involved in four

fatal hit-and-run accidents, including one

that killed a popular singer. In 2000,

500,000 Nepalis signed a petition

demanding that he be prosecuted. It was

never acted upon."(1)

The Great Powers are so nervous that

the New York Times quoted a senior

Indian diplomat saying even the

diplomats do not know what King

Gyanendra wants.(1) Apparently the

imperialists are afraid to kill off King

Gyanendra and have the Crown Prince

come to power. The imperialists are also

afraid the Maoists would advance if the

king's bond with his military is broken.

On April 22nd, the king made overtures

to other sectors of the ruling class in

Nepal embittered by his sacking of the

prime minister in 2002. The imperialists

hope to see all the semi-feudal and

bourgeois elements of Nepal working

together against the Maoists, but the

economic organization of semi-feudalism

and dependent capitalism is never broad

enough to support a general alliance of

exploiters.

Both the Amerikan and British

imperialist press are admitting that their

stooges in power in Nepal are in a bind

and that it's hard to see how Nepal can

go forward. MIM can supply the answer

they lack: the mode of production needs

to advance in Nepal. The Maoists are

right, and that's why the political

alternatives seem so ludicrous. For

unnamed geopolitical reasons, the British

have said that it is impossible for a

resolution of the People's War by violence

by either the regime's side or the people's

side. The U$ State Department has said

the same thing and has also called for a

better "human-rights" record for the king

and military. This is all just rhetoric

disguising the fact that Uncle $am always

sides with the most backward and corrupt

people that can be found and then attempts

to meddle in every Third World country.

We hope that the Greens and others

mythologizing exotic Eastern kingdoms

come down from their hobby-horses to

look at reality in Nepal. The educated

people and the peasants seeking land

reform do not want the theocracy

anymore. The Greens should not be

resisting Maoism, supporting Uncle $am

and forcing Nepal's people to live a

backward life just to suit the spiritual

longings of hippies and grubby yuppies

covering for their career professionalism

and lack of political thoroughness.

The Greens recently republished the

1957 book by Leopold Kohr titled "The

Breakdown of Nations," which says

repeatedly that Nepal is so wonderful

because, like many other countries, it is

small, and that is why it never gets aid

from Washington. The book reappeared

in 2001 and by 2002 proved false. Nepal

receives military aid from Uncle $am. In

the year 2000, I$rael and 29 countries from

the ex-Soviet bloc and Third World

received $5.2 billion in military aid (3)

designed to give Uncle $am lucrative

supply contracts and influence with

various lackeys. Contrary to the Green

political image, most of those countries

are very small, with Egypt and the

Philippines being the largest.

It is very possible that the imperialists

are considering dumping King Gyanendra

to find a better stooge. Yet, we at MIM

would point out to any lackeys-in-waiting

the record of supply and demand for

lackeys by U$ imperialism. U$

Maoism is the only modern road forward in Nepal

Continued on page 4...

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 4

Francisco financial district the day after

the invasion. Now that Americans are

getting a true and terrible glimpse of US

tyranny in Iraq, while Halliburton,

Bechtel, Chevron, and others skim millions

from this brutal occupation, it's time to

connect the dots and expose how

unchecked corporate power is the real

culprit -- working through groups like the

G8, they usurp democracy, oppress people,

and appropriate the commons both at

home and abroad."(1)

Still, this statement fails to name the

"real culprit," Amerikan imperialism. By

talking about "unchecked corporate

power" instead of monopoly capitalism

and imperialism, the organizers coddle the

illusions that imperialism can be reformed,

that it's possible to go back to the "good

old days" of free-market capitalism. As

we describe in our review of Greens

Ralph Nader and Leopold Kohr in this

issue, even if it were possible to go back

to those mythical days, small-scale "local"

capitalism inevitably leads to

concentration and monopoly. Only

socialism can end capitalist exploitation,

devastation of the environment and

degradation of humyn health. Only the

dictatorship of the proletariat can protect

survival rights from those who think they

have the "right" to profit from denying

others those survival rights.

Some who oppose biotechnology do so

from the Luddite perspective that all

technology is bad. There appears to be a

strong tendency towards this in the

"Reclaim the Commons" movement,

which openly proclaims that we must

"resist biotech." For Marxists, technology

is not inherently bad. The issue is who

controls technology. Under capitalism, the

development and implementation of

Activists attack biotech convention

technology is driven by profit, not humyn

needs. That's why a half-dozen Viagra

knock-offs have appeared on the market

in the last year, while less than 1% of

medicines developed over the last 25

years were for diseases like malaria,

sleeping sickness, and tuberculosis, which

mostly affect poor people in oppressed

countries.(4)

This campaign around the biotech

summit is an example where we Maoists

are tactically on the same side as the

Luddites. In terms of their protest's main

message--placing people before

profits--the Luddites are correct relative

to the Monsantos of the world. However,

pre-scientific back-to-nature mysticism

cannot defeat imperialism in the long run.

In some cases, this neo-Luddism glorifies

backwards economic conditions in the

oppressed nations--at the same time

taking the material wealth of the

imperialist countries for granted, as if that

wealth appeared out of thin air, instead

of being created by the toil and sweat of

oppressed-nation workers.(5)

Rather than opposing science and

technology per se, MIM accuses

Monsanto and the like of being props in a

system that prevents the masses from

becoming scientists.

Monsanto and similar biotech

companies are actively working to ensure

profit at the expensive of survival. Delta

& Pine Land Company and the U$

Department of Agriculture secured a

patent for "a genetic engineering

technique that disables a seed's capacity

to germinate when planted." Obviously

companies are interested in such

technology to force farmers to buy seeds

each year.

Capitalists have little interest in

calculating long-term risks and benefits.

So what if we might cause a massive

famine in fifty years, they think, we'll

make huge profits in the next five years!

Already, weed resistance strategies

backfire by producing and spreading

genes that make weeds tougher to

control. From the point of view of the

multinational corporation, having to buy

new technologies to deal with the problem

just created guarantees a constant flow

of business.(2) The anarchy of production

also makes it difficult for capitalists to plan

for the long-term consequences of their

new technology, if they wanted to.

Ultimately the "Reclaim the Commons"

movement is stuck in petty-bourgeois

politics. Their goal is to demonstrate

alternatives to biotechnology under

capitalism: "we want to teach and

demonstrate sustainable, life-affirming

alternatives to biotechnology and

corporate power in general: organic food,

community gardens, water reclamation,

urban transformation, a gift economy, and

so much more." They are promoting

individualist solutions to a systemic

problem: "We need to get off the

corporate grid, exercise democracy

outside of party-driven, corporate-funded

electoral machines, live sustainable lives,

and create just and thriving communities

amid the corporate-controlled world!"(3)

Promoting ecologically sound practices

is good, but the Reclaim the Commons

movement openly rejects all biotechnology

while offering no sound strategy for

getting the world to a place where

ecologically sound practice is possible for

the majority of the world's people.

MIM differs with this movement in two

ways. First, we do not oppose

biotechnology on principle. We oppose

corporate control of biotechnology, but we

support proletarian use of biotechnology

for the good of the world's people. We

might favor genetic modifications. We

only oppose the process by which some

who gain much more from the risks decide

for the rest of us how much is an

acceptable risk. Change is permanent and

any course of action or inaction involves

risks.

Second, unlike the petty-bourgeois

activists who want to offer Amerikans a

chance to eat organic food and set up

community gardens, and "get off the

corporate grid," MIM sees that the only

way to feed the world's people is to

overthrow capitalism which perpetuates

an uneven distribution of resources.

There is enough food in the world to feed

all of the people, yet still people starve to

death. This is very clear uneven

distribution, and the biotech corporations

work with the imperialists to maintain this

profitable situation, at the expense of

millions of deaths every year from

malnutrition.

The malnourished people of the world

do not have the luxury of living

sustainable lives. Their only option is

revolutionary struggle against the

imperialists.

Notes:

1. Reclaim the Commons press

statement, May 19, 2004.

2. MIM's review of the book

Farmageddon by Brewster Kneen,

available at our web site: http://

www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/

books/enviro/kneen.html

3. Reclaim the Commons web site:

h t t p : / / r e c l a i m t h e c o m m o n s . n e t /

article.php?list=type&type=6 Also very

relevant is our review of the Rice Genome

project in MIM Notes 261.

4. "Doctors Without Borders fight for

Access to Essential Medicines," MIM

Notes 264, 15 Aug 2002.

5. Witness the "really free market"

celebration, where activists plan to give

things away, ranging from food to

"smiles." They consider this "really free

market" to be a template for alternate

economic organization. Where the food,

clothes etc. they plan to give away come

from--or whether people can live on

"art" and "smiles" alone--they do not

say.

imperialism bought off Saddam Hussein

and then killed off his sons and imprisoned

him. The CIA put Panama's Noriega on

payroll and now he sits in U$ prison.

Osama Bin Laden received every military

training and resource he could get and

now Amerikans chase him around the

globe. Countless other Amerikan lackeys

have died ignominious deaths. The truth

is that Amerika has nothing to offer

Nepal. Getting involved with Uncle $am

politically and militarily brings nothing but

grief to a country.

Notes: 1. http://www.nytimes.com/

2 0 0 4 / 0 4 / 2 5 / i n t e r n a t i o n a l / a s i a /

25NEPA.html?pagewanted=2

2. http://www.reuters.com/locales/

newsArticle.jsp?type=topNews&locale=en_IN&storyID=4911360

3. Statistical Abstract of the United

States 2002, p. 792.

Maoism is the only

modern road forward

in Nepal

Continued from page 3...

Continued from page 1...

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 5

This is the last in a series of articles

on subjectivism. The first (in MN301)

covered drugs, music and art; the

second (MN302) discussed love, sex

and friends. This series was excerpted

from a longer article that can be found

on our website, at: http://

www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/

subjectivismI.html.

I'm going to talk about subjectivism and

its relationship to our communist goals by

giving a bunch of examples of

subjectivism--the belief that what one

feels or likes is true or supreme. What's

most important is not the individual evils

of subjectivism, but understanding the

overall approach that we as Maoist

scientists apply to everything.

In all likelihood, the revolution will be

successful only through the efforts of

"hypocrites" envisioning future

generations growing up with better social

influences than they had. Understanding

this is part of understanding materialism,

as when Lenin said revolution is always

made with the imperfect social material

at hand, not by divine perfection of humyn

consciousness first.

We have to come up with a list of bad

things, but our attack has to be on the

causes, not the bearers of those bad

lifestyles. With these warnings, we turn

to the last of several examples of

subjectivism discussed in these articles.

VII. Tone

Many times MIM has been taken to

task for its tone, many saying we are

"infantile" or childish. This takes us to

the next question--if you don't like liking

some things produced by imperialism,

what should we like instead? In the

imperialist countries, but also in the Third

World, at least partially dominated by the

same imperialist superstructure, we grow

up bombarded with false messages. Yes,

it starts as a child.

Janet Jackson revealed her breast on

TV during the football game called the

Super Bowl. This outraged stable

bourgeois family people everywhere and

caused a furor of call-ins and letters, but

a CNN poll also showed that Amerikans

know that violence should be our first

priority not porn. Where are all these

parents complaining about the cartoons

their kids watch on television and the video

games they play, where living creatures

and people easily get shot down 50 in a

minute? What cave do they live in that

they don't know about violence on

television? Maybe in some countries

Nipplegate would be the worst thing on

TV. It's a sign of how screwed up things

are that it's far, far from true in the United

$tates. People who like certain cartoons

and video games need to learn that the

sources of that liking are profiteering

militarists. MIM has pissed off countless

teenagers for dissing their video games.

So what MIM does is substitute new

emotions for old ones. We seek to get

people to go back to the things they

believed as children and make sure that

they all make sense. Good and bad have

been confounded such that people

somehow hate it when someone "anti-

patriotic" says that Iraqi people should

not die for the gasoline in the SUV. The

people saying these things often times

have a seventh grade level education--

and we are not even attacking them when

we say that. We are pointing out that we

in the imperialist countries--above all the

U$A of course--can see that the

emotions at the simplest levels are wrong.

Speaking in an even tone and language

fit for graduate school seminars is not

going to help counteract basic

brainwashing problems.

This is also related to the question of

the stage of our revolution. It never does

any good to avoid the truth except in

tactical situations where the enemy is in

hot pursuit. If a cop is chasing you down

the alley and a senior citizen volunteers

that you "went that way" when you really

went this way, that's a good lie. On the

other hand, we cannot lie about tone or

exploitation issues in public.

When Mao said that "without a People's

Army the people have nothing," he wasn't

kidding. He also wasn't kidding when he

said imperialist countries would have to

go through long periods of time without

armed struggle. In other words, he

expected in ordinary times for people in

the imperialist countries to have nothing.

No armed struggle against imperialism,

therefore, nothing.

So when people call us "childish,"

because we use a tone hostile to

bourgeois ideology, we say, "thank you,

can I please have another." Children are

oppressed and our greatest hope. We

Preparing for the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat

Combating subjectivism in all arenas

have a press here and the example of

that in history is still Engels in Germany.

It's an aim at some kind of influence.

Because our press is not connected with

our own armed struggle, wild success

might attract a kind of diluting influence

as seen in Engels's circles when he died.

If our tone or the rareness of our line

alienates some people, so be it. We have

a number of problems in trying to have

people associate anger with the

appropriate targets.

It's important to understand that the

white man in particular has no reference

point as an animal putting his emotions in

line with the international proletariat. We

have no armed struggles to teach us the

militant anger and determination that goes

with opposing the enemy. If we do not

use tone in the proper context, we are

handing over the determination of anger,

sadness and pleasure to the bourgeoisie.

If we do use the proper tone in contexts

that children may encounter, we may in

fact teach those children something. If

some people are too ideologically old to

relearn when to be angry, sardonic,

dismissive, etc. and when not to be, then

we have to write them off.

Note:

1. Leon Trotsky, "Communist Policy

Toward Art," http://www.marxists.org/

archive/trotsky/works/1923/tia23.htm

2. Leon Trotsky, Revolution Betrayed,

1936, http://www.marxists.org/archive/

trotsky/works/1936-rev/ch07.htm

3. www.2changetheworld.info/docs/

art-03-en.php

material basis for the formation of a

French proletariat. There is not enough

of the kind of people left of the type Marx

was talking about to even talk about a

French proletariat. As it stands, the

French minimum wage places all of legally

working France in the top 10% of income

in the world. Coal miners did even better

than that.

Since more than 80% of France's

electricity comes from nuclear power,

there is no need for coal.(1) "Electricite

de France" already obtained 35% of its

revenue from the electricity market

outside France and it was aiming for

50%,(2) in a typical process of imperialist

globalization.

France has practically exhausted its

own resources for uranium extraction.

What exists is of such poor quality it is

not economic to mine it.

Traditionally, France has obtained

uranium from Gabon and Niger, two

Francophone ex-colonies in Africa. As is

typical for neo-colonialism, France sends

troops to uphold its interests as the

situation requires.

While there were 400 coal miners in

France, there were 3000 uranium miners

in Niger in 1990 and fewer now, but still

more than 1000.(3) After using up its own

uranium ores, France also used up most

of Gabon's. So it is that coal's

replacement employs more productive

sector workers in the Third World than

coal did in France.

In their heyday, Gabon and Niger

provided for a French state-owned

company called COGEMA that supplied

25% of the world's enrichment and

conversion of uranium supplies. The

French company also sold over $5 billion

in uranium in 1999, with half the ore supply

coming from Niger alone. Now France

can also obtain uranium from Au$tralia

and other places, but the point remains

that French productive sector work has

declined.

COGEMA has 20,000 people total

spread out over 30 countries.(4) That is

much less than France's coal industry at

its peak and many of those COGEMA

workers are not in the imperialist

countries. COGEMA is a conscious

scheme of the French imperialists to see

to France's energy and weapons needs.

In 1999 for the figures above, the French

government owned 82% of COGEMA.

There could hardly be better proof of

MIM's line that imperialism has become

entirely parasitic except for a few

exceptions such as Russia. As we pointed

out in MIM Theory in 1997 (available on

the Internet), "By now we can say

China's exports alone involve more

industrial workers than the total of all

industrial workers in France, Germany

and the `United Kingdom' combined."(5)

At that time, COGEMA was wiping out

the last of the French miners by replacing

them with uranium miners in Niger.

Since 1997, the pace of parasitism has

increased. The exports of China just to

the United $tates increased from $62.5

billion in 1997 to $102.3 billion in 2001.(6)

The industrial workers are in China and

the rest of the Third World. The

consumers are in the imperialist countries.

99% of those calling themselves

"Marxist" in the imperialist countries have

yet to catch up to these economic facts

of life. They prattle on and on about the

economic demands of "workers" in the

imperialist countries, only to end up

obtaining them stock accounts and new

excuses for wars on countries with the

energy supplies.

Notes:

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/

3651881.stm

2. http://www.info-france-usa.org/

intheus/nuclear/n2f2/spring2002.asp

3. "The French Desire for Uranium. .

." www.acdis.uiuc.edu/homepage_docs/

pubs_docs/ PDF_Files/

Peder%20OP%20Folder/peder.pdf

4. http://www.cogema.com

5. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/

mt/imp97/imp97c4.html

6. Statistical Abstract of the United

States 2002, p. 796.

France closes its last coal mine

Continued from page 3...

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 6

Ralph Nader

Crashing the Party: Taking on the

Corporate Government in an Age

of Surrender

New York: St. Martin's Press,

2002, 383pp. pb.

Leopold Kohr

The Breakdown of Nations

Foxhole, U.K.: Green Books, 2001,

256pp. pb.

On April 8th, MIM Notes asked the

Nader campaign for an interview (see

sidebar, page 9). As of April 24th, there

has been no response from the Nader

campaign, so here we will review his

book and another from his general line of

petty- bourgeois thinking by Leopold

Kohr. Kohr's book came out in 1957, but

it is at the root of recent "small is

beautiful" thinking. A search of his name

and "Green Party" at Google turns up 41

entries.

The petty-bourgeoisie is that class

between the proletariat and the

imperialists which traditionally included

professionals that worked for

themselves--doctors, lawyers, journalists

and even priests. At a raw level, Nader

is a lawyer and he is the only candidate

for president who will oppose "tort

reform," which is the movement of the

productive sector industrialists against a

faction of the unproductive sector called

trial lawyers. The industrialists would like

limits on how much consumers can sue

them for, while Nader- type lawyers point

out that there is nothing else in the

capitalist system restraining the

industrialists from harming customers for

profit.

Organizations Ralph Nader started as

a consumer advocate have served as

launching pads for his presidential

candidacy. In 2000 he took 2.7% of the

vote and cost Gore the presidency while

saving one Senate seat for Democrats in

Washington.

What makes Ralph Nader so unusual

is that he is a hard-driving petty-bourgeois.

Most people from the traditional petty-

bourgeoisie think they are doing well if

they do a charity walk-a-thon or attend a

couple anti-war demonstrations per year.

In contrast, Ralph Nader is reportedly

threatening the Kerry campaign with

havoc unless Democratic Party nominee

Kerry actually opposes the war on Iraq--

something Kerry will actually have more

political room to appear to do after June

30th. For most of the petty-bourgeoisie

using "freedom" to complain a couple

times a year is self-satisfying. The

difference is that Nader takes these

complaints to the top, digs in and points

out consequences to the imperialists for

ignoring him.

The weakness in Nader's approach on

the political level is that as Lenin

explained, the traditional petty-bourgeoisie

is allied with the imperialists. Most of

Nader's would-be followers are

uncomfortable with going to the

imperialists and saying, "this is a stick up.

. . so hand over your votes." Countless

liberal Democratic dogs have stopped

giving to charities, because Nader once

worked for them or served as their

publicity front--all because Nader cost

Gore the White House in 2000.

Nader and the labor aristocracy

Coming from the Democratic Party,

Nader sports the usual slogans about the

degradation of the labor aristocracy in the

United $tates that MIM has proved false

for 18 years now and which people

rebutted before MIM as well. Typical is

"The majority of Americans have been

falling behind, notwithstanding twenty

years of economic growth: losing ground

in real wages, losing ground in home

mortgage payments, health care, and

consumer debt."(Nader, p. 107)

It's not that the Amerikkkan labor

aristocracy could not face a deteriorating

economic situation. It's just that it has not

happened yet since World War II, as MIM

most recently proved in MIM Notes 298.

Thus for a strategic length of time, we at

MIM are attacking the economic

demands of the labor aristocracy, because

it is tied to imperialism. After the labor

aristocracy has faced some real

devastation, we can talk about re-

analyzing the class structure.

With his views, it's not surprising that

Nader spent much of his time in 2000

chasing after labor bureaucrats for

endorsements. United Autoworkers

(UAW) president Steve Yokich flirted

with Nader for example, and Nader won

a number of smaller union endorsements

in 2000 outright.

Along with the labor bureaucrat-

chasing comes the territory of bashing

GATT and NAFTA, which Nader does

more than the Republicans and

Democrats. Nader has no compunction

about lashing other countries in the name

of economic protectionism, in such a way

that stirs up war sentiments among the

labor aristocracy. Nonetheless, Nader

also agrees with MIM that international

treaties should be a focus of struggle to

lift standards up globally. It's just that he

talks about lifting up while also partitioning

the world at the same time. The labor

aristocracy he is catering to tends to

demand higher tariffs to protect their high-

paying jobs.

By the terms of NAFTA, the United

$tates is supposed to allow Mexican truck

drivers on U$ roads. This has not really

happened the way it was supposed to:

"The Teamsters were very concerned

with the NAFTA agreement to allow

eight-dollar-a-day Mexican truck drivers

in heavy, poorly maintained rigs to take

their cargo throughout the fifty

states."(Nader, p. 144)

Meanwhile, Nader admits that worker

pension funds have $5 trillion in assets in

the United $tates.(Nader, p. 150) He does

not see that as bringing Amerikans into

conflict with the world as MIM does, but

rather as an opportunity for workers to

operate capitalism. Nader even managed

to work in a chant for "small and medium-

sized businesses that practice their belief

in sustainable economies"(Nader, p. 151)

in his speeches.

Petty-bourgeois internationalism

"Communism . . . is considered non-

aggressive in Yugoslavia."

-- Kohr, 1957 (Kohr, p. 29)

In a few words, petty-bourgeois

internationalism is "small is beautiful"

equality of nations. There is really no such

thing as petty-bourgeois internationalism,

because its underlying economic basis is

a mirage. Nonetheless, Kohr especially

and Nader to a lesser extent try to

convince us there is non-imperialist and

non-proletarian internationalism.

In Nader's case, there is going to be a

big stink about Iraq between him and

Kerry. The proof that Nader is no real

internationalist despite his Green "peace"

image is Afghanistan. Here is how Nader

would have handled 911: "Maybe another

more focused approach by a multilateral

corps of commandos, equipped with

knowledge of language and tribal cultures

and utilizing bribes and spies, may have

worked better to bring those culpable to

justice."(Nader, p. xiv) Thus Nader says

he would have tried to find more

international legitimacy for a more

"multilateral" approach, presumably

through the UN, to attack Afghanistan.

This is what will allow Kerry to say there

is no difference between Kerry and

Nader in principle.

The confusing thing then is the rhetoric

we hear from the Greens and Nader in

particular. Here is what radio populist and

Texan Jim Hightower said that Nader

endorsed: "`It's time for us to get on the

side of the impoverished and oppressed

peoples of the world, rather than

continuing to plant our flag alongside

dictators, monarchists, corporatists and

other elites that prosper on the misery of

the increasingly angry Third World

majority.'"(Nader, pp. xvii-xviii) This is

the sort of statement that the left-wing of

the traditional petty-bourgeoisie makes but

without intention of sounding Maoist.

For how these Greens and petty-

bourgeois populists intend to accomplish

their goals, they imagine a

"decentralized" economic and political

world as the Green Party platform says.

In other words, the petty-bourgeoisie

harkens back to a mythical and idyllic

settler past of "America," when every

white individual seemed to count, because

each could take his or her shotgun and

join up with like-minded people to bring

down a whole government.

In those "good `ole days," the traditional

petty- bourgeoisie imagines that there

were no mega-corporations like there are

today. Likewise there are no mega-

governments supporting those mega-

corporations in the Nader/Green/

Libertarian fantasy. The fundamental

reason it is difficult to engage these

people in serious politics is that they revert

to a political self-image of Amerika rooted

in a settler-past that has not remotely

existed for more than 100 years. It is like

overweight people who look in the mirror

every day, but forget their weight in reality

and only think of themselves when they

were younger and lighter.

Petty-bourgeois economics

"The trouble with corporate capitalism

in the United States is that there is a lot

of capital but very few capitalists"

--Nader, p. 312.

"A good place to start is the Social

Venture Network, which consciously

strives to inject civic values as the

framework for their successful midsize

business."

--Nader, p. 315

"Just how did the power of creeping

corporatism over the past two hundred

years take an artificial legal entity

chartered by the state, called the

corporation, and have it endowed with the

rights of real human beings plus privileges

and immunities denied human beings?"

--Nader, p. 316

"Many full-time family farms cannot

make a living in a market of giant buyer

concentration and industrial agriculture."

--Nader, p. 329

"A frown on his forehead may mean a

cold winter for 165 million people. A word

from his lips may stop trains and arrest

the wheels of hundreds of industries. It

may deprive us of gas and light. A single

gesture of John L. Lewis or of any of a

number of important labour leaders may

spell catastrophe to the nation."

--Kohr, p. 94

"Small is beautiful" does have a role to

play in "appropriate technology" in the

capitalist-dominated Third World.

However, Nader focuses most of his

material on the United $tates; Kohr

focuses all his material on Europe and

the United $tates. In the places they

exclusively discuss, the economy has

reached the mega-corporate stage that

Lenin called "Imperialism: The Highest

Stage of Capitalism."

There is no progressive role for Green,

Nader or Libertarian ideology to play in

the imperialist countries. While it is

inevitable that a proletarian-led movement

will have petty- bourgeois currents such

as that of the Greens, these petty-

bourgeois currents are currently

dominating the proletarian movement in

Amerikan Green thought reviewed

`Small is beautiful' is not an option in imperialist countries

Continued on next page...

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 7

all the majority-exploiter countries and

they are in fact inclined to dangerous

backward-looking solutions that cannot

work economically.

There is a reason that industrial

agriculture has taken over and the family

farm is almost entirely gone. There is also

a reason mega- corporations exist. If it

were more profitable to respect Nader's

backward-looking vision of democracy,

the mega-corporations never would have

formed. Kohr cited a study from 1919

that said profits declined with corporate

size (Kohr,p. 169)--in which case we

would not have seen corporate take-overs

and we would have seen all the money

made in spin-offs; hence, we would not

have to hear Nader and Kohr complain

about mega-corporations in books.

Obviously no such thing happened and

Kohr's statement is just another example

of delusion.

What is more, what Nader calls

"democracy" in fact never existed either.

He ran in 2000 with a First Nations

running mate. Surely he cannot mean that

a country should kill off its First Nations

and import a continent of slaves to get

started. "Democracy" sucked then and

sucks even worse now.

Petty-bourgeois utopianism

"Chapter Eleven `But Will It Be Done?'

No!"

--entirety of Chapter 11 in Leopold

Kohr's book Breakdown of Nations

"The dark ages of medieval times were

even in their war aspects more advanced

than our modern age with all its peace

desires and its smug detractors of

medieval backwardness."

--Kohr, p. 80.

"Smallness is not only a convenience.

It is the design of God."

"`We are happy begging, and

furthermore we are not used to work.'"

-- Kohr, quoting Tibetans he

defends against their joining China,

p. 154

"Ninety percent of our intellectual

miseries are due to the fact that almost

everything in our lives has become an ism,

an issue."

--Kohr, p. 123

The petty-bourgeoisie is constantly

threatened by the "collectivism" and

"totalitarianism" of both the imperialists

and the proletariat. It is prone to illusions

about individuality, as if people can live

on islands separate from each other and

breathe separate air. Kohr even says that

90% of "issues" would disappear if we

all learned to decentralize properly.

Evidently relating to other people is too

much burden for this sort of complacent

petty-bourgeois which we so often find

burdening our movements against war and

pollution.

It's common in the United $tates to hear

that proletarian ideology called

communism is utopian. In actual fact,

Marx outlined intermediate stages on the

way to communism and there are now

the examples of the dictatorship of the

proletariat seen in the USSR under Lenin

and Stalin and China under Mao. The

petty-bourgeoisie may not have liked

Stalin and Mao but they existed. In

contrast, what Kohr and the Greens are

talking about in their "decentralization"

platform plank for imperialist countries has

never happened anywhere. Kohr had the

decency to admit it in chapter 11.

The closest thing to Green paradise

should have been Yugoslavia with its

"local control" and lack of mega-

corporations. Under Tito, Yugoslavia was

against Stalin and supposedly against

Western capitalism too. Yet it was

Yugoslavia that broke down into at least

four ethnicities just as Kohr advised all

medium and great nations to do.

(Yugoslavia would have been considered

medium by Kohr.) Then Yugoslavia had

the greatest bit of ethnic cleansing in

recent history--all because "local control"

and decentralization had contributed to

unhealthy and unrealistic perceptions

between neighbors living only a few miles

apart. With such massive delusions, the

petty-bourgeoisie is too stupid and

provincial to figure it out.

Kohr died in 1994, but there is no

mention of Rwanda's genocidal violence

that year by his followers who wrote

forewords to the new edition of the 1957

original. Rwanda is another example of

high-energy but small ethnicity slaughter.

It was the smallest U$ states that voted

for Bu$h and it was the cities that polled

most consistently against the Afghan and

Iraq wars. If Kohr wants to talk about

urban crime rates,(Kohr, p. 54) he should

not forget to count the mass murders

carried out to thrill rural white yahoos and

their imperialist brethren. Any Green

should also know that city dwellers also

use less gasoline.

In U$ politics, Ralph Nader talks as if

corporate power were a recent thing, with

the tide turning in the late 1970s.(Nader,

p. 22) He is most famous for his work on

consumer safety, namely cars. His book

Unsafe at Any Speed came out in 1965.

He also championed air-bags. Nader

concluded from his experience that "the

system worked--government responded

to an engaged citizenry, and the fatality

rate declined from 5.6 deaths per hundred

million vehicle miles in 1966 to 1.6 in

2000." (Nader, p. 19) His idea is that

somehow government was still

manageable enough in the 1960s and

1970s to have to face civic movements

and adjust.

Today he talks about mega-corporations

and their Washington lackeys as if they

did not exist in the 1960s. He points out

that "in about 90 percent of the 435

congressional districts, there is one-party

rule. So choice is effectively denied to a

vast majority of voters."(Nader, p. 9) Yet,

that has been the case at least as far back

as 1964 when 86% of the House won re-

election.

These Nader/Kohr ideas are all utopian

diversions of a class that is not the master

of capitalism and not willing to support

socialism. Stuck in-between, the petty-

bourgeoisie evades and lives in a

complacent world with a flattering self-

image.

If there is capitalism allowed, there will

be a surplus. That surplus will accumulate

disproportionately in certain hands. Those

business leaders will 1) hire their own

states as in private armed guards

wherever necessary; 2) bribe the state

and corrupt it on behalf of rich people's

interests ; 3) acquire other businesses and

become larger. S/he who says

"capitalism" also must inevitably say

"mega-corporation."

As a hard-working but famous and

more mainstream activist, Ralph Nader

has experienced a small fraction of what

communist activists face on a day-to- day

basis. Somehow the State of

Massachusetts believed its police had the

legal right to arrest him for talking to the

press at a presidential debate in 2000 for

example. This goes on daily in political

activity, but with the only difference that

Nader is more famous than most people.

Nader was on public property, and even

so, he had a pass and obvious reason for

his presence and the state cops still told

him he had to leave. It goes to show that

some bureaucrats in charge of the police

do believe that they own the public's

property and can decide what goes on

politically on that property. That is directly

counter to the principle in the First

Amendment to the Constitution.

This again goes to the self-image of

Amerika. Amerikans who never use their

supposed rights to organize and speak out

against the two parties of the mega-

corporations do not know what Ralph

Nader and MIM know about reality.

Amerikans who do not try it out seriously

are apt to either believe what they learned

in civics classes in elementary school or

fail to apply principle to concrete

situations.

Ralph Nader is also very helpful to the

liberal wing of the Democratic Party that

might otherwise be more naive. "Long,

long ago, politicians realized this. Show

me a politician who does not flatter the

people and I'll show you one who is out

of a job. It comes with the territory and

has many faces. Violate this tradition and

the press will pounce."(Nader, p. 55) As

far as MIM is concerned, Nader has

stumbled on a great reason for having only

one party. When we meet with doctors,

we expect to gain knowledge of our

health and what to do to improve it; when

we meet with teachers, we need to learn

where we stand in our educational

progress; but somehow when we meet

with politicians, Amerikans do not want

to learn about political things, except for

the politicians' knowledge of why the

babies in our neighborhood are especially

most kissable and our hands most worthy

of shaking.

One thing we disagree with Nader on

also stems from a fundamentally correct

analysis. Nader said he felt compelled to

run to give the press something to cover

in terms of the "horse-race."(Nader, p.

140) He is referring to the fact that the

media does not like to cover political issues

in themselves, but more candidates and

persynalities in power. Later he quotes

Chomsky to the effect that soundbytes

coverage for television news favors the

status quo, because it is never in depth

enough to amount to any real political

understanding.(Nader, p. 148) For Nader,

running for president was an option. In

contrast, we believe in running our own

media. That's one difference. If Nader

does succeed it will because of various

non-profit media operations that arose to

support him.

In contrast, Nader sees his strategy as

tapping into free media, a mistake

underlying many stunts that progressive

people pull to get attention. "No matter

how long or extensively you campaign in

every state of the union, no matter how

large your audiences become, you cannot

reach in direct personal communication

even 1 percent of the eligible voters. In

essence, you don't run for president

directly; you ask the media to run you for

president, or if you have the money, you

also pay the media for exposure. . . . Since

the media controls access 99 percent-plus

of your audience, it is not shocking that

99 percent of most candidates' strategies

is born and bred for media play."(Nader,

p. 155) It is true that currently politicians

must manipulate perceptions. However,

it is not true that the people themselves

can move forward with such bad

information as flows from perception

manipulation. When progressives cater to

the mega-corporate media, they gain

nothing.

Where Nader shows some wit

From previous page...

Amerikan Green thought reviewed

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 8

The Amerikan restaurant chain Hooters

is now spreading globally. Hooters

features wimmin servants hired for their

looks and willingness to insinuate

toplessness. On May 20th, there were

620 news items on Hooters at Google

News. By comparison, Britney Spears

had 2310. "Malnutrition" had 1610.

One of the Hooters articles is about the

spreading of the suggestive Hooters t-

shirts. High schools in California are

banning them,(1) something we agree

with in spirit but see as too little, too late.

Working for bans in the United $tates only

backfires and produces hypocrisy. If a

ban is enacted, it usually means that a

friend of the banning authority is making

money in the same business. Selective

banning is just a form of business

competition under capitalism--a form of

competition that leads to fascism. Under

the joint dictatorship of the proletariat of

the oppressed nations, there won't be a

Hooters anymore, or any business like

Hooters.

Another scandal involves a California

man who secretly videotaped Hooters job

applicants while they changed into scanty

uniforms. He's in a West Covina,

California jail now.(2) Given the way

pornography works, this scandal will

probably benefit Hooters.

At the same time, there is a whole

Hooters Golf Tour in Florida.(3) That

makes good business sense, because the

Hooters airline started to cater to golfers.

In case anyone was wondering, there

is even a Hooters Iraq connection. A Bay

City waitress recently volunteered to go

to Iraq, Afghanistan and other places to

entertain troops for three weeks.(4)

Unless underage, Hooters waitresses

identify with male ideas of pleasure, and

we consider them to be gender

oppressors using their sex appeal for

"jobs" and boosting war morale in Iraq.

Many of the 620 articles about Hooters

are about newly-opened franchises.

Hooters claims to have "locations

throughout the United States and the

world, and revenues approaching $1

billion annually."(5)

Proletarian-minded people are always

amazed at the things U$ imperialism

comes up with. We could even

characterize the whole country as a

"Hooters economy." It would absolutely

collapse without pornography at this point.

It's not a secret that under capitalism

sex sells, but a billion-dollar business like

Hooters can only arise if there is

something to sell. In the case of Hooters,

it is the restaurant business, which relies

on food inputs from super-exploited

workers receiving less than U$ minimum

wage. The strength of U$ imperialism's

agricultural sector is legend, but it arises

on the backs of oppressed and exploited

migrant workers of Aztlán.

It's important to understand that without

those migrant workers providing cheap

food inputs for Hooters, Hooters

waitresses would make no money as

waitresses and would end up competing

with Playboy Magazine and the like

instead. The restaurant business would

not be able to make a profit, and people

would have to focus on spending their

money buying food, not paying for

Hooters services.

Hooters is especially remarkable to us

Marxists, because we are interested in

the distinction between hiring butlers and

chefs at home and hiring servants who

please other customers for profit after the

investment of capital. What used to be a

luxury service for millionaires is now

waitresses for everybody in the imperialist

countries. Hooters is the quintessential

waitress business, because it is clear that

Hooters is gaining advantage from its

waitresses; that is really what makes

Hooters stand out.

To us at MIM, Hooters is not just

sexism. After all, it is a huge chain making

lots of money. Hooters is a prop of the

system, an example why pornography is

a system, not a lifestyle. While some

preach lifestyle reform, others are making

billions producing degraded lifestyles. It's

a very uneven battle that only fools will

try to win under capitalism.

Hooters is also parasitism. Like sales

work, advertising is quintessentially

unproductive sector labor with no

ambiguity. In Hooters above all, but in

many other places, waitresses are there

as advertising. They are to attract

customers, the same as in topless bars,

which often do well too. What we

Marxists call surplus-value is waiting to

Hooters parasitism reaches spectacular levels

be uncovered in the food and drink or the

standard aspects of airline transport, but

someone has to help sell them first before

a profit can be made. The labor went into

the food, disproportionately in Aztlán by

migrant farmworkers. The people helping

to sell it are Hooters waitresses.

It's tempting to be "moralizing" and say

Hooters waitresses and topless bar

matrons are "exploited," but they are not

by Marxist definitions. They are

"degraded" by their own ideas of

pleasure, but in class terms we say people

working in advertising like Hooters

waitresses are a kind of parasite. It's not

that we want Hooters waitresses to have

higher wages. We MIM communists want

to distribute food to the hungry of this

world and we want Hooters-type

services abolished. There are important

needs to be satisfied and so the zeal in

setting up multinational businesses like

Hooters is misplaced.

Notes:
1. http://www.contracostatimes.com/mld/
cctimes/news/local/states/california/counties/
contra_costa_county/cities_neighborhoods/
san_ramon/8711319.htm?1c
2. http://edition.cnn.com/2004/US/West/05/15/
hooters.arrest.ap/
3. http://www.floridatoday.com/!NEWSROOM/
sportstoryS0519HOOTERS.htm
4. http://www.ksat.com/news/3322173/
detail.html
5. http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/
google/
index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20040421005093&newsLang=en

even left open the door that they may

increase in number in 2005.

People paying close attention would

have heard Wolfowitz admit that there

were no "rules" for treatment of

prisoners. Likewise, they would have

heard that he did not expect any UN or

European troops until after the violence

in Iraq subsides. He even gave

unexpected praise to the thousands of

Iraqi urban fighters: "`They seem to have

a dangerous capability for urban guerrilla

tactics.'"(5)

In remarkable flexibility for U$

imperialists, they cut occupation troops

in Korea by 10% to move them to Iraq.(6)

This sort of move is bound to incite

backward members of Congress opposed

U.$. admits troops to stay

to Korean "communism" to ask for the

draft.

Notes:
1. http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/
RTGAM.20040514.wpowe14/BNStory/Front/
2. http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/
WO0405/S00180.htm
3. http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2004/5/
353B79D9-4DA2-4EFC-93CE-
A62FF304EC92.html
4. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/
nationworld/2001931010_iraqdig17.html http://
www.state.gov/secretary/rm/32505.htm
5. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/
2004-05-18-wolfowitz_x.htm
6. http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/
20040518/topstories/52561.shtml

committed in the last year alone, if we

lived under the dictatorship of the

proletariat. Of course, these media outlets

are only mouthpieces for a state that is

itself the biggest militarist organization on

the planet.

The elimination of nuclear weapons

from the planet and other questions of

survival must come before individualist

concepts of "freedom." That said,

freedom of speech and the press will be

far superior under the dictatorship of the

proletariat than it is under the current

dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.(5)

Presently, "freedom of the press" is based

on the ability to pay (though the Internet

has leveled the field a bit for those with

computers). This means that the

oppressed are not represented, and that

the press mouths the various interests of

the oppressors who are the minority of

the world's population. Turning the tables

will require the repression of the dominant

media outlets, just as socialism will

require the repression of the dominant

What questions do YOU have?

Wasn't Mao a butcher? Why do you spell it "Amerika"? Shouldn't you try
non-violence first? What is internationalism? Isn't hating white people reverse
racism? Why don't you leftists work together? Why don't you tone it down?
What is a cardinal principle? What is your program? What is necessary to
join MIM? What concrete actions can I take? How do I write articles for
MIM? What is your copyright policy?

Go to http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq

and get real answers to these and other questions.

FOX, CNN, NBC,

ETC. SHOULD

BE TRIED AS

CRIMINALS

classes. To reject such repression on

the basis of "freedom of the press" is

to stand in favor of the status quo of

murder, starvation and potential

nuclear destruction, not to mention the

silencing of the voices of the majority.

Notes:

1. Washington Post. 6 Sept. 2003.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/

w p - d y n / A 3 2 8 6 2 -

2003Sep5?language=printer

2. Gallup Poll. See MIM's article:

http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/

agitation/iraq/falseconscious.html

3. See RAIL's Imperialism Kills

project: http://www.etext.org/Politics/

MIM/rail/impkills.html#iraq

4. Our Foreign Policy. Stalin,

Molotov, Litvinov. Co-Operative

Publishing Society of Foreign Workers

in the USSR, Moscow-Leningrad.

1934. p.19.

5. See MIM's Resolution on "Free

Speech" under the dictatorship of the

proletariat at: http://www.etext.org/

P o l i t i c s / M I M / w i m / c o n g /

freespeech.html

Continued from page 1...

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 9

The proletariat also has its perspective,

created by these mega-corporations. The

proletariat does not reject centralizing

technology and communications that

actually brings the proletariat together.

Nor does the proletariat have any interest

in divvying up capitalists into small and

medium businesses so that they can

remerge again--justifying wars all along

the way as a form of business

competition.

What the petty-bourgeoisie seeks goes

against the interests of the other classes.

It fantasizes about some third option that

does not exist. The realities of class and

national struggle stem from the situation

of economic surplus in society.

Thousands of years ago, small economic

and political units could not scrape

together the economic surplus to support

an armed force to attack another tribe.

By the time such a force travelled to the

other tribe and found its members, it might

be out of food supplies already. In such a

low-surplus situation, staying alive was a

full-time job. If some tribes did

accumulate a little surplus, they could go

make war on other tribes, but the gains

would not be that great, again because

what was possible to steal depended on

the economic level of the tribes being

warred upon. In such a situation of low-

surplus, large corporations and states do

not arise! If all such tribes mystically

signed a piece of paper saying they were

united in one administration across

thousands of miles it would not have

mattered: they would not be able to mass

an army to go attack somebody. So Kohr

misses the actual economic root cause

of great power malevolence.

Contrary to Kohr, it is not the size of

the states as administrative units that

determines the facts of war. It is the

economic surplus available determining

administrative size and thus the war

situation. The proof of this is that Al Qaeda

and similar organizations have no state

size at all, but they do have access to

resources and they can thus carry out

wars at great distances considered

inconceivable by medieval rulers and still

inconceivable to some small states.

It is also that economic surplus that

makes wars among existing small states

today more deadly than ever. May we

remind the Greens of the Croats, Serbs

and Albanians in just one example? Fascist

ideology is alive, well and practiced in ex-

Yugoslavia, thank you Greens, and in no

small part because of illusions spread by

you and your ideological forebears.

Contrary to Green theory, it was the

breakdown of their beloved Yugoslavia

into smaller pieces that saw all the

violence break out. That war also had a

lot to do with popular perceptions of

economic surplus.

Today there is no choice but for large

economic and political organizations,

especially under capitalism. Kohr is

correct obviously and in a tautological

way, that we have found no CEOs, no

managers and no dictators mentally

capable of uniting the world, because

such a task is immense. Kohr's followers

are pointing to how digital technology has

helped people communicate, but we are

in fact running out of time for the people

to come up with ways to centralize in

ways easily perceptible to the limited

humyn mind. MIM does not question that

there is a huge challenge in front of us as

a species. That does not mean that

wasting time on petty-bourgeois dreams

has any possibility of contributing to global

peace.

The capitalists have found it pays to

have these large organizations and

support states that protect their global

interests. Those states in turn have to be

large and can be large because of the

surplus of food, shelter and clothing under

capitalism. Not everyone has to work

directly on the necessity commodities of

life: some people can form the parasitic

strata of the state itself, including armed

forces and guards who do nothing else

but serve political goals.

Dear Ralph Nader or His Official

Campaign Spokespeople:

We are writing to you from MIM

Notes, an independent newspaper of the

Maoist Internationalist Movement. We

seek your written or spoken answers for

interview questions that can be answered

by Ralph Nader or his spokespeople. You

can send us back a written message or

an audio file to place on our website.

Our website garners over 50,000 people

a month and we estimate that several

hundred people will read our interview of

Nader or his official spokespeople each

month. Your interview reply will go on

our web page uncut and unedited, but we

will reserve the right to rebut anything

we believe to be wrong.

We propose to interview you in three

parts: 1) prisons 2) international trade 3)

the nature of capitalism. If you complete

any part, please send it along to our web

page minister, mim3@mim.org

I. Prisons

1. Neither the Democrats nor the

Republicans talk about the fact that the

United $tates is the world's leading prison-

state per capita. Yet, we notice even in

your book you speak of a "free" country

in the United $tates. What is your

explanation for how this state of affairs

came about that the United $tates is the

leading prison-state?

2. We notice that your "issues" section

of the web page opposes the "war on

drugs." Were you aware that if the

United $tates released every single drug

offender from prison, the United $tates

would still be the world's second-leading

prison-state percentage-wise? Is there

anything else you can see doing to resolve

this situation besides your position on the

"war on drugs"?

II. Trade

1. We saw you on Bill Maher's TV

show recently bashing international trade

agreements. Your web page mentions

"pulling up" standards. Yet 21 out of 23

of your "issues" are U$ issues. Is not the

point really not to bash GATT, WTO etc.

but to call for international work standards

in terms of a global minimum wage, global

child care regulations and global

workplace safety? Can you expand on

how you see standards rising? Is it really

possible with just a U$-centered

approach?

2. Are you not afraid that without a

bottom-up international approach, you will

be inflaming chauvinist anti-immigrant and

pro-war sentiments against other

countries when you talk about NAFTA,

WTO and China?

III. Decentralized capitalism

1. We read your book and see you

believe that it is possible to have a

capitalism of smaller economic entities

instead of giant corporations. Can you

point to any society in the world that does

what you are talking about? In what

country if any does your vision of

democracy succeed in regulating

capitalism, so that it does not get to the

stage of corporate power we see today?

How would you rebut us followers of

Marx and Lenin who see the

concentration of corporate power as

inevitable under capitalism?

2. Do not corporations amass

concentrated power in the pursuit of

profits? If the world is not composed of

the small businesses accountable to

people that you advocate, is it not because

such companies are not profitable? How

would these corporations come to exist

as they are if they were not profitable?

We thank you for your reply to these

issues and any other challenges you would

like specifically to throw the way of

communists or followers of Marx, Lenin,

Stalin and Mao in particular.

We had planned on follow-up

questions about whether he was

planning on trading his candidacy for

some Democratic Party concessions on

judges etc. However, we received no

reply from the Nader campaign.

Militarism is war-mongering or the

advocacy of war or actual carrying out

of war or its preparations.

While true pacifists condemn all

violence as equally repugnant, we

Maoists do not consider self-defense

or the violence of oppressed nations

against imperialism to be militarism.

Militarism is mostly caused by

imperialism at this time. Imperialism

is the highest stage of capitalism--

seen in countries like the United

$tates, England and France.

Under capitalism, capitalists often

profit from war or its preparations.

Yet, it is the proletariat that does the

dying in the wars. The proletariat

wants a system in which people do not

have self-interest on the side of war-

profiteering or war for imperialism.

Militarism is one of the most

important reasons to overthrow

capitalism. It even infects oppressed

nations and causes them to fight each

other.

It is important not to let capitalists risk

our lives in their ideas about war and

peace or the environment. They have

already had two world wars admitted

by themselves in the last 100 years and

they are conducting a third right now

against the Third World.

Even a one percent annual chance of

nuclear war destruction caused by

capitalist aggressiveness or "greed" as

the people call it should not be tolerated

by the proletariat. After playing

Russian Roulette (in which the bullet

chamber is different each time and not

related at all to the one that came up in

previous spins) with 100 chambers and

one bullet, the chance of survival is

only 60.5% after 50 turns. In other

words, a seemingly small one percent

annual chance of world war means

eventual doom. After 100 years or turns

of Russian Roulette, the chances of

survival are only 36.6%. After 200

years, survival has only a 13.4%

chance.

What is militarism?

Nader campaign ignores interview request from MIM Notes

Ultimately, it is the economic surplus in

society--and not even the particular types

of companies that form--that is at the

root of larger economic and state

organizations. Unless the petty-

bourgeoisie can find a way to make the

whole world less productive and stay

within those bounds, there is no hope to

turn-back-the-clock to earlier economic

times and smaller nation-states. If the

petty-bourgeoisie should decide to deal

with that reality, instead of spreading

massive delusions that only speed up the

urgency of war and fascism, the

proletariat is waiting for new allies.

Continued from page 7...

Green review

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 10

MIM on

Prisons & Prisoners

MIM seeks to build public opinion

against Amerika's criminal injustice sys-
tem, and to eventually replace the bour-
geois injustice system with proletarian jus-
tice. The bourgeois injustice system im-
prisons and executes a disproportionately
large and growing number of oppressed
people while letting the biggest mass mur-
derers -- the imperialists and their lack-
eys -- roam free. Imperialism is not op-
posed to murder or theft, it only insists that
these crimes be committed in the interests
of the bourgeoisie.

"All U.S. citizens are criminals--

accomplices and accessories to the crimes
of U.$. oppression globally until the day
U.$. imperialism is overcome. All U.S.
citizens should start from the point of view
that they are reforming criminals."

MIM does not advocate that all

prisoners go free today; we have a
more effective program for fighting
crime as was demonstrated in China
prior to the restoration of capitalism
there in 1976. We say that all prisoners
are political prisoners because under
the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, all
imprisonment is substantively
political. It is our responsibility to
exert revolutionary leadership and
conduct political agitation and
organization among prisoners --
whose material conditions make them
an overwhelmingly revolutionary
group. Some prisoners should and will
work on self-criticism under a future
dictatorship of the proletariat in those
cases in which prisoners really did do
something wrong by proletarian
standards.

Under Lock & Key

News from Prisons & Prisoners

Join the fight against

the injustice system

While we fight to end the criminal

injustice system MIM engages in

reformist battles to improve the lives

of prisoners. Below are some of the

campaigns we are currently waging,

and ways people behind the bars and

on the outside can get involved. More

info can be found on our prison web

site: http://www.etext.org/Politics/

MIM/agitation/prisons

Stop Censorship in Prison: Prisons

frequently censor books, newspapers

and magazines coming from MIM's

books for prisoners program. We need

help from lawyers, paralegals and

jailhouse lawyers to fight this

censorship.

Books for Prisoners: This program

focuses on political education of

prisoners. Send donations of books and

money for our Books for Prisoners

program.

End the Three Strikes laws: This

campaign is actively fighting the

repressive California laws, but similar

laws exist in other states. Write to us

to request a petition to collect

signatures. Send articles and

information on three strike laws.

Shut Down the Control Units: Across

the country there are a growing number

of prison control units. These are

permanently designated prisons or cells

in prisons that lock prisoners up in

solitary or small group confinement for

22 or more hours a day with no

congregate dining, exercise or other

services, and virtually no programs for

prisoners. Prisoners are placed in

control units for extended periods of

time. These units cause both mental and

physical problems for prisoners.

Write to us to request a petition to

collect signatures. Get your

organization to sign the statement

demanding control units be shut down.

Send us information about where there

are control units in your state. Include

the names of the prisons as well as the

number of control unit beds/cells in

each prison if that is known. Send us

anti-control unit artwork.

MIM's Re-Lease on Life Program:

This program provides support for our

comrades who have been recently

released from the prison system, to help

them meet their basic needs and also

continue with their revolutionary

organizing on the outside. We need

funds, housing, and job resources. We

also need prisoner's input on the

following survey questions:

1. What are the biggest challenges

you face being released from prison?

2. How can these problems be

addressed?

3. What are the important elements

of a successful release program?

When exploring the ethical implications

of some socially sanctioned institutions, it

is understandable how society at large

might not invest due attention to human

rights questions that arise based on the

severe conditions within prison control

units. After all, the ones who are affected

may not be society's most beloved

individuals and may even be regarded as

deserving of less than compassionate

treatment.

This logic, however, does not fully

encompass the extent of the issues that

control units present. Practically speaking,

these types of environments inevitably

serve as breeding grounds for a wide

range of psychological disturbances.

What the average person might not realize

is that these disturbances manifest

themselves in behavior and it is precisely

for this reason why people who don't care

should.

One specific dynamic that is universally

present in inmates who endure long- term

isolation is social starvation. Not being

exposed to regular social situations

creates a profound loss of touch with the

world from which they came - the world

that bore them. This severed connection

can lead to distrust (to the point of extreme

paranoia), introversion, and a distorted

path of normal, healthy social

development.

Anxiety, insecurity, and ultimately,

resentment, are also common elements

that contribute to an individual's alienation

from their community. In fact, isolation is

the antithesis of the concept of

community and is, in itself, implicative of

cruelty and abandonment.

The very term "control unit" is an irony.

Yes, while an inmate is housed in one of

these places he is under control. However,

it is this very "control" that precipitates a

wholly negative change in one's

character. The inherent coldness of such

a barren place demonstrates a disregard

for the monstrous effects such a cruelly

oppressive environment creates. Instead

of nurturing improvement and growth, it

actually fosters hostility. It is insanely

counterproductive.

Long-term isolation forces inmates to

construct elaborate coping mechanisms

to deal with the psychologically crippling

conditions. It requires an emotional

detachment, which is a precursor to

antisocial behavior and is not in any way

healthy or helpful.

It is for this reason that the notion of

control units being effective deterrents to

future, disruptive behavior is absolutely

illogical to a laughable degree. These

coping mechanisms become so

entrenched into one's personality, that it

completely alters their entire psyche. The

process is allowed to continue for so long,

that inmates become accustomed to

isolation at a hefty expense to their

emotional well-being.

Strangely, it can become a perverse

measure of mental strength - being able

to withstand the crushing weight of

isolation as a show to "prove" they cannot

be broken, when in fact, this contempt

may be evidence that they have already

been cruelly affected. It amounts to no

less than psychological mutilation - a

perpetually self-defeating attitude.

It is difficult to believe that control units

have any redeeming qualities. The fact is

this: nearly all inmates housed in control

units will re-enter prison populations, or

in many cases, will be released directly

back into society.

Human beings are known for being

products of their environments. So what

do you get when you subject a person to

inhumane conditions and an utterly

complete lack of compassion? It appears

to be as simple and reliable as working

out a mathematical equation. It seems

though, if you don't get the answer you

were looking for, why would you stick

with the same formula?

That's not how progress is made.

Reexamination, acknowledgement of

mistakes, and the redressing of faults are

the key to a healthy, moral society.

- a prisoner at Walpole MA in the

Department Disciplinary Unit, March

2004

Letter to California Senators:

Prison abuse must be

stopped

I am a hostage of the California

Department of Corruptions. I sent this

letter out as a personal challenge to

Senator Jackie Spier, Senator Gloria

Romero, and Senator Bruce McPherson,

concerning the abuse within these prison

facilities.

I came here to California Correctional

Institution on March 27, 2003. My release

date was August 23, 2004. On April 8,

2003, Lt. J. Lundy threatened to plant a

shank on me in order to give me more

time. I wrote a complaint and I also sent

a copy to a judge and an attorney to cover

my butt in the event he made good on his

threat. And ever since then, I've been

having problems. 115's have been

falsified against me to give me more time.

My original date has been changed

because of the retaliation and the

corruption within this institution. On

October 1, 2003, I was physically

attacked for initiating a court action

against Lt. Lundy and his subordinates.

They then conspired to cover up the

attack by falsifying reports.

The guards have abused their authority

and stripped away my freedom to prove

to me and others not to "fuck with us or

we'll fuck you over." They have proven

to me that they can do that. Now, can

you prove to me that they can't get away

with it?

I've been placed in isolation in a small

cell approximately 24 hours a day with

the exception of a shower and, when

permitted, a dog cage outside. All because

of their abuse of authority and lies. I've

repeatedly asked for an Internal Affairs

investigation which has repeatedly been

denied. It's obvious that there's a

conspiracy to cover-up misconduct by

these rogue guards.

Senator Spier, you stated in the L.A.

Times (January 17, 2004) that the

Associate Warden of Folsom Prison

asked for protection. If he's asking for

protection, then what do you think I need?

Wastelands: prison control units

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 11

Facts on U$ imprisonment

The facts about imprisonment in the United $tates are that the United $tates has been the world's leading prison-state per capita for the last

25 years, with a brief exception during Boris Yeltsin's declaration of a state of emergency.(1)

That means that while Reagan was talking about a Soviet "evil empire" he was the head of a state that imprisoned more people per capita.

In supposedly "hard-line" Bulgaria of the Soviet bloc of the 1980s, the imprisonment rate was less than half that of the United $tates.(2,3)

To find a comparison with U.$. imprisonment of Black people, there is no statistic in any country that compares including apartheid South

Africa of the era before Mandela was president. The last situation remotely comparable to the situation today was under Stalin during war
time. The majority of prisoners are non-violent offenders(4) and the U.S. Government now holds about a half million more prisoners than
China; even though China is four times our population.(5)

The rednecks tell MIM that we live in a "free country." They live in an Orwellian 1984 situation where freedom is imprisonment.

Notes: 1. Marc Mauer, "Americans Behind Bars: The International Use of Incarceration 1993," The Prison Sentencing Project, 918 F. St. NW, Suite

501, Washington, DC 20004 (202) 628-0871 Reference: SRI: R8965-2, 1994
2. Ibid., 1992 report.

3. United Nations Development Programme, "Human Development Report 1994,:" Oxford University Press, p. 186.

4. Figure of 51.2 percent for state prisoners there for non-violent offenses. Abstract of the United States 1993, p. 211.
5. Atlantic Monthly December, 1998.

And others like me? I can name many

incidents that can clearly show a pattern

of abuse and cover-ups. For instance,

there is a gentleman waiting on trial right

now because of the abuse and falsified

reports. There is also a disabled

gentleman sitting in isolation because of

falsified reports. The police here sprayed

him down with tear gas all because he

wanted to speak to a Sergeant because

he was being denied medical attention.

Guards show a lack of training and an

overreaction to inflict pain because of the

fact that they know they'll get away with

it.

Misconduct is rarely reported and often

covered-up. Many inmates are illiterate

and do not know how to write a complaint

and that's a big factor in the guards doing

what they do. They assumed I was

illiterate but now I'm a political threat

because I can read and write. Illiteracy

plays a big part in the abuse.

The abuse has been going on for so

long that now guards feel secure and

comfortable doing it. That security comes

because of the fact that places like

Prisoners Rights Union, Office of the

Inspector general, Prison Law Office,

ACLU and other places that are intended

to assist us, don't. We are being abused

and killed by the same people who are

sworn to uphold the law. We are sent here

as punishment for whatever crime we

may or may not have committed but we're

not sent here to be punished. Article 1 of

the United Nations Convention Against

Torture prohibits "physical or mental pain

and/or suffering inflicted to punish." The

United States Constitution 8th

Amendment also prohibits "cruel and

unusual punishment."

So here we are at the cross road. You

speak out against the abuses. I'm trying

to do something about it. My question is:

what will you do about it? Pelican Bay

isn't an isolated incident. The problem is

within all of the institutions. The CDC is

the problem. The CDC's top officials

block investigations which allows them

to get away with it. By failure to discipline

the officers, failure to follow up on

complaints, failure to investigate

misconduct, failure to properly train

guards, failure to fire guards when it's

necessary, the CDC is a failure. So what's

correct about the Department of

Corrections? Nothing.

I can tell you things that go on here

that will shock the conscience of mankind.

I've seen dogs get treated better than we

are here. Is this the intended message

you want to send to the public? That there

is no rehabilitation, just humiliation, torture

and annihilation by ways of inhumane

conditions for which people, human

people, are forced to live because no one

wants to do anything about it?

I will fight this for as long as I have to

and do whatever it takes to see justice

prevail. With or without your help, I

promise you a change. Without your help,

it'll take a little longer but I've learned

patience, especially from being in

isolation. If you could only see with your

own eyes what goes on here, it would

make you sick. There are people who

belong here and many who don't, but no

one should be abused. The abuse doesn't

discriminate, though. It reaches out to

who's available. Under the United States

Constitution, 14th Amendment, it states

in part "equal protection" for all under

the law. Inside these walls, not only does

an inmate suffer but so does society. A

prisoner being abused carries hate and

animosity with him and sooner or later,

he lets it out and in turn hurts someone

that doesn't deserve it. Then society asks,

"Why did he do that?" You have the

answer but you're ignoring it by ignoring

the problem.

As law makers, you're able to change

it, to correct the wrong. I'm just one voice,

but I'm going to make it one loud voice.

The truth does hurt but we must face it in

order to make things right. A just society

is a society with justice for all, not the

selected few.

-- A California Prisoner, March 2004

NY SHU full of Non-

Violent convictions

Now, to give you a list of things that's

going on in Upstate Correctional Facility

(NY). This prison was built under the

eyes of the government for "violent

prisoners" (yet it's double cell) in 1999...

It's 2004, and the majority of the SHU

(isolation cells) is filled with drug tickets,

medium prisoners who only have 30 days,

and other "non-violent" cases. Therefore

the way they're keeping us in this box

(SHU) system is just to keep it full. So

what is it really for?

Then you have programs established

in SHU that are only beneficial to the

economy in the colony of Malone, New

York! Give jobs to these people who don't

care about the prisoners per se (example:

nurses, educational staff, counselors, etc.)

They have a cell study program

established in SHU. I haven't seen the

school teacher in a month and when they

do come around they have nothing

educational to give me, but have Donald

Goins books, etc. The things that have

kept our kind down for centuries.

Ignorance is power over our kind. Then

you have a ASAT workbook program, and

it's not established for the well being of

drug addicts. Let me point out just what

I'm going thru. I have been in SHU for

27 months, and the reason I came into

SHU was drug related tickets.

--a New York Prisoner, April 2004

Oregon punishes

hunger strikers

First, much love to my folks who stand

strong at EOCI in Oregon. Brother X is

in the hole on charges of starting a hunger

strike. The convicts at Snake River in

Oregon just finished a food strike last

month in March. It was beautiful to see

Black/White/Asian/Mexicans stand

together - no one on 2 side except rape-

o's and medical went to chow - we can

understand medical, they had to eat. Since

then officials from Salem have made

some changes, however we have a long

way to go before we are treated as human

beings out here. But here at SRCI we

have started to understand we have to

stand united against the system.

--Another Enlightened Brother of the

Struggle, April 2004

Intensive Management Units:

Behavior Modification

or Psychological

Subjugation?

From inside of this beast called the

Prison Industrial Complex, I find that the

agenda upon which its foundation was

laid is being fulfilled to our detriment. I

find that Black Men are not only being

physically arrested but they are also being

developmentally arrested, their

psychological, spiritual, political and

cultural development confined and

suppressed to the point of retardation. But

what transpires behind these steel curtains

is only a replica of what transpires out

there in so-called free society on a smaller

scale.

Prisons were constructed from the

recesses of man's mind yet Man's mind

has become subject to prison cells, the

very atrocity born of his incomplete

thought. I've watched prison cells cause

man's mind to regress to the point where

he becomes primitive in his application of

thought to this reality.

I've witnessed confinement to a cell

for 23 hours a day in Intensive

Management Units (IMU), sensory

deprivation, and the deprivation of human

contact cause my brothers to become so

consumed by emotions that it distorts their

ability to conceive reality. At this stage

they lose the faculty of progressive

thought and this causes them to become

perceptual beings instead of conceptual

beings, making it hard for them to grasp

concepts that transcend their confinement.

This causes them to fall down on all

fours psychologically in regression

designating for themselves a cave of

ignorance as a domicile where ambition

is imprisoned. They're cast out to the

peripherals of reality and held hostage

there, never pondering the full extent of

their inherent potential, therefore never

becoming cognizant of the duality in man's

nature. Man can exhibit the highest

manifestation of life on earth, or he can

exhibit the manifestation of an animal in

human form, yet it is not a cell that keeps

man confined or imprisons ambition.

Physical freedom is concomitant with,

and a product of, psychological liberation.

These two elements, physical freedom

and psychological liberation, are procured

through abstract intellectual concepts, not

physical precepts. The ability to grasp

abstract intellectual concepts and apply

them to one's plight frees the prisoner and

the lack of ability to grasp abstract

intellectual concepts and apply them to

one's plight imprisons the free man.

In light of this reality, sensory

deprivation becomes self-realization, for

it alleviates sounds, smells and

circumstances that redirect man's

attention from self, causing estrangement

between the physical and the intellect and

the deprivation of human contact becomes

the introduction to self because it forces

man to contemplate self.

It is time that our brothers and sisters

overstand that in order to transcend our

perceptual confinement, we must elevate

our conceptual consciousness! Then and

only then will we taste psychological

liberation and embrace physical freedom.

Uhuru SaSa (Freedom Now)

--a Washington prisoner, May 2004

MIM Notes 303 · June 1, 2004 · Page 12

Notas Rojas

juno 1, 2004, Nº 303 Fragmento del Periodico Oficial del Movimiento Internacionalista Maoista

Gratis

12 de Diciembre

Activistas latinos sostuvieron un boicot

en todo el estado de California para protestar
la decisión tomada por el gobernador Arnold

Schwarzenegger el 3 de diciembre de revocar
la ley de licencias de conducir que hubiera
otorgado el derecho de conducir a los

llamados inmigrantes ilegales. Iniciado con la
intención de demostrar el poder económico
de los latinos en California, el boicot que sólo

duró un día, se convirtió en una huelga
económica en la que los latinos del estado se
quedaron en casa en vez de ir al trabajo o al

colegio, y se negaron a ir de compras.

Una tercera parte de la población

californiana es latina y las industrias del

estado cuentan con la mano de obra latina,
cuya contribución a la fuerza trabajadora
asciende a un 45%, sobre todo en trabajos

pesados y de poco pago que otra gente no
quiere. De las nacionalidades latinas en
California, los mexicanos constituyen la

mayoría abrumadora-- un 80% según los
resultados del censo del 2000. (1) Comparada
demográficamente, esta huelga fue

compuesta en su mayoría por líderes y
participantes mexicanos, poniendo en
evidencia el nacionalismo mexicano

acompañado de banderas mexicanas volando
al viento en las protestas y en las calles del
estado.

Los colegios en distritos densamente

poblados por latinos reportaron una dramática
ausencia de estudiantes; algunos negocios

cerraron sus puertas en solidaridad con la
acción, y muchas calles llenas de tiendas
carecían de consumidores. El periódico

Fresno Bee reportó que la ausencia en el
condado de Fresno costó a los distritos
escolares aproximadamente 500,000 dólares.

Es difícil acertar el impacto económico sobre
las tiendas, pero juzgando por la ausencia de
estudiantes en colegios públicos a través del

estado, la participación en el boicot aparenta
ser extensa. Varios negocios entrevistados
por principales medios de comunicación

cerraron sus tiendas debido a su
reconocimiento de la contribución por parte
de la mano de obra barata de los inmigrantes

a sus ganancias monetarias. La pérdida
económica a causa de un solo día del paro,
aunque sea durante una temporada festiva,

no es nada comparada con las posibles
pérdidas a las que se enfrentarían los negocios
si perdieran sus trabajadores. Esta decisión

sin duda alguna también fue impulsada por el
punto de vista práctico de algunas compañías
que sabían que la mayoría de sus trabajadores

planeaban apoyar el boicot faltando al
trabajo.

Las demostraciones que tuvieron lugar a

través del estado, fueron formadas por grupos
de huelguistas latinos y algunas personas de
origen no latino que se unieron en

solidaridad. En pueblos con un gran número
de habitantes latinos como Fresno y Santa
Rosa cientos de protestantes salieron a las

calles. En Sacramento, enfrente de la casa del
estado, cientos de protestantes latinos
hicieron poco caso a la lluvia para unirse a la

lucha. El llamativo grupo recibió mucho
respaldo por parte de carros que pitaban en
apoyo de los carteles escritos pidiendo

licencias de manejo y derechos iguales a los

inmigrantes latinos.

La gran mayoría de participantes en las

demostraciones públicas fueron personas

mexicanas, siendo algunas de ellas residentes
legales y otras ilegales. La frontera imperialista
entre U.$. y México refuerza el robo de latierra

mexicana por parte de EE.UU. y mantiene a la
gente en México, y en todos los países de
América Latina, en pobreza convirtiéndola en

un blanco perfecto para la explotación. La
llamada inmigración ilegal provee al estado
de California con la mano de obra barata que

se utiliza en los campos y en otros trabajos
mal pagados y destructivos para la salud
física que los americanos blancos no quieren.

Al mismo tiempo, corporaciones americanas
tienen la libertad de poner fábricas al otro
lado de la frontera y mantener sueldos bajos,

porque los trabajadores mexicanos no pueden
cruzar la frontera para competir por los
mismos trabajos con ciudadanos americanos.

El MIM respalda dicha huelga económica

siendo ésta un ejemplo de una lucha obrera
correcta en contra de la explotación que es

parte de una larga lucha de liberación nacional.
EE.UU. es el país que está ocupando
ilegalmente las tierras mexicanas; los

americanos son los inmigrantes ilegales que
masacraron a poblaciones indígenas para
robarles su territorio. La lucha por el derecho

a licencias de conducir es sólo una pequeña
batalla en una larga pelea por una abolición
de fronteras imperialistas y una liberación

nacional de los pueblos oprimidos del mundo.

Convocado por la Asociación Política

México-Americana con su base en Los

Ángeles, el boicot no obtuvo ningún respaldo
por parte de sindicatos laborales. Es posible
que, dado el corto plazo de la convocatoria,

los organizadores de la protesta no hayan
solicitado ayuda sindical. Pero no nos
sorprende el hecho de que los sindicatos no

hayan sido representados en las
demostraciones dominadas por la presencia
de inmigrantes mexicanos. Los sindicatos

americanos tienen una larga historia de
oposición a los trabajadores inmigrantes y
de organización por los derechos de

trabajadores blancos en detrimento de las
naciones oprimidas. Los sindicatos
americanos respaldan el cierre de las fronteras

por miedo a perder puestos de trabajo que
pueden pasar a manos de inmigrantes o
pueden ser transferidos a otros países. Dichos

sindicatos luchan para mantener el alto nivel
de vida del que disfrutan los ciudadanos de
este país a costa de los países del tercer

mundo. Los trabajadores del tercer mundo
son explotados por corporaciones americanas
que traen las ganancias a casa y las

comparten con los trabajadores americanos
en forma de sueldos más altos y beneficios.
Los inmigrantes ilegales dentro de las

fronteras americanas se enfrentan a semejante
explotación.

Manifestantes del

Alojamiento de la

Unidad de Seguridad

se unen a la protesta.

Una demostración en frente del

Departamento Correccional de California en
Sacramento (CDC), convocada por el Comité
de Defensa del Barrio, una organización

comunitaria en San José, atrajo la atención de
gente a las unidades de máxima seguridad
(SHU) de las prisiones de California, cuyas

celdas de tortura se usan para encerrar a
muchos prisioneros latinos en confinamiento
solitario por tiempo indefinido. Estas

sentencias se aplican a supuestos miembros
de pandillas, pero los criterios que definen a
miembros de pandilla ponen bajo sospecha a

todos los latinos. Tanto una conversación en
un área de recreo de la prisión como un tatuaje
o una dedicatoria en una tarjeta de

cumpleaños, bastan para tachar de
sospechoso a un prisionero. Los prisioneros
activos políticamente llegan a ser blancos de

estos criterios, de modo que se les retira de
patios de recreo para que no puedan
influenciar en y educar a otros prisioneros.

Un líder del Comité de Defensa del Barrio
explica que "Juzgando por los resultados del
proceso judicial (llevado a cabo por el senado

del SHU) el 15 de septiembre del 2003, el costo
estimado de mantenimiento de una persona
en el SHU vacila entre 60,000 y 70,000 dólares,

lo cual implica un gasto inútil de millones de
dólares. Steve Castillo ha estado en el SHU
por ocho años sólo por ser abogado. Hugo

Pinell lleva un sinfín de años en el SHU por
sus ideales políticos! John Martínez fue
encerrado en el SHU por cuestionar la

brutalidad en Corcoran! Francisco Cesar Villa
está en el SHU por pedir el número correcto
de zapatos! José Luis Avina y Eddie

Bustamente están en el SHU por participar en
una huelga de hambre en 1999 en la prisión
de New Folsom. Al fin y al cabo, el único

remedio que queda es organizar a gente afuera
de las cárceles para poder llevar a cabo
cambios fundamentales y cerrar las unidades

de máxima seguridad."

Los manifestantes que se reunieron

enfrente del CDC marcharon a la casa de

estado para unirse a la demostración. Los
huelguistas firmaron una petición circulada
por el MIM para cerrar las unidades de máxima

seguridad, y muchos hablaron de sus
experiencias personales o sus parientes que
están encerrados en esos lugares.

Un pequeño grupo de activistas le entregó

una carta a la Senadora Gloria Romero,
presidenta del Comité del Senado Selecto

encargado del Sistema Correccional de
California, exigiendo un cierre del SHU. Hacía
unos meses, Romero había tenido un proceso

judicial para investigar las unidades de máxima
seguridad (véase MN 289), pero desde
entonces los activistas no habían obtenido

ningún tipo de información.

Romero no se encontraba en su oficina

pero su representante Rocky Rushing, quien

accedió a hablar con los activistas, explico

que el CDC se había reunido con el Comité la

semana anterior justo para informar sobre el
"progreso" respecto a las demandas
presentadas en el proceso judicial. Deducimos

que el CDC no iba a implementar ningún
cambio. El CDC accedió a hacer unos
pequeños cambios en el proceso de

implementación de criterios que establecen
la definición de "miembro de pandilla", lo cual
haría posible que los presos argumentaran y

cuestionaran las evidencias presentadas. Sin
embargo, la mayoría de las evidencias se
mantiene en secreto, y el CDC no hizo ningún

caso de las respuestas de los presos, de modo
que estos cambios no tienen ningún sentido.
El CDC también accedió a hacer algunos

cambios en el programa del SHU. Pero estos
cambios también son insignificantes ya que
se enfocan en la educación sobre pandillas y

en terapia. De esta forma, el CDC puede
pretender que el SHU en realidad está
solucionando el problema de las pandillas en

las prisiones de California, en vez de proveer
los medios necesarios como bibliotecas,
educación y programas de recreación.

Los activistas solicitaron información al

representante de la Senadora Romero sobre
las demandas entabladas por familiares y

amigos de los presos en el reciente proceso
judicial (es decir, sobre las promesas de la
senadora). El representante respondió que

esta responsabilidad había sido relegada al
CDC que se encargaría de revisar todas las
quejas, y que para este propósito el CDC

había recibido la transcripción del proceso.
¡Además informó que el CDC sostenía que
todos los problemas habían sido

solucionados! Claro está, los organizadores
del SHU no vieron a ningún representante
del CDC en el proceso judicial, en el cual

alrededor de cien personas dieron su
testimonio sobre los horrores del SHU. Quizás
lo más relevante fue la afirmación del asistente

de la Senadora Romero que expresó la
esperanza de poder organizar otra reunión
con representantes del CDC y la gente

preocupada por el estado del SHU, para que
en caso de que el CDC se negara a implementar
cambios, los participantes de la reunión

podrían sentirse incluidos. El MIM deduce
que el asistente de la Senadora Romero no
cree que el gobierno tenga poder sobre el

Departamento Correccional de California.
Puede convocar reuniones pero no puede
exigir cambios. Esto no es ninguna sorpresa,

ya que el presupuesto del CDC no ha sufrido
ningún cambio o recorte a pesar de los
grandes recortes presupuestarios y extensas

negociaciones entre varias ramas del
gobierno de California con el fin de aprobar
un presupuesto equilibrado.

El MIM sabe que un verdadero cambio en

el sistema de justicia criminal no provendrá
de un Comité del Senado. Pero seguiremos

explorando todas las direcciones posibles a
medida que vayamos peleando por reformas
que puedan mejorar las vidas de nuestros

hermanos y hermanas tras las rejas, mientras
nosotros sigamos educando y organizando a
la gente para acabar con el sistema

imperialista.

California: Boicot dirigido por mexicanos y prisioneros del

Alojamiento de la Unidad de Seguridad (SHU) que se unen a la lucha