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MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 1

MIM Notes

February 15, 2004, Nº 314 The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

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On January 26 2005, 31 U.$. troops

died in a helicopter crash in Iraq and
insurgents killed another 6 Marines for
the bloodiest day of the land war for the
U.$. side. CNN ran an unscientific poll
of 60,000 website users that MIM found
very interesting: 9% of website users said
they would be willing to sacrifice their
lives to establish "democracy" in Iraq.

First of all, MIM is also interested in

this question of the altruist minority--in
this case willing to die so that the country
can have cheap oil. Often times we are
told that communism is unrealistic
"because people are selfish."

MIM agrees that people are selfish and

that is why they are some day going to
put down U.$. imperialism at the source.
The world's people are going to realize
that Bu$h has no right to risk their lives in
endless wars for contractor profits and
counter-productive efforts against
"terror." Selfishly, but with the best
intentions for the species, the world's
oppressed and exploited are going to
establish the joint dictatorship of the
proletariat of the oppressed nations over
u.$. imperialism and its allies, thanks
above all to the efforts of rulers such as
Bu$h.

Nonetheless, the 9% is an interesting

figure. It's about what MIM thinks is
possible for a communist party in most
countries, (probably not the U$A just yet),
not a communist society. That's the big
mistake at this stage in our movement.
Finding a society of 100% altruists is
indeed impossible in the industrial world,
but finding 9% is fairly probable. The other
91% should take notice of what it means
and not assume that everybody is like
they are.

Nine percent or even two percent is

not nothing. Much can be done with that
number of people and that is crucial to
species-survival.

MIM has plans that the altruist minority

serve in responsible positions in society.

Iraq: Altruism worth pondering

February 5, 2005

The governor of Colorado and the

craven leadership of the University of

Colorado have whipped up a bureaucratic

witch-hunt against a tenured professor

named Ward Churchill. This has come

as no surprise to MIM, because Ward

Churchill had badly hurt the u.$.

imperialists with his past books on

government documents related to FBI

repression of the American Indian

Movement and the Black Panther Party.

The new furor damages further an

already government-financed academic

institution--the University of Colorado

and all similar state schools. The witch-

hunt also fits the federal government's

priorities--to blame someone else for its

failures. Ward Churchill is a professor

without state power who never had a

chance to run the U.S. government and

prevent 911. In fact, Ward Churchill and

all advanced people like him suffer the

frustrating risk of living in a country that

allows its government to go to war after

war. Unlike the vast majority who turn a

blind eye and then claim shock when the

war hits home, Ward Churchill knew what

was going on and continued to live in a

country that risked his and others' lives.

Now happily ignorant yokels are asking

for Ward Churchill to lose his tenured post

at the University of Colorado--instead

It's enough people to run a government
with a leadership principle that means the
death penalty for those who are corrupt
or inept. It means that until the world gets
to a safer and more harmonious place,
we can choose our leaders on the basis
of who is willing to bear a heavy burden
of risk for failure instead of picking our
leaders based on campaign contributions
and baby-kissing photo opportunities.

Secondly, the CNN poll is of interest

for a general rebuttal of individualism, the
ideology behind Liberalism--the "war of
all against all." Going back a million years,
humyns always had a survival advantage
because at least some individuals were
altruists and not focused on saving their
own lives or even just those of their mates
and offspring. The formation of tribes and
the idea of sentry duty was a step along
those lines hard to imagine if the world is
really "all against all." One might
speculate that gay sexual behavior
survived over a million years because it
is an advantage in evolutionary struggle
against other species: it guaranteed that
there were always some people not
focussed on their own offspring. Groups
without that minority had a disadvantage
in putting up a united physical effort for

Continued on page 3...

The world's people are going to

realize that Bu$h has no right to

risk their lives in endless wars for

contractor profits and counter-

productive efforts against `terror.'

defense.

Finally, and relevant to the war in Iraq,

9% is important because it shows there's
a limit to the U.$. war effort globally. It
means there are less than 30 million people
in the united $tates ready to die. When
we subtract out the portion that is really
too young or old to fight, we get a better
picture. When we consider that some of
that 30 million also will not believe
establishing democracy in Iraq by U.$.
force is possible in the real world, the
number is less than 30 million.

Right now there are 150,000 troops in

Iraq, a lot less than 30 million. Many of
those 30 million will be the wrong age to
serve in the military and won't have to
because they're done with their service.
Others won't have the proper physical
condition or education to serve under
current regulations.

Still the 9% says that a draft should not

be necessary at least in theory. The land-
based forces and reserves are having
trouble recruiting, but u.$. imperialism
does have more back-up forces possible.
On the other hand, in a battle that rachets
up internationally, there is no way the u.$.
imperialists can win. The more intense it
gets, the worse for the imperialists.

15 years later, Soviet dissidents'

record a shambles

Continued on page 8...

As 2004 drew to a close, we

celebrated the 125th birthday of Stalin on

December 21,

but we can

also look at the

15 year record

of Russian

Liberalism in

power. In

1989, the

critics of Stalin

and the Soviet

Union finally won open victory with the

dissolution of the Soviet Union.

In 2000, Soviet-era dissident Alexander

Solzhenitsyn deigned to meet with Russian

President Putin for three hours.(1)

Meanwhile, polls show that 21% of

Russians consider Stalin to have been a

"wise leader,"(2) while a larger portion

has an overall positive view of Stalin. The

Russian people are chewing on this issue

somewhat as evidenced by various polls

THANK YOU

WARD

CHURCHILL

Backward lynch

mob blames the

messenger on 911

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 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.

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The courageous judge in Massachusetts

who said gays are the same as everyone

else and deserve the right to marry has

triggered global repercussions that include

Bu$h's re-election but also many

activities outside the united $tates. MIM

picks up on some conversations that

Amerikans may not hear much.

MIM's biggest criticism of Stalin--one

that makes us doubt if he were even a

communist--is that he did not lead his

people correctly on the gay question. To

this day, the ex-Soviet proletariat is an

easy sucker for anti-gay chauvinism used

by the bourgeoisie to divide the proletariat

on non- principal leisure-time questions.

That is why the Russian Maoist Party has

had to tackle this question with

aggressiveness to the point of

provocation.

The proof of the true nature of the gay

political question is available today in how

successful professional politician Putin

handled Ukraine's election for president.

Yes, it was an important foreign policy

question for the world, the election in

Ukraine and it is in that important moment

we see the role that the gay question plays

in the proletariat of the ex-Soviet Union

but also many other places.

In an effort to campaign against

Yuschenko, Putin held a press

conference. He correctly derided a Texas

judge which ordered that Putin not

disband a Russian oil company named

Yukos that did not pay its taxes. Putin

was right that it was typical Amerikan

arrogance.

Putin also derided the forces involved

in the so-called "Orange Revolution." So

then in the midst of such important

subjects and taking a cue from Bu$h no

doubt, he took a shot at the side he was

opposing in Ukraine's election by asking

whether a gay revolution would be next.

The Yuschenko forces fired back even

in English, and without the context. They

said that Yanukovych was also carrying

out the "Blue Revolution."(1)

Not satisfied with his gay-baiting on

national television, Putin's lawyers also

went to court. A critic had called Putin

gay. The defense lawyer had to say it

should not be considered an insult.(2)

While successful politician Putin knows

how to push the buttons, we can be sure

that among the proletariat the gay question

screams even louder or Putin would not

be pushing the buttons. A Latvian poster

linked to by the unofficial "National

Bolshevik" (Nazbol) website of the

Russian fascists limonka.net shows a

firing squad saying, "we don't care which

one is the gay pedophile."(3) The same

website limonka.net links to the official

nazbol party website that advocates

Hitler's "final solution" for the Chechens,

which means eliminating them all through

slaughter.(4)

At the moment, there is a lead article

in a December issue of a well-read paper

of the Russian/English-speaking literati

featured right above an article by the

fascist Limonov. The article sports a

mockery of the Black Panther

Program,(5) with the same picture MIM

uses, with no less than two of the ten points

bashing gays in order to get at Putin,

including the first point in the program.

Though Putin be imperialist enemy, it is

shooting ourselves in the foot to take him

down with gay-baiting.

The exile.ru article reeks of an FBI

connection, because the FBI also

historically forged documents showing

Huey Newton to be gay in order to

attempt to split the BPP. Having seen that

move, Huey Newton moved quickly to

champion gay rights and he was right.

We cannot give the enemy any crease to

get through. At the very least, the exile.ru

mockery of the BPP program plays 100%

into FBI hands.

The comfortable people of Leningrad

and Moscow can make jokes like these

as if the gay question were worth dividing

over. They give not much thought to the

people of Russia's hinterland, susceptible

to such demagoguery but needing

proletarian economic leadership.

Meanwhile, Nelson Mandela admitted

his last surviving son Makgatho Mandela

died of AIDS at age 54. Previously, "in

1996, one of Zimbabwe's foremost and

revered son of the struggle, Dr Nkomo

revealed that his son Earnest Thuthani

aged 41, had died of Aids." (6) In some

ways, the death of a ruler's son by AIDS

is more revealing than the death of a poor

persyn. In cases of poverty we are sure

a lack of health-care was the problem.

For rulers, the question could be something

else.

It has been common African opinion

that only gays get AIDS. The denial of

heterosexual or blood transmission is

adamant among common and even

educated people. In Africa, the warping

effect of anti-gay chauvinism and male

supremacy on sexual questions (such as

condom use and promiscuity) is causing

millions to lose their lives --another

reason sex education is a life-and-death

question not to be left to parents or

ignorant religious organizations. The

Catholic Church in Mandela's South

Africa chose this moment to object to

condom use.(7) For that alone, a Bishop

would be shot under the dictatorship of

the proletariat.

Decent people anywhere with any

sense would refuse to bash gays solely

on the basis of the influence of anti-gay

chauvinism in Africa in causing so many

deaths. It's another case where fear

leads to ignorance of a fatal kind for the

proletariat. This is no good for our anti-

imperialist struggle --to have our side die

off because of bourgeois scapegoating.

It's no better than dying off because

corporations sold us cigarettes.

The global funding for the tsunami relief

reached the same level as the total global

funding for all international AIDS, malaria

and TB campaigns according to the

UN.(8) Yet at the moment, 4.1 million

Africans are dying just from AIDS, with

6500 deaths every day.

The gay question does successfully

Gay rights question heats up globally

Continued on page 4...

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 3

of asking for the resignation of the many

government officials with documented

ties to Al-Qaeda including arms and

finance ties. They wonder what right

Churchill has to question all the risks that

governments not of Ward Churchill's

choosing heaped on him.

We ask Ward Churchill not to back

down. He should fight this thing to the

end, no matter how lop-sided and stupid

the media may seem. He should not resign

his post. Quite the contrary, the people

who should resign are the ones who

formed the committee to investigate him.

If a poll could be found revealing that a

majority of the u.$. public knows anything

about the wars the united $tates conducts

around the world, including those relevant

to 911, then, just maybe, an argument

could start. As it stands, Ward Churchill's

opponents barely deserve his reply.

The comparison of Amerikans to Nazis

is even more apt than Ward Churchill has

said, because the u.$. public knows and

admits that the Nazis were engaged in a

massive war. When engaged in a war and

when fully dealing with that reality, a public

does not demonstrate the shock so

widespread in Amerika after 911. Shock

is really proof of ignorance or a level of

consciousness choosing to be uninformed.

No one was shocked that the Nazi

movement that lived by the sword died

by the sword. Anyone who knew about

u.$. wars around the globe should not

have been shocked by retaliation. People

who were not paying attention to

international wars and politics before 911

like Ward Churchill was have no right to

judge him now. It's not possible to have it

both ways. People who want to stay

uninformed should not claim to know

what is right and cast stones at Ward

Churchill.

January 31, 2005

THANK YOU WARD CHURCHILL

Continued from page 1...

statement from Ward

Churchill

h t t p : / / w w w . c o l o r a d o . e d u /

E t h n i c S t u d i e s / p r e s s _ r e l e a s e s /

ward_churchill_013105.html

In the last few days there has been

widespread and grossly inaccurate media

coverage concerning my analysis of the

September 11, 2001 attacks on the World

Trade Center and the Pentagon,

coverage that has resulted in defamation

of my character and threats against my

life. What I actually said has been lost,

indeed turned into the opposite of itself,

and I hope the following facts will be

reported at least to the same extent that

the fabrications have been.

* The piece circulating on the internet

was developed into a book, On the Justice

of Roosting Chickens. Most of the book

is a detailed chronology of U.S. military

interventions since 1776 and U.S.

violations of international law since World

War II. My point is that we cannot allow

the U.S. government, acting in our name,

to engage in massive violations of

international law and fundamental human

rights and not expect to reap the

consequences.

* I am not a "defender"of the

September 11 attacks, but simply pointing

out that if U.S. foreign policy results in

massive death and destruction abroad,

we cannot feign innocence when some

of that destruction is returned. I have

never said that people "should" engage

in armed attacks on the United States ,

but that such attacks are a natural and

unavoidable consequence of unlawful

U.S. policy. As Martin Luther King,

quoting Robert F. Kennedy, said, "Those

who make peaceful change impossible

make violent change inevitable."

* This is not to say that I advocate

violence; as a U.S. soldier in Vietnam I

witnessed and participated in more

violence than I ever wish to see. What I

am saying is that if we want an end to

violence, especially that perpetrated

against civilians, we must take the

responsibility for halting the slaughter

perpetrated by the United States around

the world. My feelings are reflected in

Dr. King's April 1967 Riverside speech,

where, when asked about the wave of

urban rebellions in U.S. cities, he said, "I

could never again raise my voice against

the violence of the oppressed . . . without

having first spoken clearly to the greatest

purveyor of violence in the world today

my own government."

* In 1996 Madeleine Albright, then

Ambassador to the UN and soon to be

U.S. Secretary of State, did not dispute

that 500,000 Iraqi children had died as a

result of economic sanctions, but stated

on national television that "we" had

decided it was "worth the cost." I mourn

the victims of the September 11 attacks,

just as I mourn the deaths of those Iraqi

children, the more than 3 million people

killed in the war in Indochina, those who

died in the U.S. invasions of Grenada,

Panama and elsewhere in Central

America, the victims of the transatlantic

slave trade, and the indigenous peoples

still subjected to genocidal policies. If we

respond with callous disregard to the

deaths of others, we can only expect equal

callousness to American deaths.

* Finally, I have never characterized all

the September 11 victims as "Nazis."

What I said was that the "technocrats of

empire" working in the World Trade

Center were the equivalent of "little

Eichmanns." Adolf Eichmann was not

charged with direct killing but with

ensuring the smooth running of the

infrastructure that enabled the Nazi

genocide. Similarly, German industrialists

were legitimately targeted by the Allies.

* It is not disputed that the Pentagon

was a military target, or that a CIA office

was situated in the World Trade Center .

Following the logic by which U.S. Defense

Department spokespersons have

consistently sought to justify target

selection in places like Baghdad , this

placement of an element of the American

"command and control infrastructure" in

an ostensibly civilian facility converted the

Trade Center itself into a "legitimate"

target. Again following U.S. military

doctrine, as announced in briefing after

briefing, those who did not work for the

CIA but were nonetheless killed in the

attack amounted to "collateral damage."

If the U.S. public is prepared to accept

these "standards" when the are routinely

applied to other people, they should be

not be surprised when the same standards

are applied to them.

* It should be emphasized that I applied

the "little Eichmanns" characterization

only to those described as "technicians."

Thus, it was obviously not directed to the

children, janitors, food service workers,

firemen and random passers-by killed in

the 9-1-1 attack. According to Pentagon

logic, were simply part of the collateral

damage. Ugly? Yes. Hurtful? Yes. And

that's my point. It's no less ugly, painful

or dehumanizing a description when

applied to Iraqis, Palestinians, or anyone

else. If we ourselves do not want to be

treated in this fashion, we must refuse to

allow others to be similarly devalued and

dehumanized in our name.

* The bottom line of my argument is

that the best and perhaps only way to

prevent 9-1-1-style attacks on the U.S.

is for American citizens to compel their

government to comply with the rule of

law. The lesson of Nuremberg is that this

is not only our right, but our obligation. To

the extent we shirk this responsibility, we,

like the "Good Germans" of the 1930s

and '40s, are complicit in its actions and

have no legitimate basis for complaint

when we suffer the consequences. This,

of course, includes me, personally, as well

as my family, no less than anyone else.

* These points are clearly stated and

documented in my book, On the Justice

of Roosting Chickens , which recently

won Honorary Mention for the Gustavus

Myer Human Rights Award. for best

writing on human rights. Some people will,

of course, disagree with my analysis, but

it presents questions that must be

addressed in academic and public debate

if we are to find a real solution to the

violence that pervades today's world. The

gross distortions of what I actually said

can only be viewed as an attempt to

distract the public from the real issues at

hand and to further stifle freedom of

speech and academic debate in this

country.

These are the views of Ward Churchill,

not the University of Colorado.

by Mousnonya

Rosa Suarez, an Aztlan national living

on her ancestral homeland within the

illegal borders of Amerika lost her son to

human sacrifice: namely, her son was

eaten by the imperialist war machine. But

his death wearing the uniform of the

oppressor is not in vain. Ms. Suarez has

learned the vital anti-imperialist lesson.

She does not hate those who killed her

son. In proletarian unity she is telling all

who will listen to stop the killing and end

the war. Ms. Suarez recently led a

delegation with humanitarian aid for Iraqi

refugees to Jordan.

MIM regrets each and every

unnecessary death that the imperialists

stick us with. Mao taught us that some

deaths are meaningful and others are

meaningless. The death of Ms. Suarez's

son would ordinarily be meaningless for

he was serving the imperialist cause, the

forces of reaction, ignorance, hatred and

death. But the courage and love of his

mother who learned the bitterest of

lessons, shines out as an example to us

all. We extend our hands and hearts in

proletarian sympathy to Ms. Suarez and

all who understand that they were on the

wrong side and come over to the

proletarian camp. Stop the imperialist

machine of death before it kills someone

you love too.

Source: "US Families of Dead Raise

600,000 Dollars for Fallujah Refugees,"

AFP Dec 23, 2004

Note: http://story.news.yahoo.com/

news?tmpl=story&cid=1506&e=10&u=/

a f p / 2 0 0 4 1 2 2 3 / t s _ a l t _ a f p /

usiraqrefugees.0412231737 37

Mother of dead soldier loves Iraqi people

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 4

divide proletarian ranks, which shows that

the proletariat is not ready to rule. We

will be able to tell if we have reached a

critical mass of proletarian leaders when

we can convince the proletariat

somewhere to put aside this question

through solidarity.

It is the duty of the communists to use

the gay question to teach the difference

Gay rights question heats up globally

Continued from page 2...

between science and religion and

between Liberalism/fascism on the one

hand and proletarian science on the other.

We need a fighting unity of heterosexuals

and gays/lesbians.

Notes:

1. http://

www.orangeukraine.squarespace.com/

display/S

howJournal?moduleId=88592¤tPage=2&creatorId=

15932

2. http://www.chechentimes.org/ru/

press/?id=25069

3. http://dvinsk.front.ru/art.htm

4. http://nbp-info.ru/new/lib/nbpinfo3/

05.html http://www.nbp-info.org/library/

nbp-info_3/Section_IV.htm

5. http://www.exile.ru/2004-

December-10/

huey_v_putins_ten_point_plan_for_the_russian_people.html

6. http://allafrica.com/stories/

200501250032.html

7. http://www.swissinfo.org/sen/

Swissinfo.html?siteSect=143&sid=5494196

8. http://www.ipsnews.net/

new_nota.asp?idnews=27187 ;

see also, http://

www.medicalnewstoday.com/

medicalnews.php?newsid=18799

1. Isn't it Liberal imperialist

decadence to support gay rights?

Countless species exhibit gay behavior.

It is unscientific to believe that gay sexual
behavior is a specific product of imperialist
decadence. Gay sexual behavior has
existed in all cultures at all times.

Sexual behavior in general can exhibit

imperialist decadence, by putting one's
sex life ahead of the revolution or by
hurting other people and by divorces that
damage children's interests. It has nothing
to do with gays per se.

2. Aren't you making too big an

issue of gay rights just like Liberals?

MIM believes there are three strands

of oppression--nation, class and gender.
We do not even have a secondary strand
of oppression for gay rights and we
believe that the total of gender oppression
is a secondary oppression.

It is the fascists and other reactionaries

who are obsessed with the gay question.
Like the Liberals, these reactionaries see
lifestyle questions as paramount.

MIM fights back hard on the gay

question to prevent division of the
proletariat and as a matter of fighting
against child molesting--in other words
both as a class question and a gender
question. Currently, many child molesters
have the protection of anti-gay chauvinists
who believe gays are the only ones who
carry out child molesting.

Treating gays the same as everyone

else is the way to end the obsession with
the issue by Liberals and fascists. They
should marry like everyone else, suffer
divorce like everyone else and they
should go to prison for child molesting just
like everyone else--no difference.

3. How can you call the gay

question a general gender question?

If we had a dime for every time that

someone said that child molesters are all
gay, we would have funded world

revolution by now. Child molesting is a
general gender question, not specific to
gays. Heterosexual child molesting is also
evil, so the proper way to handle this
question is as a general revolutionary
approach to gender, not just one orientation
or the other. (It may make sense to read
more on how MIM defines gender.)

We also call it a gender question

because gay sexual behavior is largely
an issue of leisure- time and our definition
of gender is connected to leisure time.
We cover work under the term "class."

Child molesting is a gender question,

not a gay rights question.

4. Didn't Engels write a letter

opposing pederasts?

Yes, he did. He did not publish it. He

did not distribute a flyer just about gays.
He wrote a whole book on the gender
question in general, and it is not a pretty
picture that he creates about humyn
sexual behavior. Marx and Engels were
highly critical of both heterosexuals and
gays at that time. Marx and Engels were
revolutionary anti- Liberals: they did not
give a hoot for particular lifestyle
questions except to prove that they are
all linked to class questions.

This again is something that shows the

lack of logic. Marx and Engels never said
anything good about heterosexual child
molesters.

5. You're just saying that to pander

to "pc."

It does not matter who we are

pandering to. The question is who is right
in this case for the international
proletariat.

In the Republic of Je$u$land, ex-U$A,

in the ex- Soviet republic in many places,
in Africa--these places have their own
version of "politically correct" that
revolves around lifestyles instead of real
issues of class, nation and gender.

6. How is it fascist to oppose gays?
Gays are a minority group. Historically

fascists stem from Liberalism and
scapegoat minority groups--Jews, gays,
Blacks and Chechens--to distract
attention from the crisis of imperialism.
Now we also have "social-fascists" who
stem from communism where capitalism
became restored.

Some Liberals may oppose fascism on

the gay question, but all Liberals and
fascists share in common a lack of an
underlying system level approach. They
share an obsession with cultural lifestyle
and not the causes of humyn behavior.
Fascists and Liberals simply have differing
versions of "pc."

The word "scapegoat" means to

wrongly blame for a problem. The
scapegoating problem by fascists and
other reactionaries is the reason MIM is
not silent on the gay question. Hitler
scapegoated communists, Jews, gays,
gypsies etc. and we of the proletariat
should have learned our lesson on the
importance of solidarity.

7. Then Marxism is Liberal on the

question.

Fascism and Liberalism share in

common the belief in breaking down
humyn society into tiny groups. Hitler
targeted Jews and gays. Some fascists
target Chechens. Countless fascists
target their nearest neighbor of a tiny
nation on a global scale--the ex-
Yugoslavia being a prime example.

The underlying root of Liberalism is

individualism. According to Liberals if
there are 6.5 billion people, there are at
least 6.5 billion social groups.
Individualism is also anti-science, because
of course it is impossible to scientifically
generalize about the individual. To
translate into Marxist terms, individualism
is the philosophy of the small group, the
smallest group.

U.$. elections break things into small

separate issues--gun-ownership, gays
and even surfing was key in San Diego
mayoral elections. The underlying belief
of Liberalism is that alliances of small
groups can prevent abuse of power by
any one dominator.

In contrast, Marxism started with only

two groups--proletariat and bourgeoisie.
The contrast could hardly be better--two
versus 6.5 billion. Obviously the more
small groups one talks about like the
Liberals and fascists do, the closer one
gets to saying there are 6.5 billion social
groups of one individual each.

Eventually Marx added two more

splits--oppressor versus oppressed nation
and oppressor versus oppressed gender.
The total of groups talked about as most
important is eight. With Lenin, Stalin and
Mao the principal focus has been on the
four groups--1) Exploiters of oppressor
nations ; 2) Exploited of oppressor nations
; 3) Exploiters of oppressed nations; 4)
Exploited of oppressed nations.
Moreover, those four groups often boil
down to two again, because over 85% of
the exploiters live in the oppressor nations.

Marxism derives its anti-Liberal

strength and universalism by talking only
about large groups--by lumping people
together. If you find yourself talking about
separate solutions for gays, separate
solutions for Chechens, Jews, gun-owners
etc., you have entered Liberal or fascist
territory. Once we go down the road of
looking at cultural lifestyles, there is
almost an infinity of "groups" to account
for. The fight to have gays counted the
same as heterosexuals is a fight against
Liberalism and fascism.

Basic questions and answers on

scapegoating, fascism and Liberalism

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 5

February 5, 2005

Public opinion in Germany has not

exploded yet, but it may well as details of

U.$. treatment of Germans continue to

leak out in the "war on terror." In January

2005, it came out that the united $tates is

holding at least 9000 new prisoners

outside U.$. borders since the "war on

terror" began. One was Khaled al-Masri,

an unemployed used car salespersyn from

Germany.

While Khaled al-Masri was on holiday

in ex-Yugoslavia on New Year's Eve, u.$.

authorities kidnapped him and brought him

to Afghanistan for torture there. He

returned to Germany in May 2004 and

now the story is getting out. The German

government is belatedly carrying out an

investigation into how the united $tates

picked on Khaled al-Masri for torture.

U.$. lackeys of all sorts ranging from the

government to Nazis have downplayed

the case, because the united $tates tends

to persecute those with Arab-sounding

names.

It has become apparent that the CIA

believes it has the right to pose as anyone

and kidnap anyone for torture in Afghan

and Guantamo prisons to name the ones

that are public knowledge. Corrupt and

treasonous government officials in

eastern Europe, Germany and elsewhere

are allowing the CIA to pose as whatever

they want--border officials for example.

When there was a Soviet Union, Uncle

$am bent over backwards for the Western

European imperialists to prevent their

sliding into the Soviet camp. Now there

is no Soviet Union, so the locus of

bourgeois competition has changed and

the world is still finding it difficult to get

used to that. Instead of a relatively united

West competing with the Soviet Union,

we are starting to see increasingly

competitive behavior among the Western

imperialists.

Instead of forever saying "I can't

believe they are doing this," we have to

prepare people with Marx's contributions

on capitalism and Lenin's contributions

on imperialism. Despite victory in the Cold

War, the Western imperialists still have

the same old competitive system and drive

to war. They have learned no lesson of

peace from the world wars or Cold War.

Cut-throat economic competition is built

into capitalism and the corresponding

politics is what we see in the global u.$.

kidnapping policy.

Historically, the kidnapping of a citizen

by another country would result in a war

or at least an expedition to capture the

pirate kidnappers. In U.$. history, the

Congress debated at length the

recruitment of u.$. sailors by the British

as an act of hostility leading up to the war

of 1812--and those cases were much

more in doubt than what the united $tates

is doing now, since the British sea

merchants paid for the services of the

recruited Amerikan sailors while

Amerikans are torturing and imprisoning

foreigners from Germany, England,

Au$tralia and many other countries. In

the German case as in all the others, the

German and Amerikan people are not

ready yet for a war between Germany

and the united $tates.

Also in the news and of obvious interest

to Germans is that the CIA has turned

down freedom of information requests

regarding its ties to Nazis after World War

II. Now the U.S. legislature (Congress)

is having to threaten to extend the law

and hearings to force the CIA into

compliance with existing law on releasing

of documents, especially those over 50

years old.(2) Such foot-dragging can do

nothing to improve the u.$. image in

Germany or I$rael.

Meanwhile, in January, the united $tates

also released four British citizens from

Guantanamo Bay,(3) another illegal u.$.

prison; Russian ex-prisoners announced

February 4 that they are suing the u.$.

government for torture(4) and even one

Australian from Guantanamo Bay went

home at the end of January.

It was a member of the Au$tralian ruling

class that championed Au$tralian

nationalism against the united $tates: "A

former senior Australian cabinet minister

has come to the defense of released

Guantanamo Bay inmate Mamdouh

Habib, assailing the government for letting

US authorities hold him and other terror

suspects for years without charge on the

basis of `doctored' intelligence."(5)

In the united $tates, the Bu$h

administration is receiving slight

resistance from two sources--local

governments and the judiciary. A federal

judge ruled on January 31 that the U.$.

government's Guantanamo Bay (Gitmo)

tribunals are unconstitutional.(6) In this

situation, the temptation of many rulers is

to impose the judgements of their core of

political lackeys through fascism and war

by abolishing the independence of the

judiciary, eliminating local government

powers and carrying out wars against all

other countries not going along.

At first glance, one might make the

mistake of thinking the u.$. prisons outside

the united $tates are proof of

"globalization" dominated by u.$.

imperialism. In actual fact, they are proof

of MIM's thesis on the national and class

question, because nations still do matter

as proved by the indignation in each

country that citizens of each country face

arbitrary kidnapping and torture by u.$.

imperialism.

The faultlines in international politics are

along lines of parasitism and united front

strategy dictates that the Europeans will

not feel a complete unity with U.$.

parasitism. Indignation about u.$.

kidnapping of Germans and Au$tralians

is likely to be much greater than U.$.

kidnapping of Third World people or even

Amerikans themselves. Although both

Germany and the united $tates are

countries with huge parasitic middle-

classes dominating, alliance with u.$.

Democrats leads no where while alliance

with the German middle-classes in general

does have some potential anti-u.$.

imperialist thrust on a vacillating basis.

The reason for this is that the parasites

of any country have no real basis for

conflict with their government

representatives, but the parasites of other

countries certainly do have a basis of

conflict with imperialist governments not

of their home country. These parasites in

Inter-imperialist rivalry:

Are the Germans, British, I$raelis and

Au$tralians panzies for U.$. imperialism?

Europe will wonder why they should risk

kidnapping by the CIA when the contracts

and oil control in Iraq go to the united

$tates for example.

Notes:

1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/

story/0,12271,1390256,00.html

2. http://www.jpost.com/servlet/

Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/

ShowFull&cid=1107055730759

3. http://news.scotsman.com/

international.cfm?id=111062005

4. http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/

World/WarOnTerrorism/2005/02/04/

920895-ap.html

5. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/

stories/afp_asiapacific/view/130581/1/

.html

6. http://www.suntimes.com/output/

news/cst-nws-gitmo01.html

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?

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 6

"Finding Neverland"

Directed by Marc Forster

Miramax Films, 2004

Reviewed by a contributor January 28,

2005

It would be very easy to write off

"Finding Neverland" as being mindless

drivel about the cultural and romantic

adventures of filthy-rich bourgeois adults

in an imperialist country. And shouldn't

"Finding Neverland" fall in the exact

same political dung heap as "The

Phantom of the Opera" (2004) for

example? There are not one, but two,

sexy, thin white wimmin in semi-

biographical "Finding Neverland": J. M.

Barrie's (Johnny Depp) wife, played by

Radha Mitchell, and Barrie's seemingly

adulterous romantic interest, Sylvia

Llewelyn Davies (Kate Winslet). Busy

playwright Barrie hasn't been putting out

for gender aristocrat Mary not-quite-

madonna Ansell Barrie, who wants to get

a divorce; they sleep in separate rooms.

Sylvia, on the other hand, is a widow with

four children. She likes the fact that Barrie

spends time with her children, but seems

to long for companionship herself. Sylvia

has a bad "chest cold," but insists to her

children that it's no big deal. Mary

becomes jealous of Sylvia after Barrie

begins to spend much time with her and

her children. This seems to be a variation

on the love-triangle theme, but there is

more going on in "Finding Neverland"

than a love story or even a story about a

child's love for their parent. "Finding

Neverlands"'s portrayal of children's

perspectives is just as false as the movie's

stereotypical portrayal (under the pretext

of portraying the content of J. M. Barrie's

imagination) of First Nations' peoples as

being menacing, with war bonnets and

paint.

In several different ways, "Finding

Neverland" claims to be about looking at

things from a child's perspective, so I will

take that claim as a starting point and talk

first about what is good in this movie,

which is more important than other movies

that touch on children's issues only

incidentally. The notion that "Finding

Neverland" has something to do with the

viewpoint of children is interesting to

MIM's line on children and their

oppression under the patriarchy.(1)

Something that "Finding Neverland"

does which is good is to stand the doting-

grandmother theme on its head and use it

to explore children's oppression under

patriarchy. Dislikable Mrs. Emma du

Maurier (Julie Christie) is obviously

overbearing toward both Sylvia and her

children for reasons partly having to do

with keeping Sylvia's lifestyle "proper"

and acceptable to future suitors. At one

point, the youngest of the Davies children

(Luke Spill) says: "Is [Barrie] in trouble?

Because I've been alone with Grandma,

and I know what it's like" (my emphasis).

Later, George (Nick Roud), the oldest

Davies child, angrily objects to his

grandmother's interventions and tries to

exclude her from the family verbally.

In the real world, one of the problems

relating to children's oppression under the

patriarchy is that it is difficult for children

to leave a caretaker who is abusive,

harmful or obstructive to their

participation in the revolution, and then

go to another caretaker if necessary.

Under the patriarchy, children are

oppressed by gender oppressors

regardless of who their parent is, but under

the patriarchy, the separation problem

expresses itself as a relative inability of

children to choose their own oppressors.

Connected to this is the fact much of

parents' disciplining of their children is

hidden and insulated from the rest of the

community, which is why some of the

most damaging and terroristic physical

and sexual abuse happens inside the

family. So-called parents' rights

advocates have whined about some

progressives threatening parents' rights.

Well, this reviewer is here to say, shit yes

communists will in the long term do

whatever it takes to destroy patriarchy

and all other kinds of oppression, so step

out of the way. Even if some groups of

exploited and oppressed people

experience a temporary resurgence of the

nuclear family after imperialism and its

interfering effects are overthrown, there

will be less and less room for disciplining

children in private--and keeping abuse a

family secret. The situation that "Finding

Neverland" portrays faces eventual

extinction. Disciplining children in the

privacy of one's own home may not exist

forever.

Children are oppressed under the

patriarchy. One of the manifestations of

this is the pervasive culture of child-hating

and a presumption of gullibility, incapacity

or ineptitude when it comes to culturally-

defined children. In "Finding Neverland,"

Peter Llewelyn Davies (Freddie

Highmore) is deeply affected by his

father's death. Barrie is concerned that

Peter is growing up too fast. Peter doesn't

like to play pretend as much as his

brothers, and he is incredulous when

Barrie puts on a show with his pet dog

and encourages the Davies to imagine that

he's dancing with a circus bear. Later in

the movie, Peter becomes angry after

Sylvia and seemingly all the adults, Barrie

included, refuse to let him know what's

going on with his mother's sickness.

George also objects to being treated like

a "fool."

Barrie gets up in Peter's face and puts

him down for not going along with the

pretending. The idea is that Peter is being

difficult or uncooperative. Sylvia tells him

to mind his manners. In the real world, a

child like Peter would be considered a

"brat" or a "snot-nosed kid." By the end

of "Finding Neverland," Peter learns to

deal with loved ones' deaths by using his

imagination. It is as if he had been broken

and made a child again, or "put in his

place" mentally.

Most of the time, even in imperialist

countries, uncooperative children have

legitimate concerns and are not just being

difficult, or whining, to get economic or

social privileges. We should sympathize

with Peter when he is being a "snot-nosed

kid." In large part, it is patriarchy that

makes children have so much affection

for their parents even though they may

be abusive; it is patriarchy that conditions

them to be more emotionally vulnerable

than they would otherwise be; and it is

patriarchy there waiting to take

advantage of their vulnerability when they

lose a loved one, in order to reinforce

itself.

To the movie's credit at a time when

so much attention is being paid to

children's so-called mental illnesses,

"Finding Neverland" does not end up

suggesting that Peter has a mental illness.

In the real world, Peter would probably

be diagnosed with a mental illness

because of his seeming depression

symptoms and unusual interpersynal

behavior, but "Finding Neverland"

suggests an alternative to psychiatry:

mentoring and imagination. Barrie

encourages Peter to develop his own

writing ability and teaches him to use his

imagination. However, this is sub-

reformism of the weakest kind; it

absolutely doesn't even try to end the

system.

Some may sentimentalize adults'

mentoring children, but children don't need

adults, period. This doesn't mean that no

child will ever need a persyn, who

happens to be an adult, for survival, just

that children do not need adults as a

group. Even if age segregation and age

hierarchies existed for pragmatic reasons,

pragmatism does not determine for

communists how child-rearing practices

should be revolutionized. This needs

pointing out because, in some theaters in

the united $tates, an advertisement

encouraging adults to mentor children

appears on the screen before the movie

starts. The gives "Finding Neverland" the

context of mentoring and makes Barrie

look even more like a mentor to the

Davies children. This reviewer does not

deny that there is something to be said

for some adults' mentoring children.

However, most movie viewers will not

understand what it means for an adult to

mentor a child in an imperialist country,

like the united $nakes, and encourage

them to grow up to be a good citizen

without adjustment problems--content.

Mentoring is often done explicitly for

social control (as when adults mentor

children to discourage them from being

delinquent), but basically, mentoring is a

recipe for contentment and one that does

not challenge either patriarchy or the

adultist assumptions of many mentoring

programs.

"Finding Neverland," like Barrie's play

Peter Pan , presumes to bring adults and

children together. Within the movie itself,

Barrie, whose own "childishness" is a

recurring theme in the movie, invites a

number of orphans to attend the opening

performance of his play "Peter Pan."

Barrie purposefully scatters them

throughout the mostly adult audience, and

they seem to encourage the rest of the

audience to laugh with them during the

funny parts of the play. This is a feel-

Patronizing portrayal of children's

oppression under patriarchy

Go to next page...

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 7

good moment for "Finding Neverland"'s

own movie audience, but the theme of

connecting adults with children detracts

from the fact that patriarchy, and the

corresponding institution of childhood,

need to be destroyed.

At one point, Barrie learns that his

relationship with the Davies children has

come under suspicion for child-molesting.

He reacts indignantly, saying that some

people are just trying to squash his (or

the Davies children's) moment of

happiness. "You find a glimmer of

happiness in this world, there's always

someone who wants to destroy it."

"Finding Neverland" may take the some

of the heat off real-world mentors for

child-molestation accusations, but the

movie does nothing to contribute to the

movie audience's scientific understanding

of why child sexual abuse or assault

happens, or how to end it. Worse, the

movie excludes mentors from the

category of child molesters without

considering that mentors are often adults,

too, and participate in the gender-

oppression of children and can engage in

the sexual abuse of children.

(Interestingly, Barrie mentors Peter

Davies, but still uses Peter by drawing

inspiration from him. Also, the kind of

access Barrie has to Peter through

Peter's mother may be possible only

under patriarchy.) The sentiment that

child molestation is perpetrated

sporadically by just a tiny group of

evildoers, violating "innocent" and

"precious" children, supports the

patriarchal institution of childhood and is

detrimental to children by detracting from

a scientific understanding of child abuse.

In "Finding Neverland," Barrie seems

to create problems for the Davies by

involving himself with their family, for

example, the gossip about his relationship

with Sylvia, but the idea at the end of the

movie is that he was needed after all.

"Finding Neverland" pretends to be

concerned with the best interests and

perspective of one child, Peter Davies,

but leaves the oppression of children under

the patriarchy virtually untouched and is

patronizing toward children in general. In

this way, "Finding Neverland" is an insult

to the real Peter Davies when he was a

child.

"Finding Neverland" never even really

deals with its central theme with the Peter

Davies character: a certain kind of

paternalism toward children and keeping

"How to Dismantle an Atomic

Bomb"

Universal, 2004

We at MIM consider lead singer of U2

Bono to be a worthy friend of the

international proletariat. In his spare time

he campaigns against Third World debt

and has appeared in public with Senator

Jesse Helms and others to the extent that

it is necessary.

We call Bono a "internationalist

reformist," because he is seeking

forgiveness of debt, not overthrow of

global capitalism. On this particular

question, he will find that he has more

allies among international bankers than

the so-called working class of the united

$tates and other countries where the

biggest banks reside.

The bankers themselves realize that

tax-funded debt relief enables them to

issue new loans. Whether the taxpayers

of the united $tates or the Third World

country in question pay the bill is of no

consequence to the banker, as long as the

bottom line shows a profit. Because

bankers feel constant pressure to make

loans that turn a profit, they are more open

to ideas such as Bono's than the smaller

exploiters not in the banking business. The

ones most open to the idea of forgiving

the debt placed on Third World countries

through u.$.-puppet regimes and direct

brute force are the exploited Third World

people themselves.

Often times people ask MIM what to

do for the revolution. Before one has the

skills or resources to carry out work in

public opinion or financing, it may be

useful to work for a debt relief

organization or even certain departments

of a charity such as Oxfam. Many

communists learn how to write leaflets,

distribute literature and collect petitions

by starting in other political campaigns,

even campaigns for the bourgeois parties

such as the Democrats.

Despite Bono's politics, this album has

none. "Love and Peace or Else" is as

close as it gets: "Lay down/ Lay down

your guns/ All you daughters of Zion/ All

LATIFAH

STICKS TO

ROMANCE

CULTURE

"The Dana Owens Album"

Queen Latifah

Universal, 2004

Queen Latifah gained a public

reputation as a Black radical when Bill

Clinton denounced her in his campaign

for the presidency. By denouncing Black

radicals, Clinton reassured oppressor

whites everywhere that he could stand

up to Black criticism. This album seems

to show the public a different side of

Queen Latifah, other than radical

whipping-girl.

It would be wrong to refer to this as

jazz or bluesy jazz music. There seems

to be a point in being ultra-retro. This is

the old-fashioned crooner's music of the

1920s to 1940s before electricity made

much difference. It may come as a shock

to hear someone like Queen Latifah pull

it off in 2004, but she did.

It seems that Queen Latifah is trying

to evoke something "classy" from the

past while simultaneously casting doubt

on the message of current forms of

music. We can't deny that her form fits

what she's trying to do--reform

heterosexual relations.

Her first song is about power struggle

with a lover. Other songs emphasize the

old "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" theme. The

demand for good treatment from men is

there. At the same time, Queen Latifah

provides no insight into the underlying

reasons that Black men in particular may

not treat their wimmin well or why it may

seem that way to Black wimmin.

On the question of balance, Queen

Latifah steers a firm course for romance

culture. Most of the songs such as "simply

beautiful" and "if I had you" express a

joyous heterosexual passion. Hence, her

criticisms of the men in her songs are in

a context leaving no doubt that she does

want relations with men or at least one

man.

The problems Queen Latifah has

uncovered in romantic relations are real.

At the same time, the concerns of adult

females about adult males in the

imperialist countries and the oppressed

Black nation are not a top priority for

MIM. We're much more concerned

about adult treatments of children and

gender relations with more coercive

underlying class relations.

By staying with the happy heterosexual

themes, Queen Latifah missed a chance

to move in to more political territory by

talking about how gender ratios in the

Black nation became so skewed toward

females. Hopefully Queen Latifah does

not start a trend of ultra-retro music. At

the same time, for people who can stand

this particular art form, there is no

doubting that the music is less decadent

than the vast majority of pop music

available in the imperialist countries.

your Abraham sons." General love and

pacifism seem to be vaguely expressed

in U2.

As far as the art goes, the first song

"Vertigo" reminds listeners of the early

U2 that rightfully gained popularity. The

rest of the album does not. People trying

out U2 would be better off with 1980s

albums especially since the themes and

politics of the music have not changed

much.

U2's "Bomb" shows no politics

them in ignorance. The movie's take-

home message is that children's

ignorance is bliss, whether that ignorance

takes the form of adult-encouraged

wishful imagination or withholding

information. Barrie's own fictional

character of Peter Pan represents an

idealized, and misleading, concept of

childhood--an institution by which

children are harassed, humiliated,

terrorized, silenced without reason, used,

attacked and sometimes killed. The

makers of "Finding Neverland" should

have thought twice about making this

movie after finding out that the real Peter

Davies detested being associated with the

name "Peter Pan" and committed suicide

for perhaps this reason.(2) Peter Pan

represents an romanticized concept of a

group of people who are demeaned and

hated, and damaged and exploited, in

patriarchal society: children.

Notes:

1. MCB52. "The Oppression of

Children Under Patriarchy." MIM Theory

, no. 9 (1995): 14-17.

2. Michelle Powell. "An Awfully Big

Adventure." <http://www.amrep.org/

past/peter/peter1.html> (28 January

2005).

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 8

On January 24th, the U.S. Supreme

Court refused to side with Florida's

government to stop the killing of Terri

Schiavo, a brain-damaged patient who has

had to have a feeding tube to stay alive

these past ten years. The court ruling

clears the way to allow her to die from

her inability to swallow her own food.(1)

As of now, it is back in local Florida courts

for some more jousting over when doctors

can remove the feeding tube.

Terri Schiavo of Florida clings to life in

a vegetative state. Much ink has spilled

on whether the husband should have the

right to let her die without being kept alive

artificially or if the parents should prevail

in keeping her alive. Such a story is horror

enough, but getting lost is the reason for

the whole case in the first place.

We are not referring to the inevitable

private property concerns under

capitalism which could possibly taint the

parents' view of the husband of their

daughter in this case. Even if not true in

this case, in other cases there could be

an inheritance question in the event of

Terri Schiavo's death. Hence, outsiders

may question the motivations of those

who do not have Terri Schiavo's best

interests in mind. It's an example of how

capitalism pollutes social relations and

health care.

Worse than this obvious fact is the

hidden cause of Terri Schiavo's

vegetative state. She arrived in her

condition by an eating disorder, a refusal

to eat.

In Anglo-Amerikan culture, the refusal

to eat looks at first like an act of a strong-

willed individual. In fact, the eating

disorder phenomenon is located

disproportionately among upper-middle-

class people of the imperialist countries;

hence it is much tied up with the social

relations and culture of a given time and

country. Readers should check the book

Fasting Girls by Joan Jacobs Brumberg

for a social history. A review is on our

website.(2)

If it had not been for capitalist

advertising connected to the romance

culture, we cannot say for sure that

Schiavo would have had an eating

disorder. Hence, this whole terrible case

is just another price we pay for legalized

brainwashing done for money.

The forced-feeding of eating disorder

patients by hospitals is another issue of

patriarchy and capitalism. Unfortunately,

forced drugging of hospital patients for

phony mental conditions is too frequent

while forced feeding in this case came

too late to save Terri from her brain

damage. In the long run, forced feeding

is a manifestation of the capitalist

patriarchy that we want to abolish. In the

short run, before communism, there may

be no choice but an odiously authoritarian

hand for severe cases of people culturally-

damaged by capitalism like Terri Schiavo.

We do not recognize a right to suicide via

eating disorder. Suicide-bombers, suicide

missions in combat and hunger strikes for

political demands are one thing, but we

have no sympathy for death by eating

disorder as some kind of social statement

by mousnonya

It won't get much press in amerikkka,

but the truth is out: the CIA admits that

there were no weapons of mass

destruction In Iraq.

Seeing blatant examples of imperialist

hypocrisy like this will hopefully get you

thinking. MIM has this to say:

International law does not outlaw

possession of nuclear, chemical, or

biological weapons. It may even permit

the defensive use of such weapons. When

the imperialists go around acting like

possession of weapons is a reason for

war they point out their hypocrisy. The

united $tates, i$rael, and just about all

major imperialist powers have chemical,

nuclear and biological weapons. They are

hypocrites when they claim a right to

disarm the Third World.

Now that the lying murderers admit they

lied are you going to help stop the killing?

Thanks to capitalism

Terri Schiavo had an eating disorder

in Amerikkka. We cannot respect and

take seriously the notion that people

should be "free to die" just to live on the

edge of weight control. Whether people

know it or not, this is not something in

their self-interest.

"`If Terri's feeding tube is removed she

will die . . . agonizing death by dehydration

and starvation that will set precedent

leading to the forced death of other

disabled individuals, thereby eroding the

sanctity of all human life,'" said Dana

Cody, executive director of Life Legal

Defense Foundation.(3) Much as we do

not like to agree with the organizers

creating the political climate that

contributes to murder of abortion doctors,

it is true that the historical issue in this

case is that it is difficult to "draw the line."

In Hitler Germany, for example, Nazi

executioners decided who was fit or unfit

for life. It's also a class issue, because

the disabled are generally from the lowest

economic strata and face oppression by

the able-bodied.

At MIM, we fail to see why all interests

concerned cannot be reconciled in Terri

Schiavo cases, because we are for

socialism. The husband should be allowed

to move on emotionally and socially and

the parents should know that nothing in

the economic system displayed a

motivation affecting their daughter's

remaining health, once ruined by the

romance culture.

Notes:

1. http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/

24/scotus.schiavo/

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

bookstore/books/gender/brumberg.html

3. http://www.lifenews.com/

bio680.html

CIA Admits: No WMD in Iraq

Save a life. Resist imperialism. Work with

MIM!

Source: CIA korrigiert sich in der Frage

irakischer Massenvernichtungswaffen

(CIA Corrects itself in the Question of

Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction)

Deutsche Presse Agentur Tues. 1.

Februar 2005, 4:20 http://

d e . n e w s . y a h o o . c o m / 0 5 0 2 0 1 / 3 /

4eadg.html

Continued from page 1...

15 years later, Soviet

dissidents' record a shambles

Go to next page

over the past two years. Ranging from

36% up, the Russian population finds

Stalin to have had a positive role. One

poll placed Stalin's positive approval at

53% of Russia.(3)

Since that percentage is higher than any

percentage for any Liberal leader recently

or for phony communist Zyuganov, we

are not surprised that Zyuganov placed a

wreath at Stalin's grave on the 125th

birthday of Stalin, December 21 2004.

Zyuganov is just jumping on the

bandwagon while continuing to mutter

Liberal bromides about Stalin. So it seems

that 15 years after the creation of open

free market capitalism in Russia,

communism is not "dead" and in fact, the

real communist leader of the Soviet Union

after Lenin still stands tall despite the

huge blitz of Western and bourgeois

Russian propaganda.

In the long Cold War from the end of

World War II to 1989, the Western media

put forward a simple and ignorant

message, one seemingly echoed by

dissidents within the social-fascist Soviet

Union. Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Andrei

Sakharov were the biggest name

dissidents who sought to make the Soviet

Union openly capitalist instead of state-

capitalist. Their courageous but

uninformed message was to copy the

West economically and thereby enjoy

Western freedoms, but life has not turned

out to be so simple.

The economy

"It is almost universally recognized that

the West shows all the world a way to

successful economic development"

Solzhenitsyn said at Harvard, June 8,

1978.(4) Actually, what the West did was

convince Russia to adopt a system

promoting even more Russian alcoholism

and an early death for men and death

from exposure and starvation among

senior citizens. In November, the

Washington Post admitted: "The average

Russian male born in 2002 will live to be

58.5 years old, a slight improvement from

the 1994 figure of 57.6 years and down

from 64 years in the mid-1980s. In terms

of life expectancy, Russia ranks 122nd in

the world, at the same level as Guyana

and North Korea."(5) We can be sure

that if that drop in life expectancy had

happened under Stalin still living in the

1990s and 2000s, there would be hundreds

of books published in the West declaiming

the millions murdered by him. The

difference is that Stalin doubled the life

expectancy of his people and did it in a

time of horrible war while Russia of today

lives in relative peace and with the benefit

of the industrialization completed by

Stalin.

The Russian economy has not

recovered from its suicidal turn from the

road of Lenin and Stalin. Khruschev and

Brezhnev brought economic stagnation

while Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin

brought outright economic regression. In

1990, the GDP per capita in Russia was

$3817 and by 2001 it was $2669 (in 1990

dollars which means the statistic is

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 9

15 years later, Soviet dissidents' record a shambles

Historical imprisonment rates in

selected countries, per 1000 people

Year U$A

Russia PolandBulgaria

1952

1 10-100?*

N/A

1980-86 4.3

2.7**

2.0

1.6

1994

5.5

5.8

N/A

1.0

2001

6.9

6.7

2.1

1.2

*According to the State Department of 1952.
**Figure for the entire USSR, not just Russia.
Sources:

United Nations Development Program,
Human Development Report (Oxford
University Press) (for the years 1991, 1992,

1993 and 2000).

2001 figures from British Home Office,

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs2/

hosb1203.pdf

Percentage of U.$. males ever

experiencing federal or state

prison (excluding jails) and their

lifetime chances of going to prison

based on year born

Ever

Expected to

experienced

go to

prison

1974

2.3

3.6

1979

2.4

4.1

1986

2.8

6.0

1991

3.4

9.1

1997

4.3

10.6

2001

4.9

11.3

Source: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/
pdf/piusp01.pdf

From previous page...

adjusted for inflation).(6)

This is nothing new to MIM, because we

always said that Khruschev and Brezhnev
brought about capitalism and the business

cycle. However, the economic facts firmly
rebut people such as Solzhenitsyn who came
up with easy "theories" about abandoning

alleged socialism and copying the West for
economic gains.
Imprisonment rates

After four years in the West, Alexander

Solzhenitsyn gave a speech at Harvard that
openly recommended a turn away from the

Enlightenment and a return to Christian
spirituality. In the same speech he intended
to level some criticism against the West, but

even then it was apparent that Solzhenitsyn's
grip on reality was weak.

To his credit, he noted with surprise that

Western journalists conform to underlying
trends in profit-making dictated by a few
owners of the media, not intellectual pursuit

of truth. He also said that criminality was
higher in the United $tates than in the Soviet
Union of the time.

Of criminality, Solzhenitsyn said there "is

considerably more of it [in the United $tates--
ed.] than in the pauper and lawless Soviet

society. (There is a huge number of prisoners
in our camps which are termed criminals, but
most of them never committed any crime; they

merely tried to defend themselves against a
lawless state resorting to means outside of a
legal framework)." This statement hid an

important misconception of the Soviet
dissidents, one that was contrary to the
interests of most Soviet people, who now

enjoy Amerikan-style murder and
imprisonment rates.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn's fiction works on

the Soviet gulag system loom large in
Amerikan thinking about not just Russia but
many other countries that Amerikans fear.

Solzhenitsyn catered to Amerikan nationalism
that believes other countries are more
dangerous and backward to live in. Thanks

to Solzhenitsyn, most Amerikans know more
about other countries' prisons than their own.
This sort of Amerikan nationalism may be nicer

than open "Aryan race" chauvinism, but it is
in some ways more blinding: people who
believe they live in a "free country" readily

dismiss any facts about prisoners and prison
conditions.

The truth is that the imprisonment rate in

Russia has doubled since the days of Soviet
dissidents, and may soon triple. Yet,
dissidents express their satisfaction despite

all their years of talk about the evils of
excessive imprisonment. This tells us
something about the dissidents, namely that

progress for them is praise for their pro-
capitalist speeches, not greater freedom. The
exploited and oppressed who continue to

follow these Liberals jump from the frying pan
into the fire.

Although some Liberals such as chess

player Kasparov talk about communists as if
it were still the 1980s or 1930s, more typical is
Vladimir Bukovsky imprisoned 12 years under

social-fascist Brezhnev. While the
imprisonment rate has exploded in Russia, he
believes Russia has progressed: "It will never

go back all the way to Brezhnev's time. History
doesn't repeat itself so precisely." (7)

Famous dissident and another physicist

Yuri Orlov told the Associated Press in
November that Putin's huge electoral victory
may have paved the way for what he would

consider retrogression, but overall, "Russia

today is different."(7)

Even BBC admitted that despite his criticism

of Putin, Solzhenitsyn is a "firm supporter"

of Putin.(8) In turn, Putin campaigned for
president with poster images of Sakharov and
Solzhenitsyn.

Going openly capitalist increased the

imprisonment rate in Russia--the opposite
of freedom. Today, the imprisonment rate of

U.$. Blacks in Louisiana is vastly worse than
the imprisonment rate in northern Korea--
and Louisiana is not in a state of war with its

neighboring states or the world's superpower,
the United $tates.(9)

In reply, the irrational say that crime went

up and that prisoners today deserve their
imprisonment in Russia and the United $tates
while they did not deserve it under Stalin and

phony communist Kim in northern Korea
today; although in the case of some like
Khodorkovsky, the Liberal descendants of

Solzhenitsyn would say they did not deserve
their imprisonment even today.

So to put it in Solzhenitsyn's language, in

1978 prisoners were spiritually deserving, but
the more numerous prisoners of say 1998 are
not spiritually deserving. To be a prisoner of

an openly Soviet system is a virtue while
being a prisoner in a capitalist system is an
evidence of criminality according to

Solzhenitsyn. In other words, Solzhenitsyn
speaks purely for the bourgeoisie, but he does
it in the guise of Christianity and in a way

completely compatible with Franco fascism
in Spain for example. When it's good for
capitalism, Solzhenitsyn criticizes

imprisonment, while we communists believe
the long run goal is to do away with
imprisonment by eliminating its causes. We

find little excuse for the poverty-related
imprisonment seen in the united $tates.

In 1952, the year before Stalin died, the U.S.

State Department published imprisonment
rates that compared the Soviet Union in World
War II with the United $tates in (relative)

peacetime, and not under occupation or threat
of occupation. The 1952 statistics on the
united $tates "show that there is an average

of one person out of 1,000 imprisoned. . . . If
the U.S.S.R. had the same ratio of prisoners
to population it would have 200,000 prisoners

rather than 2 to 20 million."(10) If we read this
State Department statement carefully, it is
defending a 0.1% imprisonment rate against

a 1% imprisonment rate. The article is talking
about the same things that made Solzhenitsyn
famous.

In 1952, the united $tates was killing millions

of Koreans and Chinese in the Korean War
and doing so with the justification that the

Soviet Union might have 1.8 million more

prisoners than it should. Yet it was in a way a
fair question as to whether everyone in Soviet

prison had been a Nazi collaborator or whether
there needed to be some mass releases of
prisoners. The Stalin government was indeed

discussing this.

The authors of the 1952 State Department

article on Soviet prisons should step forward

to condemn the united $tates now. As of 2003
statistics, the United $tates imprisons 5
people per 1,000 instead of just 1 for a total of

over 2 million prisoners if we add in jails. That
means that in 50 years time since the State
Department condemned the Stalin era Soviet

Union, the united $tates has had a five-fold
increase in federal and state imprisonment per
capita. In fact, the United $tates even left the

Soviet Union in the dust for imprisonment,
because after World War II, the Soviet rate
decreased, while the U.$. imprisonment rate

increased. Only since Russia has gone openly
free market capitalist and copied the United
$tates has Russia been in the running for

world's number one prison-state.

By the time Solzhenitsyn was speaking at

Harvard, the united $tates had already passed

the imprisonment rate of the Soviet Union.
While the State Department of 1952 used to
brag about a 10 times better imprisonment

rate than under Stalin in war time, today, the
U.$. imprisonment rate of Blacks is 3.4%, more
than three times higher than the lower end

estimate of imprisonment in the Soviet Union
that the State Department was talking about.
In other words, as far as Blacks are concerned,

they already live with the Stalin depicted by
the State Department, but now Stalin is in the
White House.

In this crisis potentially worse statistically

than in Stalin-era war time, Solzhenitsyn
contributed to the problem by saying about

the united $tates in 1978: "The defense of
individual rights has reached such extremes
as to make society as a whole defenseless."

As usual, there was no statistical basis for
this observation, just pure Western
propaganda-prejudice.

A scientific approach needed

This brings us to Solzhenitsyn's resistance

to the Enlightenment as a whole. It's hard to

argue with someone who is just going to say
that Jesus does not get his due. It's obvious
to intelligent people that such a formulation

will have opportunist use in defending
capitalism. It's a fraud as far as "spirituality"
goes.

In his 1978 speech, Solzhenitsyn criticized

the United $tates for backing out of the
Vietnam War in which it killed four million

Vietnamese people while he simultaneously
tried to claim that the Bolsheviks are guilty of
mass lawlessness. To this, our readers may

wonder which side is really worse,

Solzhenitsyn's or ours.

In reply, MIM says this: we are willing to

measure the question. Our critics on the other

side, the Soviet dissidents are unwilling and
Solzhenitsyn is openly opposing the
Enlightenment, so it is obvious that his side

of the debate has more to hide in obscure and
inaccessible screeds on Jesus, the Orthodox
Church and any other mumbo-jumbo that can

serve as an intellectual opiate.

The measure of a prison-state in normal

times is its incarceration rate. Choosing some

other criterion to discuss the prison-state may
very well represent simple cultural bias as in
Solzhenitsyn's preference for imprisoning

people to uphold Christian values instead of
socialist ones.

The fact that Amerikan prisoners are better

off than Russian ones stems from the
economy, and that is a separate question also
worthy of study. For one, white Amerikan

prisoners were better off than Russian ones
before 1917 too, so it has nothing to do with
communism. For two, by now, the simpleton

dissident views that copying the united
$tates's shopping malls would bring
prosperity to Russia have proved false.

As far as the economy goes, none of the

leaders after Stalin has done as good a job in
bringing about economic development, so it

is not factually true that copying the West is
the road forward. Russia has done nothing
but copy the West more and more since Stalin

and the result has only been more and more
disastrous.

The functioning of the economy and the

state are the keys to understanding why the
Soviet era dissidents have disappeared
without a trace. Even the monopoly capitalist

Associated Press article on Stalin's 125th
birthday obliged itself to point out that the
World War II veterans honoring Stalin in his

hometown receive $6 a month as a pension
from the state--not enough for food. It's quite
an irony that Stalin left the Soviet Union in a

condition equal to the united $tates in most
regards except luxury goods production, but
today the great free market Russia gives its

pensioners $6 a month for saving their country
from Nazi barbarism.

In the ex-Soviet Union and China, it seems

to be a favorite course of becoming well-
known experts on politics and economics to
study neither. While this is understandable

in China's case, where the state steered youth
into hard sciences and put a social-fascist
party chokehold on other subjects, it is no

longer acceptable in Russia. Solzhenitsyn was
a fiction-writer, who loved to cite a book by
an algebra teacher on socialism--Shafarevich.

Sakharov was a physicist. Today, one of the
handful of major Liberal leaders of the next
generation is a chess champion named Garry

Kasparov who literally believes history
started coincidentally when chess did in its
modern form--500 years ago. He is working

to promote a more radical crackpot theory of
history than promoted by Fomenko.(11)

Easy ideas about Jesus, easy ideas about

humyn rights that copy the West's and easy
ideas even about the length of history itself--
the intelligent of Russia have reacted badly

to the social-fascism of the Brezhnev era. It's
not enough to be intelligent. One must also
put in effort on the question of economic

development and the causes of crime and
state formation--even if those subjects once
seemed dominated by highly corrupt or boring

Continued on page 12...

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 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

Contraband stamps?

Dear MIM:
Thanks for coming into my life in a time of

personal trouble. Your letter showed me the
way back onto the path I once was on years
ago. The prison here has come out with a

new rule that prisoners cannot use postage
stamps as currency to pay for products or
services, and the rule said that if postage

stamps are placed in outgoing mail for this
purpose it will be deemed contraband. This is
not a security threat because some prisoners

don't receive money from home but they
receive stamps to purchase books, magazines,
etc.

--A prisoner in Florida, December 2004

Charged for services but never

saw the doctor

Dear MIM:

I have been having a problem with the

medical department here. On 11-04-04 I sent
an inmate sick call request to the see the

doctor and was denied medical treatment. On
11-14-04 I sent an informal grievance to the
chief health officer and was charged $4.00 for

sick call and I never saw the doctor. Then the
grievance came back from the chief health
officer saying that the review showed that I

saw the nurse on 11-12-04 and "became
demanding, upset and angry" and that the
interview was "appropriately terminated." So

how can I be charged for sick call and the sick
call was terminated?

--A prisoner in Florida, December 2004

Rage in a Cage

My wrath will be felt because my anger boils

within me...

With no means of expression,
it's only a matter of time before I blow...
I walk with a smile so they know not what I

feel,

But the smile is so fake I can't believe they

think it's real.

If only they knew my krys would overflow

their thoughts,

but I will never let down my walls cause they

will play me like a sport.

As the thoughts of suicide run rapidly

through my mind,

and the sun fails to shine because in darkness

is where I am confined...

Hearing screams that aren't there and seeing

shadows that haven't moved,

and if I close my eyes real tight I could still

smell my mother's food...

Even though it's been many years,
and every night is filled with tears...
I'm no longer a little boy, I'm a man who shows

no fear.

At least that's what I think,
But I'm not really sure at all...

Because I'm just a number in the system.
I don't even have a name anymore...

These are just some of the thoughts that run

through the mind of one who has

experienced the brutality of the united snakes

of amerikkka. It's just sad

that others have no knowledge of the torture

that goes on in their "Land of

the free!" But to them I say next time you

watch your news [US propaganda]

make sure you know that every Iraqi that you

see being tortured, there is 2

or 3 of your own being treated the same way

if not worse.

I close with a salute of "Power to all people of

the world" who fight to end

oppression, and all those that see through

this veil of evil that is draped

over the face of the government that so many

have to love. [Ha, Ha] What a

fucking joke!

Signing off from the land of the locked and

the home of the slave,

In struggle,
The Fallen Angel, May 2004

Punished for Indigenous culture

All these capitalists see us Indians as they

saw the Gold Rush in 1849 when California

made it illegal to be Indian to make way for
the 49ers. I feel like that today, here in the
Ironhouse. I'm told to cut my hair short or

face discipline; we are not allowed to have
our spiritual packages, only set to us from a
vendor approved by the institution. They

want us to buy imitation eagle feathers to
pray with, (our religion is not fake), also they
won't let our people, tribes, elders, and circles,

send it to us blessed, prayed over, real eagle
feathers.

- A Navajo California prisoner, Nov. 2004

Letter to the oppressed prisoners

Amerikas government system has stripped

what freedom we once had and placed us

within their dungeons under lock and key
only to take more away from us, to humiliate,
degrade and then provoke us as puppets in

their game show so that we can act out like
"animals" (as they would say) so they can
put it out to the "brainwashed" society to

pass more laws to better "control" the
"criminals" in society or (and) behind bars.

As it stands right now, no matter how we

look at it, it plays out the same every time,
everywhere in this prison system that we are
forced to live our lives in. The inmate

population plays into the pigs plan every time.
Whether you want to deny it or not, it's the
truth and we "let" it happen.

Look at what has been taken from us in

California. First on the list was to take
something from the people most likely to do

something about it -- the lifers family visits.
Lifers, and I am one myself, need to realize
that no matter how "good" we are or even if

we complete all requirements to meet the
parole board all the way, we are not and will
not ever be paroled. We will always be

deemed as a threat and a thorn to the
brainwashed society, but most of all to
Amerika's government. They are using Parole

as a carrot on a string in front of a mule (and
it is working). Nothing happened once the
lifers lost their family visits. Then went our

weights. They installed cameras on the rec.
yards, they reinforced the grooming
standards, they are taking tobacco, they took

our porn mags, and now we have to use their
vendors for our quarterly packages. Our
people can no longer put their hearts into

getting together our packages -- which many
enjoyed doing. Visiting is only allowed on
Saturday and Sunday. We get no night yard,

day rooms are on their way out, they took the
TV's from the inmates in ASU's and there is
talk about taking them from us in the SHUs.

How much more are we going to "let" them

take from us? What the prison population
needs to realize is that we are the gears in this

machine called a prison. If we shut down, so

does it. Take a minute and think how many of

us it takes to keep this machine running
smooth. If everyone stopped, it would also
stop! True only for a minute but why should

we be the ones putting forth the efforts for
three cents an hour and to have things
stripped from us? We should not! It may

not happen overnight, but we must unite as
one and look at the real picture at hand that
many of us are either top blind to see or just

want to ignore the fact that Amerika's prison
system is having its way with us. The longer
we stay divided, the longer we "let" these

pigs have their way with us. It will take small
steps, but is can be done. To stop the key
master, we must join as one.

-- a California prisoner, October 2004

Three Strikes lies and deception

MIM Introduction: This article was written

prior to the defeat of Proposition 66 on the
California ballot in November of 2004. We
print it here because the injustice of the Three

Strikes laws in California, and throughout
the country, continues.

As a drug war correspondent buried alive

for a nonviolent drug offense, I make my
reports from deep within the bowels of the
California prison system, one of the last true

bastions remaining from the tough-on-crime
era.

I have been locked up longer on this drug

case than all my strikes cases put together,
said 54 year old Manuel Madrid from San
Fernando Valley, who began his three strikes

life sentence in 1997. "I'm an old man. I'm
going to die in here."

Justice in the Golden State

The "three strikes and you're out"

sentencing laws came into being at the apex
of the lock- em-up movement in the mid-90s.

This statute has proven to be infallible,
surviving a gauntlet of state and federal
judicial challenges. Entering its second

decade of existence, the regulation is being
challenged once more, this time in the court
of public opinion.

Ever since The Three Strikes and Child

Protection Act of 2004 qualified for
November's ballot - codified as Proposition

66 - it has enjoyed wide support. In August,
Fields Research Corporation reported 69
percent in favor and only 19 percent against.

If approved, penalties for child molesters
would increase while removing nonviolent
offenders from the mandatory sentencing

scheme.

The numbers associated with three strikes

and corrections in general are prodigious.

Approximately 7,400 have been given life
sentences under this controversial
sentencing mandate, 57 percent of whom have

committed a nonviolent third strike.
Additionally, over 32,000 second strikers have
been sentenced under this law, the majority

of whom are nonviolent as well.

Second strikers must serve 80 percent to

85 percent of their doubled-up sentences,

while three strikers have to serve at least 25
years before they are eligible for parole. This
steady-stream of second and third strikers

are one of the reasons why the prison
population has hit an all-time-high of over

164,000.

With many state governments moving

away from harsh punishments as their primary
approach to crime, California refuses to
acquiesce to the national smart-on-crime

movement.

"Crime is down, which proves to us the law

is doing what it was supposed to do. We

don't want to reverse that progress," said
Carol Norris, president of the California
Probation, Parole and Corrections

Association.

The progress about which Mrs. Norris

speaks is a state that spends approximately

$30,000 a year to incarcerate an inmate and
roughly $5,000 a year per pupil on education.
By investing so generously at the wrong end

of the problem, the children from underfunded
education are systematically absorbed into
the California Department of Corrections

(CDC) by $100,000 a year prison guards who
make more money that\n tenured CSU
professors.

California spends nearly $6 billion a year

on corrections, and the CDC alone employs
over 50,000 workers. The influence the 31,000

unionized prison guards exert on state

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 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.

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?

government renders their power unmatched
and the success of their bottom-feeder

industry assured for generations.

Crime is not down, it's a chronic social

problem. The Golden State's rates of

recidivism lead the nation at nearly 70 percent,
and has the larges state prison system in a
country which accounts for on-quarter of the

world's prison population. Crime is a constant
in California, and shows no signs of going
away.

The Myth of Discretion
One little understood aspect of three strikes

is how it gives too much power to the

prosecutors and limits a judge's ability to
exercise discretion.

"[J]udges and prosecutors already have

substantial discretion to avert application of
three strikes in the furtherance of justice,"
wrote Sen. Chuck Poochigian (R-Fresno) in

The Sacramento Bee. The Senator and I took
opposing positions on Proposition 66 in the
Forum section on July 25.

Poochigian refers to the California Supreme

Court's decision in People v. Superior Court
(Romero) (1996), holding that a sentencing

judge has discretion to avoid excessive
punishments in the interest of justice.

"My sentencing judge spent 5 minutes

considering Romero and denied it," said
Tommy Wallen, a 34 year old from Kern
County who was struck out for receiving

stolen property. "It makes me very angry
because it is so misleading to the public. Very
rarely is it exercised because most judges are

afraid to use it."

Wallen is right. Since the case law favors

the prosecution few judges are willing to

exercise their limited authority under Romero
over the objections of the prosecutor --
especially in counties like Kern where three

strikes is vigorously pursued by the District
Attorney.

Further, in People v. Carmony, the state's

highest court recently limited Romero even
more when they upheld a life sentence for
failing to register as a sex offender by a mere

five days, a technical violation.

"The court did leave open the possibility

that it still could happen," said Deputy Attny.

General David Andrew Eldridge, the prevailing
attorney in Carmony, when asked under what
circumstances a judge would risk exercising

discretion. "But it would have to be extremely
rare."

Wallen and Eldridge provide two realistic

views of how discretion actually works.
Poochigian, on the other hand, like so many
who vigorously support three strikes,

repeatedly cite discretion as a substantial
safeguard when it is merely a judicial rubber
stamp cherished by the prosecutors.

Fear vs. Fact
Due to my serious felony convictions of

robbery and two burglaries committed in my

late teens and early 20s, I am serving 26 years

to life for a nonviolent drug offense. This is a
victimless crime generally carrying a couple

of years of mandatory treatment instead of
jail per Proposition 36. However, due to three
strikes, I have already served six years with

at least 20 to go.

Recently, my injection into the debate has

touched a nerve in my hometown of

Sacramento. The Bee published a couple of
rebuttals to my July 25 article.

"He minimizes a crime spree from 1984-1988

-- slashing a juvenile across the chest with a
knife, requiring 200 stitches," wrote Jan Scully,
the District Attorney. "Most recently, a buck

knife was found in his car along with 200
baggies of marijuana."

Then Marjie Lundstrom a columnist, took

a similar path and claimed, in addition to
slashing a juvenile in 1986, I committed yet
another assault in 1988 as well. Making me

look even worse, she said I possessed not
one, but two knives in the commission of the
current drug crime.

While a rap sheet is never a pretty picture,

neither are prosecutorial journalists who spin
the facts in an election year.

I never had 200 bags of marijuana, just one

bag weighing five grams. The 1986 slashing,
while tragic and regrettable, was reduced to a

misdemeanor because the prosecutor
discovered the juvenile lied about his role. A
misdemeanor is not a strike, and there wasn't

a second assault from 1988.

Sadly, the 200 bags of marijuana that don't

exist, the misdemeanor assault that isn't a

strike and the second assault that never
happened have no logical correlation to the
lawfully possessed buck knife in the glove

box or the multi-wrench with a 2 inch blade
on the seat of the car.

The fact is I entered prison a 22 year old

high school dropout in 1988, and left a college-
educated, published writer in 1994. I paid my
debt to society in full. Upon release from

prison I pursued an upwardly mobile path --
taking a full-load at my hometown university
while starting a construction company from

scratch.

However, just like a rap sheet, relapse is

not a pretty picture either. I started using

again. Eventually, in 1998, I was caught with
approximately 20 grams of methamphetamine,
a felony, and have been buried alive ever

since.

Regardless of our individual stories,

fearmongers like Poochigian, Scully and

Lundstrom work very hard to portray three
strikers as an amalgam of Willie Hortons about
to be unleashed on society if they approve

Proposition 66. Too often, as I experienced
first-hand, their arguments are based on
flawed analysis, evidence that doesn't exist,

and illogical correlations meant to
sensationalize. Politics is simply a dirty game.

"I hope and pray that the public will see

the injustice of the current law and vote to
make changes," states Wallen. "It is a huge

misconception that the District Attorneys
Association is trying to say that murders,
rapists and child molesters will be freed. This

change only affects nonviolent convictions."

-a California prisoner, October 2004

Classification in California

They are only allowing us to have one book

in our cell at a time. In order to receive another
one we have to exchange it, donate it, or send

it home. They just recently opened up this
new administrative segregation (ad-seg)
building called Z-unit and they moved a lot

of us from D6, D7 and D8 to fill it. We are in a
little cell with only a skylight that is located
on top of the ceiling to give us a look of the

outside world. We do go to the yard 3 times a
week in a dog like kennel. Three hours each
time. We do not see much out there. This is

no place for a human to do his time. No TV,
radio or any electronic devices in or outside
of our cells.

At intake the CDC system puts a label on

you. Northern or Southern [Mexican]. They
put that down on your c-file and once you

are in the system all they need is 3 points:
1030s from other people saying you belong
to a gang and they can and will validate you,

whether you have done something wrong or
not. Once this happens they put you back in
the ad-seg and give you an indeterminate

SHU sentence. That means that you will never
see the outside of these ad-segs or hit a
mainline unless you tell on someone else.

Which is how they received info/1030s to put
on another person and use that against them.

However the few that are strong must stay

back here and fight it. It will take years but all
we have is time and people like MIM to help
get us through these rough times. We do 602

(file a grievance) these. In many cases, almost
all, they are denied and we must go through
Sacramento to fight it. If not our last chance

is to file a habeas corpus and go through the
court systems. These so-called gangs are not
violent. They just use the debriefing system

for the weak and cowards who can not handle
the hard times and will give up whatever it
takes. They will even tell lies against another

prisoner to get out of the hole.

- a California prisoner at High Desert State

Prison, July 2004

MIM Notes 314 · February 15, 2004 · Page 12

Notas Rojas

feb 15 2004, Nº 31fa4 Fragmento del Periodico Oficial del Movimiento Internacionalista Maoista

Gratis

¿Que es el MIM?

El Movimiento Internacionalista Maoísta (MIM) es un partido revolucionario

comunista que ejerce el Marxismo-Leninismo-Maoísmo. El MIM es una organización
internacionalista que trabaja desde el punto de vista del proletariado del Tercer Mundo;
es por esto que sus miembros no son amerikanos sino ciudadanos del mundo.

El MIM lucha para acabar con la opresión de todos los grupos sobre cualquier otro,

naciones por naciones, clases por clases, y géneros por géneros. La revolución es una
realidad para los Estados Unidos mientras su ejército continúa extendiendose en su
esfuerzo por asegurar la hegemonía mundial.

El MIM difiere de otros partidos en tres puntos basicos: (1) El MIM sostiene que

después que el proletariado conquiste el poder estatal, existira aún el potencial para una
restauración de tipo capitalista, bajo la dirección de una burguesía nueva dentro del
mismo partido comunista. En el caso de la Unión Soviética, la burguesía se apoderó del
gobierno después de la muerte de Stalin, en 1953; y en China después de la muerte de
Mao y del derrocamiento de la llamada "banda de los cuatro' en 1976. (2) El MIM
sostiene que la Revolución Cultural en China es la fase ms avanzada a la que llegó el
comunismo en la historia. (3) El MIM afirma que la clase trabajadora blanca de los
EE.UU. es primordialmente, una élite trabajadora no revolucionaria en el presente. Es
por esto que no es el principal vehículo para avanzar el Maoísmo en este país.

El MIM acepta como miembro a cualquier individuo que esté de acuerdo con estos

tres puntos basicos, y que acepte al centralismo democrtico, el método de gobierno por
la mayoría en lo que se refiere a cuestiones de línea del partido. El MIM es un partido
clandestino que no publica los nombres de sus miembros para evitar la represión estatal
dirigida históricamente contra los movimientos revolucionarios comunistas, y anti-
imperialistas. Si Ud. desea una suscripción para cualquiera de nuestros periódicos o
libros teóricos, en español o en inglés, por favor mandar dinero en efectivo o un cheque
al nombre de MIM a esta dirección:

MIM · P.O. Box 29670 · Los Angeles CA 90029-0670

[MIM no tiene ningún conocimiento

de condiciones en Bolivia y Nepal.

MIM no sabe FRP--el Ministro de

Relaciones Internacionales del

Movimiento Maoísta Internacionalista

(MIM).]

El 13 de febrero de 1996 en las

montañas himalayas se plantó la bandera

roja del marxismo-leninismo-maoísmo con

el inicio de la Guerra Popular en Nepal,

que fue iniciada y dirigida por el Partido

Comunista de Nepal (Maoísta)

[PCN(M)], este acontecimiento despertó

la alegría de las masas oprimidas en Nepal

así como de las masas oprimidas y

explotadas de todo el mundo.

En dura lucha contra la autocracia

feudal y por la instauración de una

República Popular el PCN(M) ha

desarrollado la guerra de guerrillas

construyendo su Ejército Popular de

Liberación (EPL), que se basa en el

apoyo de las profundas masas populares,

creando zonas guerrilleras, zonas

liberadas y construyendo el poder político

rojo. A través de sucesivas ofensivas

planeadas por la dirección del Camarada

Prachanda ha elevado la fase de la Guerra

Popular de la Defensiva Estratégica al

Equilibrio Estratégico y así se ha

desarrollado la revolución en todos sus

aspectos.

El EPL ha enfrentado la incursión del

Ejército Real de Nepal (ERN), ejército

reaccionario que sostiene a las clases

feudal compradoras de Nepal y a la

autocracia real que apoyada a la vez por

el expansionismo indio y el imperialismo

norteamericano y británico, así como

otras potencias como Bélgica que han

provisto de armamentos a las fuerzas

genocidas reaccionarias de Nepal.

En su guerra contrarrevolucionaria el

gobierno nepalés no ha escatimado

esfuerzos en asesinar a poblaciones

enteras, a masas desarmadas, a

prisioneros que los hacía pasar por

combatientes, a periodistas, intelectuales,

artistas, etc. la tortura y la desaparición

han sido norma y política rectora en su

afán de detener los avances maoístas,

pero en esto no han estado solas las

fuerzas contrarrevolucionarias, han

contado con el asesoramiento de militares

norteamericanos y militares indios, el

imperialismo ha entrenado y pertrechado

de armamento a los reaccionarios

nepaleses para aplastar la auténtica

revolución de las masas oprimidas en

Nepal y han intentado desprestigiar a los

guerrilleros tildándolos de terroristas,

dentro del plan fascista del imperialismo

yankee de guerra contra el terrorismo,

cuando sabemos todos que el principal

terrorista y enemigo de los pueblos del

mundo es precisamente el imperialismo.

Pero la lucha de los maoístas ha dado

grandes saltos. Al constituirse las bases

de apoyo y elevarse la guerra en grandes

ofensivas de guerra de movimientos, el

PCN(M) llegó a controlar más del 75%

del territorio nacional y en ellas se

construye el nuevo poder y se estructura

la nueva república de nueva democracia.

En este camino, la revolución en Nepal

nos dio la gran sorpresa a finales del año

pasado, cuando la guerra entraba en la

etapa de la Ofensiva Estratégica, fase que

se ha iniciado con grandes acciones

asestadas a los terroristas reales (ERN)

dentro del Primer Plan de la Ofensiva

Estratégica, aniquilando a cientos de

elementos reaccionarios destruyendo los

cimientos de la vieja sociedad.

La situación actual en la que el Rey ha

suprimido el gobierno y a tomado en sus

manos todas las funciones

gubernamentales y la tarea de enfrentar

a la Guerra Popular coloca al PCN(M)

en la posibilidad de dirigir a todas las

masas populares de Nepal en un gran

frente contra la autocracia feudal y

fascista y por establecimiento de una

República Popular.

La situación entonces nos demanda la

enorme necesidad que tenemos los

comunistas de estar a la altura de las

Saludamos desde los andes de Sudamérica la

brillante perspectiva de la toma del poder

circunstancias, la presente situación nos

pone en la perspectiva clara de la

posibilidad de la toma del poder en Nepal

y la posible intervención imperialista

yankee de manera más directa, pues en

la actualidad tiene una intervención

indirecta, o utilizando a la India. Entonces

el mejor apoyo que podemos dar a las

masas nepaleses, a su Partido y a su

Ejército, es redoblar los esfuerzos para

iniciar la revolución en nuestros países y

así abrir frentes de batalla al imperialismo

norteamericano.

En esta fecha de celebración asumimos

ese compromiso y nos aunamos a los

diversos pedidos en Asia, Europa y

América de celebrar este aniversario

para llevar a las masas de nuestros países

las noticias de la revolución en Nepal.

¡¡Viva el Partido Comunista de Nepal

(Maoísta)!!

¡¡Viva el marxismo-leninismo-

maoísmo!!

¡¡Muerte al imperialismo

principalmente yankee!!

Saludamos desde los andes

americanos la brillante perspectiva de

la toma del poder

Frente Revolucionario del Pueblo

Marxista-leninista-maoísta

Bolivia, Febrero de 2005

people.

In 1978, Solzhenitsyn said this: "In our

Eastern countries, communism has suffered
a complete ideological defeat; it is zero and

less than zero. But Western intellectuals still
look at it with interest and with empathy, and
this is precisely what makes it so immensely

difficult for the West to withstand the East."
Yet, the Soviet bloc collapsed without the
violence to overthrow it predicted by

Solzhenitsyn and others in 1978. In 2004, it is
already evident that the intellectual trends of
Russia in the 1980s have not prevailed.

Stalin's approval rating at 53% is one
indication that communism is not "zero and
less than zero."

Kicked out of the Reagan administration

for being too anti-Soviet, historian Richard
Pipes himself noted that Solzhenitsyn "`is

quite innocent of historical knowledge.'"(12)

Facts are stubborn things. The decline of

the Russian life expectancy under free market

capitalism, the doubling of the imprisonment
rate, the continued hold of Stalin on the mind
of the Russian people--these are

manifestations of the same knot of problems
connected together in the subject of political
economy--not religion, chess or physics.

Solzhenitsyn did put his finger on

something. The Eastern intellectual betrayed
the international proletariat in the 1980s. Yet,

while the West tends toward an effete post-
modernism and watered down Marxology in
academia, we are sure that the East will once

Stalin

From page 9...

again give rise to the intellectual dragons
Marx thought he would give birth to.

Notes:
1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/
stories/may/27/newsid_2495000/2495895.stm
2. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004-
12-21-stalin_x.htm
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/
2820061.stm ;
A Houston Chronicle article mentioned a poll of
40% supporting Stalin 20Nov2004.
4. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/
solzheni tsyn/harvard1978.html
5. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
articles/A47000-2004Nov12.html
6. www.eco.rug.nl/~Maddison/articles/
World_development_and_Outlook,1820-
2030.pdf
7. http://www.ncsj.org/AuxPages/
111104_dissidents.shtml
8. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/
935876.stm
9. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/faq/
freedomorfiction.html
10. "Forced Labor in the Soviet Union," U.S.
Department of State Bulletin, Vol. 27 (1952)
reprinted in Alex Inkeles & Kent Geiger, eds.
Soviet Society: A Book of Readings (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin Co., 1961), p. 253.
11. https://listhost.uchicago.edu/pipermail/ane/
2003-November/011004.html
12. Reactionary views and how they divided
over Solzhenitsyn: http://www.firstthings.com/
ftissues/ft0408/opinion/mahoney.htm