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THE MAOIST INTERNATIONALIST MOVEMENT

MIM Notes 93

October 1994

Electronic Edition

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

Get MIM Notes 93 from the Maoist Internationalist 
Movement (MIM), and get the latest in Maoist news 
and analysis - put a revolutionary weapon in your 
hands.

This issue exposes Amerikan machinations in Haiti 
and Cuba, French President Mitterand's Nazi past, 
radio racism in Boston, the police state frenzy 
and state repression in prisons. Also, the search 
for bourgeois democracy in Nigeria and the peace 
efforts of Sinn Fein. Plus reviews, letters and 
more.

MIM Notes speaks to and from the viewpoint of the 
world's oppressed majority, and against the 
imperialist-patriarchy. Pick it up and wield it in 
the service of the people. Struggle with it and 
write for it.

MIM Notes is available to subscribers of New York 
Transfer (nyt@nyxfer.blythe.org). Or get a 
subscription from MIM in e-mail or in print for 
$12/year for 12 issues. Write: MIM Distributors, 
PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 48106-3576. (Send cash 
or check made out to "MIM Distributors".) Send 
questions, letters or submissions to: 
mim@nyxfer.blythe.org.

This issue includes:

CONTENTS

 1. AMERIKA SINKS HOOKS INTO HAITI
 2. MITTERAND WAS A NAZI BOOTLICKER
 3. AMERIKA PROVOKES CUBAN REFUGEE CRISIS
 4. SINN FEIN BUILDS UNITY AROUND PEACE
 5. HEMP RALLY IN BOSTON
 6. PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY IN MEXICO
 7. NIGERIA REACHES FOR BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY
 8. FASCIST CALIFORNIA SETTLERS
 9. REVIEW: ADDICTED TO WAR
10. RADIO RACISM IN BOSTON
11. CRIME BILL FRENZY SPURS POLICE STATE
12. MIM PAPER TIGERS
13. UNDER LOCK & KEY
14. LETTERS TO MIM
15. CORRECTIONS


* * *


UPHOLDING A PROUD TRADITION:
AMERIKA SINKS HOOKS INTO HAITI

by MC12

The Amerikan campaign to undermine democracy in 
Haiti - and defeat elected president Jean Bertrand 
Aristide - moves ahead. The anti-Aristide coup and 
now the military invasion are the latest chapters 
in Amerika's imperialist domination of the people, 
land and resources of Haiti that goes back almost 
to the nation's inception.

President Clinton made it clear in his September 
15 TV address that the military occupation will 
continue until Aristide's term runs out at the end 
of 1995, and then foreign troops will supervise 
the next election. Thus, Aristide will not be 
permitted to rule Haiti, and the next election 
will take place under U.S. military occupation.(1) 
By that time, there will be a new "professional" 
police force in place, to maintain "order" - 
trained by U.S. and Israeli military advisors.(2)

In the process, hundreds or thousands more 
Haitians will die at the hands of Amerikan troops 
and their pawns, in the proud tradition of direct 
and indirect colonial rule over the island nation.

Amerika occupied and ruled Haiti from 1915 to 
1934, then backed a series of dictators, including 
the father and son Duvaliers, until 1990, when 
Aristide won a presidential election. Available 
proof of a U.S. link the 1991 coup is 
circumstantial, but the Pentagon has admitted that 
the CIA continued training Haitian military 
officers in Haiti after the coup, despite official 
lies to the contrary.(3)

Jean Bertrand Aristide is no socialist, but MIM 
supports him as the closest thing to democratic 
leadership in Haiti. If he is put into "power" by 
the United States, however, his administration 
will not reflect the democratic will of the 
Haitian people. MIM and all revolutionaries 
unconditionally oppose the U.S. invasion of Haiti, 
as well as the political and economic domination 
of that nation by any foreign power.

There is a dispute in Amerikan power circles over 
strategy in Haiti. But the goals are shared. 
Amerika seeks to restore the "law" of oppression 
and the "order" of exploitation - getting the 
population under control and back to work - 
preferably with the facade of political legitimacy 
in place.

MIM concludes:

1. The United States has never invaded another
   country for any reason other than self
   interest.
2. Elections under foreign occupation do not
   reflect popular will or "democracy."
3. The people of Haiti have been and continue to
   be denied their democratic rights by U.S.
   imperialism.
4. True national self-determination for Haiti can
   only be the product of a victorious
   proletarian-led national liberation struggle
   and the achievement of a self-sufficient
   socialist system.

NOTES:
1. New York Times 9/16/94.
2. ABC Nightline 9/16/94.
3. Boston Globe 12/6/93, p. A1.


* * *


FRENCH PRESIDENT EXPOSED:
MITTERAND WAS A NAZI BOOTLICKER

For 14 years, the president of France has been 
Francois Mitterand, leader of the so-called 
Socialist Party. In the July MIM Notes, we 
reported the New York Times's passing reference to 
the fact that the Socialist Party leader and 
former prime minister B. Craxi of Italy took 
bribes from the Mafia and also had close personal 
friends who lead the fascist parties and new 
government of Italy. Now it turns out that 
Francois Mitterand himself was an official in the 
Nazi puppet government of Vichy France when the 
Nazis occupied France during World War II. In 
1943, he won a medal for the highest loyalty to 
the regime. 

Journalist Pierre Pean finally broke this story by 
publishing a new 616 page biography. The Boston 
Globe referred to the book at length and 
interviewed the author. The author said, "All this 
information was available for years. ... It's 
almost impossible for me to understand why it has 
come out now. That's a sad story for French 
journalism." For MIM, this falls under the 
category of "What did you expect?" That's the 
nature of bourgeois journalism - very uncritical 
of people with great power. 

Till the end of his life, the police chief of the 
Nazi-puppet regime in France had one close 
personal friend - Francois Mitterand. Rene 
Bousquet avoided trial for his role rounding up 
Jews during the Nazi occupation, but he finally 
met an assassin's bullet last year. 

Between 1986 and 1992, Mitterand put a wreath at 
the grave of Marshal Philippe Petain every year. 
Mitterand only stopped under pressure from Jewish 
groups. Petain was the head of the 
collaborationist regime of Vichy France. 

After World War II, Mitterand also continued to 
have close friends amongst the remnants of an 
underground fascist group called La Cagoule which 
staged political assassinations against Jews. This 
is not to mention that as an 18-year-old, 
Mitterand himself belonged to ultra-right 
organizations and went to demonstrations for the 
expulsion of all foreigners and wrote in ultra-
right periodicals. Such youthful mistakes could be 
ignored if the subsequent life justified ignoring 
them. 

Mitterand did fight the Germans during the war, 
but after serving time in a prison camp that he 
escaped, he joined the collaborationist 
government. He won his medal from the Nazi-puppet 
government in 1943, but he did join the 
"Resistance" to the Nazi occupation in the closing 
years of the war, after the Soviet Red Army had 
turned the tide against the Nazis. 

It appears that Mitterand was one of those 
fascists who like the would-be fascists in the 
Soviet Union, did not enjoy having fascism imposed 
by fascists from Germany. Hence, we see Mitterand 
as always a nationalist attracted to power in an 
imperialist country. He had his disagreements with 
other fascists, but that is inevitable because 
fascism can never work on a global scale, since 
there is only room for one aggressive imperialist 
nationalism in the fascist world in the end. Only 
a system based on internationalism - equality of 
nations - has a future if the species is to 
survive at all, and only communism can make 
internationalism a reality. 

In the 1980s, MIM Notes reported that under 
president Francois Mitterand, French economic ties 
with apartheid South Africa actually increased. 
While the rest of the world was struggling to cut 
off ties to the apartheid regime, so-called 
socialist Mitterand was strengthening those ties. 

The fascist pattern now makes sense as Mitterand 
concludes his 77-year life. It is not hard to see 
why the French ruling class chose Mitterand to be 
president. 

MIM Notes readers are not as surprised to learn 
the raw facts about Mitterand, because in the 
late-1920s and into the 1930s, Stalin lead the 
communist movement in criticizing "social-
fascists." These people are socialist in name and 
fascist in deed. Stalin referred to them as 
"wolves in sheep's clothing." 

At the time and to this day, the Trotskyists 
criticize Stalin for being so critical of the 
social-democrats. The social democrats also 
protested that they were not really fascists. Yet, 
Stalin judged the social-democrats by their deeds, 
not their finely polished phrases. It was a 
difficult struggle to show the international 
proletariat why communism was superior to 
democratic socialism or social-democracy. 
Eventually in France, Stalin succeeded in pitting 
the French social-fascists against the German 
Nazis, albeit only on a temporary basis and in a 
vacillating way as the pendulum-like political 
life of Mitterand typifies. 

Today, we can criticize organizations like the 
Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) for long 
pointing to Craxi and Mitterand as models for 
socialists in North America to emulate. In 
addition, around the world, as the old pro-Soviet 
style phony communist organizations crumble, they 
leave behind newly named organizations of 
"democratic socialists." They too should heed this 
lesson. Mitterand and Craxi are great examples of 
why an analysis based on the ballot box is 
hopeless. The crying shame is that these two 
people had their own supporters amongst the masses 
fooled for decades. These two so-called socialist 
leaders are typical of both the criminal and 
ideological corruption of any so-called socialism 
that does not rely on the revolutionary power of 
the international proletariat. 

NOTE: Boston Globe 9/1194, p. 4. 
 

* * *


AMERIKA PROVOKES CUBAN REFUGEE CRISIS

by MAZ10 & MC255

September 9 - The mass exodus of over 20,000 
Cubans to the United States since the beginning of 
August continues.(1) The exodus began with a 
"riot" that was sparked by 76 Cubans who hijacked 
a ferryboat in the Havana harbor, killing two 
police officers in the process. The ferryboat was 
the third ferry hijacked in 10 days. As the police 
attempted to detain the ferry boat, anti-
government and pro-government demonstrators 
descended on the waterfront.(2) Over 15,000 Cubans 
are now being held in refugee camps, alongside of 
thousands of Haitian refugees, at the U.S. naval 
base at Guantanamo Bay, on the eastern tip of 
Cuba.(3) 

The Amerikan response to the refugees has been to 
slam the door in their faces. This is a dramatic 
and hypocritical turnaround by the Amerikan 
government. After decades of encouraging Cubans to 
come to the U.S. in the hopes of destabilizing the 
government there, Amerika has done an abrupt 
about-face. In an attempt to force the Cuban 
government to prevent Cubans from leaving the 
country for the U.S., President Clinton is further 
limiting travel, including reducing the number of 
charter flights allowed from Cuba.(4) Clinton has 
also reversed a long-standing U.S. policy and 
refused to allow the refugees automatic asylum in 
the U.S. Instead, Clinton ordered that the 
refugees picked up at sea be detained at 
Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.(3) 

Previously, the Amerikan government had encouraged 
Cubans in thousands of radio broadcasts to enter 
the U.S. illegally, without passports, visa or 
permit. Amerikan propaganda portrayed as heroes 
those who seized boats, murdered and abducted 
hostages in their efforts to leave Cuba. The Cuban 
Adjustment Act provided additional inducement for 
Cubans to illegally emigrate because it granted 
entry without restrictions and offered a residence 
permit one year and a day after arrival. Migrants 
from other countries were not awarded the same 
privileges(5) Now that the Amerikan government has 
decided that it too many Cubans have taken up its 
invitation, it attempts to brush all this history 
under the rug.

However, Cuba is resisting Amerikan attempts to 
re-write history. The Clinton administration began 
talks with the Cuban government in the beginning 
of September, hoping to get the Cuban government 
to agree to forcibly stop Cubans from emigrating. 
Cuban negotiators rejected the Amerikan offer of 
20,000 visas per year as a hypocritical pretense 
at negotiation. The head of the Cuban delegation, 
Roberto Alarcon, pointed out that Amerika had 
already signed a bilateral agreement with Cuba in 
1984 that granted up to 20,000 visas per year. 
Amerika is not negotiating, but merely offering to 
do something they agreed to do 10 years ago. 

Alarcon added that while the U.S. was now asking 
Cuba to stop people from leaving the country, in 
the past it had denounced Cuba in international 
forums for precisely the same thing.(5) MIM is not 
surprised at such duplicity by the Amerikan 
government and we will do our part to uncover 
Amerikan lies and misinformation.

During the recent negotiations the Cuban 
government proposed that the U.S. grant entry to 
at least 100,000 Cubans, explaining that the large 
number was necessary to make up for the backlog 
created by the Amerikan failure to abide by the 
1984 agreement. In the ten years from 1984 to 1994 
the U.S. only granted 11,222 visas while accepting 
14,000 illegal immigrants. The U.S. quickly 
rejected the Cuban proposal.(6)

The Cuban delegation has also been pushing for 
negotiations over the U.S. economic embargo 
against Cuba.(5) Alarcon explained that the 
Amerikan immigration policy was only one part of a 
larger attempt to suffocate the Cuban economy and 
win political capitulation.(5) He stated that "If 
you want to find a real resolution to this problem 
you cannot ignore the sources of the problem. And 
the sources are the economic embargo."(7) 

Alarcon has stressed that Cuban and Amerikan 
agreement on the immigration issue was unlikely 
without resolving the core issue of the blockade 
because any serious analysis has to take into 
account the root causes of the problem, which in 
this case would require a fundamental change in 
U.S. policy.(5) MIM knows that the fundamental 
change required is really revolutionary change, 
and such change will not come about because the 
Amerikan government has suddenly learned good 
manners. Revolutionary change requires that 
Amerikan imperialism be exposed and defeated in 
whichever Third World country, Cuba, Haiti, etc., 
it rears its ugly head. 

Amerika's attempt to destroy the Cuban government 
and force Cuba to serve Amerikan interests, 
evidenced by its immigration policy and the 
decades old economic embargo, are clearly the 
major factors that have provoked this crisis. 
Cuba, however, must bear some of the 
responsibility. By failing to develop a 
diversified and self-reliant economy and instead 
depending for so many years on Soviet social 
imperialism, Cuba now finds its back against the 
wall. 

Already existing problems were exacerbated last 
year when the Cuban government decided to allow 
Cubans to save and spend Amerikan dollars. Fidel 
Castro has said that Cuba would like to open up 
trade relations with Amerika. But, once those 
doors are open, Amerika is not likely to just 
politely peek in. Furthermore, the Amerikan 
government is now in a position to maintain the 
economic embargo until Cuba is forced to allow 
Amerikan corporations to reap the superprofits of 
the Cuban masses.

In order to end the exploitation of the Cuban and 
other Third World people, MIM works to expose and 
destroy the imperialist system, principally 
Amerikan imperialism.

NOTES:
1. New York Times 9/2/94, p. A1.
2. NYT 8/6/94, p. A3
3. Los Angeles Times 9/5/94, p. A1.
4. NYT 8/25/94 p. A10.
5. BBC based on report from Prensa Latina news
   agency, Havana, 9/5/94.
6. Dallas Morning News, 9/5/94, p. 7A.
7. Reuters, 9/5/94.


* * *


SINN FEIN BUILDS UNITY AROUND PEACE;
UVF CONTINUES ARMED ATTACKS

by MC206

On September 1 the Irish Republican Army (IRA) 
declared a unilateral cease-fire in British-
occupied Northern Ireland. The declaration came in 
response to recent peace overtures from the 
British and Irish governments. Although these 
overtures did not address issues basic to the 
peace process (such as the withdrawal of British 
troops from Northern Ireland) the IRA and its 
political wing, Sinn Fein, made this declaration 
to show their willingness for peace and to force 
the British government to act on its supposed 
plans for peace.(1) "[T]here is a heavy onus on 
the British government to respond positively, both 
in terms of the demilitarization of the situation 
and in assisting the search for an agreed Ireland 
by encouraging the process of national 
reconciliation."(2)

The cease fire has united those working for a true 
and lasting peace in Northern Ireland and isolated 
those working against it. 

Talks between Sinn Fein and moderate John Hume 
which preceded the cease-fire brought about a 
"crucial consensus" among representatives of 
nationalist opinion.(3) Sinn Fein also met with a 
delegation from "Irish-America." These talks 
essentially took those who were half-hearted 
supporters of armed struggle and put all of their 
weight on Britain and the unionists. After the 
cease-fire Adams met with Irish Prime Minister 
Albert Reynolds - the first time the leader of 
Sinn Fein has met with an Irish Prime Minister.(4) 
The cease-fire was greeted with all-night 
celebrations in the nationalist quarters of 
Belfast.(5)

The hard line Unionists, on the other hand, have 
lost their traditional connection with the British 
government. Ian Paisley, who leads the Democratic 
Unionist Party and concedes that he will not allow 
the Irish government any power in Northern Ireland 
"today, tomorrow, or forever,"(6) was barred from 
the British Prime Minister's office. Paisley would 
not accept Prime Minister John Major's statement 
that there was no secret agreement between the IRA 
and the British government. Major kicked Paisley 
out of his office and said, "I will never talk to 
you again until you declare your belief that I 
speak the truth."(4) 

Since the cease-fire the Unionist Ulster Volunteer 
Force (UVF) has carried out five armed attacks.(9) 
The UVF exploded a bomb outside of Sinn Fein 
headquarters in Belfast and tried to bomb the home 
of a Sinn Fein councilor. The UVF also shot a 
Catholic man dead.(7) The UVF has claimed 
responsibility for 31 deaths this year, the IRA 
for 18.(9)

The IRA has not broken the cease-fire to respond 
to these attacks and seems to be following Adams' 
advice: "[D]espite the threatening knee-jerk 
reaction of the Unionists to the current 
developments... it is a time to extend the hand of 
friendship, and to urge dialogue, and calm 
reflection."(3) 

But, Adams points out, "It is not possible for the 
nationalists to make peace with the unionists if 
the unionists refuse to even engage in a dialogue 
with them. The only thing we are condemning 
unionists to is a life sentence under 
democracy."(8)

NOTES:
1. MIM Notes, 9/94. The headline of this article,
   "Sinn Fein rejects British 'peace,'" was
   incorrect and contradicted the article and
   subsequent developments. Sinn Fein and the IRA
   have responded positively to the latest British
   overtures - all the while making it clear that
   the responsibility for the absence of peace for
   the last 20 years belongs to the British
   Government.
2. Joint declaration by Gerry Adams and John Hume,
   8/28/94.
3. Essay by Gerry Adams released 9/1/94.
4. Los Angeles Times, 9/7/94.
5. National Public Radio, Morning edition, 9/1/94.
6. NPR, All Things Considered, 8/31/94.
7. Reuters, 9/10/94.
8. Irish Times, 9/2/94.
9. Associated Press 12/9/94.


* * *


HEMP RALLY IN BOSTON

September 17 - This year's annual Boston hemp 
rally was the biggest yet. It was a scene of white 
youth disenchanted with the system and looking for 
a feel-good way out of the disgusting decay of 
Amerikan culture. This was a good crowd for 
revolutionary paper selling, but not a 
revolutionary event. The speakers preached 
pacifism, capitalism, and libertarianism for the 
most part. The bands were an excellent sampling of 
local punk talent and a good example of the 
disenchantment of white youth with Amerikan 
culture.

These scenes of "alternative" culture are useful 
in that they get people thinking about how Amerika 
and capitalism really repress people. But in the 
case of this rally, the cops kept a respectful 
distance on the perimeter of the scene, made no 
arrests, harassed very few people, and generally 
just made a show of policing the crowd. In return, 
a number of the speakers thanked the cops for 
being so kind. MIM knows that this is not the cops 
improving and being nice to the people. It is in 
the interests of the state to allow small displays 
of "counterculture" decadence to pacify people. 
Why piss off your future mass base: white 
Amerikans. Let them smoke pot: a hit on a bong 
does a better job of pacifying people than a few 
hits on the head with a police club.

Many of the youth at this rally were politically 
aware and glad to get a hold of a newspaper that 
saw through the lies in the Amerikan media. People 
were particularly impressed with MIM's work in the 
prisons, and MIM Notes willingness to tell it like 
it is. On the eve of an Amerikan invasion of 
Haiti, people wanted to know where MIM stood and 
were relieved to find a newspaper that opposed 
U.S. intervention everywhere. 

People fighting for the right to legally smoke pot 
should turn their energies to more useful work. 
Individual freedom to pursue decadent relaxation 
in an imperialist country should not be the first 
priority of a revolutionary. It is far more 
important to feed the people of the world, free 
them from imperialist oppression, and allow all 
people the right to self-determination around much 
more fundamental issues than the legal use of 
hemp.


* * *


BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY FALTERS:
PEOPLE'S DEMOCRACY GROWS IN MEXICO

As expected, the Institutional Revolutionary Party 
(PRI) won Mexico's presidential elections on 
August 20. Supporters of the Democratic 
Revolutionary Party (PRD) held peaceful 
demonstrations in several Mexican cities 
protesting fraud.

Sub-commandante Marcos of the Zapatista National 
Liberation Army said that "only the gringos will 
swallow" the official figures,(1) which show 50% 
for PRI, 27% for the right wing PAN, and 17% for 
PRD.(2) The New York Times says the Zapatista 
Liberation Army (EZLN) "indirectly backed" 
Cuahtemoc Cardenas of the PRD.(3) More accurately, 
participants at the EZLN-led Democratic Convention 
this summer issued a call to "vote against" 
PRI.(4) What is most significant about the 
elections, fraudulent or not, is the widespread 
discontent with the results. Neither PRD or PAN is 
interested in Zedillo's call for dialogue. While 
most of the PRD's Mayan supporters are not in a 
compromising mood, Cardenas has vacillated between 
indignant resignation and militant calls to people 
to organize and "stop the imposition of a 
fraudulent government."(5) Cardenas himself is a 
former PRI senator and state governor. His father 
was a PRI president from 1934 to 1940.(6)

The EZLN is more concerned about fraud in the 
governor's race in Chiapas. They have warned of 
more violent protests if PRI's candidate for 
governor doesn't renounce his victory. Already 
Chiapan peasants have held street protests, taken 
over several town halls, and blocked highways.(5) 
In contrast to bourgeois electoral democracy, the 
EZLN is continuing to develop people's democracy. 
Their National Democratic Convention last Aug. 6-9 
drew 6,000 people, campesinos and indigenous, from 
all over Mexico. It took place in the Zapatistas-
liberated area around Tepayec, Chiapas. Among 
other things, they called for a national strike if 
there is election fraud, and passed resolutions 
calling for autonomy for indigenous peoples and 
the guarantee of equal participation in society 
for women and gays. They also came out against US 
military intervention in Haiti, and repeated their 
demands that the Mexican military leave Chiapas 
and that the government recognize the EZLN as a 
belligerent force.(7) 

The PRI is clearly approaching a crisis in 
maintaining political power. Increasing political 
repression is expected. In the weeks previous to 
the elections, Amerika and Russia sent heavy duty 
riot control equipment to Mexico, including: "18 
(13 ton) water cannons [total cost: $40 million] 
from Cadillac Gage Textron in Warren, Michigan, 
used for crowd control; several 17-ton Cobra riot 
control vehicles from Custom Armoring in 
Pittsfield, Massachusetts.(equipped with plows to 
destroy barricades, indelible dye to mark 
protesters for subsequent arrest, and rows of gun 
ports); 23 tanks and armored vehicles [unloaded 
from the Russian-flag vessel Ulan Bator]... 200 to 
300 tons of war material including rifles and 
other firearms; military equipment [including] 
riot-control vehicles unloaded from the Russian 
freighter Truts Karets." Huey helicopters and 
armored equipment have also been transported from 
Amerika to Mexico.(8) 

MIM repeats its call to Amerikans to build public 
opinion in the US in favor of the EZLN, of the 
Mexican people's right to self-determination, and 
to organize and oppose all forms of Amerikan 
intervention and imperialism in Mexico, as we have 
done since the Zapatista uprising in January. The 
best way to do that is to help build a Maoist 
revolutionary party, and overthrow the Amerikan 
government. 

Notes:
1. New York Times 8/2894, p. A8. 
2. NYT 8/25/94, p. A3. 
3. NYT 8/23/94, p. A6. 
4. Sergio Reyes for Latinos for Social Change,
   "After the August 21, 1994 Elections in Mexico"
   8/20/94, p. 4.
5. NYT, 9/8/94, p. A9.
6. Sergio Reyes op. cit., pp. 2-3. 
7. From New York Transfer News Collective,
   8/22/94 on alt.politics.radical-left.
8. Sergio Reyes op. cit., pp. 4-5.


* * *


NIGERIA REACHES FOR BOURGEOIS DEMOCRACY:
OIL WORKERS FIGHT TO  MILITARY DICTATORSHIP

In early September, oil workers in the western 
African nation of Nigeria ended a political strike 
that lasted for two months. The central issues 
were the struggle to free victorious presidential 
candidate Moshood Abiola from prison and to end 
the nation's military dictatorship to achieve 
bourgeois democracy. The strike failed as oil 
workers could not resolve the internal and 
external contradictions that have prevented 
Nigeria from moving out of semi-feudal, semi-
colonial status. 

The strike by the 150,000-strong National Union of 
Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) began 
on July 4, 1994. They demanded the release of 
Moshood Abiola, the installation of Abiola as Head 
of State, the release of political detainees and 
for the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation 
(NNPC) to settle the millions owed to foreign oil 
companies.(1) Last year, the military abruptly 
annulled elections after Moshood Abiola won them. 
Then in June 1994, Abiola was arrested for treason 
after he declared himself president. He is a 
multi-millionaire who owns Summit Oil Company. 

During the two-month strike, more than 100 people 
have died in protests and youth rebellions, and 
the commercial capital, Lagos, was virtually shut 
down by the strike.(2) Many of the casualties were 
Nigerian youths who battled the regime on the 
streets of Lagos and other southwestern cities. 
Other workers, like university lecturers, bank 
workers and the white-collar oil workers union 
(PENGASSAN) joined the strike.(3) The alliance of 
NUPENG and PENGASSAN along with other workers 
indicates a broad consensus by Nigerians to fight 
on the side of the national bourgeoisie and move 
forward to bourgeois democracy. 

The corruption of the military regime and the 
stunning economic collapse brought the oil workers 
out in full force to support multi-millionaire 
Abiola, who is seen as a better alternative. Over 
the past five years, auditors from Arthur Anderson 
were unable to trace over one billion dollars in 
the accounts of the Nigerian National Petroleum 
Corporation.(4) NNPC is a state-owned corporation 
that operates joint ventures with imperialist oil 
companies. 

Since 1983, Nigeria's income per capita has fallen 
from nearly $1,000 to around $330 a year, partly 
because oil prices dropped dramatically during the 
1980s.(5) For these reasons, wages have dropped, 
even below subsistence levels, and many jobs were 
lost in the oil industry, thus driving oil workers 
and unemployed Nigerians to strike in support of 
Abiola when he was arrested. 

On June 12, 1993, former Head of State General 
Babangida annulled national elections after it 
became evident that the national bourgeoisie was 
going to win the elections, lead by Moshood 
Abiola, presidential candidate of the now defunct 
Social Democratic Party (SDP) and owner of Summit 
Oil Company.(1,6) Babangida controlled Nigeria 
from 1985 to 1993. The annulment tarnished 
Babangida and prominent army officers overthrew 
him on November 18, 1993. General Sani Abacha 
became Head of State.(7)

Then, Moshood Abiola defiantly declared himself 
president of Nigeria on June 11, 1994, the eve of 
the anniversary of last year's elections.(8) 
Abacha had him arrested for treason, which 
instigated the strike lead by NUPENG. Despite 
rhetoric from General Abacha to return to civilian 
rule soon after the November 1993 coup, he was 
never interested in giving up power peacefully to 
civilians, made evident by ignoring the June 1993 
elections and later arresting Abiola for treason. 

Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa with 
120 million people, is the sixth largest oil 
producer in the world and a member of OPEC. Most 
of the oil pumped is in the southwest, dominated 
by the urban Yorubas. The country has always been 
ruled by military generals from the predominantly 
Hausa north. While southwestern Nigeria is oil-
rich, the military has siphoned capital to the 
northern region. Abiola is a Yoruban, so much of 
his support comes from that region.(3) The 
military has ruled Nigeria 24 of its 34 years 
since independence from British colonialism on 
October 1, 1960. 

Oil production is important for both Nigeria and 
the imperialists. Shell, Mobil and Gulf oil 
companies control over 78 percent of oil 
production. (9) About 95 percent of export 
revenues comes from crude oil production in the 
country.(10) If Abiola had become Head of State, 
his Summit Oil Company would have emerged as a 
great force, and this change would have confronted 
the power of the imperialist oil companies. The 
national bourgeoisie, located primarily in the 
southwest, sought more power by gaining political 
control of the government, which has been always 
controlled by military generals from the north.

NOTES:
 1. West Africa July 18-24, 1994, pg. 1265. 
 2. Reuters, 8/23/94. 
 3. Reuters, 8/16/94. 
 4. Africa Confidential 2/18/94, pg. 1. 
 5. African Report Jan/Feb 1994, pg. 49. 
 6. Africa Confidential 2/19/94, pg. 3. 
 7. African Report, Jan/Feb 1994, pg. 48. 
 8. West Africa, 6/20-6/26/94, pg. 1086. 
 9. Faloa, Toyin & Ihonvbere, Julius, The Rise and
    Fall of Nigeria's Second Republic: 1979-1984,
    London: Zed Books Ltd., 1985, pg. 180. 
10. Encyclopedia of the Third World vol II, pg.
    1446.


* * *


KALIFORNIA SETTLERS:
STILL FASCIST AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

by MC206

Seeing their bloated incomes threatened as the 
Kalifornian economy loses the big fat federal 
subventions that went along with its closed 
military bases, suburban Kalifornian settlers are 
supporting a proposition (placed on the ballot by 
voter initiative) which would codify and demand 
harassment for Kalifornia's immigrant community.

Proposition 187, also called SOS ("Save our 
State"), would cut off illegal immigrants from 
federal funds which they supposedly now receive. 
Children of illegal immigrants would not be able 
to attend public school (although the children 
themselves may be U.S. citizens), illegal 
immigrants would no longer be able to receive care 
at publicly funded health clinics (this includes 
immunization but excludes emergency care), they 
would be barred from services aiding the elderly, 
etc.

The SOS proposition also calls for the massive 
extension of programs aimed at identifying and 
tracking illegal immigrants. It forces local 
police forces to co-operate with the INS in all 
cases (previously some local legislation 
prohibited such co-operation in some 
municipalities). SOS also recruits many people 
from professions outside law-enforcement into its 
dragnet. Social workers, doctors, clinicians and 
teachers would be required to ask for proof of 
citizenship from anybody deemed "reasonably 
suspicious." SOS goes beyond sanctioning 
harassment of Latinos and Asians (most of the 
immigrants arriving in southern California come 
from Mexico or Southeast Asia), it makes it 
legally enforceable.

That's why its backers like it. For now, SOS 
supporters hope to create a legally threatening 
(and extra-legally dangerous) situation for 
immigrants in southern California, prompting as 
many "self-deportations" as possible. As for the 
future, their rhetoric speaks for itself. One of 
the authors of the SOS proposal recently addressed 
a crowd of supporters: "You're the posse, and SOS 
is the rope."

Deportation is one of the imperialists' methods of 
controlling the relative surplus population. When 
they need more workers (at lower wages) they open 
the borders; when they need less, they close the 
borders and force the unemployed out - so they 
don't have to deal with all of the unrest 
concentrated unemployment and poverty foster. 

NOTE: Los Angeles Times 8/10/94, p. A1.


* * *


REVIEW: ADDICTED TO WAR
WHY THE U.S. CAN'T KICK MILITARISM
"AN ILLUSTRATED EXPOSE" by Joel Andreas, 1993

by MC31

A little kid and his mother are the protagonists 
of this 61-page comic book description in easy to 
understand facts and figures of U.S. militarism 
and imperialism.

The comic is well illustrated, with many 
photographs and actual quotes from various war 
mongers and peace activists interspersed 
throughout. The book begins with the mother 
realizing how much tax money was taken out of her 
paycheck, and the kid asking her to help with a 
school bakesale to raise money for toilet paper! 
The comic then gives a range of facts and 
information on the breakdown of government 
spending, and how the government spends 60 percent 
of the budget on military, and only 2 percent on 
education. 

While the information in the beginning of the 
comic is nothing new, including drastic 
underfunding of social programs and the period of 
massive military buildup in the late 1970s, the 
book is useful in that it helps people ranging 
from junior high school to college age find 
details about different military coups that the 
U.S. has helped orchestrate. It also explains what 
the Amerikan interests were in Cuba, Haiti, the 
Philippines, Vietnam, and every other country that 
Amerika has invaded and brutalized.

The comic is divided into chapters, including 
"Manifest Destiny", "Militarism and the Media", 
and "Resisting Militarism" among others. The book 
ends with the kid asking his mother how we can 
resist militarism and kick the U.S. addiction to 
war. "That's another comic book" the mother 
replies. MIM would like to see that next book, and 
hopes that it pulls no punches in telling kids 
that capitalism must be destroyed and a 
revolutionary communist movement must lead the way 
to a new society where nations are no longer 
"addicted" to war profits and plundering raw 
materials and exploiting labor from the Third 
World proletariat. 

One serious flaw with the book is that Andreas 
makes no distinction between white workers (the 
labor aristocracy) and Third World workers, and 
instead says that it is "the workers" who pay for 
Amerikan militarism with their tax money and their 
labor. Andreas also mentions that it is "the poor" 
that are sent overseas to fight imperialist wars. 
This is true, but Andreas misses the point that in 
fact the white working class benefits from these 
imperialist wars, and supports Amerikan 
exploitation of other countries.

Another problem with the approach of the book is 
that it seems to say that militarism, i.e. 
imperialism, is just a sickness or a drug, that 
the U.S. is addicted to, and can therefore be 
cured of. MIM believes that the only way the U.S. 
will be "cured" of its imperialism is to destroy 
the entire machinery of the country. The U.S. 
cannot remain the way it is minus war and 
militarism; the very foundation of Amerika, as 
Andreas rightly and carefully points out, is built 
on imperialist expansion. 

But even as Andreas recognizes Amerika's 
imperialist basis, and does a good job of relaying 
that information in picture form, he falls short 
of advocating revolution as the solution, and 
instead concentrates on statistics that show that 
most Amerikans are not war mongers, and how many 
Amerikans have opposed various recent wars, 
including Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf 
wars. On page 59 the book notes that in April 1991 
(right after the Gulf War) 73 percent of Chicago 
voters "approved a ballot resolution calling for 
the government to cut the Pentagon budget in half 
and use the money for education, health care, 
housing, and other social programs."

The contradiction in the reformist-the U.S.-can-
be-cured-of-its-militarism approach is evident in 
that quote: so what if 73 percent of city X's 
voters don't want a big Pentagon budget? The 
voters don't actually control U.S. foreign policy 
and voting for smaller defense budgets won't make 
it so. While MIM thanks Andreas and others like 
him for exposing U.S. militarism, especially in a 
format designed for young readers, MIM recognizes 
the shortcomings in an approach that says that we 
can save some of the baby as we throw out the 
bathwater. Instead, we work for building public 
opinion toward a communist revolution.

Addicted to War is available from: Illustrated 
Exposes, 2019 W. Ohio #3, Chicago, IL 60612, (312) 
243-6907. $5.95 + $2 shipping/1 copy, less if you 
order multiple copies.


* * *


RADIO RACISM IN BOSTON

WBZ radio (1030 AM in the Boston area) outdid 
itself in racism September 16 at about 10:00 p.m., 
as talk-show host David Brudnoy claimed that 
college students should learn in their African 
history classes that African writing did not exist 
and hence there is no record of African cultural 
achievements to compare with Western cultural 
achievements. Brudnoy went on to refer to African 
culture as the culture of "mud" of "mud thatched 
roofs" "that never built a building two stories 
high" with "nothing of value to anyone." As in 
typical old-style KKK literature, Brudnoy spoke of 
Africans as "uncivilized," "barbaric" "tribal 
savages" etc. 

The context was Brudnoy's hosting of an author of 
a book opposed to "multiculturalism" on college 
campuses. Brudnoy told a calling student - a 
sophomore complaining about having a course on 
African culture as a prerequisite for European 
culture - that the student should have the bravery 
to tell the professor that African culture was not 
worth anything to anyone. When the student recited 
his notes from class about the definitions of 
"multiculturalism" and "ethnocentrism," so fearful 
of any knowledge is Brudnoy, he told the student 
that the professor "really wants you to hate 
yourself" - for knowing the definitions of two 
words! 

Brudnoy's comments were more openly extreme than 
some KKK literature MIM saw in September, which 
while spewing its venom claimed not to want to 
stand in the way of any achievements by Black 
people. Moreover, Brudnoy's comments are connected 
to a major news radio station in the Boston area. 
Television Channel 4 is WBZ television. In the 
past, Brudnoy has hosted famous guests including 
Governor Weld and U.S. Senate candidate John 
Lakian. 

Brudnoy has made "red-meat" right-wing remarks on 
the air before. In one case his support for the 
death-penalty was laced with comments about drug-
crazed mothers who push their babies out the 
windows. It was a typical attempt to link crime to 
"liberals" and the inner-city peoples. 

This reporter has never heard more outrageous 
comments on radio. Even the right-wing author 
featured on the show said that Brudnoy was 
"unfair" in his comments. 

As usual, far right-wing activists immediately put 
their ignorance on display for all to see when it 
comes time for expressing their brazen hatred. The 
facts about cultural achievements in Africa before 
Western colonialism intervened are much different 
than Brudnoy claims and MIM takes the time to 
refute the racism rather than just repeating it as 
many liberal news media would. 

In his comment on not having buildings more than 
two stories high, Brudnoy obviously forgot about 
the Pyramids of Egypt. There were also numerous 
famous statues much taller than two story 
buildings and of course the famous lighthouse of 
the Pharos (from about 280 B.C.) was about 200 to 
600 feet tall. In all these accomplishments, the 
Egyptians were ahead of Western civilization, just 
as the Chinese of 1000 A.D. were centuries ahead 
of Western science. 

As for Brudnoy's comments on writing, Egyptian 
hieroglyphics are the basis of much modern 
writing, and are arguably the most influential 
source of today's script. Phoenician, Hebrew, 
Arabic and Devanagari alphabet/writing systems 
derive from Egyptian hieroglyphics. History from 
the so-called first dynasty from 3110 to 2884 BC 
is written in hieroglyphics, but the ancient 
Egyptian script was well established even before 
that. 

Also well-established was Ethiopic writing, which 
in the 300s A.D. switched to writing from left to 
right with the influence of Christianity. Even 
many barely disguised racists are aware of Nubian 
writing from the 700s to the 1300s. 

Of course, Islam spread through North Africa with 
a written work called the Koran. The source of all 
the historical information in this article is one 
conservative and ethnocentric encyclopedia called  
The New Columbia Encyclopedia , 1975. This 
encyclopedia is typical of the problem of dealing 
with ideas like those of Brudnoy, because in the 
encyclopedia every minor white, male historical 
figure occupies much more space than entire 
languages of some Third World peoples. 

A laughable example is the length of space given 
to Arthur Koestler on the one hand and the holy 
book of Islam, the Koran, on the other hand. An 
English writer born in 1905, Koestler received 32 
lines in the encyclopedia. "His greatest influence 
has been as spokesman of the ex-Communist left." 
The encyclopedia goes on to describe the anti-
Stalin book  Darkness at Noon  as Koestler's 
greatest achievement. 

Two pages later in the 3000-page reference book, 
the central sacred book of Islam which has 
hundreds of millions of followers spanning over 
more than 1000 years receives 35 lines. In other 
words, the Koran gets three more lines of 
explanation than a minor anti-communist literary 
figure. While the "New" Columbia Encyclopedia 
attempts to handle a "diversity" of topics and 
cultures, the result is still colored by the 
narrow hatreds and ignorance of the white man. We 
should add that the co-editor and one half of the 
senior editors of the reference book are women by 
biology but male by social position. 

MIM does not support the "multiculturalist" agenda 
on campus, because it is true that it is dominated 
by foolish liberals who ignore oppression of 
nations by nations through political, economic and 
military power. MIM does not believe cultural 
appreciation and diversity can be the central 
buzzwords of a day where one people oppresses 
another. The oppressed must instead fight for 
power, not just integration into the white man's 
world. It is only too bad that the major 
opposition to "multiculturalism" in imperialist 
Amerika comes from ignorant, fear-mongering 
racists like WBZ news radio hosts.


* * *


CRIME BILL FRENZY SPURS POLICE STATE:

THREE ARTICLES

PSEUDO-FEMINISTS JOIN ANTI-CRIME CAMPAIGN

The campaigns for governor and senator of 
Massachusetts have the candidates tripping over 
each other to posture on crime. On the right, we 
have John Lakian opposing the Bill Clinton crime 
bill because it will raise property taxes to match 
federal funds for the hiring of 100,000 police in 
the United States, not because it has already been 
shown in studies that raising the number of police 
does not cause crime to decrease. However, on 
Lakian's behalf, it should be said that fiscal 
responsibility in government by the conservative 
Liberals is one of the few brakes on the ruling 
class's putting half the public in prison to be 
guarded by the other half of the population. 

The other Republican candidate for the U.S. 
Senate, a Mormon leader named Mitt Romney supports 
the Clinton crime bill as does Senator Kennedy who 
Romney seeks to replace. These two candidates most 
likely to win have guessed that the white nation 
voters will pay almost any cost "to fight crime." 
Because the white working class is bought off with 
the superprofits from superexploited Third World 
people, successful politicians like Romney and 
Kennedy must pander to the viciously jingoist 
anti-crime fervor of the white nation. 

The most "left-wing" of the major candidates for 
state-wide office in Massachusetts has received 
feminist, gay/lesbian, labor and "peace" activist 
group endorsements. George Bachrach has accepted 
the label of "liberal" and "Democrat" while the 
other candidates call themselves "different 
Democrats" to indicate that they are not liberal 
Democrats of the old Franklin D. Roosevelt mold. 

Yet, even Bachrach has to talk tough to get 
elected by the settlers. Not satisfied that the 
United States already has the highest imprisonment 
rate per capita in the world, Bachrach suggests 
putting millions more in prison by appealing to 
settler women in particular. "Bachrach proposed a 
law prohibiting 'domestic assault and battery' 
carrying a sentence of 2.5 to 5 years in prison or 
$5,000 fine - substantially more than current 
crimes of assault and battery or assault with 
intent to murder." 

Taking the typical liberal pseudo-feminist line 
which seeks only that women have an equal part in 
fascism and imperialism, Bachrach said, "'I'm 
frankly tired of hearing this governor talk about 
how tough he is on crime when he has done so 
little to stop the spread of domestic violence.'" 
Bachrach is correct within his own imperialist 
logic, because domestic violence is by far the 
most common kind of violent crime, and so someone 
claiming to "fight crime" should put domestic 
violence front and center. His solution has no 
track record of working to stop domestic violence, 
but it should be good for an easy doubling or 
tripling of the prison population and a doubling 
or tripling of his number of pseudo-feminist 
settler votes. 

NOTE: Boston Globe 9/794, pp. 23, 31-32.


KIDS TODAY: IF YA CAN'T PUT 'EM IN JAIL, BEAT 'EM

The Kalifornia state legislature recently narrowly 
defeated a proposal which would have mandated 
public spanking for minors caught "tagging" 
(spray-painting a graffiti name or "tag" on walls, 
signs, etc.). The spanking could be administered 
by a parent or a duly appointed representative of 
the state.

The proposal was inspired by the spanking of 
Amerikan teenager Michael Fay in Singapore for 
spray painting on cars. Much of the verbiage 
spilled on this incident in Amerika centered on 
"Oriental disrespect for human rights" or 
"Singapore's audacity to treat a U.S. citizen like 
that" - ignoring, of course, that the beatings the 
Amerikan police deal out on the streets and in the 
prisons, which make the Fay spanking look like the 
slap on the wrist it is. Still, the Singapore 
spanking excited Kalifornia's "law and order" 
lobby - especially if those spanked would be 
urban, predominately oppressed-nation youth.

MIM finds nothing odd or delinquent about young 
people painting on property that does not belong 
to them and does not contribute in any positive 
way to their community. And we like it when 
taggers paint "pigs out" over State-funded murals 
showing police officers "helping" the community. 
If MIM were to publicly spank anybody, we would 
spank the pig-apologists who painted those ugly 
murals.

- MC206

NOTE: LA Times 8/5/94, p. A3.


GERONIMO PRATT DENIED PAROLE FOR THE 13TH TIME

For the 13th time in twenty-three years, Geronimo 
Jijaga Pratt was denied parole. Pratt was 
convicted in 1971 for a crime he did not commit.

Ex-FBI informant Louis Tackwood has clearly shown 
that Pratt was framed for murder by the FBI's 
COINTELPRO (counter-intelligence program).(1) The 
FBI also sabotaged Pratt's trial, withholding 
information from the defense and the jury. Many 
jurors have said they would not have voted guilty 
if they had had access to this information.(2)

The parole board cited Pratt's refusal to accept a 
work assignment and several (easily fabricated) 
disciplinary reports as reasons for the denial of 
parole. The work assignment Pratt refused would 
have forced him to work with members of the Aryan 
Brotherhood, a white supremacist group. Pratt 
refused the assignment in order to avoid the 
possibility of violence.(2)

So Pratt is still being kept in jail for political 
reasons. It is not because he shows no remorse for 
this crime he did not commit that the parole board 
claims he has "failed to demonstrate evidence of 
positive change," but because he shows no remorse 
for his activities in the Black Panther Party when 
he was seeking "to free people from bondage." At 
one point the board claimed Pratt "still has a 
criminal mentality," to which Pratt replied, "I 
think you have a criminal mentality. There is a 
difference in the way we think."(2)

 - MC206

NOTES:
1. Churchill and Vander Wall, Agents of
   Repression, Boston: South End Press, 1988, pp.
   77-94. 
2. Los Angeles Times 8/25/94, p. B1.


* * *


              - PAPER TIGERS -

   All reactionaries are paper tigers. In
   appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying,
   but in reality they are not so powerful.
   From a long-term point of view, it is not
   the reactionaries but the people who are
   really powerful.
                                   - Mao Zedong


D.C. BLACK VOTERS GIVE POWERS-THAT-BE THE FINGER

Black voters in Washington D.C. won a symbolic 
victory by giving former Mayor Marion Barry a big 
win in the District's Democratic party primary 
election in September.

Barry won a record 65,308 votes, almost 50% of the 
total vote (though only a fraction of adult 
Blacks) in a race with three major candidates and 
a half dozen others. Now he has to win a general 
election in November, considered very likely 
because the city's voters are almost all 
Democrats.

Barry, a civil rights activist with origins in the 
Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 
served as mayor of the district until he was 
busted for smoking crack in a FBI set-up aimed at 
embarrassing a popular Black politician who was 
trying to build up Black capitalism in the city.

After serving time in jail, Barry re-emerged into 
politics with a redemption theme, having kicked 
illegal drugs and alcohol and wearing kente cloth 
with his suits. Whites tried to make him a 
laughing stock as he got elected to the city 
council in a Black ghetto district.

But as the city continued to go down the tubes 
under the "reformer" Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelley - 
who fired thousands of city employees to please 
Congress - Barry capitalized on the white 
establishment's attacks on him. Soon many of the 
city's Black residents made him a symbol of their 
hatred of Congress, the white media, the 
hypocritical "drug war," and the denial of 
democratic rights for Washington residents, who 
have no representation in Congress, which controls 
the city budget.

Barry registered thousands of young Black voters 
and got them to come out and vote against whitey. 
And he got the Black middle class, many of whom 
are materially connected to the city government, 
to reject the establishment candidate John Ray, 
and the back-stabbing incumbent.

In the end he swept not only ghetto wards, but 
also many precincts in Black middle class 
districts.

One young Black lawyer told the Washington Post: 
"I voted for Barry to give the powers-that-be the 
finger ... to let them know that there is a 
palpable black rage even among the middle class. 
... [Barry] is the slave that was beaten by the 
slave master and didn't shed a tear."

The mayor of Washington D.C. is largely a symbolic 
post. Life for the city's proletarians, hamstrung 
Black middle class and would-be capitalists is 
unlikely to improve under Barry. As usual, most 
oppressed people simply boycotted the polls. In 
fact, Congress and the media's hatred of Barry 
could make things worse for the city.

But the victory was a definite rebuke to the white 
power structure in the city and country.

 - MC12

NOTE: Washington Post 9/15/94.


ARRESTS DON'T STOP DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

New York City reported an 11.1% increase in 
domestic violence complaints between fiscal years 
1993 and 1994. That happened as all arrests 
increased more than 4%. Reported rape, robbery, 
murder and assault crimes decreased, continuing a 
gradual trend, and arrests for those felonies 
dropped slightly.

Therefore, increased arrests overall did not lead 
to fewer domestic violence calls, and there were 
fewer violent felonies even though there were 
fewer arrests.

There are many problems with government reported 
crime statistics (for example, imperialism is not 
one of the crimes counted), but this generally 
supports what MIM has long pointed out: police and 
arrests don't stop either violent crimes in 
general or attacks on domestic partners.

 - MC12

NOTE: New York Times 9/14/94, p. B1.


COLLECTIVITY IN MONKEYS

Advocates for capitalism and social Darwinists 
always like to say that competition is natural and 
inevitable, and they love to watch nature shows 
that portray predators and prey in life-and-death 
struggles. But they ignore counter examples.

Scientists studying the rare cotton-top tamarin 
monkeys in Colombia now say the monkeys 
collectively raise their young - with most females 
practicing hormonal birth control in order to help 
the collective - and openly welcome foreigners 
into their jungle communities.

Other species have been found to practice such 
collective breeding, but usually the non-breeding 
females are kept from reproducing through 
terroristic attacks that cause hormonal shifts to 
keep them from being fertile. Here, however, there 
is no evidence of such practices: the inhibition 
appears consenting.

The New York Times, in reporting the findings, 
paraphrased one scientist as saying that "for 
every example of animal ugliness, of male lions 
systematically butchering cubs sired by their 
competitors, there are cases like the cotton-tops, 
which live in a primate version of a kibbutz."

MIM disagrees. While cases of non-human 
collectivity probably outnumber competition, the 
cotton-top communities are not like the kibbutz in 
Israel. Kibbutzes, which used to maintain somewhat 
egalitarian social relations, were based on and 
supported by a colonial system of exploitation 
that bankrolled their cushy living.
The cotton-tops are closer to the real thing.

- MC12

NOTE: New York Times 9/13/94, p. C1.


* * *


LETTERS TO MIM

WELFARE MOTHER BUILDS REVOLUTION

Amerika has betrayed my children and I one time 
too many. Having struggled to raise three sons on 
welfare over the past twenty years, I am appalled, 
sickened, and hurt that this government has chosen 
to make poor women and their children their new 
scapegoats. When this current assault on poor 
women and children was first initiated, I did 
everything in my power to work legislatively to 
educate the public and Congress about the 
realities of the Feminization of Poverty. Living 
in Massachusetts, where Governor William Weld, an 
elite "Boston Brahmin," looks down his nose at 
poor women, but gives tax breaks to business, I 
worked with the Coalition for Basic Human Needs in 
attempting to stem the tide of classism, racism, 
and sexism that fuels this welfare bashing. We 
have had no effect at all. It is like a 
steamroller - running full throttle over the 
rights, dignity, and lives of poor women and 
children. The poor, it is blatantly obvious to me 
now, have no representation in Amerika. The 
purpose of the Amerikan state is to serve the 
avaricious White, Male, Capitalist class.

The regulation of women, people of color, and the 
poor, is at the root of the new welfare "reform." 
Issues of class, race and gender intersect in the 
analysis of the new welfare "reform." Amerikan 
politicians will tell you that the welfare-system 
is broken; but everything they say is about people 
- women - not the "system." Welfare recipients, 
almost entirely women, with an over-representation 
of women of color, are seen to be the cause of 
their own problems. This "Blame-the-Victim," 
"Culture-of-Poverty," Androcentric ideology is 
necessary to the perpetuation of Capitalism. To 
admit that very large chunks of the population - 
most women, and especially women of color, are 
vulnerable to slipping below the poverty line, 
would be to admit the failure of Capitalism. 
Amerika has alternatively chosen to stomp on the 
evidence - if this segment of the population has 
reached such proportions that it can no longer be 
made to be invisible, it must be blamed. Although 
welfare expenditures constitute only 1% of the 
national budget (and a large percentage of this 
goes to administrative costs), the rising numbers 
of the poor make Amerika look bad in the eyes of 
the world. The myth of the Amerikan Dream must be 
perpetuated - especially when Capitalist Amerika 
knows that due to expanding global Capitalism, 
these numbers have only just begun to rise.

The white, male working-class is not oppressed - 
but white, working-class women are. All women are 
oppressed by Patriarchy - the system whereby 
women's child-bearing capacity is utilized to 
create economic dependency on men. Women's wages 
are such that very, very few women can both rear 
children as a single parent and provide for them 
financially as well as pay for child-care. In a 
Patriarchal society, childrearing is not seen as 
of value, and therefore, not paid wages; it is 
then, in turn, not seen as valuable because it is 
not paid wages! It is not seen as of value because 
women do it. It is not considered work. This 
androcentric conception of work enables them to 
say "Get a Job!"

Women are childraisers for a myriad of 
interconnected reasons - including reasons related 
to their own choices, to male oppression, and to 
biology: 1) Women see the work to be of absolute 
value to society and personally fulfilling, 
despite the vulnerable position it puts them in a 
Patriarchal society; 2) Children are an economic 
burden in modern industrial society; therefore, 
men are not expected to be single parents, but 
rather the mother is; however, when children were 
an economic asset in agricultural society in this 
country, men got custody of children in the event 
of a divorce; and 3) Because women carry and bear 
children, the man is in a position to leave if he 
chooses, or to deny paternity.

It can be seen, then, that women as a class, are 
vulnerable and dependent on men in a Patriarchal 
society in much the same way that the worker is 
under Capitalism. Just as the worker must sell his 
labor, and has only his labor to sell; women and 
only women must bear children. This is not to say 
that every individual woman must bear children; 
but, the population must be reproduced, and women 
are the only bearers of children.

When we add Race to the equation, this 
vulnerability is compounded. Not only are women of 
color subject to the oppression of Patriarchy, as 
are all women; but, due to racism, the low-wage 
jobs available to many men of color are inadequate 
to support a family, and the mothers of their 
children must rely on public support even when the 
family does remain intact. Of course, Amerika 
calls this welfare fraud when it is simply 
survival. 

Early on in our struggles for welfare rights in 
Massachusetts, we were understandably pushing for 
the strict enforcement of child-support on the 
part of errant fathers. Dialogue, however, with 
inner-city women from Roxbury, a poor Black 
section of Boston, convinced us that this should 
not be our focus, as the majority of the fathers 
of their children simply could not do it. They 
were barely surviving themselves. Women of color's 
over-representation on welfare rolls suits Amerika 
fine - White Amerika's racism can be called into 
play, in addition to Sexism and Classism, to bash 
the welfare mother.

The problem is complex then; issues of Class, 
Race, and Gender are inextricably linked, 
providing perhaps the truest test for Socialist 
Theory. Patriarchy and Racism existed before 
Capitalism; therefore, socialism does not 
necessarily entail abolition of Patriarchy or 
Racism. However - the chances that Patriarchy and 
Racism will be expunged from Late Capitalist 
society are nil. Patriarchy provided the bedrock, 
the prototype, for both Racism and Capitalism; if 
the fruits of women's labor could be expropriated, 
so could that of others. The racist practice of 
slavery was integral to the instituting of 
Capitalism. The abolition of Patriarchy, and 
remuneration for the labor of child-bearing, 
child-raising, and household labor, under 
Capitalism, would necessarily entail a vast 
transference of wealth from men to women - great 
structural upheaval, profits grinding to a 
standstill; in short, practices that are 
antithetical to Capitalism. Profits, not people, 
fuel Capitalism. Socialism is our only hope. The 
most basic premise underlying Socialism, that of 
economic justice for all, provides the most 
fertile ground for the abolition of Patriarchy and 
Racism, and, therefore, an end to "Welfare as we 
know it" or Public Patriarchy, a system where 
women and children are subject to the vagaries of 
the cost/benefit economism of Capitalism. 

 - Revolutionary Mom on welfare

MIM RESPONDS: MIM has a great deal of unity with 
this writer. She starts off very strongly with a 
statement against naive, liberal electoral 
politics. She says that their legislative efforts 
"have had no effect at all." MIM fully supports 
this sober reflection against reformism from a 
non-Maoist socialist. MIM also shares with the 
writer total opposition to the "poor bashing" 
that's been going hand-in-hand with welfare 
"reform". 

Particularly important is the story about the 
black Roxbury women who convinced their white 
welfare-rights comrades of the fallacy of inviting 
the reactionary state further into their lives 
through "delinquent dad" laws. This is compelling 
evidence of the national contradiction playing 
itself out on the gender front, in that the state 
always focuses its repressive power on the 
oppressed nations far more than on the white 
nation. 

The point about "remuneration for the labor of 
child-bearing, child-raising, and household labor" 
as a means of eliminating patriarchy is an 
excellent idea. Though only achievable under 
proletarian dictatorship, remuneration will de-
feminize these jobs, and in the eyes of men will 
equalize the economic benefits of doing them as 
opposed to a "masculine" job.

The concept of "public patriarchy" versus private 
patriarchy is very useful in criticizing pseudo-
feminists who prefer the former over real 
liberation. MIM should employ this analysis, as it 
is critical in re-orienting feminists away from 
reformism and white-nation solidarity.

However, despite all these agreements, there are 
numerous points in the revolutionary welfare 
mother's article that MIM must critique:

I) "The poor, it is blatantly obvious to me now, 
have no representation in Amerika. The purpose of 
the Amerikan state is to serve the avaricious 
White, Male, Capitalist class." Unfortunately, 
socialist strategy cannot rely solely on pure 
class analysis alone. In the US, class 
contradictions are overdetermined by 
contradictions between oppressed nations and the 
white nation. This historical dynamic has 
structured the distribution of capital in such a 
way that locks the oppressed nations into a 
politically neo-colonial and economically 
imperialist relation with the oppressor nation. 
Under these conditions, the oppressor nation has a 
greater tendency for cross-class unity. 

This is concretely manifested when the oppressor 
nation's lower strata ("the poor") actually unite 
with the imperialist bourgeoisie to such an extent 
that even the lower strata of the US white nation 
must be considered thoroughly bourgeoisified. 
Their material interests make them therefore 
overwhelmingly opposed to proletarian revolution, 
as the acute and chronic lack of proletarian class 
consciousness among the white working class 
demonstrates over and over again. 

In similar fashion, gender contradictions are also 
overdetermined by the above conditions. While 
white males in the US are certainly gender-
privileged relative to their female counterparts, 
white nation females share in imperialism's 
benefits to such an extent that in effect a 
"cross-gender" alliance results in the oppressor 
nation. This squelches the material basis for 
revolutionary feminism taking root in the 
oppressor nation. Thus the Amerikan state does in 
fact represent the interests of the "gender 
aristocracy," - white nation women who share in 
the privileges of masculinity accorded by 
patriarchy under imperialism.

II) "The myth of the Amerikan Dream must be 
perpetuated - especially when Capitalist Amerika 
knows that due to expanding global Capitalism, 
these numbers have only just begun to rise." The 
impetus for welfare reform does not arise from a 
desire to maintain the Amerikan dream myth. The 
Third World proletariat knows that Amerika is a 
nightmare - they suffer the consequences of 
imperialism every day. Welfare reform arises from 
the necessity of the capitalist state to gird 
itself against a perpetually semi-recessionary, 
ailing imperialist economy. The absolute numbers 
of the poor as capitalism expands is certainly a 
threat to its longevity. But it is economism to 
assume that the objective size of the proletariat 
means that it will automatically be class 
conscious. By the same token, the numbers of the 
poor in the U.S. is a threat to Capitalist Amerika 
only when the oppressed nations are organized for 
a socialist national liberation struggle.

The issue is not how visible Amerika's poor are to 
the rest of the world, because those who idolize 
Amerika do not care about the plight of the poor 
to begin with. Imperialism is principal, and these 
ideologies only reflect its class, nation, and 
gender composition.

III) "The white, male working-class is not 
oppressed - but white, working-class women are. 
All women are oppressed by Patriarchy." MIM 
understands that denying the exploitation of the 
white, male working class is a step in the right 
direction for revolutionaries, because it 
signifies agreement with MIM that this stratum is 
not the principal vehicle for revolution. 

MIM argues only that the white working class is 
not exploited. The oppression suffered by the 
white working class is open to question. For 
example, bourgeois labor-discipline is certainly 
alienating in any form. But the principal point, 
again, is that imperialism concentrates capital 
disproportionately in the imperialist white 
nation. This causes even white working class women 
to ally with their gender-oppressors. 

So while all women are oppressed by patriarchy, 
Third World women are more so than others. First 
World women have too much of a stake in keeping 
imperialism intact, and thus do not seek to 
overthrow their male counterparts, but only to 
demand a more equal share in super-exploited 
capital from the Third World. 


DON'T CRITICIZE HARSHLY

Hi folks at MIM,

As an activist and someone who reads your 
literature regularly as well as Amnesty's, it 
saddens me to see a piece like this from you all, 
but I must admit it was not a surprise.

Criticizing Amnesty on the issue of strategy seems 
only counter-productive to me. I worked years ago 
with Amnesty in college and I remember getting 
into similar arguments with Amnesty people, but 
the fact is that people can only do what they are 
physically, emotionally, and psychologically 
capable of doing. And I think it only discourages 
people when you criticize them for "not doing 
enough." People all live and learn, at their own 
pace, and in their own way. If you jump too hard 
on some young liberal, say just entering college, 
who is starting to question the years of 
propaganda she has been subjected to and joins a 
group like Amnesty - and say here she meets some 
really nice people, makes friends with them and 
starts learning about lots of things she never 
knew about - if you tell her that her letter-
writing is a waste of time, and that she is an 
unconscious supporter of imperialism and 
capitalism, and if you do it too harshly, than you 
risk setting her backward on her personal 
educational path. I have seen people give up out 
of frustration because they feel they aren't doing 
"enough." We should encourage all forms of 
activism and give positive suggestions for 
evolutionary thinking, not accuse people of being 
complicit in imperialism because they don't do 
direct action, but only "reveal the truth." 
Revealing the truth is important, and I for one am 
glad Amnesty is doing it.

Oh well, it's not that big of a deal, but it kind 
of bothers me to see this kind of thing in so many 
places. We're all in this together and we all do 
what we can in our own way. A much better strategy 
to convince someone would be to actually take them 
down to Columbia to meet the people whose families 
have been killed by the paramilitaries, to see the 
suffering these people endure. Maybe then they 
will understand the motivation and necessity of 
armed struggle. An article like "Amnesty For 
Imperialism" will only back people against a wall 
and make it  harder  for them in the future to 
come to this realization.

Thanks for reading this, and keep posting!

 - Internet reader

MIM responds: We are glad to receive and respond 
to this letter, because the argument here is 
fairly common, and the critic represents the 
position with integrity.

This argument is a part of Liberalism (capital-L). 
The critic says it's OK to refrain from 
criticizing someone's misguided political work 
because the truth might hurt; that we shouldn't 
encourage someone to do something she is not 
"physically, emotionally, and psychologically 
capable of doing."

The Maoist response is to give people more credit 
than that. On an individual level, we say: Where 
there is a will, there's a way. Especially in the 
case of women, which this critic focuses on, no 
one does women favors by assuming they are not 
capable of understanding the true nature of their 
actions and conditions. Quite the opposite. It is 
a harmful paternalism to treat women as frail when 
they engage in political work, to protect their 
friendships, their emotions, and so on.

(For example, MIM also does not agree that women 
who could survive without a spouse are "forced" to 
stay in abusive relationships.)

Treating women with  real  respect - advancing 
praise and criticism honestly and straight-
forwardly - only has positive results for their 
politics. People who quit politics because they 
aren't "doing enough" aren't really interested 
yet. It is not MIM's intention to destroy Amnesty 
International or other reformist or single-issue 
groups. Rather, we criticize them from the outside 
and encourage their members to take up work that 
better serves the oppressed. Many people will blow 
us off, but the best will listen seriously. And 
everyone will know that we have treated them with 
respect under the assumption that they understand 
and are responsible for their actions.

The critic also urges MIM to "encourage all forms 
of activism and give positive suggestions." MIM 
agrees for the most part. If we didn't think 
people in Amnesty were more progressive than pure 
couch potatoes, we wouldn't have published a 
criticism. We consider our serious criticism to be 
encouraging activism by taking it seriously.

And as for positive suggestions, every MIM Notes 
is full of suggestions for how to get involved 
with revolutionary political work in the interest 
of the world's oppressed. Send letters, articles, 
artwork or cash to MIM; distribute MIM Notes and 
MIM Theory; write to us for a revolutionary study-
group curriculum, etc. 


A WORD FROM COLOMBIA

I will pay you a history course to learn what Mao 
did  against  human rights. Maybe I'll also give 
you a ticket to Peru to learn what Sendero 
Luminoso does  against  human rights. Or to 
Colombia, my country, where the Marxist 
"guerrillas" enter the small villages and kill all 
the policemen with rockets and grenades and when 
they finish they steal the money from the 
village's bank.

And what do they do with this money? Do they build 
schools? No. Water supply systems to the most 
impoverished regions? No. Hospitals? No. Do they 
have training centers for the little farmers to 
improve their agricultural practices? No. And all 
the dead policemen were imperialists? No, they 
were young people as impoverished as the people 
for whom the "guerrillas" say they fight.

Do you fight for the people's rights by means of 
kidnapping, bombing pipelines and energy supply 
systems?

What about the rights of the little farmer (as 
impoverished as the people for whom the 
"guerrillas" say they fight) who was left without 
electricity or with his farm covered with oil 
after a bombing? Or the rights of the people of a 
small village who live by fishing from a river now 
full of oil? Or the guilty is the "capitalist" who 
built the pipeline  just in the place  were these 
"nice guys" put their bomb in the name of the 
people?

It would be very interesting for you to travel to 
the former Soviet Union, as my family did, to see 
what your Marxist-Leninist-Maoist regime gives to 
"the people." The capitalist governments aren't 
angels and they make mistakes, but I and most of 
the Colombian people are tired of bloody 
revolutions that just make things worse. These 
revolutions are just to give the power to a group 
of mads capable of making even the worst things in 
the name of "the people".  The people  is the 
first victim of your crazy revolutions and the 
dictators that come with them.

 - Internet reader

MIM RESPONDS: The difference is that when 
capitalist governments rob, rape, murder and 
torture, it's not a "mistake": it's business as 
usual. MIM has published a lot of material on the 
People's War in Peru, led by the Communist Party 
of Peru (PCP or Shining Path). During 
revolutionary wars many people die, including some 
of the proletarian members of the state's 
reactionary forces. But many soldiers also desert 
their posts, and bring their guns around to the 
side of the people.

Without more investigation, MIM is not prepared to 
comment on your criticism of Colombian guerrillas. 
In general, economic sabotage and attacks on 
members of the repressive state apparatus are 
valuable elements of a People's War strategy. Such 
a strategy includes serving the people (in the way 
you say the Colombian guerrillas do not - yet), as 
well as educating and struggling with people to 
become revolutionaries and work for national 
liberation, socialism, and an end to patriarchy.

Finally, there has never been a Maoist regime in 
the Soviet Union. But when there was a socialist 
regime - from 1917 to the death of Stalin - the 
people made tremendous advances and won many 
victories, not the least of which was destroying 
the Nazi army and defeating fascism in a great 
internationalist sacrifice.

To pre-order a copy of the upcoming issue of MIM 
Theory, devoted to the legacy of Joseph Stalin, 
send $5 (cash, stamps or check) to: MIM 
Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor, MI 48106- 
3576.


* * *

UNDER LOCK & KEY

WASHINGTON STATE DOC CENSORS MIM NOTES

The publication is a threat to legitimate 
penological objectives; advocates violence.

 - Washington State DOC
 7/22/94


WHO PROFITS FROM PRISONS?

While the benefits of prisons may be questionable 
for the public, they are undeniable for a variety 
of private corporate interests. To the $51 billion 
spent for state and local criminal justice 
systems, we can add the amount spent for federal 
criminal justice agencies ($5.7 billion in 1985) 
and private security systems ($21.7 billion in 
1980). The annual total thus lies in the 
neighborhood of $80 billion. (Focus, 1989)....

Prisons take on another face if one views them as 
generators of profits. Some of those who profit 
from the business of imprisonment are easy to 
identify, like architects. According to the chair 
of the American Institute of Architecture's 
criminal justice committee, there are now over 100 
firms specializing in prison architecture. Of the 
200 companies that exhibit their products at the 
annual Congress of the American Correctional 
Association, more than 10 percent are 
architectural firms. One Michigan entrepreneur who 
is marketing what he describes as "do-it-yourself, 
easy-to-assemble portable jails," comments that 
"once this thing goes, we're talking about scads 
and scads of money."

Architects are far from being the only people with 
a vested interest in the proliferation of prisons. 
After successfully lobbying the state legislature 
for new prison construction, the former Alabama 
state prison commissioner, Robert Britton, moved 
into the private sector to head a for-profit 
medical firm that services Alabama's prison 
system. "I've always wondered what the corporate 
world is like," he said at the time.

The corporate world is extensively involved with 
prisons. San Quentin offers more than 350 products 
for prisoners to purchase, from cupcakes and fried 
pies to perm-cream relaxers and pin-up calendars. 
The wares annually exhibited for sale to 
corrections professionals at their convention 
include institutional hardware like Aerko 
International's Mister Clear-Out ("The state of 
the art in tear gas hand grenades, especially 
designed for indoor use") and the wares of the 
Peerless Handcuff Company ("A major breakthrough 
in cuff design!"). More prosaic products include 
the Muffin Monster from Disposable Waste System, 
Inc. ("It will grind up into small pieces all the 
things inmates put down toilets"); the food 
distribution company Servomation ("Just is 
served"); and the Coca-Cola Company ("Time goes 
better with Coke!").

It is a well known fact that today, prisons are 
the number one industry, after war. Actually, in 
many cases the two industries overlap. The 
American Security Fence Corporation of Phoenix, 
Arizona, manufactures the double-edge coiled razor 
blade that graces most prisons' fences ("Razor 
Ribbon, the mean stuff!" According to the 
company's promotional literature, their top-of-
the-line product, Bayonet barb, which "combines 
awesome strength ... and vicious effectiveness," 
is "manufactured in strict accordance with 
military specifications."

Likewise, GTE Security Systems of Mountain View, 
California, sells an electrified fence called Hot 
Wire. Tested on the field of battle, the product 
is advertised as being "so hot that NATO chose it 
for high-risk installations; so hot that thousands 
have found their place in military installations 
ranging from sub-zero Alaskan winters to sizzling 
Southeast Asian summers."

>From architects to academics who study prisoners 
and the prison system, from food service vendors 
to health care firms, from corrections bureaucrats 
to psychologists and social workers, there is a 
lot of money to be made from the proliferation of 
prisons. "It's a money thing."

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved 
in it as he who helps to perpetuate it. He who 
accepts evil without protesting against it is 
really cooperating with it." - Martin Luther King, 
Jr.

Our choices are clear. We can come together and 
organize the millions of fighters for justice into 
one coordinated attack against this system, and 
establish a society and economy based on the moral 
principles of equality, liberty and justice. Or we 
can continue to be suckered by lying politicians 
whose only goal is a public office, and who will 
continue to give us false hope in believing that 
if we can hold on a little longer, things will get 
better, that this new liberal president or that 
new Black mayor is going to make a difference in 
our lives if we just give them a chance. And in 
the case of this crime bill, it's a $23+ billion 
chance. Can you afford it?

 - by a California prisoner, 8/1/94


I AM A VICTIM OF CIA MIND CONTROL TORTURE

Dear comrades,

I am a torture victim. I was extradited from 
Brazil after thirteen months of daily torture 
including gassing, electric shock, beatings, food 
deprivation and daily mental abuse. The police 
station I was held in, the fascist Brazilian 
Federal Police Station, Brasilia, Brazil, is known 
as a torture site (interrogation center). My 
torturers utilized the known grid room technique 
with bio-medical implants I still have within me.

Presently I am serving a mandatory life sentence 
at Leavenworth Penitentiary after being denied the 
right to prove implants exist within my body. I am 
one of the many individuals the CIA/Military 
Intelligence has and is using to control society. 

My continued claims of torture in Brazil and the 
U.S. from the time of my pretrial detention 
(awaiting extradition) to the present have been 
met by the U.S. government with the denial of 
medical treatment. There obviously is no question 
but that torture and human experimentation does 
occur in Brazil. Unfortunately, there isn't any 
law that affords the right to treatment for 
torture victims incarcerated in the U.S. There 
should be.

I believe the denial of medical evaluation and 
treatment is part of a conspiracy to cover up 
mistreatment and human experimentation. The U.S. 
government takes the position that evaluation and 
treatment was given at the Federal Medical Center, 
Rochester, Minnesota. The fact of the matter is 
that the examination given was absolutely 
substandard according to every doctor with whom I 
have spoken. Flat plate x-rays were taken. Today's 
doctors call that stone age medicine, perhaps 
acceptable for a broken arm, but completely 
unacceptable for examination of the skull.

The first flat plate x-ray taken showed "foreign 
bodies" and the second showed nothing. I have 
enclosed the medical report for your review.(1)

My continued pleadings to the court and prison 
officials attesting to the control and imagery 
capabilities someone has over me via implants 
receive little more than a smile. (I assume the 
implants are embedded in my temporal lobe and 
possibly the back of my eye.) It is interesting 
that my doctors have proven that the intensity 
setting was changed on the x-ray machine after my 
first x-ray detected foreign bodies. I recall that 
in Brazil, contact lenses were placed into my eyes 
that were able to control eye and body movement 
and project imagery of nonexistent mosquitoes and 
roaches within my cell. This is consistent with 
documented Brazilian torture practices.

Attorney and friend X and myself have done a fair 
amount of research into the possibility that this 
type of implant is being used by the CIA. The CIA 
has been heavily involved in electronic mind 
control experiments for over 40 years.(2) The lead 
researcher in the field is Dr. Jose Delgado, 
Chairman of the Medical School, Autonomous 
University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain....

The main constraint in the 1970's was the size of 
the equipment. Professor Scheflin, author of The 
Mind Manipulators, has informed X that the 
experiments were stopped in the mid 1970's due to 
ethical constraints. X has learned from other 
sources that experiments continue in Brazil and 
Argentina. In fact, it appears as though the CIA 
trained Brazilian operatives to place surgical 
implants in the brain. This training was performed 
at Tulane University in Louisiana.

I seek to have an MRI exam, the definitive test to 
prove I have the bio-medical implants. Hopefully, 
we can compare notes as to any research you may 
have access to in this area. The government mind 
terrorists must be stopped. I will do anything to 
have the implants removed from me so as to end my 
slave existence. The torturer has become like the 
slave trader before him - an enemy of all mankind.

Sincerely,

- a Kansas prisoner, 7/5/94

Notes from MC49:

1. The 7/17/92 report reads in part: "In the 
lateral view there appear to be clusters of 
punctate radiopaque foreign bodies. However, in 
the frontal projections no radiopaque foreign 
bodies are identified. Recommendation would be to 
repeat a lateral view to further exclude a foreign 
body."

2. True. Check out The Search for the "Manchurian 
Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, by John 
Marks; Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD and the Sixties 
Rebellion, by Martin Lee and Bruce Shlain; Covert 
Action Information Bulletin, Summer 1987; and The 
Nelson Rockefeller Report to the President by the 
Commission on CIA Activities, June 1975. The 
Kansas prisoner recommends Journey Into Madness, 
the True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and 
Medical Abuse, by Gordon Thomas, pp. 276-279.


PEACE

My people, the suppressed, the repressed
The hungry, the homeless, the children who have no
 toys
Who wait in line for a bowl of rice
Or a bowl of beans, a crust of bread
And go hungry in the soup lines
With their belly swollen, strewn with flies,
Shall rise like the Phoenix out of your trash cans
Out of your alleys
Out of your junkyards
Your tenements, run-down, rat-infested
Cardboard houses - We shall surely rise.

We will take a bath in your blood
Because we had no running water
We will eat your flesh
Because we had no meat
Our children shall play with your children's toys
And we will walk through your garden
And God will tell us to eat
And then there will be peace.

 - by a California prisoner, 7/25/94


PIGS MASK PRISONER

I write from the confines of the Maximum Control 
Complex in Westville, Indiana. As a prisoner of 
consciousness I write with extreme urgency and 
call upon the citizens of this country to 
immediately aid and assist me in stopping the 
indignities that are being inflicted upon me daily 
at this control unit.

I am being subjected to political persecution for 
exercising my first amendment rights. This has 
been continuous for over three years, during which 
Charles E. Wright and his lackeys have 
systematically conspired against me to no avail. I 
am presently being subjected to a "hockey mask" 
each time I am removed from my prison cell.

It began on 4/6/94, when Superintendent Charles E. 
Wright ordered all his MCC guards to force me to 
wear a "hockey mask" each time I was removed from 
my cell. This was initiated because a neo-Nazi 
racist white guard lied on me, alleging that I 
spit on him. Due to being harassed with the 
"mask," I refused my shower and recreation up 
until 4/30/94, when I began coming out of my cell.

On 5/4/94, MCC guards began harassing me again 
with this "hockey mask," this time by sitting it 
out in front of my prison cell. On 5/25/94, I was 
dumped on by the MCC cell extraction team, forced 
to wear the "hockey mask," and strapped down to 
the bed for several hours.

After this, I was let out of my cell without being 
threatened or harassed with this "hockey mask" for 
several weeks. On 6/27/94, I was moved to A-Pod 
from B-Pod without having to wear the "mask." Once 
I was housed on A-Pod, I wasn't harassed with this 
"hockey mask," and was allowed to come out of my 
cell without having to wear it.

Charles E. Wright began harassing me again with 
this "mask." On 8/8/94, Lt. Newson and Sgt. 
Silveus ordered their subordinates to have me wear 
the "hockey mask" when I was moved from C-Pod to 
A-Pod. The cell extraction team was called by Sgt. 
Silveus, and I was cell extracted, forced to wear 
the "mask," taken to cell C1-101 and strapped to 
the bed for several hours. On 8/9/94, Sgt. Welch 
was told by some unknown source to take the 
"hockey mask" off of C-Pod.

MCC Superintendent Wright went and bought a new 
"mask" which is truly degrading and humiliating. 
This new "mask" is similar to the "mask" in 
William Andrew's book called  Old Time 
Punishments. It has a face of its own. This sick, 
barbaric practice is totally inconsistent with 
society's standards of humanity and dignity. I 
call all civilized and concerned people of the 
State of Indiana and the United States to demand 
that Superintendent Wright and his agents 
immediately cease subjecting me to this clown-type 
"mask."

This new "mask" was brought and set in front of my 
cell on 8/16/94 by Officer Walker, who claimed 
that Sgt. Silveus told him to bring this new 
"mask" and place it on me when I am removed from 
my cell. It's obvious that Wright is intentionally 
attacking me with this "mask" and something must 
be done to stop this mistreatment against me. 
Wright is using taxpayers' money to buy torture 
toys ("masks") to inflict psychological and 
physical suffering upon prisoners.

Decent people who are concerned with humanity will 
not stand by and continue to be silent about the 
hidden terrors that I continue to endure daily. I 
ask all concerned people to voice their concerns 
about my situation and demand that Wright and his 
agents cease harassing me and forcing me to wear a 
clown-type "mask" solely to punish, dehumanize and 
humiliate me for exercising my religious, 
political and legal rights under the First 
Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. When I was 
sentenced to prison, the court did not state that 
I had to wear a clown-type "mask" as a punishment 
for the crime I was accused of committing.

Superintendent Wright's attempts to permanently 
subject me to a "mask," though this practice was 
outlawed over a hundred years ago, which is the 
reason the Eighth Amendment was drafted in 1791, 
to stop similar tortures. Wright has a personal 
vendetta against me, which is documented in the 
Indiana Department of Corrections' records. Wright 
continues to attack me, hoping to provoke me so he 
can have reason to make my confinement more 
repressive. Any person who has love for human life 
must demand that my political persecution cease.

 - an Indiana prisoner, 8/17/94


FORCIBLY DEHYDRATED PRISONERS REBEL

Dear comrade,

Received an issue of MIM Notes, in addition to 
your notice that I should contact MIM Notes if I 
wish to continue receiving the publication. 
Therefore, consider this a request to keep me on 
your mailing list.

Admittedly, I've had some problems getting back 
into a routine. In case MIM Notes is not aware, 
there was a riot here a month ago (6/25/94). 
Inmates suffered injuries at the hands of the 
state's so-called Tactical Squad - a brutal 
collection of hand-picked, specially-trained 
correctional officers. There were several reasons 
behind the prisoners' rebellion. Primarily, they 
were angry because the institution was without 
drinking water for several days. With the above 
90-degree temperatures, the guys just went 
bonkers....

Again, I enjoy MIM Notes and would like very much 
for you to continue mailing the publication.

Many thanks,

 - a Georgia prisoner, 7/25/94


PRISONER'S LOVED ONE JOINS THE ENEMY'S RANKS

... I've been receiving the MIM Notes. Keep on 
sending them. Once I read them, I rotate them to 
other people.

I would like your opinion on something. Since I 
was born to political consciousness, I have always 
looked at any pig or anyone who works for this 
system (such as pig departments, Department of 
Corrections, military, etc.) as my enemy and 
looked upon them with total and complete 
disrespect.

Lately, several things have been going on that 
have caught my attention. I have been reading in 
bourgeois newspapers about how the U.S. government 
has been putting out a campaign to get young 
people and other people to join its military and 
pig forces by offering to pay for college 
education and other shit. The other day, I read in 
a newspaper ad put out by the neo-racist Indiana 
Department of Corruption about how if a person 
would become a prison pig for two years, the DOC 
would pay that person's college tuition, etc.

I didn't really pay too much attention at first to 
those ads of deceit. But then someone who I am 
really close to and love very much laid up and 
joined the army of this neo-fascist government. 
This threw me all off of my square. Cuz I have a 
loyalty to the struggle for revolution, but I also 
love my family. When I asked why, I was told that 
she joined the army (of our enemy) cuz she needed 
to pay for her college and had nothing to fall 
back on, and that she needed money to support 
herself, etc.

What could I say? Many times I have heard that 
line said by a lot of pigs who work for these 
death camps. That they are only working for these 
death camps cuz they need the work to put food on 
the table for their families, etc. And I have 
always blown it off as bullshit excuses, but this 
act committed by this person whom I love and care 
for has forced me to take a serious look at what 
I've so long considered "bullshit excuses." And 
this disturbs me a lot!

This is something about which I need feedback and 
which is a reactionary tactic put down by this 
united snakes government to draw unconscious 
people into its trap. I feel that this needs to be 
seriously brought to light. How is this to be 
dealt with? I've had to face reality that people 
need to survive and to support themselves, and the 
only way that they are going to do that is if they 
have a steady income to bring in. And because of 
the way this system is set up, the only way for 
them to do that is either have a job or do 
something else to make money. And there are barely 
any jobs out there, and here we have the beast, 
amerikkka, offering to pay for these people's 
college and other stuff. Anyone out there who is 
unconscious is gonna grab at that.

What is to be expected of people who are scraping 
to survive and sees a chance of making better for 
himself/herself? This needs to seriously be 
addressed, cuz at this rate, by the year 2000, the 
pig system will have nearly everyone in its trap, 
and this needs to be countered by political-
progressives.

I've had pigs come up to me alone and ask for me 
to at least look at them as a human. I've had this 
one female pig tell me she thinks she treats 
everyone with kindness and respect, and that she 
does what she does (as in finding people guilty of 
write-ups, etc.) cuz if she doesn't, she'll lose 
her job, etc. And a lot of times, I want to smack 
them for being so stupid and trying to feed me a 
line of bullshit, but now that a loved one has 
also fallen into the enemy's ranks, I've had to 
think and try to do a self-analysis concerning 
this.

I refuse to betray the struggle, but I ask myself 
how do I look at these people, are these people 
guilty of siding with the enemy in the enemy's 
campaign to forever oppress all people and 
therefore to be brought to revolutionary justice; 
or are these people just guilty of being 
unconscious and falling for a trap in their 
struggle to survive and support themselves.

I request that you not only respond to this 
letter, but that you print it, for I seriously 
feel this is an issue that needs to be dialogued 
in depth and given feedback by progressive 
revolutionaries everywhere. Please continue 
sending MIM Notes. Stay strong.

Viva Aztlan! Viva la revolucion! Uhuru Sasa!

 - an Indiana prisoner, 8/16/94


PENN GUARDS REGULARLY ASSAULT PRISONERS

In the month of July alone, many Black prisoners 
here at the State Correctional Institution at 
Pittsburgh have been beat on upon being brought 
into the A-100 unit (the hole). These assaults 
range from having one's head run into the wall, 
one being punched while handcuffed, to what 
happened on 7/27/94: Upon having the transfer van 
bring in prisoners from another prison this Black 
prisoner was taken to the hall area and beaten by 
three C.O.s with a Sergeant and Captain present. 
They beat up this individual, then placed him 
upstairs to keep a lid on their assault.

There's so much wrongdoing here. One's mail is 
even tampered with both going and coming, for we 
are told to place all outgoing mail onto our doors 
for the officers to pick up. Then it's taken to 
the Control Booth where the officers decide what 
should go out.

The same procedures apply to incoming mail, which 
is first dropped off at the Control Booth. There 
again, the 2-10 shift decides who gets what. I 
have seen C.O. Reese deliberately take outgoing 
mail from the mail lady and throw it in the 
garbage can, but once asked what it was, he said 
"Just a piece of paper."

At this very moment and since last Thursday 7/21, 
there's three prisoners who've been totally denied 
their exercise period and several meals.

Some of these guards are just KKK members hiding 
behind correctional uniforms. They even have 
several Uncle Toms. The bottom line is assault is 
against the law, but who creates these laws?

 - a Pennsylvania prisoner, 7/28/94


NO NEUTRAL GROUND

"Ain't no real convicts left,"
they snivel
in feigned reminiscence
of a time
when they were real ones.

Respect.
A word without substance, that.
It cannot extend
to others from those
who lack it for themselves
much less bounce it back again.

Inmate.
Nasty word, that.
Denoting diseased
psychopath receiving treatment.
But it escapes even
those so classified
as they feign reminiscence
of a time when they weren't.

Correctional facility
Another antiseptic lie.
This is a prison.
We are prisoners.
We are oppressed,
dehumanized,
repressed out of existence.
A word without substance, that.

Resist.
If we don't,
we perpetuate
the grinding forces
that crush the spirit
of those who do.
Thus
we become the oppressors,
the dehumanizing
agents of repression.

There is no neutral ground.

 - a prisoner


* * *


CORRECTIONS

MIM Notes 91, August 1994, incorrectly reported 
that Umberto Bossi of the Northern League in Italy 
is the brother of the fascist Prime Minister 
Silvio Berlusconi. What MIM meant is that both 
Berlusconi's brother and Bossi would benefit from 
the attempt to release people from prison who have 
reputed mafia ties. Berlusconi's brother and Bossi 
are two separate people.

MIM Notes 91, August 1994, one of the references 
to the Maoist Party in Peru was incorrect. We 
should have said "Communist Party of Peru", not 
"Peruvian Communist Party." That is a different, 
revisionist, party. 

The last sentence on the short front page Haiti 
article in MIM Notes 91, August 1994, contradicted 
the short article itself, and the longer article 
on the inside. That final sentence said: "After 
being burned by Somali resistance, President 
Clinton needs a military victory to shore up 
Amerikan support for his political agenda and 
electoral future." 

In August, and now, Amerikan public opinion is 
against an invasion of Haiti. An invasion of Haiti 
is likely to further hurt Clinton's approval 
ratings, and this is a significant impediment to 
an invasion. However, U.S. national political and 
economic interests - getting a Haitian leadership 
that can stop the flow of refugees to Amerika - 
may be viewed as principal over Clinton's personal 
chances for reelection.

The footnotes for the article "Battery discussion 
unveils patriarchy" were missing from MIM Notes 
92, September 1994.

They are:
 1. What is MIM? "The Focoist Revolution", p.11.
 2. See MIM Theory 2/3 "Gender and Revolutionary
    Feminism".
 3. Newsweek, "Patterns of Violence", 7/4/94.
 4. US Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
    Statistics, "Violence 
    Against Women: A National Crime Victimization
    Report", January 1994.
 5. Uniform Crime Reports, "Crime in the US",
    1992.
 9. The Los Angeles Times, 7/11/94, p. 13A.
11. The Chicago Tribune, 6/30/94, p.8C.
12. CNN News, 6/26/94.
14. The Boston Globe, 6/22/94, p.8.

There were no footnotes numbered 6, 7, 8, 10, or 
13.

In MIM Notes 92, September 1994, MIM published an 
ad for literature from the Communist Party of the 
Philippines (CPP), in which we made several 
incorrect statements. 

The Philippine Revolution is led by the Communist 
Party of the Philippines. The CPP's army is the 
New People's Army (NPA) and it is led by the CPP.  
Rebolusyon  is the theoretical journal of the CPP, 
not the NPA.

Jose Maria Sison is not the chairperson of the 
NPA, (or of the CPP). He is a founder of the CPP. 
The current CPP chairperson is Armando Liwanag.

MIM Notes is not copyrighted. Please credit MIM 
when redistributing or referring to this material. 
Subscriptions are $12/year (12 issues), U.S. mail 
or e-mail. Send cash, stamps or check made out to 
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Write: MIM Distributors, PO Box 3576, Ann Arbor MI 
48106-3576. E-mail: mim@nyxfer.blythe.org.
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