Under Lock & Key

Hyping up the threat of dangerous gangs of “super-predators.” Using confidential informants, tattoos, and appearance to label people “gang members.” Using that gang affiliation to imprison and torture people. These draconian methods are familiar to readers of ULK, and to those who’ve spent time in U.$. prisons in general. The Trump regime has made this headline news for the whole country.

In recent weeks, hundreds of Venezuelans have been deported from the United $tates to a supermax prison in El Salvador. The Trump regime justified this with the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows for the deportation of non-citizens during wartime, and was last used during WWII to deport Germans and Italians and roundup Japanese in internment camps, seizing their assets for Euro-Amerikans. Trump claimed these people were part of a gang conducting “irregular warfare” in the United $tates, but there seems to be no evidence that Tren de Aragua is even a widely functioning organization here. In February, the U.$. State Department designated Tren de Aragua, Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), and a list of Mexican drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

A federal court has ordered a halt to the deportations, but the Department of Justice is defying the order. A legal battle continues, while the executive branch continues to defy the courts.

Venezuela has been a consistent target of U.$. imperialism since the rise of Hugo Chavez to power in 1999.(1) As a result almost 600,000 Venezuelans have been accepted into the United $tates with Temporary Protected Status (TPS). Trump attempted to cancel TPS for Venezuelans, but a federal court has deemed the move illegal. Without TPS, many from Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine, Sudan, Afghanistan and elsewhere could no longer legally work in the United $tates and could be legally deported.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is getting special attention as the Trump administration admitted eir deportation was a mistake, and that they can’t get em back from Salvadorean custody. This is despite a court order that prevented em from being sent back to El Salvador, where ey had fled gang violence as a youth. Abrego Garcia has no criminal charges, for what that’s worth, but was labelled a member of MS-13 by a pig citing a “confidential informant” during a round up of day laborers some years ago. As a result, Abrego Garcia has been disappeared from eir family and sent to a torture unit in the very country ey fled for safety reasons.(2)

The ACLU obtained a copy of the “Alien Enemy Validation Guide” being used to deport people.(3) Once establishing someone is over 14 years old, of Venezuelan origin and without U.$. citizenship, a point system is used to “validate” gang members. A “TdA” tattoo gets you 4 points while 8 points are required to qualify as validated. The Homeland Security guide lists photos of tattoos like crowns and stars that are “TdA”. In addition, wearing Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan athletic wear are listed. When was the last time you saw someone with Air Jordans on and a star tattoo?

Student Activists Targeted

Educational institutions from Columbia University in New York to the University of California system are enforcing the fascist repression on their campuses, from expelling students during Biden’s Presidency, to disappearing them off the streets and from their homes under the Trump regime. Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk is being detained for writing an article criticizing the U.$.-I$rael genocide in Palestine. Mahmoud Khalil, who was a respected negotiator between Columbia University and the pro-Palestine student encampment last year, told eir story in a recent statement from 18 March 2025:

“My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana… On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. …

“My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.”

“… Columbia [University] targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students – some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation – and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.

“If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. …”(4)

Other targeted students have gone into hiding. At the same time, students across the country are coming together to stand with and defend those who may be targeted next. We commend the solidarity being shown. Schools and prisons are somewhat unique in our society due to the collective identities of their populations and their abilities to organize. With the recent announcements from the Trump regime that they will be deporting U.$. citizens with criminal records to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, prisoners need to be prepared to stand together as students are learning to do. While there are many recent examples to the contrary, there is a long history of U.$. prisoners standing up for one another due to the group consciousness that comes with facing a common oppressor every day.

Fascism Coming Home

The United $tates has been using long-term solitary confinement for decades on a scale not seen elsewhere in humyn history. Physicians for Human Rights released a report in 2024 exposing the use of solitary confinement in ICE detention centers contrary to government directives to limit its use to absolute necessity. They documented at least 14,000 cases of people being put in solitary confinement by ICE from 2018 to 2023. Durations in solitary averaged 27 days, with 42 cases lasting over a year. At the time, in 2024, ICE held over 35,000 people, making it the world’s largest immigration detention system.(5)

Conditions are likely worse for those sent to El Salvador, where President Bukele has stated that the only way gang members will leave the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) ey built in 2023 is in a coffin. With a capacity of over 40,000, there are 65 to 70 prisoners held per cell. “CECOT prisoners do not receive visits and are never allowed outdoors. The prison does not offer workshops or educational programs to prepare them to return to society after their sentences.”(6) Bukele has been promoting images of shaved gang members, dressed all in white, being warehoused and man-handled by masked prison guards online since the prison opened. This propaganda campaign has appealed to the pro-fascist elements of Amerika. And with that support, Trump is incorporating this prison into the Amerikan international prison system and sending hundreds of people there from the United $tates. This is a shift closer to home from the network of dark sites, and infamous prisons like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, that were used to torture and hold without trial oppressed people across the Muslim world.

Most press sources are reporting the Amerikans paid $6 million for 238 prisoners to be held in CECOT, which some point out is much less than what it would cost to imprison them in the United $tates. But it is an amount that will greatly help El Salvador to fund their monstrosity of a prison. It doesn’t make sense that the imperialists are paying to have these prisoners held, but then claim they cannot return people like Abrego Garcia back to their families.

In the 1980s, U.$.-sponsored death squads, trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia, killed and displaced countless people across Central America that were fighting for socialism and to remove imperialism from their countries.(7) Many children of this war in El Salvador were displaced to Los Angeles where they joined Barrio 18 or formed the new Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), were persecuted by the state, and then exported back to El Salvador. We’ve reported on efforts at peace between these groups in 2013, which coincided with investment by USAID and the building of new U.$.-inspired prisons in El Salvador.(8) But conditions for the people of El Salvador did not improve, and they voted for President Nayib Bukele who both utilized the lumpen organizations in eir political organizing and later turned on them as a scapegoat for the ills of the country in a fascist repression campaign.(9)

The struggle against fascism in this country relies on the coming together of people to defend migrant populations and students currently under attack. As fascism rises, we see the campaigns of groups like the ACLU coming closer to those of MIM(Prisons). As important legal battles are taking place, we also see the spreading recognition that we can’t rely on the courts to save us. We must have a plan B. We must build our plan B.

<sup>Notes:
1. Soso of MIM(Prisons), January 2019, Imperialists Push Coup in Venezuela to Secure Oil for Amerikans, Under Lock & Key 67.
2. Democracy Now!, 2 April 2025.
3. https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador
4. https://www.aclu.org/news/free-speech/a-letter-from-palestinian-activist-mahmoud-khalil
5. Physicians for Human Rights, 6 February 2024, https://www.wlrn.org/immigration/2025-03-31/ice-tren-de-aragua-venezuela-deportation-el-salvador.
6. Aleman & Cano, 17 March 2025, “What to know about El Salvador’s mega-prison after Trump sent hundreds of immigrants there”, Los Angeles Times.
7. MIM(Prisons), June 2009, FBI Arrests Peacemaker, Under Lock & Key 9.
8. MIM(Prisons), March 2013, One-Year Anniversary of Peace Treaty in El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 31.
9. Badgreen of MIM(Prisons), September 2023, 8,000 Military and Police Deployed in Cabanas Province, El Salvador, Under Lock & Key 83.</sup>

The Barnes Review published, in their October 1996 edition, a criticism of Marx and Engels as “anti-black racists.” What followed were a series of quotations which prove this point beyond much doubt. Not only did Marx and Engels believe that Black people were inferior to whites, they upheld slavery as progressive at certain points in history, even in North America. We will not and do not contest the author on these unassailable points; we merely seek to show the deeper relations embedded within this “statement of facts.”

Modern society is built upon social relations which are wholly at odds with its technological capacity. This basic fact results in the myriad social problems we encounter in every facet of society. Our task is therefore, first, to understand these social relations, and second, to grasp the manner in which they may be transformed. This is the world-historical gift which Marx gave to the world: a guide to action. This is the essence of Marxism as a revolutionary doctrine. With this perspective on the world, who could think to waste the precious time they have on discussions of personalities? How dedicated someone is to “the cause,” how far someone was able to purge their thinking of bourgeois ideology, whether someone is patriarchal or racially prejudiced in their thoughts and actions – these are topics of gossip, and as such are not questions worthy of discussion in the tasks of a revolutionary organization. What will we focus on: the method of transforming reality in the interests of anti-imperialism, or the racial prejudices of individuals? Discussions of Marx which rise above useless biographical gossip have long become a literary rarity.

Marx and Engels upheld the racial inferiority of certain races. That is a demonstrable fact. What of it? On this our authors tell us nothing. We would like to inform the authors of this reputable and eminently revolutionary newspaper, to return the favor, that the Volga flows into the Caspian, and that horses eat oats. What wondrous facts!

There is one attempt at a discussion of a meaningful topic, however:

“Virtually every serious study concerned with the economics of employing black slaves in the American South shows, with little room for contradiction, that the importation of free white workers from Europe (skilled and semi-skilled) would have proven far more profitable economically.”

This is all we are told as a refutation of Marx’s view that slavery was an integral component in the development of the United States’ economy. It is clear to all that this is merely a platitude, a hint at a position, in order to give some measure of legitimacy to the real object of this article: to imply that Marx’s theories are merely a set of subjective views which may be regarded as reactionary and therefore worthy of being simply set aside. The reactionary nature of a theory, however, is no argument against it, however much it may seem to us that this is the case. Every proposition must be regarded objectively, concretely, and scientifically. Any deviation from this, such as the deviation exemplified by The Barnes Review, is a deviation towards post-modern thought. The question then passes to the clash between Marxism as a modernism with the movement which succeeded it, an important question, but one exceeding the bounds of this reply.

It is worth noting that white nationalist magazines coming out of Washington DC like The Barnes Review and The National Interest spend time “exposing” Marx like this. The latter is the home of Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis, that saw U.$. imperialism’s global hegemony after the collapse of the Soviet Union as the pinnacle of humyn society, proving the alternatives unworkable. Today the imperialists clearly disagree, as they work to upend the status quo of the United $tates dating back to Fukuyama’s 1989 work. And communists have always disagreed, pointing to the continued heightening of the contradictions within capitalism that Marx elucidated, and the bourgeoisie largely ignores. The early attempts at socialism in the USSR and China were massively successful for decades, with China building on the lessons learned in the USSR. While these early attempts were ultimately overthrown, the proletariat does not give up so quickly.

As for The Barnes Review, their latest issue condemns funding to I$rael and exposes the propaganda around Hamas. So far so good. Then it links all of this to “international Jewry”. While many fascists today support the fascist project of I$rael, The Barnes Review keeps it old school by exposing Marx and the Jews as the source of evil. Here we see how a publication can mix correct conclusions with metaphysical methods of understanding the world. In contrast Marx and Engels, despite having some incorrect conclusions around race, had (and developed) a scientific method of understanding the world that is dialectical materialism, which continues to be a tool for understanding and transforming our world.

Readers of ULK will read many other, less mainstream, publications in their search for answers, for the source of the evil they see in the world. While the I$rael lobby is certainly the enemy of the people, and generally speaking, so is “the white man”, it is the system of imperialism that we must focus our ire at. There is no metaphysical, absolute source of evil; oppression is the product of economic forces that Marx did so much to expose for us. And it is in the resolution of the contradictions of the imperialist system (the contradiction between exploiter and exploited nations, the contradiction between the means of production and the relations of production, etc) that we can build a society without so much unnecessary humyn suffering as ours.

Back in September, as part of Prison Banned Books Week, MIM(Prisons) had pledged to send out more free literature (not counting our newsletter) this winter than any other winter since 2020. Prior to 2020 our organization was bigger both inside and outside, and as a result our Serve the People Free Political Books to Prisoners Program was also larger.

Despite our efforts, we failed pretty hard at meeting this modest goal. It was not for lack of books, nor was it for lack of funding, though we could use help there. It was for lack of participants in the program. Part of this, again, is due to our limited reach with a lower number of subscribers. But even if we normalize for number of subscribers we mailed out more lit last winter than this one.

Therefore it seems it is our inability to recruit people into the program that is our main limiting factor. We attempted to boost the program in 2 main ways. First we printed a large ad in the center spread of ULK advertising some popular books we offer, with an explanation of how to get said books in large font. We know people saw the ad because many wrote in asking for the books in it. But almost no one actually followed the instructions for how to join the program.

The second way we attempted to promote the free books program was through persynal correspondence. We fairly aggressively wrote to people asking for books explaining how the program works.

One possible explanation for this failure is that people in prison just want free books, but aren’t actually interested in anti-imperialist organizing. It has always been the case that the vast majority of our subscribers are not actively involved in the work we do. There are also a myriad of subjective explanations for why people don’t get involved despite having interest. Promoting a Revolutionary 12 Step Program is an attempt to address one of the possible limitations.

Yet, objectively, the number of people in U.$. prisons and the oppression they are facing has not changed significantly. Some prison systems, like in California, have seen significant structural changes in the last ten years. K2 and tablets have been the biggest change countrywide.

Despite the challenges it is up to us to find ways to reach the oppressed masses and serve them in a way that is engaging to them. Us means MIM(Prisons), AIPS, and especially USW comrades who are working on the ground amongst the prisoner population. Our failure to expand the book program this winter is another data point, along with our declining subscribership over many years, to measure our work.

2 April 2025: Today thousands of Haitians marched on the capital in Port au Prince demanding action be taken against the gangs controlling most of the city. Some protestors were armed. As the government has not taken action to protect the people, some local police have begun arming the people with weapons seized from the gangs. The government responded to the protest with massive tear gas attacks and firing live rounds into the air.

The new government took power in November with help from the U.$. imperialists, the latest in a series of comprador states since the overthrow of popular president Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004. Since being the first victorious slave revolution in 1804, and a bastion of anti-slavery in the 1800s, Haiti has been a target of the European imperialists. This imperialist meddling has created the conditions of the current failed state.

The fighting spirit of the Haitian people lives on, as does their efforts to build strength through unity, even as current conditions seem dire. Haitian refugees from this violence are one of the targets of the Trump regime for deportations, as they currently can qualify for Temporary Protective Status (TPS). If Trump can remove TPS it will worsen the humanitarian crisis in Haiti in the short-term and threaten the safety of those deported.

^{Notes: Kevin Pena, Flashpoints, 2 April 2025.}

MIM recognizes the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP) as the most advanced communist vanguard to have existed in North America. Specifically, we uphold the BPP from 1966 to 1970. For our analysis of the BPP see our study pack Defend the Legacy of the BPP.

12 January 1865: During the Civil War 20 New Afrikan leaders meet with General Sherman of the Union. 19 of the 20 state that they prefer to live separate from the United $tates. Initially land in the south was given to New Afrikans with the Union victory, but when President Andrew Johnson came to power ey re-established Euro-Amerikan rule in the south.

1914: Marcus Garvey founds the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), a pan-Afrikan, pro-capitalist movement that recognized Euro-Amerikans would never live with New Afrikans as equals. UNIA organized 5 million followers in a movement to return to Afrika and built a number of successful businesses before Garvey was arrested in 1925 and deported to Jamaica.

1917: The African Black Brotherhood (ABB) for African Liberation and Redemption formed as the first Marxist Revolutionary Black nationalist organization in the United $tates, at a time when a free New Afrikan proletariat was migrating from the south to urban centers. The ABB merges into the American Communist Party in the late 1920s.

1952: Malcolm X, a son of Garveyite parents, is paroled from prison and immediately begins organizing with the Nation of Islam, quickly becoming its most influential leader, until ey is expelled in 1964.

1962: Huey P. Newton meets Bobby Seale at a rally at Merritt College opposing the blockade of Cuba. The Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) is founded by “revolutionary Black nationalists” (including Max Stanford) seeking to organize an armed struggle to win national liberation for the “colonized Black nation” based in Marxism-Leninism and inspired by Mao Zedong and Malcolm X.

1963: RAM goes underground. Mao Zedong puts out an essay calling on support for Black Liberation Struggle at the behest of Robert F. Williams who was in China in exile after first going to Cuba in 1961 to avoid legal attacks by the U.$. imperialists.

1964: RAM develops armed self-defense units with Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the Mississippi delta region. Malcolm X becomes a RAM officer and travels through Africa building support.

28 June 1964: Malcolm X (now el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz) returns from Africa and forms the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) with John Henrik Clarke, the OAAU was to be the broad front organization for the now underground Marxist cadre organization RAM.

21 February 1965: Malcolm X is assassinated. Bobby Seale swears to “make his own self into a motherfucking Malcolm X.”

August 1965: Watts rebellion breaks out in Watts, California, after two New Afrikan stepbrothers and their mother are subject to violence from a white pig. Both cops and white citizens of Watts are beaten by New Afrikans, riots break out throughout the city, and the National Guard are sent in.

1966: Seale leaves RAM, to work with Newton, over lack of material support against police brutality and “inability to organize brothers on the block.” Seale disagrees with RAM’s insistence on the revolutionary vanguard being clandestine. This is later addressed by Newton in the essay, “The Correct Handling of a Revolution” (1967).

1966-67: Newton and Seale adopt the imagery of a black panther, sell Little Red Books to fund handguns, and rent an office for the first chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, at the time an armed group in confrontation with police.

21 February 1967: Eldridge Cleaver and the RAM-affiliated Black Panther Party of Northern California hold a memorial for Malcolm X. Seale, Newton, and other Panthers provide an armed security detail for Betty Shabazz, his widow. Newton says their ability to stand up to police at the event finally convinced Cleaver to join the BPP.

April 1967: The Panthers begin organizing in North Richmond, holding two armed rallies and distributing newspapers informing about the murder of Denzil Dowell by the pigs and the need for armed self-defense.

2 May 1967: A delegation of thirty Panthers go to Sacramento to challenge the passing of a new bill prohibiting carrying arms in public. Twenty-four New Afrikans are accosted and arrested on the way home – 22 armed Panthers, as well as unarmed Eldridge Cleaver and an unarmed, unaffiliated New Afrikan passerby.

May 1967: The Black Panthers publish their Ten Point Program, laying out what they believe and what their demands for New Afrika are.

12 July 1967: Rioting breaks out in Newark, NJ, a majority-New Afrikan city under oppressor-nation control, after a New Afrikan cab driver is beaten too badly to walk. Molotov cocktails are thrown and businesses are looted as the rebellion grows. Twenty-one New Afrikans are murdered by police.

23 July 1967: Urban rebellion breaks out in Detroit, MI, going beyond looting to tactics such as arson and sniping. 33 New Afrikans are killed, as well as ten whites, many of them government officials.

27 October 1967: Newton shoots notorious racist pig John Frey, killing him; Frey shoots Newton in the stomach. Newton’s trial for the murder of Officer Frey sparks the “Free Huey!” movement, wherein Newton is presented as resisting the perpetration of violence against New Afrikans by the occupying-force pigs.

17 October 1967: White youth radicals protest the draft in Oakland, attempting to shut down the induction center, and are met with violent repression. Further rallies and riots against the draft eventually merge with the “Free Huey!” campaign, among both the white and New Afrikan left.

1968: RAM disbands and decides to coordinate through other groups such as the Black Liberation Party, African Peoples’ Party and House of Umoja. BPP rules state: “no party member can join any army force other than the Black Liberation Army.”

28 January 1968: Seale gives a speech at a UC Berkeley rally linking the struggles of anti-draft protestors with police brutality against New Afrikans.

31 March 1968: Malcolm X Society hosts 500 New Afrikan nationalists for the Black Government Conference in Detroit; they initiate the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afika (PG-RNA) to be composed of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina.

4 April 1968: Martin Luther King Jr. is martyred in Memphis, Tennessee. Rebellion erupts in Memphis, and then sweeps New Afrikan neighborhoods. The Panthers play a role in quelling riots in many cities to encourage more organized rebellion.

6 April 1968: Lil’ Bobby Hutton, a 17-year-old Black Panther, is martyred by police in West Oakland while doing armed pig patrols with Eldridge Cleaver.

8 September 1968: FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover designates the BPP as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.”

Fall 1968: Cleaver goes into exile in Cuba.

17 January 1969: Los Angeles chapter leaders Bunchy Carter and John Huggins shot and killed by US organization members on UCLA campus, provoked by FBI interference. BPP leadership had institutes a policy to expel those in clandestine military formations. Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, with eir experience in the U.$. military, takes Carter’s position as Southern California Minister of Defense and begins building chapters across the south while developing underground cadre units as well

July 1969: BPP hosts Revolutionary Conference for a United Front Against Fascism conference in response to others looking to them for leadership, bringing together 4,000 activists, majority Euro-Amerikan. Bobby Seale stresses class struggle and condemns Black racism. The conference creates National Committees to Combat Fascism across the country under BPP leadership that focus on control of the police and freeing political prisoners. Cleaver appears publicly in Algiers, Algeria where ey will establish the BPP international office.

5 November 1969: Seale sentenced to four years in prison for sixteen counts of contempt, because of his outbursts during the trial. Originally being tried as part of the Chicago 8 for “inciting a riot” at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, ey was bound and gagged during the trial. Seale was released in 1972.

4 December 1969: Fred Hampton, leader of the Chicago chapter, is assassinated by Chicago police and FBI. The pigs killed Hampton as ey was successfully uniting lumpen organizations in Chicago of different nationalities in the original Rainbow Coalition. The BPP was also in the process of expanding the Central Committee beyond the trusted founders in Oakland to include leaders like Hampton before this happened. This never happened and contributed to the splitting of the party over regional differences.

1969: Los Angeles pioneers the first-ever Special Weapon Assault Team, or SWAT, against BPP office building in L.A.

July-August 1970: Eldridge Cleaver and Elaine Brown join a delegation of people from the U.$. visiting North Vietnam, North Korea and China.

5 August 1970: Huey P. Newton is acquitted and released from prison, taking control of the underground military operation that was built while ey was incarcerated.

7 August 1970: Jonathan Jackson is killed at the Marin County Courthouse attempting to free eir brother George Jackson.

August 1970: Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt goes underground to develop BLA and establish guerrilla bases, with support of the party.

October 1970: People’s Republic of China Premier Zhou Enlai hosts Newton, Elaine Brown and other Panthers. Tens of thousands gather in Tiananmen Square to honor their visit They also visit Jiang Qing.

December 1970: Newton and Elaine Brown send Melvin “Cotton” Smith, a secret police informant, to Dallas to meet with Pratt.

8 December 1970: Pratt, Will Stanford, Will “Crutch” Holiday, and George Lloyd arrested in Dallas; Cotton is arrested shortly after as well.

1971: The BPP splits.

January 1971: Newton and Brown publicly denounces Pratt and others arrested in Dallas for counter-revolutionary behavior. Panther 21 (NYC) issue statement from prison supporting Weather Underground, condemning BPP for ignoring Panther 21 and Weather.

23 January 1971: Newton publishes his theory of “intercommunalism” arguing that nations and national liberation were no longer relevant in global capitalism, which ey introduced at a speech at Boston College in November 1970 following release from prison.

28 January 1971: FBI offices in Boston, NY, LA and San Francisco receive memo to capitalize on the rift over armed struggle within BPP.

13 February 1971: NY Panthers Michael Tabor, Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Connie Matthews were expelled after they went underground.

26 February 1971: Newton and Cleaver (in Algiers) have a phone conversation on live TV that ends with Cleaver calling for the reinstatement of expelled members from NYC and LA and the resignation of David Hilliard as Chief of Staff. Newton follows up by calling Algiers and expelling all Panthers at the BPP International office. Elaine Brown replaces Eldridge Cleaver on the Central Committee of the BPP.

3 April 1971: Cleaver faction begins publishing own newspaper Right On! calling for insurrection as The Black Panther newspaper moves away from calling for “revolution now.”

17 April 1971: Newton puts out statement “On the Defection of Eldridge Cleaver…” stating the “We will never run for political office…”

19 May 1971: On the 46th birthday of Malcolm X the BLA shoots two cops protecting the house of the NY District Attorney in charge of prosecuting the Panther 21.

18 August 1971: FBI and police raid headquarters of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika in Mississippi.

21 August 1971: Field Marshall George Jackson is killed by guards at San Quentin State Prison in California. BLA carries out multiple retaliatory attacks on police in San Francisco, and ends support for clandestine military action in Oakland.

1971-1973: 2 years following split the FBI would attribute 20 police deaths to the BLA, while claiming police killed 7 BLA members and imprisoned 18 key members. In 1971 the BLA calls for a strategic retreat, but it is too late for many and the organization is too decentralized to pull back.

1972: Bobby Seale released from prison, but at by this time the BPP was becoming little more than a local community organization in Oakland. “Afro-American Liberation Army” used in place of BLA in Humanity Freedom Peace in 1972 – reprinting essays by Geronimo Pratt. AALA claims action in Los Angeles.

1973: Elaine Brown runs for Oakland City Council.

1973: In the two years after the BPP split, the U.$. government attributed the deaths of 20 police officers to the BLA.

14 November 1973: Police kill Twyman Meyers in an ambush in the Bronx, after which they declared they had “broken the back” of the BLA.

1974: Huey Newton flees to Cuba to avoid criminal charges and Brown takes over as chair of the BPP securing federal and foundation funding for its programs.

1975: Between 1973 and 1975, the FBI claims responsibility for 7 assassinations and the capture of 18 other BLA members.

1975: Imprisoned BLA members sum up last four years in report “Message to the Black Movement” that says, “we lacked a strong ideological base and political base,” and initiated the BLA – Coordinating Committee (BLA-CC), publishing a newsletter circulated in prisons. By this time, BPP chapters with links to the BLA have no above-ground presence.

1977: Newton returns from Cuba, Brown resigns from the BPP after an incident where Newton supported male members of the party who assaulted a womyn in the party in retaliation for the womyn reprimanding a male member for lack of discipline.

2 November 1979: BLA members successfully break Assata Shakur out of prison.

1980: NYPD and FBI form the Joint Terrorist Task Force (JTTF) to coordinate search for Assata and to smash the BLA.

1981: Brinks truck holdup with BLA and Weather members involved led to other militants getting targeted, proving that BLA still had strong membership years after big raids. The Join Terrorist Task Force would go on to conclude that the Revolutionary Armed Task Force (including Weather and BLA members) had conducted many robberies throughout the late 1970s.

December 1981: Last known action of the BLA according to the JTTF.

June 1982: Black Panther Party closes its last office.

November 1993: Former BLA members issue public call to form a New Afrikan Liberation Front.

March 1998: the NALF and PGRNA-Sponsored Jericho ’98 mobilized at least 5000 people around the country for political freedom for nationalist-related prisoner organizing.

Sources: * Triumphant, Black August 2022, Power to New Afrika, MIM Distributors. * Akinyele Umoja, June 1999, “Repression breeds resistance: The black liberation army and the radical legacy of the black panther party, New Political Science. * Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., 2013, Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party, UC Press, Berkeley.

This comrade has been struggling against censorship in the Indiana Department of Corrections for years. Last year ey was locked in a shower by staff, then given a disciplinary charge for panicking because ey has asthma. Ey has been locked in solitary for 6 months as a result and will not get to hug eir mother before she dies. This is an example of what is withheld from oppressed people in this country on a daily basis, a necessary result of the national oppression we seek to end.

At the end of every year, MIM(Prisons) does an assessment of our work and finances and we plan for the new year. We also solicit reports, criticisms and self-criticisms from USW comrades. We were a little late on that this year, so perhaps we will have more for next issue of ULK.

While most are finding it hard to predict what the next Trump regime will bring, it is clear from this choice that imperialism is in crisis. The uncertainty and threat of instability from things like tariffs, deportations and defunding important social programs do not bode well for the future of U.$. imperialism or stability of the current world order of U.$. domination. There are clear cracks in the latter, despite 2024 being a series of short-term victories for the U.$. empire in the Levant.

The coming upheaval of the current system requires preparation and organization. Since the dissolution of the original MIM in 2008, we cannot say that the MIM has seen significant growth. The prison ministry did accomplish a lot in the decade from 2008 to 2018, reaching new heights in MIM’s prisoner support work. In U.$. prisons we saw significant growth and some amazing actions of mass solidarity. As long-time readers know, MIM(Prisons) took some major setbacks in 2020 and we’ve been regrouping since. In that period we’ve successfully expanded our online recruitment. We’ve also seen a significant growth in MIM line in online communities that MIM(Prisons) has never or no longer participates in (meaning promotion of MIM’s 3 cardinal principles). This has come along with a general growth in “Maoist” groups popping up, evolving and dissolving, though most of these groups do not uphold the 3 cardinals. All of this indicates change in favor of the growth of our forces here on occupied Turtle Island.

Assessing 2024

In the last few years we have revamped and relaunched all of our educational programs for prisoners, which were all non-operational by 2020. We’ve also begun running them online. In 2024, we saw another significant expansion of our educational engagement with prisoners with the relaunching of our study group for USW leaders through the University of Maoist Thought (UMT). Meanwhile, every year, comrades inside and outside continue to complete our intro study courses. These education programs are the first step to building the leaders we need to grow our movement.

Beyond just education, 2024 marked the beginning of the intentional building of the MIM-led united front. By MIM-led we mean ideologically, not a centralized organization. While still in its early stages, these discussions have been fruitful, involving people in cadre orgs and mass orgs that are doing real work in the anti-imperialist movement outside of prisons.

To be prepared for the changes to come, we must continue on these fronts. We must educate more allies into leaders, through both study groups and pushing them to engage in practical work. And we must continue to develop our networks and infrastructure to support real fighting forces in the future.

In 2024, our readership in prisons has continued its steady decline dating back to 2016 now. We didn’t receive a lot of feedback last year on the possible causes of this, but some factors include: drugs, tablets, digital mail, more long-term isolation, and a general decline in the prison movement.

We had less prisoners write us in 2024 than any other year in our existence. This translated to another decrease in donations. A few years ago we accomplished our longstanding goal of having prisoners fund 10% of ULK costs. This seemed to be a result of Covid money. Since then donations have returned to the more normal rate, but with less people writing us that’s an overall decrease in donations. The percent of ULK costs covered by prisoner donations dropped to about 4.2% in 2024, down from 11.5% in 2022.

On the other hand, this summer we distributed far more copies of ULK on the streets than ever before as part of our effort to link the prison movement to the student movement for Palestine. We got close to our goal of matching distribution inside prisons. And our donations from outside supporters (outside of MIM(Prisons)) reached an all time high as well to help pay for those papers.

Overall, our budget was very stable between 2023 and 2024, and much of the small increase was due to us expanding our operations in other locations.

Other than continuing our regular publication of ULK each season, we also put the finishing touches on our paper “Why the International Communist Movement (ICM) Must Break with the Legacy of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM)”. This paper is an important summary of the MIM struggle against the Revolutionary Communist Party(U$A) in the realm of the ICM, pointing out key differences between us and the various revisionists claiming Maoism to this day.

New for 2025

We have a number of things planned for this year already.

As whitehouse.gov removes all Spanish-language content, we are excited to announce the relaunch of our Spanish page (or section) that will start in ULK 89. We already have a Spanish version of our current letter introducing United Struggle from Within and MIM(Prisons), and will have a Spanish version of the intro study course level 1 soon. So if you know people who are interested in studying with us in Spanish have them write in for that. We are also looking for incarcerated translators to help contribute to this important project.

We are already making progress in 2025 towards our unachieved goal of establishing local AIPS chapters with local outreach, regular meetings, educational events, and campaign support for comrades inside. This should continue to expand our ability to correspond with prisoners and attempt to rebuild interest in U.$. prisons around our work.

We will be pushing the September 9th Day of Peace and Solidarity, on the anniversary of Attica, on the streets in the forms of fasting, political work and study, and possibly larger events as we have promoted inside prisons for a decade now. We have not seen much activity around this inside prisons in recent years, so we hope this will inspire that again and that we can reinforce each others’ efforts around 9/9.

The relaunch of our study group for USW leaders has been very successful overall. Specifically, it has brought together some of our most enthusiastic and advanced thinkers within the New Afrikan Independence Movement, creating momentum around more proactive work in that realm. We will be continuing this study and looking to produce work from it for the broader movement.

Join Us

Imperialism will keep providing opportunities for resistance as its internal contradictions only continue to heighten. It has been some time since we’ve seen real opportunities within the United $tates, and it remains one of the most stable places in the world. Yet, now is the time to build. Opportunities are close enough that people are getting interested in real change, but we must build before real crisis ensues and the existing dominant forces sweep away our efforts because we were not prepared.

Since 2020 we’ve seen a persistent slow and steady growth. We need your help to sustain that growth into the future.

Damascus, the capital of Syria, fell to militia forces on 8 December 2024. The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s Ba’ath government in Syria is another setback for the resistance to U.$.-I$rael aggression in the region. The last half century has also demonstrated the limitations of bourgeois nationalism in the Levant. While Syria has been the center of meddling by the imperialists and regional powers for decades, the Ba’ath government’s failure is due to the bourgeois class’ nature as a self-interested minority that cannot fully represent the interests of the nation.

The current civil war started during the so-called “Arab Spring” in 2011. Popular protests that year led to state suppression of many of the more progressive forces. Meanwhile funding via U.$. proxies (Turkey, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates) helped prop up extremist Sunni-affiliated militias. In the chaos that ensued, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria(ISIS) arose to control most of Syria, in terms of area, and parts of Iraq by 2014. At this point, the United $tates teamed up with the Kurdish nationalist movement in Syria to form the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to prevent ISIS from completely taking over Syria, while Hezbollah and Iran fought ISIS on other fronts. A decade ago, it was clear the Assad government could not sustain itself.

By 2024, the former al-Qaeda affiliate in Syria, Al-Nusra Front, had evolved into Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS led a coalition of militias from the Idlib region to take Homs and then the capital of Damascus soon after. At the same time, the United $tates rallied the Revolutionary Commando Army from al Tanf region near the Syrian-Jordan-Iraq border. Many of the 2000 U.$. troops currently in Syria are in al Tanf. Meanwhile, the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army (SNA) continues a war against the SDF in the North of Syria. The Syrian National Army has incorporated many former ISIS soldiers, and threatens to wipe out Kurds in regions bordering Turkey to serve Turkey’s interests in suppressing the Kurdish independence movement. But the U.$. sees SDF territory as theirs, so Turkey is limited by its NATO master on that front.

In coordination with the taking of the capital by HTS, I$rael immediately seized strategic territory in the Golan Heights and destroyed Syria’s military installments (reportedly 90% of their capacity). I$rael has seized the highest point in Syria and territory that was granted to Syria as a buffer zone in a previous war. I$rael is now closer than ever to Damascus, with no Syrian military to stop them. This means the ability of Syria to stand as an independent military force against the U.$./I$rael has been eliminated. This has led HTS to say they will not allow Palestinian militants to train in Syria anymore.

Over the last decade plus, hundreds of armed organizations have operated across Syria; a condition that is hard for us in the United $tates to imagine. The situation continues to be chaotic in Syria, and those much more familiar than us have a hard time knowing what is going on on the ground. It is clear that U.$. intelligence had a good sense of the balance of forces and was able to foster this takeover by HTS and others in very short time.

Short-term Impacts

Despite the reactionary nature of the Assad regime, which led to its quick collapse in December, Syria has served as a base of resistance for the region for over half a century. This is why, in the short-term, we see the fall of Assad as a bad thing for the anti-imperialist movement, despite being inevitable.

Syria was a transit corridor for resources from Iran to Hezbollah in Lebanon, this has been disrupted. Syria can now serve as corridor for I$rael to reach and attack Iran. The overthrow of Assad is another short-term setback in the resistance to U.$. imperialism in the region following I$rael’s successes in decapitating Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine. The recent peace deal between Hezbollah and I$rael also indicated a victory for the U.$. camp.

Five days after taking power, HTS declared that all Palestinian resistance forces must demilitarize. Palestinian factions, including Fatah, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), the Saiqa, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) Martyr Ali Aswad Brigade, have had a presence in Syria as guests of the government for decades. The refugee camp “Yarmouk”, near Damascus, is the center of the Palestinian diaspora. Beginning with the Nakba in 1948, most Palestinians have been forced off of their land by I$raeli settlers, and therefore live in what are now separate countries like Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. With the peace deal in Lebanon, I$rael is trying to demilitarize Arabs there next. By cutting off the bases of operation of the Palestinian movement and the flow of supplies, I$rael is remaking the region for a complete suppression of the liberation movement.

After more than two years without a president, Lebanon’s parliament chose Joseph Aoun on 9 January 2025. This U.$.-backed candidate clinched the vote after the Hezbollah-favored candidate withdrew. Aoun, like HTS, has pledged to demilitarize any groups outside the Lebanese army. Hezbollah has long been the strongest military force in Lebanon, while participating in a multi-party government. According to the peace deal between I$rael and Hezbollah, I$rael had 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon. They have not done so as Hezbollah has also not demilitarized from the south as agreed to in the deal.

Sanction Wars

While the December events were swift, the overthrow of Assad was a U.$. operation dating back decades, through low intensity military and economic warfare. In 2002 Undersecretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the list of President Bush Jr’s “Axis of Evil” countries, justifying economic sanctions, which the Amerikans get their allies to enforce as well.

Sanctions are economic warfare. Just like when you drop bombs on a country, sanctions often result in suffering and death of the civilian population. The fear-mongering around Russian election interference is a joke compared to what the Amerikans have been doing for decades, starving people to force them to change their political allegiances.

According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Syria’s oil sales in 2010 would have been around $3.2 billion or 25% of the state’s revenue. But war and sanctions put an end to that within a year. Oil extraction in Syria was first done by an Amerikan beginning in 1956. By 1958, Syria was part of Nasser’s United Arab Republic (UAR), which seized the oil fields and machinery from the Amerikan company. When the Ba’ath Party took over a couple years later, with the dissolution of the UAR, they kept the oil fields nationalized. By 2013, ISIS controlled most of the oil fields and were using them to raise money. Assad stated that ISIS had two partners in stealing the Syrian oil since 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey and the Amerikans. China has echoed Assad on this point. In November 2019 Trump said to the press that “We’re keeping the oil, we have the oil, the oil is secure, we left troops behind only for the oil,” referring to the SDF-controlled region of northern Syria.(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum_industry_in_Syria)

The U$ imperialists want to monopolize the global oil supply as much as possible and ensure that all major oil producing economies are selling their oil in U.$. dollars. This allows the U.$. dollar to maintain an inflated value in global commodity exchange (by forcing countries that need to buy oil from OPEC countries to have a stash of U$ currency on hand). A secondary effect is that it makes it harder for countries sanctioned by the U.$. to buy oil (forcing the use of proxies to access U$ currency and do business with OPEC). This allows the Amerikans to artificially control inflation of U$D, while currencies in other countries like Syria, or Nigeria, take on that burden.

The Revolutionary Commando Army, paid by the Amerikans, was making 12 times what the Syrian Army was paying, thanks to inflation crippling the value of the lira, or Syrian pound. This inflation can be blamed on the U.$.-imposed sanctions. However, it is also a characteristic of a capitalist economy. There is a reason why socialist China did not have inflation despite U.$. sanctions on the Communist Party of China.New China’s First Quarter-Century, Foreign Languages Press, Peking 1975 And there is a reason why inflationary forces and financial markets threaten the Chinese economy today, after 50 years of capitalism. Similarly, the Ba’ath economy was susceptible to these problems and more. Nationalist policies can slow the effects of capitalism, but cannot eliminate them like socialism does.

The Limits of Bourgeois Nationalism

The weakness of the bourgeois Syrian state is also reflected in Russia’s unwillingness to get involved and Assad’s sudden fleeing of the country leaving his army with no clear leadership for resistance. If there was a way to maintain Ba’ath rule, Russia would have wanted that. Contrast Assad to Sadaam Hussein in Iraq who faced a trial, and was executed by hanging while calling for a united Arab resistance to U.$. imperialism and a free Arab Palestine. The Ba’ath parties in both countries come from a nominally pan-Arab and nationalist background. But we see how circumstance exposes them as inconsistent allies against imperialism.

When the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party emerged, about a third of the world’s population was living under socialism, most of them in the Soviet Union or China. The Syrian Communist Party was the other party with broad mass support. These influences pushed a pan-Arab line with pro-social economic policies in the early Ba’ath Party. Ba’ath was the radical alternative to Nasserism and originally mobilized the peasantry in Syria via land redistribution. The father of Bashar al-Assad led a coup that abandoned this path, and focused on serving the urban capitalist class. Today the national and regional economic projects of the 1960s are impossible as war and divisions have become dominant under imperialist influence.

The way the Assad regime folded was a sign of its own internal weakness. Of course, this came after 13 years of more or less constant imperialist meddling and instigating of civil war. But the resistance in Gaza has not folded after 75+ years, while the once stable and relatively powerful Syrian government folded in a matter of days. This speaks to the internal contradictions. While parties like Ba’ath and Hezbollah have served to suppress communist organizations, the conditions in Palestine have united the nation to the extent that communists and bourgeois nationalists are waging guerrilla warfare in conjunction against the occupiers just days before a cease fire is expected to begin. Now that Assad’s government has fallen, Syria faces greater chaos, allowing the imperialists to play forces off against each other.

Neo-colony of U.$. or Jihadist Caliphate?

While the general media propaganda in the United $tates has been to celebrate the takeover in Syria, the more thoughtful Amerikans are concerned that HTS is “former al Qaeda.” They see conservative religious views of such groups and lump them in with Christians in the U.$. government who are fighting against abortion rights and diversity. On top of that is the racialized view of Muslims as foreign, other, and dangerous. But for the proletariat “al Qaeda” is not necessarily a negative, and the network continues to capitalize on the perception that they are fighting U.$. (and allied) imperialism.

Some real red flags for the proletariat to look out for are things like doing your first interview on CNN within hours of taking power, moving to neutralize threats to I$rael, letting I$rael seize territories of the former state, and the number 1 red flag to look out for: courting positive business relations with U.$. imperialism. These are all things HTS leaders have already done.

Osama bin Laden is rolling over in his watery grave as these rebranded al Qaeda leaders of HTS have become the tip of the U.$. imperialist spear in Syria. But what appears to be the rise of a clear U.$. puppet, emerged from the anti-imperialist bourgeois nationalism that dominates the Muslim resistance today. Their bourgeois character ultimately comes into contradiction with their nationalist claims.

As Marxists we look at class interests, and class interests in the form of national interests, to determine who are our friends and who are our enemies. And the majority of people in the Levant are proletariat and peasantry. Palestine is clearly included in the proletarian camp, despite their economic structure limiting class development and perhaps being dominated by a lumpen-proletariat or semi-proletariat.

Much has been made of the foreign nature of HTS, that it is a transnational group of ragtag extremists. But this too just feeds into neo-colonial thinking. Expelling the foreigners is progressive when aimed at the imperialists. But this is a specific brand of foreigner. And the imperialists can easily pull together a group of born-and-bred Syrians that will be happy to run the country for their Amerikan sponsors. So the oppressed must guard against this form of narrow nationalism.

Syrian nationalism may turn against HTS, but it is not clear who will take their place and how they will be any better. The national question is not clear in a country whose borders were created by the U.$. and French imperialists in 1948. Like many political forces in the region, the Ba’ath Party came from pan-Arab roots, that see one Arab nation that is destined to dissolve the imperialist imposed boundaries. Syria even briefly formed the United Arab Republic by merging with Egypt towards this goal. More recently, ISIS united broad regions of Iraq and Syria for a short period, though against the will of many in the region. What is clear is that the Arab people of the region share a common interest, and should be working together to meet that common interest. Currently I$rael is crushing the attempts at doing so.

The New “President” of Syria

Abu Mohammad al-Julani is the leader of HTS, who united the various forces that fought to overthrow Assad. He has returned to using his birth name of Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa. While he indicated it would be up to four years before elections would occur again in Syria, National Public Radio quickly began referring to em as the “President of Syria.” The U.$. State Department also lifted the $10 million reward it had long offered for al-Sharaa’s capture on 20 December 2024, another indication of how the Amerikans are viewing the take over.

In 2021, al-Sharaa did an interview with Frontline where ey said ey was radicalized by the Palestinian Second Intifada, stating, “I started thinking about how I could fulfill my duties, defending a people who are oppressed by occupiers and invaders.” Then al-Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11 inspired em to travel to Iraq to fight the U.$. invasion in 2003 as a soldier with al-Qaeda. Ey was arrested by the Amerikans in 2006 and imprisoned for 5 years. Ey was released, coincidentally during the start of the Syrian revolution in 2011 and began immediately working to build al-Qaeda in Syria, which ey called Jabahat al-Nusra, or in the U.$. media referred to as Al-Nusra Front. Al-Nusra eventually emerged at the center of power plays between the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. The differences between these groups may be mostly about power struggles and not ideology. However, ISIS was initiated by al-Qaeda affiliated people who thought they weren’t moving fast enough to liberate the land. Al-Nusra seemed to have a similar strategy, which is what led to confrontation with ISIS. In the end, HTS was militarily fighting both ISIS and al-Qaeda to govern Idlib province in the years prior to seizing Damascus, while benefiting from Turkish economic support.

U.$. State Department aide Jake Sullivan told Hillary Clinton that “AQ [Al-Qaeda] is on our side in Syria” in 2012, referring to the Al-Nusra Front.

State of Imperialist Forces

Russia’s lack of action in Syria, compared to years past, is a sign of their military over-extension with the war in Ukraine. They lost a strategic naval base in the Mediterranean Sea without a fight with the fall of the Assad regime. Like the United $tates, they seemed aware of the Syrian government’s inability to sustain itself and cut its losses, which were significant.

Recently a comrade wrote us asking about what are we waiting for to start the revolution here in occupied Turtle Island. Well a lot of things. From the Russian Revolution, Lenin taught us that a revolutionary situation is defined by the masses and the ruling class realizing the impossibility of continuing in the old way. In addition, an actual end to U.$. imperialism becomes possible when it finds itself over-extended militarily. This is clearly not the case as it is effectively exerting its interests on the other side of the world via proxies like I$rael, Ukraine, and militias in Syria. While the U.$. is footing the bill, they are doing very little in terms of providing their own military support and are not putting Amerikan lives in jeopardy to do so. This could be to avoid open conflict with Russian troops, but also avoids much of the backlash they faced while occupying Iraq.

The overthrow of Assad with only 2000 U.$. troops in the country is a victory for the imperialists, but we’ll see whether this is enough for them to establish a new client state in Syria. Syria has also been a success for the Amerikans in terms of global public opinion. Following the escalated genocide in Gaza over the last 15 months, U.$. public opinion has grown significantly to condemn I$rael, but less so Amerikkka, despite the recognition by most that I$rael is U.$.-funded. In Syria the connection is much less apparent, but the predominant sentiment is that the overthrow of Assad was a good thing. This is a big difference from the Amerikan regime change project that overthrew the Ba’ath regime in neighboring Iraq. During the invasion of Iraq, the U.$. was in the position I$rael is today. Today I$rael could fall, and the imperialist superpower lives on.

Axis of Evil - 25 years of Reshaping the Middle East

Following al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, U.$. President George Bush coined the term “Axis of Evil” to refer to Iran, Iraq and North Korea in 2002. While these countries were not united in any way, Bush claimed they were all sponsors of terrorism and manufacturers of “weapons of mass destruction.” In reality their commonality was in their resistance to U.$. imperialism.

This “Axis of Evil” was coined while the “Great Satan” U.$. imperialists were invading Afghanistan, ostensibly for their harboring of al Qaeda, including Osama bin Laden. That invasion lasted until 2021, when the former governing Taliban finally returned to power. In those two decades, hundreds of thousands were killed and millions were displaced in Afghanistan. In 2011, the United $tates assassinated bin Laden in neighboring Pakistan. The 9/11 attacks also triggered the United $tates to launch an international prison network made up of CIA “black sites”, in which the Bush regime okayed the CIA to ignore Geneva Convention rules against torture.

After George Bush’s speech, Undersecretary of State John Bolton gave eir own 2002 speech entitled “Beyond the Axis of Evil” that included Cuba, Libya and Syria. In response to the “Axis of Evil” talk, people from these countries began talking about the “Axis of Resistance”, since resisting U.$. imperialist interests was the thing these countries had in common. Iran eventually took up this term around its informal alliance in opposition to the U.$. imperialist outpost of I$rael.

Before Syria’s takeover this month, Syria was the only state power, other than Iran, to serve as a training ground and supply source for the other members of the Axis of Resistance. Ansar Allah in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hamas in Palestine all participate in state power or at least dual power. Other members of this alliance include Shia militias in Iraq, other national liberation forces in Palestine, and now emerging militias in Syria that oppose the recent takeover.

In addition to opposing I$rael and the United $tates, the Axis of Resistance has generally opposed Salafist groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Salafism is a revival of Sunni Islam that attempts to connect to its “authentic” traditions by opposing things that didn’t exist in the times of the prophet Mohammed; a truly reactionary ideology that wants to take society backwards.

Despite Syria’s important role in supplying Hezbollah in Lebanon and resistance forces in Palestine and being on the U.$. “Axis of Evil” list, Syria actually served the U.$. imperialists in their “War on Terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq. The imperialists invaded Iraq (again) in 2003 under the pretense of weapons of mass destruction, which was later proved to be a complete lie. During this period CIA black sites were operating in countries across the world, including Syria. These “black sites” were a secretive international prison system focused on torture, interrogation and disappearances.

While some recent U.$. media coverage of the freeing of prisoners in Syria was proven to be fabricated, there were many people who suffered under the Assad regime who are understandably celebrating or at least relieved. While we criticized imperialist meddling against Assad and recognized the Ba’ath government as useful to the resistance in the region, its failure to serve the people led to its demise. As always, we join in the call of the resistance forces in recognizing the right to self-determination of the Syrian people and opposing all imperialist occupation of portions of Syria and imperialist meddling in the economy and resources of the region. Much struggle will be needed to make that a reality.

^{Note: Our citations for this article are not up to our usual standards, but we believe most of the facts here to be uncontroversial and easily verifiable.}

UPDATED VERSION AFTER TRUMP’s INAUGURATION

A group called Americans For Tax Fairness posted an announcement online that:

“The wealth of the four richest Americans hit $1 TRILLION yesterday.

“It’s the first time in history the net worth of just four men – Musk, Bezos, Ellison, Zuckerberg – has hit the trillions.

“These four men were worth $74 billion twelve short years ago.

“Tax billionaires.”

A startling increase in wealth for sure. And who could possibly use so much wealth? Have their lives even changed with this increase of wealth of two orders of magnitude? Did they even notice? In related news people are up in arms about one of the 4, Jeff Bezos, putting on a $600 million wedding.

Later this month, the wealth at Trump’s inauguration also topped $1 trillion, with three of the above attending with many other tech CEOs. One of them, Musk, ended a speech with a powerful seig heil (Nazi salute). Ellison also met with Trump within days of his presidency beginning.

It is true that any of these individuals could take a chunk of that wealth and ride off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. But like any one of us, we can only operate within the laws of the world we were born into. And the laws of capitalism would just fill that slot with another individual.

We’ll let Engels explain this in more depth:

“The capitalistic mode of production moves in these two forms of the antagonism immanent to it from its very origin. It is never able to get out of that”vicious circle” which Fourier had already discovered. What Fourier could not, indeed, see in his time is that this circle is gradually narrowing; that the movement becomes more and more a spiral, and must come to an end, like the movement of the planets, by collision with the centre. It is the compelling force of anarchy in the production of society at large that more and more completely turns the great majority of men into proletarians; and it is the masses of the proletariat again who will finally put an end to anarchy in production. It is the compelling force of anarchy in social production that turns the limitless perfectibility of machinery under modern industry into a compulsory law by which every individual industrial capitalist must perfect his machinery more and more, under penalty of ruin. But the perfecting of machinery is making human labour superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage-workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead-weight upon the limbs of the working class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for the keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital. Thus it comes about, to quote Marx, that machinery becomes the most powerful weapon in the war of capital against the working class; that the instruments of labour constantly tear the means of subsistence out of the hands of the labourer; that the very product of the worker is turned into an instrument for his subjugation. Thus it comes about that the economising of the instruments of labour becomes at the same time, from the outset, the most reckless waste of labour-power, and robbery based upon the normal conditions under which labour functions; that machinery, the most powerful instrument for shortening labour-time, becomes the most unfailing means for placing every moment of the labourer’s time and that of his family at the disposal of the capitalist for the purpose of expanding the value of his capital.” - Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring

For those four people to keep increasing their wealth, is to fulfill their destiny in the system of capitalism. It is not a question of persynal greed, nor of humyn nature, rather it is the natural law of the current economic structure.

The call to tax billionaires is ultimately a futile act in opposition to the laws of the capitalist machine. It is possible to do, and could change the balance of wealth among those living in the most wealthy country in the world. But the tendency of the laws of capitalism is to go back to this point, and surpass it, in terms of the concentration of wealth. This tendency to concentrate wealth, to maintain profitability by out-competing others, is one of the inherent contradictions in the capitalist system that require its end.

In his last speech as president, Joe Biden pandered to the labor aristocracy with a hypocritical condemnation of a rising oligarchy. People want to pretend that U.$. imperialism wasn’t always run in the interests of the largest corporations. This growing concentration of wealth is a law of capitalism that Marx exposed 170 years ago.

Marx & Engels also wrote about how the inherent contradictions of capitalism build a “reserve army” of labor, excluding more and more from participating in the wage system. Even in the richest country of the world, where there is virtually no proletariat like that described by Engels above, these laws of capitalism apply and we have a class we call the First World lumpen. A class that is excluded by capitalism – the only economic system that has ever had a thing called “unemployment.” The idea that there is no work for some people to do is unheard of in most of humyn history, as well as in socialist countries of the past like the USSR and China.

In 2024, homelessness increased 18%, following a 12% increase in 2023. The official count is over 770,000 people, meaning real numbers are approaching a million.(1) That is still less than half the people we have locked in prisons and jails in this country. And both numbers may continue to surge with proposed plans under the second Trump regime. However, mass deportations could also contribute to a decline in homelessness, as migrant raza make up a significant portion of those without houses.(2)

Most of the people in the United $tates raise their pitchforks at these billionaires in hopes of raising their taxes to maintain the standard of living here. These people believe in the system, just think it needs to change a bit. The First World lumpen are at least torn, in that they benefit from operating against the rules of the system, while also receiving some benefits from it. As contradictions spiral up, as Engels describes, the lumpen will be some of the first to see opportunity in the destruction of the old and the creation of something new, in particular the oppressed nation lumpen, who we identify in our analysis, “Who is Lumpen in the United $tates?”

<sup>1. Michael Casey, 27 December 2024, US homelessness up 18% as affordable housing remains out of reach for many people, Associated Press.
2. Communist Party of Aztlán, November 2024, On Homelessness: A Growing Site of Lumpen Organizing, Under Lock & Key 87.</sup>

Yesterday, U.$. Presidents Trump and Biden announced a cease fire deal between their military outpost called I$rael and the Palestinian resistance, primarily represented by Hamas. Palestinians are celebrating in the streets for this potential respite from the 15 month onslaught that has turned Gaza to rubble and murdered 47,000 Palestinians officially and closer to double that in reality. Despite these heavy losses, the cease fire is a victory for the Palestinian resistance that has not folded after 15 months of fighting a much more heavily funded occupier. The United $tates says that the fighting forces in Palestine have increased in numbers since 7 October 2023.

At this writing, the peace deal has not begun and has not officially been signed by I$rael. I$rael has continued to murder Palestinians in recent days, including one reporter who had just announced the planned peace deal to the world. And the imperialists continue to spread lies about Hamas holding up the deal. Investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill says ey saw a deal signed by all of the Palestinian resistance representatives days before the deal was announced, when Biden was claiming they were waiting on Hamas.

The deal is a victory for the Palestinian resistance, in meeting their immediate demands, including a prisoner exchange that is supposed to release some who were sentenced to prison for life by the I$raelis. The deal will also involve I$rael’s withdrawal from and the rebuilding of Gaza. At this time no details are public.

I$raeli press has credited Trump with forcing the deal that has been drafted during the Biden presidency and is scheduled to begin the day before Trump’s inauguration. Trump had demanded a deal happen before he gets into office. The Trump administration has continued to call for the total elimination of Hamas, and the deal seems to also force a demilitarization of all Palestinian resistance in the Gaza Strip. While the majority of Amerikans opposed the bombing campaign of the last 15 months, they do not support a liberated Palestine. Trump seems to be willing to at least pause the slaughter that Biden supported and to appease the minimal demands of many Amerikans, but he is no friend of the Palestinian people. Those who demanded “Ceasefire Now!” may have their demand met, but this is not the first time Palestinians have celebrated in the streets after a deal is struck with I$rael. There is an antagonistic contradiction between the I$raeli settlers and the Palestinians of the land that is far from resolved. And indications have already been made that I$rael does not intend to see the deal through past the first phase. Only time will tell how the imperialists will behave in Palestine in the coming weeks and months. But the struggle for the national liberation of Palestine lives!

UPDATE: As ULK 88 goes to press, prisoner exchanges have begun, with the release of 90 Palestinian prisoners and 3 settlers, followed by 200 Palestinians and 4 settlers. Many Palestinians had been held without charges, and some were already freed by the resistance on 7 October 2023, but recaptured. The second group included many with life sentences.. Meanwhile, I$rael has launched a major military operation in Jenin in the West Bank, killing at least 10 people so far. I$rael has also issued administrative detention orders to imprison 85 more Palsestinians and has been targeting the families of released prisoners for harassment and repression.