Under Lock & Key

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.

Just a few months ago we reported on the ongoing illegal funding of I$rael by the United $tates, with a recently announced $8.7 billion funding package. As Biden prepares to leave office later this month, it has been reported that another $8 billion is being sent to fund the imperialist outpost in the Middle East. Axios reports:

“The State Department has notified Congress ‘informally’ of an $8 billion proposed arms deal with Israel that will include munitions for fighter jets and attack helicopters as well as artillery shells.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) responded in part:

“Only racists who do not view people of color as equally human, and sociopaths who delight in funding mass slaughter, could send Netanyahu even more bombs while his government openly kidnaps doctors, destroys hospitals, and exterminates the last survivors in northern Gaza.”(1)

The Palestinian resistance has drawn the line in the sand, and are continuing to expose the racism of Amerikans and others in the imperialist countries who support this ongoing genocide. But it is especially the people in the United $tates who benefit from the funds feeding the military industrial complex, as most aid to I$rael is spent here.

In further support of militarism on his way out of office, Biden has once again begun direct bombing of Yemen by U.$. war ships despite a pledge to end the war on Yemen when campaigning for the presidency. As part of Operation Prosperity Guardian, U.$. aircraft carriers have been in the Red Sea for over a year to safeguard international trade in general and shipments to I$rael in particular. Recently, the Amerikans bombed both the only airport in Yemen, killing six and injuring 40, and the main port that serves as the lifeline for getting supplies to Yemen. This port was already largely damaged in the ongoing war with the U.$.-backed Saudi regime. The airport attack was timed by I$rael to happen while the World Health Organization General Secretary was there, though ey was not injured.(2)

Despite over 22 years of continuous U.$.-sponsored attacks, the people of Yemen stand strong, and Ansar Allah are clear they will not stop rerouting ships in the Red Sea and attacking I$rael until genocide in Gaza stops.

There is no hope of the U.$. imperialists cutting off I$rael on their own volition, and everything in our power must be done here in the heart of empire to stop the funding of genocide and the expansionist settler colonialism spreading across the region. Palestine, Yemen and others in the region are at the front lines fighting imperialism and oppression.

<sup>Note:1. CAIR, 4 January 2025, CAIR Calls Biden Admin’s New $8 Billion Arms Sale for Israeli Genocide ‘Racist, Sociopathic’.
2. Democracy Now! 3 January 2025.</sup>

Robert Brooks, a 43 year old New Afrikan man, was beaten to death by Correctional Officers (C.O.s) in Marcy Correctional Facility in upstate New York on 9 December 2024, dying in the hospital the next day. On 27 December the New York Attorney General’s office released body camera footage from 6 C.O.s and 2 Sergeants involved in the beating. They show Brooks being pinned to a gurney, while handcuffed, and beaten on-and-off for many minutes by the pigs.(1) Thirteen staff members of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) are being investigated in the beating.(2)

Marcy C.F. is in an area of upstate New York known for its racist rednecks, a very white area abutting the Oneida Nation Reservation. Just down the road is the infamous Clinton Correctional Facility as well as the Mohawk Correctional Facility offensively named after the neighboring Mohawk nation of the Iroquois confederacy. A comrade struggling with addiction was moved from Mohawk last year to a Secure Housing Facility where ey reports:

“I still am recovering from the brutal assault, battery, torture and sexual assault by the gang of pigz here at Upstate C.F. I am physically healing slowly and taking some drug to help with the brain damage I suffered from all the fractures in my face and forehead. I’m doing physical therapy for my arm. My studies with you all have given me the focus and strength to recover. I am no longer on the Suboxone program, smoking cigarettes, marijuana or PCP. I still struggle with K2, but the more time I spend grounded in studies, writing and reading with you all, the less time I have to think about wanting to get high. I thank you all and hope my struggle is an example to those who are sick themselves and struggling.”

Brooks had recently been transferred from Mohawk as well, and sent to Marcy this month.(2) The state investigation indicates that Brooks did not attack the officers or do anything to warrant the use of force, which the videos show as well.(1,2) Brooks’s death is suspected to be a result of “asphyxia due to compression of the neck.” New York State Correctional Officers are required to wear body cameras and have them running whenever encountering a prisoner. While many involved covered their cameras, the beating continued despite the presence of the body cameras in the room. The Times Union reports that the C.O.s seemed to be unaware that their body cameras could be passively recording the incident.(2)

People posted pictures of Mario and Luigi cartoon characters online in response to pictures and videos of the beating posted online. The outrage at this state-sponsored lynching is somewhat encouraging, but posting images online obviously won’t solve the brutality waged against oppressed nations, and against prisoners in general, in this country. Organization is needed. Only together can we protect ourselves.

<sup>Notes:
1. https://ag.ny.gov/osi/footage/robert-brooks
2. Brendan J. Lyons, 27 December 2024, Court records confirm inmate was beaten while handcuffed, The Times Union.</sup>

This past summer, we gathered commentary from our readers on the student uprising against the genocide in Gaza, which is now expanding across the region. These articles were used in a pamphlet that many USW comrades received, and were all printed in Under Lock & Key 86.

Comrades on the streets distributed the pamphlet and ULK 86 to students (and non-students) in a number of regions across the country. We attended rallies and speaking events, visited the remnants of encampments and shared publications at conferences.

In general, the response was enthusiastic to the articles written by prisoners, especially regarding solidarity with Palestine. Anti-Imperialist Prisoner Support (AIPS) maintained a presence at Socialism Conference 2024 which took place in Chicago during the end of August. Over 100 copies of ULK were handed out at the conference, while also agitating against prisoner repression.

At a New York hacker conference, audience members eagerly grabbed copies of the Palestine pamphlet at a talk on prison surveillance. The speaker exposed most of the issues we discuss in our Prison Banned Books Week articles. Ey also exposed how Securus has a patent to use the phone numbers of prisoner contacts to track their spending data. And Securus already provides location data to Correctional Officers by phone number! We hope comrades can understand why we’re sticking to snail mail. This also happened to be the only talk at the conference where the speaker shouted “Free Palestine!”

At a southern California Palestine solidarity event comrades were able to give out ULK 86 to a large group of students and noticed that others would grab a copy on their way out. Reactions were mostly positive with one criticism being that it may have been too tough on the students. This was presumably referring to the critique written by an outside comrade involved in the student movement.

Comrades have communicated with a number of student groups to solicit responses or statements for this issue of Under Lock & Key. While at least one group expressed interest, we did not get any reports from students on the ongoing legal struggles and political repression they are facing for this issue. It is clear more work is needed to strengthen a connection between the prison movement and the student movement. But progress is being made.

Decades ago, Under Lock & Key was a section in the newspaper MIM Notes put out by the original Maoist Internationalist Movement and its party in the United $tates. For a time, MIM distributed newspapers on the streets at 20-30 times the amount they sent to prisoners, and their paper came out every 2 weeks. Since MIM(Prisons) launched Under Lock & Key in 2007, it has always been a primarily prisoner newsletter. Though in the past we’ve estimated our online readership to be bigger. A couple years ago we set the goal of distributing as many newspapers on the streets as we do in prisons. While not quite there, ULK 86 was by far the closest we’ve gotten to reaching that goal.

If you want to help expand ULK distribution on the street, send us $55 in cash or postage stamps with a return address and we’ll send you 100 copies of the next ULK we print. ULK currently comes out at the beginning of November, February, May, and August.

As we go to press, the prospects of an inter-imperialist war loom heavy once again. The upcoming U.$. presidential election contributes to the uncertainty as various forces posture and attempt to exert influence. What is clear is that U.$. imperialism is set on backing its Zionist outpost in the Levant (Middle East) while the majority of the world stand in opposition, and even most Amerikans want their government to stop sending arms to I$rael.(1)

Despite public opinion, the imperialists are offering no presidential candidate that will slow aid to I$rael. Military aid also continues despite the United $tate’s own laws.

“ProPublica has revealed USAID and the State Department’s refugees bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies even though they’re considered the two foremost U.S. authorities on humanitarian assistance. Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. Days after receiving the reports, Blinken told Congress, quote, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

“On [24 September 2024], the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, called for Blinken’s resignation, accusing him of lying to Congress.”(2)

I$rael received at least $12.5 billion in U.$. aid as of May 2024.(3) And as the 2024 fiscal year comes to a close, they just announced another $8.7 billion in military aid to I$rael in an aid package that also includes $17 billion to “reimburse U.S. operations in response to recent attacks.”(4) This came in the midst of increased attacks on Lebanon and the killing of the leadership of Hezbollah.

“Most of the aid—approximately $3.3 billion a year—is provided as grants under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program, funds that Israel must use to purchase U.S. military equipment and services. …U.S. aid reportedly accounts for some 15 percent of Israel’s defense budget. Israel, like many other countries, also buys U.S. military products outside of the FMF program.”(3)

Israel gets 78% of its arms imports from the United $tates.(3) This circulation of capital into the U.$. economy is one reason why the imperialists won’t offer an anti-war candidate. Meanwhile, family members in Gaza send photos of bombs and military equipment used against them stamped with “Made in USA”.

An April 2024 Pew Research poll showed much lower opposition to sending military aid to I$rael among Amerikans than other polls, but its breakdown by age reflected who is out in the streets, and who is putting their bodies on the line to stop the genocide here in the United $tates. While 45% of 18-29 year olds opposed U.$. aid to I$rael according to Pew, this number decreases with age, getting down to only 22% of Amerikans 65+.(3) This conflict between the young and the old has been reflected in the anti-imperialist movement for decades, and we see this as the principal contradiction within the Amerikan nation where class contradictions and the contradictions between male-bodied and female-bodied people are generally not antagonistic.

The military-industrial complex (MIC) ensures politicians represent economic interests by massive investments in lobbying:

“Lobbying expenditures by all the denizens of the MIC are even higher—more than $247 million in the last two election cycles. Such funds are used to employ 820 lobbyists, or more than one for every member of Congress. And mind you, more than two-thirds of those lobbyists had swirled through Washington’s infamous revolving door from jobs at the Pentagon or in Congress to lobby for the arms industry.”(5)

Weapons manufacturers have bigger budgets than those in charge of the wars, and more influence than any other industry. In 2020, Lockheed Martin received more money from the U.$. government than the budgets of the State Department and the Agency of International development combined. Meanwhile, more than 75 percent of the top foreign-policy think tanks in the United $tates are at least partially funded by military contractors. These weapons manufacturers are also deeply involved in Hollywood movie production. This is why we think it is misleading to use terms like “prison industrial complex” or “non-profit industrial complex”. The size, influence and importance to the U.$. economy of military production is not comparable to such theories.(6)

According to statistics gathered by the National Defense Industrial Association, there are currently one million direct jobs in arms manufacturing compared to 3.2 million in the 1980s.(4) But we all benefit indirectly in this country, and the east coast dock workers agree:

“Dating back to World War 1, the ILA was always proud to note that ‘ILA Also Means Love America’ when it came to its “No Strike Pledge” in handling U.S. military cargo at all its ports,” said ILA President Harold Daggett, who served in the U.S. Navy and saw combat duty during the Vietnam War. “We continue our pledge to never let our brave American troops down for their valour and service and we will proudly continue to work all military shipments beyond October 1st, even if we are engaged in a strike.”(7)

While it is not clear exactly what the U.$. strategy is for I$rael right now, two things remain true: 1. I$rael is an outpost for U.$. interests in the Levant (which is rich in fossil fuels), and 2. weapons production is a key prop to the U.$. economy by continuously increasing the circulation of capital.

France announced it has ceased any military aid to I$rael to be consistent with their calls for a cease fire. The United Nations called on I$rael to withdraw its military from Palestine and Lebanon and evacuate settlers from lands occupied since 1967 (124 countries voted in favor, 14 against, 43 abstained). Weeks later, I$raeli troops fired at 3 UNIFIL positions in southern Lebanon, injuring a number of UN peacekeepers. Countries continue to join the International Court of Justice case against I$rael, including Chile, the Maldives and Bolivia most recently. Meanwhile, Nicaragua, an early signatory, has just cut off diplomatic ties with I$rael.

I$rael has killed an estimated 8% of the population of Gaza after one year of war and displacement.(8)

<sup>Notes:
1. a June 2024 CBS poll had 61% opposing sending weapons to I$rael and 37% who wanted an end to all military actions in Gaza; a majority of Amerikans have consistently opposed sending arms to I$rael since 7 October 2023
2. Democracy Now!, 26 September 2024, U.S. Gov’t Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing.
3. Jonathan Masters & Will Merrow, 31 May 2024, U.S. Aid to Israel in Four Charts, Council on Foreign Releations.
4. Laura Kelly, 26 September 2024, Israel says it secured $8.7 billion military aid package from US , The Hill.
5. William D. Hartung and Benjamin Freeman, 9 May 2023, The Military Industrial Complex Is More Powerful Than Ever, The Nation.
6. Wiawimawo, April 2016, The Importance of Militarism Under Imperialism, and Why Prisons Aren’t So Much, Under Lock & Key 50
7. International Longshoremen’s Association, 25 September 2024, press statement.
8. Ben Norton, 13 October 2024, Global South denounces genocide in Gaza, Nicaragua breaks relations with ‘fascist’ Israel, Latin America supports Palestine, Geopolitical Economy Report.</sup>

On 5 October 2024, about 150 people organized by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 3585 picketed to call for an end to paper mail in the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). Another protest is planned for October 17th.

The plague of drugs in U.$. prisons is real, and it has continued in states where digital mail has been implemented. The claim of this “labor” union that staff are being poisoned is not real. In neighboring Indiana, a number of prisoners were threatened with isolation in torture cells for mail that we sent them that was accused of being drug-laced. Further testing proved they were not. Meanwhile, there have now been a number of cases of prison staff across the country claiming extreme medical crises from contacting prisoner mail, following similar claims by street cops, that have never been substantiated by medical professionals. It’s interesting that this “labor” union is willing to stand out on the street and picket for a policy that would give Correctional Officers a monopoly on bringing paper into IDOC facilities.

Even much of the pro-labor union movement in the United $tates will agree that cops aren’t workers, or the oppressed, but rather are the oppressors, regardless of the question of surplus value. And Marxism has always excluded the employees of the state from the proletariat in any country. So it is of little surprise that the AFSCME would be pushing this reactionary policy to eliminate education, resources and community connection in prisons, even if it risks the very safety of their own members.

MIM Distributors submitted the protest email below to Illinois DOC Director Latoya Hughes. We encourage others to send emails or make phone calls or send letters (especially if you are in Illinois). There are more suggested scripts available from campaign initiators working with Midwest Books to Prisoners.(2)

Dear Director Hughes,

I have recently been made aware that several Illinois legislators are calling for an immediate cessation of non-legal paper mail being delivered to people incarcerated in the IDOC. Our organization sends paper mail to thousands of prisoners across the country and we object to this effort to abridge our First Amendment rights to speech and association, as well as those of the people in your prisons. We will be sharing this letter with our members and supporters, especially in the state of Illinois.

Books, newspapers, and other printed materials are a crucial source of information, education and growth for people locked in prison. Letters can be a rare thing to look forward to. Our organization runs study programs, conducts surveys and regularly sends forms to prisoners to get updates on their status. All of these programs rely on prisoners receiving pieces of paper that we send them so they can fill out the forms and return them. The impact of blocking such mail would be massive.

We have been watching the spread of alarmism around drug-laced mail, and have even had such baseless accusations made against our mail! Of course testing proved the accusation false, just as it did in the recent incident at Shawnee, where the testing by Marion Fire Rescue came back false. We’ve also seen multiple cases where staff have claimed to have gotten sick from handling mail, which have been proven to be impossible claims multiple times now. The benefits of education and community connection are proven to help ensure staff safety far more than these imagined risks of being poisoned. Policy should be fact-based and should not succumb to rumors and fear-mongering.

Again, I am writing this email to clearly state my complete opposition to any and all proposals to halt mail delivered to incarcerated people, and urge you not to move forward with this proposal.

Sincerely Concerned,

MIM Distributors

<sup>Notes:
1. Madison Porter, 5 October 2024, Canton prison workers protest how inmates receive mail, 25 News.
2. For more materials on this campaign you can access Google docs here: bit.ly/IDOCmail</sup>

What is Tox?

It’s an instant messaging protocol with applications available for all the most popular operating systems.

What are the benefits?

1. peer-to-peer: no central point of failure or interference
2. no metadata: related to point 1, no third party can see who you are messaging, when or from where
3. encrypted: content of messages are encrypted
4. perfect forward secrecy: each message is encrypted with a separate key, so that decrypting one message does not allow an attacker to decrypt your previous messages (this is an advantage over GPG encryption)

What are the shortcomings of Tox?

1. new/alpha software not all apps have full functionality (i.e. no group messaging on Antox for Android), and software can be buggy
2. untested related to it’s newness as well as the relative complexity of a full messaging app, the encryption/security of Tox is not as well tested as GPG
3. peer-to-peer: This is not really a shortcoming, but you should be aware that when you use Tox with someone, while no one else should be able to see where you are messaging from, the persyn you are communicating with has access to your IP address by default. This is much better than most other apps out there, and it can mitigated by running Tox behind the Tor network. Below are instructions for how to do this.

How to run TRIfA behind Tor on an Android device

1. install Orbot and TRIfA both are available from F-Droid repositories if you don’t have or don’t want to use Google Play Store
2. open Orbot
3. click the button to turn on “VPN Mode”
4. at the bottom where it says “Tor-Enabled Apps” click the little gear wheel on the right
5. on the following screen check the box for TRIfA and any other apps you want to be forced through Tor
6. hit the back arrow
7. in orbot click the big “Start” button.
8. once orbot has a connection to Tor open TRIfA app and follow instructions for setting up your account

How to install Tox messaging app in Tails OS

[NOTE: If you were already using Tox in Tails, you should back up your config files before installing Tox again. Go to Places -> Dotfiles, then hit ctrl-H, then go into .config folder and copy the folder named “tox” and all its contents to your Persistent folder as a backup.]

• In Tails set up Persistence for dotfiles, applications and personal data following directions here: https://tails.boum.org/doc/persistent_storage/configure/index.en.html#index13h2<
• reboot Tails

• at login screen, first set up administrative password 1) click the “+” under “Additional Settings”

         2) click "Administrative Password"
  
         3) enter a password you will remember in both boxes and click "Add"

• enter your password you set for persistence and click “Unlock”
• once it says “Settings were loaded from the persistent storage” click “Start Tails”
• go to Applications -> System Tools -> Synaptic Package Manager
• you will need to enter the administrative password you set above (not persistence password)
• Synaptic will load the list of available software - will take a couple minutes and requires network connection

• click the search button and type in “qtox” or “utox” depending on which client you want

  Which should i pick?

        qTox, because uTox seems to crash every time you change settings in Tails, however, uTox is the lighter one, so slow computers might prefer it
  
        https://github.com/qTox/qTox
  
        https://github.com/uTox/uTox
  
        NOTE: the versions available in the stable debian repos will often be older than the latest versions on github, you can install the latest version but this guide will not cover that

• right-click on the package you searched for and click “Mark for Installation”
• it will ask if you want to install additional required packages, click “Mark”
• click “Apply” button, then click “Apply” on the screen that comes up – it will now download and install tox packages
• you should get a Tails popup asking if you want to Install Every Time - click that and this will occur automatically next time you boot Tails
• you can close Synaptic
• Run qTox by going to Applications -> Internet -> qTox (or uTox)
• create a Tox ID - password protect it in settings->Advanced

• Set tox up to use Tor

          IN qTox: click the gear in lower left and go to Advanced settings
  
          1) uncheck enable IPv6 and uncheck enable UDP (probably already off)
  
          2) Proxy type: SOCKS5
              Address: 127.0.0.1
              Port: 9050
  
          3) Click "Reconnect" - wait a bit and the circle next your name should turn green when you connect (also probably in your top menu bar)
  
          IN uTox go to: settings->Advanced
  
          1) Proxy (SOCKS 5) Address: 127.0.0.1   Port:9050
  
          2) Force uTox to always use proxy
  
          3) turn off Ipv6
  
  4) turn off UDP
  
         NOTE: sometimes changing these seems to cause uTox to crash, the important setting is the proxy to make sure it's connecting to Tor
  

• Shutdown qTox/uTox IMPORTANT: must do this before the below!

In order to save any settings, including your Tox ID keys, and your friends, you need to copy the files automatically stored in your dotfiles to the permanent persistent folder. More background on how to save dotfiles: https://tails.boum.org/doc/first_steps/persistence/configure/index.en.html#index11h2

local/temporary dotfiles in RAM are found here: /home/amnesia/.config/ permanent persistent dotfiles folder is here: /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/.config/

These files/folders are probably hidden. To see them, if you are in the file folder view click on the icon with three horizontal bars at the top and check the box to show hidden files.

To find these folders in a finder window: Click on Other locations at the bottom, then select computer. There you will see live and home folders

You need to move the tox folder and all its contents from the first location to the second. There should be two files in the tox folder: “tox_save.tox” and “utox_save”, then as you add friends files will be created for their info and your conversations if you choose to have conversations saved in the app.

The first time you do this copying over you will need to create the .config folder in the /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/ location if it’s not there already.

Command to use in terminal window when in the folder you want to copy TO: cp -r /home/amnesia/.config/tox /live/persistence/TailsData_unlocked/dotfiles/.config/

NOTE: Doing this using sudo (root user) will change file ownership to root. File ownership MUST be amnesia.

To check file ownership in Terminal:

 $ls -lah

To change file ownership in Terminal:

 $sudo chown amnesia:amnesia 

Connecting with others

To connect with others you must send them your Tox ID. This is not your name, your name is for display purposes only.

• click on your name/status in upper left
• you should now see your Tox ID as a long string of characters and a QR code, you can copy the long string into an PGP encrypted email and email it to your contact (if in persyn/on mobile they can scan the QR code, or you can send the image to them)
• if someone send you their Tox ID, in qTox click the “+” in bottom left and paste the code in “Add a Friend” -> Tox ID, similarly in uTox, paste your friend’s Tox ID into the Add Friend at bottom left.
• click “send friend request” and wait for their response - this is best done when you know the friend is online because you must both be online to exchange messages

Updating utox

Tails will automatically install the latest version available in the debian stable repo. Installing newer versions is beyond the scope of this guide.

Troubleshooting utox in Tails suggestions

• Delete the tox files from BOTH .config locations above
• Reinstall tox
• Run tox: it will create new files into your local .config folder
• Shut down tox. Move new tox_save.tox and utox_save over to persistence .config folder
• Try rerunning tox to see if your ID is persistent within a tails session. If so try restarting tails to see if it is persistent now.