MIM Notes ***

MIM Notes 299 · April 1, 2004 · Page 1

MIM Notes

April 1, 2004, Nº 299

The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

Free

INSIDE: Return of the King review * Dating advice * Una Página en Español...

www.etext.info/Politics/MIM

ith the election of pseudo-

socialists to power in Spain on

March 14th, the Anglo-Saxon

imperialist press went into overdrive

saying it was a vote for terrorism. MIM

would say of course it was a vote for

terrorism: terrorism was the only choice

on the Spanish imperialist ballot. On the

one side was giving the Spanish

government what it wanted: a vote for

the war in Iraq. And on the other hand

was giving Al-Qaeda what it wanted --

withdrawal from Iraq. Spaniards suddenly

voted overwhelmingly for withdrawal.

(Whether or not the "Socialist Party"

actually carries through with promises to

pull out of Iraq by the end of June is

another question.)

The definition of "terrorism" is violence

or the threat of violence against civilians

to achieve a political goal through

intimidation. Bush with Spain's help killed

thousands of Iraqi civilians to remove

Saddam Hussein. The troops are still

killing Iraqis and preventing freedom of

speech.(1) Likewise, somebody killed 200

Spaniards in the subway to achieve a

political goal, maybe one of Al-Qaeda's

goals since Al-Qaeda reportedly claimed

responsibility.

The Popular Party led by outgoing

Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar sent

1300 Spanish troops to help Bush in Iraq,

even though over 90% of Spaniards

oppose the Iraq war.(2) Until bombs in

Madrid killed about 200 Spaniards on the

subway, it looked like the Spanish people

were going to be bought-off for another

round of war.

The reasoning of the public prior to the

bombing appeared to be that Aznar had

brought prosperity to Spain, so it would

keep quiet about the war in Iraq. In reality,

Spain has benefited from the European

Union through economic growth in

conventional bourgeois terms. The

European Union (EU) has the historic task

of consolidating majority-exploiter rule,

especially in Ireland, Portugal, Spain and

Greece, but also eventually eastern

Europe, where MIM is not so sure the

EU can actually succeed in creating a

parallel competitor to the United $tates.

Currently parts of Europe like France,

Belgium and England are solidly bought-

off imperialist states while other parts look

spotty. The EU is aiming to fix all that.

The Madrid bombing derailed the EU-

Bush combination that we saw in Spain.

Combining a European economic outlook

UNCLE SAM

STIRS

TROUBLE IN

EQUATORIAL

GUINEA AND

ZIMBABWE

Bush teams up with

old apartheid buddies

to pick new neo-

colonial lackeys in

Africa

The United $tates, England and Spain

have conspired to overthrow the

government of Equatorial Guinea.

Mercenaries caught in the act confessed

on television March 10th.

The mercenaries sought to replace

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema

Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea with a man

in exile in Spain, Severo Moto. Equatorial

Guinea used to be Spain's colony. With

money from the U.$. Government and

multinational corporations and a promise

of oil interests, the mercenaries went into

action.

Equatorial Guinea caught 15 people, the

advance party: "The 15 people detained

comprised white South Africans, black

South Africans of Angolan origin, a

German and others from Kazakhstan and

Armenia, officials said on Tuesday."(2)

It is only fitting that Zimbabwe holds

most of those captured, some 64

mercenaries. England lately criticized

Zimbabwe to the point where Zimbabwe

withdrew from the Commonwealth

England heads.

"Some of the men were said to have

been former members of the notorious

32 Commando of the South African

defence force, a clandestine unit of the

apartheid regime who went on to join the

equally controversial private military

company Executive Outcomes, which

carried out military operations for the

governments of Sierra Leone and Angola

in the 1990s. It was formally disbanded

in 1999, largely in response to South

Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act,

which outlaws mercenary activities."(1)

An English gent providing a cover for

March 6

Protesters took to the streets across

the state of California to demand

California prisons shut down the Security

Housing Units (SHU). Like other control

unit prisons across the country, the SHUs

are prisons within a prison. They are

solitary confinement cells where

prisoners are locked up 23 hours a day

for years at a time. The one hour a day

these prisoner sometimes get outside of

their cell is spent alone in an exercise pen

not much larger than their cell, with no

direct sunlight. This long-term isolation

causes serious mental and physical health

problems for many prisoners. And these

torture cells are used to target politically

active prisoners using a system of

classification that makes it impossible for

prisoners to appeal their assignment.

Activist groups in California have

initiated a united front to shut down the

Security Housing Units. Organizations

and individuals have come together to

coordinate our actions and raise the

struggle against the SHU. The united

front recently convened a meeting that

included the Barrio Defense Committee,

the Maoist Internationalist Movement, the

African People's Socialist Party, Aztecs

of North America Inc, African People's

Solidarity Committee, Justice for

Palestinians, Zami! Cooperative, and

California Prison Focus. Participants also

include family members of SHU

Spanish people try to vote down Iraq War

Elections pit terrorist factions against each other

Spanish peace protestors (madrid.idymedia.org)

First Monthly Demo Against

SHU; Protests Across California

prisoners and former prisoners

themselves.

In cities across the state, participants

in the united front will be holding protests

the first Saturday of every month. We are

collecting petition signatures and

educating people about the SHU torture

and why it must be shut down. Participants

in this united front see the fight against

the SHU as part of a larger battle against

the criminal injustice system as a whole.

And many participants also have an

understanding of the corrupt system of

Amerikan imperialism that uses prisons

as a tool of social control and national

oppression. We bring these lessons to the

people on the streets as we build this

movement to shut down the SHU.

In the city of San Francisco MIM led

the protest against the SHU this month at

the corner of Powell and Market streets.

We set up a literature table with flyers,

newspapers, magazines and petitions. Our

signs demanding the SHU be shut down

caught the eye of many passersby who

stopped to ask about the campaign. Many

of the Black men walking by stopped to

support the struggle, having experienced

the prison system first hand. And many

Black wimmin also stopped based on their

experience of having relatives locked up.

Continued on page 8...

Continued on page 6...

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MIM Notes 299 · April 1, 2004 · Page 2

What is MIM?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor, MC206; Production, MC12

Letters

MIM Notes

The Official Newsletter of The Maoist Internationalist Movement

ISSN 1540-8817

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

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accepts submissions and critiques from anyone. The editors reserve the right to edit
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Reader takes MIM to

task on Abraham

Lincoln

Dear MIM,

It is indeed shocking to read in "MIM

Notes" that you are singing the praises

of George Washington and Abraham

Lincoln. Washington was not an "anti

colonist". The genicide against Native

People and Africans began before the

"revolution"and continued well after.

Washington just laid the basis for the white

priviledge we see today. That is why he

is "beloved" by Amerikans. Lincoln was

concerned with preserving the "Union".

He would have preferred to do so without

the "Emancipation Procomation". Slavery

did not end because Lincoln and white

Amerika found it "intoleritable" as you

have said, but because the Slaves found

it intoleritable. A true example of a

revolutionary hero from the past would

be Nat Turner. If the Trotskyists had been

around back then they would have

denounced Turner as an "indiscriminat

killer of ordinary white folk" including

"Women and children"(one of their

favorite terms).

mim@mim.org responds : Many

people have written to us, disappointed

with our recent comments on Abraham

Lincoln, George Washington, and other

American "founding fathers."

We are trying wrest certain terms and

ideas away form the reactionaries. We've

done this for years by spelling Amerikan

with a "k"--we've recently broadened

this campaign to undermine more of the

reactionaries bogus rhetoric (http://

www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/wim/cong/

noamericans.html). That's why you've

seen more references to George

Washington, Abraham Lincoln et al. in

MIM Notes recently. The point is: the

"principles" the reactionaries say these

"founding fathers" stood for contradict

their actual principles. In fact, the

"founding fathers'" principles are in many

important cases much closer to MIM's.

We're saying that if these boobs really

wanted to live up to the legacy of earlier

bourgeois revolutionaries, then they

wouldn't censor MIM Notes because we

uphold the principle of armed revolution;

they wouldn't set up secret courts and

further restrict civil liberties; etc. This does

*not* mean we think Abraham Lincoln

was a great proletarian revolutionary; we

are careful to make this clear. It's an old

story: when the bourgeoisie was young

and out of power, it took progressive

stances, talked about the "unity of all

mankind," etc. Now that it is old and in

power, it has to oppose those progressive

stances it once took. We are trying to

highlight that.

We'd agree with you that Black

resistance to slavery was principal to

slavery's overthrow. Lincoln did not free

the slaves; slavery was overthrown in a

revolutionary process, the largest part in

which was played by Blacks, especially

in the electoral and armed struggles of

Reconstruction. The failure of

Reconstruction and the counter-revolution

that followed has a lot to do with the fact

that the North's principal aim in the Civil

War was not the emancipation of Blacks.

That said, whatever his motives, Lincoln

did some very good things that objectively

aided the revolutionary struggle against

slavery. He stood up to the slave states

and called their bluff of armed action;

previous governments (all the way back

to George Washington) had always

backed down in the face of that threat.

Despite severe criticism at home, he both

emancipated the slaves and armed blacks

to fight against the South. These were

important factors in the South's eventual

defeat (and their experience under arms

helped Blacks fight for their rights during

Reconstruction). He stuck with a bloody

and unpopular war when he realized that

it was the only way to break the political

clout of the Southern planter class. Thus,

in several key moments, Lincoln was

presented with the choice of intra-white

unity or abolition of slavery--and he chose

the right side. Of course, he would rather

have abolished slavery peacefully, but

when events proved that peaceful

abolition was a pipe dream, he stuck by

his guns and toughed it out.

The point of all this: Lincoln took the

political principles of the rising bourgeoisie

seriously ("Our progress in degeneracy

appears to me to be pretty rapid. As a

nation, we began by declaring that `all

men are created equal.' We now

practically read it `all men are created

equal, except negroes," he once said).

However, the bourgeoisie can no longer

realize those principles--in fact it must

oppose them at every turn. This is the

hypocrisy we hope to unmask by

comparing Bush, Clinton, et al. to

Washington and Lincoln.

I should emphasize, though, that if on