MIM Notes ***

MIM Notes 302 · May 15, 2004 · Page 1

MIM Notes

May 15, 2004, Nº 302

The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

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INSIDE: `Enemy combatants' * Gender and the Iraq abuse story * Prisons

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MIM SCOOP:

TORTURE OF

NAKED PRISONERS

ORIGINATED IN

PENNSYLVANIA

PRISON

by MC17 & MC5

n May 5 President Bush told the

world that the torture of Iraqi

prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison

is not typical Amerikan behavior. He said

the soldiers who carried out the torture

"don't represent America" and stated

"This is a free country. We do not tolerate

this kind of abuses." Bush made these

statement in an interview aired on Al-

Arabiya, a station widely viewed by Arab

peoples. He also did an interview on the

Amerikan Arabic propaganda station Al-

Hurra, stating, "What took place in that

prison does not represent the America

that I know."(1)

But what took place at Abu Ghraib does

represent Amerika. It is happening daily

in prisons across the country, the country

that has the highest imprisonment rate in

the world. These statements by President

Bush are exposed as nothing more than

public image cleanup when we look at

the conditions in Amerikan prisons.

Two of the first seven soldiers caught

torturing Iraqis in Abu Ghraib prison

worked as U.$. prison guards before

going to Iraq. Staff Sgt. Ivan Frederick

learned how to torture prisoners at

Buckingham Correctional Center in

Dillwyn Virginia, after working there six

years.(2) MIM Notes reported limitations

of prison visitation and thefts of prisoner

property in Buckingham in 1997.

However, Virginia has imposed

censorship on MIM before and we do

not have as many details about prison

conditions as we would like. Again, it's

the same old story of cover-up.

Charles Graner, another of the seven

caught torturing Iraqis worked in the

AMERIKAN

TORTURE

OF IRAQIS

EXPOSED

by MC12 and MC206

n the run up to the Amerikan invasion,

in February 2003, President Bush

declared: "The first to benefit from a

free Iraq would be the Iraqi people

themselves. Today they live in scarcity

and fear under a dictator who has brought

them nothing but war and misery and

torture."(1) Today, they live in scarcity

and fear under a FOREIGN dictator who

has brought them nothing but war and

misery, and--we can now confirm--

torture.

Despite valiant efforts by quick-acting

politicians and media apologists, it has not

been possible to make the torture

practiced by the Amerikan military in the

Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq out to be the

work of a few lone, "sick" individuals.

The story broke when the CBS news

program 60 Minutes released photos of

U$ soldiers gloating over naked and

hooded Iraqi prisoners. However, the

most detailed description (to date) of

torture, abuse and humiliation at the hands

of Amerikan soldiers, contractors and

intelligence agents comes from a U$

army report on Abu Ghraib, which was

leaked to the New Yorker magazine.(2)

The report details how soldiers

humiliated some of the prisoners by

forcing them to simulate sex acts. A photo

included in the report shows an Amerikan

womyn "giving a jaunty thumbs-up sign

and pointing at the genitals of a young

Iraqi, who is naked except for a sandbag

over his head, as he masturbates." One

soldier testifies, "I saw two naked

detainees, one masturbating to another

kneeling with its [sic] mouth open."

Although this soldier claims he refused

to participate in the abuse--"I just didn't

want to be part of anything that looked

criminal"--he repeatedly refers to Iraqis

as "it" and did little to stop the abuse (he

told his superiors, then assumed "the issue

was taken care of").(2)

The army report makes it clear that the

Amerikan occupation

keeps looking to the

future for relief

by MC5 and MC17

May 4--Amerikan Pentagon officials

announced recently their plan to keep

Amerikan troops in Iraq at the current

level (about 135,000) through at least the

end of 2005.(1) Originally the United

$tates had claimed it wanted to reduce

Amerikan occupation forces by 20,000.

Uncle $am believed the transition to a

pseudo-autonomous Iraqi government on

June 30th, 2004 would allow this.

Amerikan troops are needed to keep

the Iraqi population from rising up and

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners and U$ prisons

NAKED HUMILIATION: The Amerikan torture tactic

on display in Iraq (above) -- and following the

supression of the Attica prison uprising in New York

in 1971, when prisoners were paraded around naked

in the mud (below right) and forced to lie prone for

hours (above right).

Imperialists spell relief: D-R-A-F-T

taking back their

country. And

Amerika is

willing to use

whatever force

is necessary to

a c h i e v e

domination of

Iraq.

The increased

U$ "force structure" in Iraq is an

accomplishment of the Iraqi proletariat

and oppressed launching armed struggle,

without so much as the benefit of a Maoist

vanguard party (as far as we know).

Since the time we have written articles

on the draft, "Secretary of Defense" and

nutcase Donald Rumsfeld has reiterated

opposition to the draft and said that he

will find a way to rotate the 1.4 million

people in the Amerikan military to find

135,000 soldiers for combat in Iraq.(2)

Many of the 1.4 million are office and

technical back-up personnel.

MIM reiterates that Rumsfeld (or a like-

minded successor) might be able to pull

that off. The United $tates is not in

England's position yet,(5) which is why

this will be a protracted war against U$

imperialism best handled by pan-Arab

nationalism and proletarian

internationalism over a long haul. We must

steer away from seeing U$ imperialism

as about to fall, but also we must fully

credit the damage already done by the

Iraqi fighters fighting consciously and

Continued on page 4...

Continued on page 6...

Continued on page 7...

MIM Notes 302 · May 15, 2004 · Page 2

What is MIM?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes is the official Party voice; more complete statements are published in our journal,
MIM Theory. Material in MIM Notes is the Party's position unless noted. MIM Notes
accepts submissions and critiques from anyone. The editors reserve the right to edit
submissions unless permission is specifically denied by the author; submissions are
published anonymously unless authors insist on identification (prisoners are never
identified by name). MIM is an underground party that does not publish the names of its
comrades in order to avoid the state surveillance and repression that have historically
been directed at communist parties and anti-imperialist movements. MCs, MIM comrades,
are members of the Party. The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League (RAIL) is an anti-
imperialist mass organization led by MIM (RCs are RAIL Comrades). MIM's ten-point
program is available to anyone who sends in a SASE.

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For general correspondence, contact:

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I was reading your revolutionary

definitions page. Let me start off by

saying thank you for making the

definitions easy to understand without

"talking down" to readers. However, I

have one question, or perhaps reservation,

considering your definition of a labor

aristocracy. While I agree completely that

workers in the United States benefit from

imperialist exploitation abroad, and

unfortunately this corrupts their

consciousness, I have a question

regarding the statement that they are

therefore no longer exploited. Isn't a

portion of the surplus value of their labor

still exploited by capitalists in the United

States? In other words, aren't they still

exploited even though they benefit from

imperialist exploitation, even if this

exploitation is to a lesser degree than the

exploitation experienced in the third

world. Perhaps it is the contradiciton of

US workers being both an exploiter and

exploited? Just a thought. I look forward

to your response.

--An internet reader

MIM responds: There's one quick

answer to the question of whether

Amerikan "workers" are still exploited,

even though they do receive a part of the

surplus value the imperialists rob from the

Third World: the majority of Amerikan

"workers" are in non-productive jobs.

They do not produce anything and hence

cannot produce surplus value. They are

"necessary" only because the capitalists

need guards, advertising experts,

salespeople and lawyers to keep making

profits. As J Sakai points out in "Settlers:

the Mythology of the White Proletariat,"

already in the 1970s around a third of

Amerikan workers were police, prison

guards, or employed by the military.

The key to understanding unproductive

sector workers via surplus-value is that

they can only preserve or appropriate it;

they cannot expand it. Without

salespeople, capitalists can certainly blow

their chance at obtaining surplus-value,

but no matter how good or how many

salespeople one employs, there is a limit

to the price of a good. Without the

commodities produced by the productive

sector, the sales staff have nothing, even

in the most elementary conditions. If

everyone were a guard, soldier or lawyer,

everyone would die of starvation and

exposure. Life without any guards,

soldiers or lawyers, however, is certainly

possible.

According to the definitions used by the

COMINTERN, the majority of

imperialist-country "workers" are at best

"semi-proletarian." COMINTERN

documents clearly consider the "urban

petty bourgeoisie and broad layers of the

so-called middle class, of office workers

etc." to be non-proletarians. Of course,

the majority of Amerikans is (and sees

itself as) "middle class."

For those Amerikan workers in

productive sector jobs, we have

extensively documented that the amount

of surplus value transferred to them from

the exploited Third World exceeds the

value of their labor. Of course, on the

whole the capitalists must pay workers

less than the value of their product--but

they can afford to bribe a small minority

of workers, and, as Lenin's Imperialism

points out by quoting Cecil Rhodes, such

Amerikan workers both bought-off and exploited?

bribery helps secure the imperialists'

interests in the "home country." Any

Amerikan workers who are truly exploited

are so few and isolated so as to not

constitute a class.

We recommend those interested in

these questions read MIM Theory 1, "A

White Proletariat?" J Sakai's "Settlers,"

and our "Imperialism and its class

structure, 1997," wich is available free

online: http://www.etext.info/Politics/

MIM/mt/imp97/index.html.

`Hey, it's not as easy as it looks...

--MC12

MIM Notes 302 · May 15, 2004 · Page 3

by mousnonya, April 20, 2004

$pain has decided to withdraw its troops

from Iraq as quickly as possible.(1)

However $pain has also declared itself

willing to send "humanitarian" relief to

Iraq.(2) So $pain is a two-faced

imperialist. However, despite the fact that

the imperialists are treacherous, the

international proletariat is patient. Iraqi

resistance leader Muqtada el Sadr has

called on his troops not to attack Spanish

soldiers and to allow them to return home

safely to their families where they

belong.(3)

Sadr's action contradicts U$

propaganda which calls Iraq's resistance

"bandits." The recent release of Japanese

hostages by the Iraqi resistance also

contradicts U$ lies. These facts should

make people question whether Uncle

$cam is a lying hypocrite or merely

deluded. MIM sees a practice and pattern

of U$ lies and calls it like it is: "your"

government, the capitalists, regards you

as expendable. They will lie to you. They

will tell you to kill. And if you die fighting

the rich man's war he will celebrate your

making him rich with a 21 gun salute.

MIM sees the pull-out of $pain as

probably the first imperialist rat deserting

the sinking ship of the U$ occupation of

Iraq. Honduras, one more Spanish

speaking country with a history of being

attacked by U$ imperialism, has also

declared that it will withdraw its soldiers

from Iraq.(4) Then the Dominican

Republic pulled out its 300 and Thailand

says it may be next. Imperialists of various

stripes are calling for NATO (5) or the

UN (6) to take over the occupation of

Iraq. But who wants to take over? No

one. Because any other imperialist

coalition would face the same fate as the

U$, being bogged down in an unpopular

bloody war.

[mim3@mim.org interjects: The UN is

already taking a greater role in forming

the puppet regime that comes to power

June 30th when the U$ colonial regime

ends in favor of a neo-colonial regime.

Despite the UN role, it still looks like other

major powers such as Russia, India,

France and Germany have not received

a good enough deal from Uncle $am to

send in their own troops. We have to

distinguish between troops and diplomats.

The situation with troops on the ground

has not changed and that's what is

important to the political climate in Iraq.

People should not be confused by the

meaning of the June 30th date Bush is

talking about. Troops in

Germany and Japan have never left

since World War II. Probably the best

thing that could happen to Amerika is that

the Iraqis hand Amerika such a stunning

military defeat that Bush pulls out the

troops June 30th or shortly thereafter.

The Iraqis will no doubt try to make it

happen, but we are still counting on a

protracted struggle running into the next

Bush or Kerry term.]

Each defection of a U$ ally is a major

victory for the anti-imperialists because

it makes the illegal U$ occupation of Iraq

all the more difficult. MIM does not

expect a UN takeover of Iraq. In fact,

some neoconservatives probably wanted

to use Iraq to destroy the UN which they

saw as no longer useful in extending U$

imperialism. Germany and France, both

NATO members, will likely oppose using

NATO (supposedly a defensive alliance)

to occupy a country far from Europe. The

U$ imperialists have painted themselves

into a corner.

We're sure the U$ imperialists are

mad. MIM dares to ask something the

mainstream press and imperialists are too

gutless to say out loud:(7) When will

other U$ allies in Iraq such as Poland,

Italy, Japan, Australia, and Britain send

their troops home? Britain also produces

oil. Japan is oil dependent. So even though

Japan has seen its hostages in Iraq

released we expect to see Japan continue

to lick the b.s.-encrusted cowboy boots

of Amerikan imperialists. Reactionary

Anglo solidarity will increasingly be

stressed by "realities on the ground." The

United $tates will find itself increasingly

isolated and overextended. This is exactly

one of the preconditions MIM sees as

necessary to a revolution in Amerika. The

truth is and will become increasingly

obvious: imperialism means only death for

you and me and riches for large

corporations.

Meanwhile U$ atrocities continue: U$

imperialists killed two more journalists in

Iraq.(8) "[A]t least 26 Iraqi and foreign

journalists and media workers have been

killed" so far in Iraq.(9) So it's no surprise

that Hosni Mubarak, U$ puppet leader of

Egypt, is even saying the U$ is now hated

more than ever in the Arab world.(10)

Once again, MIM is willing to use

scientific materialism to reach the painful

truth that no one else recognizes let alone

says: the continuing murder of journalists

in Iraq is no accident. The imperialists

want the press to report what is good for

imperialism and ignore the ugly truth.

MIM calls on mainstream journalists

unwilling to be censored or to tolerate the

murder of their colleagues: Avenge your

colleagues' deaths. Refuse to be

intimidated. Write for MIM Notes.

Notes:
1. Spain withdrawal from Iraq deals new blow to
US coalition Sun Apr 18, (AFP) http://
story.news.yahoo.com/
news?tmpl=story&cid=1515&ncid
=1515&e=2&u=/afp/20040418/wl_mideast_afp/
iraq_worldwrap; Spanien beginnt mit
Truppenauszug aus dem Irak (German Press
Agency) April 20, 2004, http://
de.news.yahoo.com/040419/3/3zpbu.html;
L'Espagne prépare le retrait de ses troupes
présentes en Irak, Andrew Marshall (Reuters) 19
April 2004 http://fr.news.yahoo.com/040419/85/

Spain, Honduras, Dominican Rep. send their troops home

3r41p.html
2. Spain to Offer U.S. Non-Military Aid in Iraq,
Sun Apr 18, (Reuters) http://www.reuters.com/
newsArticle.jhtml?type=t
opNews&storyID=4856690
3. El Sadr fordert Stopp von Angriffen auf
Spanische Soldaten April 19, 2004, (AP) http://
de.news.yahoo.com/040419/12/3znz8.html; Sadr
veut épargner les Espagnols, qui accélèrent leur
retrait French Press Agency (AFP) http://
fr.news.yahoo.com/040419/202/3r5n5.html
4. Honduras to Pull Its Troops Out of Iraq
Gustavo Palencia (Reuters) http://
story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/
nm/20040420/wl_nm/
iraq_honduras_dc&cid=574&ncid=1480; Auch
Honduras zieht Truppen aus Irak ab April 20,
2004, (German Press Agency) http://
de.news.yahoo.com/040420/3/3zpfb.html;
5. L'OTAN pourrait jouer un rôle dans la
sécurité en Irak, selon le ministre australien de la
Défense April 20, 2004, (AP) http://
fr.news.yahoo.com/040420/5/3r5t1.html
6. Michel Barnier et son homologue russe
appellent à l'intervention de l'ONU en Irak. AP,
April 20, 2004.
7. Colin Powell craint que plusieurs pays ne
suivent l'exemple espagnol et se retirent d'Irak
April 20, 2004, (AP) (Colin Powell fears that
several countries will follow the Spanish
example and withdraw from Iraq) http://
fr.news.yahoo.com/040420/5/3r5t0.html MIM
asks the reader: Why can't you read this in
English?
8. GIs Kill 2 Workers of U.S.-Funded Iraq TV
Mon Apr 19, 2:44 PM ET (AP) http://
story.news.yahoo.com/
news?tmpl=story&cid=540&
ncid=736&e=10&u=/ap/20040419/
ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_journalists_killed
9. See note 8.
10. Mubarak: Arabs Hate U.S. More Than Ever
20 April 2004 (Reuters) http://
story.news.yahoo.com/
news?tmpl=story&cid=574&ncid=72
1&e=1&u=/nm/20040420/wl_nm/
mideast_egypt_usa_dc.

This is the second in a series of

articles. The first (in MN310) covered

drugs, music and art; future

installments will address the topics of

tone, sectarianism and chauvinism.

I'm going to talk about subjectivism and

its relationship to our communist goals by

giving a bunch of examples of

subjectivism--the belief that what one

feels or likes is true or supreme. What's

most important is not the individual evils

of subjectivism, but understanding the

overall approach that we as Maoist

scientists apply to everything. We at MIM

are not saying we have some long list of

behaviors that we tack on to the end of

the "Ten Commandments." It's not our

point to bring attention to hypocrisy in

individual behavior--and this is something

that we from Christian, Jewish and

Islamic cultures have to watch out for.

(Buddhism has a little better intellectual

material to work with on this question.)

We Maoist scientists are interested in the

underlying causes of behavior.

In all likelihood, the revolution will be

successful only through the efforts of

"hypocrites" envisioning future

generations growing up with better social

influences than they had. Understanding

this is part of understanding materialism,

as when Lenin said revolution is always

made with the imperfect social material

at hand, not by divine perfection of

humyn consciousness first.

No one is a 100% pure. Hence, MIM

has acted to push aside the politics of

putting lifestyle first. Whoever comes up

with the idea that a party should set up a

list of lifestyles to condone or not condone

is setting up a huge Liberal fight to divide

the party. We have to come up with a list

of bad things, but our attack has to be on

the causes, not the bearers of those bad

lifestyles. With these warnings, I turn to

several examples of subjectivism.

IV. Love

Now let's look at love. Many see it as

the one refuge from corruption all around.

Too many wimmin are looking for love

only from lone individuals instead of the

international proletariat. People in love

hope they won't see their love stolen for

a pack of cigarettes, a bit of crack, a man

who has a higher paying job or a womyn

with bigger breasts. Ah, but here is the

sad part: for all the people who are looking

at this question, "love" itself is usually

thought of as a refuge of two people. Yet,

where do all these challenges to love

come from? People in love or pursuing

love but who do not ask this question are

already guilty of another kind of

subjectivism. The sources of problems in

love come from society. If we can

question what is going on between two

people, we can also extend that to the

question of love in the whole society.

V. Sex

For the sake of having a definition of

romance culture we've said that sex is a

component of romantic love. Going back

hundreds of years poets and even

preachers have said that womyn is a

creation to remind men of God's power

and what Heaven could be. Milton was

even talking about the question of how

men tempted by Satan would worship

wimmin. While some people say it is

music, some say the rush they got from a

particular drug --probably even more

men would say that there is nothing more

subjectively profound than the experience

of seeing naked wimmin and then having

sex.

Again, MIM has no need to deny that

there is a portion of society is that would

Preparing for the all-round dictatorship of the proletariat

Continued on page 9...

COMBATING SUBJECTIVISM IN

ALL ARENAS

MIM Notes 302 · May 15, 2004 · Page 4

infamous SCI-Greene Prison in

Pennsylvania holding Mumia Abu Jamal.

Graner is the guy smiling with arms folded

in the torture photos. SCI-Greene also

prohibits MIM Notes. On August 15, 1998,

MIM reported this about SCI-Greene in

Pennsylvania: "As a result of result of

the brutal beatings inflicted upon prisoners

(back here in the hole at SCI Greene) by

guards, the grand wizard warden, Ben

Varner had been terminated from his

prestigious and luxurious position.

Unfortunately the same people who

removed him from office decided to

relocate him to another prison within

Pennsylvania. So now he's on the eastern

side of the state implementing the same

dirty tactics. Only now he's been demoted

back to Deputy Superintendent."(3)

Thus, in 1998, we already reported the

important facts of life in Amerikan prisons:

get slapped on the wrist and there is

always another prison willing to take you

and if you don't like that, then there is

always the U.S. Armed Forces which will

take you for torture abroad.

MIM reported what appears to be the

disciplining of someone referred to as

"Grainey" by prisoners in 1998. That's

not definitely a connection to "Graner"

and prison authorities say privacy rules

prevent them from saying if Graner was

disciplined in 1998.

On August 15, 1998, we reported the

following about SCI-Greene: "Plus,

according to the television news, 40

guards/predators are supposed to be

FIRED! They have recovered videotapes

of inmates being beaten down while

NAKED! The inmates/POW's never did

anything to cause these pernicious

predators to assault them." Thus, the

naked video thing came from SCI-

Greene and has now been exported to

Iraq! Graner worked at SCI-Greene from

1996 to today where he is still employed

there.(4)

Perhaps if SCI-Greene had not

censored MIM Notes in 1997(5) and given

us such a hard time and if the imperialist

media were not so pig-headed

reactionary, we could have struggled

successfully to prevent the 1998 events

in SCI-Greene--and maybe even

Graner's role in Abu Ghraib, but the facts

are that the U.S. prison authorities make

it extremely difficult for MIM to do its

work. To this day, SCI-Greene is

censoring MIM. Documents from prison

authorities at SCI-Greene justifying this

cover-up and isolation of prison conditions

can be found at our website. There are

about 50 different documents on SCI-

Greene at the MIM website thanks to all

the horrors there.(6)

In fact it should be no surprise that Abu

Ghraib prisoners were tortured, as this is

common in the Amerikan prison system

in general where beatings, long term

isolation, medical neglect, sexual assault,

and humiliation are all part of a system

that doesn't even pretend to offer

Abuse of Iraqi prisoners and U$ prisons

For President Bush to
claim that Amerikan
doesn't tolerate the kind
of abuses that happened
at Abu Ghraib is a
boldfaced lie.

rehabilitation or education.

An Army investigation that resulted in

criminal charges against six military police

officers found a number of specific abuses

at Abu Ghraib prison. Below we describe

the findings and explain the similarity to

daily conditions in prisons across this

country.

Soldiers punched, slapped, kicked and

otherwise physically beat Abu Ghraib

prisoners. This is typical day to day

activity for prisons across Amerika where

guards regularly beat prisoners and then

file false reports accusing the prisoners

(often shackled and held down by several

guards) of attacking the guards to avoid

any criminal charges for these actions.

Abu Ghraib prisoners were left naked

for days at a time. Some were videotaped

and photographed. Some were arranged

in sexually explicit positions or to perform

sex acts for the photos. Prisons in

Amerika have video cameras throughout,

taping prisoners with and without their

clothing on. Leaving prisoners naked is

common practice, especially locked in

solitary confinement, but also outside in

cold temperatures. Full body cavity

searches are also daily practices in

Amerikan prisons serving only to

humiliate and degrade prisoners.

One naked Abu Ghraib prisoner was

forced to stand on a box with wires

attacked to his fingers, toes and penis.

While we can't describe specific

instances of this same form of torture in

other Amerikan prisons, the idea is the

same everywhere, it is only the tools used

to torture prisoners than vary.

At Abu Ghraib a male police guard had

sex with a female prisoner. Sexual abuse

by guards and by other prisoners is

common in Amerikan prisons. Guards set

up situations where prisoners will be

raped by another prisoner, if the guards

themselves do not commit the rape. This

happens in both male and female prisons.

These are just the abuses the military

is willing to admit to in a report. Additional

accounts of torture at Abu Ghraib include:

Guards threatened prisoners with guns,

beat them with brooms and chairs,

sodomized one with a chemical light,

poured phosphoric liquid on prisoner, and

allowed military dogs to bite them. Again

these are all common practices in

Amerikan prisons. The form of torture

may differ from one prison to the next,

but the physical and mental abuse by the

guards is common practice throughout this

country's prisons.

In California recent reports on the

prisons have exposed conditions very

similar to what was found at Abu Ghraib.

These reports have even reached the

mainstream media, with frequent stories

appearing in the Los Angeles Times and

San Francisco Chronicle describing the

cover-up at the top of the California

Department of Corrections that stopped

investigators from looking in to brutal

prison guards at Pelican Bay State Prison

among others. This brutality has resulted

in severe physical and mental injuries to

many prisoners and even some deaths. A

recent film from the California Youth

Authority shows guards there brutally

beating and kicking kids locked up in a

facility there. And this guard brutality is

on top of the standard conditions in

Amerikan prisons which include control

units where prisoners are locked in

solitary confinement for years at a time

in conditions that have been condemned

by the United Nations as torture.

For President Bush to claim that

Amerikan doesn't tolerate the kind of

abuses that happened at Abu Ghraib is a

boldfaced lie. The criminal injustice

system in this country is built on a solid

foundation of torture. It is used as a system

of social control. Whether trying to extract

confessions or information, or just trying

to degrade and break the will of prisoners,

the tools used by the system include

torture, humiliation, and degradation.

Stories about these abuses can be found

in the pages of MIM Notes every two

weeks, in a section written by prisoners

called Under Lock and Key. Occasionally

they reach the mainstream media where

politicians scramble to explain away the

abuse as atypical and the fault of a few

individuals (who often escape punishment

as soon as the publicity dies down).

What is unusual about Abu Ghraib is

not the torture of the prisoners there but

that the torture was exposed and that

Amerikan officials are now forced to

disavow it and even punish some

individuals for what happened there. But

punishment of individuals will not change

the criminal injustice system. The more

than two million people locked behind bars

in this country know the truth of the daily

torture that Amerika endorses as a

condition of imprisonment. It will not

change until we dismantle imperialist

system that uses these prisons as a tool

of social control.

Notes:

1. MSNBC, May 5, 2004

2. USA Today 7May 2004, p. 6a.

3. www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/cal/

Waynesburg.txt

4. http://

www.thejerichomovement.com/

charlesgraner.html

5. http://www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/

ulk/ulk/ulk150.html

6. http://www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/

agitation/prisons/censor/archive/ To read

detailed accounts of abuses of Amerikan

prisons across the country visit: http://

www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/agitation/

prisons.

Continued from page 1...

MIM Notes 302 · May 15, 2004 · Page 5

The photo below shows U.S. military

reservist Lynndie England mocking a row

of naked Iraqi men with a leer on her face.

In the other photos, the men are forced

to perform sex acts for the cameras.

A lot of people have a hard time

thinking of gender as anything but biology.

When MIM calls Amerikan females-by-

biology "men," we get a lot of blank stares

and snickers. Yet the proof is that Lynndie

England is no one special in Amerikkka.

Any female-biology adult of the right age

could have volunteered to take her place

in the Amerikan Army. That's the proof

that it is a group thing about gender in

Amerika.

On the other hand, it is the Iraqi people

with penises being gender oppressed in

these pictures. Other phrases you will hear

used for this is that Iraqis here are "social

females" or "socially wimmin." Lynndie

England will be referred to as "socially-

speaking a man" and other variations on

the idea.

There will be a lot of speculation

whether the smile on Lynndie England's

face comes from something deep down

in female biology or whether she is just

going along in comradeship with her male

peers in the U.S. Army. That's a

discussion for another day. For this once,

MIM will let the pictures do the talking

for why MIM is the only party of any

kind with a line addressing how this got

to be.

by mousnonya, April 16, 2004

This story was written two weeks

before the Amerikan abuse of Iraqi

prisoners at Abu Ghraib became

common knowledge. It goes to show

that Abu Ghraib is not a case of a few

bad apples, as nutcase Don Rumsfeld

and his posse of generals would have

us believe. Further, it says something

about the degree the U$ media toadies

up to the Amerikan government. If

Amerikan abuses have been so obvious

since the occupation began last April,

why are they only reporting about them

now? How many atrocities go

unreported? Outside of the coastal

cities where magazines like the New

Yorker are actually read, how

successful is the Pentagon in selling

its line that these incidents of brutality

are just that: isolate incidents?

MIM has been reporting on

Amerikan crimes committed in the name

of the "war on terror" since September

2001 (and we're been reporting on the

atrocities committed in Amerikan

prisons since we started publishing

MIM Notes). With your help--financial

and/or practical--we can make MIM

Notes into a voice that the bourgeois

media has to reckon with.

U$ forces are indiscriminately killing

even more Iraqis than usual in the wake

of the 80+ U$ soldiers killed last week. It

is not surprising that the U$ press is

ignoring this fact. Since the imperialists

are bickering about how best to exploit

the Third World, the foreign press is not

reluctant to report some of the facts. For

example, the Agence Presse France notes

that "At Fallujah, after more than a week

of bloody combat, young marines are not

hesitating to kill Iraqis to `avenge their

comrades'" (1) -- killing innocent people

for no reason at all other than their brown

skin.

MIM credits AFP for pointing out the

beating death of one Iraqi by U$

soldiers.(2) Why did the soldiers kill Salem

Hassan? Because he refused to remove

a picture of a cleric Moqtada Sadr from

his car. These people call themselves the

forces of freedom. MIM calls them lying

parasites.

Some bourgeois journalists claim to be

concerned by mercenaries (a.k.a.

"contractors") in Iraq. However the fact

is all imperialist soldiers are mercenary

vampires feeding off the blood of the Third

World. The AFP does not say whether it

was the U$ regular army, the national

guard, marines or private armies who

killed Hassan. To MIM it does not matter

which imperialist hatchet men bludgeoned

Hassan's skull to pulp. The fact is:

imperialism in its death spasms pointlessly

kills even more people. The imperialists'

murderous rampages only hasten

imperialism's doom. Expect more and

more resistance in Iraq, more and more

repression from the United $tates and

ultimately a defeat in Iraq--just like

Vietnam.

We are witnessing today a straight out

power grab: U$ imperialists bet that they

could seize Iraq's oil. They bet they could

buy off the Iraqi ruling class. And they

hoped to be able to threaten any other

oil-dependent imperialist country like

France or Japan by cutting off the Arab

oil. The fact that the war in Iraq is about

oil should be obvious to anyone who

thinks. U$ imperialism has already lost

this gamble: the Iraqi ruling class is not

going to be bribed. Not only that, OPEC

has reacted: oil has gone over $35 per

barrel. Even after devaluing the dollar

from 80 Euro cents to 1.20 euros (a

devaluation of at least 20%) oil still

remains so high that more recession is

just about guaranteed--unless the U$ can

squeeze oil out of Iraq or overthrow the

government of Venezuela (the last time

the U$ tried that it failed). Since

capitalism guarantees recession it also

promises us more pointless wars and more

needless death. These needless deaths

are inherent in imperialism, capitalism's

highest stage.

Arab states are gambling that they can

max out oil profits and justify it as resisting

U$ imperialism. European imperialists are

gambling that they can expand eastward

into the Caucasus and thus at least avoid

energy dependency and possibly also

come to denominate oil contracts in Euros

instead of dollars--which would drive the

value of the dollar down by as much as

40%.

Notes:

1. 15 April, 2004 AFP, http://

fr.news.yahoo.com/040415/202/

3qwhc.html

2. Iraqi `beaten to death' by US troops,

AFP April 14, 2004 http://news.com.au/

c o m m o n / s t o r y _ p a g e /

0,4057,9282015%255E1702,00.html

U$ atrocities in Iraq guarantee U$ defeat

A picture worth 10,000 words about gender

Female biology but gender oppressor: Lynndie England