MIM Notes 311 · December 2004 · Page 1
MIM Notes
December 2004, Nº 311
The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)
Free
INSIDE: Extensive election analysis on pages 6-9 * Una Página en Español...
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NO-ALTERNATIVE
DEMS CODDLE
BACKWARDS
VOTERS, SHARE
POWER WITH WAR-
MONGERS
The nature of the Bu$h victory
demonstrates some very clear points
about the united $tates. Our candidate
"none of the above" has to make a
concession speech for the nation
commonly known as whites in the united
$tates; even though our candidate won
over 50 million votes from among
registered voters who number 173.6
million.(1) 57% of whites voted for Bu$h.
More than 89% of Blacks, 55% of
Hispanics and 59% of Asians voted
against Bush and large numbers stayed
home with us.(2)
Something that MIM has never done is
claim that it has majority support in
Amerika. If we were like former
president Richard Nixon, we would say
we are the "silent majority," because
generally the majority does not vote
except in presidential elections and
candidates like Bu$h brag about winning
with 48% of 55% of the population voting
as in 2000 or maybe something like 51%
of 59% this time.
Something that this election reveals and
we've said before is that reactionary
white politics does have reserves in
Amerika. In 2002, there were just under
193 million people eligible to vote in the
united $tates.(3) About another 18 million
people the U.S. Census found but can't
vote because they're not citizens. The
imperialists must have really turned up
their game to register 173.6 million and
leaving only about 20 million not registered
but eligible. It appears 50 million just
registered in the last two years.
The smoking gun in our observation on
the reactionary nature of Amerika is that
voter turnout did increase from the year
2000. They're at 114 million up from 105
million in 2000, and not all the votes are
counted yet, so we may get as high as
120 million.(4) Nonetheless, Bu$h won
by a bigger margin than in 2000. So though
Crackers get their man
It's lifestyle politics, stupid
By MC12
In a report on a news conference held
by Air Force Gen. Richard Myers,
chairman of the U.$. military's Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Reuters quoted him as
saying that "hundreds and hundreds of
insurgents" killed or captured in Fallujah,
but "hardly any, if any, civilian casualties
so far."(1)
In a report from an "embedded"
reporter in Fallujah, the Washington Post
quoted an Amerikan sergeant as saying,
"It's a great thing blowing stuff up" and
pointing to a 155mm round for his cannon.
"Three of these and I can take out a
whole building. As long as no civilians are
out there, we're doing all right."(2)
Surely an independent media would
point out such obvious lies. Instead,
Reuters went on to talk about wounded
Amerikan troops, and the Post went on
to talk about how cool the cannon was.
In fact, neither of these reports mentioned
any civilian deaths, even though there are
known to be many.
Civilian deaths are reported here and
there, but they are not part of the main
narrative of the Amerikan press. In a
separate story we have a quote from a
man saying "I saw a man carrying my
son Mustafa, who is 14 months old. He
was bleeding, with his left leg amputated,
and then I looked for my wife and found
her wounded with multiple fractures in
the arms and legs. I used to sell sheep in
Fallujah, and now I am a jobless man
staying in hospital with a handicapped
child and dying wife." The Iraqi Red
Crescent spokesperson is quoted as
saying, "There's no medicine, no water,
no electricity," and describing a situation
where "a woman died after miscarrying
in a refugee camp where no doctor was
present. A boy died of a snake bite
because there was no antidote available.
A clinic used as an emergency hospital
Amerikan militarism turns
Iraq into a bloody mess
`FREE' MEDIA LOOKS THE OTHER WAY
was hit by a bomb, killing many doctors,
nurses and patients, medical staff said."(3)
A Scottish newspaper reported:
"Fallujah residents today claimed US jets
had destroyed a clinic that had been
On September 12, 1992, fascist
Peruvian police captured the greatest
revolutionary of our hemisphere,
Comrade Gonzalo, the leader of the PCP
(Communist Party of Peru). The alleged
appearance of Comrade Gonzalo in a
Peru courtroom November 5 2004 is a
bittersweet reminder of the twists and
turns of revolutionary struggle in Peru.
Beloved by the people of Peru,
President Gonzalo was not perynally able
to bring Peru a happy ending in its story
of revolution. It remains up to the masses
of Peru to bring the reality of revolution
into being. The study of Marxism-
Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought is
essential for revolution in all of Latin
America.
When the fascists arrested Gonzalo,
conservative estimates put the
percentage of Peru under PCP control at
between 25 and 40 percent.(1) By that
time, the PCP had coordinated far more
armed struggle than Fidel Castro ever
had. In a handful of small battles, Fidel
Castro came to power in Cuba. The PCP
showed how a thorough revolution could
sweep Latin America under more difficult
conditions.
Though the PCP did not overthrow the
fascist regime before the capture of
Gonzalo, the success it did have was still
the greatest revolutionary success in the
hemisphere since World War II. MIM has
spoken with academics who cannot
imagine what sustained revolution in Peru
for 12 years. There is no theory for it in
the academic world, but in Marxism-
Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought we
The fascists captured Comrade Gonzalo, but
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Gonzalo Thought is free!
Continued on page 5...
Continued on page 4...
Continued on page 6...
MIM Notes 311 · December 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
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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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Ex-soldier sees
the light
I'm a 39 year old First Nations combat
vet who has finally seen the light. I grew
up in Occupied First Nations land
surrounded by poverty, alcoholism, and
racism. As a young person it was made
clear to me that the only way to escape
was to join the military and make a career
of it. So, at 17 I joined the military of the
country that had tried so hard to destroy
my people, just so I might escape. Over
a 12 year career I participated in many
conflicts against people who were just like
my people. I fought and killed people who
refused to give in to the demands of the
Amerikan empire. I saw more poverty
than I had ever known yet these people
still resisted. Year after year all over the
world I saw many people who were just
like my people trying to survive yet still
resisting. I related to the resistors more
than the empire I served. I felt I was
betraying my people and myself. I was
the Native scout that was used against
other Natives. I remember talking to my
clan mother about the guilt and shame I
felt. She suggested I leave the military
and find a way to help the people not just
here but all over the world. I tried to find
a philosophy that matched what I thought
was the correct path in life. After trial
and error, I finally found Maoism. The
only answer to the problems of the world
is through truly International efforts to
bring down the system of oppression that
destroys people, cultures, and the earth:
the system of capitalism.
--First Nations veteran
Dump the spectating,
get off your asses
Dear MIM:
Those were some good comments
about the idiotic phenomenon of
commercial spectator sports [our article
in the last MIM Notes on the shooting
death of a Boston Red Sox fan].
The very term "spectator sports" seems
like an oxymoron. It's really quite pathetic
to see an entire region of the United $tates
get worked up into a frenzy over the
supposed virtues of its local team--only
to see that team repay the devotion by
pulling up stakes and moving to
Albuquerque for an extra two bucks per
year. That stuff is also very heavily
subsidized by local and state governments,
which constantly find themselves shelling
out for a new stadium in order to keep
the monopoly capitalist in town. They
should tell the damn team to get lost and
instead use some of their funds to build
more parks and athletic facilities for the
people, who wouldn't have so much time
for raising hell after large commercial
productions if they took part in sports
themselves. Amerikkkans need to put
down the remote control and get off their
asses anyway.
--HC123
Militarism is war-mongering or the
advocacy of war or actual carrying out
of war or its preparations.
While true pacifists condemn all
violence as equally repugnant, we
Maoists do not consider self-defense
or the violence of oppressed nations
against imperialism to be militarism.
Militarism is mostly caused by
imperialism at this time. Imperialism
is the highest stage of capitalism--
seen in countries like the United
$tates, England and France.
Under capitalism, capitalists often
profit from war or its preparations.
Yet, it is the proletariat that does the
dying in the wars. The proletariat
wants a system in which people do not
have self-interest on the side of war-
profiteering or war for imperialism.
Militarism is one of the most
important reasons to overthrow
capitalism. It even infects oppressed
nations and causes them to fight each
other.
It is important not to let capitalists
risk our lives in their ideas about war
and peace or the environment. They
have already had two world wars
admitted by themselves in the last 100
years and they are conducting a third
right now against the Third World.
Even a one percent annual chance of
nuclear war destruction caused by
capitalist aggressiveness or "greed" as
the people call it should not be tolerated
by the proletariat. After playing
Russian Roulette (in which the bullet
chamber is different each time and not
related at all to the one that came up in
previous spins) with 100 chambers and
one bullet, the chance of survival is
only 60.5% after 50 turns. In other
words, a seemingly small one percent
annual chance of world war means
eventual doom. After 100 years or turns
of Russian Roulette, the chances of
survival are only 36.6%. After 200
years, survival has only a 13.4%
chance.
What is militarism?
MIM Notes 311 · December 2004 · Page 3
Armored personnel
carriers show up at
Los Angeles demo
Los Angeles,
9 November, 2004
MIM handed out about 100 copies of
MIM Notes to a rush hour demonstration
to protest the renewed Amerikan attack
on Fallujah. The ANSWER Coalition,
which called the demo at the Westwood
Federal Building, claimed a crowd of a
few hundred took part.
For the most part, the LA organizers
did a better job of keeping the focus on
Iraq than did the organizers of the San
Francisco demonstration on the same
night (see accompanying article). The
better signs were homemade--calling for
an end to the "illegal occupation" and for
support for the "brave fighters" in Iraq.
MIM is all in favor of reminding the
Amerikan people of the lesson the Iraqis
are giving the u.$. military every day:
technology alone will never subdue the
will of a people to fight off an occupier.
Amerika has many times the population
of Iraq, and so can choose to keep
throwing soldiers at the problem, but the
Iraqis will exact their price for the
suffering the u.$. inflicts.
The Westwood demonstration had its
share of chauvinism too. One official
ANSWER sign we saw called for equal
rights for the lesbian/gay/bi/trans people
-- discrimination is really not an issue to
put up alongside the rights of Iraqi people
to survival. And the activist leading chants
took a lengthy detour into parasitism when
he started calling for money for jobs,
healthcare, and unions of all things,
instead of for war. The bit about the
unions made us laugh the hardest--as if
now funding labor bureaucrats, who are
paid out of the superprofits Amerika sucks
out of the Third World, is supposed to be
this great argument against imperialist
expansionism!
After MIM left, two armored
vehicles--apparently Marine APCs--
showed up on Wilshire Blvd. in front of
the demonstration. We don't know why
they were there, or if their presence had
anything to do with the demonstration, but
one activist reported that a few of the
soldiers gave the demonstrators a thumbs
up and seemed friendly, then they drove
off.
It's no secret that the military ranks are
disproportionately filled with oppressed
nationality youth. MIM also notes that the
u.$. troops are becoming discouraged at
the combination of their own lengthening
tours and the seeming inevitability of a
draft, the fact that the Amerikan
government and military leaders obviously
either didn't know what to expect in Iraq
or lied about it, and most importantly the
fierce resistance of the Iraqi people. We
do not target our recruiting efforts at the
military, but we welcome any disaffected
military members to get in touch and use
our press as a platform for voicing your
new-found anti-imperialist views.
Sources: www.boingboing.net;
www.la.indymedia.org.
San Francisco
9 November, 2004
International ANSWER sponsored an
emergency rally to protest the u.$.
invasion of Fallujah, Iraq, which brought
out thousands of supporters. So far, the
news reports are saying scores of civilians
have been killed in the first two days of
the attack. These numbers are sure to
increase as the united $tates has bombed
medical facilities in Fallujah and reportedly
arrested and detained medical staff. (1)
One speaker at the rally told the story of
a man who watched his child die from
wounds caused by an explosion because
he knew if he brought her to the hospital
she would be killed. This is all within the
context of the recent estimate of over
100,000 Iraqi deaths, making violence the
leading cause of death in Iraq these days.
(2)
With this imperialist slaughter being
conducted by the u.$. military, we rally
condemn the leadership (International
ANSWER and associates) that ended up
leading a march to all of the downtown
hotels to support workers that are striking
for a contract. ANSWER baited those
who are rightly outraged by the slaughter
in Fallujah to join what became a rally for
guaranteed wealth for the relatively
wealthy (see below). Judging by the
enthusiastic chants ("What do we want?
Contracts!"), the crowd was more
excited about the hotel struggle than the
war on Iraq. However, the hotel strikers
have not been able to rally a crowd big
enough to block Market Street in
downtown San Francisco as we did this
night. The loud chanting at the hotels may
have happened because it was a break
from the monotonous march and chant
routine and not an indication that the
crowd thought the hotel strike was a more
important cause. While clearly in the
minority, MIM and RAIL were not the
only ones that seemed uninterested
during the hotel stops.
The hotel workers make at least $8.00
an hour, which at 40 hours a week for 50
weeks a year is $16,000 per year not
including benefits. (3) This puts the lowest
paid hotel worker in the top 12% of the
richest people in the world. (4) The hotel
workers have legitimate complaints
regarding questions of job security and
health care, both of which would be
guaranteed under socialism. But these
are questions that we can deal with after
the rest of the world has food, shelter
and clean water and certainly after we
put an end to mass genocide in Iraq,
Palestine and elsewhere around the
globe. Not only are these issues more
pressing, but it is only the struggle of those
who have nothing to lose that will lead
us to a peaceful and equitable future.
Of course, the people leading the rally
argued that the money being spent on war
could better go to health care and fat
contracts for workers in the united $tates.
On the contrary, the demands of the hotel
workers in the current economy amount
to calling for more imperialist exploitation
to pay them off, in other words more
slaughter of Third World people. It is the
chauvinism of Amerikans that allows them
to think that the billions of dollars spent
on war was wealth that rightfully belongs
to them in the first place. Until
International ANSWER and 90% of the
anti-war movement recognize the
economic realities of imperialism, the
struggles of the oppressed will continue
to be used as window dressing for the
struggle of the oppressors and oppressor
wannabes. (5)
Notes:
1. Flashpoints news radio. 8 November
2004.
2. 100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says
study. The Guardian. 29 October 2004.
3. indybay.org/labor/
4. www.globalrichlist.com
5. for MIM's analysis of the economic
realities of imperialism check out
"Imperialism and its Class Structure in
1997"
ANSWER suckers MIM, RAIL and others into oinkfest
Slaughter in Iraq is the real issue
By MC12
10 November 2004
The first substantive comment on
Arafat that we can find MIM making is
from MIM Notes 23, on April 28, 1986:
"MIM would like to ask various long-
standing cheerleaders of the PLO: who
are they waving the flag for now? Nothing
could cause greater disorientation than
hitching one's cart whole-heartedly to this
opportunist-led organization. Arafat has
done everything short of taking an Israeli
salary and appears to realize his value to
Israel and the United States as a potential
ally relative to more pro-Soviet leaders in
the PLO. He is left to holding out for the
best deal until the day he gets one or is
assassinated by impatient Israelis. While
the PLO's cause deserves support, its
factionalization and opportunism points up
that it was not always the perfect vehicle
of revolutionary nationalism it was
cracked up to be by its tag-along
supporters. The Palestinian people
deserve better leadership."
The most recent, in response to a letter
about Nelson Mandela and Yassir Arafat
from a Texas prisoner, was from MIM
Notes 267, on October 1 of this year. We
said:
"Fifteen years ago, the movements they
[Mandela and Arafat] led--the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO) and the
African National Congress (ANC), along
with their allied movements in Nicaragua
and El Salvador and a few
others--represented to
some people the cutting
edge of anti-imperialism
and the future of socialist
movements. Those of us
who disagreed at the
time- -including MIM--
were clearly vindicated in
the 1990s when all of
these organizations gave
up the revolutionary
cause for good and went
over into negotiated
capitulation whole hog. To
MIM, this history holds
valuable lessons,
including two major ones.
First, national liberation
from imperialism without
a socialist program and
leadership leads to
neocolonialism. This we
already knew, but these
cases underscored it.
Second, national
liberation movements tied
too heavily to external
great- power support--in
this case the social-
imperialist ex-USSR--
are not independently
sustainable. Whatever
was revolutionary in the
A few reflections on Yasser Arafat's death
MIM looks back at past statements on the Palestinian leader
Continued on page 4...
MIM Notes 311 · December 2004 · Page 4
have an answer of how to make
revolution in much of Latin America.
MIM never undertakes to answer a
question without a thorough investigation.
We can say we do not know about the
man who appeared November 5 2004 in
that Peru courtroom. It is the job of the
Peruvian revolutionaries and masses to
know who that was and what the struggle
is concerning him in the details. It would
be wrong for MIM to read what the
Associated Press reporter has to say
about it and take it literally and then draw
MIM's own conclusion. That's why MIM
describes itself as based in imperialist
countries and their internal semi-colonies.
As MIM has explained before in its
U.$. tactics for working "at arm's length,"
the enemy's strength and weakness is the
individual approach. The enemy does
police work on the individual, but we of
the larger class, the exploited proletariat
with allies in the exploited peasantry have
a different approach.
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism Gonzalo Thought is free!
So while MIM does not know what
happened November 5 in Peru, what we
do know is that the approach described
in Comrade Gonzalo's books is correct.
The writings of Comrade Gonzalo are
based not just on valuable and bloody
struggle in Peru but also the experience
of China.
Comrade Gonzalo led 12 years of the
most successful People's War in Latin
America. Now it is also 12 years since
the arrest of Gonzalo, but official
unemployment in Peru is 10.1% according
to the Miami Herald and expected to
increase in the coming year.(2) According
to BBC, a World Food Program "study
found that up to 91% of children under
age five in Puno were suffering from
malnutrition. The area also has been
struck by drought and floods.
"More than half of Peru's population
live . . . below the poverty line and some
6.5 million people, 25% of the population,
are classified as extremely poor, living on
an income of less than $1 per day."(3)
The reactionaries in Peru strive to
demoralize us by making us remember
the capture of the individual Gonzalo. Yet,
we will direct the people internationally
to remember that Peru did not accomplish
anything under capitalism and semi-
feudalism these past 12 years.
The excuses are gone. It used to be
the excuse that Peru was too social-
democratic, so it found new u.$. lackey
leaders. Then the excuse was that
Comrade Gonzalo was nearly bringing
down the regime. So they captured
Gonzalo. Then the excuse became that
the regime was corrupt and tied up with
narco-trafficking. So they imprisoned
Montesinos and exiled Fujimori.
What we must learn is that each time
there is a different excuse, but the
underlying problem is always the same.
While capitalism may be a "success" for
whites in the united $tates and some other
imperialist countries, most countries in the
world share Peru's fate. They are
partners with Washington but make no
progress in the supposedly successful
capitalist system, which backs semi-
feudalism in Peru. While Uncle $am wars
on the people of Iraq for their resources
and Amerikans get richer on oil and
military contracts, the people of Peru and
most countries in the world suffer
relentless oppression and exploitation. The
wealthy Amerikan "success" stories are
only 294 million people, while the rest of
the world is over 6 billion people opposing
u.$. imperialism. It's been 12 years since
the capture of Gonzalo and the people of
Peru know that capitalism is still a failure
for them, just as it is for most of the
world's people.
Notes:
1. http://www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/
mn/mn.php?issue=070
2. http://www.miami.com/mld/
miamiherald/business/special_packages/
business_monday/9949073.htm?1c
3. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/
3757150.stm
Continued from page 1...
By MC12
Even though the official crime rate is
still lower than it was in the 1990s, the
number of prisoners continues to
increase, because harsher sentencing
rules introduced in previous years reduced
the number of people leaving prison. The
latest report from the Bureau of Justice
Statistics shows that the mean time
served for current prisoners increased
from 23 months in 1995 to 30 months in
2002. So even with a slower rate of
prisoners coming in, the population
increases because fewer people are
leaving.
The total number of prisoners in state,
federal, and local custody was 2,085,620
at the end of 2003, up 2.6% over the
previous year. The annual average rate
of growth from 1995 to 2003 was 3.5%.
If the number of prisoners keeps
increasing at a 3.5% annual rate, it will
reach 3 million in 2014 and 4 million in
2022. If it grows at the slower rate of
last year alone, it will reach 3 million in
2018.
As the population also grows, it's
important to look at the imprisonment
rate, or the number of people out of every
100,000 that is in prison. That's the
number that shows how much the prison
craze is impacting the internal Black and
Latino colonies by removing whole
segments of the productive population.
The overall imprisonment rate increased
from 601 per 100,000 population in 1995
to 701 in 2002, and 714 in 2003. The rate
for Black men, however, was 3,405,
compared with 1,231 for Latino men and
465 for White men. At the most extreme,
the rate reached 9,262--or 9.3%--for
Black men ages 25-29. At that age, Black
men are 8.5-times more likely to be in
prison than White men. Overall, the
prison population in 2003 was 44% Black
and 19% Latino.
One other number to watch is the
number of prisoners under the jurisdiction
of the Bureau of Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, which increased
12% from 2002 to 2003. More importantly,
that number has increased by 186% from
1995 to 2003 (8,177 to 23,514). That
shows the continuing reach and
U.$. prison population keeps climbing
repressive capacity of the police-state
border authorities, which are charged
with regulating the flow of labor from the
oppressed nations in the U.$.A.
The Amerikan injustice system and its
prison operations are fundamental aspects
of the national oppression of Amerika's
internal colonies, and increasingly of non-
U.$. citizens as well. The giant prison
industry is also a source of construction
projects and employment for the labor
aristocracy, especially in white rural areas
where many prisoners are located. To get
involved with MIM's anti-prison
agitation--against censorship, control
units, and the imperialists' death penalty--
visit http://www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/
agitation/prisons.
Source: "Prisoners in 2003" (NCJ
205335). See: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/
bjs/abstract/p03.htm
programs of these movements was
quickly sacrificed when they could no
longer leverage Soviet support against the
U.$. empire. When the ex-USSR
collapsed, they had no one to lean on, so
they quickly cut the best deals they could
with imperialism, and declared victory.
Before the collapse of the ex-USSR,
Arafat and Mandela were more likely to
end up in the Soviet camp. That was how
they played their hands. Now, to MIM
that is not as big a difference as it is to
some others, because we understand that
the Soviet Union had become social-
imperialist after the development of state
capitalism in the 1950s. So this was a
choice between imperialist powers. It is
not inherently wrong to play one imperialist
power off another, but revolutionary
movements need to maintain their
independence and self-sufficiency in such
situations (look at formerly-Soviet-
dependent Cuba, too).These guys were
the two leaders supposedly representing
the most visible unresolved colonial
legacies post- WWII. These cases posed
international political problems for
imperialism in the neocolonial era, because
they undermined the imperialist
propaganda that the current era is "post-
colonial," the "former" imperialists having
given up their colonies out of their own
largesse or political savvy. So maybe it is
fitting (from the imperialist's perspective)
that when these two guys finally gave it
up, they got the Nobel Prize. The
revolutionary aspirations of the people
they represented were a major thorn in
the side of imperialism. Which brings us
to your final question: why do the masses
put up with this? On that we urge you to
take a longer view. In the long run, the
masses do not put up with this.
Developing revolutionary organizations
and leaders takes time and requires
capitalizing on the historical moment.
Already in both Palestine and Azania
(South Africa) there are growing mass
movements which see Arafat and
Mandela/Mbeki for what they are:
imperialist running dogs. You won't catch
imperialist mouthpieces reporting on these
movements though; the myths they've
built up around Arafat and Mandela are
important propaganda."
We need to be clear about neocolonial
nature of Arafat's leadership, but that
doesn't mean we side with those liberal
Zionists like the New York Times who
blame Arafat for "rejecting peace" when
he refused to accept the force-feeding
U.$. President Bill Clinton and I$raeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak attempted to
give him at Camp David in 2000. As we
said in MIM Notes 254, March 15 2002,
"When Yassir Arafat rejected the plan,
he was falsely accused of choosing war
over peace." Rejecting that deal --
which would have formalized the
dismemberment of the existing paltry
Palestinian territory, leaving I$rael in
control over its borders, water, and
maintaining Jewish settlements all over
the West Bank -- was one of the better
things Arafat did in the last 20 years,
though it seems to have been only because
of pressure from the Palestinian masses
that he was compelled to reject it.
A few reflections on Yasser Arafat's death
MIM looks back at past statements on the Palestinian leader
Continued from page 3...
MIM Notes 311 · December 2004 · Page 5
receiving casualties after US forces
seized the city's main hospital, where
rebels had been hiding. Some medical
staff and patients had been killed at the
Popular Clinic in a central district, they
added. Sami al-Jumaili, a doctor at the
main hospital, said: `There is not a single
surgeon in Fallujah. We had one
ambulance hit by US fire and a doctor
wounded. There are scores of injured
civilians in their homes who we can't
move. `A 13-year-old child just died in
my arms.' Doctors said at least 15
civilians had been killed since the assault
on Fallujah began."(6)
But the products of Amerikan
journalism schools blandly quote generals
saying there are "hardly any, if any,
Amerikan militarism turns Iraq into a bloody mess
civilian casualties" without even offering
the contrasting evidence.
While CNN and other media show
brave-looking Amerikan troops going
building to building (actually much of that
footage is from training grounds), they
spend a lot less time talking about the
Amerikan practice of leveling parts of the
city, known as "softening up the
battlespace" before moving in.(4) Maybe
the brave soldiers with the 155mm canons
can some day run for president, talking
about how their "covering fire" saved
Amerikan lives.
MIM readers know Amerika is killing
thousands of civilians in Iraq, having
already killed hundreds of thousands
through a decade of sanctions after first
round of the war in 1991, including half a
million children under age 5.(5)
We also know that we can't rely on
the imperialists' media to learn the truth
about this and other Amerikan wars of
aggression. MIM doesn't have reporters
on the ground in Iraq, but we do know
how to prioritize the information that we
can gather, and use a political theory
directed at overcoming imperialism in our
strategy of building public opinion to end
these wars for good.
Notes:
1. "General Says 18 U.S. Troops Killed
in Falluja," Reuters, Nov. 11, 2004.
2. "Artillerymen Clear Path for the
Infantry," Washington Post, November
11, 2004. p. A33.
3. "Refugees claim that civilian
casualties left to die." November 11, 2004.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/
0,,7374-1353856,00.html.
4. "Assault on Falluja: Go kick some
butt and make history, Vietnam-style, US
troops urged." The Guardian (London),
Nov. 9, 2004, p. 3.
5. "New evidence of Iraqi suffering
under sanctions: U.$. blames Iraq; blocks
delegation from visiting." MIM Notes
194, September 15, 1999. http://
www.etext.info/Politics/MIM/mn/
text.php?mimfile=mn194/iraq.txt.
6. "Fierce fighting as rebels dig in
against U.S. troops." Evening Times
Online, http://www.eveningtimes.co.uk/
print/news/5032337.shtml.
Continued from page 1...
By MC12
A completely accurate count of war
dead in Iraq is impossible. Even if you
could count up all the reports of deaths
made to the press and hospitals, as the
iraqbodycount.org site tries to do, you
miss many, as devastated families may
sometimes be forced to bury loved-ones
in the garden--if they can--before they
flee the destruction of Amerikan
bombardment.
And we don't need to know the exact
number of dead to know that we oppose
this and all other imperialist wars of
aggression. However, it is important to
get a sense of the magnitude of the death
and destruction, for purposes of public
education and also for making strategic
decisions. To that end, MIM welcomes
the recent report in the journal The
Lancet, the journal of the British Medical
Association, which attempted a scientific
assessment of mortality in Iraq before and
after the most recent Amerikan invasion.
Researchers led by people at Johns
Hopkins University selected a random
sample of 33 residential locations in the
country, and interviewed residents of a
cluster of 30 households around each
location. They asked people to list the
births and deaths tat occurred within each
household, by date, for a period before
and after the invasion. Using probability
theory, if the population interviewed is a
random sample, then the mortality rates
from before and after the invasion can
be extrapolated to the whole population,
with a measurable likelihood that the
estimates are correct.
They used Arabic-speaking medical
doctors to conduct the interviews, and had
a very high cooperation rate among the
residents they interviewed. They also
requested death certificates for a small
number of cases to see if many had gone
unreported. They had to make some
adjustments from perfect randomness, to
cut down on travel time and expenses,
and because some areas were too
dangerous to go, but they got pretty close,
and did the best job we've seen under
the current circumstances.
In 15 out of the 33 sites they visited,
the researchers encountered households
that had experienced at least one violent
death, the majority of them
noncombatants.