MIM Notes ***

MIM Notes 286 · September 1, 2003 · Page 1

MIM Notes

September 1, 2003, Nº 286 The Official Newsletter of the Maoist Internationalist Movement (MIM)

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Spain sends

Adolfo

Olaechea

to Peru

VIOLATES LAW,

TREATY WITH

PERU

by mim3@mim.org

August 7, 2003

ourgeois newswire service

Reuters reported that Spain

extradited Adolfo Olaechea to

Peru and that he landed in Peru by plane

on August 7 with a bullet-proof vest. Peru

sought Olaechea for openly political

reasons concerning Olaechea's speaking

in England for the Maoist road in Peru

blazed by the Communist Party of Peru

(PCP).

Luis Arce Borja in Belgium responded

that the extradition of English permanent

resident Adolfo Olaechea was an

international kidnapping done with the

coordination of a certain Spanish judge

and Peru's embassy. Peru openly admits

that the charge it used to extradite Adolfo

Olaechea was "defending terrorism." As

Adolfo Olaechea's attorney pointed out

on July 24th, article 5.1 of the extradition

treaty between Spain and Peru says

terrorists may be extradited but not people

with differing political views. So much for

Spain belonging to the "free world."

September 11 report

Reactionaries' failed `security'

policies exposed

John Ashcroft and other Bush henchmen
have detained thousands without charge --
without preventing `terror' attacks.

t the press conference

announcing the release of the

Congressional report on

September 11, the chairman of the House

intelligence committee admitted he did not

know who would be behind the next attack

on the United $tates or when, where, or

how it would happen. Whether the

Representative understood it or not, this

was an admission that the U.$.

government's police-style approach to

ending violence is a failure. Amerikans

should stop supporting a government

which imprisoned thousands of

immigrants without charge and which

spends billions attacking countries around

the globe in the name of security, yet

admits that it cannot stop the next attack.

Days before the September 11 report

was released, an internal Justice

Department report leaked to the New

York Times found evidence that law

enforcement officials were guilty of

"serious civil rights and civil liberties

violations" while enforcing the Patriot

Act. Over the last six months, the Justice

Department received an average of

almost six Patriot-Act related complaints

per day, with allegations ranging from

verbal abuse to beating.(1)

However, the Justice Department

report apparently did not comment on the

basic injustice of the sweeping arrests of

largely Muslim immigrants under the

auspices of the Patriot Act, which allows

non-citizens to be held for up to a week

without charge. Nor did it comment on

the absurdity of these arrests: only one

of the thousands arrested has been

charged with any crime related to

September 11. To paraphrase Benjamin

Franklin, an Amerikan "founding father"

supposedly revered by the Amerikan

government, those who give up essential

liberties for temporary security will have

Continued on page 5...

Continued on page 8...

Notes

Rouges

hits the

streets

The first issue of the French

publication "Notes Rouges" came out

at the end of July. At the Gay Pride

parade of August 3rd, 150 free copies

went out to the revelers, many sporting

stickers and buttons supporting the

struggle against AIDS. MIM supports

the right to gay marriage, even within

the existing oppressive patriarchal

system. MIM has always struggled at

the forefront to end discrimination

against gays/lesbians.

The significance of the "Notes

Rouges" is that it is the first print

publication in French to uphold Mao and

oppose imperialist country parasitism

in its true extent.

Big change needed to

avoid situations like this

The media

Something the public needs to

understand is that the capitalist media is

making big money off the Kobe case. The

media should not be trusted on questions

of fact especially in this case, because

its first priority is to entertain the public

to boost ratings or sales and increase

advertising revenue. In contrast, we at

MIM put out a newspaper called "MIM

Notes," which far from being for profit

Communist opinion on

the Kobe Bryant case

gives us the

dubious honor of

d r a i n i n g

comrades' bank

accounts. We

drain our bank

accounts out of a

sense of duty and

we believe the

public should

often take advantage of such non-

commercial sources of political and social

analysis.

MIM would like to emphasize that it

has no first-hand involvement in the Kobe

Bryant case just like 99.9% of the media.

We have no secret stash of info on the

accuser, but we are willing to talk about

Continued on page 6...

MIM Notes 286 · September 1, 2003 · 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.

The paper is free to all prisoners, as long as they write to us every 90 days to confirm

their subsciptions. There are no individual subscriptions for people outside prison.

People who want to receive newspapers should become sponsors and distributors.

Sponsors pay for papers, distributors get them onto the streets, and officers do both
distribution and financial support. Annual cost is: 12 copies (Priority Mail), $120; 25
(Priority Mail), $150; 50 (Priority Mail), $280; 100, $380; 200, $750; 900 (Express
Mail), $3,840; 900 (8-10 days), $2,200. To become a sponor or distributor, send
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Most back issues of MIM Notes are available free on our web site. The web site con-

tains thousands of documents, with ordering information for many more.

MIM grants explicit permission to copy all or part of this newspaper for any reason, as

long as we are credited.

For general correspondence, contact:

MIM

P.O. Box 29670

Los Angeles, CA 90029-0670

eMail: <mim@mim.org>

WWW: <http//www.etext.info/Politics/MIM>

Trotskyist website
reader perturbed

Dear MIM,

I hope that you people eventualy realise

the absolute babarity of Mao and Stalin

and get on board with the rest of us

communists. You are discrediting

everything that Marx - Engels - Lenin -

Trotsky - Luxembourg - and the every

other true communist out there has done.

Stalin and Mao were and are not the way

forward.

Mao and Stalin coming to power meant

the death of international socialism for an

indefinable amount of time.

The only thing that pleases me on your

web site is your admission at being a small

party - may it stay that way.

--Trotskyist, July, 2003

mim3@mim.org replies for MIM:

Barbarism is dying from hunger and lack

of medical care. Barbarism is not shooting

a small portion of society spreading

confusion and otherwise throwing up

obstacles to progress as the writer above

does by referring to a movement that has

produced no social change in the last 75

years. Whether he is objective enough to

know it, the above critic of us is a part of

the status quo.

Barbarism is also not having universal

education. Stalin and Mao fixed those

problems--hunger, medical care and

education. That's why the life

expectancies of their countries doubled

despite all the repression of liberal-radical

idiots.

What this sort of criticism always boils

down to is two things: 1) A defense of

the status quo in the guise of Trotskyist

(or fill in the blank) principles which have

failed to bring about changes like Stalin

and Mao did. 2) Valuing the lives of

liberal-radical dissidents at 100 or 1000

times that of the toiling peasants and

workers. There is no other explanation

for how people supposedly interested in

the Soviet Union's history could ignore

the progress there in the name of their

impotent principles.

by mim108

Some people see a "silver lining" in the

cloud of budget crises facing state

correctional operations. In Texas, for

example -- which had to cut $172 million

from its corrections budget by June 2003

and another $525 over the next two years

-- the state has passed a law mandating

treatment probation and treatment for

some first-time drug offenders.(1) So, the

need to save money helped reformers

get some of what they wanted. We don't

know the details of this change yet, but it

could be a positive development. At the

same time, Texas Rep. Ray Allen claims

that the parole rate in Texas has risen

from 16 to 25 percent in the last year, as

the parole board faces pressure to reduce

the prison population.

On the other hand, the budget crisis also

lent support to those who want to

increase the privatization of Texas prisons

-- private prisons currently hold 7% of

Texas prisoners -- although in the end

the bill did not pass. And, in a supremely

humanistic move, they proposed a policy

of paroling prisoners who are in a coma

(there were two at the time) -- to save

money.(1)

A prisoner sent us a newsletter

published by a lawyer named James

Randall Smith, which summarizes the

past year in Texas like this: "A quick

evaluation ... indicates that if the bill would

have made the inmates or parolees life a

little easier, the bill did not pass, if it made

life more difficult ... it passed."

Smith reports that the worst law will

allow the parole board to set off prisoners

for 5 years. One prisoner tells us, "I can

smell prison riots all over that bill, and so

can they."

Smith also reports that budget problems

cost more than 145 jobs at the Windham

School District, which runs programs that

help people qualify for parole, and 600

jobs in the corrections department, many

of them in health care. Those who lose

their jobs have an opportunity to become

prison guards - - because the state can't

hire people to fill these. These bitter,

untrained ex-bureaucrats sound like

excellent additions to the prison guard

population.

We conclude that most of the effects

of the budget crisis will be bad for Texas

prisoners, although it might also prompt

some positive reforms. But MIM has

always resisted the argument that the

oppression of the prison system is bad

because it wastes government money.

The real issue is national oppression and

social control. The comings and goings

of budget travails don't change that

underlying dynamic.

Notes:

1. "Dollars and Sentences: Legislators

Views on Prisons, Punishment, and the

Budget Crisis," by Robin Campbell. Vera

Institute of Justice, New York, July 2003

(http://www.vera.org/publications/

publications_5.asp? publication_id=204).

Texas prisoners feel

brunt of budget crisis

MIM Notes 286 · September 1, 2003 · Page 3

The Japanese parliament voted in July

to send troops to Iraq, despite public

opposition to the Iraq war and the

Japanese Constitution's ban on the use

of force in settling international disputes.

The government of Prime Minister

Junichiro Koizumi claimed that Japanese

troops would only be sent to non-combat

zones; his critics correctly noted that

"there are no noncombat zones" in Iraq

(1).

The deployment of Japanese troops in

a combat zone outside Japan is the latest

rutsch down the slippery slope of

resurgent Japanese militarism--or

perhaps it would be better to say, it's the

latest crack in the crumbling façade of

official Japanese pacifism. The Japanese

military, called the Self Defense Forces,

is among the five largest in the world.

The Japanese navy sent ships to the

Indian Ocean to support Amerika's war

in Afghanistan. Japan bankrolled

Amerikan military adventures such as the

1991 Gulf War. And, of course, the

massive military bases that the Japanese

government grants the Amerikans played

important roles in the Korean and Vietnam

wars and continue to threaten much of

Asia (2).

Japanese reactionaries including some

in Prime Minister Koizumi's Liberal

Democratic Party have been pushing for

a more aggressive military in recent years.

In part, this campaign has been cultural.

Schoolbooks have been re-written to de-

emphasize Japanese war crimes; movies

have been made glorifying Japanese

militarists (3) or promoting the line that

the Japanese were the victims in World

War II (4); Koizumi has offended his

Chinese and Korean neighbors by visiting

shrines to Japanese war veterans--visits

analogous to Ronald Reagan's official

stop at a German cemetery honoring dead

SS men--and Koizumi wants to change

the name "Self Defense Forces" to

Japan approves sending troops to Iraq

Continued on next page...

Parents and activists have come

together in response to a series of events

within Oakland schools in the last school

year including abuse by teachers, the

threat of denying many students the right

to graduate and one incident where the

Secret Service was called in to berate

students.

A recent public forum featured Dr.

Randolph Ward, the newly appointed

administrator of Oakland Unified School

District, and Nneka Simon who is the

mother of a boy who was beaten by his

teacher in the Claremont school in

Oakland. The beating of Simon's son was

one of the many recent incidents that has

brought attention to the education system

in the community. Despite having 16

witnesses there has been no investigation

and the teacher was not brought to jail in

handcuffs as is common procedure with

students who use physical violence.

The International Peoples' Democratic

Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) sponsored

the forum, which also featured Chairman

Omali Yeshitela of the African People's

Socialist Party. While we have political

disagreements with Yeshitela and the

InPDUM,(1) we agreed with what they

had to say about education for oppressed

nation youth in oppressor nation schools.

In her presentation, Simon brought

together anecdotes and statistics to link

the education system to the systematic

oppression of Blacks in the United $tates.

She cited that Black students are expelled

twice as much as they were in 1974 and

they are 2.6 times as likely to be expelled

as white students, who usually have to

break the law to be expelled. This

treatment of oppressed youth as criminals

from such a young age only prepares

them for the more aggressive treatment

they will receive by the criminal injustice

system. This system in turn takes away

oppressed people's access to education

through the Higher Education Act which

prevents convicted felons from getting

financial aid. That's 13% of Black men

who cannot get financial aid or even vote

in most states. These questions of access

to knowledge and political power have

existed since Africans were first brought

to this continent as slaves. Therefore to

attempt to solve the problem of education

in the Black community without solving

national oppression by imperialism is

attacking a symptom without killing the

disease.

After touring some Oakland schools for

the first time, Dr. Ward's first criticism

of their condition was the prevalence of

graffiti, which he claims prevents "a

sense of pride." Besides being the

expression of students themselves in

making the school their own, graffiti is

hardly the greatest concern for their

successful education. Maybe a sense of

respect for the school would decrease

graffiti. But even if that is so, Ward's

approach is backwards. The solution is

to make the school serve the kids, not

eliminate graffiti to create "a sense of

pride." Other problems in the physical

conditions include leaking ceilings and the

usual lack of materials in oppressed nation

schools. Yeshitela's response to all this

is that you should be able to get a good

education sitting outside under a tree with

no books. The fundamental aspect of the

problem being the approach of the system

and not the materials available to the

school.

The greatest example of this is the

Eurocentric curriculum that comes from

the materials that are available. How can

students relate to school when the system

is telling them that they have no worth

and do not even merit mention? Yeshitela

stressed that Bill Cosby and peanut

farming do not represent the reality of

Blacks in the United $tates now or ever.

As long as that is the Black history that

appears in text books, more books is not

going to help the situation.

In an effort to exert real power in the

Oakland school system, InPDUM will be

holding weekly meetings for a committee

to address education in the community

that will be in direct contact with Ward

and will work with parents and teachers

who have seen their efforts crushed by

the school system. Continued vigilance

on these issues is urgent since education

is one of the biggest concerns facing the

Black community in Amerika. Along with

prisons and the police, it is of the most

blatant faces of oppression that the u$

government is showing the oppressed

within its borders. And without the bigger

picture, provided by Yeshitela and Simon

at this forum, reforms in the school system

are nothing more than a band aid for the

problems of oppressed people under

imperialism.

The Amerikan school system is

threatening the oppressed by alienating

children. Rather than giving them an

education that will help them survive, it

prepares them for life in oppressive

government institutions. As Yeshitela

Oakland school system channels

oppressed youth to California prisons

pointed out, this is not an issue of money,

this is the issue of why do oppressed

people exist in this system and how the

system treats those people. It is the

seizure of control that will change things,

and the shifting of funds is only secondary

to the question of power. Fighting to win

requires the complete elimination of all

forms of oppression to ensure quality

education and other survival rights for all

people.

Notes:

1. See our review of the African

People's Socialist Party in MIM Theory

MIM Notes has seen a big spike in

circulation since the "war on
terrorism" began. It's not surprising:
MIM Notes is a free and independent
newspaper. Yes, there are especially
now knee-jerk patriots who believe
everything Bush says and pass by a
chance to read MIM Notes. There are
other patriots and internationalists
who realize that at this time papers
like MIM Notes can undo the huge
spectacle that Uncle Sam is creating
for its own benefit.

Sure, you have seen MIM Notes

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MIM Notes 286 · September 1, 2003 · Page 4

Hotaru no haka, 1988
Isao Takahata,
director

Nobody will confuse this animated

Japanese film with a Disney cartoon.

Grave tells the sad story of two Japanese

children orphaned by an Amerikan

bombing raid during World War II. Left

to fend for themselves, they slowly starve

to death. However, like other films which

simply try to convey the horrors of war

-- the German films Das Boot and

Stalingrad come to mind -- Grave

makes no attempt to explain the causes

of wars and how they can be avoided in

the future.

Because of that, MIM can't

recommend the film, but we will say that

it is more progressive in the Amerikan

context than in the Japanese. Grave

reminds Amerikans that the firebombing

of Tokyo -- to say nothing of Hiroshima

and Nagasaki -- had brutal consequences

for the civilian population, on a scale far

surpassing anything Amerikans have

experienced. It's a far cry from the

jingoistic Pearl Harbor (2001), which

portrayed an Amerikan raid as a great

spectacle over empty warehouses,

watched from afar by two kimono-clad

women on a lazy afternoon.

In the Japanese context, Grave bolsters

the prejudice that Japan was the victim

in the war. The children's father is a naval

officer, and he is simply portrayed as doing

his duty and defending Japan. No mention

is made of Japan's imperial ambitions in

Asia and the Pacific; no discussion of the

rape of Nanking, the occupation of Korea,

etc. etc. When the older boy Seita learns

that Japan lost the war, he weeps, not

believing that the invincible Japanese

empire could lose. Just as in the United

$tates today, most children in Japan and

Germany brought up during World War

II were taught to identify with their

militaristic governments, so there is

nothing wrong with acknowledging this

fact -- but Grave does so without

comment. The scene where Seita breaks

down could provoke outrage that the

Japanese militarists twisted his mind, but

it could just as easily promote nostalgia

for the good old days when Japan had a

strong navy and army.

One reviewer (out of over 100) on an

internet message board argued that

Grave contained a subtle critique of great

nation pride. If so, it was too subtle, as

most of the other comments did not pick

up on this. Grave suffers from what

could be called the "Mother Courage"

effect.

Mother Courage and Her Children

is a play written by the German anti-

militarist Bertolt Brecht during World War

II. The title character tries everything she

can in the context of war and

capitalism to keep her children alive, but

by the end of the play, war has killed them

all. The play was intended as a critique

Grave of the Fireflies is no Disney cartoon

of Mother Courage and a reminder that

suffering the horrors of war was not

enough to teach people how to avoid it in

the future. When it premiered in the rubble

of Berlin after the war, however,

audiences hailed Mother Courage as a

heroic character, indicative of the

"Armed Forces."

The militarization campaign has also

been structural. "Although Japan's richly

financed military forces boast some of

the world's most sophisticated

hardware--weapons systems like the

[U.$.-supplied] Aegis destroyer and

[U.$.-supplied] F-15 fighter jets--their

actual configuration, as well as training

for their use, has been overwhelmingly

defensive.

"That is changing abruptly. The country

is acquiring in-air refueling capacity for

its fighter force, as well as developing a

sophisticated air support ship--part

destroyer, part helicopter carrier--that

news reports say is intended to allow

operations near the Korean Penninsula."

Furthermore, calls for Japan to build

nuclear weapons are apparently getting

louder--this in a country with strong anti-

nuclear sentiments (2).

There are economic reasons behind the

military expansion. Instead of cutting the

United $tates a check for services

rendered, Japan could invest in its own

formidable defense industry.

Although the United $tates helped draft

Japan's "pacifist" constitution, it has

sheltered and nourished Japanese

militarism when convenient. The

Amerikans helped Japanese war

Japan approves sending troops to Iraq

criminals escape prosecution; many

eventually served in the post-war

government. The CIA paid off Liberal

Democratic Party officials for their

service in keeping Amerikan bases in

Japan during the Cold War.(5) Amerikan

politicians pissed and moaned in 1991 and

again this spring that Japan was not

pulling its weight in the campaigns against

Iraq.

Disturbingly, Amerikan provocations in

Korea--starting with Clinton's non-

compliance with the 1994 "Agreed

Framework" agreement with north Korea

and extending to the Bush administration's

charges last Fall that north Korea was

making nuclear weapons--may be aimed

in part at Japan. This wouldn't be the first

time the United $tates manufactured a

threat or the appearance of a threat to

force countries to play ball--or even just

buy Amerikan weapons. The United

$tates did this in Iraq in the early nineties.

Koizumi's government uses the supposed

threat from north Korea to justify both its

close alignment with U.$. foreign policy

and its own expanding militarism.

Gregory Clark, a former Australian

diplomat, argues that sending troops to

Iraq may backfire on the militarists.

"[Koizumi and his hawkish advisers] like

to talk about the need for Japan to `shed

blood' in support of various pro-U.S.

causes. They want to galvanize the

Japanese public out of `heiwa boke'

(peace loving stupor), and to force Japan's

wimpish [Self Defense Forces] to

become a bloodied, full-fledged fighting

force.

"But can this happen if the blood is shed

for a shabby cause fought brutally and

unfairly in a distant country and with little

chance of success? This is what we saw

in Vietnam. It is likely what we will see

in Iraq."(6) MIM agrees with this

dialectic, although we frankly fear that

militaristic sentiments will initially increase

as the first score or hundred casualties

arrive home. It took close to a decade of

steady Amerikan military losses far above

those currently seen in Iraq to turn

Amerikan opinion against the war in

Vietnam. It took absolute military defeat

in World War II and terrible civilian

suffering in Dresden and Hiroshima to

bring down Germany and Japan and

create the possibility that those militaristic

and imperialistic societies might rejoin

humynity. That chance was squandered,

principally by Amerika, as it groomed

militaristic and imperialistic elements in

Germany and Japan for its own ends.

With the tools of war becoming more

and more destructive, we cannot squander

our next chance to destroy militarism and

imperialism once and for all. This means

taking the re-humanizing process for

formerly imperialist societies seriously and

preventing them from lapsing into their

old, exploitative ways. In other words, this

requires an international dictatorship of

the proletariat over the defeated

imperialist countries. In principle, this

would be similar to the much-ballyhooed

Amerikan occupation of Germany and

Japan after World War II--except that

instead of being run by an imperialist

power for its own ends the dictatorship

of the proletariat would be run by people

aiming to end war and exploitation,

globally.

Notes:

1. New York Times, 28 Jul 2003.

2. New York Times, 25 Jul 2003.

3. MIM Notes 168, 15 Aug 1998.

4. See our review of "Grave of the

Fireflies," in this issue.

5. Chalmers Johnson, ITAL Blowback

END, New York: Henry Holt, 2000, pp.

16-17.

6. The Japan Times, 13 Jul 2003.

Reprinted at: www.zmag.org/content/

print_article.cfm?itemlID=3908&sectionID=17

persistence of ordinary Germans to carry

on with their lives as they always had

despite the trauma of defeat.

Although perhaps intended to challenge

oppressor-nation complacency, as

Mother Courage was, Grave never

goes beyond sentimental humanism.

MIM Notes 286 · September 1, 2003 · Page 5

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Politics/MIM

Much of the spin surrounding the

release of the Congressional inquiry into

September 11 focused on so-called

"intelligence failures." For example, the

CIA allegedly had information it did not

share with the FBI and vice versa. This

discussion is largely a re-hash of

complaints made by reactionaries

immediately following September 11:

intelligence agencies' hands are tied; they

can't talk to each other; they can't recruit

some bad guys to catch the other bad

guys; they can't try and kill the bad guys

themselves; etc.

Then and now, these complaints miss

the main point: in the "good old days" when

Amerikan spy agencies officially had--

or simply used--these powers, they could

not stop attacks on Amerikan troops and

civilians. Heavy CIA presence in Iran

provoked the embassy hostage situation;

it did not stop it. Amerikan involvement

in Palestine and Lebanon provoked the

attack on the Marine barracks in Beirut;

it did not stop it. And we know where

CIA support for the mujahideen in

Afghanistan like Osama bin Laden got

the United $tates.

Furthermore, the official restraints

placed on spy agencies in the late 70s

aimed to stop the abuses of powerful

government officials. Not only was the

FBI's illegal COINTELPRO killing

scores of radical Black Panthers, but even

staunchly bourgeois-liberal critics of

government policy found themselves

surveilled and harassed. The "unshackle

our intelligence agencies" types and the

Amerikans who follow them out of

"father knows best" mentality have

forgotten these recent lessons--indeed

they've forgotten the lessons their own

"founding fathers" learned regarding

government accountability.(1)

Regardless of the supposed constraints

placed on Amerikan spy agencies,

however, the Congressional report

illustrates a point we made in the last issue

of MIM Notes at length: just because the

imperialist spend $100s of billions yearly

on spying doesn't mean they know

everything. The spies may lose the crucial

piece of information in background noise,

or they may be fed false information.

An FBI official said, "This report gave

us a good overview of where a number

of failures took place, but just at the FBI

but throughout the government. But

nothing in the report says we really could

have stopped it... There are any number

of ways to second-guess this."(2)

Amerikan spy agencies have also

emphasized the incompleteness of their

knowledge in an attempt to justify their

earlier (false) claims that Iraq was trying

to buy African uranium.

Azanian freedom fighter Steven Biko

used to say "never underestimate the

inefficiency of the Security Police."(3)

MIM agrees, and urges activists not to

concede the security struggle in the face

of the imperialists obvious material

advantage. To recap our previous

conclusions:

Although the imperialists spend much

more money on intelligence than the

Imperialist `intelligence failures' -- imagined and real

proletariat does, the imperialists are not

[always] able to use what they collect

and when they do use what they collect

they come into conflict with other

imperialists with other property interests

and government agendas. For this reason,

it is always justified to struggle to make it

a little harder for the imperialists to spy

on the oppressed and exploited...

The reasons not to surrender are

numerous: 1) Raising the cost to the

enemy, because even when s/he does

espionage correctly it costs him/her. 2)

The enemy must sort out true from false

once information is obtained. 3) The

enemy may not bother.

Notes:

1. See our review of Gore Vidal's

"Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How

We Got to Be So Hated" at our online

bookstore or in MIM Notes 278, 15 Mar

2003.

2. Los Angeles Times, 25 Jul 2003.

3. Donald Woods, "Biko," New York:

Henry Holt, 1987, p. 86.

neither.

Benjamin Franklin is not the only

"founding father" the Amerikan

government has turned its back on. The

authors of the Federalist Papers were

suspicious of large standing armies and

warned against giving "ITAL just END

causes of war to other nations."(2) Now

the Amerikan military budget of $360

billion per year is larger than that of the

next ten (or more) largest armies

combined.(3) The United $tates spends

$10 billion per year to keep 9,000 troops

in Afghanistan, while it has promised $1

billion a year to fight AIDS in Africa--a

promise which has yet to be fulfilled.(4)

As the occupations of Afghanistan and

Iraq drag on, with 16 of the army's 33

combat brigades in Iraq alone,(5)

Amerikan generals and Secretary of

"Defense" Donald Rumsfeld are

discussing expanding the already massive

Amerikan military--reversing the

"smaller, faster" dogma Bush ran for

president on and Rumsfeld clung to as

recently as April.

The authors of the Federalist Papers

were worried that a militarily weak

United $tates would invite attack from

larger colonialist powers. Nowadays, 100s

of other countries offer easier targets than

the United $tates--yet the Bush

administration concedes it is in a

protracted "war on terror." According to

the reactionaries' own logic, then, the

attacks on the United $tates are not just

a matter of opportunism but have a basis

in just cause.

Instead of investigating the real basis

September 11: Reactionaries' failed

`security' policies exposed

for the attacks, the U.$. government

persists in its policy of "peace through

strength," even though that strategy has

not stopped the "post-war" casualty rate

for U.$. soldiers from increasing,(6) just

as it did not prevent September 11, the

Oklahoma city bombing, the embassy

bombings in Africa, first World Trade

Center bombing, the bombing of the

Marine barracks in Lebanon, etc. etc.

As we noted in our January comments

on the massive Amerikan military

budget,(3) the Amerikan "founding

fathers" warned repeatedly of the dangers

of an overbearing, permanent military.

"The violent destruction of life and

property incident to war, the continual

effort and alarm attendant on a state of

continual danger, will compel nations the

most attached to liberty to resort for

repose and security to institutions which

have a tendency to destroy their civil and

political rights. To be more safe, they at

length become willing to run the risk of

being less free. The institutions chiefly

alluded to are STANDING ARMIES and

the correspondent appendages of military

establishments."(7)

The alternative to the Amerikan