We Stand with Deep Green Resistance

We Stand With Deep Green Resistance

Primarily among the Left that is centered on “activism” that only manifests itself on the internet, Deep Green Resistance, a group dedicated to resisting corporate greed’s effects on the planet, an organization that is also equally dedicated to the liberation of women, is being accused of “transphobia”. On the contrary, female members of Deep Green Resistance were assaulted by male transgender activists.

By transphobia, these e-activists mean to insinuate that Deep Green Resistance is an organization that shares the same dedications of those who continually make life ever more difficult for individuals who identify as transgender. Employers who discriminate against transgender employees, “tough guys” who spend their afternoons brutalizing, beating and raping people who do not fit into the gender identity their biology prescribes for them, and other, real, authentic, physical threats, physical forces that seek to harass and harm transgender individuals.

Deep Green Resistance partakes in none of the above. What Deep Green Resistance DID do, is the following:

a.) Make a class based analysis of gender as a structurally induced social-construction, manifesting itself as the organized control and restriction of men and women to a set of actions to empower one sex over the other, and subjugate the other sex to the dominant sex’s control

b.) Make a distinction between women and trans-women, and analyze the political connotations of the transgender phenomena

In this post, we’ll be exploring both the abolitionist approach to gender, and the distinction made between women and trans-women by Deep Green Resistance .

Gender, Sex, Class & Restriction

The Gender Boxes

Lets take a look at what Deep Green Resistance actually said about gender and transgender people. First, lets take a look at their political summary of gender, and gender abolitionism:

Firstly, they make the comparison of gender to race, or rather, the set of actions that are associated with specific races:

“The point is that race is not biologically real. Politically, socially, economically, race is, of course, a brutal reality around the globe. But the concept of race is a creation of the powerful. If we want a just world, the material institutions that keep people of color subordinate need to be dismantled. And the concepts of “whiteness” and “blackness” themselves will ultimately be abandoned as they make no sense outside of the realities of white supremacy.” (1)

Basically, They’re arguing that race seeks to tie whole groupings of human beings into whole, collective classes that manifest themselves as power-relations between one another. This can be biologically confirmed. It’s reported, for example, that:

“Possibly only six genes determine the color of a person’s skin,” Graves, a professor of evolutionary biology and African-American Studies at Arizona University, said in the Times interview.” (2)

Six genes out of 30 to 40,000 genes that make us human, determine the color of our skin. Something that can seem so important, so relevant, so determinant of whole historical events, is in reality, a non-factor. Whole economic systems, wars, and even spiritualities have been developed on the basis of, or developed off of the perceived color of one’s skin.

The article, published by Fox News titled Biologically Speaking, Race Doesn’t Exist, continued to say:

“Black, white, Asian—all are artificial, really. A black man and a white man from Manhattan, for example, are likely to be more genetically similar than a black man from Manhattan and a black man from Nigeria.” (2)

“Artificial”, that is to say, socially-constructed. If race is socially-constructed, as the biological as well as historical evidence seems to suggest so overwhelmingly, that must mean that it is the result of a certain society, or rather, specific societies that are connected historically and structurally to one another. For example, the transformation from slave society to industrial capitalist society in the Southern regions of the United States. America had shed the old form of slave holding society for industrial and post-industrial capitalism, while remaining, in essence, the same.

In regards to gender, the writers for Deep Green Resistance continue:

“A lot of people get confused when asked to apply the same radical analysis to gender. But from a feminist perspective, the parallels are obvious. Are there differences in skin tone across the human species? Yes. Why do those differences mean anything? Because a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power needs an ideology called racism. Are there differences in the shapes of people’s genitals? Yes. Why do those differences matter? Because a corrupt and brutal arrangement of power—patriarchy—needs an ideology called gender.” (1)

In this case, what they are arguing is that whole sets of human interactions, emotions, and perceptions are relegated to classes of interaction  reserved for people who biologically meet society’s’ “requirements” for these actions; in the 1800′s, pink for boys, blue for girls, today, pink for girls, blue for boys. Socially, this color-class dynamic becomes football for boys, ballet for girls; dresses and high-heels for girls, pants and boots for boys; etc.

Anarchist activist Emma Goldman

Emma Goldman commented on this reality, referencing the Christian religion and the Bible’s role in enforcing gender:

“Religion, especially the Christian religion, has condemned woman to the life of an inferior, a slave.” (3)

What substantiation is there for this claim? We need only look at the Bible itself, the Bible has quite an amount to say about woman and her place in the family unit. This quote, from versus Titus 2:1-5, is telling:

“But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” (4)

Here we see the ways in which the Bible enforces the gender binary. In regards to “femininity” and “masculinity” the writers for Deep Green Resistance say the following:

“What of femininity? Femininity is a set of behaviors that are in essence ritualized submission. Female socialization is a process of psychologically constraining and breaking girls—otherwise known as “grooming”—to create a class of compliant victims. Across history this breaking has including so-called “beauty practices” like FGM (female genital mutilation) and footbinding as well as ubiquitous child sexual abuse. Femininity is really just the traumatized psyche displaying acquiescence.” (1)

What Deep Green Resistance is directly implying is, gender manifests itself as a restrictive classing of men and women into sets of actions that seek to dominate, or submit men and women to one another. There is an idea, there is a concept of “femininity” but in reality, it does not exist, it is not something I can touch. It’s physical manifestation may be a dress, or a pair of high-heels that damage bone-structures, but this manifestation is merely symbolic, an outgrowth of the idea, the concept known as “feminine”.

What did Deep Green Resistance say about transgender in regards to their analysis of gender? Lierre Keith has said a number of things concerning the transgender phenomena, one of which is this:

“Gender is no different. It is a class condition created by a brutal arrangement of power. I can’t fathom how mutilating people’s bodies to fit an oppressive power arrangement is frankly anything but a human rights violation. And men insisting that they are women is insulting and absurd.” (5)

Interestingly enough, the article that claims that Deep Green Resistance is transphobic refers to the group as “Derrick Jensen’s Deep Green Resistance” in the title. Nowhere is Lierre Keith mentioned, until it becomes convenient for the claim that the group is transphobic. I suppose the sexist e-left considers Lierre Keith to be nothing more than a female counterpart to Derrick Jensen, despite the two being co-founders. My question now is, where did Lierre Keith incite violence towards trans-people? How did this statement physically affect trans-people? If we cannot offer any structural, class-based analysis of gender, because the identities of those affected by gender are much more precious, than we cannot in any way threaten the system’s coercive nature. Another claim by the same article attempts to male-excuse me, I mean make-the case that Deep Green Resistance discriminated against transgender members of the organization:

“I left the organization at the beginning of 2012 after a trans inclusive policy was cancelled by Derrick Jensen and Lierre Keith. Many good people and good activists left the organization for that reason.” (5)

While the author does not substantiate this claim in any way, I’d like to take a minute to comment on the pressure transgender activists make for “inclusion”. Inclusion into what? Women’s spaces? Feminism? In the context of transgender activism, “transphobic” has become a sort of scare word. There is no argument you can make against it, it taints you in radical circles entirely. No matter how well substantiated your claim is, no matter how well researched it is, they will continue to hurl the word at you, as they did against comedian and feminist Roseanne Barr (6), for her insisting that bathrooms be female only spaces. For Deep Green Resistance, words weren’t the only thing hurled:

Lets call it what it is; assault

“Two women were tabling, handing out DGR literature and selling books. A group of five transgender/queer activists came up to the table. One of the male queer activists began shouting at the women, using aggressive language. This man made threatening gestures toward the women. He grabbed and defaced table materials. When one of the women went to protect the materials, he marked her arm and hand as well.” (7)

Is this the kind of inclusion that trans-activists demand? Inclusion that disrupts the activity of female-only spaces? That drives women to the wall, having the word “woman” seized from themselves, forced to grasp tightly on the only thing left, a biological fact; female? If anyone resorted to physical attacks, it is the sexist transgender activists who swarmed onto the Deep Green Resistance activists, who were peaceably distributing materials. The Deep Green Resistance article continues:

“A half an hour later, a male DGR member tried to engage in respectful conversation with these queer activists. They began chanting at him and insulting him, culminating in them throwing trash and food at his head.” (7)

Immature, unacceptable behavior. Apparently, women standing up against their social-constraints is violence, but assaulting peaceful Deep Green Resistance organizers isn’t.

Trans-women and Biological Facts

Germaine Greer, Feminist Writer

Germaine Greer said in her book The Whole Woman:

Governments that consist of very few women have hurried to recognize as women men who believe that they are women and have had themselves castrated to prove it, because they see women not as another sex but as a non-sex. No so-called sex change has ever asked for a uterus and ovaries transplant, if uterus and ovaries transplants were made mandatory for wannabe women they would disappear overnight. The insistence that man-made women be accepted as women is the institutional expression of the mistaken conviction that women are defective males. (8)

The 78-year old veteran feminist writer and activist was also assaulted-excuse me, I mean, “glitter bombed”- for this “transphobic” paragraph. It seems that these trans-activist types can only speak with the rage of testosterone, that is to say, through physical force against women? Apparently so.

That isn’t to say that violence is specifically male; but overwhelmingly, male violence is directed against females. For the man, the loss of a job could eventually entail the entering into crime; anything from drug dealing to legal means of keeping one’s head above ground. For the woman, the loss of a job entails the selling of the only commodity she has left; her vagina.

That also isn’t to say that men (specifically gay men) cannot enter into prostitution, or that they cannot be exploited as prostitutes. But overwhelmingly, this reality is faced by women, the ones who grew up as girls, who were conditioned into patriarchal notions of femininity, who have penetrable vaginas, who normally have the ability to become pregnant with a child, and all the economic hazards that come with that. If the woman grew up in the Third-World, she may have, as a young girl, been subject to clitoral mutilation. For the majority of women who enter-or should I say, are forced into-prostitution, the nightmare begins with childhood. It is reported that 75% of women who are involved in prostitution started as children. In a society that views women as the property of men, how can anyone be surprised without being disingenuous? (9)

It is also reported that women are threatened on the basis of their biology according to the following statistics: 74% of women cite poverty as the primary motivator for entering into prostitution, up to 70% of women in prostitution spent time in care, 45% report sexual abuse and 85% physical abuse within their families, up to 95% of women in prostitution are problematic drug users, including around 78% heroin users and rising numbers of crack cocaine addicts, more than half of UK women in prostitution have been raped and/or seriously sexually assaulted, at least three quarters have been physically assaulted, 68% of women in prostitution meet the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the same range as torture victims and combat veterans undergoing treatment, The mortality rate for women in prostitution in London suffer is 12 times the national average, and a global study of prostitution found that 9 out of 10 women in prostitution would like to exit if they could. This is substantiated by object.org. (9)

I believe that, if we are to define woman in society as a sex class, we cannot call transgender individuals who “identify” as women to be women. As I said in my article Does Gender Dysphoria need to be ‘Cured’?:

“The ‘sex change’ surgery is faulty advertising. It does not produce what it advertises it produces. It does not, in actuality, change one’s biological sex. To say it does is dishonest. A man who transitions into “womanhood” does not menstruate. They do not endure menopause. They lack the internal organs to become pregnant. Their chromosomes cannot change from female to male. The ‘sex change’ surgery itself is an offensive on the bodies of transgender people. It sterilizes their castrated bodies, leaving them only with a mutilated penis, designed for penetrative intercourse. Going back to the original question, “does a ‘sex change’ surgery really change the biological sex of the transgender person?”, the answer depends upon the definition of what a woman is. If a woman is defined by her penetrability, then the answer is yes. If woman is to be defined by her place in society, by her biology and it’s relationship to society, the answer is no.”

References:

(1) http://www.deepgreenresistance.org/faq/dgr-a-feminist-organization/

(2) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,43298,00.html

(3) http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/goldman/works/1911/woman-suffrage.htm

(4) http://www.openbible.info/topics/gender_roles

(5) http://www.decolonizingyoga.com/how-derrick-jensens-deep-green-resistance-supports-transphobia/

(6) http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/183gi9trxj13mpng/ku-medium.png

(7) http://www.deepgreenresistance.org/incidents-this-weekend/

(8) http://anntagonist.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/that-time-i-met-germaine-greer/

(9) http://www.object.org.uk/the-prostitution-facts

Willie Manning and Assata Shakur: Justice and Legality

Willie Manning, Innocent and on Death Row

Willie Manning is innocent. His innocence is supported by DNA evidence, and an FBI admission to error. According to the ACLU:

“Much of the key evidence that led to Manning’s murder convictions and sentence of death has turned out to be a sham. One witness has admitted that he lied in his testimony, and another confessed that she never revealed what she was promised for her words against Manning. The FBI has conceded that it wrongly testified about a “match” between a hair found in the victim’s car and Manning when science supported no such thing.” (1)

The only commonality with the hair of Willie Manning and the hair found in the victim’s car, was that the hair was from an African-American. So it cannot be argued that this case is not about race, specifically when such a gross injustice is occurring in Mississippi, a state that has a notorious history of racism, and oppression of and towards black people.

Despite these facts, Willie Manning is scheduled to die. I’m writing this article on May 7th, 2013, at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. The time I am writing this, is the time that Manning was scheduled to be executed. Despite arrogance on the part of prosecutors in Mississippi, and the legal system of Mississippi, his execution has, thanks to the persistence of activists, been delayed. But only delayed. This is not a victory, merely a step forward.

That the Mississippi supreme court would come to this decision only hours before he was scheduled to be executed is itself a gross injustice. (2)

That such a miscarriage of justice could and more, that it would occur in America, shows the “color scheme” of the “justice” system. When, as of every 40 hours, a black person is killed, or should I say, executed, by a police officer (3), is evidence of the structural, and indeed, the violent manifestations of racism that pervade the American political system, that pervade the American economic and judicial systems.

Indeed, it would be illegal for Willie Manning to break out of prison, out of death row. It would be immoral if the Supreme Court decided that, tonight, rather than postponing his execution, they continued with it as planned. Would it be moral to stop it from happening, even by illegal force? I would argue it would be moral, but it certainly would be illegal.

Assata Shakur, Innocent and Pursued

For Assata Shakur, it was the only way. Assata Shakur was subject to, while in prison, vaginal and anal searches. She was confined in an all men’s prison, and she lived in solitary confinement for half the time she remained in prison. She was under 24 hour surveillance, during her most intimate functions, without any adequate medical service, or exercise, or even seeing the sun, in some cases. (4) An international panel of seven jurists representing the United Nations Commission on Human Rights concluded in 1979 that her treatment was “totally unbefitting any prisoner.” (4)

Assata Shakur is pursued for supposedly shooting a New Jersey state trooper. The New Jersey Crime Laboratory shows that the fingerprint analysis of every gun found at the scene showed there were no fingerprints from Assata, on any of them. Neutron Activation Analysis taken immediately after Assata was taken to the hospital that night for three bullet wounds (two to the arm, one to the back, while she was wounded on the ground) showed that there was no gunpowder residue on her hands, effectively refuting the possibility that she shot a gun. As a pathologist also testified that “There is no conceivable way that the bullet could traveled over to the clavicle if her arm was down. That trajectory is impossible”. The most damning evidence of all, is the testimony of a surgeon who worked on Assata while she was wounded by the police officer she supposedly shot. The surgeon said,“It was anatomically necessary that both arms be in the air for Ms. Chesimard (Assata Shakur) to have received the wounds she did.” (5)

It was also reported that the testimony of New Jersey state trooper James Harper was false. James Harper admitted, under cross-examination, that he had lied in all three of his official reports and in his Grand Jury testimony. (5)

It is clear that Assata Shakur is not guilty. If anyone is guilty, it is the legal powers, the inculpable ones, the state, the police, in a word, and in a physical, breaking sense, the people’s oppressors and exploiters, and those who facilitate this exploitation, and oppression. However, in New Jersey, she was not going to be given a fair, non-racist trial. In fact, the entire jury that condemned her was comprised of white New Jerseyans. (5)

What does this mean? It means that, sometimes, to do what is morally right, one must break the law, and to do what is morally reprehensible, what is morally indecent, is to follow the law. That law does not always translate to morality. And that, if one’s law is moral law, it is sometimes necessary to break the law to prevent a crime of a moral and ethical sense from occurring. This is why Assata Shakur was broken out of prison. This is why Assata Shakur is living free, in Cuba.

The FBI has recently featured Assata Shakur as the primary “terrorist” they need to capture. Assata Shakur is on the front of the FBI’s website, and she is being pursued, in what is a political attack on Cuba. They are continuously claiming that Assata Shakur needs to “be brought to justice” and that she “needs to finish her time behind bars”.

The same people who, just hours before Willie Manning was executed, finally decided to postpone this innocent man’s execution, want Assata Shakur to return to the racist United States to “face justice”. It is akin to saying that Jews who escaped Hitler’s camps should “be returned” to “do their time”. America’s policies towards black people are effectively genocidal. They take lives in what can only be called a systematic offense on the lives of black people. Freedom, for America’s exploitation. Liberty, to exploit, and plunder. Justice, for white America. Restriction, for those who are exploited by America. Incarceration, for those who resist American exploitation and plunder, injustice for black people in America.

References:

(1) http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/case-against-death-penalty

(2) http://tinyurl.com/c592h8a

(3) http://bossip.com/609434/study-shows-that-police-kill-black-person-every-40-hours3920/

(4) Browder, 2006, p. 159

(5) Evelyn A. Williams: New Jersey Crime Laboratory in Trenton, NJ;FBI crime laboratories in Washington D.C.

Femen: Shirtless Women Insensitive?

A woman being arrested for not wearing a shirt

My writing is generally centered around economic and military Imperialism and it’s excesses. So, understandably, given the misunderstandings and ignorance abound about anti-Imperialism and criticism of the United States, you may be surprised to know that I consider the struggle against Imperialism waged in the Third-world a woman’s struggle just as much as it is an anti-Imperialist one. That, to divorce the struggle against Imperialism as capitalism’s current manifestation in this era from the women’s question, is to negate the ABC’s of Leftist thoughtform. Anti-Imperialist struggle is relegated to Islamic fundamentalist chauvinism by the media.

“They hate us because we allow women in the workplace”

That is what we hear. But we never hear of the women and girls who suffer and die in Afghanistan from drone strikes; nor do we hear of, as the book Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism reports, the up to 25,000 women and girls who have been trafficked into brothels in Kabul since the onset of the invasion and military occupation of Afghanistan in 2001. (1)

That women are allowed to be exploited not just at home, but in our factories and places of work here in America too, is sufficient. They “hate us” hundreds of thousands of miles away, never to see us, all because we allow women to work. Nevermind the power-structure at play that has women making less than men in the workplace, and never getting so much as a “thank you” let alone a wage for the work they do in the household.

Muslims in the United States are a persecuted minority. And so, the Left has a priority in America to defend the rights of this group of people. But in Tunisia, where these topless protests originated from, Islam is the overwhelming majority, ranging 98% of the population. Tunisia is also an ally to US Imperialism.

This is where the American Left has confused it’s priorities.

As a writer on the blog Eagainst wrote:

“To claim that Islam is not political, or only political in a certain framework, does not force women to become unquestionably and brutally subordinated to their husbands, is not just wrong but also ahistorical, unless one is referring to a secularized, modernized sect, which either attempts to rationalize Islamic ethics or even adopts a less religious-centric approach, by embracing other values and norms.” (5)

Simply because Muslims can play a role against economic and, specifically, in more cases, military Imperialism in the Third-world, does not mean that we should simply consider Islam an ally at every turn. If the Left’s goal is anti-Imperialist realism, than realist it should be. The Left would find itself almost uncritical of Islamic theocracy, even if that Islamic theocracy is backed up by US Imperialism, simply because it is Islamic, and that our immediate goal is not to stifle the interests of US Imperialism in the Arab regions, but rather, to “humanize” and adapt, in a sense, Islam for Euro-Christian eyes. So the Left likens Islam to Christianity, or Judaism. Therein lies the mistake. We have no interest in the doctrines and dogmas of Christianity, or Judaism, and neither Islam for that matter. It’s members we may take an interest in, but a proportionate amount of Leftist thought and theory comes down to criticism of religion and metaphysical dogmas.

Why the Topless Protests Started

“my body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone’s honour”

This “obscene” photograph is a picture of Amina. Amina posted a topless picture of herself on the internet. Amina is a Tunisian Feminist activist. It is being reported that Amina has:

“..been effectively detained incommunicado by her family with the help of the police, and the latest reports say she has been drugged and beaten.” (2)

In Tunisia, Islam is followed by nearly 99% of the entire population. The state is not only conservative and, in a number of ways theocratic, but that because of this, oppression of the nuclear family, and with that the systematized oppression of women are exacerbated.

Amina challenged a conservative, backwards society, and it’s patriarchal values, and rightfully so. But instead of feedback, positive or negative, she was imprisoned not just by the state, but by her family, all because she showed her chest on the internet.

The Guardian reports that Amina “fears for her life”:

“I’m afraid for my life and the lives of my family,” she said, adding that she doesn’t think it possible to return to school in Tunisia and wants to study journalism abroad.” (3)

You must understand that women are not your property. You have no right to tell women they ought to cover up, simply because you’re insecure about your breast fetishism. There is nothing inherently sexual about the female breast. Because our society retains a sexual dialectic of sexual conservatism/sexual liberalism, you, understandably, feel both uncomfortable and aroused seeing female breasts in public. But simply because the male in western society views breasts as a sexual object, does not mean that breasts are a sexual object.

A fetish is defined by merriam-webster as:

“..an object or bodily part whose real or fantasied presence is psychologically necessary for sexual gratification and that is an object of fixation to the extent that it may interfere with complete sexual expression” (4)

The object’s inherent sexual character to the fetishist is not itself inherent; rather, it is projected onto the object by the individual with the fetish. So the object that is fetishized is not itself the character projected on it, merely symbolic of that character. What does the female breast represent? It represents the half-covered/half-naked on the TV female body. It represents, for the American male, the mother and the wife.

Of course toplessness does not entail liberation of the female. In the words of Germaine Greer, “As long as men think of women’s bodies as commodities offered only and solely for their consumption, there is no liberation to be had either in taking clothes off, or keeping them covered.”

The oppression of the female is both economic and socio-political; cultural as it is capitalistic, going back to feudalism and feudal property relations. As Ulrike Meinhof wrote in her column for Konkret titled False Consciousness (1968) it is impossible to pursue equal pay for men and women without also pursuing a redistribution of social wealth, impossible to liberate women without displacing capital, capitalism, and from that the capitalist who is engaged in and benefits from that system.

But to say that women cannot take off their tops in the streets is a reduction of the female to her breasts, and what her breasts psychologically and politically symbolize in the eyes of the American male. It is to, as Greer says, restrict women’s actions on the basis of man’s thinking of women’s bodies “as commodities”, offered “only and solely for their consumption”.

Topless Solidarity and Politics

So far, the criticisms of Femen made by the Left have been cataclysmic. Femen is either entirely black and without virtue, or the greatest thing since the 1960′s for women’s liberation. The truth is, it is neither.

Any criticism of Femen must be a dialectical one. It has to view Femen as a movement sprouting from a bourgeois society, and view it as a movement that lacks any serious class analysis of the women’s question, gender oppression and women’s relationship with society in light of capitalism and the ownership of women. It needs to remember that Femen is not perfect, nor is it utterly evil and chauvinistic. Femen is women, angry with the current order, striking out at the oppression they experience, and, as was said before, rightfully so.

There is nothing inherently wrong with toplessness, for either men or women. Because we live in patriarchy, women are told that their breasts must be hidden, that they are something so powerful that if they were to reveal them everywhere, their power as a woman would be reduced to nothingness, because the female breast represents the female, and therefore female sexuality, in the eyes of the young boy, and the aged man, who were conditioned to hide away their sexuality, they saw that something hidden, yet representative of their blooming sexual interest in the female, was something that their subconscious projected their desire upon.

Porn and rape culture is not liberation; it is not that the west experiences “softer” oppression, and that the middle-east experiences “harsh” oppression in regards to the female, but rather that this oppression manifests itself in different forms, and different variants, but that the basis, that of the ownership and subjugation of women, still stands. To say that the woman in the west is “better off” than the woman in the middle-east, is like saying that the African slave was “better off” than the Greek slave. Oppression is oppression, and so the goal of resistance to oppression is not simply to settle for crumbs, but for the whole pie. Not concessions, but power. Proletarian revolution is but a women’s revolution, it is but a shift of power dynamic between the thesis and the antithesis, those on bottom and those on top.

So to say that the middle-east should adopt strip clubs and start filming porn, that middle-eastern women are “dimwitted” to not throw away the hijab and put on the Bikini, is to ignore the larger, economic aspect of women’s oppression, and, more importantly, the strategic implications of female emancipatory action.

But that is not the point of Femen – surely, among Femen’s members, these false mentalities may be adopted, but that is beyond the point. The point is not that we will “liberate women overnight by taking off our shirts collectively” but that a message of broad solidarity is echoed from the west to the east, a message of solidarity to Amina, and to all the women and girls living under conservative patriarchy in the Arab world.

References:

(1) Feminism and War: Confronting US Imperialism, p. 169

(2) http://freethoughtblogs.com/maryamnamazie/2013/04/05/our-day-defend-amina/

(3) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/07/tunisian-feminist-fears-for-life

(4) http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fetish

(5) http://eagainst.com/articles/islamic-apologism/

Does Gender Dysphoria need to be ‘Cured’?

Disclaimer: No section of this article is designed to offend or upset trans-people. This is an argument against cosmetic surgery. If you are a transsexual person and are pursuing sex change surgery to relieve your dysphoria, this article may be of interest to you. It may also bother you, because I am not entertaining the popular misconception that a sex change surgery is some sort of “quick fix” to your dysphoria.

Gender as an Oppressive Limitation

To oppose gender roles, is to oppose gender

Gender is a conservative idea, however you attach it, we know this to be true. The trans-movement has advanced the idea of gender on lines that defy biological sex only insofar as they possibly can reach given the limitations of a biologically gendered society, hence, the sex change. Because our notions of gender and sex are changing and evolving so quickly, there will probably be a redefinition of the concept itself between the “liberal” interpretations of gender as a “creative outlet”, where the trans-people stand, and the “conservative” interpretations of gender, as something necessary for specific biological sexes to be conditioned into. Gender stands as a limitation on human interaction on the basis of biological phenomena. Associations and power-relations on the basis of a human being’s biology, that is, male or female. It seeks to divide humanity and human interaction into classes of action. It seeks to categorize action by “Gendered rules of operations”. That, to do one thing would be to relegate oneself from the appropriate gender identity according to one’s biological sex. Over time, our standards on what is masculine and what is feminine have changed, at one point blue being a girl’s color, pink being a boy’s color, today the roles being reversed. I would argue that conforming to society’s standards on gender and biological normativity through the means of a sex change is self-mutilation. Ethically, and politically, I am opposed to this, and other practices of cosmetic surgery.

What is a Sex Change?

“Transsexuality is currently considered a gender disorder, that is, a person learns a gender role which contradicts his/her visible sex. It is a “disease” with a cure: a sex-change operation will change the person’s visible sex and make it consonant with the person’s felt identity. Since we know very little about sex identity, and since psychiatrists are committed to the propagation of the cultural structure as it is, it would be premature and not very intelligent to accept the psychiatric judgement that transsexuality is caused by a faulty socialization. More probably, transsexuality is caused by a faulty society.”

“Cosmetic surgery fixes everything!”

Andrea Dworkin said this in her book Woman Hating, which was published in the early 1970′s. At that time, little was known about the transgender phenomena. Previous to those times, a sex change surgery was nothing more than a simple castration. Today, the sex change surgery is much more complex. The sheath of skin that covers the penile organ is put inside out, becoming inverted, held in place by internal scar tissue. The surgery essentially reconstructs the penis and male sex organs to resemble that of a female’s genitalia, the penis tip becoming a sort of make shift clitoris, the skin of the shaft becoming the vaginal canal, until you have what the medical community calls a “neovagina”. Given these facts, many wonder what to classify the ‘sex change’ surgery as. Some argue that the sex change surgery gives the trans-person a vagina/penis identical to that of any biologically female/male genitalia. Others argue that the surgery is “purely cosmetic” that, the surgery does not alter the biological sex of the recipient of the surgery, rather, it merely alters the recipient’s physical appearance. Thus, we must ponder the question; does a ‘sex change’ surgery really change the biological sex of the transgender person? Wikipedia defines the sex change surgery as follows:

“… is a term for the surgical procedures by which a person’s physical appearance and function of their existing sexual characteristics are altered to resemble that of the other sex.” (1)

Note that Wikipedia defines the sex change surgery as “altering” the “appearance” of “existing sexual characteristics” to “resemble” that of the other sex. No where does the Wikipedia article say that the ‘sex change’ surgery literally “changes” the sex of the person getting the surgery performed, as the name of the surgery and it’s proponents so dishonestly advertise it to perform. Be that as it may, some will continue to argue that the sex change surgery “cures” gender-dysphoria. The article continues:

“It is part of a treatment for gender dysphoria in transsexual people.” (1)

Note the use of the word “treatment” for gender dysphoria. It is not a magic cure. This society advertises the use of cosmetic surgery as some sort of mystical solution to the mental conditions that people contend against. The standards that society sets on biology, on sexuality, on gender, on beauty, on health; these standards lead to mutilation. The argument is that the human body must be adapted to the cultural-normatives of society, by dress, or by scalpel. Does the “neovagina” function like that of a biologically female vagina? It does not. It’s functioning is that of a penetrable wound. It requires eternal dilation to prevent it from healing, and closing up. It does produce discharge – discharge that comes from the bowels. It is held together only by internal scar tissue. The ‘sex change’ surgery is faulty advertising. It does not produce what it advertises it produces. It does not, in actuality, change one’s biological sex. To say it does is dishonest. A man who transitions into “womanhood” does not menstruate. They do not endure menopause. They lack the internal organs to become pregnant. Their chromosomes cannot change from female to male. The ‘sex change’ surgery itself is an offensive on the bodies of transgender people. It sterilizes their castrated bodies, leaving them only with a mutilated penis, designed for penetrative intercourse. Going back to the original question, “does a ‘sex change’ surgery really change the biological sex of the transgender person?”, the answer depends upon the definition of what a woman is. If a woman is defined by her penetrability, then the answer is yes. If woman is to be defined by her place in society, by her biology and it’s relationship to society, the answer is no.

The lack of Effectiveness of Transition

The viewpoint endorsed by society is that the dysphoria experienced by the transgender person “ends” with the ‘sex change’. That hormones magically relieve the gender dysphoria that transgender people experience. In reality, the journey continues, and, in the long-term, does not improve. Anyone with dysphoria will tell you that it cycles. Transition is merely a high, or as they call it, the “trans-high”, which, in time, becomes a trans-low. This trans-low is a low far more devastating than that of the previous experience in dysphoria, as it is a kind of hopelessness. The ‘sex change’ surgery, being that it’s product is not what it was originally advertised to be, is, in fact, a kind of disappointment. The transgender person does not become the sex opposite to their biology, rather, they are forced to live in a perpetual gender disguise.

“I am a non-person, an ‘it’. I have let them mutilate me. Far from solving my problems, the operation has made things worse.” (2)

This is the testimony of Peter, or Sandra, as he is now called. In his forties, Peter was going through panic attacks, and was dependent to an extreme degree on tranquilizers. He continues, holding back tears:

“… But I found the requisite two psychiatrists to recommend surgery. That is all you need. I had no money, so I could not afford any counselling, and was offered none on the NHS. I thought that becoming a woman would solve all my problems.” (2)

Peter’s anger is towards the medical community, towards the psychological community, and towards society:

“She blames the medical profession for recommending irreversible surgery when she was in no fit state to think the issue through for herself.” (2)

Another person, Steve, now Stephanie Robinson, says that he felt pressured into genital surgery, and that they had “wandered into” the process. Steve continued, saying:

“I would probably have chosen a less radical solution if I had thought anything else was available.” (2)

Not only is the process of transition rapid, and in many cases influenced by the psychological community, which is itself relatively ignorant on the relatively new topic, but in many cases, these psychologists ‘play God’ so to speak, with people’s bodies. They’re the psychologists, they know what is right, and they know what is wrong. They know what you are, and they know why you are what you are. Thus was the case with Andrew. Since Andrew was 18, he had been adamant about receiving a sex change operation. Andrew was without doubt about his gender identity as a woman. Transition, for him, seemed like the way to relieve all the problems he had ever experienced related to his dysphoria. Three years later, when he was only 21 years old, Andrew got what he “wanted”. With the backing of psychiatrist Dr. Kennedy, who said that Andrew had a female brain in a male body, this horrible mistake was made possible. Andrew recalls telling the surgeon that:

“I think I’m doing the wrong thing, I think we’ve got to stop it.” (3)

Andrew was physically abused by his father, raped by two men at age 16, and had begin to hate his body, and his being male. He picked up a book on transsexuality one day, and the feelings expressed by the transsexual people resonated with his own. Like Brandon Teena, Andrew’s issues we’re much deeper than a cosmetic operation. Andrew was mutilated on the basis of his abuse, and on the abusive perceptions he, as a result of his abuse and rape, took on about his body. There was nothing wrong with his body, and probably not his mind, either. He was reeling from the abuse of a faulty society.

But when Andrew woke up, he found that his genitals were bandaged. It had happened. He recalls crying, and feeling intense emotions of regret. Later, Andrew developed suicidal tendencies. Some wonder how it was possible that such a mistake was made. That, there is nothing inherently wrong with the practice of sexual reassignment surgery, rather, the process that individuals go through to get the surgery performed. To divorce the connection between the diagnosis of transsexual, and the real psychological (not physical) issues these people contend against, is to ignore the blatant reality people like Andrew face. As The Independent article says:

“Reviews of the Monash clinic found psychotherapy was rarely, if ever, offered. While a patient would require a diagnosis as a “true transsexual” from two psychiatrists before being offered surgery, both opinions were from inside the clinic — one that operates under the fundamental ethos that surgery is the only cure.” (3)

What about people with “genuine” dysphoria? Those who aren’t misdiagnosed? The Guardian reports the following:

“There is no conclusive evidence that sex change operations improve the lives of transsexuals, with many people remaining severely distressed and even suicidal after the operation, according to a medical review conducted exclusively for Guardian Weekend tomorrow.” (4)

It continued to say concerning regret and suicide rates among trans-people the following:

“Research from the US and Holland suggests that up to a fifth of patients regret changing sex. A 1998 review by the Research and Development Directorate of the NHS Executive found attempted suicide rates of up to 18% noted in some medical studies of gender reassignment.” (4)

In defense of the transgender transition practices, Mr. Bellringer says the following concerning the benefits of transition:

“There’s no other treatment that works. You either have an operation or suffer a miserable life. A fifth of those who don’t get treatment commit suicide.” (4)

The argument is essentially that “This is the best we have”. While it may seem convincing, lets not forget that, at one time, a sex change surgery was nothing more than a simple castration. At that time, that was “The best we had”. The psychological community, out of “respect” for “people’s identities” versus people’s bodies, is almost barred from looking at the issues of gender identity disorder outside the spectrum of gender roles. Those psychologists who are “trans-critical” are so on the basis of conservatism. Rather than divorcing the matter from conservative notions of gender roles, these “trans-critical” psychologists resort to “boy things” and “girl things”. “Your son likes the color pink? He must be transgender. This is the fault of faulty conditioning. We must administer ‘corrective’ gender conditioning”.

“This is the best we have” isn’t good enough. It isn’t good enough for those transgender people who are pro-op and still suffer from dysphoria, it isn’t good enough for the rape victims who were diagnosed with gender identity disorder, and, by extension, transitioned, it isn’t good enough for those who cannot reverse the bodily damage that has been inflicted by the medical and psychological community.

Female to male ‘top surgery’

What is even more disturbing is the phenomena of female to male gender transition. Many times, female to male gender transition occurs on the basis of trauma. Brandon Teena, for example, was an incest survivor. On the basis of her wearing “baggy pants” (which is common for sexual abuse victims) and other “masculine” clothing, the idea that Brandon was transgender was drilled into her head. (5) Testosterone injections have been shown to cause or worsen polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Which has been linked to an increased risk of endometrial cancer, as well as ovarian cancer. (6) It was also reported that many women who have suffered at the hands of male privileges and violence wanted to reverse the power-relations. To them, masculinity mean’t power. Transition into manhood mean’t escape from male violence and patriarchy. On the contrary, I would argue that transitioning from female to male is itself a form of male violence.

References:

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_reassignment_surgery

(2) http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/when-sexchange-is-a-mistake-some-transsexuals-suffer-bitter-regrets-sarah-lonsdale-reports-1512822.html

(3) http://www.smh.com.au/national/gender-setters-when-doctors-play-god-20090530-br14.html

(4) http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2004/jul/30/health.mentalhealth

(5) http://www.triviavoices.com/the-inconvenient-truth-about-teena-brandon.html

(6) http://dirtywhiteboi67.blogspot.com/2010/06/truth-about-testosterone-effect-and.html

Why America Should get out of Korea

The “Juche Tower” which represents independence

It is in the best interest of Korea, and in the best interests of the Korean people as a whole, that Korea govern itself by it’s own standards; that is to say, it use it’s own resources for it’s own benefit; that the Northern half of the country be able to develop it’s war-torn agriculture and countryside on it’s own terms. In regards to North Korea, it would not be in the peninsula’s best interests to “open itself up” to the western powers, simply because of the fact that these powers base their immense wealth and economic prosperity on their barefaced exploitation of the underdeveloped, resource rich territories that make up the Third-world – Korea is part of that Third-world.

It would be in the best interests of the Southern peninsula of Korea to be free of domineering foreign power politics. It would be in the best interests of the people of South Korea to free themselves from economic subjugation and exploitation, or in other words, robbery, by the large, powerful reigning empires of the day – or, to be specific, to be free from United States Imperialism. Many Third-world leaders are cowardly in their negotiations and relations with the First-world empires. They sacrifice independence for consumer goods. They sacrifice development on their own terms – even if it is made difficult by the Imperialist powers – for “easy” development, or, to be frank, they sacrifice independent development of their resource rich territories for sweatshop labor, for the fruits of their labor to go to the, already rich, First-world powers.

North Korea’s Problems are because of America

Due to the series of bombings by the United States military during the three year Korean war, only about 18% of North Korea’s land is agriculturally arable (1).On the 12th of August, 1950, the United States Air Force dropped 625 tons of bombs on heavily populated regions of North Korea; two weeks later, the daily tonnage increased to some 800 tons. American war planes dropped more napalm and bombs on North Korea than they did during the whole Pacific campaign against Japan during World War II (7). What the land arability means is, it means agricultural, and therefore food shortages. It means there is hunger. It means that, considering the loss of it’s greatest partner in trade, the Soviet Union, which made up a predominant amount of North Korea’s trade in food and products of necessity for human survival, North Korea survived the 1990′s while maintaining it’s independence only through intense struggle and endurance.

What did the Korean war mean? It mean’t a large and powerful empire was bullying a small and dependent territory, crippled by a pre-existing anti-Japanese independence struggle. It mean’t the destruction of Japan as an empire, which was progressive to be sure, by Allied forces, however, it also mean’t the seizure of the Japanese empire’s stolen territories for the American empire. It mean’t that America was getting it’s first real tastes of conquest. Everything else previous to Korea was minor for America’s newborn Imperialist economy. But this… This was America’s first taste of blood. And when it got that taste, it went into a frenzy.

A frenzy that even America and South Korea admit cost the lives of at the very least an estimated 2.5 million Korean civilians (6). But I think that statistic itself might be a little generous towards America’s war machine.

Concentration camps were set up, with the intent of executing suspected Communists or North Korean sympathizers living in South Korea. An estimated 200,000 – 1,200,000 civilians were executed and tossed into mass graves, among which were children. At each execution site, a United States soldier was present to sanction the mass killings. I wrote about this tragic act of genocide more extensively in my revealing article Death Camps on the Korean Peninsula .

Pablo Picasso’s depiction of the massacre. Picasso was an artist and a Communist

In Sinchon, North Korea, 30,000 civilians in total were massacred over a period of 52 days. The terror of these near two months is well documented. Torture of civilians was common place. Sharon Ayling of the Worker’s World Newspaper wrote the following:

“There was well-documented evidence of 2,000 people pushed off the Sokdang Bridge, 1,000 women thrown into the Sowon Reservoir, 600 others found in the Pogu Reservoir, 1,200 stuffed in an icehouse and then burned to death. Over 900 people perished in an air-raid shelter when U.S. soldiers poured gasoline into the ventilation hole and ignited it.” (10)

“Regard Koreans as animals. Kill them without mercy thinking as if you are killing animals.” This was an order of MacArthur at the beginning of the war. America’s track-record certainly isn’t clean. The crimes are many, the effects still very much real. That American media would dare to open it’s audacious and pretentious mouth and criticize the small territory of North Korea is ludicrous. That America would expect itself to be well received by the Korean people, or the leading administrative forces of North Korea, is simply out of the question. The cuts are far from healed – in fact, they will never, really, truly heal. For any calming between Korea and America to occur, America would need a radical change of power-structure. America would need to leave Korea for good. America would need to pay the necessary reparations to those groups of people, especially Koreans, whom they devastated and murdered.

Korea is Better Off Independent

Kim Il Sung delivering a speech

Korea would do better without interference and sabotage by world powers against it’s economy. Three-and-a-half decades previous to the Soviet Union’s demise, Kim Il Sung, founder and revolutionary leader of Korea during the Anti-Japanese war of resistance, and the Korean war against the United States, compiled his speech ‘On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the DPRK’ in the year of 1965.

In section III. ‘On Socialist Economic Construction‘ he remarks the following:

“Light industry was one of the most backward sections of our country.”, he continues to say that ”We have made great efforts to build up our own basis of a light industry which is capable of meeting the needs of the people.” (11)

He says concerning the growth of industrial production in North Korea:

“The annual rate of growth of industrial production in the ten post-war years from 1954 to 1963 averaged 34.8 percent. Our country’s industrial output in 1964 was about eleven times that of the pre-war year of 1949 and more than thirteen times that of the preliberation year of 1944.” (11)

These facts are actually quite substantial. The growth experienced in North Korea under the socialist economy was unprecedented under the rule of the Japanese empire; such growth would have also been impossible under the wing of America’s eagle.

He continues, saying:

“As a result of this rapid growth of industrial production, the proportion of industry in the total value of industrial and agricultural output jumped from 28 percent in 1946 to 75 percent in 1964″ (11)

The capabilities of North Korea’s independent economy are clearly shown. The socialist economy is capable of production adequate for a sustainable society, even more, it has the capacity for a thriving society and people. Contrary to the claims that North Korea was, at that time, simply a territory under the Soviet empire, and therefore, did momentarily well because of the Soviet Union, Kim Il Sung’s defiance towards the Soviet leadership of Khrushchev and co. on the question of Korea’s development and industrialization is mentioned:

“The (Soviet) revisionists, talking about “international division of labor,” opposed our Party’s line on the building of heavy industry and maintained, among other things, that our country did not need to develop a machine-building industry but would do well to produce only minerals and other raw materials. Of course, we could not follow their view.” (11)

He continues to say, concerning the immense growth of heavy industry in North Korea:

“Our heavy industry now possesses all its key branches, is equipped with new techniques, and has its own solid raw material bases. In 1964 our country’s heavy industry produced 12,500 million khw of electricity; 14,400,000 tons of coal; 1,340,000 tons of pig and granulated iron; 1,130,000 tons of steel; more than 750,000 tons of chemical fertilizers; 2,600,000 tons of cement; and large quantities of machinery, equipment, and various other means of production.” (11)

Kim Il Sung noted the necessity of technical revolution in the underdeveloped countryside, remarking:

“In the past our country’s agriculture was based on backward medieval technique. And in our country cooperativization was realized with practically no technical reconstruction of agriculture. Thus the technical revolution in the countryside posed itself as the most urgent problem for the development of socialist cooperative agriculture.” (11)

Concerning the realization of technical development, he notes the following concerning means of development:

“No little successes have been attained in mechanization, electrification, and chemicalization. Our countryside now has 20,000 tractors for every 15 hp units. This is equal to one tractor per 100 hectare of crop area, and about 300 kilograms of chemical fertilizers are applied to each hectare.” (11)

In regards to electricity in the formerly unlit countryside, Kim Il Sung notes the spread of electricity under the socialist economy:

“In the preliberation days our countryside had no electricity, but now electricity is supplied to 95.5 percent of all the rural villages, and 81 percent of all the farmhouses.” (11)

This kind of development and expansion of people’s livelihood would have never been thinkable, let alone possible under the rule of Japanese Imperialism. Neither would it be under American Imperialism. The socialist economy is capable of sustaining the livelihood of the Korean people, but is made impossible to implement without excess under the threat and acts of sabotage of American Imperialism.

North Korea’s struggle to be free from the American empire, and the former Japanese empire, have been difficult ones; their struggle to maintain this freedom and independence has been even more arduous. America’s three year all out war, complete with bombings, biochemical warfare, concentration camps, collective civilian massacres, and other atrocities committed against the Korean people, atrocities that have had devastating effects on the territory; effects that have brought the Korean people hardship and destitution, has created very real problems for North Korea; but these problems are the fault of war, and isolation, not socialism.

American Media’s Double Standards

The criticisms of North Korea, on average, only amount to a series of despicably chauvinistic and ignorant double standards.

One criticism leveled against the administrating forces of North Korea, is that there is some sort of “top echelon” in North Korea, one that is centralized in the industrial Pyongyang as some sort of “show city”. The accusation is that Pyongyang is a front, that, in actuality, most Koreans suffer and even die from starvation, and live in utter poverty and destitution. Essentially, the argument is that North Korea has the capacity to “feed it’s starving people” but that “they refuse to” due to the current leadership’s perceived stubborn attitude towards “opening up” and “reform”.

In actuality, the irony cuts deep; what of the 24,000 children who die of hunger every day (2) in nations that embrace capitalism and cooperation with the United States? Africa is abundant in it’s resources. Africa has the capacity to feed it’s starving children, it’s starving population; but it’s leaders and governments don’t.

Like Malcolm X said: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”

Why aren’t we invading and “liberating” these African territories? Because we have a stake in their destitution. North Korea? We don’t have a stake in any of their economy. “If they’re gonna suffer, we should at least profit off of it”. You want to talk about elitist echelons that live in prosperity and abundance, while their populations live in destitution, lets look at the home of the free itself.

Some statistics on poverty and wealth disparity in America:

(1. 17.2 million households were food insecure as of 2010. (3)

(2. In 2010, 46.9 million people were in poverty, up from 37.3 million in 2007.  This is the largest number in the 52 years for which poverty rates have been published. (3)

(3. 36.3 million people – including 13 million children–live in households that experience hunger. (4)

(4. A CEO working for UnitedHealth average’s a pay of 101,965,000 dollars, whereas their median worker’s pay is 58,700 dollars. That is a pay ratio of 1737:1. A CEO working for Walmart average’s a pay of 16,270,000 dollars, whereas their median worker’s pay is 22,700. That is a pay ratio of 717:1. (5)

Talk about inequality. Worse yet, you have to wonder who is paying these CEO’s. If they can throw around hundreds of millions of dollars like it’s nothing, how much wealth do the owners of these owners retain? I imagine more than any of us would ever even dream of seeing, let alone having access to. As Thomas Paine, author of America’s token “Common Sense” said, “Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich”.

I’ve always felt that the criticisms of North Korea made by the American media have been carbon-copies of America’s own experienced problems. Disparity between the poor and the wealthy, bureaucracy and power-elitism, close-mindedness towards foreign systems other than the American system, the ability to solve the existing problems of hunger and poverty, but the lack of action against these realities, etc. It is my assertion that, as Americans, we have no right to tell North Korea what social-system they should take on – this kind of pretentiousness of the “Yankee military” has been seen before in Vietnam; and we know how that ended.

Korea belongs to the Korean people. Not to Japan, as history has shown, Japan’s empire, although mighty, eventually fell, as all empires do. Korea also does not belong to America – something that will eventually be shown to be true. America, as it stands now, in it’s current form as an empire, is pretentious, arrogant, dependent on the dependent, preying on the life forces of those who are weak, and vulnerable, thirsty for bloodshed, blind to it’s own inconsistencies and incapabilities, birthing war-monger after war-monger, decade after decade. It victimizes the children abroad, it victimizes the working at home. It alienates the students here in it’s own universities, it fails to provide sufficiently for it’s own working class. Korea is but one of many this empire has sunk it’s rotten teeth into. We, as Americans, must do away with such a rotten system. We benefit not from empire an ounce.

References:

(1) http://countrystudies.us/north-korea/49.htm

(2) http://crimesofcolonialism.wordpress.com/2013/01/14/why-change-why-now/

(3) http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/us_hunger_facts.htm

(4) http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/04/editorials/hungry_us_children.htm

(5) http://www.payscale.com/ceo-income

(6) http://www.imhc.mil.kr/imhcroot/data/korea_view.jsp?seq=4&page=1

(7) http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2010/11/25/walkom_north_koreas_unending_war_rages_on.html

(8) http://article.joinsmsn.com/news/article/article.asp?total_id=915799&cloc=

(9) http://www.themilitant.com/2002/6620/662053.html

(10) http://www.workers.org/ww/2000/korea0323.php

(11) On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the DPRK

Choosing to be Gay?

The other day, I was talking to my family relative. She told me that I “looked very handsome” in the recent pictures she had seen of me, as we had not seen each other in a few years, you see. She joked to me that “I’d be getting a lot of flirts from the ladies”. I laughed accordingly, not thinking much of it, despite my bisexuality, and preference almost especially for males. But my mother, my mother is a warrior in a lot of respects, brave and impulsive towards what she sees as right in the context of the situation. She objected to what my relative had said, as she knew my relative had said this to shy away from the identity I had told her I was part of, some few years ago. You see, my mother is also a self-described bisexual woman, with preferences towards females specifically, and so she objected.

I couldn’t really hear my relative’s response on the phone at that point, but I knew that it was objection. My mother handed me back the phone, when they were done discussing my homosexuality, and the first thing that my relative said to me was, “What do you mean you don’t like girls?” I continued to explain to her that I had engaged in relationships with other males since I was age 14. That I had also engaged in relationships with some girls, but that I didn’t really fancy them in the abstract, that I preferred guys, although some individual girls I had found attractive and pursued relationships with, and probably would in the future, too, the preference was for males. Mentally, I’ve given myself a rating of 60% homosexual and 40% heterosexual.

A sense of notable defeat could be perceived in the voice of my relative. She told me that accepted me, as she tried her best to disguise the emotional cracks in her tone, but my intuition knew better. She sounded as though she were about to breakdown and cry, and I felt as though I deserved to die for doing this to her, as I couldn’t blame her for this emotional response, that other factors had caused it in the area of sociological organization.

“I suppose I just need to get with the times”, she said.

I felt as though my heart had stopped. Everything that had gone on in the conversation previous to that, her objection to my self-described preference for males, the defeat in her tone (which did affect me, a lot more than a simple disowning might have), everything I had thought about myself, my pride, were all reduced to the fact that I am homosexual. My individuality, was reduced to this fact. I suddenly felt ashamed of myself. As though I was to be looked down at, but formally respected. As if I belonged to new clique in society that alienated everyone else. I felt as though I had disappointed those who expected “more of me”.

Tolerance.

To tolerate something, means to let it slip, even though you don’t like it. This is the image the media gives us of the homosexual. They depict the homosexual as weak, decadent, consumerist, unfaithful, happy and go lucky; fun, but not threatening. I don’t want tolerance. I’m not concerned with my physical safety, I can hold my own. I’m much more fearful about others perceptions of me. To tolerate me, the way one would tolerate a worm crawling next to their feet while they sit outside, to not crush it, but to want to, to be disappointed in it, but to let it do it’s walk… I’d much rather you attack me.

It has been said that many revolutionaries and activists like Malcolm X, Sitting Bull, Marlon Brando, etc. had male lovers, or homosexual tendencies. Huey P. Newton claimed that Eldridge Cleaver had bisexual tendencies, in his view, for example, saying that Cleaver had kissed James Baldwin. None of these men were doormats. They were revolutionaries, and in the words of multiple people, “the symbol of what a man is supposed to be”.

“In the world today all culture, all literature and art belong to definite classes and are geared to definite political lines. There is in fact no such thing as art for art’s sake, art that stands above classes or art that is detached from or independent of politics.”

Such was said by Mao Tse-Tung.

From a Marxist perspective, all forms of art, be they on the canvas or in the media, can be viewed as expressions of distinct and characteristic class-positions, as they relate to and interact with class-society. For example, the phenomena of the “starving artist” is both an aesthetically peculiar and attractive, yet sad occurrence that is all too common in our western capitalist society. A simple painting or photograph with the right hue, perspective and topic can directly or indirectly say more than a thousand words, a hundred thousand ideas and confirmations, and a million feelings.

And therefore, the same can be said for the ideas we already carry in our minds while we walk down the street, go to work or school, get reprimanded by an authority figure, have sex with our one or multiple partners, and yes, when we open up our sensitive inner-psyche to the television before we go to bed at night.

You see, genetics mean nothing to me, when we are discussing sociological phenomena, when we view ourselves and others as individuals, rather than as the human animal. Not just because I as an individual lack an interest in the biological, but just for that reason, too. We humans are, in fact, individuals, and therefore, we cannot simply be reduced to little cliques and groups belonging to the biological development, or how we grew in the womb, and in what position. Rather, we as individuals are all vast collections of our various and complex life experiences, mistakes, crimes and doings of good, our relationships, be they abusive or rewarding, and our interactions with other humans, which affect us both on the inside and therefore on the outside, and in relation to other human animals, who are, too, the same collections of experiences.

It was Marx who had said that the ruling ideas, in fact, are always that of the ruling classes. In our society, and in most of the world today, even countries far off, like China for example, or even progressive countries on our side of this international struggle, like Cuba, the vast populations of these territories are definitely and without doubt, affected by the international class hegemony of the bourgeoisie, who have, at their disposal, the instruments and weapons of class domination that is the state, and therefore the army, the police, and the TV.

Because the contradictions of capitalism have become global, international, and because the international capitalist class have taken up the formation of the reactionary non-state, in the terminology used by Huey P. Newton of the Black Panther Party, we can no longer view the world from the perspective of progressive states versus regressive states, bourgeois states versus proletarian states, or western or non-western states. We must view the world as a vast collection of territories, territories filled with workers, and compradors to the capitalist class centralized in the western territories, of which these compradors use to their advantage the many instruments of class domination embraced by the bourgeoisie against the proletariat. We must view the world in terms of communities alienated and separated from the global chain of Imperialist economy, that is to say, territory liberated from the tyranny of class domination perpetuated by the bourgeoisie, and territories that the international bourgeoisie control.

And, from these revelations, we will now tackle the issue of heteronormativity, the movement for the liberation of sexual minorities growing in the first-world and, too, around the world, where Gay and Lesbian people are being oppressed. But most of all, we will be discussing the political in the private, because the private is, indeed, political. We will be discussing bourgeois straight and gay relationships, and proletarian straight and gay relationships.

Are People born Straight? Are People born Gay?

“If we feel that the group in spirit means to be revolutionary in practice, but they make mistakes in interpretation of the revolutionary philosophy, or they do not understand the dialectics of the social forces in operation, we should criticize that and not criticize them because they are women trying to be free. And the same is true for homosexuals. We should never say a whole movement is dishonest when in fact they are trying to be honest. They are just making honest mistakes.”

Said Huey P. Newton in his short analysis of the Gay and Women’s liberation movements.

I should point out, before I continue with my analysis of homosexuality and capitalist society, that I am in fact a male who is attracted to other males. If I were to choose any sort of ‘term’ to identify myself by, it would be bisexual with a preference for other males. And so, it would be said that I am part of the spectrum of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual.

And, indeed, I am part of that spectrum. But I do not feel so. I don’t feel as if I am included among the members of this spectrum, and why is that? Why do I feel alienated, embarrassed and insecure, you ask? Why shouldn’t I. Why shouldn’t I, when every Gay male character on television is depicted, not as a creative and complex individual, brave, daring, with a romantic life that is secondary to himself as an individual, yet also part of it in a way that is brilliantly empowering and exciting for me to see, such as the depiction of Mickey in the United States version of the showtime series Shameless (which is actually a great step up for the entertainment industry in regards to depictions of life in impoverished capitalist communities in America, and depictions of Gay characters as human beings rather than extensions of their fluffy-fashion obsessed female counterparts (which has to do with the oppression of the woman in the media as being simpleminded, but we’ll get into that later).

I imagine black people felt horribly insecure about themselves when racist and alienating depictions of black people were the norm in white euro-supremacist Hollywood. Black people were stereotyped to be ignorant,  their facial features played up to the extreme, made to “look ugly” and “unattractive” to the white-skin-worshiping populace white Hollywood was in the process of creating. And, in many ways, this goes on today, towards all sorts of ethnic minorities. “Little ethnic pokes” the white population might call it. The Japanese or Korean (and mixing those together is, too, a racist phenomena) mixing their L’s with their R’s, the black character playing a minor part in cinema and character depiction, and when the Gay character is singled out to be the most flamboyant, the most outrageous, the least leading, brave, valiant, interesting, strong or individualistic.

I can relate to that surge of pride the black man or woman, adult or especially child, must have felt, when they saw that outlier among all the black-hating, white-worshiping films in Hollywood. When a film, maybe not particularly great itself, had come out, where the black character was just that; a character. Part of the dynamic of the film, treated like an individual, playing his own part, smart, handsome, maybe even sexy in his or her own right, but not commodified. A sense of empowerment flowed across the black boy or girl, who was trained to hate their beautiful and original dark skin, made to feel as though they were not an individual, but rather, were part of a group that not only defined them as an individual, but robbed them of that sense of individuality. Out of their control, because you see, they were born that way. That isn’t to say they wouldn’t be white if they could, but that is simply out of their control.

A sense of defeat must have overcome the black boy or girl, at the realization of that. That, they were “naturally inferior” but that it “wasn’t their fault, if they could, they’d choose to be light skinned too”. I also imagine a sense of defiance came over the black boy or girl, in light of that reality pushed onto them by white-supremacy, constructed and confirmed by the white capitalist media.

“I choose to be black”

Are you perplexed by that statement? I’m not. Is it an expression of love for what one is? A sense of identity and community? Hardly, for them, that’d simply be another confirmation of their lack of identity, their reduction to a biological objective. Let me rephrase that statement for you, it might help you understand just a little better:

“I choose to be black”

There we go. Do you see now? When someone says they are an “I” they are not a group, clique, or new trend. They are an Individual. An Individual with thoughts and feelings, actions and interactions distinct from their biological functions or characteristics. And hence, my slightly misleading (but not really) title. I choose to be Gay. I wouldn’t change myself if I consciously could, I wasn’t ‘born this way’, and I’m not some passive counterpart to go shopping with your wife.

I’m not defenseless, I’ve been in fights before, and I can defend myself as much as I need to.

I talk normally.

I won’t be reduced to what I find attractive.

I hate fashion, because I hate consumerism.

Concerning whether or not attraction is a choice, I am aware that it isn’t. Nobody chooses to like anything, if that were the case, everyone would be white, straight and upper-class, because of the social-consequences of sexuality outside the norm, skin color that isn’t as light and as boring as a sheet of paper, or living as a member of the toiling and oppressed working class.

At the same time, I don’t believe I was born Gay. I don’t believe that my homosexuality is congenital, that we are ‘feminized’ in the womb, like Mr. Michael Bailey argues. No one walks out of the womb in high-heels adoring the color pink, and no one runs out of the womb carrying a football adoring the color blue. During the 1800′s, pink was actually viewed to be a boy’s color, while blue was seen as a girl’s color. This itself is proof that ‘femininity’ is sociological, and not congenital. A study back in around 2006 tried to argue that Lesbian women had ‘stronger wrists’ than Straight women, and that, therefore, Lesbian women were “naturally more masculine”.

I’m sure, back during the days of slavery, to confirm the “moral-sanctity” of the oppression of the black slave, studies would come out claiming scientific proof that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites by testing a series of white and black people on a multitude of questions to see who would know the most answers. Ignore the fact that white society at that time, and today, consciously tries to cut education for black youths.

I believe that we are all naturally inclined towards bisexuality. That, through our lives, and development as human beings, we can develop to be more orientated towards males, or females. Rather than viewing homosexuality as a “new trend” that people need to “get with the times” with, I see homosexuality as a naturally occuring inclination that anyone can be orientated towards, and that it shouldn’t matter, or be played up to “be Gay” in the first place, that, it should simply be seen as a relationship not unlike any other. That it should be viewed, depicted and taken part in, as nothing unusual, or special.

Why Compulsory Feminization of Gay Men is Problematic

I believe that the feminine identity is a creation, and product of patriarchy. I cite the example of the “naturally feminine Gay” and the

Marilyn Buck, Marxist & Lesbian

“naturally masculine Lesbian” as proof of this.

The feminine identity is passivity. It is being the most receptive human sex-toy that you can be. The feminine identity is also impractical. Things that are considered to be feminine, like, for example, high-heels, or make up, are in actuality unhealthy. High-heels have been shown to damage women’s bone structure and foot, and make up can irritate and hurt skin. Plump lipstick that burns your lips to make them look bigger, and more appealing to men? You might as well just resort back to foot-binding.

The Lesbian woman is depicted to be masculine, because she fancies women, and it would be problematic to the existing social-power structure for her to engage in an equal relationship with another woman.

The Gay man is depicted to be feminine, because he fancies men, and it would be problematic to the existing social-power structure for him to engage in an equal relationship with another man.

And hence, you have hetero-colonialism. The negative phenomena persistent in heterosexual relationships such as inequality in power, for example in the bedroom, is pushed onto Gay relationships. This is more noticeable with the phenomena of ‘top’ and ‘bottom’.

I see this phenomena as a mere appropriation of bourgeois family relations, taking the bare essentials of the oppressive and demeaning marriage and sexual relations championed among bourgeois society, which sees sex as a means of producing more capable soldiers in the armies of eventual labor for the elite ruling classes to exploit, and laying them over sloppily onto homosexual relations, simply to sustain their acceptability. When you say you’re a “bottom” you’re taking on the role the woman takes in the bourgeois family relations, that is, meeting the need in this society to be a submissive subservient to your masculine counterpart, be they male or female, in this case, either, with adoption and marriage further assimilating homosexual relationships into the bourgeois superstructure. What is this superstructure? The confirmation, and embellishment, of the compulsion to produce.

The terms “bottom” and “top” should have no place in any relationship. One is a recipient, a tissue for the other to come in. The other is the penetrator, the exploiter, and sometimes, the one on the bottom doesn’t even get to achieve orgasm during the act of sex, because the one on top comes too early.

I’m not making a case against penetrative sex, but what I am saying is that sex is inequal in this inequal society, because everything we do is a reflection of this relationship of inequality. Gender roles, sex and relationships, these are not separated from that.

Some of you may not understand my criticisms. You may think “So what? Live and let live” well sure, I’m inclined to agree entirely, but I’m not interested in passive ‘tolerance’ of the existing social-power structure. I’m a Communist. I seek to rearrange it, from the ground up, to throw away the old ideas no longer useful to human development.

On the contrary, I am interested in overthrowing the current power-structure, and putting the ones on bottom, you and I, the working class, on top, for the eventual abolition of bottoms and tops in society, for equality and real, genuine peace.

Some also say that saying we are not born gay will lead to dangers, like Christian “straight camps”.

I say that those camps shouldn’t exist in the first place, and that we need to stand up for ourselves, instead of avoiding tearing these camps down like Auschwitz was, because it is a similar Fascism. The same goes for marriage. I want benefits for my relationships, medicare benefits, so forth, but I don’t want assimilation. In short, we need to learn how to stand up for ourselves as individuals, and as a biological class of people, rather than tip-toeing around the semantics of mainstream bourgeois society. That societies conceptions of what is average, and what is not, must be torn assunder. If we want benefits, we ask for those benefits, rather than asking for them in the most cowardly of ways, that is, to beg for the right to marry, just so we can be by our partner’s side if they see medical complications in the future, rather, we must demand the right to be by their side itself.

Drone Strikes on U.S. Soil: Christopher Dorner

“In 8/07 I reported an officer (Ofcr. Teresa Evans/now a Sergeant), for kicking a suspect (excessive force) during a Use of Force while I was assigned as a patrol officer at LAPD’s Harbor Division. While cuffing the suspect, (Christopher Gettler), Evans kicked the suspect twice in the chest and once in the face. The kick to the face left a visible injury on the left cheek below the eye. Unfortunately after reporting it to supervisors and investigated by PSB (internal affairs investigator Det. Villanueva/Gallegos), nothing was done. I had broken their supposed “Blue Line”.”

- Christopher Dorner’s Manifesto

United States Drone strikes. I’m sure you’re familiar with them, but how familiar are you with them? Have you ever been on the end of

Emma Hernandez (71), and daughter Margie Carranza (47) shot

this massively destructive weapon? Well, 176 dead children in Pakistan have (1) and you could experience the burns too (2).

Talk about uniting the Third and First-world fronts. I suppose Imperialism has a death wish. I suppose it wants to make enemies not just abroad, but at home too. We know that the contradictions that ensue around the world due to the Imperialist’s position of power, and embellishment of privilege are intense, and deadly. We know that 24,000 children die of hunger daily, that 90% of America’s food could feed them, but rather, that it is all for us, and none for them. We know that America’s bloody thirst for natural resources, like oil, is leaving a trail of utter terror all across the Arab world.

For some time now, this has been a far off nuisance. A question of little importance to ourselves, and our class position in this society itself. No longer. “War is utilized by the imperialists, first and foremost, to crush internal enemies”.

In the state of California, things are anything but peaceful. Police are on a violent rampage, attacking an innocent 71 year old woman and her 47 year old daughter, because they drive a truck similar to that of Dorner’s (3) forcing Dorner to burn his blue truck just to stop the massacres of civilians by the brutal LAPD (4). Who is the monster, Dorner, or the cops?

What is even more telling, is the now suggested use of Drone strikes against Christopher Dorner, who is hiding in the forest in a manhunt that has put a one million dollar bounty on his head. (5)

Already, these deadly weapons are being used against United States citizens. What does that tell you about our Government’s character? What about Dorner’s?

Things are getting tough for everyone. As the situation intensifies, multiple conclusions are possible. For people like me, we’re waiting for a situation whereby the Imperialist’s position of power is threatened, his security, not guaranteed. For Dorner, the time has come for action. Among many in California, Dorner is becoming more of a folk hero, rather than some sort of personal threat, despite the media’s efforts otherwise.

References:

(1) http://www.policymic.com/articles/20884/is-america-like-adam-lanza-u-s-drone-strikes-have-killed-176-children-in-pakistan-alone

(2) http://openchannel.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/04/16843014-justice-department-memo-reveals-legal-case-for-drone-strikes-on-americans?lite

(3) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2275999/California-manhunt-Police-gave-warning-mistakenly-shoot-woman-71-delivering-newspapers.html

(4) http://www.deseretnews.com/article/765622321/Camping-gear-found-in-ex-cops-burned-truck.html

(5) http://now.msn.com/christopher-dorner-is-first-drone-target-on-us-soil

Communist Solidarity in Music

Music itself is a thing of social-characteristics. Designed for the enjoyment of others, utilized especially in social-gatherings. More often than not, however, especially in our capitalist and consumerist society, music celebrates social-classes, the accumulation of wealth, and the sense of being better than one’s fellow man.

However, among all of this muck, ruling ideas inculcated onto the people through the mediums of bourgeois state-tyranny over the proletariat in labor, mind and spirit, enlightened individuals and musicians have broken free from the trend of decadence of the mainstream consumerist media to express solidarity with liberation movements across the globe, performing songs we can all dig, with music videos that reference Liberation leaders around the world, and especially among the third-world Liberation movements, here’s to some catchy tunes that express some much needed proletarian internationalism for the international camps of Revolution towards the goal of empowerment and socialism:

Rage Against the Machine

Rage Against the Machine has always been a radical band dedicated to political consciousness and solidarity with workers struggles, and anti-war movements, but I myself was surprised when I saw their music video for the song ‘Bombtrack’.

In the music video, Chairman Gonzalo, leader of the Shining Path People’s War in the Latin American country of Peru, is referenced multiple times. The first reference to Chairman Gonzalo is not so obvious, the cage the band is performing in. It makes a reference to Chairman Gonzalo’s famous ‘Speech From the Cage’ which was delivered after Gonzalo was arrested by the Peruvian state.

Along with this, clips of Chairman Gonzalo raising his fist inside of his prison are flashed during the video at certain points, obviously to show solidarity with the Peruvian People’s War led by Gonzalo. Clearly from a Marxist perspective, the lyrics go:

“Blood in the trench, couldn’t shake the toxic shot Maize, was all we needed to sustain Now her golden skin burns, insecticed rain, Ya down with DDT? Yeah you know me, I’ll rape for the grapes and a profit for the Bourgeoisie”

Around 3:19 minutes into the music video, Shining Path soldiers can be seen brandishing a golden hammer and sickle, as they march with automatic rifles and red flags, dedicated to the struggle of the People’s War in Peru, for the creation of a People’s Republic, and for the Liberation of the third-world country from the vestiges of United States Imperialism.

Paul Robeson

Paul Robeson was a renowned Black singer, actor and political activist. Among his covers was an English rendition of the anthem of the Soviet Union recorded during the 1940′s. Among the lyrics he sung were:

“Through days dark and stormy where Great Lenin lead us, Our eyes saw the bright sun of freedom above, And Stalin our leader with faith in the people, Inspired us to build up the land that we love.”

In 1953, when Joseph Stalin passed away at the age of 74, Paul Robeson wrote the following eulogy, titled ‘To You Beloved Comrade’ where he said the following concerning the news of Stalin’s passing:

“And arrayed against them, the combined powers of the so-called Free West, headed by the greedy, profit-hungry, war-minded industrialists and financial barons of our America. The illusion of an “American Century” blinds them for the immediate present to the clear fact that civilization has passed them by – that we now live in a people’s century – that the star shines brightly in the East of Europe and of the world. Colonial peoples today look to the Soviet Socialist Republics. They see how under the great Stalin millions like themselves have found a new life. They see that aided and guided by the example of the Soviet Union, led by their Mao Tse-tung, a new China adds its mighty power to the true and expanding socialist way of life. They see formerly semi-colonial Eastern European nations building new People’s Democracies, based upon the people’s power with the people shaping their own destinies. So much of this progress stems from the magnificent leadership, theoretical and practical, given by their friend Joseph Stalin.”

Paul Robeson was vilified by the Western media for this, in schools, as Huey P. Newton mentions in his autobiography Revolutionary Suicide, and in interviews. At one point, an interviewer asked Robeson why he didn’t go live in Russia if he was so influenced by the Russian Revolution. Robeson responded, simply:

“(I stay) Because my father was a slave, and my people died to build this country, and I am going to stay here, and have a part of it just like you. And no Fascist-minded people will drive me from it. Is that clear? I am for peace with the Soviet Union, and I am for peace with China, and I am not for peace or friendship with the Fascist Franco, and I am not for peace with Fascist Nazi Germans. I am for peace with decent people.”

When confronted about his words on Joseph Stalin in the past, Paul Robeson said the following:

Arens: Tell us whether or not you have changed your opinion in the recent past about Stalin.

Robeson: I have told you, mister, that I would not discuss anything with the people who have murdered sixty million of my people, and I will not discuss Stalin with you.

Dead Prez

Dead Prez is a hip-hop group dedicated to African people and African culture, their slogan ‘RBG’ standing for Red, Black and Green, the colors that represent Africa, and in their words, “Revolutionary but Gangsta”.

Performing songs dedicated to political consciousness, the Liberation of Black people, and health and fitness, and in some songs specifically the goal of women’s Liberation and empowerment of Black women, Dead Prez is probably one of my favorite hip-hop groups.

In their music video ‘These are the Times’, Dead Prez plays on the legacy of the Black Panther Party and it’s leader in the 1960′s and 1970′s, Huey P. Newton, who is depicted in the video while he was imprisoned. The Black Panther Party was a Marxist-Leninist political party founded in Oakland California in the 60′s, at the height of pressures both at home and abroad perpetuated by the United States Imperialists for the control of the working people in the first world, and the dependent people in the third world, which made up sources of raw materials and cheap labor pools to accumulate super-profits for the benefit of Empire, which the United States at that time was shedding the blood of many to build, and today, to maintain.

As Huey P. Newton said in an interview with a journalist:

“What are the important inspirations to the Black Panther Party? Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-Tung and Kim Il Sung, and not only them, but also Guerrilla bands operating in Mozambique and Angola, and the Palestinian Guerrillas who are fighting for a Socialist world. I think they have all been great inspirations to the Black Panther Party.” 

Out of the spirit of the ideological foundations and internationalism the Black Panther Party expressed towards Liberation movements in the third world in Vietnam, Korea, China, Palestine and other dependent territories of the world seeking their Liberation from finance-capitalism, Dead Prez makes many references to Liberation leaders and Communist struggle.

Around 4:02 minutes into the music video, shown above, Che Guevara, Kim Il Sung, Korean Revolutionary and leader of North Korea, and Mao Tse-Tung, Revolutionary and leader of China. As this image flashes, the lyrics go:

“I read Mao Tse-Tung”

Along with this, in their music video ‘Root of all Evil’ copies of Mao’s Little Red Book are waved, as he cites a quote from Mao Tse-Tung, saying:

“Politics is war without guns, war is politics with guns, know what I mean? You better get one”

Bambu

Bambu, who is a hip-hop artist with the group ‘Native Guns’ performed this song, titled ‘Chairman Mao’.

“I study Mao Tse-Tung’s tongue” he says in the song, referencing the Chinese Revolutionary. He continues to reference Ho Chi Minh who led the Vietnamese struggle for National-Liberation against United States Imperialism, and Malcolm X of the Black Liberation struggle here in America.

He also mentions the People’s War in the Philippines by the People’s Liberation Army which is the military wing of the Communist Party there.

The Coup

The Coup is a Marxist hip-hop group based in Oakland, led by Boots Riley who’s worked with Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine, and who also takes great inspiration from the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, who he often references in his songs. ‘Dig it’ is a heavily political and catchy song with a creative and rebellious music video style. As the lyrics go in the beginning of the song, as they board a bus in Oakland:

“Presto, read the Communist Manifesto, Guerillas in the Mist, a Guevara named Ernesto, so, What a brother with an afro know?, Yo, go and flow for the mack and be the hoe so grow cause the lynchin brothers might get hung, Better rip through em from the tip of my Mao, Tse-Tung”

In the song, Boots also mentions Dialectical-Materialism, the Mau-Mau uprising and the video ends with a demonstration in Oakland which Boots and his trio had been heading to the duration of the song

Pablo Hasel

Pablo Hasel is a Communist hip-hop artist from Spain. He was arrested for his involvement with GRAPO which is an Anti-Fascist Revolutionary Marxist-Leninist organization in Spain modeled after Chairman Mao’s Revolutionary experience in China.

In this music video, titled ‘No Hay Bozal’ the Red Army Faction of West Germany is referenced, flags representing multiple Socialist countries are on the walls of what we can presume to be Pablo Hasel’s apartment, while his Marxist-Leninist related books, among which are books by Joseph Stalin, Ludo Martens’ Another View of Stalin, Marx’s Capital and other books, as a depiction of Spanish military police harass and abuse him and his roommate.

Pablo Hasel has released two other albums which reference the leaders and founders of Germany’s Red Army Faction, which include “Writing with Ulrike Meinhof” and “Coffee with Gudrun Ensslin”.

Immortal Technique

Immortal Technique is a politically conscious hip-hop artist who’s songs focus on global injustice and poverty, war and Imperialism, and corruption in American politics and rights for Black and Brown people.

In his album ‘Revolutionary’ a microphone and sickle are depicted spray-painted onto a wall to represent the Communist Hammer and Sickle, as dead NYPD officers are shown shot on the ground.

In the cornerstone song of the album, ‘Revolutionary’, a squad of Revolutionaries can be heard talking about their strategy as a police officer tries to break into their hiding place as they shoot him under the directions of Technique, who is supposed to represent the leader. Revolutionary indeed, Immortal Technique’s style is gruff and doesn’t hold back. Immortal Technique also donates and works with charities and said groups in the third world, as his dedication is struggle for the Liberation of the oppressed people not just in word but also in action.

Country Joe and The Fish

The first thing to note is that ‘Country Joe’ stands for Joseph Stalin, of which the term was an old nickname for Stalin, and ‘The Fish’ being a reference to Mao Tse-Tung’s quote “The Revolutionary must move through the people like the fish does through water”.

Country Joe and the Fish made many references to Marxism in their anti-war songs, and truly represented the counter-culture and wrath of the youth at home towards the carnage their military and state were perpetuating against the dependent peoples of Indo-China, truly exposing the United States for what it really was.

Lowkey

Lowkey has performed a number of Anti-Imperialist songs and performances against the Obama administration, United States Imperialism and U.S. Military involvement in the third-world.

In this song, Lowkey is playing the part of a kidnapped and interrogated activist deemed by intelligence officials to be a “terrorist”. In it, he makes references to Revolutionary Latin-American leaders Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chavez around 3:04 minutes into the video, and he also references the Irish Republican Army near the end of the video. Along with this, he has filmed multiples of his videos in Cuba.

A Tribute to Martin Luther King Jr.

I should clarify before I say anything, that I am in fact a white youth. Upon reading this observation of myself, I imagine you’re expecting some sort of apologetic, fluffy mini-speech about stuff you learned about in school when you were a kid. You’re probably expecting me to talk about “how far we’ve come” or to talk about the fact that our President’s skin is darker than that of most Presidents.

Well, if that’s what you came for, go somewhere else. Sorry if I disappointed you.

No, I’m not here to talk about the past. Well, maybe I am, but not in the context in which you’re all so reminiscent over. I’m not here to talk about how far we’ve come from where we were when Reverend King was being beaten, brutalized and imprisoned, and I’ll be damned if I use his memory as some sort of amnesiac for the ongoing, relentless suffering subjugated against black people in America and around the world today. No, I refuse to be that dishonest. Not while Trayvon Martin is in the ground, while Troy Davis was injected with poison which flowed through his veins destabilizing the natural functions of his organs, and not while Mumia Abu Jamal, probably one of the greatest intellectuals of our society today, does his radio shows in a cage.

We don’t owe black people an apology, not a day in January,  not even a month, either. We white people owe black people their long sought but never reaped reparations, alleviation from strategically placed poverty, and more than anything else, we white people owe the black youth of our society security. Security in the years to come, security when they walk down the street with their friends, and security from “white heroes” like Zimmerman, the man who shot Trayvon Martin for supposedly “stopping him from robbing a neighborhood home” as he called Trayvon a ‘coon’ as he chased after him, gun in hand. Trayvon Martin was only 17 years old.

This is how white capitalist society responds to property crime, and the reality of lack of property, severe poverty and destitution that black people and especially black youth face in this society we put them in today. As I pointed out in my article The Police and their Relationship to Crime the cops kill a black youth, woman or man every 40 hours.

I also pointed out the connections between property crime, poverty and continued segregation by comparing demographics on crime and race in the richest and poorest counties in the United States.

So it begs the question, how should we treat this day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day?

Today, we remember a man whose image was wrongfully used to “put aside” and “forget” about the suffrage of black people across this territory of North America, where over a hundred million black people were enslaved, exploited and murdered. But tomorrow, do we forget his prophetic words concerning the brutality and violence subjugated against the Vietnamese people by the United States?

“…the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home…We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.’”

Tomorrow, we remember Martin Luther King Jr. not as a magical name with no connection to the suffering he endured at the hands of the defenders of this power structure, that gives us some sort of amnesia to the horrible injustices black people in America suffered through at the hands of white police officers, fire-hoses, calculated poverty, exploitation and violent apartheid that made South Africa look like a haven for civil rights. Tomorrow, we remember the times that brave, valiant and unbreaking man was beaten, brutalized, arrested and eventually assassinated in an event speculated to be implicated with the Central Intelligence Agency of the Empire. We remember his defiance to the senseless violence in Indo-China perpetuated by the United States military, which continues today in other territories of the dependent world. We remember his struggle, which goes on today.

I leave you all with a quote from his prison letters, where Reverend King denotes that perhaps peace can only be secured through forced action against the oppressor, saying:

“It doesn’t matter whether or not we are extremists. What matters is, what we are extremists for. Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or for the extension of justice?”

I express my undying solidarity with black people in their struggle for justice, security and freedom.

Starvation is Genocide: 24,000 People Died of Hunger Today

Why is it necessary to struggle against Imperialism, by both the people of the Third-World and of the First-World? What are the necessary prerequisites of resistance? What justifies struggle? Capitalism’s inability to meet the needs of the world’s poor is more than a catchy political slogan; it is a reality faced by Third-World people each and every day.

Here are some facts on poverty in the Third-World, and it’s connection to prosperity in the First:

We could stop this right now

1. 24,000 people die of hunger every day.

2. 6 million children die of hunger every year.

3. Undernourishment contributes 53% to 9.7 million deaths of children under five each year in developing countries.

4. Wealth in the First-world is due to poverty in the Third-World. For example, Great Britain purposely underdeveloped India back in the 18th Century by sabotaging their textile industry so India would be forced to import from the similarly developing British textile industry. The British also destroyed Indian crops, which caused a horrible famine near the end of the 18th Century, so they could create cash-crops for their own benefit.

5. In the words of Salvador Allende, who was murdered by the CIA in a US backed coup that brought a Fascist and mass-murderer into power in Chile: “.. there are 600,000 children who can never enjoy life in normally human terms, because in the first eight months of their existence they did not receive the elementary amount of proteins. My country, Chile, would have been totally transformed by these US$ 4,000 million (which is the amount of money expropriated by American industry in US corporations in Chile). Only a small part of this amount would assure proteins for all the children in my country once and for all.”

6. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories per person per day, yet 925 million people are without food, 99% of which reside in the Third-World.

What can this be attributed to? Certainly, we can’t simply blame the stars.

Perhaps an investigation is due. What – or rather, whom, is to blame? A number of possible contenders come to mind. Each of these factors must be investigated in regards to the environments around them, which we will cover and discuss here in full:

I. Land Fertility and Territorial position

A claim often made by the individual members of the bourgeoisie (and their liberal detractors) is that:

“(I) wasn’t born in (insert Third-World country)”

The aim of such a statement is to, of course, misdirect any responsibility these class parasites might have in regards to the toil experienced by the working and dependent peoples of the earth; our common home.

This detractive statement must, too, find itself subject to unforgiving scrutiny.

The Third-World constitutes territory rich in abundance, contrary to popular fallacy. If we were to categorize the wealth of nations by the standard of abundance they experience in the amount of natural resources, our viewpoint of the world would be altered quite radically. Take Japan for example. For quite some time, Japan has been considered to be one of the richest countries in all of Asia – despite its extremely limited array of natural resources. Not coincidentally, Japan is formerly an empire, bringing to it’s submission all territories surrounding it – including their abundances of formerly untapped resource reserves.

But this is not the standard of measurement we indulge. Wealth, in this society, is not defined by who has the resources, but by who can access them. Not by who works the land, but by who expropriates it, and the labor of those whom do the cultivating. If one section of the world is developed, and itself developed by workers who maintain and run the means of production owned by a small-and-smaller clique of parasitic individuals, ones who, before the unions came along, had saw it fit to work eight year olds to the bone in America for 18 to 19 hours at a time; it would only make sense that these soulless men would seek to expand their workforce where the population is immense, the exploitation veiled to us American civilians, being that it is a ways across the planet, and the minds of these potential workers under or even uneducated, their requested wages 15% of what they’d pay for 25% of the labor output here, considering that industry on this side of the world has developed to the point where one maintained machine can produce twice of what 100 workers with mere needle and thread can produce in a faction of the time socially necessary for the cheap labor forces, with a rate of output that makes the Nike shoe labor of 200 Asian 9 year old children look arbitrary – but oh, how it isn’t.

Imperialism is not interested in what is efficient - nor what is humane. So the efficient means possible to employ the millions of us without employment here are abandoned, simply because it isn’t profitable. And for what is our labor capabilities cheated for?

For little boys and girls to spend 19 hours a day making 10% of what we’d make here doing the same job for 6 hours. For cheap labor, uneducated black and yellow kids – for the embellishment of capital.

II. Underdevelopment, Access to Natural Resources & the Market

There are over 925 million people in the world who are starving. 578 million of these starving people, live in Asia and the pacific, 239 million in Sub-Saharan Africa, 53 million in Latin America, 37 million in North Africa, and 19 million of them live in the developed territories, like North America. The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories per person per day, yet 925 million people are without food, 24,000 of which die every day, of which six million children die yearly. Six million is the equivalent of the number of Jews Hitler worked to the bone and exterminated in his camps; that was a single case, but this happens every year, not even counting the number of adults. Is this not violence?

We have to ask ourselves, who causes poverty? And more importantly, how can we stop them?

The Third-World is not poor, in fact, it is rich. Rich in resources, in land, and workers. Their poverty cannot simply be attributed to something as petty as geological position, if that were the case, the First-world would be the poor territories of the world, and not the Third-World. If the Third-World was “allowed” by the global Imperialist powers, to direct it’s labor, it’s resources, it’s people towards the cultivation of development for themselves, and not for the United States, we would not have these problems; but we do, and we do because of the Empire, to sustain the ruling clique.

Nelson Mandela famously asserted that poverty is man-made.‎ If poverty is man-made, starvation is genocide. If starvation is genocide, and derives from poverty, which is man-made, we can only conclude that the ethically sensible thing to do, would be to remove the individual(s) producing poverty in these cases, which in turn creates genocide against the poor peoples of the Earth, rather than sit idly by as the poor people of Earth die slowly, but ever surely. If you find oneself in conditions that are violent and forceful, if you witness the state you pledge to, practice extreme forms of violence and barbarity towards weak groups of people, and underdeveloped and poor people, and you conform to this violence, confirm it’s existence, yet ignore it, you are placing yourself on the side of the oppressor, in the international class struggle. If you are a worker in the First-world, this is even more contradictory, for you are placing yourself on the side of your very own oppressor, in the first place. In such circumstances, you can choose to remain in passive complacency, you can turn your back on people who need your solidarity desperately, from an Afghan or Pakistani ducking from an air-raid, to a child in Asia working for hours on end for quarters a day; or, you could take the other path, the path of organized and strategic resistance, the path men and women like Sophie Scholl took.

United States terror in Afghanistan

Scholl grew up in Germany under the rule of Fascism. She was, in a word, an anti-war activst, she objected to the invasion of European and African nations by the German Imperialist Government that presided over her, and she took part in organized resistance, in the universities, in particular.

For this, she lost her head. Despite this, she never lost her heart. What does this mean in relation to the American? This means that the German Media called her and others who resisted “terrorists”. She was accused of aiding the enemy, that is, the Communist “Jewish-Bolshevik” in the East. We are accused of aiding the “Muslim extremist” in the middle-East.

The prosperity experienced in the First-world is interconnected to the destitution experienced in the dependent continents of Asia, Africa and Latin America, which make up the vast exploited peoples of the Third-World.

It is not a coincidence that 822 people die of obesity in the First-world, while 24,000 a day die of hunger in the Third-World; nor is it a coincidence that the United States holds a stake in natural resources, like oil, in every country or continent that it deploys it’s troops, neither is it a coincidence that a large amount of commodities in America read “Made in China” in the fine print. The exploitation of the working classes is global, and spans all the way from China and Africa, to America and Europe, to varying degrees.

How the Cops respond to pacifism

In light of these facts, we must make clear that the American people cannot be held accountable, because the same ruling class that exploits the people in the Third-World, exploits the people in the First-world. It would be foolish and counter to the interests of the American working class to take the side of the oppressor in such circumstances, because they are constantly at the whim of the Capitalist, and this is, contrary to popular belief, strengthened when one gets a higher wage, because Capitalists put in what they can get back double, and as a result of this, the social-power of the Capitalist on the Global hierarchy is strengthened. What is the negative consequence of this? The negative consequence is, when the global Market experiences crisis, which is each time more serious, the means of production which enable the working class in the First-world to accumulate wages necessary for human survival, are unaltered, yet “unworkable” according to the Capitalist, who is the machine’s owner. During the Great Depression, people were starving and dying, in such circumstances. The Market develops disproportionately, and so crisis is natural to it; and so, this leads us to ponder, what will the consequences be when we experience the next great depression?

III. Prevailing methods of Food and Resource allocation

As we wrote in our article The Police and their Relationship to Crime:

‘WorldHunger.org asserts that “Poverty is the principal cause of hunger”. It goes onto talk about whether or not the issue of hunger is related to lack of resources, remarking the following:

“The world produces enough food to feed everyone. World agriculture produces 17 percent more calories per person today than it did 30 years ago, despite a 70 percent population increase. This is enough to provide everyone in the world with at least 2,720 kilocalories (kcal) per person per day”

Clearly, the issue at hand is not the amount of food produced, nor the agriculture that creates food. We have more than enough to provide everyone on Earth with adequate means of subsistence. What is the issue, then? The issue, the contradiction, that causes about 25,000 people to die every day of hunger or hunger-related causes, that causes one person to die of hunger every three-and-a-half seconds? Quite clearly, the problem is the prevailing methods of allocation of resources. The problem isn’t the food, or the agriculture, and while the problem is also clearly the methods of distribution, we also need to realize that the people who distribute the food are just that – people. The root of the problem is the Capitalist who controls these resources, the minority of the population who drowns in prosperity while people die of hunger.

The United States, according to an article from the Washington Post, wastes around 165 billion dollars worth of food every year, which amounts to around 40% of all the food produced in the North American continent. The territory of North America consists of a large concentration of resources, resources exploited from other territories in “unfortunate continents”, of which the allocation of resources on the North American continent, too, is illogical. Billions of dollars worth of resources concentrated into the hands of a small percentage of the population, while the rest works to survive.’

We’ve compiled these facts and distributed them multiple times here on our website.

Crisis in the First-World

The majority of clothing is made in China

The majority of consumer goods, especially ones of necessity, like food and clothes, are made and harvested in the Third-World. For the working class in North America, the dependency takes the form of an addiction. For them, the sweatshops are not money-makers, but places where drugs are procreated. Places of slavery, bad things not to be thought of. The clothes shop is the drug dealer. The working class of the First-World does not, in the long term, benefit from the exploitation of the people of China and Asia, Africa and Latin America; in reality, the benefit is not only transient, it is illusory. As the individual who finds themselves addicted to heroin does not benefit from the harvest of opium, and the drug dealer does benefit, at least financially, the exploitation has two faces. The working class of North America is made dependent upon the cheap commodities that come from China and other territories in Asia, while the big corporate monopolies receive large sums of capital. The apologists for the exploitation of, for example, the Chinese people, claim that a minority of consumer spending is spent on Chinese goods; but do they hardly account for the clothing market?

Hardly.

Some 98% of clothes purchased in North America are made abroad. (1) Why does this happen? ABC reports that:

“A worker at the Chinese sock factory makes just $14 a day, or $270 in month. In America, a clothing worker makes $88 a day, or $1,760 a month.” (1)

The reasons are obvious. The desire for profit is said to “equalize” the playing field. It’s true affects are anything but mutually beneficial. Capitalists are in a position of power over the rest of humanity, while their concern is anything but humanity. It is, then, in their class interest to make the most amount of capital possible, even at the expense of human lives, and, in the case of Asian cheap labor – children.

Cheap labor is valued more highly than that of employment for the 12 million without a job in the United States. People’s lives are cheated, their means of putting food on the table shot down, their arms, capable of labor, drained of muscle due to lack of food, due to lack of job; all for cheap labor. The horrifying truth is, crisis can develop quickly, and without warning for the working class of the United States. If Asia underwent massive nationalization of it’s economies (like what we’ve seen in Latin America with the wave of nationalization going on there) access to shoes, shirts, pants, jackets, gloves, things the poor essentially are forced to live in, would deplete rapidly.

The ruling clique of capitalists in the United States, in such an event, would scurry to find new sources, new spheres of influence to exploit and plunder. New children to deform in sweatshops. If this was, even momentarily, made impossible, it is possible the job crisis would be “fixed” for the time being, if the ruling clique so decided to employ it’s working class. However, the cost of such goods would surely go up.

If such rapid nationalizations did not occur, and the trend of sweatshop labor continued to develop gradually in the Third-World, the job crisis would only worsen. Those who are employed would have the prospect of unemployment hanging over their heads, as it already does now, and those who aren’t employed would scramble to find any paying avenue. As we pointed out in our article, A Class Analysis of America: Unemployed Armies, technology is also developing so rapidly that, soon enough, many of the low paying jobs, such as cashier work, will be replaced with technology. Stores like ‘Harris Teeter’ have already pursued this.

In conclusion, this quote from Martin Luther King Jr. illustrates the point we’ve been getting at this entire time:

“Capitalism has outlived it’s usefulness.”

References:

(1) http://abcnews.go.com/Business/MadeInAmerica/made-america-clothes-clothing-made-usa/story?id=13108258