shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: March 11, 2008 10:32PM

Four students from a Phoenix high school who were picked up by immigration authorities while on a school trip to Niagara Falls and threatened with deportation.

The Growing Nightmare for Immigrants in Arizona
from Revolution #123

Maricopa County, Arizona: A pregnant teenager is held captive in a house, along with more than 50 other immigrants. They are locked in rooms with no furniture and jugs of human waste. When her family in Mexico doesn’t immediately pay the thousands of dollars demanded, she is dragged into a bathroom. Her young husband hears her screaming as she is beaten for a half hour. She miscarries, and her bloody clothing is left lying on the floor.

Yet she and every other person in the house are subject to felony charges under Arizona law, of “conspiring with themselves” to smuggle themselves across the border. Some are arrested—all are deported. This is just one peek into the nightmare for immigrants in Maricopa County which has escalated dramatically recently, one which has arisen out of the complex and underlying dynamics of this system.

Immigrants in Maricopa County describe being so terrorized that they are afraid to leave their homes. In a recent article, Phoenix New Times interviewed a number of immigrants, including Daniela, who came to the U.S. 13 years ago.

Daniela doesn’t go more than three blocks from her house, and then only to her children’s elementary school. She never drives—the chance of being pulled over for driving while brown is too great. She never walks alone—if she’s picked up, no one will know what happened. She has very few friends—thanks to the atmosphere of immigrant bashing and the “Illegal Immigrant Hotline,” anyone she meets might turn her in. She can’t shop—the sheriff has officers at Food City. She can’t call the police if she witnesses a crime—they’ll ask about her status and she’ll be deported. Her children can’t sleep through the night—they have nightmares about their parents being disappeared.

This is the situation for hundreds of thousands throughout the county—and not just for immigrants but all brown-skinned people. They are literally being forced into the shadows, into their homes, away from even each other. Attendance at predominantly immigrant churches is down by as much as a third, as parishioners are too afraid to come.

Along with the legislative assaults, police raids and vigilante violence, there has also been a significant increase in crimes against immigrants. Just as in the South (and beyond), there was no crime that couldn’t be committed without impunity against a Black person, the system has created “open season” conditions for anyone who wants to prey on immigrants.

In the last few years, Arizona has passed a series of steadily more draconian laws targeting immigrants. A ballot measure, reinforced by the State Senate, denied bail for undocumented immigrants accused of serious crimes. Another mandated English as the official language. A statute made it a crime to transport, harbor, or hire undocumented immigrants. And a law supposedly designed to target “coyotes” who bring immigrants into the U.S. has been interpreted to mean than any undocumented immigrant is guilty of conspiring to smuggle themselves, a class-four felony. (Other states have been following Arizona’s lead. For example, Oklahoma passed a law denying bail to undocumented immigrants, and Colorado, Nebraska, and Idaho are considering similar legislation.)

These laws, and the widespread promotion of hatred against immigrants, have steadily tightened a noose around immigrants in Arizona and have provided a legal foundation for an assault on immigrant communities.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, a racist campaign of terror is being spearheaded by Sheriff Joe Arpaio and County Attorney Andrew Thomas. Arpaio is infamous for his policies of humiliating prisoners and suspects. He has institutionalized racial profiling on a massive scale and unleashed a crackdown in which anyone looking “illegal”—whether food vendors, college students, or day laborers—is subject to being stopped and subjected to racist insults and demands to produce proof of citizenship. If detained, they face tremendous pressure to sign a plea deal and accept deportation.

Thomas was elected on a platform of vehement anti-immigration. One of his first acts after taking office was to announce he wouldn’t prosecute a racist vigilante who held seven Mexican migrants hostage at gunpoint at a rest stop. Invoking truly Nazi-like rhetoric designed to declare some people non-humans, he has said that the U.S. “is tolerating a sub-class of people.”

The Fair and Legal Employment Act

On top of all this, on February 7, a federal judge upheld Arizona’s Fair and Legal Employment Act—a law that prohibits employers from hiring undocumented immigrants, and will suspend an employer’s business license on the first offense and will revoke it on the second. The Arizona law requires employers to check the eligibility of anyone applying for a job with the E-Verify database, an experimental and temporary federal database that is known for its high error rate.

This law affects the estimated 500,000 or more undocumented immigrants that make up 9-12 percent of the workforce in the state of Arizona, mostly in service, construction, and landscaping, according to Arizona State University. The law also requires the Attorney General or local county attorneys to investigate all complaints about unauthorized workers. It represents a leap in the systematic clampdown on and persecution of immigrants in this country.

Governor of Arizona Janet Napolitano, the “moderate” Democrat who signed the law, said she thinks that the law could result in a business “death penalty”—however, she said it was better than an “even more draconian” ballot initiative that might be introduced if nothing is done to enforce the immigration laws. And, having signed the law, she’s now enforcing this draconian law. Arizona officials were mandated to comply with this anti-immigrant work enforcement law, the largest and strictest in the country, on March 1. County Attorney Thomas has promised to aggressively enforce the law, even saying that he believes the law can be enforced retroactively.

Employers have already begun laying off immigrant workers, and this has had repercussions throughout their communities. Local restaurants and shops have closed down because there are not enough customers. Schools, apartment complexes, and neighborhoods have seen large numbers of Latino families moving out of the state. One elementary school in west Phoenix has reported that enrollment has declined by 525.

Contradictions at the Top—Need for Breakthroughs from Below

Businesses and organizations like the state Chamber of Commerce, the Arizona Contractors Association, the AZ Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and the Arizona Landscape Contractors Association are strongly opposed to the Fair and Legal Employment Act. They argue that the law will mean that Arizona will be shooting itself in the foot by driving out immigrants who are so critical to the economy. The Wall Street Journal recently quoted University of Arizona immigration expert Judith Gans as stating, “Getting rid of [undocumented] workers means that we are deciding as a matter of policy to shrink the economy.”

When all is said and done, the capitalists need the immigrants—both to keep the U.S. economy profitable and because the money they send home helps to maintain stability within Mexico. This fundamental necessity conflicts with the need to maintain and strengthen the “glue” of nativist anti-immigrant chauvinism—a key part of keeping U.S. society intact.

There is an intense contradiction for the U.S. ruling class. On the one hand, they need to superexploit undocumented immigrants. On the other hand, they need to strengthen the whole cohering structure of society—to “keep it all together” and keep their setup intact. And then, there are contradictions within the ruling class on how to manage all this, and those contradictions are getting played out in different ways. Last summer, Congress failed to pass highly repressive immigration “reform” legislation pushed by Bush. That legislation would have increased the militarization of the border, set up a “guest worker” program to keep immigrant workers in slave-like conditions, and set up a “legalization” system—the main element of which would be to force undocumented immigrants to register with the government. Reactionary opposition to the bill in the ruling class stopped its passage, accompanied by a frenzy of attacks on immigrants. Since then, attacks on immigrants have intensified. On the federal level, border militarization is moving ahead. Waves of factory raids by armed agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are spreading terror in immigrant communities. And then, on the local level, cities across the country are passing laws to drive undocumented workers out by punishing those who employ or rent to them. And the new levels of repression being implemented in Arizona are breaking new ground in all this.

The nightmare for immigrants in Maricopa County illustrates the kind of society we are living in, and the kind we are moving toward—one where people are increasingly terrorized, hunted down, separated from their kids, and deported—just because they have no official documents.

In this situation, all sections of the people, including the proletarians of all nationalities, urgently need to wage political struggle to beat back these escalating attacks on immigrants, with an eye towards greater upheaval to come, including potentially revolutionary upheaval.

Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: March 11, 2008 11:29PM

"Four students from a Phoenix high school who were picked up by immigration authorities while on a school trip to Niagara Falls and threatened with deportation. "

Why were they picked up ?, did they had their proof of US citizenship or green card with them ?, or are we talking about illegal immigrants ?

quasi Report This Comment
Date: March 11, 2008 11:32PM

The easy and legal solution to all of this is don't come into this country illegally, dumbass.

Placelowerplace Report This Comment
Date: March 11, 2008 11:37PM

Sounds like typical living conditions in Mexico. They say they want it to be just like it is in Mexico, so here its.

Actually this sounds more like propaganda bullshit from a bleeding heart socialist point of view. This dogma is yet just another break down in the USA's internal mechanism. I believe that if you were to live in Arizona (Which I have) California (Which I Have) New Mexico or Texas, you wouldn't find fault with Maricopa County. The whole false imprisonment stuff in this article may or may not be true, but to criticize a county that has finally the courage to make life better for the Leagal citizens of its county, state, country is no different from the floods of Mexican immigrants that cross the border, with the exception of IT IS OUR COUNTRY!!!!!!!!!! OUR HOME!!!!!!! OUR NATION!!!!!!!!!!

What contemptuous behavior to present this to us as if USA was wrong for having laws and rules that are for the benefit of its own. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. If you think this country is so bad, then you move to Mexico and live there for a while. Come back when you decide to be an American (USA). As far as immigration goes, fill out the application at the door and we will get to it in the order it was received and then we will welcome you, but when you cross our border illegally, you have just begun your life of stealing from us. YES it is THEFT!

Boo hoo (sniffle) and now go home!

Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: March 11, 2008 11:59PM

Hey , its too bad they tore down the wall in Berlin, it sounds like you could have used it . Mexicans were here hundreds of years ago and will be here hundreds after we are gone. They have always migrated with the field work and traveled a free America. Until recently its been pretty much business as norm. You do no that there is a country right next door called Mexico and has been your neibor to the south.

Wish i could put a wall 8ft high around your house. Get mexicans to put it for you,would be cheaper

shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 04:19AM

We are in the situation we are in now because of this system, not because of immigrants. Capitalism creates scarcity, and that is not how it has to be. With the advances technology has made(and could be even further advanced without capitalism) we could all have more than enough. Instead a handful has more than what is necessary, while the majority does not have enough so they are forced into fighting each other over what is available to them. But it does not have to be this way.

Now this particular article brings up something very interesting, in addition to exposing the gestapo behavior of the ICE agents, in that there is this contradiction we have here. On the one hand the "invasion" of the immigrants is destroying U.S. society and culture(by the way some culture we have here, built entirely on super-exploitation and genocide, while the great majority of the people are kept ignorant), and yet on the other hand, the cheap labor power that these immigrants own is the only thing keeping this economy, in its current stage of capitalism-imperialism, alive. And such a contradiction cannot be resolved under capitalism, not in any way that will benefit the interests of humanity at least.

Once again, if you approach this matter from the viewpoint of a dialectical and historical materialist(nothing to do with dogma), you will notice this, and the fact that this is not the immigrants doing, but rather is the doing of the ruling class and their insatiable appetite for profit. Until the masses in the millions can understand this, from a dialectical materialist perspective, and understand also the need for the revolution and communism, we will continue to fight for the very little that is made available to us.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2008 04:22AM by shaDEz.

Mrkim Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 01:45PM

I find it quite interesting how bleeding heart fucks always employ the "poor victim" bullshit when discussing the rampant illegal immigration issue but never seem to even mention the socio-economic impact to the legal citizenry and how THEY are victimed by the illegals presence here.

With up to 30% of the prison populations consisting of illegals (and don't kid yourself folks, they didn wind up there for being fine upstanding citizens OR for their own illegal status in this country, they got there by breaking more of our laws!), hundreds of thousands of births by illegals annually in the US all paid for by the legal citizens, free medical care (it's actually ILLEGAL to turn them away or refuse medical treatment TO illegals) <-as if even the legals here have these same rights, food subsidies, housing subsidies, and the list goes on and on and on, but at the bottom of that list when you get to the "paid by" part it will always read John Q Public.

The liberals as always seem to have no problem taking our money and handing it out to anyone but the ones who pay it in, and then are quick to paint anyone who dissents with that philosophy as a racist or uncaring. What a weak, shallow minded and simplistic tactic, but it works great on those too weak minded to see through the smoke screen haze of BS they spew.

I think I get it though ... legal citizens shouldn't have any rights, but we should all give everything we can to people who don't even have a right to be here in the 1st place, right ?

Then, when the system is totally drained dry from extending our hand (once again), surely the illegals will see our plight and help us legal citizens in turn, right ? Nope ... if the fuckin well of prosperity and social freebies were to dry up they'd all be on the 1st thing smokin to head somewhere else and say "Fuck the American citizens" is EXACTLY what they would do!

Reminds me a lot of how network television always vilifies the white guy and always shows the minority as the bright, upstanding or righteous one ... same logic, different scenario





Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 12/03/2008 04:35PM by Mrkim.

Anonymous Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 02:47PM

ha ha

Mrkim Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 03:55PM

^^^ Hope you didn overtax those 2 brain cells you have left with that bit of witty reparte ^^^

Placelowerplace Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 03:56PM

What Mr.Kim is talking about I have seen first hand. Growing up in Orange County CA. I have seen exactly that. When you can't give anything more then the "starving" turn on you and attack......EVERY TIME! no exceptions.

Additionaly I am sick of hearing how bad everyone elses life is because I am a white male and I some how owe everyone else something more or I am a rasist.

I am not allowed to use certain vocabulary that other "races" can in the name of racism. If I complain about some ones behavior and they are not a white male then I am a sexist and a racist. If I look at some one and they don't like it and they are not a white male, I am again labeled as a racist.

The truth is, Its all about theft. it isn't about fairness and never has been. Its about Profiting on ill gotten gains. The USA wants to share in the hopes that other nations will be our friends, but it has yet to be true, but with a few nations. Seems that when we have helped in the past punishment has been gratitude repayed.

Next time a country gets a flash flood, I say fuck em. they should learn how to survey thier land and not live there or they are starving in the middle of some fucking dessert, fuck em let them figure out out how to pump water to the area if they are so inclined to live there as well.

You know who'd come to help me if that were me in the dessert or in a flash flood....... ONLY A WHITE MAN would and he wouldn't tell me I owe him something for it either..............

Mint Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 04:45PM

PLP is a racist and a sexist

Mrkim Report This Comment
Date: March 12, 2008 04:58PM

^^^ If that's meant to be humorous ^^^ I'd agree. If it wasn't intended as such I'd like to hear the logic that leads to such an assertion

quasi Report This Comment
Date: March 13, 2008 01:22AM

OK, the dumbasses should stay in their own damned country or go back to it to avoid being eploited by the evil U.S. economis system. Easy,legal and morally (politically) correct - everybody wins. Yay!!!!

And by the way, probably the oldest and most influencial latin American organization in the U.S. is called "La Raza" which translates to "the race." Now just who are the racists here?

shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: March 13, 2008 05:43AM

To think that the problems with the economy is due to the presence of immigrants is ridiculous. And yet so many people are being bamboozled into thinking this way. What it is actually due to is the incompetence of the ruling class, what Marx talked about a bit in the Communist Manifesto, the bourgeoisie, to handle this economy. What is this type of societal economic system based on? Constant expansion, and profit. Simple fact is, that in this current stage of capitalism-imperialism and with the labor reforms, it is no longer very profitable to employ "legal citizens" in the States, but it is a lot more profitable to exploit peoples in other countries by imperialist dominance over third world countries, which has uprooted people(in Mexico, for example) in the tens, hundred of thousands, even millions, from their lands that they used to farm and forced them into the cities. And in the cities they were unable to find work once it became no longer profitable to hire them, so they were forced into the empire where they are either extremely underpaid in virtual slavery conditions, and/or driven to crime if they are not so lucky to get paid work, where they can be completely enslaved. Also this makes it sort of difficult for people to properly "pump water to their land if they live in the middle of the desert", because of what it does to their economy, it becomes difficult to afford such technology.

And with that I am brought to what was said about "this all being about theft, about profiting off of ill gotten gains" and how "the U.S. wants to share in the hopes that other nations will be friendly". First off, what about the ill gotten gains of the U.S. with much of the western territories. That actually at one time belonged to Mexico, albeit not the people of Mexico--and of course the Spaniards did take that land, to begin with, from the people that lived there before. Second thing that was said here, which is actually in dialectic nature with the first thing(and also within itself!), the U.S. wants to share in the hopes that other nations will be friendly, how does it demonstrate this though? Yeah, true some nations are friendly, but not because of the "generosity" of the U.S. empire, rather because the U.S. massacred whatever regime was standing in opposition to it, whether that regime was beneficial to the people or not(Iran, for example, is in the cross-hairs of U.S. imperialist conquest and its fundamentalist Islamic regime is certainly not beneficial to its people) and replaces it with a puppet government which is never beneficial to the people. So why does much of the world hate the U.S. empire? Because of its actions, not just recently, but all throughout its history, and the third world always came under one of the empires. Back when the U.S.S.R. (after Stalin's death the U.S.S.R. became a revisionist state and social imperialist, that means socialist in appearance but actually imperialist in actions-phony communists) existed the third world had a choice of social imperialism or U.S. imperialism, but with the dissolving of the Soviet Union, and return to Russia, which is openly capitalist, now the third world's only opposition to U.S. imperialism is Islamic fundamentalism, which is a monster that the U.S. created to fight the U.S.S.R.!

(And on that, what was that African country that had a railroad built for it by some other country, and when the engineers were finished there, they left without demanding some sort of pay back?)

Back to the immigration issue, what is this solution that seems to concern people here, and causes my posting to create such an uproar, this liberal solution? To get the people, "legal citizens", to pay for the "illegal citizens". But that is the only way to fix this problem really while remaining within the narrow confines of this system, by reforming this system. Bottom line is the people that pay, are the same people that suffer the consequences that come out of the bourgeois insatiable appetite for profit. But to keep the people from rising up against this system, when things get shitty for them, the ruling class twists it so that it becomes a section of the people's fault. They do this in order to get us to fight amongst ourselves instead of fighting against what we need to be fighting against, instead of transforming ourselves so that we can actually go forward if and when we do overthrow these fuckers, so that we can wind up going right back to this type of system.

Another thing is the oppressed nations, not just outside the boarders, but also within the empire. You have these Black Nations, and Latino Nations(and the list goes on and on), these nationalists which are in contradiction with your U.S. nationalists, that think that what is the right thing to do to attack the white man. To vilify the white man. Yes true, pretty much all of the suffering in the world today is because of U.S. imperialism, which is a system built on white supremacy, but how does, after some kind of revolution, oppressing white people fix any of this? That too is the wrong kind of revolution, yes we need to end this oppression of the Black Nation, La Raza, and all of the other nations, on the national level, and on the international level, but we have to do away with capitalism entirely and in every form. Yes a lot of white people are very fucked up, but a lot more of the white people think that racism is fucked up, some of those in which do actually say racist things sometimes, but are not necessarily aware of it, and those need to be struggled with and criticized in a correct way. Sometimes they might think, due to a determinist outlook, that only other whites would ever look out for them(and this type of thinking is also reflected in a lot of the Blacks and other races as well). That is also actually very racist(and determinist), but it is because of a wrong type of thinking, and usually due to a lot of bad experiences; which these experiences, if looked at from a dialectical materialist perspective is caused by what? Once again it is the way that this type of system pits different section of the people against one another racially, and in other ways, because people will do whatever is necessary in order to transform necessity and that is what determines the societal climate.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 13/03/2008 07:09PM by shaDEz.

Mrkim Report This Comment
Date: March 14, 2008 02:53AM

shaDEs, I don't think anyone was attempting (at least not in this discussion) to blame the countries economic ills on the burgeoning populations of illegals within the US borders, and I certainly made no allusions to such a simplistic train of logic in my statements.

What I outright said (and have done so in the past) is that the illegal populations are a constant and unnecessary, and at least to myself, an illogical drain on our social services structures in the US. Anyone who can refute that statement will have to do some pretty goddamned good manipulation of the facts and numbers relevant to this issue since the cost is in the billions annually to the US and again, that really means as PLP alluded to, theft of John and Jane Q Publics tax dollars.

I think by and large the American middle class, who does most of the livin and dyin in this country, is quite fed up with the idea that our government hands out billions of THEIR tax dollars annually to people who by law don't even have a right to be here. So ... it seems absolutely insane that they should even be able to get ANY of the monies paid in by the American working class and it angers MANY of us that they not only can and do receive monies they seem by rights to have no claim to, but that our government would ever even consider offering these people outright amnesty for their trespasses against our nations laws!

Though past this issue your above post seems to head off into the communistic doctrinal blatherings that have become so tedious of late, let me ask for some clarifications on your statements:

1. Please name the regimes the US has massacred. This is not to say it's never occured, but more to the point, I wanna know what examples YOU personally hold to be true regarding this statement.

2. With the following statement you made in mind which has uprooted people(in Mexico, for example) in the tens, hundred of thousands, even millions, from their lands that they used to farm and forced them into the cities. And in the cities they were unable to find work once it became no longer profitable to hire them, so they were forced into the empire where they are either extremely underpaid in virtual slavery conditions, and/or driven to crime if they are not so lucky to get paid work, where they can be completely enslaved

Let's start off by asking WHO uprooted these people? Then, whose responsibility do you deem it to be to take care of these people, the US, who they are not even citizens of (nor typically care to be!) or their own Mexican government? You can dance all around this issue with ideologies of "in a perfect (communistic) world it should be this or it could be that, but in the real world of today and right fucking NOW who really SHOULD cliam responsibility for the Mexican peoples problems?

3.With the following statements in mind Back when the U.S.S.R. (after Stalin's death the U.S.S.R. became a revisionist state and social imperialist, that means socialist in appearance but actually imperialist in actions-phony communists) existed the third world had a choice of social imperialism or U.S. imperialism, but with the dissolving of the Soviet Union, and return to Russia, which is openly capitalist, now the third world's only opposition to U.S. imperialism is Islamic fundamentalism, which is a monster that the U.S. created to fight the U.S.S.R.!


Are you trying to say that the US actually generated/empowered/enabled the Islamic Fundamentalist regime, hierarchy that exists today to fend off the Soviet Union? If so, please give facts to back that up, and this should be a really good one, since the Islamic faith has been around far longer than the US has been in existance and I think history shows that it has been steadily spreading throught known history since its inception, long before the US could have ever played any part in it, but I'll wait for you to drum that one up, OK?

4. Here's one that really stcks in my craw ..... HARD Back to the immigration issue, what is this solution that seems to concern people here, and causes my posting to create such an uproar, this liberal solution? To get the people, "legal citizens", to pay for the "illegal citizens". But that is the only way to fix this problem really while remaining within the narrow confines of this system, by reforming this system. Bottom line is the people that pay, are the same people that suffer the consequences that come out of the bourgeois insatiable appetite for profit.

So I guess this means we Americans should just fuckin roll over and give the illegals amnesty, keep feedin and housin 'em, keep givin 'em free medical care, all while they come here and work illegally so they can keep continuously draining our economy even further by sending billions upon billions of dollar$ they send back home to Mexico every year (which BTW is a HUGE part of Mexicos GNP base!) because that's the only solution? I mean really man, should we all just start carryin around industrial sized jars of vaseline and a 50lb bag of sand so we're always ready for another good hard nasty fuckin?

5. Here's another juicy one Yes true, pretty much all of the suffering in the world today is because of U.S. imperialism

Sorry dude, you may be sellin, but I damned sure ain't buyin! While industrial concerns absolutely whore out sections of the worlds workforce for their own gain at wages well below what they used to pay American workers to do the work, another side of that issue is that people all over the world would still be makin a big 0 fuckin $$ like they had been for most of their lives had these interests NOT invested in land, power generating facilities, water systems, housing and wages in countries all over the globe as a byproduct of their industrial interests there.

Another facet of this issue is that Americans give more aid independent of what the US government does to needy people all over the world and usualy for NO profit at all, so try explainin again how "all the suffering in the world" is because of the same US imperialism that also makes these acts of human kindness possible in the 1st place?

Do you think all the billions after billions of dollars US citizens have poured into places all over the world when an earthquake hit, a tsunami hits, people are starving (like those mentioned livin in the middle of a desert and pumpin out puppies left and right when they god damned sure KNOW that's stupid, thoughtless and unconscionable!), or when a people is being pressed into genocide by an oppressor and just need some aid to help them make it through would have been possible? If we as a nation were not so successful as we are at being Capitaistist do you think any of this could happen on the same scale? Not fuckin hardly my friend, not even close!

So get on with it brother, I'm awaiting your response to this with bated breath

BTW : I'm still waitin for that mention of a successful communist society/government that ever existed. Pipe dreams are great man, but being built on smoke, are doomed to dematerialize as quickly as they come to exist at all.






Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 14/03/2008 06:09AM by Mrkim.

90130_ Report This Comment
Date: March 14, 2008 08:09AM

God damn, Kim. You got the "green" button for that one.

Placelowerplace Report This Comment
Date: March 14, 2008 06:00PM

Toast Masters?

quasi Report This Comment
Date: March 14, 2008 11:35PM

I'm particularly facinated by the fact that the number of people murdered during Stalin's purges make Hitler's holocast look like a church picnic. Htf do you rationalize that bullshit?

You keep calling for a revolution, shaDEz, and you're gonna get one when legal American citizens get fed up with the illegals and really start kickin' some asses back across the border. You're whining about how mistreated the illegals are but I don't think you've seen anything yet. I used to have some pretty socialistic ideas myself, I thought everybody should get a piece of the pie, but now I'm gettin' pretty sick of people taking advantage of the generosity of the American public then bitchin' about how evil this country is. You want to kick your own countrymen's ass for the sake of these sponges and that pisses me off mightily.

You spout off about how the proletariet should take control but it's the proletariet that wants the illegals out of here; you're just so wrapped up in your rhetoric and rage against the machine that you can't see that simple truth. The proletariet of the U.S. has been showing these people the milk of human kindness for years and now is being overrun, overwhelmed, and spit on in return. That's where your fuckin' revolution is gonna happen, when the proletariet has finally had enough and takes back from "La Raza" what belongs to it.

Mrkim Report This Comment
Date: March 16, 2008 10:28PM

3 Days ... and still awaiting your reply shaDEz

zxz555 Report This Comment
Date: March 17, 2008 09:49AM

Firstly, no-one coming to this thread late is going to read all of it and I can safely vouch for that.

Secondly: ShaDEz: capitalism can indeed resolve the problems created by an illegal workforce and resolve the problems those workers have.

- Lets take the workers first. Their problem is that they work illegally and are therefore not entitled to the same government services (what you all call rights; voting, minimum wage, health care, protection by the law etc). Yet these workers are still able to earn more than at home and exploit the US economy. Yet they too are exploited by the capitalist elite (farmers! :0).
I hate to admit this but the Bush administration may have gotten this right from a number of perspectives. By making it illegal with strict penalties to employ illegal immigrants the govt are forcing employers to act responsibly. The effect this has for illegals is simple: register through the proper channels or do not work. If you are registered you gain your rights. And you can negotiate your wage. You win. Business loses by having to pay a higher production cost (wages) but this will become insignificant over time as the higher cost of production is reflected in higher prices. The end result is more tax for the govt and less dollars bleeding out of the country, also an important factor in a country`s economy. Americans need not worry about those higher prices because as costs rise wages will rise to meet them and farmers are subsidized anyway (part of the pricing problem).
What is important to remember is that the illegal workers do want to work, they are doing it illegally because that is the easiest way
and because the industry favours those who cost the least.

- Business needs to be regulated and by incurring heavy penalties for employing illegals the govt is forcing regulation and price stability on an industry that is unstable and exploitative. Business always complains about this but over time it is the best solution for all parties as a fair reward for a fair days work is received from the market. That sounds like Marxism, but it is actually how capitalism works. The difference being those with the greatest responsibility benefit most.

ShaDEz, if you want Mexicans to be treated fairly and equally then you have to want businesses to be forced into using only legal workers and working practices. That means the workforce has to legitimise itself.

---

As for the beating up and persecution of brown people in the US, well that has nothing to do with anything other than ignorance. Stop teaching creationism in your schools, that christian message of peace and understanding clearly is not working.

To whoever said that when you cross the border you have begun to steal. The irony here is that the illegal immigrants and the people who employ them are actually stealing from each other. Standing back to back and as one empties the others pockets so the other does the same. Around and around it goes. The smartest thing to have come from the Bush years is the legitimization of the US work force. Marx is dead, ShaDEz, let him rest in peace and look to the future.

shaDEz Report This Comment
Date: March 24, 2008 06:59AM

I see everyone has been busy since I left... sorry, I should have mentioned that I was doing an action(s) in DC and then attending a presentation and discussion on Chairman Avakian's New Syntesis in Chicago. I hope you weren't actually holding your breath Mr. Kim!

Well to answer your first question:
1. Please name the regimes the US has massacred. This is not to say it's never occured, but more to the point, I wanna know what examples YOU personally hold to be true regarding this statement.

Okay, well there is this obvious thing going on right now, but we can go back some. What about the end of the 19th century? The US promised to give the people of the Philippines independence from Spain, went back on that promise and massacred the people in the hundreds of thousands and commited unspeakable atrocities after "liberating" them(not to mention, waterboarding is nothing new, the US used this against Philippines long before after Guantanamo Bay).

Or how about the US sponsored Contras in Nicaragua? What about Panama? What about the history with Iran? No this isn't something new either! US been fucking with Iran for a very long time after Brittain lost its imperialist dominance in the world arena.

I could do this all day, but let's move on

2. Let's start off by asking WHO uprooted these people? Then, whose responsibility do you deem it to be to take care of these people, the US, who they are not even citizens of (nor typically care to be!) or their own Mexican government? You can dance all around this issue with ideologies of "in a perfect (communistic) world it should be this or it could be that, but in the real world of today and right fucking NOW who really SHOULD claim responsibility for the Mexican peoples problems?

Again, this has US fingerprints all over it! NAFTA agreement, do I really have to get into how people will do whatever it takes to survive(this is sort of like what you, and many others, like to tell me all the time, "human nature", except that you fail to understand that this nature is determined, dictated, by the prevailing enviromental and societal conditions...), that is why the people of Mexico are invading and is causing this contradiction between the American people and the Mexican people... but let's not confuse cause and effect, what is the root cause in this?

Who should have to pay for this, well the some sections of the ruling class seem to think that it is up to the American people. Correct me if I'm wrong, but i could have sworn that I made that perfectly clear, that it should not be a weight on the American working people. I thought I have expressed that before, but I may have neglected to that.

The fact is that this problem could be solved, it won't be easy mind you, but it can never be solved under this type of system. It will take a radically different type of society, a socialist society moving towards communism by achieving the four alls.

3. Are you trying to say that the US actually generated/empowered/enabled the Islamic Fundamentalist regime, hierarchy that exists today to fend off the Soviet Union? If so, please give facts to back that up, and this should be a really good one, since the Islamic faith has been around far longer than the US has been in existance and I think history shows that it has been steadily spreading throught known history since its inception, long before the US could have ever played any part in it, but I'll wait for you to drum that one up, OK?

The Islamic faith has been around for quite a bit longer than the existence of the US, but even the bourgeois media admits to this simple fact(that the US armed Islamic extremests to fight the Soviets in the 80's). There was a lot of this being aired shortly after the 9-11 attacks. There was this concern for the invasion of Afghanistan because of Tommahawk missles. You can find a lot more specific info on this off of the web(revcom.us has some things on this and so does worldcantwait.org and a lot of others).

I think I have answered the fourth one already in this reply.

And the last one, yes, the US, by which I mean the empire, the ruling class of this empire, the only ones who really gain off of this; not the people, the working class. Yes a lot of the American people are very good and very generous. People will give money to help with relief when there are disastors, and not just the Amercian people do this. The Us, however, only pours money into a situation when there is profit to be had off of it. The tsunami, actually, they had the opportunity to develop for hotels and resorts, to help the bourgeois class there make more profit off of exploiting the disaster, and the victims of it; after which the US can exploit the nation.

And I could get into New Orleans(and how these fuckers are abusing their own people!) right now, but again, I have to refer you to revcom.us for now.




(for quasi
20 million dead Russians under Stalin. Stalin was very pragmatic yes, but this little historic fact is twisted by bourgeois telling of history. It was the Nazis that killed all of those Russians!

[thisiscommunism.org]

I will continue to struggle with you all, as well as many many others, on these and much more, as everything that is fucked up about this world cries out for the DOP and revolution and communism, and I encourage people to actualy try reading some of this paper(revcom.us) and the works of Bob Avakian, and if you get the chance to, I strongly suggest attending a Re-envisioning Revolution and Communism WHAT IS BOB AVAKIAN’S NEW SYNTHESIS? presentation and discussion, whether or not you agree with me, or communism in general.