A lot of these people who come from this other world are always trying to get us killed in one way or another. Even when I read the letters in the foregoing chapter of solidarity with my fight for amnesty I find that these letters are permeated with ideological advice which if I swallowed would be devastating to poor and working class people like myself. For many years now people have been trying to convince me of one or the other ideologies. However I have no trust in any of it... Because every time I turn around it is the Nick's, the eddies, the Bob's, the Indians, the blacks, the little Vietnamese girl who are running for there lives. It is pretty easy for these people with there nice cars and nice houses coming down into the streets of New York, or into the African jungles, or the Vietnamese country side in order to convince us of the latest dominating theory in their circles. But it is people like myself who make the pyramid of skulls throughout history. What I am trying to say here is there ain,t nothing these people want to give us. In fact most of the rules made up by them in society are to protect their interests and not the Nick's or Eddies or the little Vietnamese girl who was running for her life. Take the latest round of death sentences being handed down. 15 and 16 year old kids who rob a store for twenty dollars and shoot somebody in the process. They are to be executed by the state. When was the last time the state executed a rich person for robbing millions from working class people. When was the last time the state executed somebody for sending working-class and poor kids off to awar that they started with the domino theory. How about the mining company officials on Bougainville today who are responsible for a genocidal war against the people on the island in order to open the copper mine for there profits. No the death penalty is not for rich people. The death penalty was invented by them in order to keep poor people in line. Remember how they screamed the couple of times in history this got turned around. The French revolution and the guillotine for the rich by the poeble! The Bolsheviks who put the czar against the wall. Christ they are still talking about that today. On the other hand what about all the Vietnamese who were turned into dust for the domino theory. Or the 55,000 G.I.s who came back in bodybags. Oh yeah, the GI,s got a black stone in Washington D.C. (Idealogically that stone is being used to prepare the next generation for a new war) In America nobody ever talks about the millions of Vietnamese turned into dust by the bombings.No not at all because the people controlling things are only interested in making rules to put down anybody Vietnamese or American who get in the way. NO THE RICH PEOPLE MAKE THE RULES AND THE IDEOLOGIES TO KEEP POOR AND WORKING CLASS PEOPLE IN PLACE. So don't come with any moral or ideological judgements of the Nick's and Eddie,s or Bob's in this story. These guys are certainly not angels. We are at least honest in saying that we were born into a system which has never nor will never give us a fucking chance. A system which is built up by oppressing the poor and working class people.Your nice houses and cars and the rest , yes your standard of living is kept up by exploiting people like us everywhere on this fucking planet. So don't start telling us how we should try an survive a death sentence, from the very day we were born, imposed on us by the rich so that you can continue your bourgeois historical domination. Go fuck your selves. I don't like rich people or their lackeys. I will never trust you because, Oh it is so fucking simple!, I don't like you because I have been a victim , just as the little Vietnamese girl was a victim. We were on the same side. You rich people with your nice cars and houses are on the other side. Until the historical inequalities built into this system are erased we are deadly enemies! So long as there are rich and the poor we are deadly enemies. When you talk about black mothers on welfare, or dope addicts, or criminals, your talking about people who never had a chance in thisfucking society. They are victims just as the little Vietnamese girl was a victim. And morals ! Nick and eddy and many other poor kids made their livings by selling drugs to middle-class kids and rich kids coming in from the suburbs. I remember the moral outrage about this stuff. Why there were articles in the newspapers everyday about this stuff. Our kids are being destroyed and all that shit. I even remember seeing articles about middle-class kids running down to the village to buy pot or LSD being a fucking communist conspiracy! We thought that it was great to see kids from the suburbs come down into our part of town slumming. Later on they would protest against the race riots and the war in Vietnam. Well it was people like Nick and Eddie Zeke and Clem who got these kids to let their hair down. Let these kids know that their shit stinks just like our shit. The Nick's and the eddies got all these kids pointed in a direction which led to that the American bourgeoisie suffered the biggest military defeat in history in Vietnam. The pot and LSD that the Nick's and Eddies were selling to these kids was the motor which made these kids drop out a short period of time in history. That drop out saved just as many Vietnamese lives as the political organisations did. I personally would like to thank the Nick's and the eddies of the world. You were small time gangsters trying to survive in a world you never understood. But you turned the youth of America on and got them in a critical moment of history to turn their backs on their bourgeois parents. And to think that those college kids still today think that they were solely responsible for helping the Vietnamese win the war! That is just a crock of bullshit. We were watching you people long before you even became aware of it. These kidswere digging music of black people who's forefathers were slaves! These kids were buying drugs like pot and LSD from the eddies and Nick's of the world and that money was financing the IRA and the Cuban Revolutionaries! These kids were buying paintings and lots of other shit in the village and that money was feeding workers on the picket lines. This stuff was going on before these kids even new what race riots were. These kids helped finance the civil rights movement. The blacks who were dealing drugs were sending money to Martin Luther King: These kids think probably even today think that the struggle against inequality started on campus around 1968. Well, guess what in 1917 the Bolsheviks had the hookers working in the party. The Bolsheviks understood poor and oppressed people in 1917 and it worked. The point being that historically there have been poor and working class kids that in very specials skills, (sometimes skills which the bourgeoisie consider criminal) have had an enormous effect on the outcome of historical struggles. The hookers in the Bolshevik party are one example. The Nick's and the Eddies of the sixties are another example. So I hope the reader of these lines does not raise any bourgeois moral arguments or political arguments which condemn my childhood friends. There roll in history at this particular time saved a lot of people's lives especially in Vietnam where in 1963 the American bourgeoisie decided to take over the roll of the French colonialists after being military defeated. These street kids turned on a whole generation. The music came from black slaves. the drugs came from Cuban, Mexican and Vietnamese peasants. LSD came from Harvard, but peyote came from the Indians. In fact the only thing the rich and middle-class kids had at this time was money!, which they usually got rom their parents. So no moral crap! O.K. By the way. Max this is an answer to your letter dated 21/5/95. The same old discussion of the "we,s"----"they" discussion. In ending up this stuff on morals and intellectual snobbery I would like to quote the words of a very old and wonderful blackman Willy! Willy used to sit on the steps with us kids in the neighbourhood. Willy was always there. This very old black man. And I remember to this very day the words he often said to us kids on the hot, humid summer nights of New York City. Willie would say: "Watchit boy, this nigger ain,t got nothin never from rich whiteman!" Oh Willie, you wonderful old man--how right you were... All these years we sat with you on the steps and that was what you were trying to hammer into our heads. Willie how fucking right you were. I think Willie deserves a statue right next old Abe Lincoln. Because this man new what the bottom line in the fight between the have,s and the has not,s as Willie use to put. Willie with those few words new more about class struggle then all the fucking liberals alive today. Hats off to Willie a great black old man! So I was on thirty days leave from the Navy. These thirty days quickly turned into 60 days. This meant I was AWOL, (absent without leave) which mean that I would be court-martialled on returning to the Navy. AWOL usually means a period of time in the brig, stockade, jail, or whatever to pay for your crime.I had not committed any crime. In fact I was getting my head together for the first time in my life. I was beginning to get a primitive class consciousness. Learning and choosing which side of the fence to be on the have,s or the have not,s. Unfortunately the Navy had realised this also. My friends and I discussed the question of getting out of this 6 year re-enlistment I had just signed up for. There were a number of good suggestions. I think Eddie came with the idea of putting on a dress on returning to ship. That would not work after 3 and a half years in the Navy. Another suggestion was just don't go back. This was also not such a good idea because it could mean that people would start looking for me and find my friends. Finally I decided on a suggestion that one of my friends had. Let them find out you are using some kind of heavy drugs, opium, heroin or something like that. So I returned to the oiltanker and was put on court-martial. I was found guilty and sentenced to thirty days in the Stockade in Charlotte, North Carolina. The stockade there is run by the marines. It was then a real torture chamber. To teach people like me not to break the rules they had a program of torture to remind you who was the boss. One of the more interesting things is taking prisoners out in the evening and make them lay at attention in the grass. When the mesquitoes started eating you alive you could not move a muscle because the marine guards beat your ass if you moved. Fortunately I did not have to go through this torture. I stayed in the brig in Charleston 45 minutes! Probably a record. The morning I was to be sent off to the stockade I put my plan in to action. I went to the lifeboats on the ship. In the lifeboats there are medical kits. In these kits there are syrettes ( a needle with a tube on the end) filled with drugs like morphine and atropine. I took a number of them and put some holes in my arms. Then I took two sugar cubes with LSD and off I went to the stockade. On arriving I was beginning to feel the effects of the chemicals. A guard came and took me to be registered as a prisoner. They took me into a shower room and told me to get undressed. By this time I was really high. I stood there just looking at all the things that were moving around the room I was hallucinating. The marine I realised who was my guard stood looking at me with his mouth hanging down to ankles. He was a southern boy probably never confronted with somebody with holes in his arms and wiped out of his mind. He got really fucking nervous and told me to sit down and gave me a cigarette. He went to get his superiors and I put on a really convincing scene. They took me into a room put some clothes on me. Soon after I was transferred to the Charleston Naval Hospital. Section 8 the nut ward ! TO BE CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 9 My razor is getting edgy about this stuff. My cat Sputnik has disappeared now for 4 days. So be back to you soon...