IMGpapers 1976–79

Newspapers of the International Marxist Group and its forerunners, 1976–79

Behind the Triads - CIA

Red Weekly No. 182, 13 January 1977 · pp. 8-9 of the scan · 1,726 words

The scan: rw-no182-jan-13-1977.pdf (PDF, Marxists Internet Archive, opens at this page)

Uncorrected machine reading. This text was read by machine (Apple Vision OCR) from a scan of a newspaper page, and the page was cut into articles by machine, at the headlines found by their type size. Nothing has been corrected: expect misread words, text from a neighbouring article, and titles that are the machine reading of the headline, some of them only fragments. Quote from the scan, not from this page.
How this article was cut and titled: headline found by type size in the OCR geometry (split_tabloid.py); 1-7 of 7; machine-segmented newspaper page; uncorrected Vision OCR.

page 8 of the scan

January, 10.30am. At Nationai Centre viG rade union baare ochoc IMG comrades designated to attend by strial unionism and social democracy strategy of the CP class struggle left wing other parti Saturday/Sunday and: 100ay London.

Transport Fraction, for al ImG women's Commission, sunday Is repruary 1tam. At Natonal centre ma ochool on une ramuy for tempers and ciose contacis. saturday o maren Riverside, Durham DH1 3JT.

get kits on vational Fund Raiser wanted by iMG. really challenging job for someone with hair and oroanisino adity nas no rich backers and relies or Bang'. But for for reference here we use the name Iriad to apply to all the Dark societies that existed in China.

MASSACRE 22/23 In the 1920s the 'Qing Hong Bang'. the most famous of the "Dark' societies, began to play a growing part in actively involved in the Shanghai massacre of 12 April 1927, when Satur-casc ol tacks took place elsewhere - for Chapei were occupied. Similar atexample, in Canton, where thousands of workers lost their lives. The contribution of the Hong Bang' was most valuable to Chiang Kai-shek in crushing the trade union movement.

HONG KONG

politics. It was After the liberation of China in 1949 the Triad was forced to move 'Qing Eastern revolution.

on the revolutionary process.

mass communications ignored on the left.

These Triad societies had close connections with an old group of Kuomintang army members situa triangle OPIUM Burma and Northern Thailand. They in turn controlled drug production in that area These were the remnants of the Kuomintang army defeated by the People's Liberation Army during Its a gross misrepresentation of Marxism to say that changes in technology alone lead to social However, it's an equally distorted Marxism which maintains that significant technoopical chonges nove no innuence Yet enormous develooments in La nO insignificant section of the ided logy industry' - have gone largely As a social 23 January factor having considerable tactical Raymond importance for revolutionaries, the mass media have largely been a These military expeditions all failed, but their drug trade was meanwhile booming. The Kuomintang army today control 90 per cent of the opium produced in Burma.

Clearly the CIA knew all along about this set-up, but they did nothing to discourage it in case that upset their anti-communist nised by NUJ and Equity members in the IMG, is designed to begin to attempt to bring together socialists oj all currents working in or con cerned with the various media, the Ali. series will be introduced by an im pressive list of speakers, most of them not in the IMG but willing to contribute to such an overdue and non-sectaran oroject EES The series kicks off on Sunday 7.00 pm, al Wher wei-know! author of several books and essays on ine subject, wur speak on ine to immigrants. and serves as smokescreen for the Government's policy. Why has the Labour Governmen never spoken of the role the CIA plays in the drugs business? Behind the Triad lurk, not only the CIA but also the remnants of the counterrevolutionary Kuomintang THE REAWAKENING is a new journal produced by overseas Chinese with articles in both Chines and English. 10p from Red Books author of the study of TV news coverage, Bad News; Leon Rosselson. socialist musician and sone writer; Chris Rawlings of Rea Ladder Theatre Group; and Taria Topics to be tackled include Film, Rock Music, Agitprop Thea Sexism and Racism Media, the Mass Media and WorkControl, and the Role of the Media in a Socialist Society. venue is the London Film-Makers Co-operative, 44 Fitzroy ROad London NWI [Primrose Hill BR or Chalk rarm tude. King An

page 9 of the scan

ANNEE CUUN DE CONTINUONS COPERi MONDA FRANCE WHAT foolish games the capitalists play. eminen amaury, boss of the Parisien Libéré newspaper, killed on 2 when he rorest or onanny. amaury was a veteran non-wincer, with a partcularly infamous record of alignPUERTO RICO FOOLISH games, part two. Gerald Ford has been spencine nis las President on a ski-ing Colorado. UUTLOOK LELOHNN ment with the extreme right during the Algerian war.

Recently his notoriety has been CIne enhanced ov nis treatment of ine Parisien Libéré workers. [see Red Libére was The horse is man's best saying. friend'.

Puerto Rican shanty town Washington would like to federaFord's statement was timed comiciac wit te inaucuration or a new covernor auer the out. going governor, the aptly named Very Hernandez Colon, had his expelled taken from the 22 November issue or Ine West Spiegel] What made the German Democratic Republic expel you?

I am now certain that the whole tour was only permitted with the intention of not allowing me back in again.

I knew that the GDR leadership - or rather part of the leadership : 1976]. - entertained this understandable and reactionary desire. But I could not know and would not believe that those responsible for this decision were in such dire straits, that they were in such a desperate and terrified state that they were forced to adopt such a measure. For some years your influence in the GDR has only been possible via the West. Did your appearance here not finally push you into the role of a Solzhenitsyn?

That comparison is false. It is so false that I do not want to explain it any further.

Solzhenitsyn criticises the Soviet Union and the attempt to construct socialism from a position which 1s generally labelled Everything that Solzhenitsyn has written is the truth and nothing but the truth; that is my own opinion, and that of my comrades in the Soviet Union who have languished in Stalinist concentration camps for twenty years.

The problem, however, is that with sad truths about the societies caing nemselves socialist you can spread dangerous lies about the only change mankind has got, namely socialism…... applitst and at sure ine happy to poet bigwigs who German paper are much Hal Co white what I only suspect.

socialism. Do opinion?

GDR in this respect.

humanist.

Europe?

again .... I do not praise the Stalinist tremble for their eaucratically and with good reason They know very well how threat everyone's nose. ened they are — they have the state security apparatus which tells them everything the people think. They worse off than I could ever imagine in my wildest nightThey know in black and There are other communists who see the negative aspects of the GDR as you see them, but explain that they are unavoidable during the transition from capitalism to you snare inis No. I'd be an enemy of humanity peoples, or offered it to them as a your songs? general social law. It only une len in the Federal Republic would have une grace to realise, to understand to note what painful and valuable up Coming later, and therefore being wiser, they could perhaps take advantage of the fact that they live in a very rich country with a large working class. For them there would be less complications, less difficult conditions than in the GDR, with less necessary or unnecessary mistakes. In this sense officialdom? my songs also have an immediate purpose in the Federal Republic.

Is it possible that what they call socialism in vour state becomes more and more of an obstacle for socialist movements in Western It is not just possible, it is already the case. What hinders the left, that way. apart from its own stupidities, is be examined, the off-butting example of a burdeformed society calling itself socialist right under West German class, the majority of the population, forms a judgement on the chances of a socialist change in their own society not from the study of some theoretical writings, but from observing reality, how reality presents itself to them and how it is presented in the mass media. They don't of course have some utopian socialist models in their minds but the very real moae of GDR socialism.

Do you not overestimate the influence of the left opposition in the GUK, which you represent will My despicable expulsion is a striking proof of the opposite. have always suspected and known that one day i would ciner be lockeo or locked out - when the political forces working towards a socialist democracy in the GDR became so strong in the GDR I self, and the ideas expressed in my songs became as much of a material force as I could wish for.

For the last ten years you have been less dangerous to the GDR more As long as the ideas that my comrades and I in the GDR stand for were weak among the population. it was possible simply to let us live on the fringe of society - in God's name, in Honecker's name. As the situation is developing the rulers can no longer. bear to let us live In 1967 Rubin Carter and John RED WEEKLY 13 January 1976 9 my part, it is simply ine law o political expediency in a society. In the past it would have been too costly to lock me up or out. Now apparently, it would be too costly not to lock me up or out.

You have been expelled. Others who sing your songs and spread them can be jailed. Can you still expect your friends in the GDR to take that risk?

Everyone has to take the risk for himself, not for Herr Biermann but for the ideas he has and wants to realise inside the GDR, and not by escaping into the West. That is a new attitude and it is a valuable attitude. It will be more fruitful politically for the GDR the more it spreads.

said, there is a difference between treedom and all omer commocie under capitalism. Freedom is the omy commoany whose price lans with rising demand.

Biermann has since outlined specifically which he thinks the revolt against ine oureaucracv snoure take, in a -interview oldished in me wes German leftist monthly Konkret Accusing the leaders of the Eas German usine orura mernoos to prevent the neve ooment or socisist dem ocracy, he concludes that 'a sort One German Demo i spry li revolution is necessary in OrDe a to out eno anis, bureaucraTe system and Carter

----- pull-quotes -----

Fraction, Satur 1 am. Al Nasona

act M. Holbrook University of Durham

Marxism and The mass media KUOMINTANG

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