* The Dictatorship of "Freedom" *
* [col. writ. 11/4/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
With shining boots, cadenced marches and loaded arms, the Pakistan Army entered the country's Supreme Court and announced martial law.
America's biggest ally in the so-called 'War on Terror' has launched another war: one on democracy and the very notion of an independent judiciary.
The problem, it seems, is that the Pakistani judiciary was growing a tad too independent for President-General Pervez Musharraf.
The fig leaf of this pretend democracy has been discarded; it is a military dictatorship plain and simple.
So much for the American rhetorical exercise of bringing democracy to the benighted Islamic world.
Nor should we be surprised!
A month ago, when Pakistani opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif tried to return home, he was met by a wall of military resistance that wouldn't allow him to enter the country that he once led as prime minister.
While en route to Pakistan, in London's Heathrow Airport, Sharif described his imminent return thus: "It's a final battle now between dictatorship and democracy." Sharif added, "Civil society is there now struggling for the restoration of the rule of law. The judiciary is today independent. I think it is about time that we put an end to this menace of dictatorship because it has inflicted so much damage to my country." ( New York Times , 9/11/07, p.A8.)
Denied his court ordered right of return, Sharif told reporters at the Pakistan airport, "Mr. Musharraf does not believe in the rule of law. He tries to bulldoze everything that comes in his way." ( NYT , 9/11/07)
Sound familiar?
And what's the White House response? The Bush Regime has announced it still supports the military junta that suspended the constitution, removed objectionable judges from the Supreme Court -- and placed the whole capital on lockdown.
Observers say Musharraf's moves comes just as the court was about to rule on his right to stand in a recent election.
As Nawaz Sharif noted a month ago, "President Bush is somehow supporting an individual who today has become a symbol of hatred in Pakistan, a man whom everybody in Pakistan wants to get rid of." Added Sharif, " I don't know why Mr. Bush is still supporting this man. He must not equate Pakistan with Mr. Musharraf. He should have this friendship with the people of Pakistan, not with an individual who is becoming more and more unpopular in the country."
As democracy dies in Pakistan, it casts a pall on the biggest supporter of this dictatorship -- the United States of America.
--(c) '07 maj
{Source: Gall, Carlotta, "Pakistan Edgy As Ex Premier Is Exiled Again," New York Times, Tues., Sept. 11, 2007, pp.A1-A8.}
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Echoes of a Freedom Struggle (A Book Review) by Mumia Abu-Jamal
* Echoes of a Freedom Struggle (A Book Review) *
* [rev.writ. 11/22/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
There has been, in the last 30 years, a kind of cottage industry of civil rights histories, works written by folks recounting the heroic, and ostensibly successful black freedom movement, most centered around the life, and martyrdom of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The arc of those tales told is that there was once a vast evil called "segregation" which was overcome by the goodness, light, and sacrifice of people like Rev. Dr. King.
Such a tale is comforting, and also popular, for it reaffirms a safe legend about America, and as such, as it is self-congratulatory, it sells.
Yet, as always, this was not the whole story, as shown by a growing number of works on the Black Liberation Movement (BLM).
Lifetime liberationist, and later scholar Muhammad Ahmad ( f/k/a Max Stanford, Jr.) has given us all a unique and revealing look at this movement, often told from the inside. In his new book, *We Will Return in the * *Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations - 1960 1975* , (Chi., IL: Kerr Publ., 2007) Ahmad tells us of the formative years, apex of development, and the fall of several radical and revolutionary groups: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) , the Black Panther Party (BPP), and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW). As he was involved in the formation of several of these groups, his accounts are rich in historical detail. For today's young activists, and especially for those who aspire to learn about the accomplishments , and failures of the Black liberation movement, this work is invaluable.
Not surprisingly, many of the movements he examines (with the notable exception of the LRBW) had their origins in the Black student movement (either high school or college). Early in his work he cites the singular insight of revolutionary activist and organizer, Grace Boggs for an idea that would echo through almost all those movements - the failure to reach young people:
The main weakness of the Black left has been its inability to focus on the youth, who are burdened by a very high unemployment rate and are targeted by the drug culture. Until the divorcement of the Black left from the youths is addressed there is likely to be no real advance in Black radicalism. {p.22}
I learned a great deal from Dr. Ahmad's work, not just on RAM, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, but also of the role of key, 'organic' intellectuals and organizers, like Queen Mother Audley Moore (1898-1997), who played a central role in educating Ahmad when he was a young RAM activist. His recollection of his initial fear of Moore rings clear and true, when we recall how popular culture taught us about the world around us:
Wanda Marshall [another RAM activist} and I had been afraid of Queen Mother, because of anti-communism red-baiting among progressive people. Though I read some Marx, Lenin, and a little of Trotsky, I still had the sting of anti-communism in me. Wanda would say, "you know communists can brainwash you." When the RAM cadre along with others would go over to Queen Mother's house, attending "Free Mae Mallory" meetings, we would be in the hall talking before breaking up. Queen Mother would interrupt the discussion, point at me, and would say, "you, darling, you're the one I want." This would scare the "living daylights" out of me, and I would promptly leave. Queen Mother would say to me before I left, "If you ever want to come by, the front window of my study is open: just raise it and come on in." {p.113}
One day, while traveling from North to West Philly, he did just that, and discovered a gold mine of articles, rare books, and other information that blew his mind. When Queen Mother found him several hours later, he was full of questions, which she patiently answered and explained. It turned out that she was a key activist in half a dozen social movements, going back decades, and she knew a great deal from both her life, and her studies.
She taught him about Black nationalism, socialism, history, and a wealth of other subjects. Because she was deeply knowledgeable and dedicated to the Black freedom struggle, she became an adviser to RAM.
Ahmad's work is a valuable addition to the growing literature on a radical movement that rarely gets play, especially positive play, in the corporate media. Published by Chicago's famed Kerr Publishing (the home of Marxist, Wobbly, and surrealist literature), Ahmad adds to our understanding of movements that made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of African Americans during the 1960s, and '70s.
It is a treasure trove that should open the eyes of many young people, who want to learn how it was to fight the world's mightiest empire, from within.
--(c) '07 maj
* [rev.writ. 11/22/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
There has been, in the last 30 years, a kind of cottage industry of civil rights histories, works written by folks recounting the heroic, and ostensibly successful black freedom movement, most centered around the life, and martyrdom of the late Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
The arc of those tales told is that there was once a vast evil called "segregation" which was overcome by the goodness, light, and sacrifice of people like Rev. Dr. King.
Such a tale is comforting, and also popular, for it reaffirms a safe legend about America, and as such, as it is self-congratulatory, it sells.
Yet, as always, this was not the whole story, as shown by a growing number of works on the Black Liberation Movement (BLM).
Lifetime liberationist, and later scholar Muhammad Ahmad ( f/k/a Max Stanford, Jr.) has given us all a unique and revealing look at this movement, often told from the inside. In his new book, *We Will Return in the * *Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations - 1960 1975* , (Chi., IL: Kerr Publ., 2007) Ahmad tells us of the formative years, apex of development, and the fall of several radical and revolutionary groups: the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) , the Black Panther Party (BPP), and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW). As he was involved in the formation of several of these groups, his accounts are rich in historical detail. For today's young activists, and especially for those who aspire to learn about the accomplishments , and failures of the Black liberation movement, this work is invaluable.
Not surprisingly, many of the movements he examines (with the notable exception of the LRBW) had their origins in the Black student movement (either high school or college). Early in his work he cites the singular insight of revolutionary activist and organizer, Grace Boggs for an idea that would echo through almost all those movements - the failure to reach young people:
The main weakness of the Black left has been its inability to focus on the youth, who are burdened by a very high unemployment rate and are targeted by the drug culture. Until the divorcement of the Black left from the youths is addressed there is likely to be no real advance in Black radicalism. {p.22}
I learned a great deal from Dr. Ahmad's work, not just on RAM, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, but also of the role of key, 'organic' intellectuals and organizers, like Queen Mother Audley Moore (1898-1997), who played a central role in educating Ahmad when he was a young RAM activist. His recollection of his initial fear of Moore rings clear and true, when we recall how popular culture taught us about the world around us:
Wanda Marshall [another RAM activist} and I had been afraid of Queen Mother, because of anti-communism red-baiting among progressive people. Though I read some Marx, Lenin, and a little of Trotsky, I still had the sting of anti-communism in me. Wanda would say, "you know communists can brainwash you." When the RAM cadre along with others would go over to Queen Mother's house, attending "Free Mae Mallory" meetings, we would be in the hall talking before breaking up. Queen Mother would interrupt the discussion, point at me, and would say, "you, darling, you're the one I want." This would scare the "living daylights" out of me, and I would promptly leave. Queen Mother would say to me before I left, "If you ever want to come by, the front window of my study is open: just raise it and come on in." {p.113}
One day, while traveling from North to West Philly, he did just that, and discovered a gold mine of articles, rare books, and other information that blew his mind. When Queen Mother found him several hours later, he was full of questions, which she patiently answered and explained. It turned out that she was a key activist in half a dozen social movements, going back decades, and she knew a great deal from both her life, and her studies.
She taught him about Black nationalism, socialism, history, and a wealth of other subjects. Because she was deeply knowledgeable and dedicated to the Black freedom struggle, she became an adviser to RAM.
Ahmad's work is a valuable addition to the growing literature on a radical movement that rarely gets play, especially positive play, in the corporate media. Published by Chicago's famed Kerr Publishing (the home of Marxist, Wobbly, and surrealist literature), Ahmad adds to our understanding of movements that made a difference in the lives of tens of thousands of African Americans during the 1960s, and '70s.
It is a treasure trove that should open the eyes of many young people, who want to learn how it was to fight the world's mightiest empire, from within.
--(c) '07 maj
White Victims of Police Brutality
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Face of Police Brutality Is Getting Lighter and Lighter
Category: News and Politics
I've noticed that the face of police brutality is getting lighter and lighter. I am seeing more and more video footage of white people being beaten, tasered and roughed up by the police. Whitey would downplay our cries against police brutality and was often shocked by police evil caught on video and played on the local and national news. Now the chicken are home and roosting like crazy. In this case, the cops turned off the camera before beating the white woman. However, I am surprised that white America's outrage is barely audible. I guess until we see the cops gunning down a white grandmother or white teenager before the lens of a camera, the outrage may then come. This is not surprising and eventually, it is going to happen. You can see the video clip at www.abcnews.com. The picture of her face says it all!
Shreveport Woman: Cops Beat Me When Camera Off
DAVID MUIR, KIRAN KHALID AND IMAEYEN IBANGAABC NewsFebruary 19, 2008
A Louisiana police officer was fired after a woman, who was pulled over on the suspicion of a DWI, ended up with two black eyes and bruises to her face while in police custody in November.
What makes Angela Garbarino's injuries and situation more curious is the fact that Shreveport police Officer Wiley Willis turned off the interrogation-room camera after he and Garbarino exchanged words.
The video shows Garbarino requesting a phone call.
"You're not going to let me call anybody?" she asks on the video. "I have a right to call somebody right now and I know that. Is this on the record?"
The footage documents Wiley attempting to read Garbarino her rights, but he runs out of patience and things get tense. He seems to forcefully put her in a chair.
"Don't touch me again. Get away from me," Garbarino says after a scream.
Then, Wiley walks over to the police camera recording the booking and turns it off. What happens next is a mystery, but when the video resumes the handcuffed Garbarino is sprawled on the floor and silently lying in a pool of her blood.
The Face of Police Brutality Is Getting Lighter and Lighter
Category: News and Politics
I've noticed that the face of police brutality is getting lighter and lighter. I am seeing more and more video footage of white people being beaten, tasered and roughed up by the police. Whitey would downplay our cries against police brutality and was often shocked by police evil caught on video and played on the local and national news. Now the chicken are home and roosting like crazy. In this case, the cops turned off the camera before beating the white woman. However, I am surprised that white America's outrage is barely audible. I guess until we see the cops gunning down a white grandmother or white teenager before the lens of a camera, the outrage may then come. This is not surprising and eventually, it is going to happen. You can see the video clip at www.abcnews.com. The picture of her face says it all!
Shreveport Woman: Cops Beat Me When Camera Off
DAVID MUIR, KIRAN KHALID AND IMAEYEN IBANGAABC NewsFebruary 19, 2008
A Louisiana police officer was fired after a woman, who was pulled over on the suspicion of a DWI, ended up with two black eyes and bruises to her face while in police custody in November.
What makes Angela Garbarino's injuries and situation more curious is the fact that Shreveport police Officer Wiley Willis turned off the interrogation-room camera after he and Garbarino exchanged words.
The video shows Garbarino requesting a phone call.
"You're not going to let me call anybody?" she asks on the video. "I have a right to call somebody right now and I know that. Is this on the record?"
The footage documents Wiley attempting to read Garbarino her rights, but he runs out of patience and things get tense. He seems to forcefully put her in a chair.
"Don't touch me again. Get away from me," Garbarino says after a scream.
Then, Wiley walks over to the police camera recording the booking and turns it off. What happens next is a mystery, but when the video resumes the handcuffed Garbarino is sprawled on the floor and silently lying in a pool of her blood.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
The Injustice of Aaron Patterson
I pulled this from Aaron Patterson's Myspace page. Go and check him out at www.myspace.com/freeaaronpatterson. We as a people will never be free until we unite. Our unity is the only strategy that we have not tried yet. Do you really believe things are going to get better for Black people if there is a President Obama? We cannot look to the people, the rich, the established, the agents of state power to protect our rights and our lives.
The case of Aaron Patterson was initially to be utilized as a venue to not only expose the blatant frame-up of Aaron Patterson, but also that of the collaboration between the federal government and the powerful Chicago “Gangster” Daley Machine. This collaboration, which has been repeated, historically provided such results as the bloody Massacre on Monroe in which 21 year old Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. and 22-year-old Defense Captain Mark Clark were left dead. In the same federal court building where then presiding Judge Julius J. Hoffman sanctioned that Chairman Bobby Seale be literally chained and gagged during court proceedings, some thirty-eight years later, this time under the tenure of Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, after being handcuffed and stomped by U.S. Marshals inside courtroom 2119, Aaron Patterson has been denied all access to the same court proceedings that are to supposedly determine his fate. When Aaron Patterson was falsely accused the first time and subsequently served 17 years on death row, immediately upon release he went to work-taking care of the business of and seeing ‘bout the people. Patterson, working in coalition with other groups impacted on every issue affecting the lives of Black and other oppressed people. Once again, falsely accused, Patterson needs the same people to come see ‘bout him . . .
Who I'd like to meet:Unanswered questions from the People about the Aaron Patterson Trial . . . -Why? has the powerful Daley administration targeted Aaron Patterson? -Why? was Aaron Patterson arrested by a collaboration of law enforcement agencies in August 2004; on the same exact day that Chicago’s infamous Lt. Jon “The Torturer” Burge was returned to Chicago to answer a court deposition in reference to his torturing of Aaron Patterson and other Black men?
-Why? would the federal government have jurisdiction in what would under any other circumstances be considered a state case? -Why? were Michael P. Cronin, Joe Gorman Jr., and other special law enforcement officials who are heavily connected to Mayor Richard M. “Gangster” Daley, conducting surveillance, and subsequently arrested Aaron Patterson? -Why? hasn’t the federal government charged “Gangster” Daley, Cook County States Attorney Dick Devine, and former police Lt. Jon “The Torturer” Burge for their roles in the torture, framing and subsequent sentencing of Aaron Patterson, Anthony Porter, Jackie and Andrew Wilson, David Bates, Stanley Howard, The Death Row 10, Madison Hobley, and countless of other African and Latino men? -Why? would Dick Devine, the current Cook County States Attorney, along with Robert Shapiro, employed by the State’s Attorney’s office when Daley was States Attorney, be present at the press conference that announced the federal charges against Aaron Patterson? -Why? shortly after Aaron Patterson ran for State Representative against Daley appointee Patricia Bailey who used a ghost address; shortly after disrupting a February 2004 press conference convened by Mayor Richard M. Daley and attended by U.S. Attorney Peter Fitzgerald, and Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Kline: did Patterson receive threatening phone calls stating that he was a marked man? -Why? would the government allege that Mr.Patterson who 1). put up $100,000 (one hundred thousand dollars) of the money he was to receive from the state for restitution for his 17 years of false incarceration to bond out another death row prisoner; 2) previously turned down several attempts by the city to settle for several million dollars: Why would Mr. Patterson have any interest or need to sell drugs? -Why? would the government go inside the state jail, get a known gang leader and admitted drug dealer Mario “Fox” Maldrona, place a wire on him, pay him $6, 500 (six thousand five hundred dollars) of your hard-earned tax dollars, and tell him to set up Aaron Patterson. -Why? is it that in the same exact Federal Court Building, 219 S. Dearborn in Chicago, Illinois, where Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale was literally chained and gagged under the watch of Federal Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, Aaron Patterson was beat, handcuffed, and kicked by U.S. Marshals. -Why? has Aaron Patterson been denied bond? -Why? would Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ban Aaron Patterson from his own court proceeding? In his absence, without his permission or knowledge, Pallmeyer dismissed his previous attorney and designated a former FBI agent, and a member of the “Gangster” Daley created Hispanic Democratic Organization, to be Patterson’s legal counsel? -Where? are all the videotape footage and documents that were seized from Aaron Patterson’s home in proof of the counter surveillance that he was engaging in to show how he was being targeted by the powerful “Gangster” Daley machine via the Federal Government? -
Why? would the court appointed defense attorney for Aaron Patterson enter a motion that Patterson’s visitation and phone calls be terminated? -Why? were there no African American males allowed on Mr. Patterson’s jury; in a court that is supposed to provide you with a jury of your own peers? -Why? have the courts allowed there to be dogs, extra ID scans, humiliating searches, and other forms of harassment to deter people from coming to see what is occurring at 219 S. Dearborn, Room 2119? -Why? hasn’t the Chicago press reported the continuous arbitrary beatings and banning from court of the supporters of Aaron Patterson? -Why? have the court designated defense attorneys, turned down evidence in favor of Patterson, and have not even interviewed the countless number of people who want to attest to how Aaron Patterson positively impacted their lives and how Patterson is a true asset to the community? -Why? when in open court, in plain view of court jurors, after a physical altercation between Aaron Patterson and Rebecca Pallmeyer’s personally appointed defense attorneys Tommy Brewer and Paul Camerena then—who are supposed to represent Aaron Patterson—could these court designated attorneys and the court in general proceed with this legal lynching of Aaron Patterson? -Why? have many of Chicago’s Black Ministers as well as a number of progressive white ones, stated in private that although they know Mr. Patterson is being targeted and framed, they fear reprisals if they speak publicly on this blatant miscarriage of justice? -Why? has not one elected official come to 219 S. Dearborn to see what is occurring in courtroom 2119? -Why? did Chicago Sun Times federal court reporter Natasha Korecki ask a U.S. Marshall “How should we report this?” after witnessing the marshals beat Aaron Patterson and a 58 year old African American woman in court? -How? has Judge Pallmeyer deemed Mr. Patterson sane enough to stand trial; but not sane enough to defend himself? -Why? have both Aaron Patterson and former Governor George Ryan who granted the pardon for Patterson and implemented the moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois, be designated to have their cases heard by the same Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer? -Why? did a combination of armed federal agents and U.S. Marshalls, with dogs and bullet-proof vests at 7:00 a.m. surround the home of the widow of slain Black Panther leader Chairman Fred Hampton, and question the family as to why they come to court for Aaron Patterson? -Since being detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Why? is Aaron Patterson being isolated and his support mail derailed? However, Patterson continuously receives hate mail similar to that sent to different organizations in the 1960s (see U.S. COINTELPRO program) in order to create dissent and break morale. In addition, Patterson’s co-defendant has received hate mail urging him to turn state against Patterson. -Why? has there been minimal if any press coverage of the attacks that Mr. Patterson has been subjected to, and the recent death of one of his two co-defendants? -Why? on July 27th did Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer designate that only prosecutors and their team, her personally appointed “defense attorneys” Tommy Brewer and Paul Camerena, the press, the U.S. Marshals, and the F.B.I. are the only one allowed in the court? No Aaron Patterson and no Aaron Patterson supporters are allowed. -Why? on Friday, July 29, 2005 was Aaron Patterson given a GUILTY verdict and set to be sentenced on December 4th, the same exact day – 36 years later – of the brutal assassination of Illinois Chapter Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. and Defense Captain Mark Clark? DON’T WAIT THIRTY YEARS TO ASK THESE QUESTION, FOR THEN IT MAY BE TOO LATE! DEMAND ANSWERS! CALL, WRITE, FAX: Mayor Richard M. Daley City Hall 121 N. LaSalle Room 507 Chicago, IL. 60602 FX: (312) 744-8045 U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald 219 S. Dearborn 5th Floor Chicago, IL. 60604 FX: (312) 353-2067 Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer 219 S. Dearborn Court Room #2119 Chicago, IL. 60604 STOP THE LEGAL LYNCHING! FREE AARON PATTERSON! Free Aaron Patterson/Chicago 3 Defense Committee P.O. Box 368255 Chicago, IL. 60636 Voice Mail (773) 250-7229 WANT TO DO MORE? Donations needed? Placards, banners “Free Aaron Patterson” flyer and poster printing’ cost for Aaron to file legal motions, etc. and commissary . . . Write: Aaron Patterson #21664424 USP Big Sandy P.O. Box 2068 Inez, KY 41224
I edited my profile at Freeweblayouts.net, check out these Myspace Layouts!
The case of Aaron Patterson was initially to be utilized as a venue to not only expose the blatant frame-up of Aaron Patterson, but also that of the collaboration between the federal government and the powerful Chicago “Gangster” Daley Machine. This collaboration, which has been repeated, historically provided such results as the bloody Massacre on Monroe in which 21 year old Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. and 22-year-old Defense Captain Mark Clark were left dead. In the same federal court building where then presiding Judge Julius J. Hoffman sanctioned that Chairman Bobby Seale be literally chained and gagged during court proceedings, some thirty-eight years later, this time under the tenure of Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, after being handcuffed and stomped by U.S. Marshals inside courtroom 2119, Aaron Patterson has been denied all access to the same court proceedings that are to supposedly determine his fate. When Aaron Patterson was falsely accused the first time and subsequently served 17 years on death row, immediately upon release he went to work-taking care of the business of and seeing ‘bout the people. Patterson, working in coalition with other groups impacted on every issue affecting the lives of Black and other oppressed people. Once again, falsely accused, Patterson needs the same people to come see ‘bout him . . .
Who I'd like to meet:Unanswered questions from the People about the Aaron Patterson Trial . . . -Why? has the powerful Daley administration targeted Aaron Patterson? -Why? was Aaron Patterson arrested by a collaboration of law enforcement agencies in August 2004; on the same exact day that Chicago’s infamous Lt. Jon “The Torturer” Burge was returned to Chicago to answer a court deposition in reference to his torturing of Aaron Patterson and other Black men?
-Why? would the federal government have jurisdiction in what would under any other circumstances be considered a state case? -Why? were Michael P. Cronin, Joe Gorman Jr., and other special law enforcement officials who are heavily connected to Mayor Richard M. “Gangster” Daley, conducting surveillance, and subsequently arrested Aaron Patterson? -Why? hasn’t the federal government charged “Gangster” Daley, Cook County States Attorney Dick Devine, and former police Lt. Jon “The Torturer” Burge for their roles in the torture, framing and subsequent sentencing of Aaron Patterson, Anthony Porter, Jackie and Andrew Wilson, David Bates, Stanley Howard, The Death Row 10, Madison Hobley, and countless of other African and Latino men? -Why? would Dick Devine, the current Cook County States Attorney, along with Robert Shapiro, employed by the State’s Attorney’s office when Daley was States Attorney, be present at the press conference that announced the federal charges against Aaron Patterson? -Why? shortly after Aaron Patterson ran for State Representative against Daley appointee Patricia Bailey who used a ghost address; shortly after disrupting a February 2004 press conference convened by Mayor Richard M. Daley and attended by U.S. Attorney Peter Fitzgerald, and Chicago Police Superintendent Phil Kline: did Patterson receive threatening phone calls stating that he was a marked man? -Why? would the government allege that Mr.Patterson who 1). put up $100,000 (one hundred thousand dollars) of the money he was to receive from the state for restitution for his 17 years of false incarceration to bond out another death row prisoner; 2) previously turned down several attempts by the city to settle for several million dollars: Why would Mr. Patterson have any interest or need to sell drugs? -Why? would the government go inside the state jail, get a known gang leader and admitted drug dealer Mario “Fox” Maldrona, place a wire on him, pay him $6, 500 (six thousand five hundred dollars) of your hard-earned tax dollars, and tell him to set up Aaron Patterson. -Why? is it that in the same exact Federal Court Building, 219 S. Dearborn in Chicago, Illinois, where Black Panther Party Chairman Bobby Seale was literally chained and gagged under the watch of Federal Court Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, Aaron Patterson was beat, handcuffed, and kicked by U.S. Marshals. -Why? has Aaron Patterson been denied bond? -Why? would Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer ban Aaron Patterson from his own court proceeding? In his absence, without his permission or knowledge, Pallmeyer dismissed his previous attorney and designated a former FBI agent, and a member of the “Gangster” Daley created Hispanic Democratic Organization, to be Patterson’s legal counsel? -Where? are all the videotape footage and documents that were seized from Aaron Patterson’s home in proof of the counter surveillance that he was engaging in to show how he was being targeted by the powerful “Gangster” Daley machine via the Federal Government? -
Why? would the court appointed defense attorney for Aaron Patterson enter a motion that Patterson’s visitation and phone calls be terminated? -Why? were there no African American males allowed on Mr. Patterson’s jury; in a court that is supposed to provide you with a jury of your own peers? -Why? have the courts allowed there to be dogs, extra ID scans, humiliating searches, and other forms of harassment to deter people from coming to see what is occurring at 219 S. Dearborn, Room 2119? -Why? hasn’t the Chicago press reported the continuous arbitrary beatings and banning from court of the supporters of Aaron Patterson? -Why? have the court designated defense attorneys, turned down evidence in favor of Patterson, and have not even interviewed the countless number of people who want to attest to how Aaron Patterson positively impacted their lives and how Patterson is a true asset to the community? -Why? when in open court, in plain view of court jurors, after a physical altercation between Aaron Patterson and Rebecca Pallmeyer’s personally appointed defense attorneys Tommy Brewer and Paul Camerena then—who are supposed to represent Aaron Patterson—could these court designated attorneys and the court in general proceed with this legal lynching of Aaron Patterson? -Why? have many of Chicago’s Black Ministers as well as a number of progressive white ones, stated in private that although they know Mr. Patterson is being targeted and framed, they fear reprisals if they speak publicly on this blatant miscarriage of justice? -Why? has not one elected official come to 219 S. Dearborn to see what is occurring in courtroom 2119? -Why? did Chicago Sun Times federal court reporter Natasha Korecki ask a U.S. Marshall “How should we report this?” after witnessing the marshals beat Aaron Patterson and a 58 year old African American woman in court? -How? has Judge Pallmeyer deemed Mr. Patterson sane enough to stand trial; but not sane enough to defend himself? -Why? have both Aaron Patterson and former Governor George Ryan who granted the pardon for Patterson and implemented the moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois, be designated to have their cases heard by the same Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer? -Why? did a combination of armed federal agents and U.S. Marshalls, with dogs and bullet-proof vests at 7:00 a.m. surround the home of the widow of slain Black Panther leader Chairman Fred Hampton, and question the family as to why they come to court for Aaron Patterson? -Since being detained at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Why? is Aaron Patterson being isolated and his support mail derailed? However, Patterson continuously receives hate mail similar to that sent to different organizations in the 1960s (see U.S. COINTELPRO program) in order to create dissent and break morale. In addition, Patterson’s co-defendant has received hate mail urging him to turn state against Patterson. -Why? has there been minimal if any press coverage of the attacks that Mr. Patterson has been subjected to, and the recent death of one of his two co-defendants? -Why? on July 27th did Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer designate that only prosecutors and their team, her personally appointed “defense attorneys” Tommy Brewer and Paul Camerena, the press, the U.S. Marshals, and the F.B.I. are the only one allowed in the court? No Aaron Patterson and no Aaron Patterson supporters are allowed. -Why? on Friday, July 29, 2005 was Aaron Patterson given a GUILTY verdict and set to be sentenced on December 4th, the same exact day – 36 years later – of the brutal assassination of Illinois Chapter Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. and Defense Captain Mark Clark? DON’T WAIT THIRTY YEARS TO ASK THESE QUESTION, FOR THEN IT MAY BE TOO LATE! DEMAND ANSWERS! CALL, WRITE, FAX: Mayor Richard M. Daley City Hall 121 N. LaSalle Room 507 Chicago, IL. 60602 FX: (312) 744-8045 U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald 219 S. Dearborn 5th Floor Chicago, IL. 60604 FX: (312) 353-2067 Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer 219 S. Dearborn Court Room #2119 Chicago, IL. 60604 STOP THE LEGAL LYNCHING! FREE AARON PATTERSON! Free Aaron Patterson/Chicago 3 Defense Committee P.O. Box 368255 Chicago, IL. 60636 Voice Mail (773) 250-7229 WANT TO DO MORE? Donations needed? Placards, banners “Free Aaron Patterson” flyer and poster printing’ cost for Aaron to file legal motions, etc. and commissary . . . Write: Aaron Patterson #21664424 USP Big Sandy P.O. Box 2068 Inez, KY 41224
I edited my profile at Freeweblayouts.net, check out these Myspace Layouts!
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Beat Camp by Mumia Abu-Jamal
* Beat Camp *
* [col. writ. 10/12/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
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A 14- year old boy is assaulted, restrained, his breathing restricted, and ammonia capsules are plunged into his nostrils, as he struggles for breath.
Within moments, he falls limp, comatose.
Soon, Martin Lee Anderson is dead.
Martin met his death at a Florida boot camp, where a phalanx of so-called drill instructors beat the youth, held their hands over his mouth, and forced ammonia caps up his nose.
A predominantly white jury quickly acquitted all 8 staff members (including a nurse) from the boot-camp of all charges.
The state workers would've faced more punishment if they killed a dog.
Instead, he was a black boy. The jury barely had enough time for a good lunch.
Across the country, families are learning that boot camps, and other juvenile facilities, are little more than hell-holes for children.
Kids are beaten, brutalized, starved and caged by the state; paid by the state to administer legalized child abuse.
Just days ago, seven workers at a West Texas lockup (including so-called 'quality assurance monitors') were fired by the Texas Youth Commission.
The facility, known as the Coke County Juvenile Center, was the site of what state officials called "deplorable conditions", such as dirty sheets, feces-smeared cells, and cases of juveniles being placed in solitary confinement for five weeks (see New York Times , "National Briefing" (10/5/07), p.A19).
It's clear from the Martin Lee Anderson case, and from voluminous reports of violence and torture at boot camps nationwide, that America is at war with its youth.
Schools are but training camps for prisons.
Schools, especially in Black and Latina neighborhoods, are increasingly training grounds for failure.
Also, with the popular pollution of culture, there is the spread of the worst, most anti-life, and misogynist ideas imaginable; usually through music.
Cut off from the academic life of the nation, this cultural pollution seeks to justify various forms of street-hustling as the only way of survival.
Again, we see evidence of the war against youth. It's almost as if the generation of elders are envious of the very quality of youth, and are utilizing state power to destroy them.
De industrialization, state militarization, the failure of education, and cultural pollution are stages in this pervasive war.
The re incarceration of Mychal Bell, the recently released member of the Jena 6, is a part of this ongoing war.
Children aren't children; they are merely young combatants, who should be terrorized, /just like their elders./
Unfortunately, I predicted the outcome in Florida to other guys here on Death Row.
I'm sorry that I was right.
--(c) '07 maj
* [col. writ. 10/12/07] (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
* *
A 14- year old boy is assaulted, restrained, his breathing restricted, and ammonia capsules are plunged into his nostrils, as he struggles for breath.
Within moments, he falls limp, comatose.
Soon, Martin Lee Anderson is dead.
Martin met his death at a Florida boot camp, where a phalanx of so-called drill instructors beat the youth, held their hands over his mouth, and forced ammonia caps up his nose.
A predominantly white jury quickly acquitted all 8 staff members (including a nurse) from the boot-camp of all charges.
The state workers would've faced more punishment if they killed a dog.
Instead, he was a black boy. The jury barely had enough time for a good lunch.
Across the country, families are learning that boot camps, and other juvenile facilities, are little more than hell-holes for children.
Kids are beaten, brutalized, starved and caged by the state; paid by the state to administer legalized child abuse.
Just days ago, seven workers at a West Texas lockup (including so-called 'quality assurance monitors') were fired by the Texas Youth Commission.
The facility, known as the Coke County Juvenile Center, was the site of what state officials called "deplorable conditions", such as dirty sheets, feces-smeared cells, and cases of juveniles being placed in solitary confinement for five weeks (see New York Times , "National Briefing" (10/5/07), p.A19).
It's clear from the Martin Lee Anderson case, and from voluminous reports of violence and torture at boot camps nationwide, that America is at war with its youth.
Schools are but training camps for prisons.
Schools, especially in Black and Latina neighborhoods, are increasingly training grounds for failure.
Also, with the popular pollution of culture, there is the spread of the worst, most anti-life, and misogynist ideas imaginable; usually through music.
Cut off from the academic life of the nation, this cultural pollution seeks to justify various forms of street-hustling as the only way of survival.
Again, we see evidence of the war against youth. It's almost as if the generation of elders are envious of the very quality of youth, and are utilizing state power to destroy them.
De industrialization, state militarization, the failure of education, and cultural pollution are stages in this pervasive war.
The re incarceration of Mychal Bell, the recently released member of the Jena 6, is a part of this ongoing war.
Children aren't children; they are merely young combatants, who should be terrorized, /just like their elders./
Unfortunately, I predicted the outcome in Florida to other guys here on Death Row.
I'm sorry that I was right.
--(c) '07 maj
Wars Without End -- Again! by Mumia Abu-Jamal
* !Wars Without End -- Again! *
* {speech writ. 10/14/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
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Ona Move! LLJA!
Thanx for your invitation for me to speak to you today!
For millions of people (I among them) the Nov. 2006 elections marked a major turning point in U.S. politics -- or so we thought.
The elections had one, single motivation: to end the Iraq war.
Well, the elections changed majorities in Congress. But did it change U.S. policy?
Nope.
Before the numbers of votes could all be counted, you heard the backtracking: "we must be cautious"; "if we leave now, there'd be chaos", etc., etc.
Now, Democrats say openly that no significant troop withdrawal can come before 2012- /5 more years!/
And then, don't you think you'll hear an additional 5 or 10 years?
War isn't a Democratic or Republican project - it is a /corporate/ one, where both corporate parties play the game laid down by their sponsors and contributors.
Here we see the convergence between neo liberals and neo conservatives, who join in their service to corporate power. Their 'fight' (if it can be called that) is over who can represent their bosses best (and, by this, I /don't /mean voters!)
But, people, working through popular movements,/ can/ change how politicians think, speak, and even act.
If you put your trust in the same politicians, you'll achieve the same result - disappointment, frustration and yes -- betrayal.
What kind of democracy is it if you vote for peace, only to get more war?
But the answer isn't less protests -- it's /more /protests
To finally bring peace, the People must bring it!
Thank you!
Ona Move!
* {speech writ. 10/14/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
* *
* *
Ona Move! LLJA!
Thanx for your invitation for me to speak to you today!
For millions of people (I among them) the Nov. 2006 elections marked a major turning point in U.S. politics -- or so we thought.
The elections had one, single motivation: to end the Iraq war.
Well, the elections changed majorities in Congress. But did it change U.S. policy?
Nope.
Before the numbers of votes could all be counted, you heard the backtracking: "we must be cautious"; "if we leave now, there'd be chaos", etc., etc.
Now, Democrats say openly that no significant troop withdrawal can come before 2012- /5 more years!/
And then, don't you think you'll hear an additional 5 or 10 years?
War isn't a Democratic or Republican project - it is a /corporate/ one, where both corporate parties play the game laid down by their sponsors and contributors.
Here we see the convergence between neo liberals and neo conservatives, who join in their service to corporate power. Their 'fight' (if it can be called that) is over who can represent their bosses best (and, by this, I /don't /mean voters!)
But, people, working through popular movements,/ can/ change how politicians think, speak, and even act.
If you put your trust in the same politicians, you'll achieve the same result - disappointment, frustration and yes -- betrayal.
What kind of democracy is it if you vote for peace, only to get more war?
But the answer isn't less protests -- it's /more /protests
To finally bring peace, the People must bring it!
Thank you!
Ona Move!
Teaching False History (And Its Consequences) by Mumia Abu-Jamal
* Teaching False History (And Its Consequences) *
* {col. writ. 12/8/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
Ask any school kid in the U.S. to name the first English settlement in what we now call America, and he (or she) will probably announce, "Jamestown!". Some will add, "Virginia!". And the truly nerdy would answer, "in 1607!"
Such children of the "No Child Left Behind" generation will beam in their beautiful, childlike brilliance, for no doubt they would recall that just such answers as these earned passing grades on their history tests.
And we know that tests are right, /right?/
Wrong.
The first English settlement was established over a generation before Jamestown --in a place called Roanoke Island, in 1584, and 1587, off the coast of what is today called North Carolina.
Why are school kids taught about Jamestown, but rarely Roanoke Island?
Because Jamestown survived, and Roanoke vanished.
Dozens of novels and at least a 1/2 dozen movies have been made of Roanoke Island, but the people were lost to witchcraft, to native spirits, or, in the best telling of the tale, they 'went Native' and joined local tribes.
The real reason is a bit more grisly.
History lecturer and writer, William Loren Katz, in his remarkable book, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 2005), [orig. 1986] tells us that an eerily American ailment afflicted them. Katz writes:
What the pioneers did was self-destruct over their own love of possession. When a silver cup allegedly disappeared, the Roanoke men roared out of their tiny enclave, muskets and torches in hand, to destroy their Indian neighbors' village and crops. This blazing display of European possession -mania cut the colony off from the one local source of help. When the Spanish Armada severed the settlements' connection to British ports, it withered and died. [p.21]
In essence, telling kids the truth about Roanoke might destroy their sense of nascent nationalism, and perhaps scare them. Instead, it's Jamestown - or perhaps Plymouth Rock, the site of the beginning of that glorious theocracy of 1620.
If Roanoke's story were better known, perhaps lessons would be learned that stealing from others, and raiding others isn't a good, nor glorious thing; perhaps it would be an historical lesson about the perils of greed, or in Katz's words, "possession-mania."
of all ages, know little about the real contours of the making of America, which owed more to sheer genocide than anything else.
In this same book, Katz details how England and Spain wreaked havoc upon the indigenous people of the Americas:
In the century following Columbus' landing, millions of Native Americans died from a combination of European diseases, harsh treatment, and murder. Africans took their places in the mines and fields of the New World. The 80 million Native Americans alive in 1492 became only 10 million left alive a century later. But the 10,000 Africans working in the Americas in 1527 had by the end of the century become 90,000 people. These figures are even more striking within local areas. In 1519 when the Spaniards arrived, Mexico had a population of 25 million Indians. By the end of the century only a million were still alive. The invader calculated that more profit would be made if laborers were worked to death and replaced. In their plans pain and suffering did not count, and no cruelty was considered excessive. [p.23]
Perhaps if kids were taught this version of history, the mad dash of imperialism that marked much of the 20th century would not have occurred.
--(c) '07 maj
* {col. writ. 12/8/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal *
Ask any school kid in the U.S. to name the first English settlement in what we now call America, and he (or she) will probably announce, "Jamestown!". Some will add, "Virginia!". And the truly nerdy would answer, "in 1607!"
Such children of the "No Child Left Behind" generation will beam in their beautiful, childlike brilliance, for no doubt they would recall that just such answers as these earned passing grades on their history tests.
And we know that tests are right, /right?/
Wrong.
The first English settlement was established over a generation before Jamestown --in a place called Roanoke Island, in 1584, and 1587, off the coast of what is today called North Carolina.
Why are school kids taught about Jamestown, but rarely Roanoke Island?
Because Jamestown survived, and Roanoke vanished.
Dozens of novels and at least a 1/2 dozen movies have been made of Roanoke Island, but the people were lost to witchcraft, to native spirits, or, in the best telling of the tale, they 'went Native' and joined local tribes.
The real reason is a bit more grisly.
History lecturer and writer, William Loren Katz, in his remarkable book, Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage (New York: Simon Pulse, 2005), [orig. 1986] tells us that an eerily American ailment afflicted them. Katz writes:
What the pioneers did was self-destruct over their own love of possession. When a silver cup allegedly disappeared, the Roanoke men roared out of their tiny enclave, muskets and torches in hand, to destroy their Indian neighbors' village and crops. This blazing display of European possession -mania cut the colony off from the one local source of help. When the Spanish Armada severed the settlements' connection to British ports, it withered and died. [p.21]
In essence, telling kids the truth about Roanoke might destroy their sense of nascent nationalism, and perhaps scare them. Instead, it's Jamestown - or perhaps Plymouth Rock, the site of the beginning of that glorious theocracy of 1620.
If Roanoke's story were better known, perhaps lessons would be learned that stealing from others, and raiding others isn't a good, nor glorious thing; perhaps it would be an historical lesson about the perils of greed, or in Katz's words, "possession-mania."
of all ages, know little about the real contours of the making of America, which owed more to sheer genocide than anything else.
In this same book, Katz details how England and Spain wreaked havoc upon the indigenous people of the Americas:
In the century following Columbus' landing, millions of Native Americans died from a combination of European diseases, harsh treatment, and murder. Africans took their places in the mines and fields of the New World. The 80 million Native Americans alive in 1492 became only 10 million left alive a century later. But the 10,000 Africans working in the Americas in 1527 had by the end of the century become 90,000 people. These figures are even more striking within local areas. In 1519 when the Spaniards arrived, Mexico had a population of 25 million Indians. By the end of the century only a million were still alive. The invader calculated that more profit would be made if laborers were worked to death and replaced. In their plans pain and suffering did not count, and no cruelty was considered excessive. [p.23]
Perhaps if kids were taught this version of history, the mad dash of imperialism that marked much of the 20th century would not have occurred.
--(c) '07 maj
The CIA Destroys Tapes...(What's New?)
Just this past weekend (Sunday Feb 3), I saw a scrolling headline on ESPN that U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter wants to meet with NFL Commissioner Roger Gooddell about the destruction of the "Spygate" tapes, in which the New England Patriots were caught cheating by video taping the signals of the New York Jets. I find this quite disturbing when the CIA, in it's commission of war crimes, destroyed evidence of torturing "alleged terror detainees." Al Qaida does not exist, it's an organization that was made up by the Bush Idiocracy after September 11, 2001. Until the torture victims faces turn white, there will be no outrage by the American people. But it's just a matter of time before that starts happening.
* The CIA Destroys Tapes...(What's New?) *
* {col. writ. 12/9/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal **
As news agencies and politicians express shock and awe over the destruction by the CIA of videotapes recording the interrogations of suspected numbers of Al Qaeda, I can't help but be surprised - by the surprise.
We like to think (or pretend to think) that the CIA is merely an intelligence (or information gathering ) agency, which dutifully reports back to the government on events transpiring around the globe.
Instead, they are more like the Praetorian Guard of Rome, who did anything and everything they were told to do.
And I /do/ mean everything.
As noted by investigative journalist John Kelly, in his article, "Crimes and Silence: The CIA's Criminal Acts and the Media's Silence" [published in Kristina Borjesson's (ed.) Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of the Free Press. {Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 2002} pp.311-322] the agency doesn't engage in occasional lapses of judgment, but commits thousands of crimes a year all over the earth. Kelly cited as his source the CIA itself, as it reported to the House Intelligence Committee.
A committee staff study on the CIA report found, " The CS (Clandestine Service of the CIA), is the only part of the IC (Intelligence Community), indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world. "
The staff study went on to estimate that these actions occur "several hundred times every day," or several hundred thousand times a year (p.311)
What was the government's legislative response when such news saw the light in House Intelligence Committee documents?
The Senate Intelligence Committee proposed a mass immunization bill for CIA employees, that would make the commission of crime legal. Kelly wrote, "This is the Nazi rationale, plain and simple." On Dec. 27, 2000, then president Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, as the Intelligence Authorization Act.
Under the law, the CIA could violate international law and treaties, as long as they were following orders.
In the past, according to intrepid journalists, researchers and former CIA officials themselves, the agency has toppled governments, staged assassinations, supported terrorists who unleashed waves of violence against their people (they called them 'contras'), bombed people, undermined national economies and democracies, and a host of other crimes - because they were told to do so.
In this context, compare that they destroyed tapes - even tapes of torture! Why is this objectionable, yet all else that they do isn't even worthy of reporting?
That's because the major corporate media doesn't seriously question what the government does. We saw this when the government sold the People a bill of goods to start the Iraq war. At a time when the American people really needed their press, they were compliant, quiescent, and servile.
The US media hasn't yet come to terms with what the CIA either does, or actually is. They are Praetorian Guards, obeying the Emperor, whose word is law.
Why should we be surprised?
Weren't they 'chust followink Orders?'
--(c) '07 maj
* The CIA Destroys Tapes...(What's New?) *
* {col. writ. 12/9/07} (c) '07 Mumia Abu-Jamal **
As news agencies and politicians express shock and awe over the destruction by the CIA of videotapes recording the interrogations of suspected numbers of Al Qaeda, I can't help but be surprised - by the surprise.
We like to think (or pretend to think) that the CIA is merely an intelligence (or information gathering ) agency, which dutifully reports back to the government on events transpiring around the globe.
Instead, they are more like the Praetorian Guard of Rome, who did anything and everything they were told to do.
And I /do/ mean everything.
As noted by investigative journalist John Kelly, in his article, "Crimes and Silence: The CIA's Criminal Acts and the Media's Silence" [published in Kristina Borjesson's (ed.) Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of the Free Press. {Amherst, N. Y.: Prometheus Books, 2002} pp.311-322] the agency doesn't engage in occasional lapses of judgment, but commits thousands of crimes a year all over the earth. Kelly cited as his source the CIA itself, as it reported to the House Intelligence Committee.
A committee staff study on the CIA report found, " The CS (Clandestine Service of the CIA), is the only part of the IC (Intelligence Community), indeed of the government, where hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world. "
The staff study went on to estimate that these actions occur "several hundred times every day," or several hundred thousand times a year (p.311)
What was the government's legislative response when such news saw the light in House Intelligence Committee documents?
The Senate Intelligence Committee proposed a mass immunization bill for CIA employees, that would make the commission of crime legal. Kelly wrote, "This is the Nazi rationale, plain and simple." On Dec. 27, 2000, then president Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, as the Intelligence Authorization Act.
Under the law, the CIA could violate international law and treaties, as long as they were following orders.
In the past, according to intrepid journalists, researchers and former CIA officials themselves, the agency has toppled governments, staged assassinations, supported terrorists who unleashed waves of violence against their people (they called them 'contras'), bombed people, undermined national economies and democracies, and a host of other crimes - because they were told to do so.
In this context, compare that they destroyed tapes - even tapes of torture! Why is this objectionable, yet all else that they do isn't even worthy of reporting?
That's because the major corporate media doesn't seriously question what the government does. We saw this when the government sold the People a bill of goods to start the Iraq war. At a time when the American people really needed their press, they were compliant, quiescent, and servile.
The US media hasn't yet come to terms with what the CIA either does, or actually is. They are Praetorian Guards, obeying the Emperor, whose word is law.
Why should we be surprised?
Weren't they 'chust followink Orders?'
--(c) '07 maj
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
South Carolina & "Project Niggerization"
South Carolina & "Project Niggerization"
[col. writ. 1/27/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
The polls have closed and cooled off in South Caroline, and Illinois Senator Barack Obama has won the laurels of victory, sending his two primary challengers into a bitter defeat.
But, time may teach us the lesson that this is a Pyrrhic victory, one which costs more than what was won.
That's because the Clintons cleverly utilized and unleashed a series of attacks meant to make him stumble, and worse, to inject into his campaign something that he has been trying to studiously avoid since Day 1 of his campaign.
That issue, of course, is Race.
For by using these tactics, Clinton essentially ceded the state of South Carolina, trying to make this 'one Black candidate', rather than the Democratic candidate.
As in chess, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a pawn if it enables one to win the game.
And Bill Clinton is, above all, a master politician. He has beaten odds many times in his presidential career, and if he can successfully besmirch Obama, then he closes the door to him elsewhere.
That's why the ex president made remarks about Obama's candidacy as little more than " a fairy tale", why Sen. Hillary Clinton (De,/ N. Y.) launched into the 'slumlord" reference, and why Clintonite (and New York Attorney-General) Andrew Cuomo disparagingly spoke of Obama as "shucking and jiving", code words all designed to ghettoize and indeed, niggerize Obama.
Again, time will tell how successful this tactic has been, but that it was launched by Clinton, a man called (in jest) 'America's first Black president,' is a measure of how far things have fallen.
Modern day China's founding father, Mao Tse-Tung once observed, "Politics is war without bloodshed."
Politics, in other words, is a dirty business. It brings out the worst in us, for often it is fueled by naked ambition, and the lust to win the 'game.'
The South Carolina primary contest has brought out, not just the rhetoric of war, but the tactics as well. And, as the saying goes, 'all's fair in love and war.'
Politics is war, in a sense, for resources, for influence, and more importantly, for power.
That said, (or, as the Clintons might put it, it ain't over, 'til it's over.
If the Clintons tactics prevail in the 'long game' (that is, in Super Tuesday (Feb. 5th), and primaries later down the line), then South Carolina will become a distant, unpleasant memory. It will become the stuff of political legend, similar in tone and tenor to when the first Bush campaign unleashed their Willie Horton ads (which might be subtitled: 'fear of the black rapist') which subliminally savaged his 'liberal' opponent, played on white fears, and led to victory. This tactic did not work in South Carolina, but what about other states?
"Slumlord", "fairy tale", "shuckin' & jivin'"... Boy, talk about the politics of personal destruction!
--(c) '08 maj
[col. writ. 1/27/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
The polls have closed and cooled off in South Caroline, and Illinois Senator Barack Obama has won the laurels of victory, sending his two primary challengers into a bitter defeat.
But, time may teach us the lesson that this is a Pyrrhic victory, one which costs more than what was won.
That's because the Clintons cleverly utilized and unleashed a series of attacks meant to make him stumble, and worse, to inject into his campaign something that he has been trying to studiously avoid since Day 1 of his campaign.
That issue, of course, is Race.
For by using these tactics, Clinton essentially ceded the state of South Carolina, trying to make this 'one Black candidate', rather than the Democratic candidate.
As in chess, it is sometimes necessary to sacrifice a pawn if it enables one to win the game.
And Bill Clinton is, above all, a master politician. He has beaten odds many times in his presidential career, and if he can successfully besmirch Obama, then he closes the door to him elsewhere.
That's why the ex president made remarks about Obama's candidacy as little more than " a fairy tale", why Sen. Hillary Clinton (De,/ N. Y.) launched into the 'slumlord" reference, and why Clintonite (and New York Attorney-General) Andrew Cuomo disparagingly spoke of Obama as "shucking and jiving", code words all designed to ghettoize and indeed, niggerize Obama.
Again, time will tell how successful this tactic has been, but that it was launched by Clinton, a man called (in jest) 'America's first Black president,' is a measure of how far things have fallen.
Modern day China's founding father, Mao Tse-Tung once observed, "Politics is war without bloodshed."
Politics, in other words, is a dirty business. It brings out the worst in us, for often it is fueled by naked ambition, and the lust to win the 'game.'
The South Carolina primary contest has brought out, not just the rhetoric of war, but the tactics as well. And, as the saying goes, 'all's fair in love and war.'
Politics is war, in a sense, for resources, for influence, and more importantly, for power.
That said, (or, as the Clintons might put it, it ain't over, 'til it's over.
If the Clintons tactics prevail in the 'long game' (that is, in Super Tuesday (Feb. 5th), and primaries later down the line), then South Carolina will become a distant, unpleasant memory. It will become the stuff of political legend, similar in tone and tenor to when the first Bush campaign unleashed their Willie Horton ads (which might be subtitled: 'fear of the black rapist') which subliminally savaged his 'liberal' opponent, played on white fears, and led to victory. This tactic did not work in South Carolina, but what about other states?
"Slumlord", "fairy tale", "shuckin' & jivin'"... Boy, talk about the politics of personal destruction!
--(c) '08 maj
The Radical Alternative
The Radical Alternative
[col. writ. 1/28/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
In this age of political discontent, it seems clear that many Americans who plan to vote are voting for "change".
Just what kind of change is an open question. Will that change bring the first woman to the Oval Office? Or will it bring a Black man (or ,to some, a 1/2 Black man?)
Whatever, it is interesting that the nation's punditocracy, the talking heads who act like verbal sheepdogs of the American fleece, have almost totally ignored one candidate who can, in her single self, embody, not just the illusion, but the reality of "change", experience, a demonstrated stand against the Iraq War, and a life of living female.
I speak, of course, of Cynthia McKinney, the bold, outspoken former congresswoman from Georgia, who spoke out against the Iraq War when it wasn't popular.
She is running on the Green Party, according to published reports, but the media has virtually ignored this fact.
Her record of speaking out against the U.S. war machine, the military-industrial complex, and other issues of concern is head and shoulders above any of the other candidates running for office, on either party.
But, without the paid imprimatur of the corporate powers that be, it can be little more than an insurgent campaign, one kept safely to the margins of American politics, off the stage, and off the screen.
This is our loss, for the major candidates (or those supported by the corporate status quo) are, by their very nature, designed to split the votes of two significant blocs in the Democratic Party, which can only leave the loser feeling embittered.
Why not a real Black woman as a candidate?
Wouldn't that be a change?
And although all politics is symbolic, McKinney really is a woman of substance.
She has been politically courageous in many of her stands, which has made her persona non grata among both Republicans and Democrats.
That's because she's not a corporate candidate. She's proven in her career as a member of Congress that she won't be bought off. Of who else running today can the same be said?
People say they want 'change', but do they really?
Many people are terrified of change. They want the safety of the routine, the comfort of predictability.
That's because many people fear losing their already tenuous grip on their lifestyle.
But with millions of people facing foreclosure, and with the rest of the economy on the brink of free-fall, how much safety is apparent?
That's only an economic concern, what about foreign policy?
Foreign policy, for at least the last decade, has been handled (or should I say, mishandled?) by an array of incompetents who have succeeded only in making bad situations far worse.
Do people want change, or are they merely claiming that they do?
Cynthia McKinney would certainly represent that, in a way far more substantial and meaningful than anybody else out there.
Politicians should be far more than paid agents of the wealthy. They should be far more than millionaires working on behalf of other millionaires
Why are we not surprised that the U.S. Senate is a millionaires club?
How could such people have an appreciation of working people? What do they really know about the poor?
Wouldn't Cynthia McKinney be a significant change?
--(c) '08 maj
[col. writ. 1/28/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
In this age of political discontent, it seems clear that many Americans who plan to vote are voting for "change".
Just what kind of change is an open question. Will that change bring the first woman to the Oval Office? Or will it bring a Black man (or ,to some, a 1/2 Black man?)
Whatever, it is interesting that the nation's punditocracy, the talking heads who act like verbal sheepdogs of the American fleece, have almost totally ignored one candidate who can, in her single self, embody, not just the illusion, but the reality of "change", experience, a demonstrated stand against the Iraq War, and a life of living female.
I speak, of course, of Cynthia McKinney, the bold, outspoken former congresswoman from Georgia, who spoke out against the Iraq War when it wasn't popular.
She is running on the Green Party, according to published reports, but the media has virtually ignored this fact.
Her record of speaking out against the U.S. war machine, the military-industrial complex, and other issues of concern is head and shoulders above any of the other candidates running for office, on either party.
But, without the paid imprimatur of the corporate powers that be, it can be little more than an insurgent campaign, one kept safely to the margins of American politics, off the stage, and off the screen.
This is our loss, for the major candidates (or those supported by the corporate status quo) are, by their very nature, designed to split the votes of two significant blocs in the Democratic Party, which can only leave the loser feeling embittered.
Why not a real Black woman as a candidate?
Wouldn't that be a change?
And although all politics is symbolic, McKinney really is a woman of substance.
She has been politically courageous in many of her stands, which has made her persona non grata among both Republicans and Democrats.
That's because she's not a corporate candidate. She's proven in her career as a member of Congress that she won't be bought off. Of who else running today can the same be said?
People say they want 'change', but do they really?
Many people are terrified of change. They want the safety of the routine, the comfort of predictability.
That's because many people fear losing their already tenuous grip on their lifestyle.
But with millions of people facing foreclosure, and with the rest of the economy on the brink of free-fall, how much safety is apparent?
That's only an economic concern, what about foreign policy?
Foreign policy, for at least the last decade, has been handled (or should I say, mishandled?) by an array of incompetents who have succeeded only in making bad situations far worse.
Do people want change, or are they merely claiming that they do?
Cynthia McKinney would certainly represent that, in a way far more substantial and meaningful than anybody else out there.
Politicians should be far more than paid agents of the wealthy. They should be far more than millionaires working on behalf of other millionaires
Why are we not surprised that the U.S. Senate is a millionaires club?
How could such people have an appreciation of working people? What do they really know about the poor?
Wouldn't Cynthia McKinney be a significant change?
--(c) '08 maj
Sis. Kiilu Nyasha adds on to Mumia's essay: "With a 'Brutha' Like This":
Sis. Kiilu Nyasha adds on to Mumia's essay: "With a 'Brutha' Like This":
1/31/08 My 2 cents, KN
Bearing in mind that Black folks have always suffered the worst of America's ills, let’s not forget that in 1991, Billary was campaigning on promises of health care reform and welfare reform.
As Karim Hirji noted in his paper, Confused Consent , “The promise to reform the delivery of health care in the United States was a key factor which clinched Mr. Clinton’s victory in 1992...[W]hat Clinton could not do by legislation or fiat, major corporations achieved through financial power. Many nonprofit institutions were acquired by for-profit firms. Mega-mergers in the industry led to more hospitals and physicians coming under the control of fewer corporations.” The “stridently pro-corporate posture of the Clinton administration...led to direct to consumer (DTC) advertisement of prescription drugs, a practice in which the U.S. stood alone....by 1998, that expenditure rose to more than a billion dollars...That was in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising in medical journals, and a veritable horde of sales representatives, one per 15 doctors, that went directly after the physicians.” The end result was a dramatic increase in health care premiums and uninsured Americans, rising from 38 million to the current 47 million with no health coverage. HMOs are making profits in the billions while denying life-saving treatments to their clients. Patients are being deprived of adequate care due to policies that value profits over the good health of their "customers," who are being released from hospitals quicker and sicker every year. Some are just dumped into the streets. I know this from experience as well as observation.
"The 1st Black President" turned a blind eye to the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans during the Hutu/Tutsi genocide. Then had the audacity to go to Rwanda and say he was "sorry." He's sorry all right.
Clinton also gave us the the Crime Bill of 1994 and the ‘96 Anti-Terrorist and Effective Death Penalty Act that raised the bar for death penalty appeals, added some 60 crimes to be punishable by execution, allowed immigrants to be jailed and deported for reasons of "national security" on the basis of secret evidence (paving the way for the Patriot Act); unleashed 100,000 new policemen on urban streets while gutting habeas corpus, provided for “three strikes and you’re out” laws and sentencing provisions requiring prisoners to serve 85% of their terms; awarded grants to states for new prison construction providing up to 75% of total construction costs.
As a result, 3,300 new prisons were built in the 1990s at a cost of $27 billion, with another 268 in the pipeline. The annual cost of running America's prisons now tops $60 billion from just $9 billion in 1980.
A report released in 2002 by the Justice Policy Institute titled "Cellblocks or Classrooms" found that in the past two decades the population of black male inmates grew three times as fast as the number of black men enrolled in higher education. One study reported that one in eight young Black men are imprisoned compared to one in 63 whites. The newest statistics note that Blacks are arrested at more than six times the rate for whites. For drug offenses, Blacks are arrested at 10 times that of whites, while drug usage among both groups is equal.
In signing the Welfare Reform Bill of 1996 and the subsequent 1997 budget compromise, Clinton broke the back of the New Deal. The government commitment to protect the poor against the worst ravages of the market was ended. The top 20 percent of income earners in the United States would gain after-tax relief, while the bottom 20 percent of Americans would suffer deepening poverty. And there would be no safety net to cushion the fall. Needless to say there’s been a dramatic rise in the poverty rate and homelessness, not to mention workers with three jobs.
The systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in Florida 2000 and elsewhere across the country further validates the following statement:
"...the two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the Democratic parties." ( W.E.B. DuBois)
1/31/08 My 2 cents, KN
Bearing in mind that Black folks have always suffered the worst of America's ills, let’s not forget that in 1991, Billary was campaigning on promises of health care reform and welfare reform.
As Karim Hirji noted in his paper, Confused Consent , “The promise to reform the delivery of health care in the United States was a key factor which clinched Mr. Clinton’s victory in 1992...[W]hat Clinton could not do by legislation or fiat, major corporations achieved through financial power. Many nonprofit institutions were acquired by for-profit firms. Mega-mergers in the industry led to more hospitals and physicians coming under the control of fewer corporations.” The “stridently pro-corporate posture of the Clinton administration...led to direct to consumer (DTC) advertisement of prescription drugs, a practice in which the U.S. stood alone....by 1998, that expenditure rose to more than a billion dollars...That was in addition to hundreds of millions of dollars spent on advertising in medical journals, and a veritable horde of sales representatives, one per 15 doctors, that went directly after the physicians.” The end result was a dramatic increase in health care premiums and uninsured Americans, rising from 38 million to the current 47 million with no health coverage. HMOs are making profits in the billions while denying life-saving treatments to their clients. Patients are being deprived of adequate care due to policies that value profits over the good health of their "customers," who are being released from hospitals quicker and sicker every year. Some are just dumped into the streets. I know this from experience as well as observation.
"The 1st Black President" turned a blind eye to the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans during the Hutu/Tutsi genocide. Then had the audacity to go to Rwanda and say he was "sorry." He's sorry all right.
Clinton also gave us the the Crime Bill of 1994 and the ‘96 Anti-Terrorist and Effective Death Penalty Act that raised the bar for death penalty appeals, added some 60 crimes to be punishable by execution, allowed immigrants to be jailed and deported for reasons of "national security" on the basis of secret evidence (paving the way for the Patriot Act); unleashed 100,000 new policemen on urban streets while gutting habeas corpus, provided for “three strikes and you’re out” laws and sentencing provisions requiring prisoners to serve 85% of their terms; awarded grants to states for new prison construction providing up to 75% of total construction costs.
As a result, 3,300 new prisons were built in the 1990s at a cost of $27 billion, with another 268 in the pipeline. The annual cost of running America's prisons now tops $60 billion from just $9 billion in 1980.
A report released in 2002 by the Justice Policy Institute titled "Cellblocks or Classrooms" found that in the past two decades the population of black male inmates grew three times as fast as the number of black men enrolled in higher education. One study reported that one in eight young Black men are imprisoned compared to one in 63 whites. The newest statistics note that Blacks are arrested at more than six times the rate for whites. For drug offenses, Blacks are arrested at 10 times that of whites, while drug usage among both groups is equal.
In signing the Welfare Reform Bill of 1996 and the subsequent 1997 budget compromise, Clinton broke the back of the New Deal. The government commitment to protect the poor against the worst ravages of the market was ended. The top 20 percent of income earners in the United States would gain after-tax relief, while the bottom 20 percent of Americans would suffer deepening poverty. And there would be no safety net to cushion the fall. Needless to say there’s been a dramatic rise in the poverty rate and homelessness, not to mention workers with three jobs.
The systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in Florida 2000 and elsewhere across the country further validates the following statement:
"...the two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the Democratic parties." ( W.E.B. DuBois)
Prayin' With the Devil
Prayin' With the Devil
[col. writ. 1/18/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
In Houston, Texas, those who were the staunchest supporters of the now embattled D.A. there, Harris County's Chuck Rosenthal, are now calling for his resignation.
Among his best, most passionate supporters were Black ministers, many of whom even considered him to be a close friend.
What changed?
The release of hundreds of e-mails from the D.A. for starters; for they reveal a man who loved a racist joke, especially those aimed at Blacks. The e-mails also uncovered sexual improprieties with his co-workers.
It should be more than enough that Rosenthal, and his District Attorney's Office, led the nation in death sentences and executions. But, this being Texas, this didn't get the Black preachers sufficiently riled up.
What stung them were the racist images circulated on his e-mail, like the photo of a prone Black man, sprawled on the sidewalk, near large pieces of watermelon, a cup of soda, and an empty bucket of chicken. The photo is titled: "Fatal Overdose."
Robert Jefferson, pastor of the Cullin Missionary Baptist Church (and member of Houston Ministers Against Crime), responded to news of the e-mails by observing, "We prayed with him; we have been working with him - I feel jilted." The pastor added, "He was smiling with us in one place and stabbing us in our backs in another."
(Well --welcome to politics, Pastor!)
At a recent news conference, the pastor was joined by a number of other Black ministers who expressed their view that Rosenthal should step down - an unlikely outcome, given the relative impunity of the prosecutorial system down there (and elsewhere).
Pastor Jefferson said, "It disturbed me so much, I didn't know what to do." He added, "How deep does this racism go? How many black kids have been locked up while they laugh at us?"
But the truth of the matter is, this isn't a Harris County problem, nor purely a problem of Texas. It's an American problem that is as deep south of the Mason-Dixon Line, as it is north of it. Indeed, there are few big-city D.A.'s who have either come to power, or held on to it, without the eager support of Black ministers -- and their congregations. Is there any wonder why prosecutors bum-rush the pulpit every election season?
D.A.'s hungry for Black notches on their belts; power -drunk judges blind to the racism of the systems they oversee -- that ain't a Texas thing.
They just might be a little more juiced about it, is all.
But, as Black activist (then known as) Rap Brown might have said, "It's as American as cherry pie."
--(c) '08 maj
{ Source : Casimir, Leslie, "Black leaders urge Rosenthal to step down," Houston Chronicle , Jan. 12, 2008, pp.A1 - A14.}
[col. writ. 1/18/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
In Houston, Texas, those who were the staunchest supporters of the now embattled D.A. there, Harris County's Chuck Rosenthal, are now calling for his resignation.
Among his best, most passionate supporters were Black ministers, many of whom even considered him to be a close friend.
What changed?
The release of hundreds of e-mails from the D.A. for starters; for they reveal a man who loved a racist joke, especially those aimed at Blacks. The e-mails also uncovered sexual improprieties with his co-workers.
It should be more than enough that Rosenthal, and his District Attorney's Office, led the nation in death sentences and executions. But, this being Texas, this didn't get the Black preachers sufficiently riled up.
What stung them were the racist images circulated on his e-mail, like the photo of a prone Black man, sprawled on the sidewalk, near large pieces of watermelon, a cup of soda, and an empty bucket of chicken. The photo is titled: "Fatal Overdose."
Robert Jefferson, pastor of the Cullin Missionary Baptist Church (and member of Houston Ministers Against Crime), responded to news of the e-mails by observing, "We prayed with him; we have been working with him - I feel jilted." The pastor added, "He was smiling with us in one place and stabbing us in our backs in another."
(Well --welcome to politics, Pastor!)
At a recent news conference, the pastor was joined by a number of other Black ministers who expressed their view that Rosenthal should step down - an unlikely outcome, given the relative impunity of the prosecutorial system down there (and elsewhere).
Pastor Jefferson said, "It disturbed me so much, I didn't know what to do." He added, "How deep does this racism go? How many black kids have been locked up while they laugh at us?"
But the truth of the matter is, this isn't a Harris County problem, nor purely a problem of Texas. It's an American problem that is as deep south of the Mason-Dixon Line, as it is north of it. Indeed, there are few big-city D.A.'s who have either come to power, or held on to it, without the eager support of Black ministers -- and their congregations. Is there any wonder why prosecutors bum-rush the pulpit every election season?
D.A.'s hungry for Black notches on their belts; power -drunk judges blind to the racism of the systems they oversee -- that ain't a Texas thing.
They just might be a little more juiced about it, is all.
But, as Black activist (then known as) Rap Brown might have said, "It's as American as cherry pie."
--(c) '08 maj
{ Source : Casimir, Leslie, "Black leaders urge Rosenthal to step down," Houston Chronicle , Jan. 12, 2008, pp.A1 - A14.}
The Corporate Elections
The Corporate Elections
[col. writ. 1/22/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Do you ever wonder why certain candidates get mega-coverage and others get none?
That's because the corporate media concentrate more on a candidate's finances, than their positions. And they concentrate on the money race precisely because that money, for the most part, lands in the hands of the media industry.
Because media companies profit so handsomely from such donations, they can hardly be considered fair, detached and objective arbiters of either debates or other campaign coverage.
The money race begets the horse race; the horse race influences the media, and the media influences millions of voters; which starts the cycle anew.
I need not go into the phenomenon of 'pack journalism', for you've all seen it recently, where every media outlet gets it wrong in their collective predictions of how voters will vote.
And because of media power, those candidates who can't garner tens of millions of dollars before elections, are either ignored, or treated as colorful figures of occasional sidebar interest, the subject of smiles and faint shame.
Thus, neither Rep, Dennis Kucinich (D.- Oh.), Dr. Ron Paul (R. - Tex.), nor Mike Gravel can be taken seriously, even though all have been repeatedly elected to Congress, by healthy margins.
Because many of their messages conflicted with the market dictated "conventional wisdom" they have been virtually ignored, and most have been barred from televised political debates. In a nation of 300 million, any candidacy which doesn't get coverage over the airwaves isn't really a candidacy.
We've been told they're not serious contenders, because they've not raised serious money. Even though Dr. Paul beat Rudolph Giuliani handily in several states (coming in second in Nevada!), he's not serious, yet Giuliani is.
Money rules the roost!
It's been said that money is the mother's milk of politics.
It keeps the status quo static, for it winnows out those with views that do not cut the corporate mustard.
Why would a corporation donate (or bundle) tens of thousands of dollars -- or even millions -- with no hope of a return, such as favorable legislation or federal contracts?
No matter what any candidate may say before the elections, the odds are damned good that they won't change the rules afterwards. For to do so makes it easier for others to challenge them, and weakens their chances for reelection.
It ain't gonna happen.
In a nation where money rules almost everything, why would it no longer rule the political process?
--(c) '08 maj
[col. writ. 1/22/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Do you ever wonder why certain candidates get mega-coverage and others get none?
That's because the corporate media concentrate more on a candidate's finances, than their positions. And they concentrate on the money race precisely because that money, for the most part, lands in the hands of the media industry.
Because media companies profit so handsomely from such donations, they can hardly be considered fair, detached and objective arbiters of either debates or other campaign coverage.
The money race begets the horse race; the horse race influences the media, and the media influences millions of voters; which starts the cycle anew.
I need not go into the phenomenon of 'pack journalism', for you've all seen it recently, where every media outlet gets it wrong in their collective predictions of how voters will vote.
And because of media power, those candidates who can't garner tens of millions of dollars before elections, are either ignored, or treated as colorful figures of occasional sidebar interest, the subject of smiles and faint shame.
Thus, neither Rep, Dennis Kucinich (D.- Oh.), Dr. Ron Paul (R. - Tex.), nor Mike Gravel can be taken seriously, even though all have been repeatedly elected to Congress, by healthy margins.
Because many of their messages conflicted with the market dictated "conventional wisdom" they have been virtually ignored, and most have been barred from televised political debates. In a nation of 300 million, any candidacy which doesn't get coverage over the airwaves isn't really a candidacy.
We've been told they're not serious contenders, because they've not raised serious money. Even though Dr. Paul beat Rudolph Giuliani handily in several states (coming in second in Nevada!), he's not serious, yet Giuliani is.
Money rules the roost!
It's been said that money is the mother's milk of politics.
It keeps the status quo static, for it winnows out those with views that do not cut the corporate mustard.
Why would a corporation donate (or bundle) tens of thousands of dollars -- or even millions -- with no hope of a return, such as favorable legislation or federal contracts?
No matter what any candidate may say before the elections, the odds are damned good that they won't change the rules afterwards. For to do so makes it easier for others to challenge them, and weakens their chances for reelection.
It ain't gonna happen.
In a nation where money rules almost everything, why would it no longer rule the political process?
--(c) '08 maj
With A 'Brutha' Like This.... by Mumia Abu-Jamal
With A 'Brutha' Like This....
[col. writ. 1/24/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Whenever I've heard the phrase 'first Black president' with regards to former U.S. President William J. Clinton, it's always disturbed me.
It's reminded me of many things, but among them is the aphorism launched by Black comedian, Paul Mooney, who quips: "Everybody wanna be a ni----, but don't nobody wanna be a ni----."
What is disturbing is how nonchalant some Black folks are about the honorific, as if it is truly something intrinsically 'Black' about the behavior of Clinton. When the brilliant novelist, Toni Morrison, was credited with making the claim, it was clear that this celebrated fiction writer was utilizing metaphor to speak about how Blackness is perceived in the American mind, but not to ceremoniously award Mr. Clinton de facto admission into the tribe of the Sons of Africa.
This sense of nonchalance seems to suggest that being 'black' is synonymous with dillydallying with women (not one's wife), or playing a musical instrument that has been closely identified with Black music (jazz).
If one examines this claim a little further, it is far less promising than at first glance.
For, while Black elites have rushed to embrace him as 'one of their own', this embrace has been decidedly one-sided.
His lifetime may have coincided with the rise and emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, but his own rise has been, not as a part of that movement, but indeed, as an exploiter of it.
He has never missed an opportunity to use his public power to discipline a Black person, or, as they used to say in the deep South, 'put them in their place.'
His well reported conflicts with leading figures of that movement, like Rev. Jesse Jackson, for example, has been to cut him down to size. Like most politicians, he speaks loftily of the late Rev. Martin L. King, but if King were alive, ha would be finding ways to ignore his counsel at every turn.
For King would've been among his most severe critics, not a yes-man.
In his presidency, he consistently sacrificed Black supporters and interests, whenever they didn't seem subservient enough. He jettisoned law professor, Lani Guinier, when she was in consideration of the #2 spot at the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division. When his former Surgeon General, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, was criticized by conservatives, he unceremoniously dumped her. He has betrayed virtually every constituency that supported him to bring into being his brand of neo liberalism, a kind of conservatism with a smile.
He interrupted his first presidential campaign to return to Little Rock to execute a brain damaged Black man on the Arkansas Death Row.
His vow to 'end welfare as we know it' was a sop to whites, who saw poor Blacks as getting something undeserved, and his own Cabinet secretary, Richard Rubin, has said as much! That he would countenance so much human suffering of the poor, so that the worst feelings of whites could be sated, is proof that the claim of being the 'first black president' was little more than a cruel, ironic joke.
With 'bruthas' like these, who needs enemies?
--(c) -08 maj
[col. writ. 1/24/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
Whenever I've heard the phrase 'first Black president' with regards to former U.S. President William J. Clinton, it's always disturbed me.
It's reminded me of many things, but among them is the aphorism launched by Black comedian, Paul Mooney, who quips: "Everybody wanna be a ni----, but don't nobody wanna be a ni----."
What is disturbing is how nonchalant some Black folks are about the honorific, as if it is truly something intrinsically 'Black' about the behavior of Clinton. When the brilliant novelist, Toni Morrison, was credited with making the claim, it was clear that this celebrated fiction writer was utilizing metaphor to speak about how Blackness is perceived in the American mind, but not to ceremoniously award Mr. Clinton de facto admission into the tribe of the Sons of Africa.
This sense of nonchalance seems to suggest that being 'black' is synonymous with dillydallying with women (not one's wife), or playing a musical instrument that has been closely identified with Black music (jazz).
If one examines this claim a little further, it is far less promising than at first glance.
For, while Black elites have rushed to embrace him as 'one of their own', this embrace has been decidedly one-sided.
His lifetime may have coincided with the rise and emergence of the Civil Rights Movement, but his own rise has been, not as a part of that movement, but indeed, as an exploiter of it.
He has never missed an opportunity to use his public power to discipline a Black person, or, as they used to say in the deep South, 'put them in their place.'
His well reported conflicts with leading figures of that movement, like Rev. Jesse Jackson, for example, has been to cut him down to size. Like most politicians, he speaks loftily of the late Rev. Martin L. King, but if King were alive, ha would be finding ways to ignore his counsel at every turn.
For King would've been among his most severe critics, not a yes-man.
In his presidency, he consistently sacrificed Black supporters and interests, whenever they didn't seem subservient enough. He jettisoned law professor, Lani Guinier, when she was in consideration of the #2 spot at the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division. When his former Surgeon General, Dr. Jocelyn Elders, was criticized by conservatives, he unceremoniously dumped her. He has betrayed virtually every constituency that supported him to bring into being his brand of neo liberalism, a kind of conservatism with a smile.
He interrupted his first presidential campaign to return to Little Rock to execute a brain damaged Black man on the Arkansas Death Row.
His vow to 'end welfare as we know it' was a sop to whites, who saw poor Blacks as getting something undeserved, and his own Cabinet secretary, Richard Rubin, has said as much! That he would countenance so much human suffering of the poor, so that the worst feelings of whites could be sated, is proof that the claim of being the 'first black president' was little more than a cruel, ironic joke.
With 'bruthas' like these, who needs enemies?
--(c) -08 maj
It Ain't The Voting That Counts--It's the Counting!
It Ain't The Voting That Counts--It's the Counting!
[col. writ. 1/17/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As the 'election' of the ruling party of Kenya fades into history's rear-view mirror, the state unleashes its own brand of legalized violence against opponents of the regime, by shooting protesters, not just with the occasional tear gas canister, but with live bullets. Making protest against a deeply flawed, rigged presidential election, a capital crime.
So much for democracy.
For generations now, the elites of the West, that is, those alleged human rights and democracy proponents from Europe, the UN, and the US, have given their blessings to the barest caricatures of democracy, by applauding the outward forms, such as multi party elections, voting, and all the processes of external observance.
Yet, because they and their constituencies have traditionally benefited from the savage inequalities of these post colonial arrangements, they have not cared to look too closely, for they cared little to see what lay beneath.
These quasi-democracies are often jury-rigged set pieces, the height of scene-setting, to allow the monied elites among various societies to shake hands, smile for an occasional photo op, and go their merry ways, while the looting, exploitation, and rape of the poor continues unabated.
Thus, we see Kenya, lauded as the jewel of East Africa, as long as its rich agricultural and mineral wealth flows out of Kenya to its traditional consumers.
As in the United States, democracy has become a cheapened coin in the realm of politics.
In Pakistan, Kenya, and in other parts of the world that we used to denote as the 'Third World', democracy is seen as something to fight for. It is so serious that people take to the streets to be beaten, shot and killed by the uniformed defenders of dictatorial 'order'.
Here in the States, stolen elections are papered over, sent to robed sycophants who proclaim that 'the king can do no wrong', while democracy dies in self-imposed silence.
Should it surprise us that, among the first countries to offer congratulations for a successfully rigged election in Kenya was the U.S.? After all, it takes one to know one.
While that initial kudo was later withdrawn, it signaled to the ruling elites that the Americans wouldn't be much of a problem with a stolen election (as long as it's our guys who do the stealing!).
Meanwhile, if present counts are to be trusted, at least 1,000 Kenyans have perished in this latest convulsion of conflict, with at least 100 shot to death by police.
Here, as in Rawalpindi, as in Karachi, as in Birmingham, people are literally bleeding for democracy -- an on which side does the U.S. stand -- the people, or the dictators? The people, or the election-stealers?
Democracy is more, much more, than a phrase to be thrown out to justify a war for profit, or an imperial project. It is far more than the presence of a ballot box. It is either democracy, or it ain't.
In this historical hour, we see time's echo of the now - past Cold War, where the U.S. invariably chose the most blood-drenched dictators it could find, to support in struggles against their own people.
Generations have passed in that interim, and only the labels have changed.
Generals, strongmen, princes and bullies remain America's best 'allies', no matter what they do to their own people.
--(c) '08 maj
[col. writ. 1/17/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As the 'election' of the ruling party of Kenya fades into history's rear-view mirror, the state unleashes its own brand of legalized violence against opponents of the regime, by shooting protesters, not just with the occasional tear gas canister, but with live bullets. Making protest against a deeply flawed, rigged presidential election, a capital crime.
So much for democracy.
For generations now, the elites of the West, that is, those alleged human rights and democracy proponents from Europe, the UN, and the US, have given their blessings to the barest caricatures of democracy, by applauding the outward forms, such as multi party elections, voting, and all the processes of external observance.
Yet, because they and their constituencies have traditionally benefited from the savage inequalities of these post colonial arrangements, they have not cared to look too closely, for they cared little to see what lay beneath.
These quasi-democracies are often jury-rigged set pieces, the height of scene-setting, to allow the monied elites among various societies to shake hands, smile for an occasional photo op, and go their merry ways, while the looting, exploitation, and rape of the poor continues unabated.
Thus, we see Kenya, lauded as the jewel of East Africa, as long as its rich agricultural and mineral wealth flows out of Kenya to its traditional consumers.
As in the United States, democracy has become a cheapened coin in the realm of politics.
In Pakistan, Kenya, and in other parts of the world that we used to denote as the 'Third World', democracy is seen as something to fight for. It is so serious that people take to the streets to be beaten, shot and killed by the uniformed defenders of dictatorial 'order'.
Here in the States, stolen elections are papered over, sent to robed sycophants who proclaim that 'the king can do no wrong', while democracy dies in self-imposed silence.
Should it surprise us that, among the first countries to offer congratulations for a successfully rigged election in Kenya was the U.S.? After all, it takes one to know one.
While that initial kudo was later withdrawn, it signaled to the ruling elites that the Americans wouldn't be much of a problem with a stolen election (as long as it's our guys who do the stealing!).
Meanwhile, if present counts are to be trusted, at least 1,000 Kenyans have perished in this latest convulsion of conflict, with at least 100 shot to death by police.
Here, as in Rawalpindi, as in Karachi, as in Birmingham, people are literally bleeding for democracy -- an on which side does the U.S. stand -- the people, or the dictators? The people, or the election-stealers?
Democracy is more, much more, than a phrase to be thrown out to justify a war for profit, or an imperial project. It is far more than the presence of a ballot box. It is either democracy, or it ain't.
In this historical hour, we see time's echo of the now - past Cold War, where the U.S. invariably chose the most blood-drenched dictators it could find, to support in struggles against their own people.
Generations have passed in that interim, and only the labels have changed.
Generals, strongmen, princes and bullies remain America's best 'allies', no matter what they do to their own people.
--(c) '08 maj
Check It Out -- New Mumia Abu-Jamal Film
In Prison My Whole Life is a look at the life of imprisoned political journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Click on the link below to view the one minute or two minute trailer. Please add your supportive comments to the blog. And circulate this email as widely as possible.
About the film: Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested the day William Francome was born. William is now 25 years old. Mumia is still on death row. William Francome goes on a journey to find out about the man who has been in prison William’s whole life. The film is showing at the Sundance Film Festival.
Mumia’s case is currently before the US Court of Appeals and a decision on whether or not he will receive a new and fair trial is due any day.
http://www.myspace.com/inprisonmywholelife
For info about journalists in support of Mumia and an excellent article that was featured in the British Guardian, please go to www.globalwomenstrike.net Global Women's Strike philly@crossroadswomen.net 215-848-1120
========================
These are two new articles about IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE, which is featured at this week's Sundance Film Festival
Another take on Mumia
Sundance screens a film by one obsessed with Abu-Jamal.
By Sam Adams
For The Inquirer
PARK CITY, Utah - When the lights come up after a film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the stage usually fills with directors and producers, actors and crew, all basking in the audience's applause. But after Sunday's screening of In Prison My Whole Life, director Marc Evans apologized for the absence of the movie's "star": Mumia Abu-Jamal, on Pennsylvania's death row for the 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal is unquestionably the subject of the documentary, but as far as on-screen time goes, he plays a supporting role to 26-year-old William Francome, the "my" of the movie's title.
Francome said he was born on Dec. 9, 1981, the day that Abu-Jamal was arrested for Faulkner's murder. In Prison uses that coincidence to underscore the length of time Abu-Jamal has spent behind bars, most of it on death row - a circumstance the movie condemns as inhumane and unjust.
Francome appears as a cross between a crusading journalist, tracking down evidence to contradict the prosecution's case, and a wide-eyed student avidly pursuing the history of American racism.
The result is largely a recap of arguments for Abu-Jamal's retrial or exoneration and a broad overview of the history of American dissent.
Held together by Francome's narration, the movie oscillates between arguing the injustice of Jamal's case and charting Francome's education in the ugly side of American history.
Through interviews with the likes of Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky, In Prison attempts to place Abu-Jamal's case within a larger social context. The 1985 MOVE bombing and the 1987 videotape in which a Philadelphia prosecutor instructs young colleagues on how to keep African Americans off juries are part of the film's background. So are the FBI's Cointelpro program and Hurricane Katrina.
"I think it's part of a narrative," Francome says. "We could have made a film that was just purely about the case and looked into every single detail, but we've got 90 minutes to tell a story, and at the same time we're trying to make an entertaining film. I think we're making valid connections between certain issues."
Although the Sundance screening was not met with the rapturous whoops and standing ovations that greet the festival's instant hits, it was clear that at least some in the audience had no difficulty connecting Jamal's case and larger issues of racism, the death penalty and government corruption.
Sundance's audiences are well-known for their liberal bent, and its documentary programming tends to favor issue-oriented films. During the post-screening Q and A, one questioner asked if Abu-Jamal's bid for a new trial, currently awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be rejected because "the consequences might be too huge to allow that to happen."
The British-born Francome, son of a British father and an American mother, describes his mother as a product of the '60s counterculture, and says she reminded him that each birthday he celebrated meant Abu-Jamal had spent another year in jail. But it wasn't until he was a teenager and heard Rage Against the Machine take up Abu-Jamal's cause that Francome connected the dots. "It was like, 'Hey, that's that Mumia guy mum's always talking about,' " he recalls in the film.
In his 20s, Francome began writing treatments for a film about the case. Through his girlfriend's godmother, he met Livia Firth, wife of actor Colin Firth, and Colin offered to produce the film and introduced him to Evans, an established feature and documentary director.
Firth also got in touch with Amnesty International's Piers Bannister, who had written a 35-page report condemning Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial as failing to meet "minimum international standards." Bannister, who appeared at the Sundance screening, shared his research with the filmmakers, and Amnesty vetted the film after it was completed.
"When we finished, we came back and said, 'This is the film. Tell us if we did a good job,' " Firth says. "They tore the film to pieces. They analyzed every single word." In addition to fact-checking the film, Amnesty suggested changes in the wording of Francome's narration to better represent its stance on the case and related issues such as the death penalty. The result, Firth proudly says, is the first film endorsed by Amnesty's secretariat. In Prison opens with Amnesty's logo, which is followed immediately by the logo for Myspace, which helped finance the film. "Those two badges kind of reflect who the film is for," Evans says.
The question of the film's potential audience, Evans says, greatly influenced its form. Rather than evaluate every claim pro and con, In Prison is pitched at an introductory level.
"The bit of filmmaking I dislike the most is you have to say, 'Here's the film, now who's the audience?' " Evans says. "Is it for a very well-versed insider? Perhaps this isn't the film for them at the end of the day. I don't think the audience the film really appeals to are people who are necessarily politically clued in and have read a lot about their civil rights history. It's a series of inquiries and conversations by a 25-year-old, starting with a teenage obsession."
Crisscrossing the country, Francome pounds the streets looking for the truth of what happened on the night he was born. He talks to the authors of several books critical of Abu-Jamal's trial. He meets with photographer Pedro Polakoff, whose photos of the crime scene seem to show a police officer handling Faulkner's and Abu-Jamal's guns with his bare hands. And he interviews William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother, who says that Faulkner addressed him with a racial slur and began beating him, unprovoked, in the moments before the shooting. Cook does not, however, discuss what happened next, and says he will do so only in a court of law.
Conspicuous by their absence are Faulkner's supporters, or any evidence that might weaken the movie's claims, like the fact that Cook was convicted of assaulting Faulkner. The sole argument in favor of Abu-Jamal's conviction is made by prosecutor Joseph McGill, who appears in excerpts from the 1996 documentary Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt? (When citing the film, In Prison omits the question mark.) Francome says attempts were made to contact McGill, representatives from the Fraternal Order of Police, and, through the FOP, Faulkner's widow, Maureen, and no responses were received. But Evans also says that they pursued advocates for Abu-Jamal's incarceration and execution only "up to a point."
"We're making a film that starts from a particular point of view, with a particular interest," Evans says. "To me, the proper way to proceed is to invite people to the table, and respond when people come to the table. Not to go, 'The film I'm making is so responsible for the truth.' It's not a journalistic film in that sense."
The film contains a handful of factual errors which, while evidently below the radar of Amnesty's fact-checkers, could damage its credibility with Philadelphia audiences. City Council president Anna Verna is referred to as "Ann," and the neighborhood of Powelton Village is referred to as "a suburb of Philadelphia."
Evans knows that Abu-Jamal's case raises heated emotions in the city, and that the battle between "Free Mumia" and "Fry Mumia" factions leads many to tune out the case altogether. That, he says, only heightened his curiosity.
"For us, coming in from the outside, the fact that people are so fed up with hearing about it, the fact that it gets people so riled up, that in itself is interesting. The fact that this guy can raise so much hatred or so much empathy . . . I find that absolutely fascinating."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/livia-giuggioli/obama-in-context_b_83275.htmlObama in Context, Huffington Post
by Livia Giuggioli
My husband Colin and I have ongoing discussions on who we would support for this presidential campaign. Obama, Clinton, Edwards -- I tend to go for Obama but yesterday, while having lunch with friends here in Sundance, an African American studio executive said that should Obama be elected, he fears there would be several attempts to assassinate him simply because he is black. This sent an icy shock through me.
Walking through the crisp white snow at the Sundance Film Festival to a screening of our documentary In Prison My Whole Life, I started to wonder whether the optimism that we had felt in making the film had been misplaced. The movie centers around the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, a vociferous and radical black journalist who, after 25 years in prison, has become America's most famous Death Row inmate. Despite the injustices surrounding Mumia's case and some of the dark historical events that the film portrays, it is doggedly optimistic in approach. Mumia's continued articulate commentary as a radio journalist, broadcasting from his cell by means of typewriter and telephone, had inspired us. His voice is heroic and connects to a tradition of dissenting black voices which have always found a place in America. With our films' Sundance screening coinciding with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this surviving continuity seemed even more poignantly alive.
Producing In Prison my Whole life is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. People have asked me many times what shocked me most while making the film and my answer is always the same: how much I fell in love with America all over again. There is a general perception in Europe that "America" is "Bush". So when we left for the States to film and found ourselves listening to people like Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Russell Simmons, Howard Zinn, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def (I could go on for hours, we met the most amazing people!) it reminded me what a wonderful country America is and what a powerful counter culture still exists.
This is the country which fought many of the biggest civil rights battles, and our film endeavors to ask what is the nature of dissent in America today.
I recently read an interview with the fantastic writer David Grossman who said, "One of the great questions that people living in this age must relentlessly ask themselves is: in what state, at which moment, do I become part of the faceless crowd, "the masses"?"
If you think about it -- this question IS the most fundamental one and I guess this is why I/we found ourselves doing this movie. Among the questions "In Prison My Whole Life" raises are: Is racism in America still endemic? What did we learn from Katrina? What is the state of the American judicial system? Was it unbiased in Philadelphia in 1982 when Mumia was on trial? Was it unbiased in the election of 2000? We must never stop asking questions. Documentary filmmakers have the opportunity to engage in the great debate, to resurrect -- if one can use that word - the urge to dissent, to ask questions again, to fight for change and to fight the blindness and ignorance of racism and injustice that still exists not only in this country but all over the world.
Click on the link below to view the one minute or two minute trailer. Please add your supportive comments to the blog. And circulate this email as widely as possible.
About the film: Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested the day William Francome was born. William is now 25 years old. Mumia is still on death row. William Francome goes on a journey to find out about the man who has been in prison William’s whole life. The film is showing at the Sundance Film Festival.
Mumia’s case is currently before the US Court of Appeals and a decision on whether or not he will receive a new and fair trial is due any day.
http://www.myspace.com/inprisonmywholelife
For info about journalists in support of Mumia and an excellent article that was featured in the British Guardian, please go to www.globalwomenstrike.net Global Women's Strike philly@crossroadswomen.net 215-848-1120
========================
These are two new articles about IN PRISON MY WHOLE LIFE, which is featured at this week's Sundance Film Festival
Another take on Mumia
Sundance screens a film by one obsessed with Abu-Jamal.
By Sam Adams
For The Inquirer
PARK CITY, Utah - When the lights come up after a film's premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, the stage usually fills with directors and producers, actors and crew, all basking in the audience's applause. But after Sunday's screening of In Prison My Whole Life, director Marc Evans apologized for the absence of the movie's "star": Mumia Abu-Jamal, on Pennsylvania's death row for the 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Abu-Jamal is unquestionably the subject of the documentary, but as far as on-screen time goes, he plays a supporting role to 26-year-old William Francome, the "my" of the movie's title.
Francome said he was born on Dec. 9, 1981, the day that Abu-Jamal was arrested for Faulkner's murder. In Prison uses that coincidence to underscore the length of time Abu-Jamal has spent behind bars, most of it on death row - a circumstance the movie condemns as inhumane and unjust.
Francome appears as a cross between a crusading journalist, tracking down evidence to contradict the prosecution's case, and a wide-eyed student avidly pursuing the history of American racism.
The result is largely a recap of arguments for Abu-Jamal's retrial or exoneration and a broad overview of the history of American dissent.
Held together by Francome's narration, the movie oscillates between arguing the injustice of Jamal's case and charting Francome's education in the ugly side of American history.
Through interviews with the likes of Angela Davis and Noam Chomsky, In Prison attempts to place Abu-Jamal's case within a larger social context. The 1985 MOVE bombing and the 1987 videotape in which a Philadelphia prosecutor instructs young colleagues on how to keep African Americans off juries are part of the film's background. So are the FBI's Cointelpro program and Hurricane Katrina.
"I think it's part of a narrative," Francome says. "We could have made a film that was just purely about the case and looked into every single detail, but we've got 90 minutes to tell a story, and at the same time we're trying to make an entertaining film. I think we're making valid connections between certain issues."
Although the Sundance screening was not met with the rapturous whoops and standing ovations that greet the festival's instant hits, it was clear that at least some in the audience had no difficulty connecting Jamal's case and larger issues of racism, the death penalty and government corruption.
Sundance's audiences are well-known for their liberal bent, and its documentary programming tends to favor issue-oriented films. During the post-screening Q and A, one questioner asked if Abu-Jamal's bid for a new trial, currently awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, would be rejected because "the consequences might be too huge to allow that to happen."
The British-born Francome, son of a British father and an American mother, describes his mother as a product of the '60s counterculture, and says she reminded him that each birthday he celebrated meant Abu-Jamal had spent another year in jail. But it wasn't until he was a teenager and heard Rage Against the Machine take up Abu-Jamal's cause that Francome connected the dots. "It was like, 'Hey, that's that Mumia guy mum's always talking about,' " he recalls in the film.
In his 20s, Francome began writing treatments for a film about the case. Through his girlfriend's godmother, he met Livia Firth, wife of actor Colin Firth, and Colin offered to produce the film and introduced him to Evans, an established feature and documentary director.
Firth also got in touch with Amnesty International's Piers Bannister, who had written a 35-page report condemning Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial as failing to meet "minimum international standards." Bannister, who appeared at the Sundance screening, shared his research with the filmmakers, and Amnesty vetted the film after it was completed.
"When we finished, we came back and said, 'This is the film. Tell us if we did a good job,' " Firth says. "They tore the film to pieces. They analyzed every single word." In addition to fact-checking the film, Amnesty suggested changes in the wording of Francome's narration to better represent its stance on the case and related issues such as the death penalty. The result, Firth proudly says, is the first film endorsed by Amnesty's secretariat. In Prison opens with Amnesty's logo, which is followed immediately by the logo for Myspace, which helped finance the film. "Those two badges kind of reflect who the film is for," Evans says.
The question of the film's potential audience, Evans says, greatly influenced its form. Rather than evaluate every claim pro and con, In Prison is pitched at an introductory level.
"The bit of filmmaking I dislike the most is you have to say, 'Here's the film, now who's the audience?' " Evans says. "Is it for a very well-versed insider? Perhaps this isn't the film for them at the end of the day. I don't think the audience the film really appeals to are people who are necessarily politically clued in and have read a lot about their civil rights history. It's a series of inquiries and conversations by a 25-year-old, starting with a teenage obsession."
Crisscrossing the country, Francome pounds the streets looking for the truth of what happened on the night he was born. He talks to the authors of several books critical of Abu-Jamal's trial. He meets with photographer Pedro Polakoff, whose photos of the crime scene seem to show a police officer handling Faulkner's and Abu-Jamal's guns with his bare hands. And he interviews William Cook, Abu-Jamal's brother, who says that Faulkner addressed him with a racial slur and began beating him, unprovoked, in the moments before the shooting. Cook does not, however, discuss what happened next, and says he will do so only in a court of law.
Conspicuous by their absence are Faulkner's supporters, or any evidence that might weaken the movie's claims, like the fact that Cook was convicted of assaulting Faulkner. The sole argument in favor of Abu-Jamal's conviction is made by prosecutor Joseph McGill, who appears in excerpts from the 1996 documentary Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Case for Reasonable Doubt? (When citing the film, In Prison omits the question mark.) Francome says attempts were made to contact McGill, representatives from the Fraternal Order of Police, and, through the FOP, Faulkner's widow, Maureen, and no responses were received. But Evans also says that they pursued advocates for Abu-Jamal's incarceration and execution only "up to a point."
"We're making a film that starts from a particular point of view, with a particular interest," Evans says. "To me, the proper way to proceed is to invite people to the table, and respond when people come to the table. Not to go, 'The film I'm making is so responsible for the truth.' It's not a journalistic film in that sense."
The film contains a handful of factual errors which, while evidently below the radar of Amnesty's fact-checkers, could damage its credibility with Philadelphia audiences. City Council president Anna Verna is referred to as "Ann," and the neighborhood of Powelton Village is referred to as "a suburb of Philadelphia."
Evans knows that Abu-Jamal's case raises heated emotions in the city, and that the battle between "Free Mumia" and "Fry Mumia" factions leads many to tune out the case altogether. That, he says, only heightened his curiosity.
"For us, coming in from the outside, the fact that people are so fed up with hearing about it, the fact that it gets people so riled up, that in itself is interesting. The fact that this guy can raise so much hatred or so much empathy . . . I find that absolutely fascinating."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/livia-giuggioli/obama-in-context_b_83275.htmlObama in Context, Huffington Post
by Livia Giuggioli
My husband Colin and I have ongoing discussions on who we would support for this presidential campaign. Obama, Clinton, Edwards -- I tend to go for Obama but yesterday, while having lunch with friends here in Sundance, an African American studio executive said that should Obama be elected, he fears there would be several attempts to assassinate him simply because he is black. This sent an icy shock through me.
Walking through the crisp white snow at the Sundance Film Festival to a screening of our documentary In Prison My Whole Life, I started to wonder whether the optimism that we had felt in making the film had been misplaced. The movie centers around the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, a vociferous and radical black journalist who, after 25 years in prison, has become America's most famous Death Row inmate. Despite the injustices surrounding Mumia's case and some of the dark historical events that the film portrays, it is doggedly optimistic in approach. Mumia's continued articulate commentary as a radio journalist, broadcasting from his cell by means of typewriter and telephone, had inspired us. His voice is heroic and connects to a tradition of dissenting black voices which have always found a place in America. With our films' Sundance screening coinciding with Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this surviving continuity seemed even more poignantly alive.
Producing In Prison my Whole life is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. People have asked me many times what shocked me most while making the film and my answer is always the same: how much I fell in love with America all over again. There is a general perception in Europe that "America" is "Bush". So when we left for the States to film and found ourselves listening to people like Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Russell Simmons, Howard Zinn, Snoop Dogg, Mos Def (I could go on for hours, we met the most amazing people!) it reminded me what a wonderful country America is and what a powerful counter culture still exists.
This is the country which fought many of the biggest civil rights battles, and our film endeavors to ask what is the nature of dissent in America today.
I recently read an interview with the fantastic writer David Grossman who said, "One of the great questions that people living in this age must relentlessly ask themselves is: in what state, at which moment, do I become part of the faceless crowd, "the masses"?"
If you think about it -- this question IS the most fundamental one and I guess this is why I/we found ourselves doing this movie. Among the questions "In Prison My Whole Life" raises are: Is racism in America still endemic? What did we learn from Katrina? What is the state of the American judicial system? Was it unbiased in Philadelphia in 1982 when Mumia was on trial? Was it unbiased in the election of 2000? We must never stop asking questions. Documentary filmmakers have the opportunity to engage in the great debate, to resurrect -- if one can use that word - the urge to dissent, to ask questions again, to fight for change and to fight the blindness and ignorance of racism and injustice that still exists not only in this country but all over the world.
Economic Gangsters by Mumia Abu-Jamal
Economic Gangsters
[col. writ. 1/19/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As Americans begin to taste the bitter dregs of recession; the economy spirals to the top of primary election rhetoric. Briefly displacing the issue of Iraq.
Both Republicans and Democrats join in rare bipartisan agreement on an economic stimulus package -- a government dole out of roughly $800 per taxpayer -- which, when received, will be spent, and this spending will stimulate, or boost, the lagging economy.
I don't want to be a downer, but I feel compelled to say, if the economy can be sparked by so modest a boost, are the problems really that serious, or are they far more serious than politicians are letting on?
It seems to me that politicians are skirting the obvious: U.S. economic problems aren't displacing problems in Iraq: in fact, Iraq -- its costs in blood and treasure -- are driving this period of economic instability, recession and job losses.
How? Well, while the defense industries, and related businesses of oil and mercenary-type outfits (like Blackwater) are making big bucks, this wealth is narrowly distributed. In past wars, workers were driven into factories to build the weapons of World Wars I and II, and so money was widely circulated, particularly among Blacks, newly arrived from the segregated South, or among women, who entered factories to work machines vacated by millions of white men who were Drafted to man the war front (remember Rosie the Riveter?)
This new so-called volunteer army is largely the product of an economic draft, of poor and working class youth hoping to get a leg up in the rat race of attending increasingly unaffordable colleges.
While this hope and dream is often unrequited, what are the economic prospects of tens of thousands of men and women who return legless, armless-- or mindless -- after repeated tours in Iraq?
And the Iraq war, which will cost perhaps upwards of trillions of dollars before all is said and done, is really designed to economically benefit few -- again, oil companies and their subsidiaries. And, of course, petroleum-based fossil fuels have their own ecological, and social costs - that we've not even begun to tally.
While Bush and the Saudi princes do their sword-dance (ironic given the $20 billion Saudi-U..S. weapons deal Bush brings), the economy - and the ecology -burns.
Housing foreclosures are spiking; manufacturing flees to China; gas prices rise; neighborhoods decline into hellholes for survival; and schools resemble training camps for prison.
And prison? Perhaps they are America's lone growth industry.
Wars are poor replacements for ailing economies. For they produce nothing, but pain, loss and ultimately -- more war.
This war, started by neo con nitwits and the Texas/Bush Mafia, has produced pain, loss and death on an epic scale.
No politician now running has the barest notion of how to end the cycle -- for they too are trapped in an imperial web, spun by big business.
They promise no solution, just an extension of the same, elsewhere.
--(c) '08 maj
[col. writ. 1/19/08] (c) '08 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As Americans begin to taste the bitter dregs of recession; the economy spirals to the top of primary election rhetoric. Briefly displacing the issue of Iraq.
Both Republicans and Democrats join in rare bipartisan agreement on an economic stimulus package -- a government dole out of roughly $800 per taxpayer -- which, when received, will be spent, and this spending will stimulate, or boost, the lagging economy.
I don't want to be a downer, but I feel compelled to say, if the economy can be sparked by so modest a boost, are the problems really that serious, or are they far more serious than politicians are letting on?
It seems to me that politicians are skirting the obvious: U.S. economic problems aren't displacing problems in Iraq: in fact, Iraq -- its costs in blood and treasure -- are driving this period of economic instability, recession and job losses.
How? Well, while the defense industries, and related businesses of oil and mercenary-type outfits (like Blackwater) are making big bucks, this wealth is narrowly distributed. In past wars, workers were driven into factories to build the weapons of World Wars I and II, and so money was widely circulated, particularly among Blacks, newly arrived from the segregated South, or among women, who entered factories to work machines vacated by millions of white men who were Drafted to man the war front (remember Rosie the Riveter?)
This new so-called volunteer army is largely the product of an economic draft, of poor and working class youth hoping to get a leg up in the rat race of attending increasingly unaffordable colleges.
While this hope and dream is often unrequited, what are the economic prospects of tens of thousands of men and women who return legless, armless-- or mindless -- after repeated tours in Iraq?
And the Iraq war, which will cost perhaps upwards of trillions of dollars before all is said and done, is really designed to economically benefit few -- again, oil companies and their subsidiaries. And, of course, petroleum-based fossil fuels have their own ecological, and social costs - that we've not even begun to tally.
While Bush and the Saudi princes do their sword-dance (ironic given the $20 billion Saudi-U..S. weapons deal Bush brings), the economy - and the ecology -burns.
Housing foreclosures are spiking; manufacturing flees to China; gas prices rise; neighborhoods decline into hellholes for survival; and schools resemble training camps for prison.
And prison? Perhaps they are America's lone growth industry.
Wars are poor replacements for ailing economies. For they produce nothing, but pain, loss and ultimately -- more war.
This war, started by neo con nitwits and the Texas/Bush Mafia, has produced pain, loss and death on an epic scale.
No politician now running has the barest notion of how to end the cycle -- for they too are trapped in an imperial web, spun by big business.
They promise no solution, just an extension of the same, elsewhere.
--(c) '08 maj
"Bling, Bling" - The Murder Of Our People Part 2
Here is part two of the article. The article comes from www.guerrillafunk.com and was originally done by Morpheus of www.playahata.com.
"Bling, Bling" - The Murder Of Our People, Part 2
By Morpheus, www.playahata.com
"Bling!Bling!" Baby says, his "medallion iced up" and his "Rolex bezelled up!" Jay-Z says she's his baby, drives him crazy and is a girl's best friend. We talkin' diamonds ya'll. Helen, a 20-year-old mother raped and held captive by armed men knows about diamonds. Adamsay, 15, who uses her severed limbs to manipulate a cup knows about them too. They live in Sierra Leone, where real thugs keep the block locked down -- all in the name of ICE.
Sierra Leone went from slave port to a haven for Britain's newly emancipated. A colony until 1961, it looked forward to prosperity in those early years of independence. But as with too much of post-colonial Africa, those dreams were short lived.
Government mismanagement led to rebellion in 1991 by a group calling themselves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by a former official named Foday Sankoh. Attempts to quell the rebellion caused numerous coups and shifts in government. With the war still raging in 1996, the people finally called for democratic elections. Lawyer Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was declared victor and a peace accord with the rebels was signed.
But the peace deal unraveled. And when disgruntled government soldiers staged a coup, the RUF eagerly supported them to topple Kabbah and form a rogue government the international community refused to recognize.
Visiting Nigeria, RUF leader Foday Sankoh was placed under arrest. And Nigeria, backed by the UN and ECOMOG, fought a punishing war to return Kabbah to power in 1998. Sankoh was given the death penalty, but the RUF carried on nevertheless.
If the RUF were fighting on behalf of the people of Sierra Leone, they certainly neglected to demonstrate it. As if mimicking Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge or the brutally oppressive Belgian Congo, the RUF waged a bloody campaign of terror. They raped, maimed and killed civilians, including children and the elderly, in the tens of thousands.
When the RUF attacked the capitol of Freetown in January of 1999, they initiated "Operation No Living Thing" - raping young girls and women, burning homes and villages, and viciously hacking off the hands of children. At least 10,000 people died in this rebel terror campaign. As one UN official put it, "The RUF have turned Sierra Leone into the worst country in the world to live in?.
So who are these RUF? An extremist faction like the Peruvian Shining Path, with some profound political agenda? Something akin to the fratricidal, Hutu Interahamwe of Rwanda bent on revenge upon ethnic rivals? Or like the Hezballah, do they wage a struggle based on fanatic religious ideologies? No.
The 45,000 member RUF are simply disillusioned young men, some no older than 10, spurred on by older leaders and drug-induced acts of bravado. They come from diverse ethnic groups, practice no particular religion, and espouse no set political agenda or platform.
All that can be said is that their goals are rooted in greed. For it is diamonds that have caused and fed this war of atrocity. The eastern part of Sierra Leone, a RUF stronghold, produces some of the finest gems in the world. Reports say the RUF sells the diamonds through Liberia, who's president Charles Taylor supports them for his own corrupt ends, and receives arms in return. The evidence of this illegal trade is in the numbers: Liberia's own average annual mining capacity is 150,000 carats. But between 1994 and 1998, Liberia exported more than 31 million carats, an average of six million per year.
The RUF was eventually routed by Nigerian troops into the countryside. But pressure from the US and other governments forced President Kabbah to sign a treaty with the RUF. Jesse Jackson himself helped broker the much applauded peace deal which not only gave the RUF blanket amnesty, but ensured their leaders high-ranking government posts. Foday Sankoh went from death row, to the Vice-Presidency.
However, it soon became apparent that this deal was a sham. Only about 4,000 of the RUF disarmed while at least 13,000 government troops did so. UN observers noted that the RUF continued murder, rape and mutilation in Sierra Leone as if the peace deal never happened. In fact only days following Nigeria's withdrawal, the RUF ambushed and took 500 UN peacekeepers hostage. Terrified of the rebels, who's infamous reputation preceded them, the UN force surrendered their weapons, armored personnel carriers and even their uniforms without so much as a fight.
Sierra Leone citizens in Freetown, finally taking matters into their own hands, marched on the home of Sankoh to demand he end hostilities. They were greeted with bodyguards who fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades into the crowd, killing scores. Weeks of humiliation later, the UN hostages were finally released. So what went wrong?
Jesse, the US and foreign nations underestimated the RUF and miserably failed to understand the conflict in Sierra Leone. The RUF may be experts in tactics of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, but they amount in the end to little more than mafia-like thugs. Giving Sankoh and his rebels places in the new government would be akin to the NAACP giving gang members a place on their board. The people of Sierra Leone were betrayed by an international community looking to make deals with the devil. As one Sierra Leonean dryly observed, "they didn't make deals with Milosovic in Bosnia---why here?"
But perhaps there is hope in Sierra Leone's future. The UN, following Nigeria's lead, has taken a tough stance on the RUF. And the peacekeeping mission sent there has restored some semblance of order to the nation. Foday Sankoh was captured and marched through the streets of Freetown to the jubilant cheers of its citizens. A tribunal has been set up to prosecute both Sankoh and the RUF for their reign of terror. And a government diamond certificate is now being put into to place to keep rebel gems from financing this brutal war. And word is the RUF rebels have begun to disarm en masse.
As Nigerian author Chinua Achebe might say, in Sierra Leone things "fell" apart. It will take untold generations to heal the wounds the civil war has caused. The very existence of the RUF illustrates some of Africa's most pressing post-colonial problems: corrupt leaders, the powerful exploiting the powerless, the break-down of traditional African societal values and mores, and a lack of basic order on many fronts. What should be a diamond-rich and prosperous country, is today on the verge of chaos. Modern Sierra Leone is part of the African legacy of colonialism and the seeming inability of western styles of government and post-independence leaders to speak to the needs of their respective countries. The implosion of Sierra Leone is what happens when all of these factors go untreated for too long. It will take a world community and, most of all, the commitment of the people of Sierra Leone to fix it once again.
As I listened to yet another ghetto lyrical fantasy of ICE play out on my radio, I could not help wonder if some artists are dumber than a box of rocks? When a recent high profile rapper was asked about what he thought of Sierra Leone as he bragged about his shiny wrist pieces, he answered dumbfounded -- "Sierra who?" It seems while the rest of the REAL world was concerned with world affairs, these thugz, ballaz and ThOw'd YuNg PlAyAz could have cared less. Yet now I watch em' tripping over each other to get some American patriotic media glory after September 11th. These simps (yeah, I called em' simps) should all be loaded up in a plane and dropped ground zero into Sierra Leone, with all their flashy ICE wrapped around them. Let's see how long they make it.
Courtesy of Morpheus at www.playahata.com.
Dig the video "The Diamond Life" here.
"Bling, Bling" - The Murder Of Our People, Part 2
By Morpheus, www.playahata.com
"Bling!Bling!" Baby says, his "medallion iced up" and his "Rolex bezelled up!" Jay-Z says she's his baby, drives him crazy and is a girl's best friend. We talkin' diamonds ya'll. Helen, a 20-year-old mother raped and held captive by armed men knows about diamonds. Adamsay, 15, who uses her severed limbs to manipulate a cup knows about them too. They live in Sierra Leone, where real thugs keep the block locked down -- all in the name of ICE.
Sierra Leone went from slave port to a haven for Britain's newly emancipated. A colony until 1961, it looked forward to prosperity in those early years of independence. But as with too much of post-colonial Africa, those dreams were short lived.
Government mismanagement led to rebellion in 1991 by a group calling themselves the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), led by a former official named Foday Sankoh. Attempts to quell the rebellion caused numerous coups and shifts in government. With the war still raging in 1996, the people finally called for democratic elections. Lawyer Ahmad Tejan Kabbah was declared victor and a peace accord with the rebels was signed.
But the peace deal unraveled. And when disgruntled government soldiers staged a coup, the RUF eagerly supported them to topple Kabbah and form a rogue government the international community refused to recognize.
Visiting Nigeria, RUF leader Foday Sankoh was placed under arrest. And Nigeria, backed by the UN and ECOMOG, fought a punishing war to return Kabbah to power in 1998. Sankoh was given the death penalty, but the RUF carried on nevertheless.
If the RUF were fighting on behalf of the people of Sierra Leone, they certainly neglected to demonstrate it. As if mimicking Cambodia's murderous Khmer Rouge or the brutally oppressive Belgian Congo, the RUF waged a bloody campaign of terror. They raped, maimed and killed civilians, including children and the elderly, in the tens of thousands.
When the RUF attacked the capitol of Freetown in January of 1999, they initiated "Operation No Living Thing" - raping young girls and women, burning homes and villages, and viciously hacking off the hands of children. At least 10,000 people died in this rebel terror campaign. As one UN official put it, "The RUF have turned Sierra Leone into the worst country in the world to live in?.
So who are these RUF? An extremist faction like the Peruvian Shining Path, with some profound political agenda? Something akin to the fratricidal, Hutu Interahamwe of Rwanda bent on revenge upon ethnic rivals? Or like the Hezballah, do they wage a struggle based on fanatic religious ideologies? No.
The 45,000 member RUF are simply disillusioned young men, some no older than 10, spurred on by older leaders and drug-induced acts of bravado. They come from diverse ethnic groups, practice no particular religion, and espouse no set political agenda or platform.
All that can be said is that their goals are rooted in greed. For it is diamonds that have caused and fed this war of atrocity. The eastern part of Sierra Leone, a RUF stronghold, produces some of the finest gems in the world. Reports say the RUF sells the diamonds through Liberia, who's president Charles Taylor supports them for his own corrupt ends, and receives arms in return. The evidence of this illegal trade is in the numbers: Liberia's own average annual mining capacity is 150,000 carats. But between 1994 and 1998, Liberia exported more than 31 million carats, an average of six million per year.
The RUF was eventually routed by Nigerian troops into the countryside. But pressure from the US and other governments forced President Kabbah to sign a treaty with the RUF. Jesse Jackson himself helped broker the much applauded peace deal which not only gave the RUF blanket amnesty, but ensured their leaders high-ranking government posts. Foday Sankoh went from death row, to the Vice-Presidency.
However, it soon became apparent that this deal was a sham. Only about 4,000 of the RUF disarmed while at least 13,000 government troops did so. UN observers noted that the RUF continued murder, rape and mutilation in Sierra Leone as if the peace deal never happened. In fact only days following Nigeria's withdrawal, the RUF ambushed and took 500 UN peacekeepers hostage. Terrified of the rebels, who's infamous reputation preceded them, the UN force surrendered their weapons, armored personnel carriers and even their uniforms without so much as a fight.
Sierra Leone citizens in Freetown, finally taking matters into their own hands, marched on the home of Sankoh to demand he end hostilities. They were greeted with bodyguards who fired machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades into the crowd, killing scores. Weeks of humiliation later, the UN hostages were finally released. So what went wrong?
Jesse, the US and foreign nations underestimated the RUF and miserably failed to understand the conflict in Sierra Leone. The RUF may be experts in tactics of guerrilla warfare and terrorism, but they amount in the end to little more than mafia-like thugs. Giving Sankoh and his rebels places in the new government would be akin to the NAACP giving gang members a place on their board. The people of Sierra Leone were betrayed by an international community looking to make deals with the devil. As one Sierra Leonean dryly observed, "they didn't make deals with Milosovic in Bosnia---why here?"
But perhaps there is hope in Sierra Leone's future. The UN, following Nigeria's lead, has taken a tough stance on the RUF. And the peacekeeping mission sent there has restored some semblance of order to the nation. Foday Sankoh was captured and marched through the streets of Freetown to the jubilant cheers of its citizens. A tribunal has been set up to prosecute both Sankoh and the RUF for their reign of terror. And a government diamond certificate is now being put into to place to keep rebel gems from financing this brutal war. And word is the RUF rebels have begun to disarm en masse.
As Nigerian author Chinua Achebe might say, in Sierra Leone things "fell" apart. It will take untold generations to heal the wounds the civil war has caused. The very existence of the RUF illustrates some of Africa's most pressing post-colonial problems: corrupt leaders, the powerful exploiting the powerless, the break-down of traditional African societal values and mores, and a lack of basic order on many fronts. What should be a diamond-rich and prosperous country, is today on the verge of chaos. Modern Sierra Leone is part of the African legacy of colonialism and the seeming inability of western styles of government and post-independence leaders to speak to the needs of their respective countries. The implosion of Sierra Leone is what happens when all of these factors go untreated for too long. It will take a world community and, most of all, the commitment of the people of Sierra Leone to fix it once again.
As I listened to yet another ghetto lyrical fantasy of ICE play out on my radio, I could not help wonder if some artists are dumber than a box of rocks? When a recent high profile rapper was asked about what he thought of Sierra Leone as he bragged about his shiny wrist pieces, he answered dumbfounded -- "Sierra who?" It seems while the rest of the REAL world was concerned with world affairs, these thugz, ballaz and ThOw'd YuNg PlAyAz could have cared less. Yet now I watch em' tripping over each other to get some American patriotic media glory after September 11th. These simps (yeah, I called em' simps) should all be loaded up in a plane and dropped ground zero into Sierra Leone, with all their flashy ICE wrapped around them. Let's see how long they make it.
Courtesy of Morpheus at www.playahata.com.
Dig the video "The Diamond Life" here.
"Bling, Bling" - The Murder Of Our People Part 1
I've read this on www.guerrillafunk.com and it's a great article. We need to know more about the bling many of us love to flash in other people's faces at the expense of the poor and suffering that these diamonds are mined from. This is part one of the article. I'll be posting part two soon.
"Bling, Bling" - The Murder Of Our People, Part 1
By Eyecalone, www.playahata.com
I've seen some pretty ignorant and bizarre things in music over the last few years, but of all the things I've witnessed today's "Bling-Bling" syndrome has to be the worst. Sometimes I wonder where the hell this absurd obsession with diamond jewelry came from. I mean flossin' and frontin' have always played a part in rap but this shit is ridiculous! You can't even blame a region because the obsession is everywhere, East, West, South, Midwest, and everywhere between. You've all heard it; the jewelry praises roll off forked tongues from Roc-A-Fella to the Hot-Boyz. Nowadays rappers make songs in tribute to Diamonds ("Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend" - Jay-Z), spend better than 50 thousand dollars on a single piece of jewelry, and then insult their fans (the people who paid for that jewelry) about being broke. Ain't that about a bitch!? The more I think about the more I think that these rappers just must not know any better.
"You know the wrist frost bit, minus two degrees/about as blue as the sea"
I can't help but wonder, what if Jay-Z knew that for more than a century the men controlling the diamond industry have been hardcore racists, some of whom were the founding fathers of Apartheid, and ruthlessly exploited black Africans as well as others. The Dutch, Germans, British, as well as other tribes of Europeans had come to Africa to pull, what today we would call a jack move. Many Europeans had convinced themselves that Africans and other non-whites were inferior people and many of the rest would do so later to justify their immoral actions. From this situation the racial segregation system of Apartheid was born, in South Africa, as well as similar social orders in other parts of Africa.
Cecil Rhodes, for whom Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe) was named essentially started the diamond industry back in the 1880's diamond rush when he "purchased" the farm of Dutch Boer farmers Deiderick Arnoldus & Johannes DeBeers. This farm would eventually turn into one of the largest mines in Africa at the time (DeBeers currently has a mine 3 times the size of New Jersey called the "Forbidden Zone"). Rhodes then went on to "buy" several other mines until he controlled 90% of the world's gemstones. Shortly after that Ernest Oppenheimer made a large discovery of diamonds in "German Southwest Africa", that rivaled the Rhodes mines. Oppenheimer threatened to flood the market with diamonds and drive the price down if Rhodes did not make him chairman of DeBeers (which was Rhodes' Company at the time). Oppenheimer's company had financial investment from British investors and J.P. Morgan so it was called Anglo-American. Today, diamonds are a multi-billion dollar industry and most of them come from Southern African countries, yet black Africans from these countries remain some of the poorest people in the world.
"Every time I come around your city "Bling Bling" - Pinky ring worth about 50 "Bling Bling"
What if the Hot Boyz knew that from those early days up until now, the profits from the diamond industry were and continue to be one of the most important factors in upholding the region's racist policies and white minority rule? The best example is in South Africa. Once diamonds were discovered, the South African government instituted policies designed to force black Africans off their land and into the diamond mines to work in conditions similar to slavery. This was accomplished by the government creating new taxes on virtually everything from land to pets. In order to get money to pay the taxes black Africans had no choice but to work in the mines. For all their moral talk foreign investors, mainly in America and Europe, played a key role in upholding the South African government and economy, and similar ones throughout southern Africa.
During the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, where South African police murdered 67 black anti-apartheid demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, many foreign companies and investors pulled out their investments (not for moral reasons but out of fear of South African instability) and sold their shares of stock. Anglo-American bought up these shares to uphold the apartheid economy. Another example of foreign support occured in the Congo (formerly Zaire) in the 1950s. In 1959 Patrice Lumumba was elected as Prime Minister of the newly "independent" Congo, a country extremely rich in diamonds as well as other natural resources. Lumumba was very critical of the racist and unequal power and social relations in the Congo as well as the diamond industry's theft of African resources. The Belgian mining company, the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), and the Belgian government conspired to have him overthrown and murdered. He was then replaced by Mobutu Sese Seko, a figurehead dictator that these foreign powers found more acceptable. Dictator Mobutu was finally overthrown in 1997 and he died of natural causes later that year. Mobutu ruled the Congo for 32 years and it is estimated that through his theft he amassed a personal fortune estimated at 5 to 8 billion dollars (yes that is a supposed to be a 'B' and yes that is 5-8,000,000,000) in addition to the countless billions he misdirected or gave to his cronies.
"I don't like it if it don't gleam-gleam/ and the hell with the price tag cause money ain't a thing"
What if Jermaine Dupri knew about the conditions that miners past and present endured? Even today most people believe that since apartheid technically ended that somehow it's "all good". Nothing could be further from the truth. Black Africans continue to work and live in conditions, that make Chicago's Cabrini Green Projects look like Disney World. For example, in DeBeers' Kimberly mines division in South Africa there are between 1,200 and 1,400 workers. About 1,100 of them are black and live in squatter's camps - tin shacks with no electricity or proper plumbing. Many of these black workers are paid as little as 28 American dollars a month. But white miners and managers live in comfortable homes - oftentimes with black servants! In addition, only white and part white employees with families are provided with family housing. Married black miners are forced to stay in separate facilities from their spouses. If a black, female worker gets pregnant she is required to leave her job for 3 months and return without her child if she wishes to keep her job. White workers are never subject to these policies. If a white miner has a family, they are immediately given family housing.
Just slightly higher up the food chain, in West India (not the West Indies), hundreds of thousands of diamond cutters, many of them children under 13, cut low quality diamonds for inexpensive catalogue jewelry. At times they are required to place more than 50 cuts, the size of pencil tip, on a diamond. They are paid 4 cents per stone and work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. I doubt that comes with any health benefits.
"I Rock Ice (lil daddy) every time I step/ I rock Ice (lil mamma) cause I love to rep"
What if Baby knew that diamonds are not naturally rare? Diamonds are made from carbon under high pressure, and on Earth we live in a carbon based environment. Most of the major diamond producing countries are in Southern Africa, but diamonds are also produced in Sierra Leone, Russia, Australia, and Canada. The diamond industry is more about controlling and restricting what comes out of the ground than the actual mining of diamonds. DeBeers controls approximately 75% of the world's rough (uncut) diamonds through its marketing arm, the Central Selling Organization (CSO). It mines 50% of the world's diamonds in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. The rest are vacuumed up through contracts made with other diamond producers, and by sending their buyers to clean up diamonds that leak onto the market from places like Congo and Angola. Since DeBeers is a foreign based company they are not subject to American monopoly laws, so they artificially keep the price of diamonds high by monopolizing supply. Trying to keep control of the diamond supply has forced DeBeers into business dealings with borderline terrorist organizations and other shady characters, though they deny having dealings with most of these groups.
The lie that diamonds are extremely rare and valuable has been built up since the 1930s. During the 1930s and 1940s DeBeers paid to have diamonds placed favorably in movies. In 1947 DeBeers invented their famous slogan "A Diamond is Forever" which sells 2 dreams: (1) that diamonds bring eternal love and romance, and (2) that diamonds never lose their value. DeBeers spends no less than 200 million a year on marketing diamonds in 34 countries. Today the United States accounts for more than 33% of the worlds diamond jewelry sales. It sells the dream to every new generation of gullible young men and women. They sponsor women's magazines, host celebrity auctions and design competitions, and work to have diamonds placed on TV shows and in movies. As if the 1st gaffle wasn't enough they reinvent the dream for those who have already bought it once. Now they have the "Eternity Ring" - a band of diamonds bought to celebrate the tenth wedding anniversary - being sold using the slogan "Show her you would marry her all over again".
These fantasies are aggressively sold oversees as well. In the 1960's, before DeBeers muscled in, barely 1 in 20 Japanese brides wore a diamond engagement ring. Today, diamond engagement rings are sported by 70% of Japanese brides.
The fact that America's love affair with diamonds is the result of a marketing campaign is pretty bizarre, but even more amazing is that diamonds can be made synthetically. Their manufacture requires some expensive equipment, but if a company has the resources, it can manufacture flawless diamonds in most sizes and colors, even the more expensive pink or yellow shades. In the 1980's General Electric was making these synthetic flawless diamonds though they weren't selling them commercially. When former, GE executive Edward Russell suggested that GE begin selling these diamonds to the public he was promptly fired. Apparently GE's higher ups and the DeBeers thugs had an understanding at the time, although GE claims Mr. Russell was fired due to job performance. I try not to wonder these things when I'm watching music videos or listening to songs on the radio, but I just can't thinking about it. WHAT IF THEY KNEW?! Sadly enough though, I don't think they would even care. And that is the truly scary part!
Courtesy of Eyecalone at www.playahata.com.
Dig the video "The Diamond Life" here.
"Bling, Bling" - The Murder Of Our People, Part 1
By Eyecalone, www.playahata.com
I've seen some pretty ignorant and bizarre things in music over the last few years, but of all the things I've witnessed today's "Bling-Bling" syndrome has to be the worst. Sometimes I wonder where the hell this absurd obsession with diamond jewelry came from. I mean flossin' and frontin' have always played a part in rap but this shit is ridiculous! You can't even blame a region because the obsession is everywhere, East, West, South, Midwest, and everywhere between. You've all heard it; the jewelry praises roll off forked tongues from Roc-A-Fella to the Hot-Boyz. Nowadays rappers make songs in tribute to Diamonds ("Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend" - Jay-Z), spend better than 50 thousand dollars on a single piece of jewelry, and then insult their fans (the people who paid for that jewelry) about being broke. Ain't that about a bitch!? The more I think about the more I think that these rappers just must not know any better.
"You know the wrist frost bit, minus two degrees/about as blue as the sea"
I can't help but wonder, what if Jay-Z knew that for more than a century the men controlling the diamond industry have been hardcore racists, some of whom were the founding fathers of Apartheid, and ruthlessly exploited black Africans as well as others. The Dutch, Germans, British, as well as other tribes of Europeans had come to Africa to pull, what today we would call a jack move. Many Europeans had convinced themselves that Africans and other non-whites were inferior people and many of the rest would do so later to justify their immoral actions. From this situation the racial segregation system of Apartheid was born, in South Africa, as well as similar social orders in other parts of Africa.
Cecil Rhodes, for whom Rhodesia (modern day Zimbabwe) was named essentially started the diamond industry back in the 1880's diamond rush when he "purchased" the farm of Dutch Boer farmers Deiderick Arnoldus & Johannes DeBeers. This farm would eventually turn into one of the largest mines in Africa at the time (DeBeers currently has a mine 3 times the size of New Jersey called the "Forbidden Zone"). Rhodes then went on to "buy" several other mines until he controlled 90% of the world's gemstones. Shortly after that Ernest Oppenheimer made a large discovery of diamonds in "German Southwest Africa", that rivaled the Rhodes mines. Oppenheimer threatened to flood the market with diamonds and drive the price down if Rhodes did not make him chairman of DeBeers (which was Rhodes' Company at the time). Oppenheimer's company had financial investment from British investors and J.P. Morgan so it was called Anglo-American. Today, diamonds are a multi-billion dollar industry and most of them come from Southern African countries, yet black Africans from these countries remain some of the poorest people in the world.
"Every time I come around your city "Bling Bling" - Pinky ring worth about 50 "Bling Bling"
What if the Hot Boyz knew that from those early days up until now, the profits from the diamond industry were and continue to be one of the most important factors in upholding the region's racist policies and white minority rule? The best example is in South Africa. Once diamonds were discovered, the South African government instituted policies designed to force black Africans off their land and into the diamond mines to work in conditions similar to slavery. This was accomplished by the government creating new taxes on virtually everything from land to pets. In order to get money to pay the taxes black Africans had no choice but to work in the mines. For all their moral talk foreign investors, mainly in America and Europe, played a key role in upholding the South African government and economy, and similar ones throughout southern Africa.
During the 1960 Sharpeville Massacre, where South African police murdered 67 black anti-apartheid demonstrators in the township of Sharpeville, many foreign companies and investors pulled out their investments (not for moral reasons but out of fear of South African instability) and sold their shares of stock. Anglo-American bought up these shares to uphold the apartheid economy. Another example of foreign support occured in the Congo (formerly Zaire) in the 1950s. In 1959 Patrice Lumumba was elected as Prime Minister of the newly "independent" Congo, a country extremely rich in diamonds as well as other natural resources. Lumumba was very critical of the racist and unequal power and social relations in the Congo as well as the diamond industry's theft of African resources. The Belgian mining company, the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), and the Belgian government conspired to have him overthrown and murdered. He was then replaced by Mobutu Sese Seko, a figurehead dictator that these foreign powers found more acceptable. Dictator Mobutu was finally overthrown in 1997 and he died of natural causes later that year. Mobutu ruled the Congo for 32 years and it is estimated that through his theft he amassed a personal fortune estimated at 5 to 8 billion dollars (yes that is a supposed to be a 'B' and yes that is 5-8,000,000,000) in addition to the countless billions he misdirected or gave to his cronies.
"I don't like it if it don't gleam-gleam/ and the hell with the price tag cause money ain't a thing"
What if Jermaine Dupri knew about the conditions that miners past and present endured? Even today most people believe that since apartheid technically ended that somehow it's "all good". Nothing could be further from the truth. Black Africans continue to work and live in conditions, that make Chicago's Cabrini Green Projects look like Disney World. For example, in DeBeers' Kimberly mines division in South Africa there are between 1,200 and 1,400 workers. About 1,100 of them are black and live in squatter's camps - tin shacks with no electricity or proper plumbing. Many of these black workers are paid as little as 28 American dollars a month. But white miners and managers live in comfortable homes - oftentimes with black servants! In addition, only white and part white employees with families are provided with family housing. Married black miners are forced to stay in separate facilities from their spouses. If a black, female worker gets pregnant she is required to leave her job for 3 months and return without her child if she wishes to keep her job. White workers are never subject to these policies. If a white miner has a family, they are immediately given family housing.
Just slightly higher up the food chain, in West India (not the West Indies), hundreds of thousands of diamond cutters, many of them children under 13, cut low quality diamonds for inexpensive catalogue jewelry. At times they are required to place more than 50 cuts, the size of pencil tip, on a diamond. They are paid 4 cents per stone and work 12 hour days, 6 days a week. I doubt that comes with any health benefits.
"I Rock Ice (lil daddy) every time I step/ I rock Ice (lil mamma) cause I love to rep"
What if Baby knew that diamonds are not naturally rare? Diamonds are made from carbon under high pressure, and on Earth we live in a carbon based environment. Most of the major diamond producing countries are in Southern Africa, but diamonds are also produced in Sierra Leone, Russia, Australia, and Canada. The diamond industry is more about controlling and restricting what comes out of the ground than the actual mining of diamonds. DeBeers controls approximately 75% of the world's rough (uncut) diamonds through its marketing arm, the Central Selling Organization (CSO). It mines 50% of the world's diamonds in South Africa, Namibia, and Botswana. The rest are vacuumed up through contracts made with other diamond producers, and by sending their buyers to clean up diamonds that leak onto the market from places like Congo and Angola. Since DeBeers is a foreign based company they are not subject to American monopoly laws, so they artificially keep the price of diamonds high by monopolizing supply. Trying to keep control of the diamond supply has forced DeBeers into business dealings with borderline terrorist organizations and other shady characters, though they deny having dealings with most of these groups.
The lie that diamonds are extremely rare and valuable has been built up since the 1930s. During the 1930s and 1940s DeBeers paid to have diamonds placed favorably in movies. In 1947 DeBeers invented their famous slogan "A Diamond is Forever" which sells 2 dreams: (1) that diamonds bring eternal love and romance, and (2) that diamonds never lose their value. DeBeers spends no less than 200 million a year on marketing diamonds in 34 countries. Today the United States accounts for more than 33% of the worlds diamond jewelry sales. It sells the dream to every new generation of gullible young men and women. They sponsor women's magazines, host celebrity auctions and design competitions, and work to have diamonds placed on TV shows and in movies. As if the 1st gaffle wasn't enough they reinvent the dream for those who have already bought it once. Now they have the "Eternity Ring" - a band of diamonds bought to celebrate the tenth wedding anniversary - being sold using the slogan "Show her you would marry her all over again".
These fantasies are aggressively sold oversees as well. In the 1960's, before DeBeers muscled in, barely 1 in 20 Japanese brides wore a diamond engagement ring. Today, diamond engagement rings are sported by 70% of Japanese brides.
The fact that America's love affair with diamonds is the result of a marketing campaign is pretty bizarre, but even more amazing is that diamonds can be made synthetically. Their manufacture requires some expensive equipment, but if a company has the resources, it can manufacture flawless diamonds in most sizes and colors, even the more expensive pink or yellow shades. In the 1980's General Electric was making these synthetic flawless diamonds though they weren't selling them commercially. When former, GE executive Edward Russell suggested that GE begin selling these diamonds to the public he was promptly fired. Apparently GE's higher ups and the DeBeers thugs had an understanding at the time, although GE claims Mr. Russell was fired due to job performance. I try not to wonder these things when I'm watching music videos or listening to songs on the radio, but I just can't thinking about it. WHAT IF THEY KNEW?! Sadly enough though, I don't think they would even care. And that is the truly scary part!
Courtesy of Eyecalone at www.playahata.com.
Dig the video "The Diamond Life" here.
Friday, February 01, 2008
Do It Yourself Porn - Article From ABC News
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