Telephone Tappers 'R US'

Well more for Mumia because he can write better than I can, mainly preparing for the Green Revolution meeting, sunday PM, June 4th, mail me on wallddd@hotmail.com, if you want to get involved in building a green left network in the Green Party.

Zazen later, essential.

Do ofcourse subscribe to Mumia and support his and MOVE's prisoner campaigns.



'SILENCE OF THE LAMBS'
======================
[Col. Writ. 5/14/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

The recent report that the nation's largest phone companies turned over data on millions of Americans is less surprising than the somewhat muted response it has evoked.

If polls are to be believed, nearly 70% of those polled find nothing objectionable with the secret tracking of phone calls by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Without directly challenging the accuracy of such polls, the simple facts that folks aren't up in arms, marching on the White House like angry cinematic villagers, torches in hand, on the tracks of a Frankenstein monster, is stunning.

The relative silence of Americans -- not pundits, who are paid to have an opinion -- but of average folks on this earth-shattering issue, suggests that it may be true.

What does this say about Americans?

It suggests that people have incredible faith in the government, or are so immobilized by fear that they welcome virtually anything the State advances, as long as it promises safety.

Some will say this is a natural response after 9-11.

Yet, this didn't begin on 9-11.

Illegal government spying on Americans has a long history in this country, occasioned by the fears unleashed during the Cold War. However, even when in the 1970s', such spying was uncovered, it didn't result in any end to such practices, but a transfer to another file, under another pretext. One need only read Frank Donner's 1981 book *The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System*. This documented history is long, clear and undeniable.

Yet most Americans neither know, nor seem to want to know about what happened then, or what's happening now.

That great French observer of America, Alexis de Tocqueville, saw these qualities in Americans over 150 years ago, writing in his 1835 classic, *Democracy in America*:

"A nation that asks nothing of its government but the maintenance of order is already a slave at heart -- the slave of its own well-being, awaiting but the hand that will bind it. By such a nation the despotism of faction is not less to be dreaded than the despotism of an individual. When the bulk of the community is engrossed by private concerns, the smallest parties need not despair of getting the upper hand in public affairs. At such times it is not rare to see upon the great stages of the world, as we see at our theaters, a multitude represented by a few players, who alone speak in the name of an absent or inattentive crowd: they alone are in action whilst all are stationary; they regulate everything by their own caprice; they change the laws, and tyrannize at will over the manners of the country; and then wonder to see into how small a number of weak and worthless hands a great people may fall." [From: de Tocqueville, Alexis, *Democracy in America* [2 vols.] (New York: Bantam Classic, 2004) [orig. publ. 1835] ].

As the White House and its lapdog press peddle the potion of fear, and beats the drum for more war, the alleged 'guarantees' of the Constitution are shredded like tissue-paper, daily. Wars based on lies; US torture chambers in Guantanamo, in Iraq, in Afghanistan; secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and beyond; and now the tracking of millions of calls of Americans ...

Something is broken in Babylon; yet all we hear today is the silence of the lambs.


Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Mr. Jamal's recent book features a chapter on the
remarkable women who helped build and defend
the Black Panther Party: *WE WANT FREEDOM:
A Life in the Black Panther Party*, from South
End Press (http://www.southendpress.org); Ph.
#1-800-533-8478.]
===============================

"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is
just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die.
And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about
justice." - Mumia Abu-Jamal

MUMIA'S COLUMNS NEED TO BE PUBLISHED AS BROADLY
AS POSSIBLE TO INSPIRE PROGRESSIVE MOVEMENT AND
HELP CALL ATTENTION TO HIS CASE.

The campaign to kill Mumia is in full swing and we need you to
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Keep updated by reading ACTION ALERTS!!
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========================================

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==============================================>

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WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!

Submitted by: Sis. Marpessa

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