More good stuff from Mumia, he really must be the USA's greatest living intellectual, he writes so sharply, no wonder they want to see him executed...his very existence shows up Bush as a shambling moron...Mumia and the MOVE organisation have long championed ecological values and social justice, although Mumia is stronger on sexual politics.
I guess I will get US cheerleaders objecting but even if every piece of evidence against MUMIA was true, I still don't see how this would lead to first degree murder...the truth is that MOVE people have been murdered at the drop of hat, MOVE members are still in prison for the killing of a single police officer in 1978! who was killed by a bullet from police lines! 11 MOVE men, women and children burnt to death by an FBI bomb in the 1980s....no wonder millions view Cuba as a fully functioning liberal democracy in comparison to the USA (don't get me on third party ballot access, the fact that only millionaires have access to the decision making process, etc)
DEMOCRACY'S DEMISE
====================
[Col. Writ. 6/15/06] Copyright '06 Mumia Abu-Jamal
With the recent bombing of Jordanian-born al Qaeda leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, his spiritual advisor, and several others, the White House is crowing about 'victory' in the illusive 'War on Terror.'
This isn't the first time we've heard such political boasts; it won't be the last.
As these words are being written, members of Congress are scuffling over the wording of a resolution that all but promises such a victory. With such a resolution, Congress all but announces its own irrelevance as anything more than a cheering section for the imperial presidency; a kind of Greek chorus that can only intone echoes.
Something like this must've occurred some 2,000 years ago, when another senate granted titles to an ambitious general, making him the most powerful official in the nation. We remember him as Julius Caesar, who introduced (by adoption) his grandnephew Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus (named Augustus) the first Emperor of Rome, an institution which would rule with unbridled tyranny over the next 400 years.
The great British historian, Edward Gibbon, in his matchless *The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* (1776), found the senators themselves engaged in a dangerous kind of political fiction, where it appeared that things were unchanged, but, in fact, all power resided in the Emperor:
"To resume, in a few words, the system of the Imperial government; as it was instituted by Augustus, and maintained by those princes who understood their own interest and that of the people, it may be defined an absolute monarchy disguised by the forms of a commonwealth. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed. [p. 73]
The senate played this game, bestowing honor after honor on Augustus, until they became hereditary honors and rights of the imperial blood. In fact, the senate, Gibbon explains, was a virtual construction of Augustus, who received the flattery and submission of the legislators:
"He was elected censor; and in concert with his faithful Agrippa, he examined the list of the senators, expelled a few members, whose vices or whose obstinacy required a public example, persuaded near two hundred to prevent the shame of an expulsion by a voluntary retreat, raised the qualifications of a senator to about ten thousand pounds, created a sufficient number of Patrician families, and accepted for himself, the honourable title of Prince of the Senate, which has always been bestowed, by the censors, on the citizen the most eminent for his honours and services. But whilst he restored the dignity, he destroyed the independence of the senate. The principle of a free constitution are irrevocably lost, when the legislative power is nominated by the executive." [p. 66]
In order for an Empire to be born, democracy must die.
All it takes is a senate sufficiently subservient to power, and voila! -- the nation is transformed.
In our day, we have a Congress that rushes to grant more and more power to the executive -- the power to wage war on a whim; the power to wiretap Americans without court order; the power to establish secret prisons; the power to torture; and the power, not only to rewrite the laws, but to ignore the will of Congress! Some will say, but the Congress hasn't written such laws; yet Congress *has* allowed such actions! As these acts occur, Congress rushes to affect a flag burning ban; or a same-sex marriage ban; or a ban against protests at military cemeteries.
Irrelevance. Political grandstanding. Subservience.
This country isnt a democracy simply because we *say* it's a democracy. How can it be a true democracy when those in power represent the interests of a tiny slice of the people? And if this isn't a true democracy, how can we claim to be in a war to 'bring democracy' elsewhere?
U.S. politicians are, for the most part, puppets of their corporate paymasters; they serve those who can afford them.
Was the tightening of bankruptcy laws for you, the people, or for big business? Was the fight to shed estate taxes for the working (or even the dwindling middle) classes, or for the super-rich?
Let's stop this rap about 'democracy'. How about plutocracy (rule of the rich); or aristocracy (rule of the elites); or kleptocracy (rule of thieves?).
Surely we can come up with something.
[Source: Gibbon, Edward, *The History of the Fall and Decline of the Roman Empire* (Abridged ed.) (London: Penguin Classics, 2000) [orig. publ. 1776/1731-88).]
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
**please** contact as many publications and information outlets as
you possibly can to run Mumia's commentaries (on-line and
**especially off-line**)!! The only requirements are that you run
them *unedited*, with every word including copyright information
intact, and send a copy of the publication to Mumia and/or ICFFMAJ.
THANK YOU!!!
Keep updated by reading ACTION ALERTS!!
at http://www.mumia.org, http://www.onamove.com/ and their links.
========================================
To download Mp3's of Mumia's commentaries visit
http://www.prisonradio.org or http://www.fsrn.org
==============================================>
The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!
PLEASE CONTACT:
International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ
P.O. Box 19709
Philadelphia, PA 19143
Phone - 215-476-8812/ Fax - 215-476-6180
E-mail - icffmaj@aol.com
AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!
Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370
WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!
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16 Jul 2006
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7 comments:
As to your taste in writing, that is subjective. A writer who is as predictable and so slavishly dedicated to the party line as Jamal is might not be so celebrated.
Onto MOVE. You are clearly just repeating what you have heard FROM MOVE, a hardly credible source.
To find out more about the cult visit http://antimove.blogspot.com
and http://themoveorganization.com
There is a long history of media disinformation and dirty tricks look at how the panthers and Judi Bari (Earth First!) were victims of assaults from FBI.
Malcom X didn't die from falling of his moped.
America is the world's largest prison, I didn't like what happened in Waco, despite agreeing that David Koresh was bad news.
Ask the average Britain whether the USA has human rights and I doubt you will get a positive reply.
Mumia clearly is good news and a very impressive writer to boot...
A long history does not a case make. Facts on the other hand do. You address nothing from my response. EF and Judi Bari have nothing to do with Mumia and MOVE.
Malcom X was shot down by his former comrades. What is your point?
Human Rights? MOVE abuses it's children, it abused it's neighbors, shot and killed a police officer and on and on...
America is the worlds largest prison? So that is why so many people are trying to get here to work and become citizens...
Mumia is bad news. He brings discredit upon the anti-death penalty movement and is clearly guilty of shooting a Philly cop. There is nothing good about that.
As for his writing skills. He is a hack, a tool, at best.
Mumia's trial was full of holes but even if it was factual I can't see how this would have led to first degree murder (planned premedidated murder), even if the MOVE people killed a policemen in 1978 (the evidence here is entirely absent) why are eight of them still in prison now!
Why did the FBI fire bomb a MOVE household?
You may want to look up the phrase cointelpro...
I will continue to publish MUMIA he seems to have more to say than most columnists
I can't count how many dictators, generals, cut-throats, have been kicked out of their home countries, and found refuge in the U.S. One final note about 'harboring terrorists'.... more people have been taught torture techniques in the U.S. School of the Americas (since renamed), than in any dusty camp in Afghanistan. Latin Americans call the school,la escuela la escuela de golpes de Estado: coup d'état school.
http://www.counterpunch.org/cruz06262006.html
Full of holes? The ballistics, eyewitnesses, and the defendants all point to Jamal's guilt. Get a clue and actually investigate the case. I spent nearly a decade defending Jamal and wish I could say that he was innocent, but you can wish your fiction is true all you want, but it wont make it true.
And the case against the MOVE 9 was even stronger. They were seen shooting from the basement, the bullet that killed Ramp was linked conclusively to a gun purchased by a MOVE member, MOVE's own children told police that MOVE fired because the police wouldn't, the vast majority of witnesses non-police included said the first shots came from the MOVE compound, for months MOVE had been telling the police that if they acted against the cult that they would be killed...
The FBI did not drop a bomb on MOVE. The Philly PD did and it was done after a day long battle in which MOVE refused to vacate the house that they had been shooting out of and hiding behind there children. A bad thing to do on the part of the police, but lets not forget who started this whole thing, your friends MOVE.
And if you were the expert on MOVE you seem to want to claim to be you would already know these things
Mumia's trial was full of holes but even if it was factual I can't see how this would have led to first degree murder (planned premedidated murder), even if the MOVE people killed a policemen in 1978 (the evidence here is entirely absent) why are eight of them still in prison now!
I have cited sources but notice you don't answer these points and of course I would refer you to the Alice Walker essay.
This is not to condone the yelping of fifty to sixty dogs in the middle of the night, dogs MOVE people rescued from the streets (and probable subsequent torture in 'scientific' laboratories), fed, and permitted to sleep in their house. Nor to condone the bullhorn they used to air their neighbors' 'backwardness' or political transgressions, as apparently they had a bad habit of doing. From what I read, MOVE people were more fanatical than the average neighbors. I probably would not have been able to live next door to them for a day.
The question is: Did they deserve the harassment, abuse, and, finally, the vicious death other people's intolerance of their life style brought upon them?
Every bomb ever made falls on all of us.
And the answer is: No.
Any way I guess as you seem to work full time making sure that Mumia is executed and the rest go to prison I 'm sure you will get back to me?
Maybe if you continue to say that Mumia's trial was full of "holes" that somehow it will make it so. You can keep on trying if it makes you feel better. But until you actually cite some examples you are just spewing more empty rhetoric that is spurned by your political convictions rather than empirical factuality.
I cited some of the mountainous evidence against the "MOVE 9", if you chose to ignore it than that is your problem not mine.
I don't know of any questions you have raised that I haven't answered. If I am remiss in my response please be specific.
Again, MOVE made May 13th happen. They chose to fire at the police and they chose to keep children in the house while they had other residences for the children to reside in. I already made it clear that I believe the police did not react appropriately that day. How many other ways do you want me to say it?
But again, MOVE sought the confrontation and got what they were asking for. These people effectively murdered their own children and killed themselves.
Again, also, if you had clue one what you were talking about you would know that the city tried for years to ignore MOVE, but was forced to act only after years of MOVE's terroizing it's neighbors, fortifying their home, and threatening to kill the mayor.
And if you had actually taken any time to read my blog you would know that I am opposed to the death penalty.
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