MUMIA for PRESIDENT!

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MUMIA in 2008!

Uprising Radio Interviews Mumia

Uprising Radio - a new addition to the 'Radio' section of our blogroll - featured an 'interview' of Mumia Abu Jamal on their 1 August broadcast. Questions on the death penalty, sports, the state of journalism, and the capitalist press were recorded and presented to Mumia, which he answered and returned. Listen by clicking here or on the post title:

In a follow-up to our story in May about the case of Mumia Abu Jamal being heard by the 3rd Circuit US Court of Appeals, we present an interview with the man himself. Abu Jamal has been in prison for over two decades for the murder of Daniel Faulkner, a white police officer in Philadelphia. He enjoys widespread support among grassroots groups in the US and internationally. He has written several books, including Live From Death Row, Death Blossoms, and We Want Freedom. Abu Jamal also regularly records radio commentaries through Prison Radio which you hear often on Uprising and other Pacifica programs. I recently had the opportunity to present him with a series of questions through radio producer Noelle Hanrahan who runs Prison Radio.org. Mumia recorded his answers to my questions via telephone from prison. Here is a edited version of our “conversation.”

Special thanks to Noelle Hanrahan for coordinating and recording this interview.

GUESTS: Ward Churchill, Ramona Africa, Volker Ratzmann, interviewed by Hans Bennett

Hans Bennett is a journalist based in Philadelphia and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia. He attended the May 18th 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals Hearing of Mumia’s case. The hearing was attended by many high-profile supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal. In the moments after the hearing ended Hans Bennett interviewed Ward Churchill, Ramona Africa, and German Parliamentarian, Volker Ratzmann.

For more information about the movement to support Mumia Abu Jamal, visit the Mumia homepage.

To listen to Mumia’s Prison Radio Commentaries, visit Prison Radio.

Release POCC Minister of Defense Aaron Patterson Today!

Earlier today, Uncle Sam held a sentencing hearing for Political Prisoner Aaron Patterson in Chicago.

Stephanie Joy Tisdale summarizes the trumped-up case against Patterson in The Liberator:

Aaron Patterson’s journey with the political structure of Chicago began in April 1986, when an elderly couple was stabbed to death and he was arrested as a possible suspect... Patterson was tortured during his “interrogation”—including severe beatings and suffocation... [He] etched into a bench while in police custody: “Aaron 4/30 I lie about murders. Police threaten me with violence. Slapped and suffocated me with plastic. No lawyer or dad. No phone. Signed false statement to murders.” (Ironically, the message would remain in the bench close to 20 years later and would help to further prove that Patterson was, in fact, tortured)....

“Chicago is the torture capital,” says Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. “Chicago’s Area 2 Violent Crimes Unit is called the ‘House of Screams’ due to the torture of prisoners including everything from electric shock on sexual organs to being hand-cuffed to radiators and doused with water.” The chief coordinator of Area 2 was Lt. Jon Burge “who’s name came to stand for police brutality” (Chicago Tribune). Burge was a military policeman during the Vietnam War and later joined the Chicago Police force. He was fired in February 1993 after being implicated for the torture of Andrew Wilson in 1982. Subsequently, more than 100 victims came forward with allegations of torture by Burge or his subordinates: Aaron Patterson was one of them. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s Jon Burge, fresh out of Vietnam, extorted “confessions” from detainees using tactics like suffocation with typewriter covers, the use of cattle prods, electric shocks, beatings and "Russian Roulette..." In 1990, after years of complaints and public pressure, a formal investigation of Burge and his detectives finally took place and he was let go. To date, Jon Burge resides in Florida where he receives a pension and benefits.

A pension & benefits for a sadistic torturer? Now that's Vanilla Justice! Tisdale continues:

As the case against Burge defined itself, Cook County State's Atty. Richard Devine attempted to bribe Patterson and others—offering to reduce their sentences if they admitted guilt and dropped their claims against Burge. Patterson refused, stating in a Chicago Tribune interview: “Much as I'd like to get out of here, I'm going to stay until we get this thing right. I'm pretty much certain they know now I didn't do it, but they're trying to wiggle their way out of it... But I'm not so frantic that I just want to get out. If you're innocent, you've got to make your stand..."

Aaron Patterson would remain on death row until January 2003, when Illinois Gov. George Ryan pardoned him and three other death row inmates on the grounds that their confessions were a result of police torture... Upon release, Patterson became a central figure in the campaign to expose Burge and the impropriety of the Chicago political structure....

Patterson continued to advocate on behalf of tortured prisoners and victims of the Chicago political structure, many of whom remained on death row. He would go on to file a civil suit (which is still pending) and to run for office, while also working as the Minister of Defense for the POCC. “Aaron ran for State Representative in the 2nd District and on his platform he used the African Anti-Terrorism Bill,” says Chairman Fred. And that is when things took a turn for the worse..."

“Operation Revolving Door” was launched that same day by Joe Gorman, Jr... which would result in the arrest of Aaron Patterson in August 2004. The charge: attempt to purchase weapons and narcotics from an undercover informant... Since then, Aaron Patterson has been incarcerated based on the testimony of police informant Mario Fox, who was himself incarcerated for cocaine possession and subsequently released from jail in order to work as an informant.

Aaron Patterson’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 20th, 2007. It is important to remember that Aaron Patterson was pardoned in 2003 and released from jail only to be rearrested (on hearsay) less than two years later... As with Mumia Abu-Jamal and so many unjustly incarcerated individuals, Aaron Patterson needs and requires our support, our energy and our commitment to freedom for all.

Send love to Aaron Patterson:
Aaron Patterson
ID # 21664424
Metropolitan Correctional Center
71 West Van Buren
Chicago, IL 60605

FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS

Flashpoints Exposes Uncle Sam's Treachery

Monday's edition of Flashpoints is a must-listen:

The Knight Report opens the show. Robert Knight reported on Uncle Sam's Genocide in Iraq and the latest statement from the Iraqi National Resistance in which its leader, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, pledged "jihad and escalating jihad, until the last soldier of the enemy flees the land of Iraq." Al-Douri went on to announce that, "your enemy is collapsing and is being defeated, so are its followers, agents and spies as a result of your giant jihadi march."

Knight's report details Uncle Sam's failed military campaign, his attempted oil seizure, his quisling government, and a possible Turkish invasion of Northern Iraq.

While we see a high body count among Iraqi civilians - one of Uncle Sam's objectives - we see little in terms of military progress or military success. In the face of this news, Uncle Sam had a Wet Dream in which Iraq became like Apartheid Israel:

In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks.

The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it's not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that's a good indicator of success that we're looking for in Iraq.

Nora Barrows-Friedman knows all about Zionist "responsibilities" to Uncle Sam. She spoke with Unembedded Journalist Dahr Jamail.

While Apartheid Israel has been Uncle Sam's chief WarOn Terrorist in his Holy Crusade for Petroleum, Europe has served as Apartheid Israel's midwife and Nanny so that Vanilla Zionists can Genocide Palestine.

Uncle Sam, Apartheid Israel, and Europe: the Vanilla Entente!

Sam wants Genocide in Iraq, and the testimony Jamail has gathered from Iraq demonstrates just how similar Sam's Genocide and the Genocide in Palestine really are.

After Jamail's interview, Dennis Bernstein reports on another kind of Ethnic Cleansing taking place in San Francisco's Historic Mission District, where Vanilla Snitches serve as the shock-troops for Uncle Sam's WarOn Immigrants.

Bernstein also interviews John Ross concerning the ongoing battle taking place in Mexico over WarOn Commie Felipe Calderon's 2006 coup.

Finally, JR of the The Block Report interviews the parents of an unarmed 15-year-old shot through the face from behind on 3 July by the Oakland Pigs.

Of course this has nothing to do the the youngster's relation to Richard O'Neal of the San Francisco Eight, a group of Black Panthers framed up on Torture-Induced confessions.

Predictably, Oakland's Pigs assert without evidence that the boy was armed with multiple guns and using drugs.

Vanilla Justice!

"What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?
by Frederick Douglass
July 5, 1852

"What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence?"

Fellow-citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here to-day? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been tom from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

READ THE WHOLE SPEECH

A Modest Proposal for 2008:MUMIA for PRESIDENT!

We at Savage Justice have followed the 2008 elections with a passing degree of amusement.

Uncle Sam's electoral campaigns chiefly test a man's ability to beg for Corporate Welfare Checks, and it's remarkable to see how low men will go in order to grovel. When it's all over, the winner usually becomes the next ShellGame Despot chosen by Uncle Sam to augment his historical legacy of imperialist pillage and slaughter.

Within such a rigged system, the main task for a revolutionary must be to highlight the contradictions and hypocrisy embedded within it. The degree of success or failure in achieving this objective, and not just the number of votes, serves as the measure of ones effectiveness during a bourgeois campaign.

For many years, millions and millions of people, awake to Uncle Sam's ShellGame Politricks, have sought an alternative to and concrete negation of that system, but had no candidate with an organic connection between themselves and the masses of people. Perhaps because Uncle Sam assassinated so many of the best young leaders. Perhaps for other reasons as well.

A campaign that puts Mumia at its head could reverse that.

Mumia Abu-Jamal makes manifest Uncle Sam's blatant hypocrisy on Human Rights and Press Freedom. His forced captivity calls attention to the plight of the countless Political Prisoners languishing in Uncle Sam's Concentration Camps and Torture Chambers. And his innocence exposes the Vanilla Justice that locked him up in the first place.

Any campaign must call attention to the racist Death Penalty and to the plight of the poor on Uncle Sam's Plantation. Any campaign must call attention to the plight of Black New Orleans, which none of dwarfs has done except except as a PR stunt (right HairDo?).

And of course, any campaign must stand in Solidarity with the Bolivarian Revolution, along with the Palestinians and the Iraqis dying daily by the dozens thanks to Uncle Sam's unquenchable thirst for bloodshed and plunder.

The entire cadre of tools standing for coronation refuses to reverse any of this now. They will refuse even less in the future.

The Left has a choice to make: Ralph Nader, his coronated successor, Bill Moyers, and the myriad other Left candidates all perform a needed service in mounting a challenge to the two-party system. Do they have the power and charisma to captivate the spirit and imagination of the people that Mumia does?

These other campaigns are no better financially than a yet-conceived Mumia campaign, which has the potential to be self-sustaining thanks to people's already-existing deep connection with him.

Uncle Sam will release Mumia under only one circumstance: the development of a collective popular will that demands it. Could that demand be made any clearer than through such a campaign? Wouldn't a powerful and organized campaign make murdering Mumia more difficult?

I cannot think of a more brazen or concrete way of exposing and articulating Uncle Sam's hypocrisy of thought, word, and deed than by lifting up Mumia Abu-Jamal as a political leader: a new Mandella! A campaign such as this one - with such potential to unify - could arouse the imagination and catalyze a movement that makes his release one act among many that strikes directly into the heart of Vanilla Justice!

MUMIA in 2008!