Mumias Columns & Prison Radio comments

[col. writ. 4/18/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 The incipient, yet growing protests at Philadelphia’s Temple University around the governance of its highly-prized African Studies Dept. is not about academic freedom, nor about departmental regulations and proper protocol, although it has been couched in such terms.
It’s about something far more fundamental.
It’s about power.
The power of institutions and the power of memory.
In many ways, Temple’s African Studies department […]

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[col. writ. 4/15/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 When we speak of ‘freedom of the press’, one of the promises of the Constitution’s 1st Amendment, we usually do so with an air of self-praise and self-applause.
Alexis de Tocqueville, one of the greatest observers of America, saw this feature of this nation, and criticized it in his classic 1835 work, Democracy in America.
But the Constitution speaks to the […]

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[col. writ. 4/14/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not big on my birthday.
Many years, I forget it entirely.
So, don’t expect a big birthday speech.
But, every so often, I think of a birthday that is hard to forget.
It’s April 24th, 1996, when the President of the United States signed into law an act known as the AEDPA (or Anti-terrorism Effective Death […]

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[col. writ. 4/12/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
  The North Korean military announce a series of missile tests, implicitly suggesting some will (may) be nuclear.
The U.S. press dusts of its red banner headlines and reporters pose as armchair psychiatrists who dutifully diagnose North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong-Un, as crazy.
Sound familiar?
Over a decade ago, the same forces deemed Iraq’s president, Saddam Hussein, a clever and able politician, […]

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[col. writ. 4/10/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 It is one of the ironies of history that the descendants of the beleaguered Warsaw Ghetto in Poland, subjected to the bitter hatreds and repression of the Nazis, have established an entire sea of the oppressed and impoverished on their periphery: the open-air prison ghettoes of Palestine: Gaza and the West Bank.
There, in full view of the world, is […]

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[col. writ. 4/10/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 The issue of immigration is boiling hot in America.
Every potential presidential candidate has an opinion; and, if necessary, will find another one if s/he thinks it can get him/her a few more Latino votes.
But, ultimately, too many politicians are locked into US fear and hatred of Mexicans – so the issue is in a stalemate.
It is ironic that most […]

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[col. writ. 4/7/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 It would be easy, considering American history, to describe this country as ‘warlike’.
And while such a description would be technically correct, it would be misleading, for it ignores the social forces which drive men to war.
For chief among those forces is the media, as it provides the narrative, which focuses the rationale for war. Secondarily is the role of […]

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Hallo,
am 4. April wurde Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis, Tennessee
ermordet. Ein Jahr zuvor hatte er in New Yorks Riverside Church am 4.
April 1967 seine berühmte „Beyond Vietnam“ Rede gehalten, in der er den
Krieg und Rassismus der US Regierung scharf angegriffen hatte.
Mumia nahm am 4. April 2013 eine Rede für die Gedenkveranstaltung in der
Riverside Church unter dem Titel „Honoring the Radical MLK“ auf, welche
als Tonbeitrag […]

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[col. writ. 3/27/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 The brilliant light of a Nigerian master-writer has gone out, and the world is poorer for it.
Chinua Achebe, whose stunning novel, Things Fall Apart, opened the doorway to the voices traditional, ancestral Africa, has returned to the Essence after a long life of literature, politics, scholarship and strife.
His first novel told the searing tale of the entry of British […]

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[col. writ. 3/23/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 The story is quite recent, and therefore, much is not known.
A state prison system commissioner opens his front door, and is greeted by flame and bullets.
A grieving governor (John Hickenlooper-Dem.) laments the killing of his friend, and initial reports suggest that the state’s highest prison official met his end because of a tiff with a disgruntled Saudi Arabian citizen […]

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[col. writ. 3/22/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 There is something so wonderful and terrible about the spectacle of U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama on the world’s stage.
Wonderful, as he is a Black man at the very pinnacle of political power; terrible, too, in that his immense talents are put at the service of the Empire.
When he speaks in an eloquence so sorely lacking from his predecessor, […]

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[col. writ. 3/20/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 If my prison source is correct, Black liberation fighter, imprisoned intellectual, historian and now book author, Russell ‘Maroon” Shoatz, has been transferred from the dungeons of SCI Greene – and he is in the ‘hole’ of SCI Mahanoy in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
Maroon, who has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the longest –held-in-the-‘hole’ prisoner in Pennsylvania – nearly 36 years! […]

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[col. writ. 3/8/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 The death of Venezuelan President, Hugo Chávez has brought out the malicious and carnal glee of the corporate press, who report, breathlessly, not only on his mortal passing, but an end to the Bolivarian Revolution.
 They are the voices of their vampire, Wall Street bosses, who delight in owning more of the earth, no matter how much misery they may […]

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[col. Writ. 3/5/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
 He came from humble beginnings –from among the teeming millions in Venezuelan poverty – and joined the army as much to make a living as to serve the people.
He and a group of mid-level military officers staged an unsuccessful coup in February 1992 against the corrupt regime of President Carlos Andres Perez.
In 4 years, the man who led the […]

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[col. writ. 3/] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
The late U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice, William Rehnquist, once opined, “In times of war, the law is silent.”
That is to say, as is the State’s supreme executive power, the courts will neither interfere nor restrict nor limit that power.
And although Rehnquist has been gone from the court and life for 8 years, his dictum remains.
For in the recent […]

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