The A F James MacArthur Case

AF James MacArthur is an independent journalist with "The Baltimore Spectator." He was reporting on police brutality in Baltimore when he was arrested on very tenuous charges. It is evident that police, like most perpetrators of violence, don't like the spotlight to be on them. Was MacArthur arrested because of his hard hitting exposes of police abuse in Baltimore? Is he perhaps Baltimore's Mumia Abu Jamal? (Recall that Mumia was arrested following his extensive reporting of police brutality by Philadelphia  cops.)

Why should indy journalists like MacArthur, who serve as a bulwark to abuse of power by all three branches of government, given the yellow journalism spouted by the major (corporate) media outlets, be targets for harassment, abuse, and detention--as if this were a Third World Country? These are some of the questions to be tackled at this event.

On Thursday, December 20, friends of MacArthur will vigil outside the detention center where he is being held during rush hour, to draw attention to his plight. A brief press conference will also be held.

Please bring candles and signs saying "Free MacArthur" (or other relevant signs of your choosing).

MacArthur's Baltimore Spectator may be viewed here:

 http://baltimorespectator.com/

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Case details:

MacArthur was reporting from the scene of various police brutality incidents. He used very rudimentary equipment, including a laptop, a microphone, speakers, and maybe one or two other pieces of portable equipment. But his radio program, which can be accessed through his webpage (http://baltimorespectator.com/) had garnered a large audience, partially in response to concerns about and dearth of reporting on police brutality. (MacArthur's past programs are still archived there, and the most recent one, which he recorded just prior to his recent arrest, appears on the main page). In the process, he earned the wrath of the police. As he explains in his last broadcast, he experienced a break-in at his house (around 3:00 AM) one day. He called 9-11 (after getting the situation under control with a firearm he legally owned). The police arrived, did not pursue any suspect, but instead arrested him on gun charges. This occurred despite the fact that he was in his own house for the duration of that incident.

Resultant from this concocted incident, there was an outstanding warrant for MacArthur's arrest. He learned of the warrant as a result of an anonymous tip (he frequently received anonymous tips). As he said in his last broadcast, he had--upon receiving the tip--planned to surrender to the authorities, but given his role as muckraking journalist and the concomitant past gross violations of his rights by police, he wanted to make sure he informed the right people (and enough of them) to look out for him while he was gone--prior to making his surrender.

Before he could surrender, SWAT teams surrounded his house. In fact, they cordoned off the entire block where he lived, creating a situation so volatile that he feared for his life. Somehow, he remained calm, speaking via telephone to them from inside his house, all the while broadcasting the negotiation of his freedom over the Baltimore Spectator. He criticized police mis-use of resources, pointing out that while his house and block were cordoned off as if he were public enemy no. 1, drug running, rapes, robberies, and the like continued unabated in the area. He told them they were blackballing him to his neighbors, that his neighbors would never trust him again, and that they (the police) were ruining his life, as they have done to so many other innocent Baltimore natives.

They asked him why--if he were aware of the outstanding warrant--he didn't voluntarily surrender on his own terms to prevent the current situation. He reminded them it was a Saturday night, that it was next to impossible to reach counsel on the weekend, and that he would rather not spend the weekend locked up. After a few hours of this, he surrendered and was taken to Central Booking.

The police did not have a warrant to enter his house, and he made very clear that he did not want them there, out of fear that evidence would be planted to incriminate him. This may be exactly what happened, because they entered, searched the premises, and claimed to have found a sawed off shotgun there. MacArthur supporters say the weapon was planted there. Some go to the extent of saying it was the same gun which was confiscated from him in the earlier incident, but sawed off and then returned to his property to incriminate him (since a sawed off weapon carries a heavy penalty). He remains in custody at Baltimore's infamous Central Booking, and is being denied bail. Attempts are being made by local corporate media and others to paint this courageous, cutting edge journalist as mentally unstable--although his broadcasts clearly indicate otherwise--and it is likely he will be sent for psychiatric evaluation at Springfield or another detention facility for the mentally afflicted. He is scheduled for a hearing January 4.

The Malalal Yousafzai Shooting Story Reaks of a Pakistani Army Press Release

By Nadrat Siddique

 

Nearly all U.S. corporate media are regurgitating virtually the same set of “facts” on the shooting of Pakistani 14-year old Malalal Yousafzai.

 

Although the event is not far in the past, there are many disparities in the story which shed doubt on its authenticity: One corporate media report mentions the gunmen as being masked. Another says they were bearded. It is unclear how facial hair would be evident on a masked individual.

According to an October 10 BBC report, “One report, citing local sources, says a bearded gunman stopped a car full of schoolgirls, and asked for Malala Yousafzai by name, before opening fire. But a police official also told BBC Urdu that unidentified gunmen opened fire on the schoolgirls as they were about to board a van or bus.”

 

Also worth noting is the vice-like embrace in which Paki government officials have placed this particular girl--or more importantly her story, a story which serves to discredit their opposition. Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said: "We have to fight the mindset that is involved in this. We have to condemn it... Malala is like my daughter, and yours too. If that mindset prevails, then whose daughter would be safe?" No Paki official offered similar support to the Jamia Hafsa women when their Islamic university was attacked by Pakistani troops in 2007.

 

Even more oddly, the chief of the Pakistan army, General Ashfaq Kayani, has taken great personal interest in the girl. According to the October 10 Guardian, the “powerful military chief has put himself at the centre of a national outrage over the attempted murder” of Malalal. He went to the extent of visiting her personally in the hospital. One wonders what army chief has time or wherewithal to do that. In a statement viewed as highly cynical by those aware of the Pakistan army’s multifarious human rights abuses, he said, "The cowards who attacked Malala and her fellow students, have shown time and again how little regard they have for human life and how low they can fall in their cruel ambition to impose their twisted ideology." (Reuters, October 10)

 

Over and over, the U.S.-funded Pakistani military has been discredited for their extreme barbarism and complete disregard for human rights and the Geneva Conventions. They are viewed as collaborators with the U.S. and NATO by vast segments of the Pakistani population.

In October 2010, the Pakistan military was reported to have shot 250 Taliban prisoners. To shoot a girl such as Malala Yousafzai would not be beyond such a force.

 

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/01/new-video-appears-to-show-abuse-of-prisoners-by-pakistani-soldiers/

 

They have also collaborated with the U.S. in the killing of hundreds of civilians. Waziristan native Noor Beharam, who has repeatedly risked his life documenting the deaths of women and children, believes that 670 women have been killed by drone strikes. He has taken photos of more than 100 children, their bodies often unrecognizable as human after the strikes.

 

http://www.alternet.org/world/murder-skies-us-creating-new-enemies-where-there-were-none

 

The Pakistan military showed its prowess in media manipulation and propaganda dissemination in the course of the 2007 Lal Masjid siege, when they banned all independent media from the besieged area.

 

This writer would not put it beyond the Pakistan army to have sent one of their own to shoot Malalal. It would be a perfect red herring against the increasingly organized opposition to its human rights abuses and to the U.S. drone strikes in which it is complicit.

 

Ehsanullah Ehsan, Taliban spokesman, ostensibly claimed responsibility for the attack on behalf of the group. Anyone could call the Pakistani media, claim to be Ehsan, and assume responsibility on behalf of his organization in order to discredit it.

 

It is also possible that the action is the work of one or two misguided individuals. They may have conducted the action without the advance knowledge of the Taliban leadership. The TPP is a very large organization, with broad public support among the people of the frontier, and particularly of Swat, where the Pak army has terrorized the population over an extended period of time. Once the deed was done, they may have unthinkingly accepted their organization’s role in it. But was the action sanctioned by the top leadership, and approved in advance of the fact? Where are the interviews with the Taliban leadership to ascertain this fact? The corporate media, in keeping with their role as war time propagandists have conducted no such interviews.

Imagine if a shooting was conducted by a Jewish or White Supremacist gunman. It is extremely unlikely that any and the organizations affiliated with him would be immediately condemned. In this case, however, that is exactly what has happened. And the TPP, which seems notoriously lacking in its communication with the media, has allowed itself to be linked with a single heinous act, and therefore discredited.

 

Interestingly, only the VOA report of October 10 does not credit the Taliban with the girl's shooting. The VOA is highly regarded as the overt U.S. government propaganda organ by independent news analysists and thinkers.

 

The contradictions in detail of the attackers; the fact that Hillary Clinton, the U.S. State Department, the President of Pakistan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, and the Pakistan Army Chief all went out of their way to condemn the attack when they have yet to do so in a single one of the killings of women and children by U.S. drones or by their Pak army lackeys; and the absence of any detailed interview with the Taliban are all very suspect to an analytical mind. Regardless of who accepted responsibility afterwards, might the shooting be a Pakistan army/intelligence action? I would not be at all surprised if the "details" picked up by all the major media organs stemmed from a Pakistan army press release. The specter of a young girl being murdered by a force endemic to a country and fighting a foreign occupier is perfect wartime propaganda to deflect the war crimes of the occupier.

Baltimore Shomrein Trial Verdict Sends a Clear Message: Black Children May be Treated with Impunity

No Protest from Black Bourgeoise Organizations

 

By Nadrat Siddique and David Wiggins

 

Baltimore, MD

May 3, 2012

 

New Trend readers might recall that in November 2010, a black boy, surnamed Ausby, was beaten in the Park Heights neighborhood of Baltimore by adult males from the Shomrein Jewish militia while walking between school and home. The Shomrein militia was established with the approval of local authorities. It runs a patrol in the upscale Jewish part of Park Heights, adjacent to the adjoining Black neighborhood of the same name. The Jewish part is said to house many current and former members of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), who are duel Israeli and U.S. nationals, and like the Werdesheims, travel back and forth to “Israel.”

 

Initial charges against the Werdesheims were: 1. First Degree Assault; 2. Second Degree Assault; 3. Reckless Endangerment of a Minor; 4. Possession of a Dangerous Weapon Intent to Injure; 5. False imprisonment. This was before Jewish attorney Gregg Bernstein entered the scene.

 

Then, Bernstein came into office as State’s Attorney. His first act was to drop all felony charges against the Werdesheim brothers. His second act was to prosecute two black men, Travers and Tremayne Johnson, for setting a pittbull on fire in Baltimore. That case ultimately resulted in acquittal. Not surprisingly, many of Baltimore’s black residents viewed both decisions as examples of the Zionist attorney’s racial bias.

 

The Werdesheim brothers were permitted six postponements. The elder Werdesheim was permitted to vacation in Israel with his fiancée pending trial—something few (perhaps no) defendants of color on trial are permitted to do—with the express approval of the victim's lawyer. That attorney, a blackman named J. Wyndal Gordon, also represented John Allen Muhammad. On his watch, Muhammad was put to death, an odd contrast from Mumia Abu Jamal and many others who remain on death row for decades.

Today, the remaining three (misdemeanor) charges were dropped against 22-year old Avi Werdesheim. The most serious of the three misdemenor charges against 24-year old former Israeli Defense Special forces member Eliyahu Werdesheim were dismissed by the judge. The decisions were handed down by presiding Judge Pamela J. White, since the Werdesheims had requested a trial by judge, and not by jury. Eliyahu was subsequently convicted only of the two most insignificant misdemeanor charges, reckless endangerment and false imprisonment.

 

All told, 8 out of ten charges were dropped or resulted in acquittal; only two charges resulted in conviction.

The two other alleged defendants--other than Avi and Eliyahu Werdesheim--were never brought to the fore or charged. And—although there was strong evidence that the attack was a hate crime, this fact was never hinted at for the duration of the trial.

 

Most oddly, the $6.5 million civil lawsuit about which the Ausby’s mother was initally adamant, was dropped. Given that Eliyahu Werdesheim has his own security company here in Baltimore, and his IDF Special Forces training, the possibility that the victim’s family were intimidated into dropping the suit cannot be discounted.

 

The case also exposes the collusion between the Black bourgeoisie and the ruling Zionist Jews in Baltimore. The Baltimore chapters of the National Action Network, the SCLC, and the NAACP, while vocifereously protesting the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida, repeatedly failed to make the connection between the two cases, and hence the opportunity to make both more relevant to Baltimore’s disenfranchised Black population.

 

J. Wyndal Gordon, the black attorney representing the Ausby family, said “I was quite pleased with the verdict. In fact, I predicted it,” he said. (Jewish Times, May 3, 2012) Discussing the family’s decision to drop the civil suit, he said, "No amount of money can give someone back their peace of mind. We’re happy about having closure. What’s best for [the victim] now is to put all of this behind him and move on with his life.”

 

And, as reparations activists, and others fighting for the rights of Black people in the U.S., well know, “Moving on with one’s life,” “Letting bygones be bygones,” or characterizing an unaddressed wrong as being“in the past,” is terminology used by the White Supremacist power structure and its representatives in ensuring its design is permitted to continue and for its victims to shut up and put up. Jewish victims of the Holocaust, for example, are never expected to “move on with their lives” or to put things behind them.

 

The verdict is a clear testament to the existence of a two-tiered justice system, and of the collusion between Baltimore Zionists and the Baltimore Black bourgeoisie which allow it to be perpetuated.  The verdict is a slap in the face to all people of color. We might as well go back to the slave docks.

Occupy for Mumia

Washington, DC

April 24, 2012

 

Activists marked political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal's 58th birthday and 29th year behind bars with a protest billed as "Occupy the Justice Department/ Occupy for Mumia." The action also nearly coincided with the April 23 birthday of Marshall "Eddie" Conway, a leader of the Black Panther leader in Baltimore who has been held political prisoner by the state of Maryland for 43 years, drawing some of his supporters to the rally.

 

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Background

Mumia was a member of the Black Panther Party until 1970, and a journalist of great integrity, known for reporting police brutality and other government abuses in the Philadelphia area. He was also a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization, a revolutionary naturalist group based in the heart of Philadelphia. MOVE  advocates a holistic existence for all people--a drug-free, alcohol free, environmentalist lifestyle, emphasizing self-sufficiency, self-respect, and discipline--something anathema to Philadelphia's ruling racists. As a consequence, the organization became the target of a very long-ranging campaign of annihilation by the Philadelphia authorities. That campaign culminated in the May 13, 1985 raid and aerial bombardment of the house habited by MOVE members on Philadelphia's Osage Avenue. The firebombings and police shootings resulted in the murders of 11 men, women, and children, and the jailing of Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor. And it destroyed 61 surrounding homes.

 

Mumia's writings and his ongoing support for MOVE evidently propelled him into the government crosshairs, because in late 1981, he was linked to the shooting of a Philadelphia police officer, William Faulkner. In 1982, Mumia was convicted following very questionable trial proceedings, including the retention of the presiding judge, Sabo, who reportedly stated "Yeah, and I’m going to help them fry the nigger" (a reference to Mumia, reported in an affidavit by a court stenographer), and witnesses who later said they were pressured into testifying in a manner that favored the prosecution. Following three short weeks of jury deliberation, Mumia was sentenced to the death penalty. Undaunted, he continued to criticize U.S. government repression, authoring six books, hundreds of articles, and radio broadcasts from death row. Extremely well-informed and articulate, he spoke and wrote earnestly against U.S. imperialist adventures abroad, including the Iraq war and AFRICOM. He earned the support of Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Toni Morrison, and other notables, who variously called for inquiries into his unjust incarceration, appeals, or freedom for the jailed journalist. In 2012, after years of pressure from his supporters, Mumia's death penalty sentence was dropped, and the sentence commuted to life in prison.

 

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On the bright sunny morning of April 24, the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal (ICFFMAJ) and the MOVE organization spearheaded a rally for Mumia at the Department of Justice. Friends of MOVE, Decarcerate PA, Students Against Mass Incarceration, DC Troy Davis, the National Jericho Movement, Occupy DC, Occupy Baltimore, the Rebel Diaz Arts Collective, Workers World Party, the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, the All Peoples Congress, the Baltimore Black Think Tank, Jamaat al-Muslimeen, Bradley Manning supporters, and many other groups and individuals came together in one of the most energetic actions for a political prisoner held in Washington, DC, to date. The protestors heard Johanna Fernandez (outspoken Mumia supporter and professor from Baruch-CUNY); King Downing (American Friends Service Committee); Pam Africa (Minister of Confrontation of MOVE, and Chairwoman of ICFFMAJ); Ramona Africa (MOVE); Br. Abdul (MOVE organization; he read Mumia's deeply poignant statement penned for the occasion); Chuck D, Dead Prez, Jasiri X, Rebel Diaz, and Jay Sun--all politically conscious hip-hop artists known for their support of Mumia and other political prisoners; Mauri Saalakhan (Peace and Justice Foundation); Laila Yaghi (Free Ziyad Yaghi Campaign); Imam Khalil Rahman (Imam Al-Jamil supporter); Mumia supporters from France; and others.Around 3:00 pm, protestors left the DOJ for a spirited march through DC's downtown, passing the FBI and CIA buildings, and other landmarks of state repression. The protest culminated in a second rally at the White House, where a police cordon was pulled tighter and tighter around the protestors as some activists, who had pledged to commit civil disobedience, positioned themselves for the action. Twenty-seven activists were arrested and removed to the Anacostia Prison Facility to be booked, protesting for Mumia's freedom.

 

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AfterwardThis Muslim writer marveled at the sight of the predominantly youthful protestors, particularly those conducting civil disobedience, who had come forth to take a stance for unjustly held captives, a command clearly laid out in Islam's Holy Book. It was in stark contrast to "Islam on Capitol Hill," a mass prayer held not so long ago at the U.S. Capitol a short distance away, by the gigolos of the Muslim community, who endeavoring to ally themselves with the power structure, induced their unwitting constituents to do "sajood" (genuflection) to that grotesque symbol of Babylon. As those with Muslim names clamored for ill-sought White House invitations and Presidential Council appointments, inviting the agents of repression into their Islamic Centers and Mosques, the youth at the White House gates on April 24, most of whom were not Muslim by title, walked the path of Christ (AS) and Muhammad (SAW), fighting for the rights of the most oppressed and downtrodden--the political prisoners. What will it take for the rest of us to follow?

 

©2012 by Nadrat Siddique