At Counterpunch, Lynn Washington writes:
“One glaring example is photos of the December 1981 crime scene taken by police investigators that do not show a critical element of the prosecution’s case against Abu-Jamal. The eyewitness testimony of cab driver Robert Chobert was a central pillar of the prosecution’s case against Abu-Jamal but police crime scene photos do not show Chobert’s cab behind the slain officer’s patrol car where prosecutors claimed it was parked when Abu-Jamal killed Officer Daniel Faulkner.
Four police photos capturing different angles of the crime scene contained in the trailer for a forthcoming film about Abu-Jamal’s case do not show Chobert’s cab.
There are only two possible scenarios for the missing cab in those crime scene photos: either police tampered with the crime scene by removing the cab or the cab was never there. Either scenario is a major legal violation warranting a new trial.”
My Comment:
It’s interesting to me how much support from the establishment media Roman Polansky got over irregularities in his trial. That support, although mistakenly easy on Polansky’s crime, was correct. But where is the establishment media on an even worse case – that of Mumia Abu Jamal?
As a side-note, Abu Jamal gave my first book, “The Language of Empire,” an unsolicited endorsement. A thumbs up from someone with that much first hand-knowledge of the prison and judicial system, I must say, pleases me more than approval from the powers that be.
I find it amazing how much anger boils over for a Van Jones (Obama’s supposed Green Czar) or for an Abu Jamal. Yet for the real perpetrators of the biggest heist of the last hundred years, for the diseased greed and rapacity of vast numbers of the upper economic and political echelons, for neocolonial policies that have brought not just the USA but most of the globe to the edge of the abyss, for endless and savage wars fomented behind the sham of peace-keeping and policing, for relentless and shameless expropriation of the labor, creativity, and earnings of ordinary people all over the world, for the sordid complicity of the media in all this, where is the shame? Where is the outrage? Where is the hectoring?
President Obama was in Africa telling governments there to shape up. Well and good. They should. But perhaps he should address his moral sermons to those closer at hand…say, in the White House, and the Pentagon, and Treasury, and the SEC, and the Federal Reserve – which hide fish of a rather larger size.
It seems to me there are a lot of unresolved cases revolving around the Black Panthers — in particular rampant racist and corrupt police abuses and murders. Self-preservation (at least in the short-term — for the current batch of thugs) drives such deception.
Although, I would also posit that part of the reason for a lack of interest in such cases is that the Panthers were a pretty terrible organization. Although ostensibly a reaction to racism and bigotry, they were effectively violent terrorists who explicitly advocated totalitarian-socialism.
(Polansky, on the other hand, didn’t have such a shady history — nor did he hurt anyone — and his case is a pretty charged one that touches upon a very sensitive (and terribly repressed and hypocritical) topic that affects most people. (Sex.) Racism is pretty much extinct, so interest in Jamal’s case from that perspective is also waning.)
The parallels to Obama and white-colar crime in general are stark.
Many good points there but one thing I find incredible.
Racism is extinct?
Racism is alive and well..institutional as well as overt..
When seome races express any opinion that is not fed to them by and unobjectionable to the dominant left-liberal culture – they quickly become sidelined..demonized..or disappeared in a metaphoric sense..
Whites experience brutality and racism too but “whiteness” itself is still a powerful protection…in white neighborhoods..and the corridors of power (financial and political) are still largely white..
Don’t forget that Chinese, Koreans and Japanese are “white” Asians; Russians are whites: even Arabs, while Semitic, are often quite fair skinned.
None of this is supposed to be noticable according to the liberal mindset..
It’s no longer “respectable” to attributed actions to it…which is a polite form of censorship.
But denial doesn’t erase truth.