Killer’s confession surfaces in Mumia case
Presented at May 4, 2001 Philadelphia Press Conference by Mumia Abu-Jamal’s new lawyers, Marlene Kamish and Eliot Lee Grossman:
AFFIDAVIT OF ARNOLD BEVERY
I, ARNOLD R. BEVERLY, state that the following facts are true and correct: I was present when police officer Daniel Faulkner was shot and killed in the early morning hours of December 9, 1981 near the corner of Locust and 13th Streets. I have personal knowledge that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not shoot police officer Faulkner.
I was hired, along with another guy, and paid to shoot and kill Faulkner. I had heard that Faulkner was a problem for the mob and corrupt policemen because he interfered with the graft and payoffs made to allow illegal activity including prostitution, gambling, drugs without prosecution in the center city area. Faulkner was shot in the back and then in the face before Jamal came on the scene. Jamal had nothing to do with the shooting.
The empty death of McVeigh
I wouldn’t call the public discussion that we’ve been subjected to about McVeigh and his motivations debate. Not many facts informed the words that have been said about the whole affair. Mostly people talked past each other. The media carefully avoided acknowledging some things that actually made him look more like a monster.
As an anti-fascist, anarchist, leftist, revolutionary, respecter of human life, and generally nice guy, I’m supposed to be against capital punishment. Generally I am. As much as I am politically against state-murder, the case of Tim McVeigh strains my beliefs. Knowledge of his death came to me like a dirty pleasure.
Free the West Memphis Three
The Murders On the afternoon of May 6, 1993, Steve Branch, Michael Moore and Christopher Byers were found murdered in the woods of Robin Hood Hills in West Memphis. They were found naked, brutally beaten and hog-tied with their own shoelaces at a drainage ditch. Steve and Michael died from their injuries and drowning, and Christopher was stabbed repeatedly, beaten, castrated and bled to death from his wounds. Despite having been found in standing water, swarming with mosquitoes, there were no insect bites found on the bodies.
Bad news bears change tone of media script
A senior vice president at Ameritrade proclaimed that online investing "empowers individuals to take control of their financial lives." Within several months, the Nasdaq composite index nearly doubled. When spring 2000 began, plenty of satisfied new customers were glad to be playing the click-and-invest game.
Now, four seasons later, the Nasdaq is less than half of where it was. Losses have been particularly devastating for many of the investors who'd found the get-with-it advertisements and other media hype too irresistible to resist a year ago.
U.S. - China Dispute: From Other Side of Media Window
One of the ways to test for media slant is to put the shoe on the other foot. A big story this month provides an opportunity for inquiry in the world of intense media spin.
Here are some excerpts from actual U.S. news coverage, with only one type of change -- I've reversed the references to China and the United States. The mirror-image narrative is worth pondering.
ABC World News Tonight: "There are concerns about national security and a Chinese military flight crew that was forced to make an emergency landing during a surveillance flight along the East Coast of the United States. The Chinese spy plane was equipped with sophisticated intelligence-gathering technology."
CNN: "Chinese military officials say that they are, first and foremost, concerned about the safety of the crew. They want that crew returned back to China."
The non-issue of 'media finance reform'
"I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn't have a slant," E.B. White observed in a 1956 essay. To that candid assessment he added a more dubious one: "The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is. This he does."
The Digital Promise of a Global Village
By now, we understand that our response is supposed to be -- must be -- affirmative. But our best answer may be a question: "Ready for what?"
History tells cautionary tales. After the first rudimentary telegraph went into operation 207 years ago in Europe, media analyst Armand Mattelart says, "long-distance communication technology was promoted as a guarantee of the revival of democracy." During the next several decades, a powerful concept took hold -- "the ideology of redemption through networks."
Politics as performance art, journalism as drama reviews
By the next day, the media verdict was in: The nation's leader is learning to make effective use of a TelePrompTer!
Stage presence, cadence, rhythm, choreography -- they can really add up in the professional calculations by journalists. And Bush, known to have a remarkably short attention span, seems to be well-suited to a medium that greatly values style over substance. Like a negative in a developing pan, the current president's TV profile is taking shape. Some political reporters scoff in private, no doubt, but their on-the-job respect is thick as dense smoke.
The Red Fox
- "Who benefits, who profits?"
- "Who rules the rulers?"
- "What the hell will they do to us next?"
The "Who benefits?" part of President Bush's proposed tax cut has been thoroughly examined. Even the dimmest of us have got the point that it's a tax cut for the very rich with a little sop thrown in for some of the rest of us. According to the Citizens for Tax Justice, the poorest 20 percent of taxpayers receive on average a $15 tax cut the first year and $37 by 2004.
The 20 percent of taxpayers in the middle of the income distribution scale get an average of $170 in tax cuts, rising to $409 in 2004.
The average cut to the top 1 percent of taxpayers would be $13,469 in 2002 and $31,201 in 2004. The Bush plan gives 43 percent of all the tax relief to the richest 1 percent of the people.
Few of us seem to be alert to the other shoe here. The counterpart of "Who benefits?" is "Who pays?"
Obstinate memory and pursuit of the present
Nearly three years after the U.S.-backed coup that overthrew the elected socialist president Salvador Allende in September 1973 and brought Augusto Pinochet to power, Kissinger huddled with the general in Chile. A declassified memo says that Kissinger told Pinochet: "We are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here."
While interviewing Kissinger, "NewsHour" correspondent Elizabeth Farnsworth asked him point-blank about the discussion with Pinochet. "Why did you not say to him, 'You're violating human rights. You're killing people. Stop it.'?"