Commentaries avaiable include:

A DAILY TERROR - (Written 12/8/01)

The power of the media to condition consciousness is vast. For, with the merest mention of a word, say, for instance, "terror," a flood of images roar through the mind, like a well-placed row of dominoes, each falling one into the other, tumbling like a hard, dry, crackling wave: terror, terrorism, the twin towers of midtown Manhattan, planes circling like metallic vultures, plunging into solid rock and steel, flames, smoke, and humans blown into dry dust. Osama bin-Laden; Mullah Omar; Saddam Hussein, (fill in the blanks). Those are the thoughts we have been conditioned to think by the media. We have virtually no choice in the matter.

There is though, another terror that ravages the land. It affects not thousands, but millions. It affects Whites, Blacks, Anglos, Latinos, Citizens, Immigrants, Male, Female, Gay, Straight, Jew, Gentile, Northerner, Southerner, from Maine to Mississippi.

It is the terror of financial failure. The terror of not getting next week's paycheck. The terror of being fired; of being unable to pay rent (or the mortgage); of seeing one's children wracked by hunger. This is the silent terror; the hidden terror. Indeed it is the invisible terror that is all too real. It is one that the State not only refuses to fight, but refuses to acknowledge ......................go to www.mumia.org to read and listen to full commentary


DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY (Written December, 2001)

For millions of Americans history is a muddling puzzle, and that American history. When one looks at world history the puzzle only gets larger and even more impenetrable. For them Afghanistan, an ancient nation the size of Texas in the heart of Asia, only became real in the dusty fear drenched aftermath of 11 September 2001. Except for brief references to the decade of war with the former Soviet Union most had little idea of Afghanistan's long martial traditions .........................go to www.mumia.org to read and listen to full commentary


POWERLESS AT THE POST OFFICE (Written 11/29/01)

In the wake of the mid-October 2001 Anthrax scare, the imagery of Congressional members and staffers fleeing their Washington offices and chambers spoke volumes about the power of fear that motivates human conduct. This was quickly reinforced by the almost unprecedented evacuation of the august Supreme Court as word leaked out of the suspected presence of Anthrax spores at an off-site mail facility that serviced the nation's highest judicial body.

The evacuation of Capitol Hill and the Supreme Court building brought an eerie silence to an area that was long unaccustomed to such a hush, save on national holidays, weekends or seasonal vacations.

What it also revealed was the power of the powerful to protect their interests, no matter how infintesimal the threat, while relegating those perceived to be lower on the food chain to the possible exposure of a significantly greater threat. For although no traces of Anthrax were found in the offices or mail rooms of the House of Representatives, both Senators and Representatives closed up shop, and left.

Postal workers, however, perhaps closest to the contaminating agent, worked on, blissfully unaware of, and uninformed of, the real and deadly risks facing them. Neither were they tested or given the long-term regimen of the antibiotic, Cipro, as were their Congressional colleagues............go to www.mumia.org to read and listen to full commentary


MENTAL DETECTORS & MILITARY COURTS (Written 11/17/01)

War is declared in the wake of the Sept. 11th attack, and fear fuels a kind of public hysteria. It has ever been thus.

Thousands of Arab-Americans are being held in secret detention, unable to contact lawyers or families; those who contact lawyers may do so only with the government eavesdropping on attorney- client discussions. Now the Bush administration has announced that military tribunals will be established for those it deems "terrorists," rather than U.S. civil courts.

In a time of terror, the question arises, who is a "terrorist"? Who decides? The government? The military? ..................go to www.mumia.org to read and listen to full commentary


WHY DOES A WAR BEGIN?

Why does a war begin? That is, as the saying goes, "one of those 64 thousand dollar questions," as mommy used to say. For there are as many answers as wars.

Consider the Vietnam war, which raged for over a decade, leaving over 2 million Vietnamese and over 60,000 Americans dead, as well as a nation ecologically ravaged. On August 2, 1964, according to American press reports, North Vietnamese coastal guards attacked two US destroyers sailing in the Gulf of Tonkin. Within a week the US Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution granting the President war powers, and the Vietnam war was launched. Years later, after the fires of war cooled to ashes, we learned that the press reports that sparked this carnage were lies...............go to www.mumia.org to read and listen to full commentary