redress of grievances, if they could not call up the office of their Congress person and express an opinion for or against some proposed or pending legislation?

What Freedom of the Press would Americans have, if they could not effectively use their phone lines to send out news bulletins, by fax or e-mail, to fellow Americans on their address lists?

Starting at least in the 1960s and 1970s, a period of protest against the perceived unconstitutional Viet Nam War and denial of fundamental Civil Rights to blacks, the phone companies secretly connive d with the secret political police, like the FBI, In the nations heartland and elsewhere. A leading devil, typical of others nationwide, was Illinois Bell Telephone Company, headquartered in Chicago.

Under the pretext of "quality control" and "clear phone lines", Illinois Bell had a clandestine department of operators listening and noting the conversations of leading peaceniks and civil rights protesters.

In advance of a peace parade or civil rights protest march near a courthouse, the organizers and parade marshals often found they could not phone each other. The bosses of Illinois Bell gave easy and illegal secret access to the phone companies windowless, supposedly highly secure facilities.

Petitioners seeking redress of grievances found they could dial up others, but it would not actually contact the phone of others. Agents of the local police "Red Squad" (started originally in big city police departments nationwide on t he false idea all protesters were "Communists") and the FBI, aided by certain Illinois Bell supervisors, fixed the phones of "trouble-makers" so it would be "an open line" or would connect to a useless phone.

Another dirty trick of the secret political police, aided by pliable and corrupt Illinois Bell personnel, was to arrange a recorded false report message "the number you are calling has been disconnected. No further information is available".

If you reported the phone trouble to "Repair Department", you would be put through a phone company bureaucratic song-and-dance, with no restoration of service until after the protest parade or event. The phone company warned their employees that they are to never, never, never admit that anyone's phone service has been sabotaged by the "Red Squad" and the FBI. Proof of the sabotage, however, later came out in court and other public tribunals.

Also later made known publicly was that Illinois Bell's Security Department boss was himself in charge of arranging the sabotaging of the phones of political activists. Phone operators were warned they must not give out the phone numbe r of the Security Department as if it did not exist.

In the 1970s, a Chicago Alderman headed a committee of the City Council. He announced he was going to bring out by public hearings the illegal activities of Illinois Bell Telephone Company including their illegal wiretapping of phones. Part of the scheduled inquiry was apparently going to be that top officials of Illinois Bell were part of political campaign committees and these officials sabotaged the phones of political opponents.

As Chairman of the City Council committee, the Alderman was just starting the public hearings when Illinois Bell bosses brought the hearings to a quick end. They secretly made available a multi-million dollar sweetheart contract to a f irm owned by the Alderman. Now just as years ago, phone company bosses on occasion use pay-offs to get what they want out of city, county, state, and federal officials. Several years ago, the telecommunications industry bought Congress to get a favorabl e new law.

On occasion, state public utility regulators as well as State and Federal Judges are "for sale" to phone companies across the land. Those who regulate public stock issuances by phone companies and others, the U.S. Securities and Exchan ge Commission, can grant favored treatment for a sum under the table.

Has everyone forgot that in December,1969, Illinois Bell Telephone Company bosses made their company trucks available to a group of Chicago police trained by the American CIA, and under disguise as if a phone company crew, at 4 a .m. in the morning broke into the residence of Illinois Black Panther Party Chief Fred Hampton, and while he was asleep with his wife, machine-gunned him to death and wounded his pregnant wife?

Tight with Illinois Bell bosses and the American CIA, CBS' Chicago unit, WBBM-TV, Channel 2, went on the air with a completely fraudulent story seeking to justify the murder of Fred Hampton and Fred Clark, another Panther official.

By 1969, organized in Chicago was a group of 25,000 members, all of them Black, of the Southside Contract Buyers League. They were protesting that certain Chicago neighborhoods were "red-lined", meaning mortgages were not to be is sued in such all-black resident areas. The Afro-Americans had no choice but to seek to be a home buyer, buying "on contract" not mortgage, and paying twice the appraised value price of poorly built houses on extremely narrow lots.

The blacks organized a payment boycott which would have driven under several banks. The Cook County Sheriff Joseph Woods (brother of Nixon's secretary Rosemary Woods who wiped out the infamous 18 and one half minute Nixon tape) was giv en the task of throwing all the Buyers League members on the street. To start with, hooligans working for the banks with the okay apparently of the Sheriff, forced their way into many of the homes, and smashed their toilets, kitchen sinks, and othe r essential items like refrigerators.

Early on the morning of the planned mass evictions, the Sheriff illegally arranged to turn off their phones, electricity, gas, and water of a vast all-black neighborhood. Boycott blacks as well as non-member blacks, all had their public utilities illegally turned off. The bosses of Illinois Bell Telephone Company were the ring leaders of the whole dirty business.

The idea, among others, was to absolutely block the blacks from communicating with anyone, or informing anyone else, or seeking aid from anyone else, including those in the area who were not even members of the Buyers League.

At the urging of the leaders of the Southside Contract Buyers League, I agreed to be their unpaid, volunteer consultant. Some of the Buyers League became members of my group, the Citizen's Committee To Clean Up The Courts. I did the co mpilation of statements of the members and non-members as to the role of Illinois Bell at the time of the mass evictions. The purpose was the legal research leading to a possible massive racial discrimination damage suit, involving false disconnection o f all the phones of blacks in the area and denial of phone service to blacks, accusing as defendants Illinois Bell Telephone Company and their bosses.

Illinois Bell informed me and the boycott leaders that the phone firm wanted a meeting at my residence. To try to psyche out both me and the black leaders, Illinois Bell's agent was a black official with a gold chain around his neck wi th a Star of David attached.

This apparent Black Jew bluntly came to the point. Illinois Bell will pay the boycott leaders a half a million dollars if they saw to it that no suit was filed in court against the phone company and the phone bosses for their raci al discrimination in having cut off the phones of tne entire black area, phones of both boycott members and non-members, said the Illinois Bell agent.

My hollaring and screaming could most likely be heard a block away. "There will be no bribery deal in my house. Do you get it? No bribery!"

Instead, later Illinois Bell's money was siphoned to quite a number of the members through a real estate shill.

My investigations later turned up that much of the land on which the Buyers League members were paying for houses on discriminatory contracts, was secretly owned by the Catholic Archbishop of Chicago. And even worse, that the Buyers Le ague attorneys Jenner & Block who kept telling them to stop the payment boycott, were secretly paid by a Jesuit group called the Gamaliel Foundation and fronting for such was a person with a purported Jewish name. I call such Royal Court Jews, by the German word being hofjuden, traitors to their tribe and stooges for the Establishment.

Nine Black Catholics, members of the Buyers League, bravely sued the local head man of their religion, the Archbishop. The suit was based on my documented proof of the fact that the Archbishop, secret owner of the land in his stra nge capacity as "Corporation Sole", wanted the blacks thrown off his land for trespass, non-payment of contracts.

As a result of my investigations uncovering and publicly divulging these dirty secrets, for years thereafter Illinois Bell and the Archbishop's office hounded me with rotten illegal tricks against me personally. I do not wish to list all such details here now.

In later years, Illinois Bell Telephone Company was bought out and merged with what was later called SBC. Operating as SBC Illinois, SBC Indiana, SBC Michigan, SBC Ohio, SBC Wisconsin, SBC has continued the stinking policies against political activists, just like Illinois Bell.

Now SBC commits their treachery with Homeland Security, FEMA, and the FBI Counter-Intelligence Division. Even if you finally complain to an executive assistant at SBC's corporate headquarters, just like Illinois Bell, t hey continue in full denial. They would pretend to never have heard of FBI, FEMA, or Homeland Security, or "sabotage", and immediately steer you to their "Repair Department".

If you ask for the phone number of SBS own "Security Department", they put you into a dead end, getting rid of you by giving you the number of their ADT Division, SBC Home Burglar Alarm System.

Like phone companies across the country, SBC's press flack, if asked, would most likely deny any of the higher ups at SBC know anything about foul play directed against the phone service of outspoken bloggers and such. If you are a gue st by phone on a radio talk show, if you say something very revealing about the White House, you can fully expect that SBC, or other phone companies elsewhere, on behalf of the secret political police, will suddenly make your phone go dead. And re-conne cting may just as quickly become difficult.

Some contend that SBC continues the rotten policies of Illinois Bell that discriminated against blacks in the inner city. That is, that all-black neighborhoods, unlike fancy suburbs, do not greatly increase their use of phone services from year to year. So it is okay to go slow in replacing old, worn out phone cables in all black areas. That it is okay to give poorer service in such areas as compared to "Lily White" suburbs.

The many fine, dedicated workers at SBC are generally powerless to stop, or publicly comment on, the illegal dirty business of the bosses at SBC.

Employees at SBC know, like those years ago at Illinois Bell, they have to shut up and deny everything. All that changed over the years is the name.