Mumia Abu-Jamal Live from death row
9-11 remembered
Forever in the American mind, 9-11 will be a day of shock,
of disbelief, of sorrow and of loss. Like a flash photo image
superimposed on the retina, the specter of planes circling like
metal vultures the twin towers of midtown Manhattan repeats
itself in the mind's eye, revealing itself over and over again.
What American political, media and economic elites have done
with 9-11, however, should be cause for concern to all of us.
For the shock and sorrow and yes, the rage borne from the
flames of 9-11 have been used by these elites to reward the
very culprits who brought 9-11 into being. Those elites have
bequeathed billions if not trillions more to the military
industrial complex that armed, trained and justified the
Mujahadeen in Afghanistan in the first place. The late
Pakistani scholar Eqbal Ahmad, in his last book, "Terrorism:
Theirs and Ours," points out that the entire Muslim world was
mobilized to fight the "evil empire," as Reagan called the
former Soviet Union. Ahmad wrote:
"I've seen planeloads of them arriving from Algeria, Sudan,
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, even from Palestine where at that
time Israel was supporting Hamas against Alshata(sp), Yassar
Arafat's faction of the PLO. These people were brought in,
given an ideology and told that armed struggle is virtuous,
when the whole notion of Jihad as an international Pan-Islamic
terrorist movement was born. The U.S. has spent billions in
producing the Bin Ladens of our time. In 1986 I visited the
camp they hit in Zahowar Afghanistan. It was a CIA-sponsored
camp," Ahmad writes.
There, in the poverty-stricken, dusty mountains of
Afghanistan, the beginnings of 9-11 were born. What we saw in
the second week of September 2001 was merely what the late
Malcolm X called the "chickens coming home to roost." Deep
down, in our hearts, away from the polls, away from the
politicians, we know this. We really do. Then along come the
oil barons, the Rumsfelds, Cheneys and the boy King, Bush.
"Bomb Iraq," they say.
Americans are looking at a new colonialism that will leave a
taste as foul in their mouths as the last one. Vicious,
rapacious greed priming the pump of war--a war that will enrich
the few by raising oil prices, impoverish the many and sow the
seeds of Islamic and Arab hatred that will last until the next
century. If you're against the empire of war, hatred, greed and
new colonialism: Join us. We are growing. I thank you all.
Ona Move,
Long Live John Africa
Free the MOVE 9
Free the Angola 3
To Freedom for us all
This is Mumia Abu-Jamal
Reprinted from the Sept. 19, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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