FROM DEATH ROW
'Behind globalism's siren song'
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
Ona Move!
When George II (or is it III?) was enthroned in the White
House by the Gang of Five of the Supreme Court, as a kind of
American Emperor, a thought came to mind, chillingly: There
will be a war. It came with such a clarity that it was
surprising.
Why? A couple of reasons.
First, because George II was a man who was a darling of big
corporate interests, and such interests are always able to
profit from war. For if there are armed conflicts in Sierra
Leone, or in Kashmir, or in Colombia, you can bet your bottom
dollar that 70 percent of the weapons used in these struggles
are American-manufactured. How could it be otherwise, when the
U.S. is the world's largest arms merchant?
Second, because George II learned an important lesson from
his father: that nothing spurs a president's popularity like
war.
Now, one wonders, what's this got to do with the World
Economic Forum, the World Trade Organization, or the growing
specter of globalism?
The globalist economic structure is undergirded by the
globalist, capitalist, military structure. They are
interconnected. Indeed, one cannot exist without the other.
Consider the words of New York Times writer Thomas Friedman,
who wrote back in early 1999: "The hidden hand of the market
will never work without a hidden fist--McDonald's cannot
flourish without McDonnell-Douglas, the designer of the F-15.
And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon
Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air
Force, Navy, and Marine Corps." (New York Times Magazine, March
28, 1999)
And what could be more secret, more hidden than the WTO, a
powerful, undemocratic international multi-state, corporate
entity that sets the rules governing the lives of billions?
How about the World Economic Forum, the body that claims it
brought the WTO into existence, and one of the world's engines
of the corporate globalist movement? These are the forces
behind the war, the vicious attacks on anti-globalists in
Genoa, and the equally vicious slurs in the corporate media
against the anti-globalist movement.
War, ultimately, is fought for the wealthy, the well-to-do,
the established, with the working class and poor doing the
lion's share of the fighting and dying.
It has nothing to do with patriotism, for the rich and
super-rich know no nationality higher than capital.
Think of these things when you hear the siren's song of
globalism; it is but a call for more war, more poverty, more
exploitation and more death.
I urge you to resist it.
Ona Move, Long live John Africa!
Down with corporate globalism!
Reprinted from the Feb. 7, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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