Mumia Abu-Jamal from death row on: ‘War against ourselves’
Published Jan 9, 2011 7:50 PM
Taken from a Nov. 24 audio column at www.prisonradio.org. For up-to-date information on Mumia’s case,
go to www.millions4mumia.org.
As the 20th year passes since the West waged war against the late Saddam
Hussein, and the state of war slips into greater violence in Iraq and
Afghanistan, there is another war being waged today, one which gets little
coverage on TV, radio and/or newspapers.
That war has its own psychic and physical carnages, its losses, its losers
— and, yes, its winners.
The losers have been forced out of their homes. They have been forced out of
their jobs. Some have been driven to the mouth of madness and beyond. And, yes,
there has been death; but again this has been hidden from published view.
That’s because this war has been essentially a class war — a war
against the poor and working classes on behalf of the ruling classes and the
financial industry.
The weapons of this war have been joblessness, foreclosures and tightening of
credit lines. And while money has been withdrawn from the purses and pockets of
millions, public monies have been used to top off the coffers of the banks, but
also to fund mad wars abroad — like the almost $3 trillion to fund the
forays into Iraq and Afghanistan, often to undergird the corrupt and
narco-kleptocratic governments in power.
It bears repeating: Trillions in public monies are being spent to fund utterly
unnecessary wars abroad, and hundreds of billions are doled out to private
banks and financial institutions, while joblessness, homelessness and
hopelessness swell to truly epidemic levels — not seen for
generations.
Schools are crumbling, when they function, which is rarely; libraries are
closed; public services dry up like rain on summer bricks. And prisons burst at
the seams.
Wars are always against both sides — the victors and the losers. And in
the age of the military-industrial complex, war becomes the fuel of wealth for
a narrow ribbon of businesses.
But it has costs far beyond the be-flagged caskets, the shattered limbs, the
howling winds blowing through damaged minds, and something so banal as body
counts of any imagined “enemy.”
It brings about the very woes of the instant recession: joblessness,
foreclosures, homelessness and, yes, hopelessness. It is a war against
ourselves.
Articles copyright 1995-2012 Workers World.
Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.
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