'ILL-ECTIONS' TO COME by Mumia abu Jamal

Mumia Abu-Jamal - Commentary
unite@justiceandhumanity.com

"FLAWED INTELLIGENCE?"

by Mumia Abu-Jamal

The formal war in Iraq has been over for months now, but the Occupation has not brought peace.

Now, after almost a year of fire, death and carnage, comes the first shadowings of the truth, as a former weapons inspector, David Kay, announces to reporters and members of Congress, "We were almost all wrong." (*USA Today*, 1/29/04, p. 1A).

The deeply politicized weapons inspector announced that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the *casus belli* of the Iraq war, but it was, after all, a pretty good thing to wage war against the Hussein Regime, because he was a "bad guy." As for President George W. Bush, he was not to blame, for he received 'bad intelligence.'

Amazing.

The function of a president, it seems to me, is not to "receive," but to decide; to exercise judgment; to use reason and balance in a world where missteps can cause global explosions. But, Bush the Lesser isn't to blame. The CIA got it wrong, if Kay is to be believed.

The grim, and unmistakable truth is that the President sits in the big chair to make important, life-and-death decisions. War is certainly one of the biggest decisions any political leader has to make. Bush blew it.

But Bush Lite isn't alone; the members of Congress, who voted away their constitutional responsibilities to their liege--er, I mean, president, are also to blame, for at a time when the nation needed real debate around such questions as these, the Congress punted, and, in my view, failed.

Nor is that all. The nation's corporate media performed poorly in the weeks and months leading up to, and after, the Iraq War. They acted largely as billboards, and megaphones for the Administration, echoing and parroting whatever drivel came out of Washington, and added martial music and sexy graphics to make it sound or look better.

Who recalls the shoddy treatment accorded to the ex-weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, who was essentially run off of network and cable news programs because he wouldn't address issues not related to the war?

Ritter, according to one major U.S. news outfit, was "radioactive" because he wouldn't deign to discuss a slur thrown at him. Ritter, along with William Rivers Pitt, wrote a splendid little book that virtually predicted that no weapons would be found. *War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know* (Context: 2002) debunks the whole range of Bush claims, regarding Iraq's threat to its neighbors, the Kuwaiti invasion, and yes--weapons of mass destruction-- which Ritter asserts were 90-to-95% destroyed after the first Gulf War of 1991. His co-author, Pitt, summarized the duo's arguments nicely:

The case for war against Iraq has not been made. This is a fact. *It is doubtful in the extreme that Saddam Hussein has retained any functional aspect of the chemical, nuclear, and biological weapons programs so thoroughly dismantled by the United Nations weapons inspectors who worked tirelessly in Iraq for seven years.* This is also a fact. The idea that Hussein has connections to fundamentalist Islamic terrorists is laughable -- he is a secular leader who has worked for years to crush fundamentalist Islam within Iraq, and if he were to give weapons of any kind to al Qaeda, they would use those weapons on him first [p. 10].

The American people should have known these facts before their sons and daughters became cannon fodder for the Bush Regime in a war of occupation in Iraq. They should have known these things before 500 Americans, and perhaps (we don't know exactly, because no one has counted!) some 10,000 Iraqis lost their lives. That they did not is testament to the failure of the corporate media, which serves Power, not the People!

Mao Tse-Tung used to say that 'war is politics, by other means.' The Bush Regime has waged war for its own political ends: the ability to say they did it, even against overwhelming world opinion. The Iraqis are but chess pieces in a globalist strategy of US dominance over much of the region. But there is no peace, for there has been no justice.

FEELIN' SAFE YET?

by Mumia abu Jamal

12/14/03

It's been eight months since the Americans marched into the deserts of Iraq, as part of the triumph of the West in the now-classic 'Clash of Civilizations.'

Since that time, the Iraqis have staged a resistance that has cost the lives of hundreds of Americans, sent the United Nations into retreat, and caused several nations to refrain from even attempting to intervene in the region.

Americans started the Iraq War on a series of false pretenses; a) the war on terrorism; b) Iraq's role in supporting the jihadis of 9/11; and c) Iraq's 'imminent threat' posed by weapons of mass destruction.

The capture of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has sent the American media and politicians into paroxysms of joy. It's kind of like the second invasion of the country. The Hussein capture is of a piece that is a U.S. attempt at 'nation building.'

One of America's chief architects of the Cold War, found this aspect of Bus's new 'preemptive strike' doctrine wrong-headed. George Kennan called it "a great mistake in principle." In a little-noticed item in the congressional newspaper, *The Hill*, Kennan offered the opinion that a study of history teaches us "that you might start a war with certain things in [...] mind," but inevitably, nations turn to fighting for things "never thought of before." Of the second Iraqi war, Keenan noted it "bears no relation to the first war against terrorism."

Further, Kennan was harshly critical of the Congress, upon whom rests the awesome responsibility to declare war, but he was particularly dismissive of congressional Democrats, whom he called "shameful," "shabby," and "timid" in the face of Bush's plans for war. Kennan, 98-years old at the time of the Sept. 2002 interview, was the formulator of the U.S. "containment" policies of the past 50 years, and was U.S. Ambassador to Moscow during the Soviet regime (ca. 1952), and Ambassador to Yugoslavia in the early 1960s. That ths unabashed nationalist, conservative thinker is so critical of the present U.S. course is telling.

Clearly, Kennan sees 'imminent danger' from the Administration's present course of action.

Even with the capture of Hussein, does anyone seriously believe that the armed resistance to the U.S. occupation will cease? Saddam Hussein, President of the Iraqi state for over a generation, was not the engine, nor even the spark of the Iraqi Resistance. That Resistance is fueled by the presence and the behavior of Americans in a foreign land. The Resistance is fueled by Iraqi nationalism, not love for the Hussein family. We shall see if this event dulls the fires of resistance; time will tell.

According to one scholar who has examined the present situation in Iraq, the U.S. has done almost everything wrong. Alan Sorensen, associate Editor of *Current History*, has observed:

The U.S. military failed to deploy enough force
to establish security, permitting looting and
lawlessness to continue unchecke. It initially
appointed (then dismissed) a low-key, low-profile
coordinator to oversee reconstruction.  It  grossly
underestimated the costs of restoring  services
and rebuilding infrastructure.  It  attempted to
promote an emigre political figure  with little
experience in his native  country.  It failed to
secure critical  facilities, including arms caches,
many of them  still unguarded.  It diverted
significant  resources and manpower to a failed
attempt to find  weapons of mass destruction.
It consigned the  Iraqi Army to resentful
unemployment.  It  emptied the government
of knowledgeable  technocrats.  It invited
Iraq's former  imperial masters from Turkey to
join the  occupation.  It favored select
American  businesses in the distribution of
no-bid  contracts.  It failed miserably to engage
in  effective public diplomacy.  It ignored a
pre-invasion State Department report that
has laid  out with startling precision many of
the  challenges now bedeviling authorities.
[Sorensen,  A., "The Reluctant Naton Builders,"
*Current  History*, (Dec. '03, p. 409)].

And Americans wonder why things are going so badly there.

The reason things are going so badly is because it was ill- conceived, from the get-go. Sold as the 'next step' in the 'war against terrorism', the Iraq Adventure is not really that, nor even nation building. It is empire-building, with Iraq chosen to serve as demonstration model. The subjugation of Iraq is meant to teach other regimes in the region the meaning of American imperial power. Those are the real stakes in Iraq.

'ILL-ECTIONS' TO COME

by Mumia abu Jamal

12/21/03]

The brand  "America" is like Clorox corporation:
it sells  both toxic bleach (Clorox) and salad
dressing  (Hidden Valley Ranch).  If the salad
dressing  came with the Clorox label, we wouldn't
buy  it.  If "America" came with images of poverty
and of military domination, it would fail as fantasy.
-- Vijay Prashad, *Keeping Up With the
Dow Joneses* (South End Press,  2003),
pp.  xiii-xiv.

It is difficult to hear major presidential candidates (for either major political party) get up and talk about their program, without stifling a chuckle.

Almost all of them are corporate henchmen, who have gotten their political positions by serving the whims of the corporate elites. What is perhaps most amusing, is to see these guys (most *are* guys) dress down, with workshirts, their collars unbuttoned, their sleeves rolled up, to affect an illusion that they are just average working stiffs, instead of the wealthy cororate shills that they have spent their lifetimes being.

It is a telling reflection of the political need to perform this schlocky kind of theatre, in order for them to begin to be heard by average, everyday folks among the American citizenry. Most can't point to any real legislative, gubernatorial, or mayoral achievement of any real note, that helped out the working people. Indeed, many have been part of the generations-long war on the poor, sparked by Reagan and continued under Clinton, to "discipline" the poor, and make them amenable to corporate rule over the marketplace.

The corporate media doesn't help matters when it blares about the falling unemployment figures, or the rising Dow Jones average, when neither indicator really reflects much to average working folks. The unemployment rates are notoriously unreliable, for they never reflect those millions who have simply given up looking for work, those who are on disability, or those many in prison. As for the Dow, international studis scholar, Vijay Prashad reports:

While almost half of US households own some stocks (whether through a retirement plan or otherwise), for 60 percent of households, their stocks amounted to only $4,000. The *top one percent, those people who are given "free money," hold almost half of all stocks (47.7 percent), while the bottom 80 percent hold a miniscule 4 percent of all stock holdings*. (fr. Prashad, V. *Keeping Up With the Dow Joneses: Debt, Prison, Workfare* (Cambridge, Ma.: South End Press, 2003), p. 8]

When's the last time you heard a political candidate talk about those on the bottom of the nation's political economy? Those millions who are out of luck, out of work, on the bottom? If you listen to most pols, they'll wax eloquent about the great American "middle class", as if there are not millions of folks who are below that great middle. Millions of folks work everyday, but can't seem to get a grip on the means to really make a decent wage. For the politicians who yearn to run th government, these people are invisible. They don't exist. They are forgotten.

If they're invisible before the election, what do you think they'll do afterwards?

And now, the financial media broadcasts about the 'jobless recovery.' For too many men and women in America, the answer is not simply jobs. Jobs without a living, growing wage, are just daily drudgery and toil.

The millions of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the last few years are gone forever, and in its place is a slew of service jobs, which don't begin to pay the rates of those that are gone.

Five years ago, corporations sent terror through their workforces by threatening to move to Mexico. With the beginning of Mexican trade unionism edging their way into the dreadful maquiladoras, businesses now threaten to cross the seas to China, where labor is even cheaper! We are witnessing the dark face of globalism, the 'structural adjustment' of Reagan, and the 'new economy' of Clinton.

The solution ain't voting for soe loser to betray you after election day; it's to organize, to rebuild unions, and make them truly international entities, to protect the interests of labor -- globally!

===============================

[Mr. Jamal has written widely about war and other issues. His latest work, *Faith of Our Fathers* (Africa World Press, 2003) was named one of "The Most Remarkable Books of 2003" by *Black Issues Book Review* (Nov/Dec '03).]

"When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about justice." - Mumia Abu-Jamal

'ILL-ECTIONS' TO COME

by Mumia abu Jamal

12/21/03]

The brand  "America" is like Clorox corporation:
it sells  both toxic bleach (Clorox) and salad
dressing  (Hidden Valley Ranch).  If the salad
dressing  came with the Clorox label, we wouldn't
buy  it.  If "America" came with images of poverty
and of military domination, it would fail as fantasy.
-- Vijay Prashad, *Keeping Up With the
Dow Joneses* (South End Press,  2003),
pp.  xiii-xiv.

It is difficult to hear major presidential candidates (for either major political party) get up and talk about their program, without stifling a chuckle.

If they're invisible before the election, what do you think they'll do afterwards?

The millions of manufacturing jobs that have been lost in the last few years are gone forever, and in its place is a slew of service jobs, which don't begin to pay the rates of those that are gone.

===============================

The Power of Truth is Final

THE POWER OF 1 BLACK WOMAN

2/13/04

"If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up again!" -- Sojourner Truth

Sometimes, something happens in America that is simply stunning; something that blows the mind.

This is one such time.

The event is the Janet Jackson episode of her breast being bared at the halftime entertainment at the Super Bowl. It is not the brief, glancing peep at Janet's (or Miss Jackson 'if ya nasty') breast that is, after all, shocking.

It is the incredible response to it!

The news media launched into replay mode, showing and reshowing the shot, over, and over, and yet over again. It became the leading news story, for several days, all throughout the country.

One simply had to wonder: Had America gone mad?

Quickly, her light-complexioned cohort, who had built a career on the cooptation of Black dance grooves, leapt to distance himself from the pop star. "I am appalled," he assured us.

And one of the most remarkable female entertainers of her generation, who had sold her music to millions, stood virtually alone in the harsh, yet cold klieg lights of Hollywood. Members of Congress announced swift hearings on "decency" on television, and CBS fought with the NFL to bow and cringe the quickest at this "outrage."

One woman. One bared breast. One second.

... And a catastrophe.

There are no congressional hearings to attempt to deal with the over 2 million jobs that have been lost in the past 8 months.

There are no congressional hearings on the way the Nation was hustled into war by the White House.

There are no congressional hearings into the alleged 'weapons of mass destruction' that weren't there in Iraq.

One young singer (apparently mistakenly) bares her chocolate bosom, and the nation reels!

There is something disturbingly childish about Americans.

If this happened on French or German TV few eyebrows would've been raised.

But the Americans, who still hold to the empty illusions of their Pilgrim founding myth, take great umbrage at the baring of the body -- especially the Black female body.

Their inherent instinct is to control it; to police it; to erect barriers to it.

And they do this, ostensibly, for 'the children'.

This occurs in a country where folks have called the police when some women were breastfeeding -- children!

It ain't about children; it's about women, and the 'shock and awe' that some men feel when the female body is asserted into public space.

It smells, to me, like the fear of women; the hidden hatred of women, and, of course, the desire to control female power -- especially Black female power.

That this occurs in a country that claims to fight wars in the Middle East to 'liberate' women is telling. That it happens in a nation where women are bought and sold like hot buttered biscuits in the multi-billion dollar sex trade (owned by some of the biggest corporations on Wall St., by the way) is also telling.

This country demeans women, especially poor ones. It relegates them to the worst-paid labor, in jobs where self-respect is but an illusion. It is, in fact, closer in spirit to the theocracies of the Middle East than it cares to admit.

And yet, when events such as this occur, one can only be stunned, by the power -- the power of one woman, to rock a nation, with a mere flash of a mammary. Umph, umph, umph.

WHITE HOUSE WORDS OF WAR

"The President of the United States and the Secretary of Defense would not assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction if it were not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for saying it." -- Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer (12/5/02)

In light of the revelation of former weapons inspector, David Kay, that there were no weapons of mass destruction, the words of the White House have an eerie, almost spectral quality: One wonders, "Did they say that?" For those millions of Americans with a short memory, let us reacquaint them:

On WMDs, Vice-President Dick Cheney said, on Aug. 26, 2002:

"Simply stated, there's no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."

Almost two weeks later, National Security Advisor Dr. Condoleeza Rice announced (Sept. 8, 2002):

"Saddam Hussein is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments into Iraq of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to nuclear weapons programs."

Days later, the irascible Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld announced (Sept. 19, 2002):

"Iraq has 'amassed large, clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons, including VX, sarin, and mustard gas.'"

And let us not forget the Commander in Chief, His Highness, George Bush (Sept. 28, 2002):

"The danger to our country is grave and growing. The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons, is rebuilding the facilities to make more and, according to the British government, could launch a biological or chemical attack in as little as 45 minutes."

The very next day, the President took to the airwaves on his Saturday broadcast:

"We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons-- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have."

On the next Monday in Cincinnati, the President announced strong evidence of the Iraqi weapons programs:

"We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States. The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Facing clear evidence of peril, *we cannot wait for the final proof* -- the smoking gun -- that could *come in the form of a mushroom cloud.*"

America's respected Secretary of State Colin Powell made a dramatic presentation before the UN Security Council (Feb. 5, '03):

"There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to produce many, many more. We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails."

"Numerous intelligence reports over the past decade, from sources in Iraq, indicate that Saddam Hussein retains a covert force of up to a few dozen Scud variant ballistic missiles."

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has *a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agents...* My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. *What we're giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.*"

Then there was a war, and -- voila! -- everything changed. It became, "Weapons? Who said anything about weapons?"

At his State of the Union address, George the Lesser began to threaten any nations that might have engaged in "weapons- related program activity." Uh-huh....

The war has cost the lives of over 10,000 people, most of them Iraqi non-combatants. Over 500 Americans are dead.

Is the nation really safer? Look at the recent spate of airplane groundings, and it seems like it's just days after 9/11.

The Administration used the powerful poison of fear to 'let slip the dogs of war,' and has wreaked havoc across the earth.

The nation is not safer; neither is the world.

There is indeed a 'weapon of mass destruction'; it's called the White House.

[Mr. Jamal is the author of *Faith of Our Fathers* (Africa World Press, 2003). The Kennan quote is from: Cumings, Bruce, "Is America an Imperial Power?", *Current History*, Nov. '03, p. 360.] "When a cause comes along and you know in your bones that it is just, yet refuse to defend it--at that moment you begin to die. And I have never seen so many corpses"

The Power of Truth is Final -- Free Mumia!

PLEASE CONTACT:
International  Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ
P.O. Box 19709
Philadelphia, PA  19143
Phone - 215-476-8812/ Fax - 215-476-6180
E-mail -  icffmaj@aol.com
AND OFFER YOUR SERVICES!

Send our brotha some LOVE and  LIGHT at:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI-Greene
175 Progress  Drive
Waynesburg, PA 15370

WE WHO BELIEVE IN FREEDOM CAN *NOT* REST!!

Contact Us!