Revolutionary Worker #1172, October 27, 2002, posted at http://rwor.org
The following excerpt is from a taped statement from Mumia Abu-Jamal that was sent to Not In Our Name rallies on October 6:
What makes this new is the scope sought by the American presidency. Regime change. One wonders why was there never a call for regime change when the brutes of the armed Afrikaner state in apartheid South Africa were quite literally shooting down unarmed Black children for demonstrating against the racist excesses of the minority government. Or when the Pinochet regime in Chile was executing thousands of people in football stadiums and sending its minions to execute people on the streets of Washington, DC. But there was no call for regime change, was there? In the new colonialism of today "regime change" is newspeak for a coup--removal of any leader that the U.S. deems somehow unworthy.
But who will dare call for regime change in Washington, DC given the role of state troopers and polling officials in the controversial 2000 U.S. Presidential election where the Supreme Court interceded and imposed its will on the nation. It is indeed probable--or at least arguable--that Saddam Hussein's election may have been demonstrably fairer than George Bush's. I think we can safely say that no candidate in Iraq scored over 500,000 more votes than Saddam and still lost.
Yet even in the face of the UN-directed arms inspections, rumblings and saber rattling of war continues. We will see if these arms inspections make any difference. I don't think so. For political ambition is at the root of this hunger for war. As Bush advisor and political hawk Richard Pearl recently told the New York Times , "The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence that it would set back the War on Terrorism." What he means of course is that it would curb his re-election chances. War for money is one thing, but ambition? The hunger continues.
From Death Row,
This is Mumia Abu
Jamal.
This article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker Online
rwor.org
Write: Box 3486, Merchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: 773-227-4497
(The RW Online does not currently communicate via email.)