Mumia Abu-Jamal:

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT TO ANTI-WEF PROTESTS

Who Benefits From War?

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!

Mumia Abu-Jamal (Jan 2002).