Saunders gets it right on Mumia

Debra Saunders is the only journalist in town to write about the Supreme Court's rejection of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal's appeal. Gee, I wonder why BeyondChron, the Guardian, or FogCity haven't written anything about the decision? Saunders writes: 

Perhaps there were tears shed in Paris, where he is an honorary citizen and where the suburb of St. Denis named a one-way street "Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal" in 2006. But I see it as a sign of healthy change that in America the ruling went largely unprotested.

Good---if overly optimistic---point, but shouldn't there at least be a news story about the decision? I didn't see any in the Chronicle or the Examiner.

Saunders zeros in on our crackpot left:

Call it progress. Being convicted for killing a police officer has lost the cachet it once had for the far left---especially since Oakland just buried slain police Sgts. Mark Dunakin, Ervin Romans and Daniel Sakai, and Officer John Hege. Consider that Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, introduced a House resolution honoring the four Oakland officers. She once signed a letter against Abu-Jamal's execution. The San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution naming a day in Abu-Jamal's honor. Ditto the European Parliament. The anti-Iraq war group Not in Our Name proudly advertised Abu-Jamal's endorsement as one of its celebrity signatories---unbothered by the prospect of dubbing a cop killer as a committed peacenik. Writer Alice Walker likened Abu-Jamal to South African leader Nelson Mandela.

Recall that Abu-Jamal was also among the signers of the World Can't Wait petition---which compared President Bush to Hitler---along with Carole Migden, Sean Penn, the Hip Hop Caucus, Michael Lerner, Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan, Gore Vidal, Alice Walker, Wavy Gravy, Richard Serra---and Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi!

Recall too that the San Francisco Green Party's website still has a goofball anti-American rant (below in italics) by the cop-killer.

Hard to see how the Green Party's Mirkarimi can be elected Mayor of San Francisco with that kind of political baggage, not to mention his support for Critical Mass, which won't play as well in other parts of the city as it does in District 5.

A blog critical of Mumia.

The Board of Supervisors asked for a new trial for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Who Benefits From War?
01/29/2002
Mumia Abu-Jamal

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!