Mumia Abu-Jamal, M A. writes from "Death Row" USA... ----- Original Message ----- From: mart <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; New Worker Online <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; ARA Kitchener/Waterloo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; KIM <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Bill Howard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; Mrs. Jela Jovanovic <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 9:56 PM Subject: Fw: [pttp] THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE by Mumia Abu-Jamal Forward from mart. Please distribute widely. ----- Original Message ----- From: Joe Hine To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]' Sent: Monday, February 19, 2001 4:51 PM Subject: [pttp] THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE by Mumia Abu-Jamal New Mumia column. THE SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE By #495 Column Written 2/10/2001 All Rights Reserved ..."A society that becomes accustomed to using violence to solve its problems, both large and small, is a society in which the roots of human relations are diseased." -- Ignacio Martin-Baró, O.J. It is virtually impossible for anyone to consider the horrific violence that has taken place in Central and Latin America, without accounting for the hideous roots of that violence, that grow and thrive in America. For decades, the bloody flood from murders, massacres, rapes, torture and carnage, created a trail that could be traced to the doorsteps of a U.S. military training institution known as the School of the Americas, in Fort Benning, Georgia. Human rights activists have held increasingly swelling demonstrations at the SOA, and have dubbed it the "School of Assassins." For years the Pentagon dismissed such criticism, and defended the SOA as an elite international training academy for "counter-insurgency," or, more obliquely, for "teaching democracy." The graduates of SOA, however, constituted a kind of rogue's gallery of military despots and dictators, like Bolivia's Gen. Hugo Banzer Suárez, who brutally suppressed progressive church workers and striking tin miners; like Guatemalan dictator Gen. Romeo Lucas García (1978-82), whose rule saw over 5,000 political killings and about 25,000 civilians murdered by the Guatemalan army; and Gen. Juan Rafael Bustillo, of El Salvador, former airforce chief, who, according to a U.N. report of 1993, both planned and then covered up the massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter, for starters. If you mention a massacre, the chances are great that the men who either ordered or committed the deed were SOA grads. The El Mozote, El Junquillo, Las Hojas, and San Sebastian Massacres were all the work of SOA- trained "death squads." When four U.S. churchwomen were raped and murdered, when Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated, when union members were killed, it was SOA grads who led in the carnage. U.S.-trained and armed SOA people have been involved in so many military coups that in Latin America the school is known as the escuela de golpes-coup school. Recently, the Defense Deptartment, stung by decades of negative publicity, officially "closed" SOA, only to immediately reopen it under the name Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Co-operation (WHISC). Although not as catchy as SOA, WHISC promises to play the same game, by another name. Shortly after the Jesuit murders, U.S.-trained Salvadoran troops surrounded the office of the Catholic archdiocese, and shouted, "Ignacio Ellacuría and Ignacio Martin-Baró have already fallen and we will continue murdering communists! Ellacuría and Martin-Baró were two Jesuit priests involved in Christian base communities, where the poor learned literacy, history and how to organize for human rights in the midst of monstrous repression. Martin-Baró was a brilliant liberation theologist and psychologist, who, like the revolutionary Frantz Fanon, chose the side of the oppressed rather than the rich and powerful oppressors. For this he was targeted by the U.S.-trained terrorists of the SOA, and it is for men and women like him, who seek an end to economic and social oppression, that imperial training camps, like SOA/WHISC exist. Its name has changed, but the game remains the same. (c)MAJ 2001 ****************************************************** This column may be reprinted and/or distributed by electronic means, but only for non-commercial use, and only with the inclusion of the following copyright information: Text (c) copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author. Get Mumia's columns by email: http://www.MumiaBook.com ****************************************************** Mumia Abu-Jamal is the author of three books: 'Live from Death Row', 'Death Blossoms', and 'All Things Censored'. A new biography, 'On A Move: The Story of Mumia Abu-Jamal', is available at www.MumiaBook.com ====================================================== Knowledge is Power! Elimination of the exploitation of man by man http://www.egroups.com/group/pttp/ POWER TO THE PEOPLE! Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] =======================================================
