“Australia: The Fire This Time.”
Tongues of fire lick the trees of New South Wales, a state in southeast Australia, like a beggar at a feast. Red flowers of flame jump across the nation, eating all in its path, a living expression of what Aussies call “fire season.”
Honestly, “fire season.” This, the time of Australian summer, is the hottest summer since records were kept. And “fire season” gives a whole new meaning to the passive term “global warming.” How about “global burning?”
In this fire season alone, over a billion animals, that’s billion with a B, again, a billion animals have lost their lives. This alone seems almost incomprehensible. A billion life forms gone in a temporal blink of time.
Is this not a sign, a symbol of things to come? “Fire season,” the season of fire. Why not call it what it really is? Death season, the season of death, when so-called civilized society causes an animal Holocaust against life itself. Australia is burning.
From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan from Prison Radio.