Buy
One, Get One Free
By
Arundhati Roy
(
german
)( pdf.file
)
In
these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the
speed at which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and
when few can afford the luxury of retreating from the
streets for a while in order to return with an exquisite,
fully formed political thesis replete with footnotes and
references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight?
As
we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our
brains by satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the
move. We enter histories through the rubble of war. Ruined
cities, parched fields, shrinking forests, and dying rivers
are our archives. Craters left by daisy cutters, our
libraries.
So
what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts
about money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some
worries that flit around my brain like a family of
persistent moths that keep me awake at night.
Some
of you will think it bad manners for a person like me,
officially entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an
"Indian citizen," to come here and criticize the U.S.
government. Speaking for myself, I'm no flag-waver, no
patriot, and am fully aware that venality, brutality, and
hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every state.
But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes
an empire, then the scale of operations changes
dramatically. So may I clarify that tonight I speak as a
subject of the American Empire? I speak as a slave who
presumes to criticize her king.
Since
lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called:
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free).
Way
back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a
missile cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally
shot down an Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian
passengers. George Bush the First, who was at the time on
his presidential campaign, was asked to comment on the
incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize for
the United States. I don't care what the facts are."
I
don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the
New American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme
would be more apposite: The facts can be whatever we want
them to be.
When
the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News
survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public
believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for
the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of
Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported Al
Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because
there isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation,
auto-suggestion, and outright lies circulated by the U.S.
corporate media, otherwise known as the "Free Press," that
hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy
rests.
Public
support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on
a multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated
by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the
corporate media.
Apart
from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had
the manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass
Destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent of
saying it would be "suicidal" for the U.S. not to attack
Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved,
bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty
America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of
countries - earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya,
Grenada, and Panama.) But this time it wasn't just your
ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was
Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a
new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike, a.k.a. The
United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's
Official.
The
war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of
Mass Destruction have been found. Not even a little one.
Perhaps they'll have to be planted before they're
discovered. And then, the more troublesome amongst us will
need an explanation for why Saddam Hussein didn't use them
when his country was being invaded.
Of
course, there'll be no answers. True Believers will make do
with those fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few
barrels of banned chemicals in an old shed. There seems to
be no consensus yet about whether they're really chemicals,
whether they're actually banned and whether the vessels
they're contained in can technically be called barrels.
(There were unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of
potassium permanganate and an old harmonica were found there
too.)
Meanwhile,
in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually
decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.
Then
there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical and
nuclear weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection?
So what if Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as
he hates the United States? Bush the Lesser has said Saddam
Hussein was a "Homicidal Dictator." And so, the reasoning
goes, Iraq needed a "regime change."
Never
mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F.
Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963,
after a successful coup, the Ba'ath party came to power in
Iraq. Using lists provided by the CIA, the new Ba'ath regime
systematically eliminated hundreds of doctors, teachers,
lawyers, and political figures known to be leftists. An
entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The same
technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of
people in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam
Hussein was said to have had a hand in supervising the
bloodbath. In 1979, after factional infighting within the
Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the President of Iraq.
In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the U.S.
National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, "We
see no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the
United States and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and
covertly supported Saddam Hussein. They financed him,
equipped him, armed him, and provided him with dual-use
materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. They
supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and
morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and
the 1988 gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which
14 years later were re-heated and served up as reasons to
justify invading Iraq. After the first Gulf War, the
"Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra and then
looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and
slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.
The
point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the
most elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in
history (the opening move of Operation Shock and Awe), then
surely those who supported him ought at least to be tried
for war crimes? Why aren't the faces of U.S. and U.K.
government officials on the infamous pack of cards of wanted
men and women?
Because
when it comes to Empire, facts don't matter.
Yes,
but all that's in the past we're told. Saddam Hussein is a
monster who must be stopped now. And only the U.S. can stop
him. It's an effective technique, this use of the urgent
morality of the present to obscure the diabolical sins of
the past and the malevolent plans for the future. Indonesia,
Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan - the list goes on and
on. Right now there are brutal regimes being groomed for the
future - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, the Central
Asian Republics.
U.S.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S.
freedoms are "not the grant of any government or document,
but....our endowment from God." (Why bother with the United
Nations when God himself is on hand?)
So
here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an
Empire armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added
insurance, the most formidable arsenal of weapons of mass
destruction in history). Here we are, confronted with an
Empire that has conferred upon itself the right to go to war
at will, and the right to deliver people from corrupting
ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators,
sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested
practice of extermination. Empire is on the move, and
Democracy is its sly new war cry. Democracy, home-delivered
to your doorstep by daisy cutters. Death is a small price
for people to pay for the privilege of sampling this new
product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil,
add oil, then bomb).
But
then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don't
really qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don't
qualify as real deaths. Our histories don't qualify as
history. They never have.
Speaking
of history, in these past months, while the world watched,
the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on
live TV. Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in
Afghanistan, the regime of Saddam Hussein simply
disappeared. This was followed by what analysts called a
"power vacuum." Cities that had been under siege, without
food, water, and electricity for days, cities that had been
bombed relentlessly, people who had been starved and
systematically impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for
more than a decade, were suddenly left with no semblance of
urban administration. A seven-thousand-year-old civilization
slid into anarchy. On live TV.
Vandals
plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American
and British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they
had no orders to act. In effect, they had orders to kill
people, but not to protect them. Their priorities were
clear. The safety and security of Iraqi people was not their
business. The security of whatever little remained of Iraq's
infrastructure was not their business. But the security and
safety of Iraq's oil fields were. Of course they were. The
oil fields were "secured" almost before the invasion began.
On
CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and
replayed. TV commentators, army and government spokespersons
portrayed it as a "liberated people" venting their rage at a
despotic regime. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
said: "It's untidy. Freedom's untidy and free people are
free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do bad things."
Did anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I
wonder - did he hold the same view during the riots in Los
Angeles following the beating of Rodney King? Would he care
to share his thesis about the Untidiness of Freedom with the
two million people being held in U.S. prisons right now?
(The world's "freest" country has the highest number of
prisoners in the world.) Would he discuss its merits with
young African American men, 28 percent of whom will spend
some part of their adult lives in jail? Could he explain why
he serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions when
he was governor of Texas?
Before
the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of
16 crucial sites to protect. The National Museum was second
on that list. Yet the Museum was not just looted, it was
desecrated. It was a repository of an ancient cultural
heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the river
valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the
banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates produced the world's
first writing, first calendar, first library, first city,
and, yes, the world's first democracy. King Hammurabi of
Babylon was the first to codify laws governing the social
life of citizens. It was a code in which abandoned women,
prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had rights. The
Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of
legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the
concept of social justice. The U.S. government could not
have chosen a more inappropriate land in which to stage its
illegal war and display its grotesque disregard for justice.
At
a Pentagon briefing during the days of looting, Secretary
Rumsfeld, Prince of Darkness, turned on his media cohorts
who had served him so loyally through the war. "The images
you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over
and over, and it's the same picture, of some person walking
out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty
times and you say, 'My god, were there that many vases? Is
it possible that there were that many vases in the whole
country?'"
Laughter
rippled through the press room. Would it be alright for the
poor of Harlem to loot the Metropolitan Museum? Would it be
greeted with similar mirth? The last building on the ORHA
list of 16 sites to be protected was the Ministry of Oil. It
was the only one that was given protection. Perhaps the
occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are
read upside down?
Television
tells us that Iraq has been "liberated" and that Afghanistan
is well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks
to Bush and Blair, the 21st century's leading feminists. In
reality, Iraq's infrastructure has been destroyed. Its
people brought to the brink of starvation. Its food stocks
depleted. And its cities devastated by a complete
administrative breakdown. Iraq is being ushered in the
direction of a civil war between Shias and Sunnis.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into the pre-Taliban
era of anarchy, and its territory has been carved up into
fiefdoms by hostile warlords.
Undaunted
by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched his
2004 campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President.
In what probably constitutes the shortest flight in history,
a military jet landed on an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S.
Abraham Lincoln, which was so close to shore that, according
to the Associated Press, administration officials
acknowledged "positioning the massive ship to provide the
best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his
background instead of the San Diego coastline." President
Bush, who never served his term in the military, emerged
from the cockpit in fancy dress - a U.S. military bomber
jacket, combat boots, flying goggles, helmet. Waving to his
cheering troops, he officially proclaimed victory over Iraq.
He was careful to say that it was "just one victory in a war
on terror ... [which] still goes on."
It
was important to avoid making a straightforward victory
announcement, because under the Geneva Convention a
victorious army is bound by the legal obligations of an
occupying force, a responsibility that the Bush
administration does not want to burden itself with. Also,
closer to the 2004 elections, in order to woo wavering
voters, another victory in the "War on Terror" might become
necessary. Syria is being fattened for the kill.
It
was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, "People can
always be brought to the bidding of the leaders.... All you
have to do is tell them they're being attacked and denounce
the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and exposing the
country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
He's
right. It's dead easy. That's what the Bush regime banks on.
The distinction between election campaigns and war, between
democracy and oligarchy, seems to be closing fast.
The
only caveat in these campaign wars is that U.S. lives must
not be lost. It shakes voter confidence. But the problem of
U.S. soldiers being killed in combat has been licked. More
or less.
At
a media briefing before Operation Shock and Awe was
unleashed, General Tommy Franks announced, "This campaign
will be like no other in history." Maybe he's right.
I'm
no military historian, but when was the last time a war was
fought like this?
After
using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions
and weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to
its knees, its people starved, half a million children dead,
its infrastructure severely damaged, after making sure that
most of its weapons had been destroyed, in an act of
cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in history, the
"Coalition of the Willing" (better known as the Coalition of
the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!
Operation
Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It was more like Operation
Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees.
As
soon as the war began, the governments of France, Germany,
and Russia, which refused to allow a final resolution
legitimizing the war to be passed in the UN Security
Council, fell over each other to say how much they wanted
the United States to win. President Jacques Chirac offered
French airspace to the Anglo-American air force. U.S.
military bases in Germany were open for business. German
Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer publicly hoped for the
"rapid collapse" of the Saddam Hussein regime. Vladimir
Putin publicly hoped for the same. These are governments
that colluded in the enforced disarming of Iraq before their
dastardly rush to take the side of those who attacked it.
Apart from hoping to share the spoils, they hoped Empire
would honor their pre-war oil contracts with Iraq. Only the
very naïve could expect old Imperialists to behave
otherwise.
Leaving
aside the cheap thrills and the lofty moral speeches made in
the UN during the run up to the war, eventually, at the
moment of crisis, the unity of Western governments - despite
the opposition from the majority of their people - was
overwhelming.
When
the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of 90
percent of its population, and turned down the U.S.
government's offer of billions of dollars of blood money for
the use of Turkish soil, it was accused of lacking
"democratic principles." According to a Gallup International
poll, in no European country was support for a war carried
out "unilaterally by America and its allies" higher than 11
percent. But the governments of England, Italy, Spain,
Hungary, and other countries of Eastern Europe were praised
for disregarding the views of the majority of their people
and supporting the illegal invasion. That, presumably, was
fully in keeping with democratic principles. What's it
called? New Democracy? (Like Britain's New Labour?)
In
stark contrast to the venality displayed by their
governments, on the 15th of February, weeks before the
invasion, in the most spectacular display of public morality
the world has ever seen, more than 10 million people marched
against the war on 5 continents. Many of you, I'm sure, were
among them. They - we - were disregarded with utter disdain.
When asked to react to the anti-war demonstrations,
President Bush said, "It's like deciding, well, I'm going to
decide policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader
is to decide policy based upon the security, in this case
the security of the people."Democracy, the modern world's
holy cow, is in crisis. And the crisis is a profound one.
Every kind of outrage is being committed in the name of
democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a
pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be
whatever you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World's
whore, willing to dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a
whole range of taste, available to be used and abused at
will.
Until
quite recently, right up to the 1980's, democracy did seem
as though it might actually succeed in delivering a degree
of real social justice.
But
modern democracies have been around for long enough for
neo-liberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They
have mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments
of democracy - the "independent" judiciary, the "free"
press, the parliament - and molding them to their purpose.
The project of corporate globalization has cracked the code.
Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary
mean little when the free market has reduced them to
commodities on sale to the highest bidder.
To
fully comprehend the extent to which Democracy is under
siege, it might be an idea to look at what goes on in some
of our contemporary democracies. The World's Largest: India,
(which I have written about at some length and therefore
will not speak about tonight). The World's Most Interesting:
South Africa. The world's most powerful: the U.S.A. And,
most instructive of all, the plans that are being made to
usher in the world's newest: Iraq.
In
South Africa, after 300 years of brutal domination of the
black majority by a white minority through colonialism and
apartheid, a non-racial, multi-party democracy came to power
in 1994. It was a phenomenal achievement. Within two years
of coming to power, the African National Congress had
genuflected with no caveats to the Market God. Its massive
program of structural adjustment, privatization, and
liberalization has only increased the hideous disparities
between the rich and the poor. More than a million people
have lost their jobs. The corporatization of basic services
- electricity, water, and housing-has meant that 10 million
South Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have
been disconnected from water and electricity. 2 million have
been evicted from their homes.
Meanwhile,
a small white minority that has been historically privileged
by centuries of brutal exploitation is more secure than ever
before. They continue to control the land, the farms, the
factories, and the abundant natural resources of that
country. For them the transition from apartheid to
neo-liberalism barely disturbed the grass. It's apartheid
with a clean conscience. And it goes by the name of
Democracy.
Democracy
has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.
In
countries of the first world, too, the machinery of
democracy has been effectively subverted. Politicians, media
barons, judges, powerful corporate lobbies, and government
officials are imbricated in an elaborate underhand
configuration that completely undermines the lateral
arrangement of checks and balances between the constitution,
courts of law, parliament, the administration and, perhaps
most important of all, the independent media that form the
structural basis of a parliamentary democracy. Increasingly,
the imbrication is neither subtle nor elaborate.
Italian
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, has a
controlling interest in major Italian newspapers, magazines,
television channels, and publishing houses. The Financial
Times reported that he controls about 90 percent of Italy's
TV viewership. Recently, during a trial on bribery charges,
while insisting he was the only person who could save Italy
from the left, he said, "How much longer do I have to keep
living this life of sacrifices?" That bodes ill for the
remaining 10 percent of Italy's TV viewership. What price
Free Speech? Free Speech for whom?
In
the United States, the arrangement is more complex. Clear
Channel Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station
owner in the country. It runs more than 1,200 channels,
which together account for 9 percent of the market. Its CEO
contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Bush's
election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of American
citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on
Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic "Rallies for
America" across the country. It used its radio stations to
advertise the events and then sent correspondents to cover
them as though they were breaking news. The era of
manufacturing consent has given way to the era of
manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the
pretense, and start hiring theatre directors instead of
journalists.
As
America's show business gets more and more violent and
war-like, and America's wars get more and more like show
business, some interesting cross-overs are taking place. The
designer who built the 250,000 dollar set in Qatar from
which General Tommy Franks stage-managed news coverage of
Operation Shock and Awe also built sets for Disney, MGM, and
"Good Morning America."
It
is a cruel irony that the U.S., which has the most ardent,
vociferous defenders of the idea of Free Speech, and (until
recently) the most elaborate legislation to protect it, has
so circumscribed the space in which that freedom can be
expressed. In a strange, convoluted way, the sound and fury
that accompanies the legal and conceptual defense of Free
Speech in America serves to mask the process of the rapid
erosion of the possibilities of actually exercising that
freedom.
The
news and entertainment industry in the U.S. is for the most
part controlled by a few major corporations - AOL-Time
Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation. Each of these
corporations owns and controls TV stations, film studios,
record companies, and publishing ventures. Effectively, the
exits are sealed.
America's
media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people.
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Michael
Powell, the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has
proposed even further deregulation of the communication
industry, which will lead to even greater consolidation.
So
here it is - the World's Greatest Democracy, led by a man
who was not legally elected. America's Supreme Court gifted
him his job. What price have American people paid for this
spurious presidency?
In
the three years of George Bush the Lesser's term, the
American economy has lost more than two million jobs.
Outlandish military expenses, corporate welfare, and tax
giveaways to the rich have created a financial crisis for
the U.S. educational system. According to a survey by the
National Council of State Legislatures, U.S. states cut 49
billion dollars in public services, health, welfare
benefits, and education in 2002. They plan to cut another
25.7 billion dollars this year. That makes a total of 75
billion dollars. Bush's initial budget request to Congress
to finance the war in Iraq was 80 billion dollars.
So
who's paying for the war? America's poor. Its students, its
unemployed, its single mothers, its hospital and home-care
patients, its teachers, and health workers.
And
who's actually fighting the war?
Once
again, America's poor. The soldiers who are baking in Iraq's
desert sun are not the children of the rich. Only one of all
the representatives in the House of Representatives and the
Senate has a child fighting in Iraq. America's "volunteer"
army in fact depends on a poverty draft of poor whites,
Blacks, Latinos, and Asians looking for a way to earn a
living and get an education. Federal statistics show that
African Americans make up 21 percent of the total armed
forces and 29 percent of the U.S. army. They count for only
12 percent of the general population. It's ironic, isn't it
- the disproportionately high representation of African
Americans in the army and prison? Perhaps we should take a
positive view, and look at this as affirmative action at its
most effective. Nearly 4 million Americans (2 percent of the
population) have lost the right to vote because of felony
convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African
Americans, which means that 13 percent of all voting-age
Black people have been disenfranchised.
For
African Americans there's also affirmative action in death.
A study by the economist Amartya Sen shows that African
Americans as a group have a lower life expectancy than
people born in China, in the Indian State of Kerala (where I
come from), Sri Lanka, or Costa Rica. Bangladeshi men have a
better chance of making it to the age of forty than African
American men from here in Harlem.
This
year, on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s
74th birthday, President Bush denounced the University of
Michigan's affirmative action program favouring Blacks and
Latinos. He called it "divisive," "unfair," and
"unconstitutional." The successful effort to keep Blacks off
the voting rolls in the State of Florida in order that
George Bush be elected was of course neither unfair nor
unconstitutional. I don't suppose affirmative action for
White Boys From Yale ever is.
So
we know who's paying for the war. We know who's fighting it.
But who will benefit from it? Who is homing in on the
reconstruction contracts estimated to be worth up to one
hundred billon dollars? Could it be America's poor and
unemployed and sick? Could it be America's single mothers?
Or America's Black and Latino minorities?
Operation
Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning
Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil
to the Iraqi people via Corporate Multinationals. Like
Bechtel, like Chevron, like Halliburton.
Once
again, it is a small, tight circle that connects corporate,
military, and government leadership to one another. The
promiscuousness, the cross-pollination is outrageous.
Consider
this: the Defense Policy Board is a government-appointed
group that advises the Pentagon. Its members are appointed
by the under secretary of defense and approved by Donald
Rumsfeld. Its meetings are classified. No information is
available for public scrutiny.
The
Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that 9
out of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board are
connected to companies that were awarded defense contracts
worth 76 billion dollars between the years 2001 and 2002.
One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine Corps general,
is a senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant
international engineering outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company
chairman, is on the President's Export Council. Former
Secretary of State George Shultz, who is also on the Board
of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is the chairman of the
advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
When asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned
about the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said, "I
don't know that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it.
But if there's work to be done, Bechtel is the type of
company that could do it."
Bechtel
has been awarded a 680 million dollar reconstruction
contract in Iraq. According to the Center for Responsive
Politics, Bechtel contributed hundreds of thousands of
dollars to Republican campaign efforts.
Arcing
across this subterfuge, dwarfing it by the sheer magnitude
of its malevolence, is America's anti-terrorism legislation.
The U.S.A. Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, has become
the blueprint for similar anti-terrorism bills in countries
across the world. It was passed in the House of
Representatives by a majority vote of 337 to 79. According
to the New York Times, "Many lawmakers said it had been
impossible to truly debate or even read the legislation."
The
Patriot Act ushers in an era of systemic automated
surveillance. It gives the government the authority to
monitor phones and computers and spy on people in ways that
would have seemed completely unacceptable a few years ago.
It gives the FBI the power to seize all of the circulation,
purchasing, and other records of library users and bookstore
customers on the suspicion that they are part of a terrorist
network. It blurs the boundaries between speech and criminal
activity creating the space to construe acts of civil
disobedience as violating the law.
Already
hundreds of people are being held indefinitely as "unlawful
combatants." (In India, the number is in the thousands. In
Israel, 5,000 Palestinians are now being detained.)
Non-citizens, of course, have no rights at all. They can
simply be "disappeared" like the people of Chile under
Washington's old ally, General Pinochet. More than 1,000
people, many of them Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin,
have been detained, some without access to legal
representatives.
Apart
from paying the actual economic costs of war, American
people are paying for these wars of "liberation" with their
own freedoms. For the ordinary American, the price of "New
Democracy" in other countries is the death of real democracy
at home.
Meanwhile,
Iraq is being groomed for "liberation." (Or did they mean
"liberalization" all along?) The Wall Street Journal reports
that "the Bush administration has drafted sweeping plans to
remake Iraq's economy in the U.S. image."
Iraq's
constitution is being redrafted. Its trade laws, tax laws,
and intellectual property laws rewritten in order to turn it
into an American-style capitalist economy.
The
United States Agency for International Development has
invited U.S. companies to bid for contracts that range
between road building, water systems, text book
distribution, and cell phone networks.
Soon
after Bush the Second announced that he wanted American
farmers to feed the world, Dan Amstutz, a former senior
executive of Cargill, the biggest grain exporter in the
world, was put in charge of agricultural reconstruction in
Iraq. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy director, said, "Putting
Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural reconstruction in Iraq
is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of a human
rights commission."
The
two men who have been short-listed to run operations for
managing Iraqi oil have worked with Shell, BP, and Fluor.
Fluor is embroiled in a lawsuit by black South African
workers who have accused the company of exploiting and
brutalizing them during the apartheid era. Shell, of course,
is well known for its devastation of the Ogoni tribal lands
in Nigeria.
Tom
Brokaw (one of America's best-known TV anchors) was
inadvertently succinct about the process. "One of the things
we don't want to do," he said, "is to destroy the
infrastructure of Iraq because in a few days we're going to
own that country."
Now
that the ownership deeds are being settled, Iraq is ready
for New Democracy.
So,
as Lenin used to ask: What Is To Be Done?
Well...
We
might as well accept the fact that there is no conventional
military force that can successfully challenge the American
war machine. Terrorist strikes only give the U.S. Government
an opportunity that it is eagerly awaiting to further
tighten its stranglehold. Within days of an attack you can
bet that Patriot II would be passed. To argue against U.S.
military aggression by saying that it will increase the
possibilities of terrorist strikes is futile. It's like
threatening Brer Rabbit that you'll throw him into the
bramble bush. Any one who has read the documents written by
The Project for the New American Century can attest to that.
The government's suppression of the Congressional committee
report on September 11th, which found that there was
intelligence warning of the strikes that was ignored, also
attests to the fact that, for all their posturing, the
terrorists and the Bush regime might as well be working as a
team. They both hold people responsible for the actions of
their governments. They both believe in the doctrine of
collective guilt and collective punishment. Their actions
benefit each other greatly.
The
U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms
the range and extent of its capability for paranoid
aggression. In human psychology, paranoid aggression is
usually an indicator of nervous insecurity. It could be
argued that it's no different in the case of the psychology
of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft
underbelly.
Its
"homeland" may be defended by border patrols and nuclear
weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its
economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Already the
Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and
British government products and companies that should be
boycotted. Apart from the usual targets - Coke, Pepsi,
McDonalds - government agencies like USAID, the British
DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill
Lynch, and American Express could find themselves under
siege. These lists are being honed and refined by activists
across the world. They could become a practical guide that
directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world.
Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of Corporate
Globalization is beginning to seem more than a little
evitable.
It
would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront
Empire. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working
parts and disable them one by one. No target is too small.
No victory too insignificant. We could reverse the idea of
the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire
and its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples'
Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded
with a contract in postwar Iraq, just as activists in this
country and around the world targeted institutions of
apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed, and
boycotted. Forced out of business. That could be our
response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a great
beginning.
Another
urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the
boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a
universe of alternative information. We need to support
independent media like Democracy Now!, Alternative Radio,
and South End Press.
The
battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one.
Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They
were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them,
the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a
battle that must range across continents and countries. It
must not acknowledge national boundaries but, if it is to
succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only
institution more powerful than the U.S. government is
American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave
nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the
power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace
and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests are being
carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse.
You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles
from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag.
Refuse the victory parade.
You
have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read
Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to
remind yourself of this.
Hundreds
of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda
you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your
own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails
in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan
or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.
If
you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but
in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest
of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be
gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended
instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.
I
hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a
great nation. But you could be a great people.
History
is giving you the chance.
Seize
the time..
Emanzipation
Humanum,
version 05. 2003, Criticism, suggestions as to form and
content, dialogue, translation into other languages are all
desired
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/roy02.html
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