Posted on 02/05/2003 3:52:56 PM PST by Red Jones
Confronting Empire
by Arundhati Roy January 28, 2003
www.ZNet.org
I've been asked to speak about "How to confront Empire?" It's a huge question, and I have no easy answers.
When we speak of confronting "Empire," we need to identify what "Empire" means. Does it mean the U.S. Government (and its European satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is it something more than that?
In many countries, Empire has sprouted other subsidiary heads, some dangerous byproducts - nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course terrorism. All these march arm in arm with the project of corporate globalization.
Let me illustrate what I mean. India - the world's biggest democracy - is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization project. Its "market" of one billion people is being prized open by the WTO. Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by the Government and the Indian elite.
It is not a coincidence that the Prime Minister, the Home Minister, the Disinvestment Minister - the men who signed the deal with Enron in India, the men who are selling the country's infrastructure to corporate multinationals, the men who want to privatize water, electricity, oil, coal, steel, health, education and telecommunication - are all members or admirers of the RSS. The RSS is a right wing, ultra-nationalist Hindu guild which has openly admired Hitler and his methods.
The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of corporate globalization rips through people's lives in India, massive privatization, and labor "reforms" are pushing people off their land and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation deaths are coming in from all over the country.
While the elite journeys to its imaginary destination somewhere near the top of the world, the dispossessed are spiraling downwards into crime and chaos. This climate of frustration and national disillusionment is the perfect breeding ground, history tells us, for fascism.
The two arms of the Indian Government have evolved the perfect pincer action. While one arm is busy selling India off in chunks, the other, to divert attention, is orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of Hindu nationalism and religious fascism. It is conducting nuclear tests, rewriting history books, burning churches, and demolishing mosques. Censorship, surveillance, the suspension of civil liberties and human rights, the definition of who is an Indian citizen and who is not, particularly with regard to religious minorities, is becoming common practice now.
Last March, in the state of Gujarat, two thousand Muslims were butchered in a State-sponsored pogrom. Muslim women were specially targeted. They were stripped, and gang-raped, before being burned alive. Arsonists burned and looted shops, homes, textiles mills, and mosques.
More than a hundred and fifty thousand Muslims have been driven from their homes. The economic base of the Muslim community has been devastated.
While Gujarat burned, the Indian Prime Minister was on MTV promoting his new poems. In January this year, the Government that orchestrated the killing was voted back into office with a comfortable majority. Nobody has been punished for the genocide. Narendra Modi, architect of the pogrom, proud member of the RSS, has embarked on his second term as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. If he were Saddam Hussein, of course each atrocity would have been on CNN. But since he's not - and since the Indian "market" is open to global investors - the massacre is not even an embarrassing inconvenience.
There are more than one hundred million Muslims in India. A time bomb is ticking in our ancient land.
All this to say that it is a myth that the free market breaks down national barriers. The free market does not threaten national sovereignty, it undermines democracy.
As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to corner resources is intensifying. To push through their "sweetheart deals," to corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the dreams we dream, corporate globalization needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies.
Corporate Globalization - or shall we call it by its name? - Imperialism - needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice.
Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their borders and stockpile weapons of mass destruction. After all they have to make sure that it's only money, goods, patents and services that are globalized. Not the free movement of people. Not a respect for human rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimination or chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate change, or - god forbid - justice.
So this - all this - is "empire." This loyal confederation, this obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer them.
Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be to eliminate that distance.
So how do we resist "Empire"?
The good news is that we are not doing too badly. There have been major victories. Here in Latin America you have had so many - in Bolivia, you have Cochabamba. In Peru, there was the uprising in Arequipa, In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is holding on, despite the U.S. government's best efforts.
And the world's gaze is on the people of Argentina, who are trying to refashion a country from the ashes of the havoc wrought by the IMF.
In India the movement against corporate globalization is gathering momentum and is poised to become the only real political force to counter religious fascism.
As for corporate globalization's glittering ambassadors - Enron, Bechtel, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson - where were they last year, and where are they now?
And of course, here in Brazil, we must ask: who was the president last year, and who is it now?
Still, many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and despair. We know that under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are hard at work.
While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq.
If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball to eye-ball confrontation between "Empire" and those of us who are resisting it, it might seem that we are losing.
But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of us gathered here, have, each in our own way, laid siege to "Empire."
We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world's stage in all it's brutish, iniquitous nakedness.
Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now - too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It won't be long before the majority of American people become our allies.
Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million people marched against the war on Iraq. Each month, the protest is gathering momentum.
Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret history. Secret especially from its own people. But now America's secrets are history, and its history is public knowledge. It's street talk.
Today, we know that every argument that is being used to escalate the war against Iraq is a lie. The most ludicrous of them being the U.S. Government's deep commitment to bring democracy to Iraq.
Killing people to save them from dictatorship or ideological corruption is, of course, an old U.S. government sport. Here in Latin America, you know that better than most.
Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, a murderer (whose worst excesses were supported by the governments of the United States and Great Britain). There's no doubt that Iraqis would be better off without him.
But, then, the whole world would be better off without a certain Mr. Bush. In fact, he is far more dangerous than Saddam Hussein.
So, should we bomb Bush out of the White House?
It's more than clear that Bush is determined to go to war against Iraq, regardless of the facts - and regardless of international public opinion.
In its recruitment drive for allies, The United States is prepared to invent facts.
The charade with weapons inspectors is the U.S. government's offensive, insulting concession to some twisted form of international etiquette. It's like leaving the "doggie door" open for last minute "allies" or maybe the United Nations to crawl through.
But for all intents and purposes, the New War against Iraq has begun.
What can we do?
We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar.
We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government's excesses.
We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their allies - for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners, and pusillanimous long-distance bombers that they are.
We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.
When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank you." We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.
The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
Nations are like extended families. The various sovereign governments representing these nations are intimately familiar with and sympathetic to the individuals and their situations inside of those nations. These governments have served to protect the interests of the peoples in these nations. As the powers of the governments are taken away by the New World Order many people inside those nations will suffer from it.
In India there are hundreds of millions of people who work the land or depend on somebody who does work the land. These small farms are very unproductive. The food they produce cannot compete in price with the big corporations. The Indian government has tried very hard to protect these people. But as time goes on it seems that it is New World Order policy to force India to turn their backs on these people and accept the imports from the big corporate agriculture firms.
In China, Mexico, Brazil and many other nations it is the same. It has really just begun to force these nations into abandoning their protections of these poor farmers.
We do need a framework for international trade and international trade can bring forth tremendous benefits. But the way it is handled by the World Trade Organization we are preventing nations from providing the special protections they need to watch out for the welfare of their citizens.
We live in interestng times. It is easy to dismiss critics like this Arundhati Roy as being leftists or anti-american zealots. But my read of it is that the New World Order represents something all new and is outside of the parameters of our several decades long conflict between the liberals and the conservatives.
Hope this is at least food for thought. I respectfully submit to you all that we are being seduced into supporting something that is evil. I'm talking about the NWO, not about the Iraqi war. If we allow this to happen, then we will account for this one day. Prosperity for all should be our goal. Voluntary agreements with sovereign governments concerning trade and other matters should be our means. The WTO should be scrapped. This article makes me want to move to Argentina. They may be poor in Argentina, but oh what a glorious cause they are engaged in as they have snubbed their noses at the IMF and thus all the imperialism that the New World Order is.
If this article and my comments make no sense to you, then I suggest that you are a good little sheeple and are behaving well also or at least that you should make a point to read different views about this New World Order.
It is easy to dismiss critics like this Arundhati Roy as being leftists or anti-american zealots.
It is easy because that is what she is. She could have stated a few relevant things about farms, corporations, globalization. Instead she wraps it up in her tangential anti-Americanism, like a pol giving a stump speech. She seems most concerned about resuscitating the word "Empire" into a different context.
Citing Chavez in Venezuela shows that she follows the news in shallow fashion.
Good point about the marching orders "appearing" to come from America - Europe is a bigger player. And Ms. Roy might take a look on the shelves of her own country to see who's profiting by tearing down trade walls, and dumping products there. Made in China, South Korea, Malaysia, - rice I suspect comes from Thailand and Vietnam. What she say about OPEC?
I don't blame you. She's talking about the secret societies. I don't know much about those secret societies.
But when I was in college almost 30 years ago the political science textbook we used was written by Thomas Dye whom I was told at the time was the #1 author of political science textbooks in american universities. The thesis of the book and the only important theme was that the American people don't know what's good for them and the elites must take over and rule. It was recommended they do this by pulling the wool over the public's eyes and manipulating behind the scenes, etc. I'm not kidding, that's exactly what the book said.
It is the ideology of the elite to rule us in just this way. They have behind the scenes organizations bent on ruling. They are taking power out of the hands of sovereign governments systematically. This includes our government. This effort is called New World Order. On September 11, 1990 George Bush 1 announced that he was loyal to the NWO. It was a bad day in our history.
The biggest organization that is part of the NWO is the World Trade Organization. This person we're discussing is mainly complaining about WTO policies. The WTO, the World Bank and our government's policies are basically forcing nations to accept a trade framework that is troublesome and I believe evil when you examine it closely.
I'm opposed to the NWO. I think we should do things the old fashioned way. Sovereign governments should be able to restrict or tax trade if they desire. And I don't think the IMF and World Bank have a decent track record. And I think there's a lot of evidence that recent trade patterns are bidding wages down for large portions of populations in many countries.
You can't support traditional ideas of democracy and the New World Order at the same time. It's just that simple. I'm on George Washington's side, not George Bush'.
Why did George HW Bush give a big speech in support of the New World Order and saying that he was with them in 1990? I guess he was delusional, must've been watching cartoons on tv.
There was an article in a Spanish newspaper about 10 years ago. It seems that the Spanish had just selected a new president or prime minister. This new leader of spain, just elected, was on his first day on the job. Henry Kissinger had called and scheduled an appointment with the fellow on this first day in advance. The new leader met with Henry K. He came out of that meeting and summoned a journalist. He told the journalist that Henry K had told him that if he cooperated with them that the banking system would smile on Spain and that they would prosper. He said also that Henry K said that if Spain didn't cooperate with them that the banking system would frown on them and that they would not prosper. So, I guess this president of Spain was imagining things too along with George bush in 1990.
We can name a whole range of issues where our government is doing things that harm us and that we disapprove of. We can name all kinds of provisions in treaties that we americans don't like and will also harm us and yet our government has signed these treaties. But our government is in harmony with the New World Order.
She is putting together a litany of things she doesn't like, and calling it NWO, and laying it all at Bush's feet. You notice, in her world, The Indian government is part of the Empire she hates.
This is not a well-reasoned thesis.
the men who signed the deal with Enron in India
The case could be made that India took Enron to the cleaners. Enron built a large power plant on the promise of a power contract at market prices. The promise was not kept, and Enron is out the money. I have seen similar things happen elsewhere, where US companies have put up truly enormous sums only to lose them when promises are not kept. Multinationals who invest in 3rd world countries are playing in a very risky environment, and risk losing their shirts. And no sympathy from anyone when it happens. They just take a charge against profits, and move on.
the men who want to privatize water, electricity, oil, coal, steel, health, education and telecommunication -
Countries where the key elements of the economy are government owned are always economic backwaters, trapped in poverty. Its called socialism. These countries are always poor, but if you try to change the path they are on, you are the evil one. She admits that the status quo is bad, but she cannot bring herself to want to change the status quo. On the contrary, she blames the misery of her people on the people who are trying to bring change.
Last March, in the state of Gujarat, two thousand Muslims were butchered in a State-sponsored pogrom.
She conflates religious bigotry in India, which has a very old pedigree, with NWO. Think about this. Think about the history of India, both in classic times, and in the last couple of centuries. Limit it, if you like, even to just the post-independence era, and you will see that to blame South Asia's civil wars on GWBush is laughable.
It is tragic, it is something that people of good will are going to have to work through. The struggle to unite Indians of all faiths would be well worth the investment of Roy's talents and life-force. By blaming it on people she doesn't like, she trivializes it, and does nothing to advance a solution.
In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is holding on, despite the U.S. government's best efforts
Chavez is another case of a socialist trying to save his country from the ravages of socialist economics, by imposing ever more universal socialism. And then wondering why things only get worse. News Flash; centralized economies, which Venezuela has always been, are doomed to failure, no matter how much oil they have, no matter how charismatic their leaders. And, no, the US isn't lifting a finger to drive him out of office; the Venezuelans will have to do this themselves.
And the world's gaze is on the people of Argentina, who are trying to refashion a country from the ashes of the havoc wrought by the IMF.
No, they are having to dig their way out of the rubble caused by years of deficits, to the point that no bank in the world would loan them anymore money. The obvious answer, balance your budget, they dismiss as the evil machinations of the NWO. Again, socialist governments have driven a perfectly good country into the dirt, and then blamed capitalism.
Killing people to save them from dictatorship or ideological corruption is, of course, an old U.S. government sport. Here in Latin America, you know that better than most.
After decades of struggle, every country in latin america is a democracy except Cuba. With the fall of the Soviet Empire, within weeks the remaining communist insurgencies had all ended, amazing isn't it, with the exception of the rebellion in Colombia which metasticized into a narco movement.
While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning to go to war against Iraq.
This is a juicy one. Where are the bombs raining down on you? Since when has productive work become criminal? When did oil pipelines become evil?
Resources are developed by investment, by the employment of technology, and by hard work. When did this become evil? What makes it evil, in Roy's eyes, is if it is done by private actors rather than governments. Remember, in countries where governments control resources, including India, including most of the third world, wealth is extracted and there is little to show for it. Her answer is more of the same. Her enemies are anyone that proposes another paradigm.
We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their allies - for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners, and pusillanimous long-distance bombers that they are.
Think about this one. She is using these words about men who would stop the real killer of babies, poisoner of water, and long-distance bomber. Study Saddam's career. Study the death toll under his rule, and then get back to me.
The canard that we once had dealings with him, and are therefore disqualified from stopping him now is juvenile. We were never his ally. The Persian Gulf states supported his war against Iran out of raw fear, and we supported him out of loyalty to them. The moment he became a threat to them, our supposed "alliance" with Saddam vanished. We know very well what he has done to the Kurds, and we have spent a decade stopping it. Now we are going to take him down. Roy can squeal all she wants, but she has place herself in the wrong camp, and if she were not lost to rationality, she would have to be ashamed to back Saddam against the liberators of his prison nation.
Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.
We don't need you. You produce nothing, you stand for nothing. We are the doers and the builders. We are the ones who actually put people to work, and push back the walls of poverty. And we are the ones who are going to liberate Iraq, if it can be done. Watch us.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.