"Sir Arthur C. B. E. Wholeflaffers A.S.A." <nospam@newsranger.com> wrote in
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Buy One, Get One Free By Arundhati Roy
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 na�ve 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 na�ve 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.
Interesting.