Public Power in the Age of Empire

[Nur]

Public Power in the Age of Empire

 

The text of "Public Power in the Age of Empire" is based on a public address that Arundhati Roy delivered to an overflow crowd at the American Sociological Association's 99th Annual Meeting in San Francisco, California, on August 16, 2004. The theme of the conference was "Public Sociologies."

 

By Arundhati Roy

 

06/15/07---- (First published 08/17/04) -- - "ICH" -- -- WHEN language has been butchered and bled of meaning, how do we understand "public power"? When freedom means occupation, when democracy means neoliberal capitalism, when reform means repression, when words like "empowerment" and "peacekeeping" make your blood run cold - why, then, "public power" could mean whatever you want it to mean. A biceps building machine, or a Community Power Shower. So, I'll just have to define "public power" as I go along, in my own self-serving sort of way.

 

In India, the word public is now a Hindi word. It means people. In Hindi, we have sarkar and public, the government and the people. Inherent in this use is the underlying assumption that the government is quite separate from "the people." This distinction has to do with the fact that India's freedom struggle, though magnificent, was by no means revolutionary. The Indian elite stepped easily and elegantly into the shoes of the British imperialists. A deeply impoverished, essentially feudal society became a modern, independent nation state. Even today, fifty-seven years on to the day, the truly vanquished still look upon the government as mai-baap, the parent and provider. The somewhat more radical, those who still have fire in their bellies, see it as chor, the thief, the snatcher-away of all things.

 

Either way, for most Indians, sarkar is very separate from public. However, as you make your way up India's complex social ladder, the distinction between sarkar and public gets blurred. The Indian elite, like the elite anywhere in the world, finds it hard to separate itself from the state. It sees like the state, thinks like the state, speaks like the state.

 

In the United States, on the other hand, the blurring of the distinction between sarkar and public has penetrated far deeper into society. This could be a sign of a robust democracy, but unfortunately, it's a little more complicated and less pretty than that. Among other things, it has to do with the elaborate web of paranoia generated by the U.S. sarkar and spun out by the corporate media and Hollywood. Ordinary people in the United States have been manipulated into imagining they are a people under siege whose sole refuge and protector is their government. If it isn't the Communists, it's Al Qaeda. If it isn't Cuba, it's Nicaragua. As a result, this, the most powerful nation in the world - with its unmatchable arsenal of weapons, its history of having waged and sponsored endless wars, and the only nation in history to have actually used nuclear bombs - is peopled by a terrified citizenry, jumping at shadows. A people bonded to the state not by social services, or public health care, or employment guarantees, but by fear.

 

This synthetically manufactured fear is used to gain public sanction for further acts of aggression. And so it goes, building into a spiral of self-fulfilling hysteria, now formally calibrated by the U.S. government's Amazing Technicolored Terror Alerts: fuchsia, turquoise, salmon pink.

 

To outside observers, this merging of sarkar and public in the United States sometimes makes it hard to separate the actions of the government from the people. It is this confusion that fuels anti-Americanism in the world. Anti-Americanism is then seized upon and amplified by the U.S. government and its faithful media outlets. You know the routine: "Why do they hate us? They hate our freedoms," et cetera. This enhances the sense of isolation among people in the United States and makes the embrace between sarkar and public even more intimate. Like Red Riding Hood looking for a cuddle in the wolf's bed.

 

Two thousand and one was not the first year that the U.S. government declared a "war on terrorism." As Noam Chomsky reminds us, the first "war on terrorism" was declared by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s during the U.S.-sponsored terrorist wars across Central America, the Middle East, and Africa. The Reagan administration called terrorism a "plague spread by depraved opponents of civilisation itself." In keeping with this sentiment, in 1987, the United Nations General Assembly proposed a strongly worded condemnation of terrorism. One hundred and fifty-three countries voted for it. Only the United States and Israel voted against it. They objected to a passage that referred to "the right to self-determination, freedom, and independence... of people forcibly deprived of that right... particularly peoples under colonial and racist regimes and foreign occupation." Remember that in 1987, the United States was a staunch ally of apartheid South Africa. The African National Congress and Nelson Mandela were listed as "terrorists." The term "foreign occupation" was taken to mean Israel's occupation of Palestine.

 

Over the last few years, the "war on terrorism" has mutated into the more generic "war on terror." Using the threat of an external enemy to rally people behind you is a tired old horse that politicians have ridden into power for centuries. But could it be that ordinary people are fed up with that poor old horse and are looking for something different? There's an old Hindi film song that goes yeh public hai, yeh sab jaanti hai (the public, she knows it all). Wouldn't it be lovely if the song were right and the politicians wrong?

 

Before Washington's illegal invasion of Iraq, a Gallup International poll showed that in no European country was the support for a unilateral war higher than 11 per cent. On February 15, 2003, weeks before the invasion, more than 10 million people marched against the war on different continents, including North America. And yet the governments of many supposedly democratic countries still went to war.

 

The question is: is "democracy" still democratic? Are democratic governments accountable to the people who elected them? And, critically, is the public in democratic countries responsible for the actions of its sarkar?

 

If you think about it, the logic that underlies the war on terrorism and the logic that underlies terrorism are exactly the same. Both make ordinary citizens pay for the actions of their government. Al Qaeda made the people of the United States pay with their lives for the actions of their government in Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The U.S. government has made the people of Afghanistan pay in the thousands for the actions of the Taliban and the people of Iraq pay in the hundreds of thousands for the actions of Saddam Hussein.

 

The crucial difference is that nobody really elected Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or Saddam Hussein. But the President of the United States was elected (well... in a manner of speaking). The Prime Ministers of Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom were elected. Could it then be argued that citizens of these countries are more responsible for the actions of their government than Iraqis were for the actions of Saddam Hussein or Afghans for the Taliban?

 

Whose God decides which is a "just war" and which isn't? George Bush senior once said: "I will never apologise for the United States. I don't care what the facts are." When the President of the most powerful country in the world doesn't need to care what the facts are, then we can at least be sure we have entered the Age of Empire.

 

So what does public power mean in the Age of Empire? Does it mean anything at all? Does it actually exist?

 

In these allegedly democratic times, conventional political thought holds that public power is exercised through the ballot. Scores of countries in the world will go to the polls this year. Most (not all) of them will get the governments they vote for. But will they get the governments they want?

 

In India this year, we voted the Hindu nationalists out of office. But even as we celebrated, we knew that on nuclear bombs, neoliberalism, privatisation, censorship, big dams - on every major issue other than overt Hindu nationalism - the Congress and the BJP have no major ideological differences. We know that it is the fifty-year legacy of the Congress party that prepared the ground culturally and politically for the Far Right. It was also the Congress party that first opened India's markets to corporate globalisation. It passed legislation that encouraged the privatisation of water and power, the dismantling of the public sector, and the denationalisation of public companies. It enforced cutbacks in government spending on education and health, and weakened labour laws that protected workers' rights. The BJP took this process forward with pitiless abandon.

 

In its election campaign, the Congress party indicated that it was prepared to rethink some of its earlier economic policies. Millions of India's poorest people came out in strength to vote in the elections. The spectacle of the great Indian democracy was telecast live - the poor farmers, the old and infirm, the veiled women with their beautiful silver jewellery, making quaint journeys to election booths on elephants and camels and bullock carts. Contrary to the predictions of all India's experts and pollsters, the Congress won more votes than any other party. India's Communist parties won the largest share of the vote in their history. India's poor had clearly voted against neoliberalism's economic "reforms" and growing fascism. As soon as the votes were counted, the corporate media dispatched them like badly paid extras on a film set. Television channels featured split screens. Half the screen showed the chaos outside the home of Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the Congress party, as the coalition government was cobbled together. The other half showed frenzied stockbrokers outside the Bombay Stock Exchange, panicking at the thought that the Congress party might actually honour its promises and implement its electoral mandate. We saw the Sensex stock index move up and down and sideways. The media, whose own publicly listed stocks were plummeting, reported the stock market crash as though Pakistan had launched ICBMs on New Delhi.

 

Even before the new government was formally sworn in, senior Congress politicians made public statements reassuring investors and the media that privatisation of public utilities would continue. Meanwhile the BJP, now in Opposition, has cynically, and comically, begun to oppose foreign direct investment and the further opening of Indian markets.

 

This is the spurious, evolving dialectic of electoral democracy.

 

As for the Indian poor, once they've provided the votes, they are expected to bugger off home. Policy will be decided despite them.

 

AND what of the U.S. elections? Do U.S. voters have a real choice?

 

It's true that if John Kerry becomes President, some of the oil tycoons and Christian fundamentalists in the White House will change. Few will be sorry to see the backs of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld or John Ashcroft or an end to their blatant thuggery. But the real concern is that in the new administration their policies will continue. That we will have Bushism without Bush. Those positions of real power - the bankers, the CEOs - are not vulnerable to the vote (and in any case, they fund both sides).

 

Unfortunately, the U.S. elections have deteriorated into a sort of personality contest, a squabble over who would do a better job of overseeing Empire. John Kerry believes in the idea of Empire as fervently as George Bush does. The U.S. political system has been carefully crafted to ensure that no one who questions the natural goodness of the military-industrial-corporate structure will be allowed through the portals of power.

 

Given this, it's no surprise that in this election you have two Yale University graduates, both members of Skull and Bones, the same secret society, both millionaires, both playing at soldier-soldier, both talking up war, and arguing almost childishly about who will lead the war on terror more effectively.

 

Like President Bill Clinton before him, Kerry will continue the expansion of U.S. economic and military penetration into the world. He says he would have voted to authorise Bush to go to war in Iraq even if he had known that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. He promises to commit more troops to Iraq. He said recently that he supports Bush's policies toward Israel and Ariel Sharon "completely." He says he'll retain 98 per cent of Bush's tax cuts.

 

So, underneath the shrill exchange of insults, there is almost absolute consensus. It looks as though even if people in the United States vote for Kerry, they'll still get Bush. President John Kerbush or President George Berry. It's not a real choice. It's an apparent choice. Like choosing a brand of detergent. Whether you buy Ivory Snow or Tide, they're both owned by Proctor & Gamble.

 

This doesn't mean that one takes a position that is without nuance, that the Congress and the BJP, New Labour and the Tories, the Democrats and Republicans are the same. Of course, they're not. Neither are Tide and Ivory Snow. Tide has oxy-boosting and Ivory Snow is a gentle cleanser.

 

In India, there is a difference between an overtly fascist party (the BJP) and a party that slyly pits one community against another (Congress), and sows the seeds of communalism that are then so ably harvested by the BJP. There are differences in the I.Qs and levels of ruthlessness between this year's U.S. presidential candidates. The anti-war movement in the United States has done a phenomenal job of exposing the lies and venality that led to the invasion of Iraq, despite the propaganda and intimidation it faced. This was a service not just to people here, but to the whole world.

 

But why is it that the Democrats do not even have to pretend to be against the invasion and occupation of Iraq? If the anti-war movement openly campaigns for Kerry, the rest of the world will think that it approves of his policies of "sensitive" imperialism. Is U.S. imperialism preferable if it is supported by the United Nations and European countries? Is it preferable if the U.N. asks Indian and Pakistani soldiers to do the killing and dying in Iraq instead of U.S. soldiers? Is the only change that Iraqis can hope for that French, German, and Russian companies will share in the spoils of the occupation of their country?

 

Is this actually better or worse for those of us who live in subject nations? Is it better for the world to have a smarter emperor in power or a stupider one? Is that our only choice?

 

I'm sorry, I know that these are uncomfortable, even brutal questions, but they must be asked. The fact is that electoral democracy has become a process of cynical manipulation. It offers us a very reduced political space today. To believe that this space constitutes real choice would be naive.

 

The crisis in modern democracy is a profound one. Free elections, a free press, and an independent judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to commodities available on sale to the highest bidder.

 

On the global stage, beyond the jurisdiction of sovereign governments, international instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex web of multilateral laws and agreements that have entrenched a system of appropriation that puts colonialism to shame. This system allows the unrestricted entry and exit of massive amounts of speculative capital - hot money - into and out of Third World countries, which then effectively dictates their economic policy. Using the threat of capital flight as a lever, international capital insinuates itself deeper and deeper into these economies. Giant transnational corporations are taking control of their essential infrastructure and natural resources, their minerals, their water, their electricity. The World Trade Organisation, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other financial institutions like the Asian Development Bank, virtually write economic policy and parliamentary legislation. With a deadly combination of arrogance and ruthlessness, they take their sledgehammers to fragile, interdependent, historically complex societies, and devastate them.

 

All this goes under the fluttering banner of "reform."

 

As a consequence of this reform, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, thousands of small enterprises and industries have closed down, millions of workers and farmers have lost their jobs and land. Anyone who criticises this process is mocked for being "anti-reform," anti-progress, anti-development. Somehow a Luddite.

 

The Spectator newspaper in London assures us that "[w]e live in the happiest, healthiest and most peaceful era in human history."

 

Billions wonder: who's "we"? Where does he live? What's his Christian name?

 

Once the economies of Third World countries are controlled by the free market, they are enmeshed in an elaborate, carefully calibrated system of economic inequality. For example, Western countries that together spend more than a billion dollars a day on subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries withdraw all agricultural subsidies, including subsidised electricity. Then they flood the markets of poor countries with their subsidised agricultural goods and other products with which local producers cannot possibly compete.

 

Countries that have been plundered by colonising regimes are steeped in debt to these same powers, and have to repay them at the rate of about $382 billion a year. Ergo, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer - not accidentally, but by design. By intention.

 

To put a vulgar point on all of this - the truth is getting more vulgar by the minute - the combined wealth of the world's billionaires in 2004 (587 "individuals and family units"), according to Forbes magazine, is $1.9 trillion. This is more than the gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest countries combined. The good news is that there are 111 more billionaires this year than there were in 2003. Isn't that fun?

 

The thing to understand is that modern democracy is safely premised on an almost religious acceptance of the nation state. But corporate globalisation is not. Liquid capital is not. So, even though capital needs the coercive powers of the nation state to put down revolts in the servants' quarters, this set-up ensures that no individual nation can oppose corporate globalisation on its own.

 

Time and again we have seen the heroes of our times, giants in opposition, suddenly diminished. President Lula of Brazil was the hero of the World Social Forum in January 2002. Now he's busy implementing IMF guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the Workers' Party. Lula has a worthy predecessor in the former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, who instituted a massive programme of privatisation and structural adjustment that has left thousands of people homeless, jobless, and without water and electricity. When Harry Oppenheimer died in August 2000, Mandela called him "one of the great South Africans of our time." Oppenheimer was the head of Anglo-American, one of South Africa's largest mining companies, which made its money exploiting cheap black labour made available by the repressive apartheid regime.

 

Why does this happen? It is neither true nor useful to dismiss Mandela or Lula as weak or treacherous people. It's important to understand the nature of the beast they were up against. The moment they crossed the floor from the opposition into government they became hostage to a spectrum of threats - most malevolent among them the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government overnight. To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and history of struggle will dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism works, or for that matter, how power works.

 

Radical change cannot and will not be negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people. By the public. A public who can link hands across national borders.

 

So when we speak of public power in the Age of Empire, I hope it's not presumptuous to assume that the only thing that is worth discussing seriously is the power of a dissenting public. A public that disagrees with the very concept of Empire. A public that has set itself against incumbent power - international, national, regional, or provincial governments and institutions that support and service Empire.

 

Of course those of us who live in Empire's subject nations are aware that in the great cities of Europe and the United States, where a few years ago these things would only have been whispered, there is now open talk about the benefits of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police an unruly world. It wasn't long ago that colonialism also sanctified itself as a "civilising mission". So we can't give these pundits high marks for originality.

 

We are aware that New Imperialism is being marketed as a "lesser evil" in a less-than-perfect world. Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the merits of imperialism on "neutral" platforms provided by the corporate media. It's like debating slavery. It isn't a subject that deserves the dignity of a debate.

 

What are the avenues of protest available to people who wish to resist Empire? By resist I don't mean only to express dissent, but to effectively force change.

 

Empire has a range of calling cards. It uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross hairs of the U.S. cruise missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina is the model if you want to be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the black sheep.

 

For poor people in many countries, Empire does not always appear in the form of cruise missiles and tanks, as it has in Iraq or Afghanistan or Vietnam. It appears in their lives in very local avatars - losing their jobs, being sent unpayable electricity bills, having their water supply cut, being evicted from their homes and uprooted from their land. All this overseen by the repressive machinery of the state, the police, the army, the judiciary. It is a process of relentless impoverishment with which the poor are historically familiar. What Empire does is to further entrench and exacerbate already existing inequalities.

 

Even until quite recently, it was sometimes difficult for people to see themselves as victims of Empire. But now local struggles have begun to see their role with increasing clarity. However grand it might sound, the fact is, they are confronting Empire in their own, very different ways. Differently in Iraq, in South Africa, in India, in Argentina, and differently, for that matter, on the streets of Europe and the United States.

 

Mass resistance movements, individual activists, journalists, artists, and filmmakers have come together to strip Empire of its sheen. They have connected the dots, turned cash-flow charts and boardroom speeches into real stories about real people and real despair. They have shown how the neoliberal project has cost people their homes, their land, their jobs, their liberty, their dignity. They have made the intangible tangible. The once seemingly incorporeal enemy is now corporeal.

 

This is a huge victory. It was forged by the coming together of disparate political groups, with a variety of strategies. But they all recognised that the target of their anger, their activism, and their doggedness is the same. This was the beginning of real globalisation. The globalisation of dissent.

 

Broadly speaking, there are two kinds of mass resistance movements in Third World countries today. The landless people's movement in Brazil, the anti-dam movement in India, the Zapatistas' in Mexico, the Anti-Privatisation Forum in South Africa, and hundreds of others, are fighting their own sovereign governments, which have become agents of the neoliberal project. Most of these are radical struggles, fighting to change the structure and chosen model of "development" of their own societies.

 

Then there are those fighting formal and brutal neocolonial occupations in contested territories whose boundaries and fault lines were often arbitrarily drawn last century by the imperialist powers. In Palestine, Tibet, Chechnya, Kashmir, and several States in India's northeastern provinces, people are waging struggles for self-determination.

 

Several of these struggles might have been radical, even revolutionary when they began, but often the brutality of the repression they face pushes them into conservative, even retrogressive spaces where they use the same violent strategies and the same language of religious and cultural nationalism used by the states they seek to replace.

 

Many of the foot soldiers in these struggles will find, like those who fought apartheid in South Africa, that once they overcome overt occupation, they will be left with another battle on their hands - a battle against covert economic colonialism.

 

Meanwhile, the rift between rich and poor is being driven deeper and the battle to control the world's resources intensifies. Economic colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback.

 

Iraq today is a tragic illustration of this process. An illegal invasion. A brutal occupation in the name of liberation. The rewriting of laws that allow the shameless appropriation of the country's wealth and resources by corporations allied to the occupation, and now the charade of a local "Iraqi government."

 

For these reasons, it is absurd to condemn the resistance to the U.S. occupation in Iraq as being masterminded by terrorists or insurgents or supporters of Saddam Hussein. After all, if the United States were invaded and occupied, would everybody who fought to liberate it be a terrorist or an insurgent or a Bushite?

 

The Iraqi resistance is fighting on the frontlines of the battle against Empire. And therefore that battle is our battle.

 

Like most resistance movements, it combines a motley range of assorted factions. Former Baathists, liberals, Islamists, fed up collaborationists, communists, etc. Of course, it is riddled with opportunism, local rivalry, demagoguery, and criminality. But if we are only going to support pristine movements, then no resistance will be worthy of our purity.

 

A whole industry of development experts, academics, and consultants have built an industry on the back of global social movements in which they are not direct participants. Many of these "experts," who earn their livings studying the struggles of the world's poor, are funded by groups like the Ford Foundation, the World Bank, and wealthy universities such Harvard, Stanford, and Cornell. From a safe distance, they offer us their insightful critiques. But the same people who tell us that we can reform the World Bank from within, that we change the IMF by working inside it, would not themselves seek to reform a resistance movement by working within it.

 

This is not to say that we should never criticise resistance movements. Many of them suffer from a lack of democracy, from the iconisation of their "leaders," a lack of transparency, a lack of vision and direction. But most of all they suffer from vilification, repression, and lack of resources.

 

Before we prescribe how a pristine Iraqi resistance must conduct a secular, feminist, democratic, nonviolent battle, we should shore up our end of the resistance by forcing the U.S. government and its allies to withdraw from Iraq.

 

THE first militant confrontation in the United States between the global justice movement and the neoliberal junta took place famously at the WTO conference in Seattle in December 1999. To many mass movements in developing countries that had long been fighting lonely, isolated battles, Seattle was the first delightful sign that their anger and their vision of another kind of world was shared by people in the imperialist countries.

 

In January 2001, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 20,000 activists, students, filmmakers - some of the best minds in the world - came together to share their experiences and exchange ideas about confronting Empire. That was the birth of the now historic World Social Forum. It was the first formal coming together of an exciting, anarchic, unindoctrinated, energetic, new kind of "public power." The rallying cry of the WSF is "Another World is Possible." The forum has become a platform where hundreds of conversations, debates, and seminars have helped to hone and refine a vision of what kind of world it should be. By January 2004, when the fourth WSF was held in Mumbai, India, it attracted 200,000 delegates. I have never been part of a more electrifying gathering. It was a sign of the social forum's success that the mainstream media in India ignored it completely. But now the WSF is threatened by its own success. The safe, open, festive atmosphere of the forum has allowed politicians and non-governmental organisations that are imbricated in the political and economic systems that the forum opposes to participate and make themselves heard.

 

Another danger is that the WSF, which has played such a vital role in the movement for global justice, runs the risk of becoming an end unto itself. Just organising it every year consumes the energies of some of the best activists. If conversations about resistance replace real civil disobedience, then the WSF could become an asset to those whom it was created to oppose. The forum must be held and must grow, but we have to find ways to channel our conversations there back into concrete action.

 

As resistance movements have begun to reach out across national borders and pose a real threat, governments have developed their own strategies of how to deal with them. They range from cooptation to repression.

 

I'm going to speak about three of the contemporary dangers that confront resistance movements: the difficult meeting point between mass movements and the mass media, the hazards of the NGO-isation of resistance, and the confrontation between resistance movements and increasingly repressive states.

 

The place in which the mass media meets mass movements is a complicated one. Governments have learned that a crisis-driven media cannot afford to hang about in the same place for too long. Like a business needs cash turnover, the media need crises turnover. Whole countries become old news. They cease to exist, and the darkness becomes deeper than before the light was briefly shone on them. We saw it happen in Afghanistan when the Soviets withdrew. And now, after Operation Enduring Freedom put the CIA's Hamid Karzai in place, Afghanistan has been thrown to its warlords once more. Another CIA operative, Iyad Allawi, has been installed in Iraq, so perhaps it's time for the media to move on from there, too.

 

While governments hone the art of waiting out crises, resistance movements are increasingly being ensnared in a vortex of crisis production, seeking to find ways of manufacturing them in easily consumable, spectator-friendly formats. Every self-respecting people's movement, every "issue," is expected to have its own hot air balloon in the sky advertising its brand and purpose. For this reason, starvation deaths are more effective advertisements for impoverishment than millions of malnourished people, who don't quite make the cut. Dams are not newsworthy until the devastation they wreak makes good television. (And by then, it's too late.)

 

Standing in the rising water of a reservoir for days on end, watching your home and belongings float away to protest against a big dam used to be an effective strategy, but isn't any more. The media is dead bored of that one. So the hundreds of thousands of people being displaced by dams are expected to either conjure new tricks or give up the struggle.

 

Resistance as spectacle, as political theatre, has a history. Gandhi's salt march in 1931 to Dandi is among the most exhilarating examples. But the salt march wasn't theatre alone. It was the symbolic part of a larger act of real civil disobedience. When Gandhi and an army of freedom fighters marched to Gujarat's coast and made salt from seawater, thousands of Indians across the country began to make their own salt, openly defying imperial Britain's salt tax laws, which banned local salt production in favour of British salt imports. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British Empire.

 

The disturbing thing nowadays is that resistance as spectacle has cut loose from its origins in genuine civil disobedience and is beginning to become more symbolic than real. Colourful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe.

 

If we want to reclaim the space for civil disobedience, we will have to liberate ourselves from the tyranny of crisis reportage and its fear of the mundane. We have to use our experience, our imagination, and our art to interrogate those instruments of state that ensure that "normality" remains what it is: cruel, unjust, unacceptable. We have to expose the policies and processes that make ordinary things - food, water, shelter and dignity - such a distant dream for ordinary people. The real pre-emptive strike is to understand that wars are the end result of a flawed and unjust peace.

 

As far as mass resistance movements are concerned, the fact is that no amount of media coverage can make up for mass strength on the ground. There is no option, really, to old-fashioned, back-breaking political mobilisation. Corporate globalisation has increased the distance between those who make decisions and those who have to suffer the effects of those decisions. Forums like the WSF enable local resistance movements to reduce that distance and to link up with their counterparts in rich countries. That alliance is a formidable one. For example, when India's first private dam, the Maheshwar Dam, was being built, alliances between the Narmada Bachao Andolan (the NBA), the German organisation Urgewald, the Berne Declaration in Switzerland, and the International Rivers Network in Berkeley worked together to push a series of international banks and corporations out of the project. This would not have been possible had there not been a rock solid resistance movement on the ground. The voice of that local movement was amplified by supporters on the global stage, embarrassing investors and forcing them to withdraw.

 

An infinite number of similar alliances, targeting specific projects and specific corporations would help to make another world possible. We should begin with the corporations who did business with Saddam Hussein and now profit from the devastation and occupation of Iraq.

 

A second hazard facing mass movements is the NGO-isation of resistance. It will be easy to twist what I'm about to say into an indictment of all NGOs. That would be a falsehood. In the murky waters of fake NGOs set up to siphon off grant money or as tax dodges (in States like Bihar, they are given as dowry), of course there are NGOs doing valuable work. But it's important to turn our attention away from the positive work being done by some individual NGOs, and consider the NGO phenomenon in a broader political context.

 

In India, for instance, the funded NGO boom began in the late 1980s and 1990s. It coincided with the opening of India's markets to neoliberalism. At the time, the Indian state, in keeping with the requirements of structural adjustment, was withdrawing funding from rural development, agriculture, energy, transport, and public health. As the state abdicated its traditional role, NGOs moved in to work in these very areas. The difference, of course, is that the funds available to them are a minuscule fraction of the actual cut in public spending. Most large well-funded NGOs are financed and patronised by aid and development agencies, which are in turn funded by Western governments, the World Bank, the U.N., and some multinational corporations. Though they may not be the very same agencies, they are certainly part of the same loose, political formation that oversees the neoliberal project and demands the slash in government spending in the first place.

 

Why should these agencies fund NGOs? Could it be just old-fashioned missionary zeal? Guilt? It's a little more than that.

 

NGOs give the impression that they are filling the vacuum created by a retreating state. And they are, but in a materially inconsequential way. Their real contribution is that they defuse political anger and dole out as aid or benevolence what people ought to have by right. They alter the public psyche. They turn people into dependent victims and blunt the edges of political resistance. NGOs form a sort of buffer between the sarkar and public. Between Empire and its subjects. They have become the arbitrators, the interpreters, the facilitators of the discourse. They play out the role of the "reasonable man" in an unfair, unreasonable war.

 

In the long run, NGOs are accountable to their funders, not to the people they work among. They're what botanists would call an indicator species. It's almost as though the greater the devastation caused by neoliberalism, the greater the outbreak of NGOs. Nothing illustrates this more poignantly than the phenomenon of the U.S. preparing to invade a country and simultaneously readying NGOs to go in and clean up the devastation.

 

In order to make sure their funding is not jeopardised and that the governments of the countries they work in will allow them to function, NGOs have to present their work - whether it's in a country devastated by war, poverty or an epidemic of disease - within a shallow framework more or less shorn of a political or historical context. At any rate, an inconvenient historical or political context. It's not for nothing that the "NGO perspective" is becoming increasingly respected.

 

Apolitical (and therefore, actually, extremely political) distress reports from poor countries and war zones eventually make the (dark) people of those (dark) countries seem like pathological victims. Another malnourished Indian, another starving Ethiopian, another Afghan refugee camp, another maimed Sudanese... in need of the white man's help. They unwittingly reinforce racist stereotypes and re-affirm the achievements, the comforts, and the compassion (the tough love) of Western civilisation, minus the guilt of the history of genocide, colonialism, and slavery. They're the secular missionaries of the modern world.

 

Eventually - on a smaller scale, but more insidiously - the capital available to NGOs plays the same role in alternative politics as the speculative capital that flows in and out of the economies of poor countries. It begins to dictate the agenda.

 

It turns confrontation into negotiation. It depoliticises resistance. It interferes with local people's movements that have traditionally been self-reliant. NGOs have funds that can employ local people who might otherwise be activists in resistance movements, but now can feel they are doing some immediate, creative good (and earning a living while they're at it). Charity offers instant gratification to the giver, as well as the receiver, but its side effects can be dangerous. Real political resistance offers no such short cuts.

 

The NGO-isation of politics threatens to turn resistance into a well-mannered, reasonable, salaried, 9-to-5 job. With a few perks thrown in.

 

Real resistance has real consequences. And no salary.

 

This brings us to a third danger I want to speak about tonight: the deadly nature of the actual confrontation between resistance movements and increasingly repressive states. Between public power and the agents of Empire.

 

Whenever civil resistance has shown the slightest signs of evolving from symbolic action into anything remotely threatening, the crackdown is merciless. We've seen what happened in the demonstrations in Seattle, in Miami, in Gothenburg, in Genoa.

 

In the United States, you have the USA PATRIOT Act, which has become a blueprint for anti-terrorism laws passed by governments around the world. Freedoms are being curbed in the name of protecting freedom. And once we surrender our freedoms, to win them back will take a revolution.

 

Some governments have vast experience in the business of curbing freedoms and still smelling sweet. The government of India, an old hand at the game, lights the path. Over the years the Indian government has passed a plethora of laws that allow it to call almost anyone a terrorist, an insurgent, a militant. We have the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Public Security Act, the Special Areas Security Act, the Gangster Act, the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (which has formally lapsed, but under which people are still facing trial), and, most recently, POTA (the Prevention of Terrorism Act), the broad-spectrum antibiotic for the disease of dissent.

 

There are other steps that are being taken, such as court judgments that in effect curtail free speech, the right of government workers to go on strike, the right to life and livelihood. Courts have begun to micro-manage our lives in India. And criticising the courts is a criminal offence.

 

But coming back to the counterterrorism initiatives, over the last decade the number of people who have been killed by the police and security forces runs into the tens of thousands. In the state of Andhra Pradesh (the pin-up girl of corporate globalisation in India), an average of about 200 "extremists" are killed in what are called "encounters" every year. The Mumbai police boast of how many "gangsters" they have killed in "shoot outs." In Kashmir, in a situation that almost amounts to war, an estimated 80,000 people have been killed since 1989. Thousands have simply "disappeared." In the northeastern provinces, the situation is similar.

 

In recent years, the Indian police have opened fire on unarmed people at peaceful demonstrations, mostly Dalit and Adivasi. The preferred method is to kill them and then call them terrorists. India is not alone, though. We have seen similar things happen in countries such Bolivia and Chile. In the era of neoliberalism, poverty is a crime and protesting against it is more and more being defined as terrorism.

 

In India, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) is often called the Production of Terrorism Act. It's a versatile, hold-all law that could apply to anyone from an Al Qaeda operative to a disgruntled bus conductor. As with all anti-terrorism laws, the genius of POTA is that it can be whatever the government wants. For example, in Tamil Nadu, it has been used to imprison and silence critics of the State government. In Jharkhand 3,200 people, mostly poor Adivasis accused of being Maoists, have been named in criminal complaints under POTA. In Gujarat and Mumbai, the Act is used almost exclusively against Muslims. After the 2002 state-assisted pogrom in Gujarat, in which an estimated 2,000 Muslims were savagely killed by Hindu mobs and 150,000 driven from their homes, 287 people have been accused under POTA. Of these, 286 are Muslim and one is a Sikh.

 

POTA allows confessions extracted in police custody to be admitted as judicial evidence. In effect, torture tends to replace investigation. The South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre reports that India has the highest number of torture and custodial deaths in the world. Government records show that there were 1,307 deaths in judicial custody in 2002 alone.

 

A few months ago, I was a member of a people's tribunal on POTA. Over a period of two days, we listened to harrowing testimonies of what is happening in our wonderful democracy. It's everything - from people being forced to drink urine, being stripped, humiliated, given electric shocks, burned with cigarette butts, having iron rods put up their anuses, to people being beaten and kicked to death.

 

The new government has promised to repeal POTA. I'd be surprised if that happens before similar legislation under a different name is put in place.

 

When every avenue of nonviolent dissent is closed down, and everyone who protests against the violation of their human rights is called a terrorist, should we really be surprised if vast parts of the country are overrun by those who believe in armed struggle and are more or less beyond the control of the state: in Kashmir, the northeastern provinces, large parts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Andhra Pradesh. Ordinary people in these regions are trapped between the violence of the militants and the state.

 

In Kashmir, the Indian Army estimates that 3,000 to 4,000 militants are operating at any given time. To control them, the Indian government deploys about 500,000 soldiers. Clearly, it isn't just the militants the Army seeks to control, but a whole population of humiliated, unhappy people who see the Indian Army as an occupation force. The primary purpose of laws like POTA is not to target real terrorists or militants, who are usually simply shot. Anti-terrorism laws are used to intimidate civil society. Inevitably, such repression has the effect of fuelling discontent and anger.

 

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows not just officers, but even junior commissioned officers and non-commissioned officers of the army, to use force and even kill any person on suspicion of disturbing public order. It was first imposed on a few districts in the State of Manipur in 1958. Today, it applies to virtually all of the northeast and Kashmir. The documentation of instances of torture, disappearances, custodial deaths, rape, and summary execution by security forces is enough to turn your stomach.

 

In Andhra Pradesh, in India's heartland, the militant Marxist-Leninist People's War Group - which for years has been engaged in a violent armed struggle and has been the principal target of many of the Andhra police's fake "encounters" - held its first public meeting in years on July 28, 2004, in the town of Warangal.

 

The former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu, liked to call himself the CEO of the State. In return for his enthusiasm in implementing structural adjustment, Andhra Pradesh received millions of dollars of aid from the World Bank and development agencies such as Britain's Department for International Development. As a result of structural adjustment, Andhra Pradesh is now best known for two things: the hundreds of suicides by farmers who were steeped in debt and the spreading influence and growing militancy of the People's War Group. During Naidu's term in office, the PWG were not arrested, or captured, they were summarily shot.

 

In response, the PWG campaigned actively, and let it be said, violently, against Naidu. In May, the Congress won the State elections. The Naidu government didn't just lose, it was humiliated in the polls. When the PWG called a public meeting, it was attended by hundreds of thousands of people. Under POTA, all of them are considered terrorists. Are they all going to be detained in some Indian equivalent of Guantanamo Bay? The whole of the northeast and the Kashmir Valley is in ferment. What will the government do with these millions of people?

 

One does not endorse the violence of these militant groups. Neither morally nor strategically. But to condemn it without first denouncing the much greater violence perpetrated by the state would be to deny the people of these regions not just their basic human rights, but even the right to a fair hearing. People who have lived in situations of conflict are in no doubt that militancy and armed struggle provokes a massive escalation of violence from the state. But living as they do, in situations of unbearable injustice, can they remain silent forever?

 

THERE is no discussion taking place in the world today that is more crucial than the debate about strategies of resistance. And the choice of strategy is not entirely in the hands of the public. It is also in the hands of sarkar.

 

After all, when the U.S. invades and occupies Iraq in the way it has done, with such overwhelming military force, can the resistance be expected to be a conventional military one? (Of course, even if it were conventional, it would still be called terrorist.) In a strange sense, the U.S. government's arsenal of weapons and unrivalled air and fire power makes terrorism an all-but-inescapable response. What people lack in wealth and power, they will make up for with stealth and strategy.

 

In the twenty-first century, the connection between corporate globalisation, religious fundamentalism, nuclear nationalism, and the pauperisation of whole populations is becoming impossible to ignore. The unrest has myriad manifestations: terrorism, armed struggle, nonviolent mass resistance, and common crime.

 

In this restive, despairing time, if governments do not do all they can to honour nonviolent resistance, then by default they privilege those who turn to violence. No government's condemnation of terrorism is credible if it cannot show itself to be open to change by nonviolent dissent. But instead nonviolent resistance movements are being crushed. Any kind of mass political mobilisation or organisation is being bought off, broken, or simply ignored.

 

Meanwhile, governments and the corporate media, and let's not forget the film industry, lavish their time, attention, funds, technology, research, and admiration on war and terrorism. Violence has been deified. The message this sends is disturbing and dangerous: If you seek to air a public grievance, violence is more effective than nonviolence.

 

As the rift between the rich and poor grows, as the need to appropriate and control the world's resources to feed the great capitalist machine becomes more urgent, the unrest will only escalate.

 

For those of us who are on the wrong side of Empire, the humiliation is becoming unbearable. Each of the Iraqi children killed by the United States was our child. Each of the prisoners tortured in Abu Ghraib was our comrade. Each of their screams was ours. When they were humiliated, we were humiliated.

 

The U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq - mostly volunteers in a poverty draft from small towns and poor urban neighbourhoods - are victims, just as much as the Iraqis, of the same horrendous process, which asks them to die for a victory that will never be theirs.

 

The mandarins of the corporate world, the CEOs, the bankers, the politicians, the judges and generals look down on us from on high and shake their heads sternly. "There's no alternative," they say, and let slip the dogs of war.

 

Then, from the ruins of Afghanistan, from the rubble of Iraq and Chechnya, from the streets of occupied Palestine and the mountains of Kashmir, from the hills and plains of Colombia, and the forests of Andhra Pradesh and Assam, comes the chilling reply: "There's no alternative but terrorism." Terrorism. Armed struggle. Insurgency. Call it what you want.

 

Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanising for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could say that terrorism is the privatisation of war. Terrorists are the free marketers of war. They are people who don't believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

 

Human society is journeying to a terrible place.

 

Of course, there is an alternative to terrorism. It's called justice.

 

It's time to recognise that no amount of nuclear weapons, or full-spectrum dominance, or "daisy cutters," or spurious governing councils and loya jirgas, can buy peace at the cost of justice.

 

The urge for hegemony and preponderance by some will be matched with greater intensity by the longing for dignity and justice by others.

 

Exactly what form that battle takes, whether it is beautiful or bloodthirsty, depends on us.

 

Arundhati Roy is the author of the novel, The God of Small Things, for which she was awarded the Booker Prize in 1997. She has also published four essay collections: An Ordinary Person's Guide to Empire, War Talk, Power Politics, and The Cost of Living, and is the subject of The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Interviews with Arundhati Roy, edited by David Barsamian. Roy received the 2002 Lannan Award for Cultural Freedom from the Lannan Foundation. Trained as an architect, Roy lives in New Delhi, India.

 

© 2004 Arundhati Roy

[Nur]

Americans Unready to Revolt, Despite Revolting Conditions

 

By Joel S. Hirschhorn

 

06/16/07 "ICH" -- -- The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal national poll results vividly show a population incredibly dissatisfied with their nation’s political system. In other countries in other times such a depressing level of confidence in government would send a signal to those running the government that a major upheaval is imminent. But not here in the USA. Why?

 

First, here are the highlights of the poll that surveyed 1,008 adults from June 8-11, with a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.

 

A whopping 68 percent think the country is on the wrong track. Just 19 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction - the lowest number on that question in nearly 15 years. And most of those with the positive view are probably in the Upper Class.

 

Bush’s approval rating is at just 29 percent, his lowest mark ever in the survey. Only 62 percent of Republicans approve, versus 32 percent who disapprove. Take Republicans out of the picture and a fifth or less of Americans have a positive view of Bush.

 

Even worse, only 23 percent approve of the job that Congress is doing. So much for that wonderful new Democratic control of Congress. Bipartisan incompetence is alive and well.

 

On the economic front, nearly twice as many people think the U.S. is more hurt than helped by the global economy (48 to 25 percent). Globalization does not spread wealth; it channels it to the wealthy, making billionaires out of millionaires.

 

I have long asserted that Americans live in a delusional democracy with delusional prosperity and these and loads of other data support this view. There is a super wealthy and politically powerful Upper Class that is literally raping the nation. Meanwhile, the huge Lower Class continues to lose economic ground while their elected representatives sell them out to benefit the Upper Class. Yet no rational person thinks that a large fraction of the population is ready to rise up in revolt against the evil status quo political-economic system that so clearly is not serving the interests of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Why not?

 

For a nation that was built on a revolt against oppressive governance by the British, something has been lost from our political DNA. We apparently no longer have the gene for political rebellion. It has been bred out of most of us. And those of us that urge a Second American Revolution are seen as fringe, nutty subversives.

 

Part of the genius of our contemporary ruling class elites is that they have engineering a state of political and economic oppression that paradoxically is still embraced by the Lower Class. The rational way to understand this is that ordinary, oppressed Americans are in a deep psychological state of self-delusion. Despite all the empirical, objective evidence of a failed government, they fail to see rebellion opportunities. Many still believe they live in the world’s best democracy. But across all elections considerably less than half the citizens even bother to vote anymore. Yet, as the new NBC/Journal poll results show, people are cognitively aware of just how awful the political-economic system is. Yet they are not feeling enough pain to seriously consider rebellion. And it is visceral pain that must drive people to the daring act of rebellion.

 

Why is there insufficient pain for revolution? This is a deadly serious issue. What is historically unique about America is that even the most oppressed and unfairly treated people are distracted by affordable materialism, entertainment, sports, gambling, and myriad other aspects of our frivolous, self-absorbed culture. Even failed school and health care systems do not drive people, paying enormous sums to fill up their SUVs, to rebellion. So, Americans are aware of their oppression, but the power elites have successfully drugged them with a plethora of pleasure-producing distractions sufficient to keep them under control. We are free to *****, but too weak to revolt. The Internet has provided a release valve for some pent up anger and frustration. But it too has mostly become another source of distraction, rather than an effective tool for rebellion.

 

Though these new poll statistics make news, those in control of the political-economic system are not afraid that the population is on the verge of retaking their constitutionally guaranteed sovereign power and take back their nation. Thousands of people like me keep writing books and articles and creating protest groups and events. Those in power just find new, ingenious ways to keep the population distracted – if not through pleasure, then certainly through fear of terrorism. Growing economic insecurity also contributes to self-paralysis, as do never-ending political lies.

 

What a system.

 

Even as the population has growing awareness of the dire condition of their nation, the move by the politically powerful on the right and left continues to seek a new immigration law that will solidify the selling out of America. Business interests want more of those fleeing Mexico and other nations to keep wages low. Instead of Mexicans rising up in rebellion against their oppressive government and economic system they escape to the USA. But Americans have no such viable escape solution. Though global warming will certainly make Canada increasingly attractive.

 

So what do Americans have – other than a terribly bleak future? Where is hope in our dismal world?

 

In a bizarre twist of history that further illustrates just how impotent Americans have become, virtually all citizens are either unaware of or unreceptive to the ultimate escape route that the Framers of our Constitution gave us. They anticipated that Americans could become quite dissatisfied with the federal government. They feared that the political system could become incredibly corrupted by moneyed interests. They were right.

 

So here we sit over 200 years after our nation was created unwilling to use what is explicitly given to us in Article V of the Constitution – the option to have a convention outside the control of Congress, the President and the Supreme Court to make proposals for constitutional amendments. Do we really believe in the rule of law? If so, then we should understand that the supreme law of the land – what is in our Constitution – is the ultimate way to obtain the deep political and government reforms to restore true democracy and economic fairness to our society.

 

Make no mistake: an Article V convention has been stubbornly opposed by virtually all groups with political and economic power. This is most evidenced by the blatant refusal of Congress to obey the Constitution and give us an Article V convention, even though the single explicit requirement for a convention has been met. This fact alone should tell rational people that they are being screwed and oppressed. The rule of law is trumped by the rule of delusion. Our lawmakers are lawbreakers.

 

Come learn more about the effort to get an Article V convention at www.foavc.org and become a member. Do not keep witnessing the unraveling of American society, voting for lesser evil candidates, and believing the propaganda that putting different Democrats or Republicans in office will actually improve things for most of us. Choose peaceful rebellion by using what our Constitution gives us. Fight self-delusion.

 

[Joel S. Hirschhorn is the author of Delusional Democracy ( www.delusionaldemocracy.com ); and a founder of Friends of the Article V Convention ( www.foavc.org ).]

[Nur]

Fighting the Democrats’ Complicity with Bush

 

By Francis A. Boyle

 

08/10/07 "ICH' -- -- Despite the massive, overwhelming repudiation of the Iraq war and the Bush Jr. administration by the American people in the November 2006 national elections conjoined with their consequent installation of a Congress controlled by the Democratic Party with a mandate to terminate the Iraq war, since its ascent to power in January 2007 the Democrats in Congress have taken no effective steps to stop, impede, or thwart the Bush Jr. administration’s wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or anywhere else, including their long-standing threatened war against Iran. To the contrary, the new Democrat-controlled Congress decisively facilitated these serial Nuremberg crimes against peace on May 24, 2007 by enacting a $95 billion supplemental appropriation to fund war operations through September 30, 2007.

 

In the spring of 2007 all the Congressional Democrats had to do was nothing. They could have sat upon the supplemental appropriation request for war operations by the Bush Jr. administration and thus failed to enact it into law. At that point, the money for war operations would have gradually run out, and the Bush Jr. administration would have been forced to have gradually withdrawn U.S. armed forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead of so doing, the Congressional Democrats knowingly prolonged these wars of aggression and thus in the process became aiders and abettors to these Nuremberg crimes against peace.

 

Under the terms of the United States Constitution, the President cannot spend a dime unless the money has somehow been appropriated by the United States Congress. Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution expressly provides: “No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law…” Furthermore, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12 of the Constitution also provides that “Congress shall have power . . . To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years . . . ”

 

America’s Founders and Framers deliberately strove to keep America’s prospective military establishment on a financial short-leash tightly held by the hands of Congress precisely because of their well-founded fear that a standing army would constitute a dire threat to the continued existence of the Republic based upon their recent experience confronting and defeating King George III’s standing army. As the American July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence stated their objections in part: “[H]e has kept among us, in Times of Peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power . . . For quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us…”

 

Congress must use its constitutional power of the purse to terminate the Bush Jr. administration’s wars of aggression immediately. Those Congressional incumbents of either political party who refuse to do so must be replaced by men and women of good faith and good will of any or no political party who will do their constitutional duty to terminate ongoing Nuremberg crimes against peace. To the contrary, the current leadership of the Democratic Party (though, to be sure, not all Democrats), let alone most of the Republicans, have been complicit with all the atrocities that the Bush Jr. administration has inflicted upon international law, international organizations, human rights, the United States Constitution, civil rights, civil liberties, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and elsewhere since September 11, 2001.

 

Further confirmation of this proposition can be found in the fact that when the self-described Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan went on July 23, 2007 with 200 protesters to speak with Democratic Congressman John Conyers — Chair of the House Judiciary Committee that has supervisory jurisdiction over bills of impeachment — about starting impeachment proceedings against President Bush Jr., at the end of an hour Congressman Conyers ordered her and 45 others arrested for disorderly conduct when they refused to leave his office. In other words, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party arrested one of the leaders of the American Peace Movement for insisting that he and his congressional colleagues perform their constitutionally-mandated duties. Nothing could be more symptomatic of the constitutional, moral, and political bankruptcy of the so-called two-party system of politics in the United States of America: Republicans versus Democrats, Tweedle Dum versus Tweedle Dee.

 

Since the Democrats’ Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi had already ruled arbitrarily that President Bush’s impeachment was “off the table,” Peace Mom Cindy Sheehan announced her intention to run against Pelosi in the 2008 national elections. Once again Mrs. Sheehan’s instincts, principles, judgment, and strategy are directly on target. The American people must oppose, defeat, and replace all members of the United States Congress of any political party who will not impeach President Bush and Vice President Cheney in order to terminate their needlessly — inflicted death and destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Somalia as soon as possible. The so-called leaderships of both political parties have left the American people with no alternative. Even more urgently, the Neo-Conservative cabal known as the Bush Jr. administration are still threatening, planning, preparing, and conspiring to attack Iran, which could very well set-off World War III. Just recently they added nuclear-armed Pakistan to their publicly proclaimed list of targets.

 

Meanwhile, the Bush Jr. administration’s “surge” of 30,000 troops into Iraq announced in January of 2007 has marched on to its inexorable bloodbath for the Iraqi people and U.S. armed forces. There is more than enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that the underlying strategy of the Bush Jr. administration is nothing more than to postpone their inevitable defeat in Iraq until after their departure from office in January 2009 no matter what the cost in lives to Iraqis and Americans. But the world cannot wait until January of 2009 for America to start to end these wars and their related war crimes, as well as to prevent more threatened wars, especially against Iran or Pakistan, which could prove catastrophic for humankind.

 

The United States Congress must immediately and simultaneously proceed to exercise both its constitutional power of the purse and its constitutional power of impeachment toward that end. That is the bilateral strategy which the U.S. Congress pursued a generation ago in order to terminate the Nixon administration’s criminal wars of aggression against Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. That must be the bilateral strategy by which the U.S. Congress today terminates the Bush Jr. administration’s criminal wars of aggression against Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and otherwise perhaps soon Iran or Pakistan. Despite Pelosi’s disingenuous protestations to the contrary, the Nixon/Vietnam precedent proves that Congressional impeachment and cutting-off funds for wars are mutually reinforcing strategies. They might even win the 2008 U.S. Presidential and Congressional elections for those who embrace them.

 

Francis A. Boyle, Professor of Law, University of Illinois, is author of Foundations of World Order, Duke University Press, The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence, and Palestine, Palestinians and International Law, by Clarity Press. He can be reached at: FBOYLE@LAW.UIUC.EDU

[Nur]

Pain and Conscience

 

By Charles Sullivan

 

30/05/08 "ICH" -- -- It is evident that a substantial majority of U.S. citizens are, in principle, opposed to the most destructive governmental policies stemming from the nation’s capital. These include, but are not limited to—the continuing war and occupation of Iraq, as well as the pervasive consumer fraud that preys upon the innocent and the unwary and causes them undue hardship. These charges are born out by the abysmal approval rating of Congress and the president. It is equally evident that the government, while pretending to be sympathetic to these views, continues to carry forth those same policies both at home and abroad. It does so without the consent of the people and, therefore, it has abrogated its responsibility to them.

 

These destructive policies are formulated in the various branches of government and in the corporate board rooms of America. They are a prominent feature of the run amok presidency of George W. Bush, where they manifest themselves to the world. However, their history precedes Bush and his corporate gangsters by generations, and they are an outgrowth of the exploitive capital system.

 

In some respects the presidency serves as a distraction from the machinations that are operating behind the scenes to spew forth one disastrous policy after another. With so much attention given to Bush, the people are failing to confront the root cause of which George W. Bush is but a single manifestation: the sociopolitical system that put the present criminal regime in power.

 

Beyond capitalism, other destructive paradigms are operating to produce a hybridized and even more virulent form of economics. One might call it hyper capitalism. This explains why the American form of capitalism is so much more destructive than most of its European counterparts. For example, most European workers enjoy a shorter work week, higher wages, and have more paid vacation than do American workers; and most of them have union representation and, therefore, more and better benefits. In Germany, even Wal-mart is unionized.

 

One of these harmful paradigms that interact synergistically with capitalism is the idea of American exceptionalism: the persistent belief that America knows best and everything we do is good for the world. This synergism is tinged with powerful elements of racism, sexism, and other belief systems that are rooted in bigotry, hate, and religious intolerance. It is this lethal combination that gave rise to the concept of Manifest Destiny. It was these paradigms that attempted to sweep the continent clean of its indigenous population, and is blowing across the planet, touching ground in the Middle East and beyond like a violent cyclone.

 

What is so exasperating to many of us is that the corruption of the political system is widely understood and yet so little is done about it. The people continue to participate in it; they continue to vote in the absence of meaningful choice and they continue to support it with their taxes. There have been peace marches and other forms of token protest, but they have had little bearing on the continuing policies of economic disparity, environmental destruction, and imperial war that are prominent features of American capitalism.

 

Because protest in America has become more symbolic than effective, those in power can afford to ignore it. Even when participation in protest is great, it is of short duration; it does not cause serious economic or political disruption, and it does not pose a real threat to the established orthodoxy. After a few hours of peaceful marching, the people pack up and go back to their lives and everything remains as it was before they came.

 

Effective protest causes economic and political disruption. It persists until the just demands of the people are met. The established orthodoxy feels pain and discomfort from it; it feels a palpable threat and understands that the injustice cannot continue. Either it addresses the demands of the people, or it perishes. This is a manifestation of democracy. It is serious stuff that requires enormous sacrifice from those who protest in this way. The Montgomery bus boycott of the 60s was that kind of protest; and it was a protest that was won by the people, despite a constant threat of violence and death.

 

These days few people are willing to put anything tangible on the line. One wonders: Is there anything that the American people are willing to fight and die for? Is there anything real that we really believe in? Or do we relish the symbols of freedom more than we love freedom itself?

 

American exceptionalism is fostered in all of our social and political institutions. This includes the educational system and religious institutions. Thus, these beliefs are continually reinforced from cradle to grave, and never more so than in the corporate media. So it is not surprising that our political leaders behave as if they were endowed with the powers of deities, even though they are nothing more than fallible human beings like everyone else. It requires enormous hubris for anyone to adopt such doctrines, but there appears to be an inexhaustible supply of hubris in this country and a paucity of humility and compassion. Those who think in this way are prone to behaving toward the world with vitriol, as we witness daily.

 

The collective result of so many individually destructive paradigms is dehumanization. When we allow people to be dehumanized it is easy to hate them and to exploit them; to see them as entities endowed with less inherent value than ourselves or our chosen kind. It is easy to kill or subjugate inferior people and inferior beings. That is also how the government (the economic elite) perceives the working class and in their eyes that perception makes working people exploitable and expendable. Giving our continued allegiance to such government is irrational and immoral; it is also cowardly and self-destructive.

 

We are faced with a situation in which the body politic not only does not care what the American people think; it disdains populism as much here as it does in Latin America and elsewhere in the world. Populism and its close cousin—democracy—pose an enormous threat to the established order; and that order provides wealth and privilege to a select few, while denying it to everyone else. This is why corrupt politicians and so many academicians spare no effort to suppress and crush democratic movements, and cover up their crimes through a disingenuous rendering of history.

 

Yet with so much of the population aware of the government’s disdain of the people’s needs, why isn’t there effective organized resistance to it? Why isn’t there widespread social and economic disruption? Why do the people not revoke their consent to be governed and refuse their allegiance to a government that is not only corrupt and devoid of moral capital but is also clearly predatory or even cannibalistic? Why do we continue to fund criminal governments, including our own, with our taxes? Why isn’t there social unrest and civil disobedience in the streets? Why are those who expose these crimes punished and the criminals go free and reap financial reward for their malfeasance?

 

One explanation for the widespread social malaise in this country is that people are overwhelmed by it; shocked and awed by it; disorientated by it. They cannot believe the audacity of the Bush regime. Disorientation makes the plunder of the commonwealth easy to carry out. Even while dazed and confused, so many people remain wed to the idea of America’s inherent goodness and moral superiority to the rest of the world, despite mountains of evidence against such views. Thus, they view the criminal Bush regime as an aberration rather than a continuation of an historical pattern.

 

Social justice advocates are rightly infuriated to know that amidst this worsening climate a solid majority of the people can remain indifferent and willfully ignorant of what is being done in their names. There is a reason for this. The American people do not want to acknowledge any wrong doing on the part of their government, which is, in theory, an extension of the people. Of course, that is not the actual practice. This refusal psychologically absolves them from guilt or complicity and it permits them the luxury of apathy. By refusing to acknowledge wrong doing, no further action is required of them. They can go on consuming, falling asleep in front of the television and sending their offspring to die in unnecessary wars, while sinking ever deeper into debt and economic servitude.

 

Furthermore, the inert masses are mentally and spiritually ill equipped to deal with reality; so they block it out of their minds—aided, of course, by the corporate media and the propaganda apparatus of the government, itself. This is why fantasy is freely substituted for reality; plutocracy is mistaken for democracy, and the majority of the people do not know the difference. Millions of good people thus refuse to allow into their psyche the suffering and misery that U.S. policy has produced and exported to the world, even as that reality is closing in upon them. Unfortunately, I can point to my own family as an example of such delusional thinking, as no doubt can many of my readers.

 

Understanding this, the greatest obstacle to creating a vibrant and effective social justice movement is convincing the inert masses that they must acknowledge the suffering we have caused and are continuing to inflict upon the world. The multitudes must see the wisdom of looking behind the veneer of propaganda and confronting an ugly and often painful truth: the brutal and violent history of our nation, including the suppression of democracy wherever it is encountered. Eventually, perhaps very soon, they must also come to grips with the demise of capitalism.

 

We the people must find the courage to confront reality, and that means that we must be willing to feel the pain and suffering we have inflicted on others. We must admit that we are not exceptional or superior, and that we are not more entitled to our share of the world’s bounty than any other people. But we must go even deeper than that: we must bring about restitution for our past wrong-doing.

 

The citizens of the United States must become one with the world and look beyond nationality; beyond race, sex, and religious creed. Suffering and joy are conditions of life and they should be kept in balance as much as possible. Because suffering causes discomfort that few people want to experience, the alleviation of suffering is powerful motivation to demand justice; and that is the force that motivates most good people to do what they do, which is resist the tyranny of evil government. Once our indiscretions have been acknowledged and acted upon, we will find that the world is more than willing to forgive our past transgressions. This act alone will allow us to rejoin the world, so to speak.

 

Many years ago I questioned my mother about eating meat and the suffering it caused so many innocent animals. Her response revealed much about the American consciousness. She did not witness the suffering of those animals. She did not hear their cries of pain. She saw no blood in the sanitized product that was sold in the grocery store, wrapped in clear plastic and served up on pristine styrofoam. So their suffering was not real to her; it was too far removed from her experience. But the suffering of those animals and their cries of pain are very real indeed; and so is the suffering the United States government is inflicting upon the world.

 

 

 

Were we on the receiving end of our government’s foreign policies, we would have a very different perception of them. But like wrapped meat in the grocery store, we do not see the pain and the blood—or the suffering. So for many people it is not real; it is not happening…but it is.

 

By admitting some of this pain into our lives we are simultaneously admitting all of the other things into our lives that define our collective humanity; among them hope and joy. Then, and only then, can we take a principled stand for social and environmental justice and build an effective movement toward these ends. We must pry open closed minds and allow reality to penetrate delusion, as witnessing cause and effect often does. By this process sheeple are transformed once again into people, each of them endowed with a conscience capable of distinguishing right and wrong. This moral evolution is itself a revolutionary act of monumental import to any justice movement. It provides the means for people to act according to the dictates of conscience, and that is an act of liberation from dogma.

 

Revolution begins by altering consciousness. We stand at the brink of a multitude of possible futures, many of them tragic. The failure to act and rebel when the conditions demand it is a betrayal not only of our own humanity; it is a crime of great magnitude. The world’s foremost thinkers and visionaries have always understood this. Can we?

 

Charles Sullivan is a nature photographer, a naturalist, an environmental educator and free-lance writer residing in the Ridge and Valley Province of geopolitical West Virginia. He welcomes your comments at csullivan@copper.net(no spam).

[Nur]

A Declaration Of Independence From The Government Of The USA

 

By Anonymous

 

This article is from an anonymous woman now living in South Africa. It was sent to me by a third party, and I have no reason to believe that it's bogus. In any case, I believe its relevance to the present moment is stunning.--Carolyn Baker

 

03/07/08 "Carolyn Baker" -- - Through my signature below I hereby withdraw my consent to be ruled by the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America.

 

A government is empowered through the consent of the governed to serve a sacred purpose, namely, to create a bright and sustainable future for its people and a biodiverse garden of its region. This purpose is possible.

 

If a government no longer serves its intended purpose then it is proper that each individual formally withdraw his or her consent to be ruled by that government.

 

Through a consistent stream of actions the United States Government has proved itself to be corrupt, having turned away from serving its original purpose. The United States Government has therefore failed, and is de facto illegitimate. Consequently, all of its authorities over me are hereby removed and the United States Government is hereby disbanded in its entirety. All branches, the legislative, executive and judicial branches, including all offices and resources, political, military, informational and financial, are hereby disenfranchised and replaced by local, self-organizing, bioregional governments and currencies that promote sustainable infrastructures and demonstrably serve the principles of integrity, transparency, interdependence, consciousness and the sustainable well being of their entire ecology.

 

Human beings carry an inalienable responsibility for choosing to whom or what they pledge their allegiance. From this moment forward I no longer pledge my allegiance to the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America. We are dissociated. I disallow that organization to legislate, adjudicate, use money, or make agreements in my name, either nationally or internationally. I hereby withdraw my franchise from the United States Government and I no longer submit myself to its authority. I hereby abandon my United States Passport as worthless, null and void because through its own actions the United States Government has invalidated itself.

 

This document recognizes that the United States Government has

 

Irredeemably abolished itself by no longer fulfilling its true purpose. This document announces that I take my authority back from that failed organization. The United States Government no longer has authority to represent me, tax me, detain me, question me, or in any way rule over me. It can no longer take any actions in my name. From this moment forward I take back my autonomy. I hereby declare my independence from the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America.

 

Although I alone, without reason or circumstance, am responsible for my decision to withdraw my franchise and allegiance from the organization that has called itself the Government of the United States of America, I am willing to name examples of how this organization has betrayed the purpose for which it was originally created:

 

1. The Government of the United States of America (herein referred to as the Government) has consistently legislated in favor of a carbon-based economy that multiplies corporate profits while disregarding the increases in greenhouse gas concentrations to the point where the future of all of humanity is now seriously threatened by the consequences of global warming.

 

2. The Government has promoted the use of nuclear powered electric generation plants creating millions of tons of lethal nuclear waste products that can never be safely stored, and creating decommissioned power plants that remain radioactive for eternity.

 

3. The Government has abused its leadership position in the world by promoting fear-based military force as the international culture of America, rather than a culture of innovation, compassion, respect, and mutual support of humanity.

 

4. The Government over and over again, and still now is using illegal DU (Depleted Uranium) weapons and devices in direct opposition to signed United Nations agreements, degrading the United States of America to a renegade country, likely to have its leadership regime brought to war crimes trials and capitally punished.

 

5. The Government has promoted an unsustainable consumerism culture that multiplies corporate profits while devouring the future's natural resources and producing mountains, rivers and seas of toxic unrecyclable wastes. The consumer economy never did have a future and still the government promoted it wholeheartedly.

 

6. The Government has promoted covert military actions and subterfuge that includes traffic in illegal drugs, illegal weapons trade, assassinations, illegal takeovers of corporations and governments, and ruthless competition rather than intelligent cooperation or creative collaboration.

 

7. The Government has allowed itself to be infiltrated and corrupted by corporate and elite regimes that now direct the branches of Government to serve purposes contrary to the true and proper purpose of government.

 

8. The Government has turned over control of the currency of the United States of America (the original world currency) to private individuals who manipulate it for their own personal benefit rather than for the benefit of the world.

 

9. The Government has promoted a system of education that keeps people ****** rather than developing their innate potential and well being so they can create satisfying lives, fulfilling relationships and loving families in the 21st Century. The Government has allowed corporations and organized religions to control school curriculums, and has permitted drugs, gangs and guns to define the school experience for many children.

 

10. The Government has promoted economy over humanity in a value system that shamelessly sponsors injustice, inequity, and slavery, not only in America but around the world, regarding people in developing nations not as brothers and sisters but as sweatshop slaves for producing cheap clothes and the latest technological devices.

 

11. The Government has designed cities and towns around automobiles and roads rather than around people, cutting people off from their own community and trapping people in suburbs that are not sustainable.

 

12. The Government has consistently sponsored an imbalanced budget and has accrued a national debt over one trillion dollars that future generations must somehow pay back, meanwhile losing track of an additional trillion dollars.

 

13. The Government has greedily destroyed the future of civilization by developing an infrastructure, energy, food, housing and transportation systems relying entirely on consuming vast quantities of hydrocarbons that exist in limited supply, thus building a dangerous house of cards that will now tumble down as oil, gas and coal supplies dwindle. If half of the war budget would have been redirected towards developing renewable power for the last twenty years, the entire country would be oil free by now.

 

14. The Government has promoted a diet of fat-saturated fast-foods, and hormone and antibiotic saturated beef, pigs, poultry, and dairy products that endanger the health and general well being of its people, ground water and farmlands. The Government has also promoted fishing grounds to be exhausted to near extinction, and promotes deforestation and dependence on pesticides and fertilizers that undermine foreign economies but makes huge profits for corporations.

 

15. The Government has promoted the so-called patenting and engineering of the genetic designs of life forms to be used for the profit of corporations while endangering the future of the humanity.

 

16. The Government has promoted the introduction of genetically modified organisms into the general food chain for the profit of corporations while endangering the future of humanity.

 

17. The Government has used military force, assassination, and political manipulation to overthrow other governments as a desperate attempt to control remaining oil supplies for the purpose of maintaining the illusionary value of a world petro-dollar to assure profit for the corporations rather than assuring a bright future for the people.

 

18. The Government has promoted a medical establishment that profits pharmaceutical corporations and has blocked the development of less profitable but more humanistic, holistic and intuitive healing modalities.

 

19. The Government has persistently implemented legislation and presidential orders to override constitutional rights, and has built and staffed over 600 new prison camps across the country prepared to imprison citizens who might be regarded as the enemy of Government.

 

These and other actions reveal that the United States Government has irredeemably abolished itself by no longer fulfilling its original and true purpose.

[Nur]

Towards a Second American Revolution

 

That existing government by engaging in criminal wars, embargoes, blockades and other black-listing of foreign nations has made the United States not just an international bully but a piranha, world’s leading perpetrator of genocide and dislocation of people

 

By Ben Tanosborn

04/07/08 --

 

A Re-Declaration of Independence

 

By the People of the United States of America

 

On This Fourth of July 2008

 

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with its own government, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the denunciation.

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, a new government must be instituted, deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. –Such has been the patient sufferance of the people of the United States of America; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their existing system of government. The history of the Executive in this government, exemplified and accentuated by the current administration; together with a long history of a lobbies-corrupted Legislature and a politically-appointed Judicial, are histories of repeated injuries and usurpations, not acting as to balance power but jointly providing a unified corruptive government, all having in direct object the establishment of a world empire and a domestic ruling class able to exercise absolute tyranny over the people. The present and recent past administrations of the United States of America are hereby deemed non-responsive to the interests and well-being of the people of this nation while also acting as an imminent and constant danger to the cause of peace in the world. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

 

…That existing government has made itself a self-perpetuating tyranny where the channels to change and impeachment are de facto blocked by the duopolistic party system.

 

… That existing government operates under the auspices of special interest groups whose money influence the election of officials in such government, the enactment of legislation, and the way domestic and foreign policy are created and conducted.

 

… That existing government has not only permitted but promoted the ever-widening gap between haves (20%) and have-nots (80%), with serious wealth and income inequality.

 

… That existing government shows no concern for the well-being of the people as evidenced by the availability of healthcare, education and social welfare relative to other nations with similar or fewer resources.

 

… That existing government is responsible for instilling fear in the population, making terror the underlying reason for curtailing freedoms, spying or even lying to the people.

 

… That existing government maintains a military with a destructive capacity far in excess of that needed for self-defense; and to the detriment of public needs. And that such massive destructive capacity only serves to paint the United States as a coercive, imperialistic and terrorist nation.

 

… That existing government by engaging in criminal wars, embargoes, blockades and other black-listing of foreign nations has made the United States not just an international bully but a piranha, world’s leading perpetrator of genocide and dislocation of people.

 

… That existing government has in fact misgoverned domestically in every facet of governing; while abusing its power to promote mayhem internationally which has gravely damaged the reputation of the people of this nation before the eyes of the world.

 

We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, in self-representation and joined in mind and effort, appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name of one another with common joint interests, and self-exercising our authority as free people, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States of America are, and of right ought to be free from the tyranny of the existing government; that they are absolved from all allegiance to this existing Federal government, and that all political connection between them, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that the Fifty States making up this union immediately join forces to create and summon a Constitutional Congress for the sole purpose of enacting a new constitution and the formation of a new Federal government; representatives to that Congress to be judiciously chosen by the States in proportional numbers to population. The new constitution, and the government which will derive from it, to be exemplary models in morality and brotherhood; such government to have full power to work for peace and against war, to regulate all wealth-producing activities to guarantee a free but fair market, and to do all other acts and things which independent nations may of right do for the well-being of its citizens. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we, the people of these United States of America, pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

[Nur]

One Nation under Capitalism

It’s Time for a Crucifixion

 

By Jason Miller

 

10/2/08 "Cyrano’s Journal Online" -- - Proudly surveying our kingdom from atop the capitalist pyramid, we US Americans have deluded ourselves into believing we are at the pinnacle of cultural, social, political, and economic evolution. We fancy ourselves to be so exceptional that we are entitled to a perpetual blessing from “our” Christian God.

 

Break out the Haldol!

 

We have afflicted the globe with the fatal contagions of the American Way and corporatism. And all of us, to varying degrees, are culpable. From bicycle-peddling vegans to limo riding corporados, we are each complicit in perpetuating American capitalism, a system so rotten that were it a piece of decaying meat, starving maggots would reject it.

 

We would have far fewer amends to make if our nation’s impact were limited by the size of our population. Were that the case, we would be a mere blemish on the face of Mother Earth. But due to our extraordinary wealth and power, insatiable avarice, hostility towards life, and obscene appetites for consumption, the United States is more akin to a cankerous fist-sized boil, oozing pus and reeking with infection.

 

We’re gluttonous beyond belief, greedily devouring every morsel of meat and marrow and leaving the “dogs” of the rest of the world to gnaw hungrily on the hollow bones we thoughtlessly cast aside.

 

Spiritually we’ve struck a perverse Faustian bargain. Like the good doctor, we crave “more than earthly meat, cheese and drink.” But knowledge is not the object of our desire. What an insult to think that we’d relinquish our souls in exchange for something so hollow and meaningless. Big Macs, the NFL, NASCAR, McMansions, Hummers, American Idol, liposuction, and Viagra—we’ll settle for no less. Gloating over our seemingly endless supply of fast foods and hard-hitting dudes, heart-pounding races and expansive living spaces, monstrous cars and aspiring stars, and hot chicks and hard dicks, we glare contemptuously at the “rats” from other nations scurrying about our feet and fighting over the crumbs we don’t manage to inhale.

 

For years we have satiated our desires with utter disregard for environmental cost, have ignored the abject suffering we inflict upon humans and animals, and have spilled a veritable ocean of blood to enable corporate plunder and to stomp anti-capitalist movements into the ground.

 

Yet when we finally reaped a bit of what we’d sown in September of 2001 and again in September of 2008, we wailed, wept, and gnashed our teeth as if we were the only people ever to have sustained staggering blows.

 

While both events are tragic, how can we express such righteous indignation that we’ve been wounded as a nation when we’ve been dishing out misery for years and have remained relatively unscathed?

 

And can we be so blinded by the shimmer of the gold and diamonds that we worship that we can’t see that these deep wounds to the very heart of capitalism (both the destruction of the World Trade Center and the current financial market crisis) are clarion calls to slay this formidable but staggering beast?

 

Capitalism has had its run and it has failed. Miserably.

 

Despite a number of ‘socialist’ measures implemented by the ruling elite to pacify the masses throughout the crisis-ridden history of American capitalism, we still have an obscene percentage of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, poverty and homelessness, unemployment, imperial conquests, monopolies and oligopolies, and ‘recessions.’

 

And our collective psyche suffers from a host of maladies and malformations. We are alienated from nature, each other and ourselves. We value property over life. We buy far more than we need or could ever use. We measure success in dollars and cents. We are driven by greed and selfishness. We worship money and militarism.

 

As obviously dysfunctional, unjust, and destructive as our system is, many of us who oppose the $700 billion ‘bailout’ of the financial markets still soberly nod our heads in agreement when bourgeois economists insist that while the ‘bailout’ proposal is excessive, ‘something must be done to restore investor confidence and get credit flowing again.’

 

How about no? How about we do nothing?

 

Most of those who stand to benefit from a ‘bailout’ of any dollar amount are all about the ‘free market’ and ‘law of the jungle’ capitalism. It’s sad how quickly those in the moneyed class cast aside their ‘principles’ when adversity slaps them in the face.

 

‘Dog-eat-dog’ is their mantra when they’re fighting tooth and nail to cut spending on socially beneficial programs, rewarding mass firings by increasing stock values, pushing for increased regressive taxes and decreases on progressive taxes, and slaughtering millions of innocents in resource wars. But when these uber-predators become prey, they expect the rest of us to charge to their rescue.

 

So what of Paulson and the rest of the power elite who are coming to the working and middle classes on bended knee, begging for a hand-out? Let them twist in the wind and pray they start hurling themselves out of windows.

 

What of the financial markets, Wall Street, and the decaying socioeconomic infrastructure of American capitalism? Let them collapse.

 

What of the rest of us? Let us suffer as our victims have suffered for decades.

 

Motivated by pain and by the realization that our system is ecocidal, genocidal, and morally reprehensible, we of the working and middle classes can finally redeem ourselves by nailing our depraved god of American capitalism to the cross and starting to forge a just, egalitarian, democratic and humane socioeconomic order. Good for us and good for the rest of the planet!

 

Jason Miller is the associate editor of Cyrano’s Journal Online, founding editor of Thomas Paine’s Corner, and a corporate wage slave. He has experienced unemployment and homelessness, looks forward to meeting interesting people at the soup kitchen once his 401K has zeroed out and his job has been eliminated, and wonders when America’s wage slaves will finally unite and revolt.

[Nur]

how do we understand "public power"? When freedom means occupation, when democracy means neoliberal capitalism, when reform means repression, when words like "empowerment" and "peacekeeping" make your blood run cold

 

Arundhati Roy

[Nur]

The Empire and the War

 

By Fidel Castro

 

 

June 02, 2010 "Escambray" -- Two days ago, I said in a few words that imperialism was unable to solve the extremely serious problem of drug abuse, which has become a scourge for the people all over the world. Today, I wish to deal with another issue that I consider of major significance.

 

The current danger that the United States attacks North Korea, following the recent incident in the territorial waters of the latter, could perhaps be thwarted if the President of the People’s Republic of China decides to exercise the right to veto --a prerogative that country totally dislikes-- with respect to the agreements currently under discussion at the UN Security Council.

 

But, there is a second and more serious problem for which the United States has no possible answer; this is the conflict created involving Iran. This could be clearly seen coming since President Barack Obama made his speech at the Islamic University of Al-Azhar, in Cairo, on June 4, 2010.

 

In a Reflection I wrote only four days after that, --when I had access to an official copy of his remarks-- I used many parts of it to analyze its significance. I shall now mention some of them.

 

“We meet at a time of great tension between the United States and Muslims around the World...”

 

“Colonialism that denied rights and opportunities to many Muslims, and a Cold War in which Muslim-majority countries were too often treated as proxies without regard to their own aspirations”.

 

This and other arguments sounded particularly impressive as they were voiced by an African-American US President; they resonated like the self-evident truths contained in the Declaration of Philadelphia of July 4, 1776.

 

“I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect”

 

“As the Holy Quran tells us, "Be conscious of God and speak always the truth”.

 

“And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear”.

 

Thus, he continued dealing with thorny issues from the universe of insoluble contradictions involving US policies.

 

“In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government”

 

“Since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians.”

 

“America's strong bonds with Israel are well known. This bond is unbreakable”.

 

“Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead”.

 

Today, we know that white phosphorus and other inhumane and cruel substances are often dropped on the population of the Gaza Strip with a truly Nazi fascist frenzy. Still, Obama’s assertions seemed vibrant, and on occasions sincere, as he repeated them once and again during his feverish racing around the world, wherever he promptly arrived in his US Air Force One.

 

Yesterday, May 31, the international community was shocked when in international waters, --tens of thousands of miles off the coast of Gaza--nearly one hundred Israeli paratroops jumped from helicopters, in the wee small hours, recklessly shooting on hundreds of peaceful people from various nationalities, causing them --according to press reports-- no less than 20 dead and scores of injured. There were also Americans among those under attack, who were carrying goods to the Palestinians besieged in their own homeland.

 

When Obama spoke at the Islamic University of Al-Azhar about “the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government” and immediately added that “since the Islamic Revolution, Iran has played a role in acts of hostage-taking and violence against U.S. troops and civilians...” he was referring to the revolutionary movement promoted by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who --from Paris and without a weapon-- crushed the Armed Forces of the most powerful US gendarme in South Asia. It was very difficult for the mightiest power of the world not to succumb to the temptation of setting up one of its military bases there, south of the USSR.

 

More than five decades back, the United States had subdued another absolutely democratic revolution when it overthrew the Iranian government headed by Mohammad Mossadegh, who had been elected Prime Minister of Iran on April 24, 1951. On May 1st that same year, the Senate approved the nationalization of oil, which had been his main demand during the struggle. “So far, our long years of negotiations with foreign countries have proved unsuccessful”, he said.

 

He obviously meant the big capitalist powers that controlled the world economy. In view of the intransigence of the British Petroleum, then known as the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, Iran seized its facilities.

 

The country was unable to train its technicians. The UK had withdrawn its skilled personnel and imposed a blockade on spare parts and markets.

 

It had also sent the Royal Navy ready for action against that country. As a result, Iran’s oil production decreased from 241.4 million barrels in 1952 to 10.6 million in 1953. In such favorable conditions, the CIA organized the coup d’état that ousted Mossadegh, who passed away three years later. Then the monarchy was reinstated and a powerful US ally took power in Iran.

 

That is the only thing the United States has done with other nations. Ever since the creation of that country on the richest soils of the planet, it never respected the rights of the indigenous population living there for thousands of years or of those brought in as slaves by the English colonizers.

 

Nevertheless, I am sure that millions of smart and honest Americans understand these truths.

 

President Obama can make hundreds of speeches trying to accommodate irreconcilable contradictions to the detriment of truth; or he can dream of the magic of his well articulated phrases while making concessions to personalities and groups lacking in ethics. He can also portray fantastic worlds that only fit in his head, as they are planted there by unscrupulous advisors aware of his tendencies.

 

Two unavoidable questions: Will Obama be able to enjoy the excitement of a second presidential term without seeing the Pentagon or the State of Israel, --whose behavior shows that it does not accept the United States decision to use their nuclear weapons on Iran? What will life on our planet be like after that?

 

Fidel Castro Ruz - June 1, 2010 - 11:35 AM