This Arundhati Roy item ends...

"The U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms the range and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human psychology, paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous insecurity. It could be argued that it's no different in the case of the psychology of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft
underbelly.

Its "homeland" may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons, but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts are exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with elaborate lists of American and British government products and companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets -
Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds - government agencies like USAID, the British DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and American Express could find themselves under siege. These lists are being honed and refined by activists across the world. They could become a practical guide that directs the amorphous but growing fury in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of Corporate Globalization is beginning to seem more than a little evitable.

It would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront Empire. Our strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable themone by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We could reverse the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of Peoples' Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded
with a contract in postwar Iraq, just as activists in this country and around the world targeted institutions of apartheid. Each one of them should be named, exposed, and boycotted. Forced out of business. That could be our response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a
great beginning.

Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of alternative information. We need to support independent media like Democracy Now!, Alternative Radio, and South End Press.

The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across
continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries
but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests
are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse.
You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory parade.

You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of this.

Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting for his or her homeland.

If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of hated.

I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great nation. But you could be a great people.

History is giving you the chance.

Seize the time."


Center for Economic and Social Rights
www.cesr.org
An evening with Arundhati Roy and Howard Zinn
The Riverside Church
New York City
May 13, 2003


On behalf of the Center for Economic and Social Rights, let me start
by thanking you for coming to share in this evening of solidarity and
truth-telling. All of us at CESR are honored to be part of the
beautiful spirit present here tonight.

I know that we are all eagerly anticipating Arundhati Roy's talk, but
I hope you won't mind if I take some time to tell you a little about
how CESR got started and what we do.

Three weeks after the first Gulf War in 1991, a group of graduate
students traveled to Iraq for the purpose of collecting accurate
information about the human face of "collateral damage." We were
young, idealistic, and outraged by the uncritical media, and therefore
public, acceptance of the Pentagon's carefully packaged drama of clean
war and smart weapons. Above all, we didn't like being lied to by our
own government. And we still don't like being lied to, especially not
in the name of freedom and democracy.

We traveled throughout Iraq and came to learn the real lesson of
modern war: bomb now, die later. We found that the entire civilian
infrastructure had been destroyed: electric power stations, water and
sewage plants, food warehouses, factories, phone lines, roads, and
bridges. Hospitals could no longer refrigerate medicines. People
couldn't even turn on the kitchen tap for a glass of clean water. We
documented a three-fold increase in child mortality due largely to
simple diarrhea.

Our research made front-page news around the world. Officials in both
Washington and Baghdad deplored the tragic loss of life but simply
blamed it on each other. The UN Security Council discussed the need for humanitarian relief while continuing to impose economic sanctions.
No one accepted responsibility for the undeniable fact that Iraqis were dying every day-especially children of the poor and powerless.

Two years after the Iraq mission, we established the Center for Economic and Social Rights to challenge this kind of injustice as a violation of international human rights. We seek legal accountability for those who create and perpetuate the crime of poverty. Our mandate is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
recognizes that rights to health, education, housing, food, work, and social security are as fundamental to human dignity as the right of free expression.

When we started as a three-person outfit here in New York, economic and social rights had been ignored globally for decades, another victim of Cold War politics. In the past ten years, we've been very fortunate to participate in a movement to reclaim the meaning of human rights through engagement with community struggles for social justice.
Let me briefly describe what this means in practice:

a.. In Ecuador, we worked with a coalition of indigenous peoples, environmental groups, and scientists to document massive toxic dumping by oil companies in the Amazon rainforest, establish a community monitoring system, and launch a national human rights campaign that forced the government and companies to reform their unlawful practices. b.. In the Occupied Territories, we worked with a network of over 70 Palestinian groups to prepare the first reports documenting and challenging Israeli violations of economic and social rights. We also serve on the steering committee of the US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation, a national effort to change unjust American policy. c.. In Nigeria, jointly with a local human
rights group, we submitted the first economic and social rights
petition to the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights,
resulting in a landmark ruling that condemned the government for
violating the Ogoni people's rights to adequate food, health, and
housing. d.. We helped establish the International Network on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, a global alliance of
organizations and individuals committed to eliminating poverty
through human rights. As secretariat of the Network, CESR is
bringing several hundred activists to Thailand next month to share
strategies and build solidarity. e.. And right here in the United
States, where unprecedented material wealth coexists far too
comfortably with the highest levels of child poverty and economic
inequality in the industrialized world, CESR works on a wide range
of domestic human rights projects. We are an active member of the
Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a national initiative
led by grassroots organizations and inspired by the Reverend Martin
Luther King's appeal, just before his murder, for a new mass
movement to achieve economic rights for all Americans.
In all this work, our guiding purpose is not only to enforce human
rights law and change destructive policies, but equally to help
marginalized communities, and the broader public, reconceptualize the
struggle against poverty as a matter of justice rather than charity.

Justice is in short supply these days, especially where the US
government is concerned. Now that American Cruise missiles have
"liberated" Iraq, our government will try to convince the public to
forget all those promises about democracy and instead start getting
very scared and very angry about the imminent threat posed by Iran or
Syria-or perhaps France. CESR will do its utmost to keep faith with
the people of Iraq by holding the Anglo-American military occupation
accountable under international law-first, for ending the occupation
as soon as possible, and, in the meantime, for guaranteeing human
rights to education and health rather than corporate rights to profit
and plunder. We will be working closely with one of the most respected
authorities on Iraq-former UN Humanitarian Coordinator Hans von
Sponeck-to establish an office in Iraq and continue to advocate for
human rights.

We know that you share our concerns and hope that you will support our
commitment to this work.

Margaret Mead has famously said that we should never underestimate
the ability of a small group of committed people to change the world.
Today in Washington, there is a small group of fanatics and
fundamentalists putting her idea into practice, with terrifying
results. But they have set into motion not just the destruction that
we all can witness, but also a popular liberation that is not yet
fully visible. This liberation depends on each and every one of us. We
cannot afford the luxury of despair. We are responsible to our
children, to each other, and most of all to the world itself, which
did not allow us to be born so that we might allow it to be destroyed.
And, finally, we must never underestimate the ability of a large group
of committed people to change our world. Tonight represents an
important collective step in our march toward justice.

Speaking of a better world, I'd like to take a moment to recognize
some of the folks who have contributed so much to this event, with
apologies to the many more who are appreciated but must go unnamed.

In choosing a venue, we first turned to Carol Nixon, director of the Mission and Social Justice Commission of The Riverside Church. We thank Carol and the Social Justice staff-especially Quelyn Purdie and Marie Burgos-as well as the Commission's Global Peace and Justice Ministry, for making this event possible with grace and good humor. We
also thank Reverend Forbes, Michèle Ivey, Tinoa Rodgers, Rob Vivona,
and the entire staff of The Riverside Church for their tremendous
hospitality in allowing over three thousand of us to celebrate in
their house tonight.

For twenty-five years, South End Press has brought us the words of Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, and so many other sane voices in insane
times. After the program ends at 8:30pm, South End books, including
War Talk and Power Politics, will be available right here in the
Cloister Lounge, courtesy of the Community Bookstore of Park Slope.
You will also find informational materials there from CESR and several
other organizations. Our thanks to the Pacifica Foundation, WBAI, and
Democracy Now! for broadcasting tonight's program, and more
importantly, for breaking the corporate media monopoly through the
people's radio.

Iara Lee and Caipirinha Productions came to our rescue in a crunch,
and we're grateful for their generous support of CESR.

Last and most, thanks and praises to Anthony Arnove, who knows the
true meaning of progressive solidarity because he lives it every day,
and to Jacob Park for all his hard work, and above all to Brenda
Coughlin, who really pulled this event together with remarkable
talent, enthusiasm, and a great big heart.

Before turning the podium over to Patrick Lannan, let us all salute
the generosity of the Lannan Foundation for supporting this event. We
also thank Lannan's Board and staff-especially Laurie Betlach, Jaune
Evans, and Frank Lawler-for the courage to recognize visionary and
humane writers and to promote cultural freedom, creative expression,
and the rights of indigenous communities.

Let me close by expressing deep appreciation to Arundhati Roy for
inspiring us all to work toward a better world with her insight,
passion, and compassion.



Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy
(Buy One, Get One Free)

by
Arundhati Roy

Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church
May 13, 2003

Copyright 2003 by Arundhati Roy

Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights
www.cesr.org

For permission to use or reprint, contact:  arnove@igc.org.


In these times, when we have to race to keep abreast of the speed at
which our freedoms are being snatched from us, and when few can afford
the luxury of retreating from the streets for a while in order to
return with an exquisite, fully formed political thesis replete with
footnotes and references, what profound gift can I offer you tonight?

As we lurch from crisis to crisis, beamed directly into our brains by
satellite TV, we have to think on our feet. On the move. We enter
histories through the rubble of war. Ruined cities, parched fields,
shrinking forests, and dying rivers are our archives. Craters left by
daisy cutters, our libraries.

So what can I offer you tonight? Some uncomfortable thoughts about
money, war, empire, racism, and democracy. Some worries that flit
around my brain like a family of persistent moths that keep me awake
at night.

Some of you will think it bad manners for a person like me, officially
entered in the Big Book of Modern Nations as an "Indian citizen," to
come here and criticize the U.S. government. Speaking for myself, I'm
no flag-waver, no patriot, and am fully aware that venality,
brutality, and hypocrisy are imprinted on the leaden soul of every
state. But when a country ceases to be merely a country and becomes an
empire, then the scale of operations changes dramatically. So may I
clarify that tonight I speak as a subject of the American Empire? I
speak as a slave who presumes to criticize her king.

Since lectures must be called something, mine tonight is called:
Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free).


Way back in 1988, on the 3rd of July, the U.S.S. Vincennes, a missile
cruiser stationed in the Persian Gulf, accidentally shot down an
Iranian airliner and killed 290 civilian passengers. George Bush the
First, who was at the time on his presidential campaign, was asked to
comment on the incident. He said quite subtly, "I will never apologize
for the United States. I don't care what the facts are."

I don't care what the facts are. What a perfect maxim for the New
American Empire. Perhaps a slight variation on the theme would be more
apposite: The facts can be whatever we want them to be.

When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News
survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam
Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that
55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported
Al Qaida. None of this opinion is based on evidence (because there
isn't any). All of it is based on insinuation, auto-suggestion, and
outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known
as the "Free Press," that hollow pillar on which contemporary American
democracy rests.

Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a
multi-tiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S.
government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.

Apart from the invented links between Iraq and Al Qaida, we had the
manufactured frenzy about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction. George
Bush the Lesser went to the extent of saying it would be "suicidal"
for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia
that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate
almighty America. (Iraq was only the latest in a succession of
countries - earlier there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, and
Panama.) But this time it wasn't just your ordinary brand of friendly
neighborhood frenzy. It was Frenzy with a Purpose. It ushered in an
old doctrine in a new bottle: the Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strike,
a.k.a. The United States Can Do Whatever The Hell It Wants, And That's
Official.

The war against Iraq has been fought and won and no Weapons of Mass
Destruction have been found. Not even a little one. Perhaps they'll
have to be planted before they're discovered. And then, the more
troublesome amongst us will need an explanation for why Saddam
Hussein didn't use them when his country was being invaded.

Of course, there'll be no answers. True Believers will make do with
those fuzzy TV reports about the discovery of a few barrels of banned
chemicals in an old shed. There seems to be no consensus yet about
whether they're really chemicals, whether they're actually banned and
whether the vessels they're contained in can technically be called
barrels. (There were unconfirmed rumours that a teaspoonful of
potassium permanganate and an old harmonica were found there too.)

Meanwhile, in passing, an ancient civilization has been casually
decimated by a very recent, casually brutal nation.

Then there are those who say, so what if Iraq had no chemical and
nuclear weapons? So what if there is no Al Qaida connection? So what
if Osama bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein as much as he hates the
United
States? Bush the Lesser has said Saddam Hussein was a "Homicidal
Dictator." And so, the reasoning goes, Iraq needed a "regime change."

Never mind that forty years ago, the CIA, under President John F.
Kennedy, orchestrated a regime change in Baghdad. In 1963, after a
successful coup, the Ba'ath party came to power in Iraq. Using lists
provided by the CIA, the new Ba'ath regime systematically eliminated
hundreds of doctors, teachers, lawyers, and political figures known to
be leftists. An entire intellectual community was slaughtered. (The
same technique was used to massacre hundreds of thousands of people
in Indonesia and East Timor.) The young Saddam Hussein was said to
have had a hand in supervising the bloodbath. In 1979, after factional
infighting within the Ba'ath Party, Saddam Hussein became the
President of Iraq. In April 1980, while he was massacring Shias, the
U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinksi declared, "We see
no fundamental incompatibility of interests between the United States
and Iraq." Washington and London overtly and covertly supported
Saddam Hussein. They financed him, equipped him, armed him, and provided him
with dual-use materials to manufacture weapons of mass destruction.
They supported his worst excesses financially, materially, and
morally. They supported the eight-year war against Iran and the 1988
gassing of Kurdish people in Halabja, crimes which 14 years later were
re-heated and served up as reasons to justify invading Iraq. After the
first Gulf War, the "Allies" fomented an uprising of Shias in Basra
and then looked away while Saddam Hussein crushed the revolt and
slaughtered thousands in an act of vengeful reprisal.

The point is, if Saddam Hussein was evil enough to merit the most
elaborate, openly declared assassination attempt in history (the
opening move of Operation Shock and Awe), then surely those who
supported him ought at least to be tried for war crimes? Why aren't
the faces of U.S. and U.K. government officials on the infamous pack
of cards of wanted men and women?

Because when it comes to Empire, facts don't matter.

Yes, but all that's in the past we're told. Saddam Hussein is a
monster who must be stopped now. And only the U.S. can stop him. It's
an effective technique, this use of the urgent morality of the present
to obscure the diabolical sins of the past and the malevolent plans
for the future. Indonesia, Panama, Nicaragua, Iraq, Afghanistan - the
list goes on and on. Right now there are brutal regimes being groomed
for the future - Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, the Central
Asian Republics.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recently declared that U.S.
freedoms are "not the grant of any government or document, but..our
endowment from God." (Why bother with the United Nations when God
himself is on hand?)

So here we are, the people of the world, confronted with an Empire
armed with a mandate from heaven (and, as added insurance, the most
formidable arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in history). Here we
are, confronted with an Empire that has conferred upon itself the
right to go to war at will, and the right to deliver people from
corrupting ideologies, from religious fundamentalists, dictators,
sexism, and poverty by the age-old, tried-and-tested practice of
extermination. Empire is on the move, and Democracy is its sly new war
cry. Democracy, home-delivered to your doorstep by daisy cutters.
Death is a small price for people to pay for the privilege of sampling
this new product: Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (bring to a boil, add
oil, then bomb).

But then perhaps chinks, negroes, dinks, gooks, and wogs don't really
qualify as real people. Perhaps our deaths don't qualify as real
deaths. Our histories don't qualify as history. They never have.



Speaking of history, in these past months, while the world watched,
the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq was broadcast on live TV.
Like Osama bin Laden and the Taliban in Afghanistan, the regime of
Saddam Hussein simply disappeared. This was followed by what
analysts
called a "power vacuum." Cities that had been under siege, without
food, water, and electricity for days, cities that had been bombed
relentlessly, people who had been starved and systematically
impoverished by the UN sanctions regime for more than a decade, were
suddenly left with no semblance of urban administration. A
seven-thousand-year-old civilization slid into anarchy. On live TV.

Vandals plundered shops, offices, hotels, and hospitals. American and
British soldiers stood by and watched. They said they had no orders to
act. In effect, they had orders to kill people, but not to protect
them. Their priorities were clear. The safety and security of Iraqi
people was not their business. The security of whatever little
remained of Iraq's infrastructure was not their business. But the
security and safety of Iraq's oil fields were. Of course they were.
The oil fields were "secured" almost before the invasion began.

On CNN and BBC the scenes of the rampage were played and replayed.
TV
commentators, army and government spokespersons portrayed it as a
"liberated people" venting their rage at a despotic regime. U.S.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said: "It's untidy. Freedom's untidy
and free people are free to commit crimes and make mistakes and do
bad
things." Did anybody know that Donald Rumsfeld was an anarchist? I
wonder - did he hold the same view during the riots in Los Angeles
following the beating of Rodney King? Would he care to share his
thesis about the Untidiness of Freedom with the two million people
being held in U.S. prisons right now? (The world's "freest" country
has the highest number of prisoners in the world.) Would he discuss
its merits with young African American men, 28 percent of whom will
spend some part of their adult lives in jail? Could he explain why he
serves under a president who oversaw 152 executions when he was
governor of Texas?

Before the war on Iraq began, the Office of Reconstruction and
Humanitarian Assistance (ORHA) sent the Pentagon a list of 16 crucial
sites to protect. The National Museum was second on that list. Yet the
Museum was not just looted, it was desecrated. It was a repository of
an ancient cultural heritage. Iraq as we know it today was part of the
river valley of Mesopotamia. The civilization that grew along the
banks of the Tigris and the Euphrates produced the world's first
writing, first calendar, first library, first city, and, yes, the
world's first democracy. King Hammurabi of Babylon was the first to
codify laws governing the social life of citizens. It was a code in
which abandoned women, prostitutes, slaves, and even animals had
rights. The Hammurabi code is acknowledged not just as the birth of
legality, but the beginning of an understanding of the concept of
social justice. The U.S. government could not have chosen a more
inappropriate land in which to stage its illegal war and display its
grotesque disregard for justice.

At a Pentagon briefing during the days of looting, Secretary Rumsfeld,
Prince of Darkness, turned on his media cohorts who had served him so
loyally through the war. "The images you are seeing on television, you
are seeing over and over and over, and it's the same picture, of some
person walking out of some building with a vase, and you see it twenty
times and you say, 'My god, were there that many vases? Is it possible
that there were that many vases in the whole country?'"

Laughter rippled through the press room. Would it be alright for the
poor of Harlem to loot the Metropolitan Museum? Would it be greeted
with similar mirth?

The last building on the ORHA list of 16 sites to be protected was the
Ministry of Oil. It was the only one that was given protection.
Perhaps the occupying army thought that in Muslim countries lists are
read upside down?

Television tells us that Iraq has been "liberated" and that
Afghanistan is well on its way to becoming a paradise for women-thanks
to Bush and Blair, the 21st century's leading feminists. In reality,
Iraq's infrastructure has been destroyed. Its people brought to the
brink of starvation. Its food stocks depleted. And its cities
devastated by a complete administrative breakdown. Iraq is being
ushered in the direction of a civil war between Shias and Sunnis.
Meanwhile, Afghanistan has lapsed back into the pre-Taliban era of
anarchy, and its territory has been carved up into fiefdoms by hostile
warlords.

Undaunted by all this, on the 2nd of May Bush the Lesser launched his
2004 campaign hoping to be finally elected U.S. President. In what
probably constitutes the shortest flight in history, a military jet
landed on an aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which was
so close to shore that, according to the Associated Press,
administration officials acknowledged "positioning the massive ship to
provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his
background instead of the San Diego coastline." President Bush, who
never served his term in the military, emerged from the cockpit in
fancy dress - a U.S. military bomber jacket, combat boots, flying
goggles, helmet. Waving to his cheering troops, he officially
proclaimed victory over Iraq. He was careful to say that it was "just
one victory in a war on terror . [which] still goes on."

It was important to avoid making a straightforward victory
announcement, because under the Geneva Convention a victorious army
is
bound by the legal obligations of an occupying force, a responsibility
that the Bush administration does not want to burden itself with.
Also, closer to the 2004 elections, in order to woo wavering voters,
another victory in the "War on Terror" might become necessary. Syria
is being fattened for the kill.

It was Herman Goering, that old Nazi, who said, "People can always be
brought to the bidding of the leaders.. All you have to do is tell
them they're being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way
in any country."

He's right. It's dead easy. That's what the Bush regime banks on. The
distinction between election campaigns and war, between democracy
and
oligarchy, seems to be closing fast.

The only caveat in these campaign wars is that U.S. lives must not be
lost. It shakes voter confidence. But the problem of U.S. soldiers
being killed in combat has been licked. More or less.

At a media briefing before Operation Shock and Awe was unleashed,
General Tommy Franks announced, "This campaign will be like no other
in history." Maybe he's right.

I'm no military historian, but when was the last time a war was fought
like this?

After using the "good offices" of UN diplomacy (economic sanctions and
weapons inspections) to ensure that Iraq was brought to its knees, its
people starved, half a million children dead, its infrastructure
severely damaged, after making sure that most of its weapons had been
destroyed, in an act of cowardice that must surely be unrivalled in
history, the "Coalition of the Willing" (better known as the Coalition
of the Bullied and Bought) - sent in an invading army!

Operation Iraqi Freedom? I don't think so. It was more like Operation
Let's Run a Race, but First Let Me Break Your Knees.

As soon as the war began, the governments of France, Germany, and
Russia, which refused to allow a final resolution legitimizing the war
to be passed in the UN Security Council, fell over each other to say
how much they wanted the United States to win. President Jacques
Chirac offered French airspace to the Anglo-American air force. U.S.
military bases in Germany were open for business. German Foreign
Minister Joschka Fischer publicly hoped for the "rapid collapse" of
the Saddam Hussein regime. Vladimir Putin publicly hoped for the same.
These are governments that colluded in the enforced disarming of Iraq
before their dastardly rush to take the side of those who attacked it.
Apart from hoping to share the spoils, they hoped Empire would honor
their pre-war oil contracts with Iraq. Only the very naïve could
expect old Imperialists to behave otherwise.

Leaving aside the cheap thrills and the lofty moral speeches made in
the UN during the run up to the war, eventually, at the moment of
crisis, the unity of Western governments - despite the opposition from
the majority of their people - was overwhelming.

When the Turkish government temporarily bowed to the views of 90
percent of its population, and turned down the U.S. government's offer
of billions of dollars of blood money for the use of Turkish soil, it
was accused of lacking "democratic principles." According to a Gallup
International poll, in no European country was support for a war
carried out "unilaterally by America and its allies" higher than 11
percent. But the governments of England, Italy, Spain, Hungary, and
other countries of Eastern Europe were praised for disregarding the
views of the majority of their people and supporting the illegal
invasion. That, presumably, was fully in keeping with democratic
principles. What's it called? New Democracy? (Like Britain's New
Labour?)

In stark contrast to the venality displayed by their governments, on
the 15th of February, weeks before the invasion, in the most
spectacular display of public morality the world has ever seen, more
than 10 million people marched against the war on 5 continents. Many
of you, I'm sure, were among them. They - we - were disregarded with
utter disdain. When asked to react to the anti-war demonstrations,
President Bush said, "It's like deciding, well, I'm going to decide
policy based upon a focus group. The role of a leader is to decide
policy based upon the security, in this case the security of the
people."



Democracy, the modern world's holy cow, is in crisis. And the crisis
is a profound one. Every kind of outrage is being committed in the
name of democracy. It has become little more than a hollow word, a
pretty shell, emptied of all content or meaning. It can be whatever
you want it to be. Democracy is the Free World's whore, willing to
dress up, dress down, willing to satisfy a whole range of taste,
available to be used and abused at will.

Until quite recently, right up to the 1980's, democracy did seem as
though it might actually succeed in delivering a degree of real social
justice.

But modern democracies have been around for long enough for
neo-liberal capitalists to learn how to subvert them. They have
mastered the technique of infiltrating the instruments of democracy -
the "independent" judiciary, the "free" press, the parliament - and
molding them to their purpose. The project of corporate globalization
has cracked the code. Free elections, a free press, and an independent
judiciary mean little when the free market has reduced them to
commodities on sale to the highest bidder.

To fully comprehend the extent to which Democracy is under siege, it
might be an idea to look at what goes on in some of our contemporary
democracies. The World's Largest: India, (which I have written about
at some length and therefore will not speak about tonight). The
World's Most Interesting: South Africa. The world's most powerful: the
U.S.A. And, most instructive of all, the plans that are being made to
usher in the world's newest: Iraq.

In South Africa, after 300 years of brutal domination of the black
majority by a white minority through colonialism and apartheid, a
non-racial, multi-party democracy came to power in 1994. It was a
phenomenal achievement. Within two years of coming to power, the
African National Congress had genuflected with no caveats to the
Market God. Its massive program of structural adjustment,
privatization, and liberalization has only increased the hideous
disparities between the rich and the poor. More than a million people
have lost their jobs. The corporatization of basic services -
electricity, water, and housing-has meant that 10 million South
Africans, almost a quarter of the population, have been disconnected
from water and electricity. 2 million have been evicted from their
homes.

Meanwhile, a small white minority that has been historically
privileged by centuries of brutal exploitation is more secure than
ever before. They continue to control the land, the farms, the
factories, and the abundant natural resources of that country. For
them the transition from apartheid to neo-liberalism barely disturbed
the grass. It's apartheid with a clean conscience. And it goes by the
name of Democracy.

Democracy has become Empire's euphemism for neo-liberal capitalism.

In countries of the first world, too, the machinery of democracy has
been effectively subverted. Politicians, media barons, judges,
powerful corporate lobbies, and government officials are imbricated in
an elaborate underhand configuration that completely undermines the
lateral arrangement of checks and balances between the constitution,
courts of law, parliament, the administration and, perhaps most
important of all, the independent media that form the structural basis
of a parliamentary democracy. Increasingly, the imbrication is neither
subtle nor elaborate.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for instance, has a
controlling interest in major Italian newspapers, magazines,
television channels, and publishing houses. The Financial Times
reported that he controls about 90 percent of Italy's TV viewership.
Recently, during a trial on bribery charges, while insisting he was
the only person who could save Italy from the left, he said, "How much
longer do I have to keep living this life of sacrifices?" That bodes
ill for the remaining 10 percent of Italy's TV viewership. What price
Free Speech? Free Speech for whom?

In the United States, the arrangement is more complex. Clear Channel
Worldwide Incorporated is the largest radio station owner in the
country. It runs more than 1,200 channels, which together account for
9 percent of the market. Its CEO contributed hundreds of thousands of
dollars to Bush's election campaign. When hundreds of thousands of
American citizens took to the streets to protest against the war on
Iraq, Clear Channel organized pro-war patriotic "Rallies for America"
across the country. It used its radio stations to advertise the events
and then sent correspondents to cover them as though they were
breaking news. The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the
era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the
pretense, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.

As America's show business gets more and more violent and war-like,
and America's wars get more and more like show business, some
interesting cross-overs are taking place. The designer who built the
250,000 dollar set in Qatar from which General Tommy Franks
stage-managed news coverage of Operation Shock and Awe also built
sets
for Disney, MGM, and "Good Morning America."

It is a cruel irony that the U.S., which has the most ardent,
vociferous defenders of the idea of Free Speech, and (until recently)
the most elaborate legislation to protect it, has so circumscribed the
space in which that freedom can be expressed. In a strange, convoluted
way, the sound and fury that accompanies the legal and conceptual
defense of Free Speech in America serves to mask the process of the
rapid erosion of the possibilities of actually exercising that
freedom.

The news and entertainment industry in the U.S. is for the most part
controlled by a few major corporations - AOL-Time Warner, Disney,
Viacom, News Corporation. Each of these corporations owns and
controls
TV stations, film studios, record companies, and publishing ventures.
Effectively, the exits are sealed.

America's media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people.
Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Michael Powell,
the
son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, has proposed even further
deregulation of the communication industry, which will lead to even
greater consolidation.



So here it is - the World's Greatest Democracy, led by a man who was
not legally elected. America's Supreme Court gifted him his job. What
price have American people paid for this spurious presidency?

In the three years of George Bush the Lesser's term, the American
economy has lost more than two million jobs. Outlandish military
expenses, corporate welfare, and tax giveaways to the rich have
created a financial crisis for the U.S. educational system. According
to a survey by the National Council of State Legislatures, U.S. states
cut 49 billion dollars in public services, health, welfare benefits,
and education in 2002. They plan to cut another 25.7 billion dollars
this year. That makes a total of 75 billion dollars. Bush's initial
budget request to Congress to finance the war in Iraq was 80 billion
dollars.

So who's paying for the war? America's poor. Its students, its
unemployed, its single mothers, its hospital and home-care patients,
its teachers, and health workers.

And who's actually fighting the war?

Once again, America's poor. The soldiers who are baking in Iraq's
desert sun are not the children of the rich. Only one of all the
representatives in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a
child fighting in Iraq. America's "volunteer" army in fact depends on
a poverty draft of poor whites, Blacks, Latinos, and Asians looking
for a way to earn a living and get an education. Federal statistics
show that African Americans make up 21 percent of the total armed
forces and 29 percent of the U.S. army. They count for only 12 percent
of the general population. It's ironic, isn't it - the
disproportionately high representation of African Americans in the
army and prison? Perhaps we should take a positive view, and look at
this as affirmative action at its most effective. Nearly 4 million
Americans (2 percent of the population) have lost the right to vote
because of felony convictions. Of that number, 1.4 million are African
Americans, which means that 13 percent of all voting-age Black people
have been disenfranchised.

For African Americans there's also affirmative action in death. A
study by the economist Amartya Sen shows that African Americans as a
group have a lower life expectancy than people born in China, in the
Indian State of Kerala (where I come from), Sri Lanka, or Costa Rica.
Bangladeshi men have a better chance of making it to the age of forty
than African American men from here in Harlem.

This year, on what would have been Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 74th
birthday, President Bush denounced the University of Michigan's
affirmative action program favouring Blacks and Latinos. He called it
"divisive," "unfair," and "unconstitutional." The successful effort to
keep Blacks off the voting rolls in the State of Florida in order that
George Bush be elected was of course neither unfair nor
unconstitutional. I don't suppose affirmative action for White Boys
From Yale ever is.

So we know who's paying for the war. We know who's fighting it. But
who will benefit from it? Who is homing in on the reconstruction
contracts estimated to be worth up to one hundred billon dollars?
Could it be America's poor and unemployed and sick? Could it be
America's single mothers? Or America's Black and Latino minorities?

Operation Iraqi Freedom, George Bush assures us, is about returning
Iraqi oil to the Iraqi people. That is, returning Iraqi oil to the
Iraqi people via Corporate Multinationals. Like Bechtel, like Chevron,
like Halliburton. Once again, it is a small, tight circle that
connects corporate, military, and government leadership to one
another. The promiscuousness, the cross-pollination is outrageous.

Consider this: the Defense Policy Board is a government-appointed
group that advises the Pentagon. Its members are appointed by the
under secretary of defense and approved by Donald Rumsfeld. Its
meetings are classified. No information is available for public
scrutiny.

The Washington-based Center for Public Integrity found that 9 out of
the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board are connected to
companies
that were awarded defense contracts worth 76 billion dollars between
the years 2001 and 2002. One of them, Jack Sheehan, a retired Marine
Corps general, is a senior vice president at Bechtel, the giant
international engineering outfit. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman,
is on the President's Export Council. Former Secretary of State George
Shultz, who is also on the Board of Directors of the Bechtel Group, is
the chairman of the advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation
of Iraq. When asked by the New York Times whether he was concerned
about the appearance of a conflict of interest, he said, "I don't know
that Bechtel would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work
to be done, Bechtel is the type of company that could do it."

Bechtel has been awarded a 680 million dollar reconstruction contract
in Iraq. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bechtel
contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican campaign
efforts.



Arcing across this subterfuge, dwarfing it by the sheer magnitude of
its malevolence, is America's anti-terrorism legislation. The U.S.A.
Patriot Act, passed in October 2001, has become the blueprint for
similar anti-terrorism bills in countries across the world. It was
passed in the House of Representatives by a majority vote of 337 to
79. According to the New York Times, "Many lawmakers said it had been
impossible to truly debate or even read the legislation."

The Patriot Act ushers in an era of systemic automated surveillance.
It gives the government the authority to monitor phones and computers
and spy on people in ways that would have seemed completely
unacceptable a few years ago. It gives the FBI the power to seize all
of the circulation, purchasing, and other records of library users and
bookstore customers on the suspicion that they are part of a terrorist
network. It blurs the boundaries between speech and criminal activity
creating the space to construe acts of civil disobedience as violating
the law.

Already hundreds of people are being held indefinitely as "unlawful
combatants." (In India, the number is in the thousands. In Israel,
5,000 Palestinians are now being detained.) Non-citizens, of course,
have no rights at all. They can simply be "disappeared" like the
people of Chile under Washington's old ally, General Pinochet. More
than 1,000 people, many of them Muslim or of Middle Eastern origin,
have been detained, some without access to legal representatives.

Apart from paying the actual economic costs of war, American people
are paying for these wars of "liberation" with their own freedoms. For
the ordinary American, the price of "New Democracy" in other countries
is the death of real democracy at home.


Meanwhile, Iraq is being groomed for "liberation." (Or did they mean
"liberalization" all along?) The Wall Street Journal reports that "the
Bush administration has drafted sweeping plans to remake Iraq's
economy in the U.S. image."

Iraq's constitution is being redrafted. Its trade laws, tax laws, and
intellectual property laws rewritten in order to turn it into an
American-style capitalist economy.

The United States Agency for International Development has invited
U.S. companies to bid for contracts that range between road building,
water systems, text book distribution, and cell phone networks.

Soon after Bush the Second announced that he wanted American
farmers
to feed the world, Dan Amstutz, a former senior executive of Cargill,
the biggest grain exporter in the world, was put in charge of
agricultural reconstruction in Iraq. Kevin Watkins, Oxfam's policy
director, said, "Putting Dan Amstutz in charge of agricultural
reconstruction in Iraq is like putting Saddam Hussein in the chair of
a human rights commission."

The two men who have been short-listed to run operations for managing
Iraqi oil have worked with Shell, BP, and Fluor. Fluor is embroiled in
a lawsuit by black South African workers who have accused the company
of exploiting and brutalizing them during the apartheid era. Shell, of
course, is well known for its devastation of the Ogoni tribal lands in
Nigeria.

Tom Brokaw (one of America's best-known TV anchors) was
inadvertently
succinct about the process. "One of the things we don't want to do,"
he said, "is to destroy the infrastructure of Iraq because in a few
days we're going to own that country."

Now that the ownership deeds are being settled, Iraq is ready for New
Democracy.



So, as Lenin used to ask: What Is To Be Done?

Well.

We might as well accept the fact that there is no conventional
military force that can successfully challenge the American war
machine. Terrorist strikes only give the U.S. Government an
opportunity that it is eagerly awaiting to further tighten its
stranglehold. Within days of an attack you can bet that Patriot II
would be passed. To argue against U.S. military aggression by saying
that it will increase the possibilities of terrorist strikes is
futile. It's like threatening Brer Rabbit that you'll throw him into
the bramble bush. Any one who has read the documents written by The
Project for the New American Century can attest to that. The
government's suppression of the Congressional committee report on
September 11th, which found that there was intelligence warning of the
strikes that was ignored, also attests to the fact that, for all their
posturing, the terrorists and the Bush regime might as well be working
as a team. They both hold people responsible for the actions of their
governments. They both believe in the doctrine of collective guilt and
collective punishment. Their actions benefit each other greatly.

The U.S. government has already displayed in no uncertain terms the
range and extent of its capability for paranoid aggression. In human
psychology, paranoid aggression is usually an indicator of nervous
insecurity. It could be argued that it's no different in the case of
the psychology of nations. Empire is paranoid because it has a soft
underbelly.

Its "homeland" may be defended by border patrols and nuclear weapons,
but its economy is strung out across the globe. Its economic outposts
are exposed and vulnerable. Already the Internet is buzzing with
elaborate lists of American and British government products and
companies that should be boycotted. Apart from the usual targets -
Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds - government agencies like USAID, the British
DFID, British and American banks, Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch, and
American Express could find themselves under siege. These lists are
being honed and refined by activists across the world. They could
become a practical guide that directs the amorphous but growing fury
in the world. Suddenly, the "inevitability" of the project of
Corporate Globalization is beginning to seem more than a little
evitable.

It would be naïve to imagine that we can directly confront Empire. Our
strategy must be to isolate Empire's working parts and disable them
one by one. No target is too small. No victory too insignificant. We
could reverse the idea of the economic sanctions imposed on poor
countries by Empire and its Allies. We could impose a regime of
Peoples' Sanctions on every corporate house that has been awarded
with a contract in postwar Iraq, just as activists in this country and
around the world targeted institutions of apartheid. Each one of them
should be named, exposed, and boycotted. Forced out of business. That
could be our response to the Shock and Awe campaign. It would be a
great beginning.

Another urgent challenge is to expose the corporate media for the
boardroom bulletin that it really is. We need to create a universe of
alternative information. We need to support independent media like
Democracy Now!, Alternative Radio, and South End Press.

The battle to reclaim democracy is going to be a difficult one. Our
freedoms were not granted to us by any governments. They were
wrested from them by us. And once we surrender them, the battle to retrieve
them is called a revolution. It is a battle that must range across
continents and countries. It must not acknowledge national boundaries
but, if it is to succeed, it has to begin here. In America. The only
institution more powerful than the U.S. government is American civil
society. The rest of us are subjects of slave nations. We are by no
means powerless, but you have the power of proximity. You have access
to the Imperial Palace and the Emperor's chambers. Empire's conquests
are being carried out in your name, and you have the right to refuse.
You could refuse to fight. Refuse to move those missiles from the
warehouse to the dock. Refuse to wave that flag. Refuse the victory
parade.

You have a rich tradition of resistance. You need only read Howard
Zinn's A People's History of the United States to remind yourself of
this.

Hundreds of thousands of you have survived the relentless propaganda
you have been subjected to, and are actively fighting your own
government. In the ultra-patriotic climate that prevails in the United
States, that's as brave as any Iraqi or Afghan or Palestinian fighting
for his or her homeland.

If you join the battle, not in your hundreds of thousands, but in your
millions, you will be greeted joyously by the rest of the world. And
you will see how beautiful it is to be gentle instead of brutal, safe
instead of scared. Befriended instead of isolated. Loved instead of
hated.

I hate to disagree with your president. Yours is by no means a great
nation. But you could be a great people.

History is giving you the chance.

Seize the time.

ARUNDHATI ROY
Presented in New York City at The Riverside Church
May 13, 2003
Copyright 2003
Sponsored by the Center for Economic and Social Rights
www.cesr.org
For permission to reprint, contact:  arnove@igc.org.


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