Konfrontacja z Imperium

[Gość: ArundhatiRoy]

Confronting Empire
by Arundhati Roy; January 28, 2003

I've been asked to speak about "How to confront Empire?" It's a huge
question, and I have no easy answers.

When we speak of confronting "Empire," we need to identify what
"Empire" means. Does it mean the U.S. Government (and its European
satellites), the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the
World Trade Organization, and multinational corporations? Or is it
something more than that?

In many countries, Empire has sprouted other subsidiary heads, some
dangerous byproducts - nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and,
of course terrorism. All these march arm in arm with the project of
corporate globalization.

Let me illustrate what I mean. India - the world's biggest democracy
- is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalization
project. Its "market" of one billion people is being prized open by
the WTO. Corporatization and Privatization are being welcomed by the
Government and the Indian elite.

It is not a coincidence that the Prime Minister, the Home Minister,
the Disinvestment Minister - the men who signed the deal with Enron
in India, the men who are selling the country's infrastructure to
corporate multinationals, the men who want to privatize water,
electricity, oil, coal, steel, health, education and
telecommunication - are all members or admirers of the RSS. The RSS
is a right wing, ultra-nationalist Hindu guild which has openly
admired Hitler and his methods.

The dismantling of democracy is proceeding with the speed and
efficiency of a Structural Adjustment Program. While the project of
corporate globalization rips through people's lives in India, massive
privatization, and labor "reforms" are pushing people off their land
and out of their jobs. Hundreds of impoverished farmers are
committing suicide by consuming pesticide. Reports of starvation
deaths are coming in from all over the country.

While the elite journeys to its imaginary destination somewhere near
the top of the world, the dispossessed are spiraling downwards into
crime and chaos. This climate of frustration and national
disillusionment is the perfect breeding ground, history tells us, for
fascism.

The two arms of the Indian Government have evolved the perfect pincer
action. While one arm is busy selling India off in chunks, the other,
to divert attention, is orchestrating a howling, baying chorus of
Hindu nationalism and religious fascism. It is conducting nuclear
tests, rewriting history books, burning churches, and demolishing
mosques. Censorship, surveillance, the suspension of civil liberties
and human rights, the definition of who is an Indian citizen and who
is not, particularly with regard to religious minorities, is becoming
common practice now.

Last March, in the state of Gujarat, two thousand Muslims were
butchered in a State-sponsored pogrom. Muslim women were specially
targeted. They were stripped, and gang-raped, before being burned
alive. Arsonists burned and looted shops, homes, textiles mills, and
mosques.

More than a hundred and fifty thousand Muslims have been driven from
their homes. The economic base of the Muslim community has been
devastated.

While Gujarat burned, the Indian Prime Minister was on MTV promoting
his new poems. In January this year, the Government that orchestrated
the killing was voted back into office with a comfortable majority.
Nobody has been punished for the genocide. Narendra Modi, architect
of the pogrom, proud member of the RSS, has embarked on his second
term as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. If he were Saddam Hussein, of
course each atrocity would have been on CNN. But since he's not - and
since the Indian "market" is open to global investors - the massacre
is not even an embarrassing inconvenience.

There are more than one hundred million Muslims in India. A time bomb
is ticking in our ancient land.

All this to say that it is a myth that the free market breaks down
national barriers. The free market does not threaten national
sovereignty, it undermines democracy.

As the disparity between the rich and the poor grows, the fight to
corner resources is intensifying. To push through their "sweetheart
deals," to corporatize the crops we grow, the water we drink, the air
we breathe, and the dreams we dream, corporate globalization needs an
international confederation of loyal, corrupt, authoritarian
governments in poorer countries to push through unpopular reforms and
quell the mutinies.

Corporate Globalization - or shall we call it by its name? -
Imperialism - needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts
that pretend to dispense justice.

Meanwhile, the countries of the North harden their borders and
stockpile weapons of mass destruction. After all they have to make
sure that it's only money, goods, patents and services that are
globalized. Not the free movement of people. Not a respect for human
rights. Not international treaties on racial discrimination or
chemical and nuclear weapons or greenhouse gas emissions or climate
change, or - god forbid - justice.

So this - all this - is "empire." This loyal confederation, this
obscene accumulation of power, this greatly increased distance
between those who make the decisions and those who have to suffer
them.

Our fight, our goal, our vision of Another World must be to eliminate
that distance.

So how do we resist "Empire"?

The good news is that we're not doing too badly. There have been
major victories. Here in Latin America you have had so many - in
Bolivia, you have Cochabamba. In Peru, there was the uprising in
Arequipa, In Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez is holding on, despite
the U.S. government's best efforts.

And the world's gaze is on the people of Argentina, who are trying to
refashion a country from the ashes of the havoc wrought by the IMF.

In India the movement against corporate globalization is gathering
momentum and is poised to become the only real political force to
counter religious fascism.

As for corporate globalization's glittering ambassadors - Enron,
Bechtel, WorldCom, Arthur Anderson - where were they last year, and
where are they now?

And of course here in Brazil we must ask Šwho was the president last
year, and who is it now?

Still Š many of us have dark moments of hopelessness and despair. We
know that under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terrorism,
the men in suits are hard at work.

While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the
skies, we know that contracts are being signed, patents are being
registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being
plundered, water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning to
go to war against Iraq.

If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eye-ball to eye-ball
confrontation between "Empire" and those of us who are resisting it,
it might seem that we are losing.

But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of us gathered
here, have, each in our own way, laid siege to "Empire."

We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but we have stripped
it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the
open. It now stands before us on the world's stage in all it's
brutish, iniquitous nakedness.

Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now - too ugly to
behold its own reflection. Too ugly even to rally its own people. It
won't be long before the majority of American people become our
allies.

Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a million people
marched against the war on Iraq. Each month, the protest is gathering
momentum.

Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret history. Secret
especially from its own people. But now America's secrets are
history, and its hi