PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Confronting the Empire
by Arundhati Roy Monday, Feb. 03, 2003 at 3:12 AM

Arundhati is an amazing writer, (read the God of Small Things), and activist. The following speech may be of inspiration to you.

> Confronting Empire
>
> By Arundhati Roy
>
>

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 coinidence 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 …who was the
> president last year, and who is it now?
>
> Still, many of us have dark moments of hopelessness
> and despair. We know that under the spreading canopy
> of the War Against Terrorism, the men in suits are
> hard at work.
>
> While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid
> across the skies, we know that contracts are being
> signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines
> are being laid, natural resources are being plundered,
> water is being privatized, and George Bush is planning
> to go to war against Iraq.
>
> If we look at this conflict as a straightforward
> eye-ball to eye-ball confrontation between "Empire"
> and those of us who are resisting it, it might seem
> that we are losing.
>
> But there is another way of looking at it. We, all of
> us gathered here, have, each in our own way, laid
> siege to "Empire."
>
> We may not have stopped it in its tracks - yet - but
> we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its
> mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands
> before us on the world's stage in all it's brutish,
> iniquitous nakedness.
>
> Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open
> now - too ugly to behold its own reflection. Too ugly
> even to rally its own people. It won't be long before
> the majority of American people become our allies.
>
> Only a few days ago in Washington, a quarter of a
> million people marched against the war on Iraq. Each
> month, the protest is gathering momentum.
>
> Before September 11th 2001 America had a secret
> history. Secret especially from its own people. But
> now America's secrets are history, and its history is
> public knowledge. It's street talk.
>
> Today, we know that every argument that is being used
> to escalate the war against Iraq is a lie. The most
> ludicrous of them being the U.S. Government's deep
> commitment to bring democracy to Iraq.
>
> Killing people to save them from dictatorship or
> ideological corruption is, of course, an old U.S.
> government sport. Here in Latin America, you know that
> better than most.
>
> Nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless
> dictator, a murderer (whose worst excesses were
> supported by the governments of the United States and
> Great Britain). There's no doubt that Iraqis would be
> better off without him.
>
> But, then, the whole world would be better off without
> a certain Mr. Bush. In fact, he is far more dangerous
> than Saddam Hussein.
>
> So, should we bomb Bush out of the White House?
> It's more than clear that Bush is determined to go to
> war against Iraq, regardless of the facts - and
> regardless of international public opinion.
>
> In its recruitment drive for allies, The United States
> is prepared to invent facts.
>
> The charade with weapons inspectors is the U.S.
> government's offensive, insulting concession to some
> twisted form of international etiquette. It's like
> leaving the "doggie door" open for last minute
> "allies" or maybe the United Nations to crawl through.
>
> But for all intents and purposes, the New War against
> Iraq has begun.
>
> What can we do?
>
> We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history.
>
> We can continue to build public opinion until it
> becomes a deafening roar.
>
> We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the
> U.S. government's excesses.
>
> We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair - and their
> allies - for the cowardly baby killers, water
> poisoners, and pusillanimous long-distance bombers
> that they are.
>
> We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million
> different ways. In other words, we can come up with a
> million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.
>
> When George Bush says "you're either with us, or you
> are with the terrorists" we can say "No thank you." We
> can let him know that the people of the world do not
> need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and
> the Mad Mullahs.
>
> Our strategy should be not only to confront empire,
> but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To
> shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our
> literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance,
> our sheer relentlessness - and our ability to tell our
> own stories. Stories that are different from the ones
> we're being brainwashed to believe.
>
> The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to
> buy what they are selling - their ideas, their version
> of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of
> inevitability.
>
> Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need
> us more than we need them.
>
> Another world is not only possible, she is on her way.
> On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
>
> Arundhati Roy
> Porto Alegre, Brazil
> January 27, 2003

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