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Peace and the new
corporate liberation theology
The 2004 Sydney Peace Prize lecture
Delivered by Arundhati Roy, November 3, 2004, Seymour Theatre Centre,
Sydney University
It's
official now. The Sydney Peace Foundation is neck-deep in the business
of gambling and calculated risk. Last year, very courageously, it chose
Dr Hanan Ashrawi of Palestine for the Sydney Peace Prize. And, as if
that were not enough, this year – of all the people in the world – it
goes and chooses me!
However I'd like to make a complaint. My sources inform me that Dr
Ashrawi had a picket all to herself. This is discriminatory. I demand
equal treatment for all Peace Prizees. May I formally request the
Foundation to organise a picket against me after the lecture? From what
I've heard, it shouldn't be hard to organise. If this is insufficient
notice, then tomorrow will suit me just as well.
When this year's Sydney Peace Prize was announced, I was subjected to
some pretty arch remarks from those who know me well: Why did they give
it to the biggest trouble-maker we know? Didn't anybody tell them that
you don't have a peaceful bone in your body? And, memorably, Arundhati
didi, what's the Sydney Peace Prize? Was there a war in Sydney that you
helped to stop?
Speaking for myself, I am utterly delighted to receive the Sydney Peace
Prize. But I must accept it as a literary prize that honours a writer
for her writing, because contrary to the many virtues that are falsely
attributed to me, I'm not an activist, nor the leader of any mass
movement, and I'm certainly not the "voice of the voiceless". (We know
of course there's really no such thing as the “voiceless”. There are
only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.) I am a
writer who cannot claim to represent anybody but herself. So even
though I would like to, it would be presumptuous of me to say that I
accept this prize on behalf of those who are involved in the struggle
of the powerless and the disenfranchised against the powerful. However,
may I say I accept it as the Sydney Peace Foundation's expression of
solidarity with a kind of politics, a kind of world view, that millions
of us around the world subscribe to?
It might seem ironic that a person who spends most of her time thinking
of strategies of resistance and plotting to disrupt the putative peace,
is given a peace prize. You must remember that I come from an
essentially feudal country – and there are few things more disquieting
than a feudal peace. Sometimes there's truth in old cliches. There can
be no real peace without justice. And without resistance there will be
no justice.
Today, it is not merely justice itself, but the idea of justice that is
under attack. The assault on vulnerable, fragile sections of society is
at once so complete, so cruel and so clever – all-encompassing and yet
specifically targeted, blatantly brutal and yet unbelievably insidious
– that its sheer audacity has eroded our definition of justice. It has
forced us to lower our sights and curtail our expectations. Even among
the well-intentioned, the expansive, magnificent concept of justice is
gradually being substituted with the reduced, far more fragile
discourse of “human rights”.
If you think about it, this is an alarming shift of paradigm. The
difference is that notions of equality, of parity, have been pried
loose and eased out of the equation. It's a process of attrition.
Almost unconsciously, we begin to think of justice for the rich and
human rights for the poor. Justice for the corporate world, human
rights for its victims. Justice for Americans, human rights for Afghans
and Iraqis. Justice for the Indian upper castes, human rights for
Dalits and Adivasis (if that). Justice for white Australians, human
rights for Aboriginals and immigrants (most times, not even that).
It is becoming more than clear that violating human rights is an
inherent and necessary part of the process of implementing a coercive
and unjust political and economic structure on the world. Without the
violation of human rights on an enormous scale, the neo-liberal project
would remain in the dreamy realm of policy. But increasingly Human
Rights violations are being portrayed as the unfortunate, almost
accidental, fallout of an otherwise acceptable political and economic
system. As though they're a small problem that can be mopped up with a
little extra attention from some NGOs. This is why in areas of
heightened conflict – in Kashmir and in Iraq for example – Human Rights
Professionals are regarded with a degree of suspicion. Many resistance
movements in poor countries which are fighting huge injustice and
questioning the underlying principles of what constitutes "liberation"
and "development", view Human Rights NGOs as modern day missionaries
who've come to take the ugly edge off Imperialism. To defuse political
anger and to maintain the status quo.
It has been only a few weeks since a majority of Australians voted to
re-elect Prime Minister John Howard who, among other things, led
Australia to participate in the illegal invasion and occupation of
Iraq. The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the
most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich
nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several
times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having
nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then
invaded it, occupied it and are now in the process of selling it.
I speak of Iraq, not because everybody is talking about it, (sadly at
the cost of leaving other horrors in other places to unfurl in the
dark), but because it is a sign of things to come. Iraq marks the
beginning of a new cycle. It offers us an opportunity to watch the
corporate-military cabal that has come to be known as “Empire” at work.
In the new Iraq the gloves are off.
As the battle to control the world's resources intensifies, economic
colonialism through formal military aggression is staging a comeback.
Iraq is the logical culmination of the process of corporate
globalisation in which neocolonialism and neoliberalism have fused. If
we can find it in ourselves to peep behind the curtain of blood, we
would glimpse the pitiless transactions taking place backstage. But
first, briefly, the stage itself.
In 1991 US President George Bush senior mounted Operation Desert Storm.
Tens of thousands of Iraqis were killed in the war. Iraq's fields were
bombed with more than 300 tonnes of depleted uranium, causing a
fourfold increase in cancer among children. For more than 13 years, 24
million Iraqi people have lived in a war zone and been denied food and
medicine and clean water.
In the frenzy around the US elections, let's remember that the levels
of cruelty did not fluctuate whether the Democrats or the Republicans
were in the White House. Half a million Iraqi children died because of
the regime of economic sanctions in the run up to Operation Shock and
Awe. Until recently, while there was a careful record of how many US
soldiers had lost their lives, we had no idea of how many Iraqis had
been killed. US General Tommy Franks said "We don't do body counts"
(meaning Iraqi body counts). He could have added "We don't do the
Geneva Convention either."
A new, detailed study, fast-tracked by the Lancet
medical journal and extensively peer reviewed, estimates that 100,000
Iraqis have lost their lives since the 2003 invasion. That's 100 halls
full of people – like this one. That's 100 halls full of friends,
parents, siblings, colleagues, lovers like you. The difference is that
there aren't many children here today let's not forget Iraq's children.
Technically that bloodbath is called precision bombing. In ordinary
language, it's called butchering.
Most of this is common knowledge now. Those who support the invasion
and vote for the invaders cannot take refuge in ignorance. They must
truly believe that this epic brutality is right and just or, at the
very least, acceptable because it's in their interest.
So the “civilised” “modern” world – built painstakingly on a legacy of
genocide, slavery and colonialism – now controls most of the world's
oil. And most of the world's weapons, most of the world's money, and
most of the world's media. The embedded, corporate media in which the
Doctrine of Free Speech has been substituted by the Doctrine of Free If
You Agree Speech.
The UN's Chief Weapons Inspector, Hans Blix, said he found no evidence
of nuclear weapons in Iraq. Every scrap of evidence produced by the US
and British governments was found to be false – whether it was reports
of Saddam Hussein buying uranium from Niger, or the report produced by
British Intelligence which was discovered to have been plagiarised from
an old student dissertation. And yet, in the prelude to the war, day
after day the most “respectable” newspapers and television channels in
the US , headlined the “evidence” of Iraq's arsenal of weapons of
nuclear weapons. It now turns out that the source of the manufactured
“evidence” of Iraq's arsenal of nuclear weapons was Ahmed Chalabi who,
(like General Suharto of Indonesia, General Pinochet of Chile, the Shah
of Iran, the Taliban and of course, Saddam Hussein himself) – was
bankrolled with millions of dollars from the good old CIA.
And so, a country was bombed into oblivion. It's true there have been
some murmurs of apology. Sorry 'bout that folks, but we have really
have to move on. Fresh rumours are coming in about nuclear weapons in
Eye-ran and Syria. And guess who is reporting on these fresh rumours?
The same reporters who ran the bogus “scoops” on Iraq. The seriously
embedded A Team.
The head of Britain's BBC had to step down and one man committed
suicide because a BBC reporter accused the Blair administration of
“sexing up” intelligence reports about Iraq's WMD program. But the head
of Britain retains his job even though his government did much more
than “sex up” intelligence reports. It is responsible for the illegal
invasion of a country and the mass murder of its people.
Visitors to Australia like myself, are expected to answer the following
question when they fill in the visa form: “have you ever committed or
been involved in the commission of war crimes or crimes against
humanity or human rights?” Would George Bush and Tony Blair get visas
to Australia? Under the tenets of international law they must surely
qualify as war criminals.
However, to imagine that the world would change if they were removed
from office is naive. The tragedy is that their political rivals have
no real dispute with their policies. The fire and brimstone of the US
election campaign was about who would make a better
“Commander-in-Chief” and a more effective manager of the American
Empire. Democracy no longer offers voters real choice. Only specious
choice.
Even though no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq,
stunning new evidence has revealed that Saddam Hussein was planning a
weapons program. (Like I was planning to win an Olympic Gold in
synchronised swimming.) Thank goodness for the doctrine of pre-emptive
strike. God knows what other evil thoughts he harboured – sending
Tampax in the mail to American senators, or releasing female rabbits in
burqas into the London underground. No doubt all will be revealed in
the free and fair trial of Saddam Hussein that's coming up soon in the
New Iraq.
All except the chapter in which we would learn of how the US and
Britain plied him with money and material assistance at the time he was
carrying out murderous attacks on Iraqi Kurds and Shias. All except the
chapter in which we would learn that a 12,000-page report submitted by
the Saddam Hussein government to the UN, was censored by the United
States because it lists twenty-four US corporations that participated
in Iraq's pre-Gulf War nuclear and conventional weapons programme.
(They include Bechtel, DuPont, , Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard,
International Computer Systems and Unisys.)
So Iraq has been “liberated”. Its people have been subjugated and its
markets have been “freed”. That's the anthem of neoliberalism. Free the
markets. Screw the people.
The US government has privatised and sold entire sectors of Iraq's
economy. Economic policies and tax laws have been rewritten. Foreign
companies can now buy 100 per cent of Iraqi firms and expatriate the
profits. This is an outright violation of international laws that
govern an occupying force, and is among the main reasons for the
stealthy, hurried charade in which power was “handed over” to an
“interim Iraqi government”. Once handing over of Iraq to the
multi-nationals is complete, a mild dose of genuine democracy won't do
any harm. In fact it might be good PR for the corporate version of
Liberation Theology, otherwise known as New Democracy.
Not surprisingly, the auctioning of Iraq caused a stampede at the
feeding trough. Corporations like Bechtel and Halliburton, the company
that US vice-president Dick Cheney once headed, have won huge contracts
for “reconstruction” work. A brief cv of any one of these corporations
would give us a layperson's grasp of how it all works – not just in
Iraq, but all over the world. Say we pick Bechtel – only because poor
little Halliburton is under investigation on charges of overpricing
fuel deliveries to Iraq and for its contracts to “restore” Iraq's oil
industry, which came with a pretty serious price-tag – $US2.5 billion.
The Bechtel Group and Saddam Hussein are old business acquaintances.
Many of their dealings were negotiated by none other than Donald
Rumsfeld. In 1988, after Saddam Hussein gassed thousands of Kurds,
Bechtel signed contracts with his government to build a dual-use
chemical plant in Baghdad.
Historically, the Bechtel Group has had, and continues to have,
inextricably close links to the Republican establishment. You could
call Bechtel and the Reagan Bush administration a team. Former
Secretary of Defence Caspar Weinberger was a Bechtel general counsel.
Former Deputy Secretary of Energy, W. Kenneth Davis was Bechtel's
vice-president. Riley Bechtel, the company chairman, is on the
President's Export Council. Jack Sheehan, a retired marine corps
general, is a senior vice-president at Bechtel and a member of the US
Defence Policy Board. Former Secretary of State George Shultz, who is
on the board of directors of the Bechtel Group, was the chairman of the
advisory board of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.
When he was asked by the New York Times whether he was
concerned about the appearance of a conflict of interest between his
two “jobs”, he said, "I don't know that Bechtel would particularly
benefit from it [the invasion of Iraq]. But if there's work to be done,
Bechtel is the type of company that could do it." Bechtel has been
awarded reconstruction contracts in Iraq worth over $US1 billion, which
include contracts to rebuild power generation plants, electrical grids,
water supply, sewage systems, and airport facilities. Never mind
revolving doors, this – if it weren't so drenched in blood – would be a
bedroom farce.
Between 2001 and 2002, nine out of 30 members of the US Defence Policy
Group were connected to companies that were awarded Defence contracts
worth $US76 billion. Time was when weapons were manufactured in order
to fight wars. Now wars are manufactured in order to sell weapons.
Between 1990 and 2002 the Bechtel group has contributed $US3.3 million
to campaign funds, both Republican and Democrat. Since 1990 it has won
more than 2000 government contracts worth more than $US11 billion.
That's an incredible return on investment, wouldn't you say?
And Bechtel has footprints around the world. That's what being a
multinational means.
The Bechtel Group first attracted international attention when it
signed a contract with Hugo Banzer, the former Bolivian dictator, to
privatise the water supply in the city of Cochabamba. The first thing
Bechtel did was to raise the price of water. Hundreds of thousands of
people who simply couldn't afford to pay Bechtel's bills came out on to
the streets. A huge strike paralysed the city. Martial law was
declared. Although eventually Bechtel was forced to flee its offices,
it is currently negotiating an exit payment of millions of dollars from
the Bolivian government for the loss of potential profits. Which, as
we'll see, is growing into a popular corporate sport.
In India, Bechtel along with General Electric are the new owners of the
notorious and currently defunct Enron power project. The Enron
contract, which legally binds the government of the state of
Maharashtra to pay Enron a sum of $US30 billion, was the largest
contract ever signed in India. Enron was not shy to boast about the
millions of dollars it had spent to "educate" Indian politicians and
bureaucrats. The Enron contract in Maharashtra, which was India's first
“fast-track” private power project, has come to be known as the most
massive fraud in the country's history. (Enron was another of the
Republican Party's major campaign contributors). The electricity that
Enron produced was so exorbitantly priced that the government decided
it was cheaper not to buy electricity and to pay Enron the mandatory
fixed charges specified in the contract. This means that the government
of one of the poorest countries in the world was paying Enron $US220
million a year not to produce electricity!
Now that Enron has ceased to exist, Bechtel and GE are suing the Indian
Government for $US5.6 billion. This is not the sum of money that they
(or Enron) actually invested in the project. Once more, it's a
projection of profit they would have made had the project materialised.
To give you an idea of scale $US5.6 billion is a little more than the
amount that the government of India would need annually for a rural
employment guarantee scheme that would provide a subsistence wage to
millions of people currently living in abject poverty, crushed by debt,
displacement, chronic malnutrition and the WTO.
This in a country where farmers steeped in debt are being driven to
suicide, not in their hundreds, but in their thousands. The proposal
for a Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme is being mocked by India's
corporate class as an unreasonable, utopian demand being floated by the
“lunatic” and newly powerful left. Where will the money come from, they
ask derisively. And yet, any talk of reneging on a bad contract with a
notoriously corrupt corporation like Enron has the same cynics
hyperventilating about capital flight and the terrible risks of
“creating a bad investment climate”. The arbitration between Bechtel,
GE and the government of India is taking place right now in London.
Bechtel and GE have reason for hope. The Indian finance secretary, who
was instrumental in approving the disastrous Enron contract has come
home after a few years with the IMF. Not just home, home with a
promotion. He is now deputy chairman of the Planning Commission.
Think about it: The notional profits of a single corporate project
would be enough to provide 100 days of employment a year at minimum
wages (calculated at a weighted average across different states) for 25
million people. That's five million more than the population of
Australia. That is the scale of the horror of neoliberalism.
The Bechtel story gets worse. In what can only be called
unconscionable, Naomi Klein writes that Bechtel has successfully sued
war-torn Iraq for “war reparations” and “lost profits”. It has been
awarded $US7 million.
So, all you young management graduates don't bother with Harvard and
Wharton – here's the Lazy Manager's Guide to Corporate Success: first,
stock your board with senior government servants. Next, stock the
government with members of your board. Add oil and stir. When no one
can tell where the government ends and your company begins, collude
with your government to equip and arm a cold-blooded dictator in an
oil-rich country. Look away while he kills his own people. Simmer
gently. Use the time to collect a few billion dollars in government
contracts. Then collude with your government once again while it
topples the dictator and bombs his subjects, taking care to
specifically target essential infrastructure, killing 100,000 people on
the side. Pick up another billion dollars or so worth of contracts to
“reconstruct” the infrastructure. To cover travel and incidentals, sue
for reparations for lost profits from the devastated country. Finally,
diversify. Buy a television station, so that next war around you can
showcase your hardware and weapons technology masquerading as coverage
of the war. And finally finally, institute a Human Rights Prize in your
company's name. You could give the first one posthumously to Mother
Teresa. She won't be able to turn it down or argue back.
Invaded and occupied Iraq has been made to pay out $US200 million in
"reparations" for lost profits to corporations like Halliburton, Shell,
Mobil, Nestle, Pepsi, Kentucky Fried Chicken and Toys R Us. That's
apart from its $US125 billion sovereign debt forcing it to turn to the
IMF, waiting in the wings like the angel of death, with its structural
adjustment program. (Though in Iraq there don't seem to be many
structures left to adjust. Except the shadowy Al Qaeda.)
In New Iraq, privatisation has broken new ground. The US Army is
increasingly recruiting private mercenaries to help in the occupation.
The advantage with mercenaries is that when they're killed they're not
included in the US soldiers' body count. It helps to manage public
opinion, which is particularly important in an election year. Prisons
have been privatised. Torture has been privatised. We have seen what
that leads to. Other attractions in New Iraq include newspapers being
shut down, television stations bombed, reporters killed. US soldiers
have opened fire on crowds of unarmed protestors, killing scores of
people. The only kind of resistance that has managed to survive is as
crazed and brutal as the occupation itself. Is there space for a
secular, democratic, feminist, non-violent resistance in Iraq? There
isn't really.
That is why it falls to those of us living outside Iraq to create that
mass-based, secular and non-violent resistance to the US occupation. If
we fail to do that, we run the risk of allowing the idea of resistance
to be hijacked and conflated with terrorism and that will be a pity
because they are not the same thing.
So what does peace mean in this savage, corporatised, militarised
world? What does it mean in a world where an entrenched system of
appropriation has created a situation in which poor countries which
have been plundered by colonising regimes for centuries are steeped in
debt to the very same countries that plundered them, and have to repay
that debt at the rate of $US382 billion a year? What does peace mean in
a world in which the combined wealth of the world's 587 billionaires
exceeds the combined gross domestic product of the world's 135 poorest
countries? Or when rich countries that pay farm subsidies of $US1
billion a day, try and force poor countries to drop their subsidies?
What does peace mean to people in occupied Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir,
Tibet and Chechnya? Or to the aboriginal people of Australia? Or the
Ogoni of Nigeria? Or the Kurds in Turkey? Or the Dalits and Adivasis of
India? What does peace mean to non-Muslims in Islamic countries, or to
women in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan? What does it mean to the
millions who are being uprooted from their lands by dams and
development projects? What does peace mean to the poor who are being
actively robbed of their resources and for whom everyday life is a grim
battle for water, shelter, survival and, above all, some semblance of
dignity? For them, peace is war.
We know very well who benefits from war in the Age of Empire. But we
must also ask ourselves honestly who benefits from peace in the Age of
Empire? War-mongering is criminal. But talking of peace without talking
of justice could easily become advocacy of a kind of capitulation. And
talking of justice without unmasking the institutions and the systems
that perpetrate injustice, is beyond hypocritical.
It's easy to blame the poor for being poor. It's easy to believe that
the world is being caught up in an escalating spiral of terrorism and
war. That's what allows the American President to say: "You're either
with us or with the terrorists." But we know that's a spurious choice.
We know that terrorism is only the privatisation of war, that
terrorists are the free marketers of war. They believe that the
legitimate use of violence is not the sole prerogative of the state.
It is mendacious to make moral distinction between the unspeakable
brutality of terrorism and the indiscriminate carnage of war and
occupation. Both kinds of violence are unacceptable. We cannot support
one and condemn the other.
The real tragedy is that most people in the world are trapped between
the horror of a putative peace and the terror of war. Those are the two
sheer cliffs we're hemmed in by. The question is: how do we climb out
of this crevasse?
For those who are materially well-off but morally uncomfortable, the
first question you must ask yourself is do you really want to climb out
of it? How far are you prepared to go? Has the crevasse become too
comfortable?
If you really want to climb out, there's good news and bad news.
The good news is that the advance party began the climb some time ago.
They're already halfway up. Thousands of activists across the world
have been hard at work preparing footholds and securing the ropes to
make it easier for the rest of us. There isn't only one path up. There
are hundreds of ways of doing it. There are hundreds of battles being
fought around the world that need your skills, your minds, your
resources. No battle is irrelevant. No victory is too small.
The bad news is that colourful demonstrations, weekend marches and
annual trips to the World Social Forum are not enough. There have to be
targeted acts of real civil disobedience with real consequences. Maybe
we can't flip a switch and conjure up a revolution, but there are
several things we could do. For example, you could make a list of those
corporations who have profited from the invasion of Iraq and have
offices here in Australia. You could name them, boycott them, occupy
their offices and force them out of business. If it can happen in
Bolivia, it can happen in India. It can happen in Australia. Why not?
That's only a small suggestion. But remember that if the struggle were
to resort to violence, it would lose vision, beauty and imagination.
Most dangerous of all, it will marginalise and eventually victimise
women. And a political struggle that does not have women at the heart
of it, above it, below it and within it is no struggle at all.
The point is that the battle must be joined. As the wonderful American
historian Howard Zinn put it: “You can't be neutral on a moving train.”
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