Peace And The
New Corporate
Liberation Theology
By Arundhati
Roy
04 November, 2004
Countercurrents.org
The 2004 Sydney
Peace Prize lecture delivered by Arundhati Roy, at the
Seymour Theatre Centre, University of Sydney.
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 organize
a picket against me after the lecture? From what I've heard, it shouldn't
be hard to organize. 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 honors 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 globalization in which neo-colonialism
and neo-liberalism 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, twenty four 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 one hundred halls full of people - like this one. That's one
hundred halls full of friends, parents, siblings, colleagues, lovers.like
you. The difference is that there aren't many children here todaylet'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 'civilized'
'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 plagiarized
from an old student dissertation. And yet, in the prelude to the war,
day after day the most 'respectable' newspapers and TV 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 programme. 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 programme. (Like
I was planning to win an Olympic Gold in synchronized swimming.) Thank
goodness for the doctrine of pre-emptive strike. God knows what other
evil thoughts he harbored - 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 neo-liberalism. Free the markets. Screw
the people.
The US government
has privatized and sold entire sectors of Iraq's economy. Economic policies
and tax laws have been re-written. Foreign companies can now buy 100%
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 c.v of any one of these corporations would give us a lay person'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 - 2.5 billion dollars.
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 Defense, 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 Defense 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 a billion dollars, which include contracts
to re-build 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 thirty members of the US Defense Policy Group were
connected to companies that were awarded Defense contracts worth 76
billion dollars. 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 $3.3 million to campaign
funds, both Republican and Democrat. Since 1990 it has won more than
2000 government contracts worth more than 11 billion dollars. That's
an incredible return on investment, wouldn't you say? And Bechtel has
footprints around the world. That's what being a multi-national means.
The Bechtel Group
first attracted international attention when it signed a contract with
Hugo Banzer, the former Bolivian dictator, to privatize 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 onto the streets. A huge strike
paralyzed 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 30 billion dollars, 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 exorbitant that the government
decided it was cheaper not to buy electricity and 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 220 million
US dollars a year not to produce electricity!
Now that Enron has
ceased to exist, Bechtel and GE are suing the Indian Government for
5.6 billion US dollars. This is not even a minute fraction of 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
materialized. To give you an idea of scale 5.6 billion dollars 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 a hundred 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 neo-liberalism.
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 7 million dollars. 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 collect 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 to specifically target essential infrastructure, killing a hundred
thousand 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 TV 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 200 million dollars 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 125
billion dollar 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, privatization
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 privatized. Torture
has been privatized. 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,
then we run the risk of allowing the idea of resistance to be hi-jacked
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, corporatized,
militarized 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 colonizing 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 382 billion dollars 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 a billion dollars 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 for 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 that's a spurious choice.
We know that terrorism is only the privatization 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 half way 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 colorful
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 will lose vision, beauty and imagination. Most dangerous of all,
it will marginalize and eventually victimize 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.
© Arundhati
Roy