Globalization from above is a barbaric system impoverishing the majority of people and destroying the earth. We need another economic globalization, a globalization from below in the interests of the earth and the interests of the poorest.
ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE
Address on October 3, 2001 at the University of Hamburg
By Dorothee Soelle
[This address is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at/texte/usa/SoelleDUSAT.htm.]
With the attack on September 11, the heart of western civilization was struck, many feel. I also feel that way about a mass murder in which civilians were murdered, suffocated and buried alive. Some of my friends compare the assassins with the Nazi mass murderers. I cannot do this because the Nazis only pushed buttons for gas without sacrificing themselves. But that does not affect the pain and horror…
We must continue reflecting. Mourning does not exclude analysis. Mourning needs analysis to live differently. We are struck in the heart of civilization. But what kind of heart is that? The symbol of the financial center Manhattan was the World Trade Center, the towering representative symbol of the modern business world.
Isn’t this heart a heart of stone? Isn’t the pentagon, the center of the military enforcement of economic power, the power of this world, a heart made of steel? But in mourning over the many people who lost their lives, in sympathy toward the killed and their relatives and as persons belonging to this western civilization, we sense another heart beating in us, another culture beside the culture of stone and steel, a wounded and vulnerable heart. Listening to this beating heart is crucial today.
The heart of stone and steel of military power is without feeling for the troubles of people. There are winners and losers. 20% of the people belong to the winners. They have the right to live well, to live long and to buy new organs when the old organs do not function any more. 80% of the people belong to the losers. They produce little that is usable and do not consume profitably. Why do they exist? The stony heart thinks and feels that way.
The economy in which we live is increasingly totalitarian. This totalitarian system is very different from the two totalitarian systems known from the last century. It is more intelligent, efficient and “softer.” It does not roar with commands but enlists with a tender voice. It dictates the rhythm of our accelerated life and forces the political decisions of the responsible. The economy is more important than politics. The heart of stone and steel without feeling for the real needs and problems of people registers the rhythm, relevance and division of time. Managers and clinic directors must work 60 hours a week. As everybody knows, mass layoffs make the stocks climb. In the last years, the most important question has become “Does it pay?”
German chancellor Schroeder spoke of a “declaration of war against the civilized world.” These words go back to Samuel Huntington’s clash of cultures or clash of civilizations. But can the rich with the stony heart be described as “civilized” and the impoverished as “uncivilized”? Or with George Bush, is there now the “monumental battle” that “the good has to wage against evil?” What heart speaks that way?
Our fleshly heart knows at least sometimes about the impoverished world. Perhaps we suspect what is demanded given this barbaric catastrophe. What is necessary is not military retaliation but a correction of course or shift in policy of our way of life, an examination of the values that determine our conduct and admission of our own responsibility in the suffering, misery and humiliation of those see us as their enemies. We hear these days about the first war in the 21st century. While the murder of 6000 civilians is barbaric, we should not close our eyes to the fact that this war is the economic war of the strong and strongest against the weak and weakest. This war must end at last. It produces nothing but hatred and the will to destruction of the strong, technologically trained who cannot see any hope any more in the world of misery. “Suicide assassin” is a new and horrific term. In the past, “smash what smashes you” was emphasized. No technological, economic or military reflection helps. We are vulnerable as persons and as an open society. As long as the economic war continues, the threats will increase for us. The window of vulnerability cannot be closed. That this window can be closed is a fundamental error that is absolutely transfigured and made conventional in the Reagan-Bush tradition.
Noam Chomsky, one of the sharpest critics of the US since the Vietnam War, said the attack on the Twin Towers was a “crushing blow for the Palestinians, the poor and oppressed…because it marginalized their legitimate fears and complaints… When the US government granted Bin Laden’s prayer (a marvelously ironic sentence!) and carried out a massive attack on Afghanistan or another Moslem society, then the desire of Bin Laden and his allies happens: a mobilization against the West” (taz 9/20). I sometimes ask myself who is really the terrorist.
Several other voices of the “other America” should be heard here because the American opposition against Bush and Co. is so unknown in Germany. This opposition takes up the term terrorism and asks who are really the terrorists murdering in Colombia, Palestine, Kosovo, Ruanda, Bosnia and in the Congo and what financial backers and interests are behind them. Who struggles against the terror of the economy? Those fighting this terror include landless peasants in Brazil, women in India revolting against the bio-piracy of Monsanto and pious Christians who know we should forgive our debtors. The great growing movement against globalization from above is non-violence. Conversely, the masters of this world were protected in Genoa by the police terrorists.
An American friend and theology professor, Tom Driver, wrote a circular about “Our Beloved America” after September 11: “We are violent at home and abroad. We lead in manufacturing and selling weapons at a profit. We have supported some of the most oppressive systems of the world. We helped them with terrorist actions against their own population. We cultivate a lifestyle that necessitates the impoverishment of others.”
Thus the terror of the economy is clearly identified. In August, the American film director and activist Tim Robbins spoke about the new movement of globalization critics in the US: “There is a new broad coalition of students, conservationists, unions, small farmers, scientists and other citizens who understand themselves on the front lines of the struggle for the future of this planet.” (taz 8/28/2001). Robbins compares the new movement with the early battles to abolish slavery in the 18th century. Quakers and other Christians essentially initiated this nonviolent movement. Today something similar is arising before our eyes… We all know how globalization from above promotes new forms of slavery and makes our T-shirts so cheap. Abolishing slavery, ending child labor and introducing minimum wages took 100 years.
This struggle awaits us. We could learn what is necessary today from the history of nonviolence. Mahatma Gandhi called this form of freedom “the greatest power in the hands of humanity, more powerful than the most powerful destructive weapon.” We should believe in this power.
One of the many new movements in the US is called “Justice, not Vengeance.” Rosa Parks, Alive Walker and Gloria Steiner are its leaders. Large cities like San Francisco and Seattle declare themselves “hate-free zones.” Justice is the answer to terror that we need. Justice is slow, reflective, patient and long-term. Vengeance is often fast and its results short-term. Vindictiveness or thirst for revenge has no vision behind itself and no future ahead.
These are messages we hear from America that we should naturalize in Germany. In other words, nothing will improve if we do not change. Jesus said, Whoever takes the sword will perish by the sword. The essential living conditions in our world have worsened for 80% and we cannot endure this any more. Standing up for peace! means today “Standing up or revolting for justice,” the basic condition for peace. The globalization from above is a barbaric system impoverishing the majority of people and destroying the earth. We need another economic globalization, a globalization from below in the interests of the earth and the interests of the poorest.
Address on October 3, 2001 at the University of Hamburg
By Dorothee Soelle
[This address is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,
http://www.begegnungszentrum.at/texte/usa/SoelleDUSAT.htm.] With the attack on September 11, the heart of western civilization was struck, many feel. I also feel that way about a mass murder in which civilians were murdered, suffocated and buried alive. Some of my friends compare the assassins with the Nazi mass murderers. I cannot do this because the Nazis only pushed buttons for gas without sacrificing themselves. But that does not affect the pain and horror…
We must continue reflecting. Mourning does not exclude analysis. Mourning needs analysis to live differently. We are struck in the heart of civilization. But what kind of heart is that? The symbol of the financial center Manhattan was the World Trade Center, the towering representative symbol of the modern business world.
Isn’t this heart a heart of stone? Isn’t the pentagon, the center of the military enforcement of economic power, the power of this world, a heart made of steel? But in mourning over the many people who lost their lives, in sympathy toward the killed and their relatives and as persons belonging to this western civilization, we sense another heart beating in us, another culture beside the culture of stone and steel, a wounded and vulnerable heart. Listening to this beating heart is crucial today.
The heart of stone and steel of military power is without feeling for the troubles of people. There are winners and losers. 20% of the people belong to the winners. They have the right to live well, to live long and to buy new organs when the old organs do not function any more. 80% of the people belong to the losers. They produce little that is usable and do not consume profitably. Why do they exist? The stony heart thinks and feels that way.
The economy in which we live is increasingly totalitarian. This totalitarian system is very different from the two totalitarian systems known from the last century. It is more intelligent, efficient and “softer.” It does not roar with commands but enlists with a tender voice. It dictates the rhythm of our accelerated life and forces the political decisions of the responsible. The economy is more important than politics. The heart of stone and steel without feeling for the real needs and problems of people registers the rhythm, relevance and division of time. Managers and clinic directors must work 60 hours a week. As everybody knows, mass layoffs make the stocks climb. In the last years, the most important question has become “Does it pay?”
German chancellor Schroeder spoke of a “declaration of war against the civilized world.” These words go back to Samuel Huntington’s clash of cultures or clash of civilizations. But can the rich with the stony heart be described as “civilized” and the impoverished as “uncivilized”? Or with George Bush, is there now the “monumental battle” that “the good has to wage against evil?” What heart speaks that way?
Our fleshly heart knows at least sometimes about the impoverished world. Perhaps we suspect what is demanded given this barbaric catastrophe. What is necessary is not military retaliation but a correction of course or shift in policy of our way of life, an examination of the values that determine our conduct and admission of our own responsibility in the suffering, misery and humiliation of those see us as their enemies. We hear these days about the first war in the 21st century. While the murder of 6000 civilians is barbaric, we should not close our eyes to the fact that this war is the economic war of the strong and strongest against the weak and weakest. This war must end at last. It produces nothing but hatred and the will to destruction of the strong, technologically trained who cannot see any hope any more in the world of misery. “Suicide assassin” is a new and horrific term. In the past, “smash what smashes you” was emphasized. No technological, economic or military reflection helps. We are vulnerable as persons and as an open society. As long as the economic war continues, the threats will increase for us. The window of vulnerability cannot be closed. That this window can be closed is a fundamental error that is absolutely transfigured and made conventional in the Reagan-Bush tradition.
Noam Chomsky, one of the sharpest critics of the US since the Vietnam War, said the attack on the Twin Towers was a “crushing blow for the Palestinians, the poor and oppressed…because it marginalized their legitimate fears and complaints… When the US government granted Bin Laden’s prayer (a marvelously ironic sentence!) and carried out a massive attack on Afghanistan or another Moslem society, then the desire of Bin Laden and his allies happens: a mobilization against the West” (taz 9/20). I sometimes ask myself who is really the terrorist.
Several other voices of the “other America” should be heard here because the American opposition against Bush and Co. is so unknown in Germany. This opposition takes up the term terrorism and asks who are really the terrorists murdering in Colombia, Palestine, Kosovo, Ruanda, Bosnia and in the Congo and what financial backers and interests are behind them. Who struggles against the terror of the economy? Those fighting this terror include landless peasants in Brazil, women in India revolting against the bio-piracy of Monsanto and pious Christians who know we should forgive our debtors. The great growing movement against globalization from above is non-violence. Conversely, the masters of this world were protected in Genoa by the police terrorists.
An American friend and theology professor, Tom Driver, wrote a circular about “Our Beloved America” after September 11: “We are violent at home and abroad. We lead in manufacturing and selling weapons at a profit. We have supported some of the most oppressive systems of the world. We helped them with terrorist actions against their own population. We cultivate a lifestyle that necessitates the impoverishment of others.”
Thus the terror of the economy is clearly identified. In August, the American film director and activist Tim Robbins spoke about the new movement of globalization critics in the US: “There is a new broad coalition of students, conservationists, unions, small farmers, scientists and other citizens who understand themselves on the front lines of the struggle for the future of this planet.” (taz 8/28/2001). Robbins compares the new movement with the early battles to abolish slavery in the 18th century. Quakers and other Christians essentially initiated this nonviolent movement. Today something similar is arising before our eyes… We all know how globalization from above promotes new forms of slavery and makes our T-shirts so cheap. Abolishing slavery, ending child labor and introducing minimum wages took 100 years.
This struggle awaits us. We could learn what is necessary today from the history of nonviolence. Mahatma Gandhi called this form of freedom “the greatest power in the hands of humanity, more powerful than the most powerful destructive weapon.” We should believe in this power.
One of the many new movements in the US is called “Justice, not Vengeance.” Rosa Parks, Alive Walker and Gloria Steiner are its leaders. Large cities like San Francisco and Seattle declare themselves “hate-free zones.” Justice is the answer to terror that we need. Justice is slow, reflective, patient and long-term. Vengeance is often fast and its results short-term. Vindictiveness or thirst for revenge has no vision behind itself and no future ahead.
These are messages we hear from America that we should naturalize in Germany. In other words, nothing will improve if we do not change. Jesus said, Whoever takes the sword will perish by the sword. The essential living conditions in our world have worsened for 80% and we cannot endure this any more. Standing up for peace! means today “Standing up or revolting for justice,” the basic condition for peace. The globalization from above is a barbaric system impoverishing the majority of people and destroying the earth. We need another economic globalization, a globalization from below in the interests of the earth and the interests of the poorest.
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On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.
22.07.2006 10:32
Confronting Empire: The Race is on for a Better World
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 Organisation, and multinational corporations? Or is it more than that?
In many countries, Empire has sprouted subsidiary heads, some dangerous by-products—nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and, of course, terrorism. All these march arm in arm with the project of corporate globalisation.
Let me illustrate what I mean. India—the world’s biggest democracy—is currently at the forefront of the corporate globalisation project. Its ‘market’ of one billion people is being prised open by the
Globalisation—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 globalised. 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.
The Naked Empire
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 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 globalisation is gaining momentum and is poised to become the only political force to counter religious fascism.
As for corporate globalisation’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 privatised, and George Bush goes to war against Iraq. If we look at this conflict as a straightforward eyeball-to-eyeball 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 its 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.
Before September 11, 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.
For example, 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.
And while nobody doubts that Saddam Hussein is a ruthless dictator, a murderer, we should note that his worst excesses were supported by the governments of the United States and Great Britain. There’s no doubt that Iraqis will 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?
So, what can we do about the next war against the next Iraq?
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.
—Porto Alegre, Brazil, January 27, 2003
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