Document | Article: Proposals for Education Ministry and System in Jamaica
For a long time the media and most thinks have purported the idea that we live in the information age. We live an age where cell phones and gadgetry pervade all walks of life. Computers and the internet are constantly creeping into our lives. Sociologists will contend that the family is the primary agent of socialization. But most of know and will very well contend that it is the TV. Especially in an age where the family is in crisis and in the third world where the core notion of family lives in a state of flux, the television and cable have taken prominence.
Folklore, Anansy and the oral tradition have been usurped by Sponge Bob, Dora and Hannah Montana. With absentee or limited supervision parenting rampant and the television controlling brain space and time at all times and any given hour, whilst the education system will only have them for 6 to 7 out of 24 hours much of which will be ruled by televisions and corner time no wonder we are unable to transmit and pass on the education, knowledge and morals we need to.
Mister Minister on the heels of your party’s message of change and changing the course, the courses and course of the education system has changed little. At this crucial moment in history the education system with all its short comings are in need of radical overhaul and requires new approaches and revolutionary thought. We need to design a curriculum to stimulate the development of analytical skills. The thing I care most about is that we focus not on the specific set of tools, but on the ability to “learn and apply a current tool set”.
The truth is that we constantly acquire and discard sets of tools. So we should not be fixated on one specific set of tools for all of life. Society, technology and the times change so fast that any fact, process or algorithm we learn at school is by definition not going to be useful for any length of time. The real skills that serve us are the ability to adapt, learn, apply the products of that learning, and participate in the discussions and challenges of the day. That doesn’t mean that facts are useless, or that specific tools don’t matter. Unless you can demonstrate an ability to absorb and apply both, fast, you haven’t actually gained the knack of becoming effective in a given environment.
How can we better communicate with them?
The traditional talk and chalk won’t work with this generation. Our communication style is structured, yet they want freedom. The old order stresses learning, they like experiencing. We react, they relate. We focus on the individual, while they are socially driven. Here are four essentials to consider when engaging with youth today:
Real:
Not only must our communication style be credible, but we must be also. They don’t expect us to know all about their lifestyle, nor do they want us to embrace their culture. They are simply seeking understanding, and respect. If our communication has a hidden agenda, or we are less than transparent, it will be seen. This generation can sniff a phoney from a long distance.
Raw:
Today’s youth have access to the most advanced technology, movie special effects, and video games with which we can never compete. But the good news is that they are not impacted by slick presentations. They don’t want a rehearsed talk, or a manufactured spiel. The more spontaneous and interactive we are in the classroom, the less intimidated, and more open they will be.
Relevant:
Obviously what we are communicating has to fall within their area of interest. But the style, as well as the content of our message must be relevant to a generation who are visually educated and entertained. There is no point in giving music to a friend on a cassette tape if they only have a CD player, or on CD if they only use MP3. Similarly we must research in the most appropriate format for those we are reaching. So in understanding the communication styles of our target cohort we will be better equipped to reach them.
Relational:
There is an old and true saying in education circles: “They don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care!” Communicating to this generation requires openness, vulnerability, and genuine interest in those we are trying to teach, and above all else, understanding. The more relaxed the environment, and the more socially conducive to discussions; the better will be the quality of the learning.
The Issue of Text Books and Learning Materials
Today, many children and individuals have MP3 Players, I-Pods, Smart-phones, computers, DVDs and DVD players, Radios and Televisions. Lots of in Jamaica are in some way linked and have some access to the various media. Today, I believe it is a tragedy that books, audio-books, tutorials and classes and the entire Jamaican and Caribbean syllabus are not posted online in PDF on accessible sites, material and content for our youths’ education should already be on their cell phones, in their DVD players, on YouTube.
It is an even more horrendous thought that every entrepreneur with a two-bit dream of becoming a media mogul can implement far reaching cable stations, whilst JIS is relegated to a time slot on TVJ, instead of being a Caribbean BBC, the U.S. has PBS and as a matter of fact the BBC has managed to pervade the island. We have an A.M. Band going to waste and yet I have seen people in small communities with their small means and incomes set up small radio stations and internet radio stations, why is JIS being broadcast, why aren’t we making full use of all the channels and vectors we have that can be used to bombard people with sensible, useful, practical, culturally relevant information.
I have lived to see middle-aged women become interior decorators watching HGTV and seen nearly illiterate dog lovers in the garrison swear they are dog trainers after a few episodes of dog whisperer on Discovery channel. In this vein I do believe if we have relevant content people will be willing to watch it. If you build it they will come. I do believe we have a wealth of content that can be drawn from, old documentaries from JBC and such. More can be commissioned, after all this is the era of YouTube movie directors, Open Source content and citizen journalism.
I am convinced the government has been lacklustre in pursuing technologies such as Linux, Open Source and notions such as FOSS. Brazil, Mexico and India are already using these to bring technology more cheaply to their nation. There are also revolutionary methods of implementing technology in the class room all throughout the Americas.
Also Mr. Holness I am sure you will probably have played dominoes with illiterate people as I have and been beaten by people who have never learnt primary school mathematics, which is proof that the education is disconnected from the everyday realities we face. Someone must have the potential to learn math if he can grasp the process of deduction and numerical elimination it takes to play domino well. We live in the Caribbean and still don’t learn enough about where we live. Why isn’t there our national geographic?
The other day I had to watch on foreign news that lizards that do morning exercises had been discovered in Jamaica. Lots of municipalities and small nation states have set up their own, local intranet that can provide the general populace with basic informational resources, like wikis and encyclopaedias and educational material. Today it is the nation’s own fault we are falling behind in education.
The government must become the primary agent of socialization, as parents and the family are lagging. If we are to grow a nation we need to grow people. We need our human resource to grow and develop. Technology, TV, internet, cell phones and the Radio are the way to reach them.
A Final Word:
The quality outcome of our education system is dependent on our understanding of the youth. Once we have a foundational grasp of their characteristics, communication styles, and social attitudes, we will be well equipped to effectively impact this enormous and emerging generation.
We want to create a curriculum that can:
Be self taught, peer mentored, and effectively evaluated without expert supervision.
Provide tools for analysis that will be general useful across the range of disciplines being taught at any given age.
Be an exercise machine for analysis, process and synthesis.
The idea is not that children learn tools they use for the rest of their lives. That’s not realistic. I don’t use any specific theorems or other mathematics constructs from school today. They should learn tools which they use at school to develop a general ability to learn tools. That general ability – to break a complex problem into pieces, identify familiar patterns in the pieces, solve them using existing tools, and synthesise the results into a view or answer… that’s the skill of analysis, and that’s what we need to ensure the youth graduate with.
"It is when your spirit goes wandering upon the wind,
That you, alone and unguarded, commit a wrong unto others and therefore unto yourself.
And for that wrong committed must you knock and wait a while unheeded at the gate of the blessed. ...And of the man in you would I now speak.
For it is he and not your god-self nor the pigmy in the mist, that knows crime and the punishment of crime." By Kahlil Gibran
I am compelled point to the
glaring hypocrisy at the core of much of the media commentaries
surrounding the Whirl Boss and his conviction. Many have been quick to
lambaste him, as maybe he deserves to be, but I ask... "What part did
the gatekeepers of information have in building the Vybz Kartel they are
no so quick to turn their back on?" Were not the media gatekeepers too
neglecting their social responsibility by not better regulating the
airwaves, and not filtering what was being syphoned to the nation?
I
would like to point to the glaring hypocrisy at the core of the
decision to free Kern "Bulb Boss" Spencer. The government has shown its
will to decisively uphold the rule of law is weak. The impetus for impartiality and legal ethics in our government today is missing.
We live in a time and
political climate in Jamaica where the state seems
committed to consistently targeting the marginalized, who are not able to buy the best lawyers and with political connections. Rarely, if ever are corrupt politicians and white collar criminals
brought to justice. Hence the nation has no faith in the justice system,
nor does it believe in the institutions charged with maintaining law
and order.
The government has the will to press through anti-gang legislation, public smoking legislation (even as they muddled it), scamming and fraud legislation. Yet to financially and medically empower Jamaicans by legalizing medical marijuana as well as decriminalizing it usage whilst making licensing easy and accessible to Jamaica's poor and dispossessed is something they are willing to pussyfoot around. All while madam PM goes globe hopping I suppose!
Here is a point of note on the rule of law to
our ministries of security and justice… Rule of law deals
with the range of processes and
relationships amongst individual and state. The crucial idea that has grown out of the rule of law as it has developed in the UK and is adopted here in
Jamaica, posits in Albert Venn Dicey’s understanding that “the law
should not be arbitrarily or capriciously administered by those in
power”
The Constitution of Jamaica implicitly states that the
power or duties of each arm of government should not overlap... Yet Resident
Magistrates don’t have security of tenure as part of the public service
and fall within the executive arm of the state. Hence the Court System
we have before us may very well contravene the constitution and the
notion of the separation of powers as well as undermining the doctrine
of rule of law. The Jamaican RM Court is a one of a kind in the world.
No other such structure exists. An arbitrary structure, with arbitrary administration and hence the arbitrary administration of justice.
Let us not forget the mess made
in the creation of the gun court, it was an embarrassment in Jamaican scholarship and
jurisprudence. The unusual features of the Gun Court have faced legal handicaps, some of which have forced amendment of the Gun Court Act.
The Gun Court has faced criticism on several fronts, most notably for
its departure from traditional practices, its large backlog of cases,
and for the continuing escalation in gun violence since its institution. If these things are not proof that we need better jurisprudence and more honest and fair delivery of justice.
A
1993 County Report on Human
Rights Practices in Jamaica from the United States Department of State
noted the denial of a "fair public trial" and alleged that Gun Court
trials observe "less rigorous rules of evidence than in regular court
proceedings."
The Canadian Bar Association's Jamaican Justice System
Reform Task Force noted that the Gun Court is overloaded, that
defendants are not well represented, and Crown attorneys are often
inexperienced. Hence even internationally it is evident and plain to see
that we are a unique court system and a particularly arbitrary one!
If we are to move forward as a nation we must cut these wretched political hypocrisies in our system!
I
close with a quote from - John Adams, “Nip the shoots of arbitrary
power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the
liberties of any people.”
The Schematics for a Sustainable City: The Montego Bay Ecopolis
We are losing connection with the soil. We need to understand the connection between soil, soul and society and drop ego in favour of eco!~Satish Kumar
"A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars, it's where the rich ride public transportation."~ Gustavo Petro (Mayor of Bogotá, Colombia)
The social big bang that was the start of the 21 century saw the acceleration of the pace of human life beyond anything people of previous centuries could have imagined. Today there is a crisis of haste and of a lack of hospitality in the world and its cities.
The tourist capital Montego Bay, is a typical 2nd city: vast, pulsating, noisy and full of smoke and exhaust fumes. But it is atypical in many many ways. A beautiful city couched and cocooned in a bay... city by the sea, tourist hub, cultural hub, growing, strategically located in the Caribbean, resting on an energy lay line, cultural axis, business crux of the west... in many ways too, Montego Bay is the apotheosis of urban and rural life: rustic yet metropolitan and cosmopolitan, "country-fy and farrin-ish!" "If yuh naah mean'
This is the setting in which new building concepts, IT solutions, the Freezone's continued expansion, the Indigenous Rastafari Village, Academia in the form of Utech West and UWI western Campus, lifestyle solutions, energy concepts, a new Caribbean ecological, local, indigenous way of life can emerge: a new and re-newed peoples, with new objectives, new domiciles and modus operandi. A mode of operation that can save energy as well as avert looming oil and energy crises (research Peak Oil), cut pollution, solve food security issues and make living in the city, this city, our city a more pleasant experience, culturally, aesthetically, intellectually, socially and otherwise.
After seeing several conferences and conventions on alternative energy being held in Montego Bay, we can realize sustainability and sustainable development are becoming a little more than just buzzwords, maybe they are actually manifesting... actualizing as it were, possibly as a response to poverty, inflation, awakening consciousnesses to the social crises ahead. But what is sustainability and sustainable development?
Wikipedia defines: Sustainable development as "an organizing principle for human life on a finite planet. It posits a desirable future state for human societies in which living conditions and resource-use meet human needs without undermining the sustainability of natural systems and the environment, so that future generations may also meet their needs."
Achieving sustainability is not that far-fetched as our neighbours, Cuba according to data presented to the United Nations, was the only nation in the world in 2006 that met the World Wide Fund for Nature's definition of sustainable development, with an ecological footprint of less than 1.8 hectares per capita, 1.5 hectares, and a Human Development Index of over 0.8, 0.855.
Investigating MoBay's space development cross the span of quarter century, one realizes the explanation behind this transformation. Walking down Church Street to see the St. James church history. Owing to the lack of to cheap and accessible housing solutions, residents, denizens and citizens "unofficially" settle and squat in and near the center of MoBay. They could live in better places out of town, but instead suffer a significant loss in revenue since the trip to downtown by taxi is very expensive compounded by the lack of a robust and diversified public transport system. In MoBay, both middle-class families residing in settlement or "scheme" houses in the suburbs, as well as those upper-class families whose homes are within gated communities travel to downtown by taxi or private vehicle. We can see that development of the city has been ad-hoc and in sporadic growth spurts, with no great over arching vision that spans decades or centuries, just the whim and will of whichever political directorate. So how do we dream a dream of betterment and better development.
GREEN DREAMS
The dream of a green Eden like future has been long in the minds of Rastafari elders and a part of the Rastafari ethos and cosmology since its inception. The green Eden seems also a part of the basic religious or spiritual memory of mankind. The promise of a green future brings forward the hope of halting and altering the weathered gray concrete of the streets and lanes and the crumbling down brown blocks of downtown into a lush and beautiful garden mixing steel towers and tree-filled parks teeming with life.
The Dream is of a Montegonian Ecopolis calling out to us from the future, where the Montego River will be a blue river filled with sail boats meets and greeting the rainbow of colors of humanity walking in the middle of farm stalls and kiosks, whilst craft shops of citizens whose work reflect the rich variety of its population. A Montegonian Ecopolis with a vibrant populace, where the citizenry once again takes back the design of their city and model their neighborhoods, schools, businesses, civic organizations, and communities of potential and creative imagination, of multi-cultural customs and traditions, and of love and tolerance.
Finding the resources to build a city beyond fear and intolerance, beyond mistrust and prejudice The hope of a Montegonian Ecopolis shines like a beacon of hope to its neighboring cities in the island and cities across the Caribbean, casting a light to the state, the nation, the region and the world symbolizing the dawn of a new day in our relations with ourselves, with others and with our environment. In a space where men and women and children of all colors and ethnic traditions build that new city brick by brick and block by block, the promise of yesteryear's Montego Bay and the realities of the present meet the possibilities of the future.
In this new and grand ecological vision of Montego Bay, a baby can smile and a flower can grow uncompromised, where human potential and the human spirit thrives and blossoms. A habitable place free of molestation and frustration. There are solar generators quietly hum, producing power to run machines and to light homes. Where eco-farmers grow food and sustainable fishermen catch fish to feed its populations and to sell their surplus to a wider market. There will be the new professionals and specialists and workers of the new information and sharing economy who are educated in the requirements of the increasingly decentralized workplace of the new millennium. Where, the plenitude of cultural traditions of racial and ethnic sub-communities mutually enrich one another in a new ecology of diverse popular culture spanning street theater and alternative film and Internet entertainment and ever multiplying digital television stations produced locally and around the world. Where, local citizens meet and petition their representatives in person, on the Web, or in public squares, pressing their demands and dissatisfactions in every forum and thus restoring some the closeness and intimacy of old-style town democracy.
The Montego Bay Ecopolis is both far away and very near. It is a place we can call home, if we make it so, if we vision it so, if we dream it so.
CITIES AROUND THE WORLD Local governments worldwide are working to protect the environment. The concept that is green cities aims to reduce energy usage and the various forms of pollution in new and creative ways. Such efforts by city governments not only help reverse the effects of climate change. They also help governments save large amounts of money on energy costs. And, cities that are leaders in this green movement set a good example to their citizens about the importance of environmental issues.
A new approach to the planning of cities and calls for the various professions which play a part in the process of urban renewal – city planners, architects and regeneration consultants – to be bound by new institutions and a collective commitment to the better design of cities. to harness principles of liveability and diversity in the way urban space is designed and managed.
A few points on what needs to be engendered in the Eco-Mobay:
Quality architecture and urban design
Emphasis on beauty, aesthetics, human comfort, and creating a sense of place;
Special placement of civic uses and sites within community.
Human scale architecture: beautiful surroundings nourish the human spirit
Smart transportation
A network of high-quality roads connecting cities, towns, and neighborhoods together
Pedestrian-friendly design that encourages a greater use of bicycles, rollerblades, scooters, and walking as daily transportation
Sustainability
Minimal environmental impact of development and its operations
Eco-friendly technologies, respect for ecology and value of natural systems
Energy efficiency
Less use of finite fuels
More local production
More walking, less driving
It time we emphasize Montego Bay as one community, an eco-community in the heart of future planning rather than short-term commercialism dictated by the quick take-up of leases. It is time tovalue the input of the community in participatory planning structures; this MUST be another core ideal of the modern-day city. Also we need to examine and to stress the "psychogeographic" significance of our surroundings. This analysis dictates that there is a direct correlation between the quality of the public realm and the actions of the individual, with its attendant ramifications for other aspects of social policy.
This vision of an eco city, and eco-Mobay is aimed at those who wish to listen to the rhythm of their own lives,and possibly adjust it.”
Check Out this Amazing Video!
The Dream of The Montego Bay Ecopolis has already begun to spring to life: Check out this link!
The Montegonian is a community-powered alternative news page and learning library for people who want to change Montego Bay and Jamaica...
We facilitate the educational and action-oriented campaign to address the issues before our nation and city now. Our aim is to connect and inform people through our plethora of media and social media platforms, including a calendars of local activities and events, a directory of local progressive and radical groups, and a blog for writers to contribute local news and perspectives.
We facilitate the educational and action-oriented campaign to address the issues before our nation and city now. Our aim is to connect and inform people through our plethora of media and social media platforms, including a calendars of local activities and events, a directory of local progressive and radical groups, and a blog for writers to contribute local news and perspectives.
All in all, through this website, and our other outlets, The Montegonian aims to provide for this city an information and resource network that will reduce the city's dependence on corporate media, providing more meaningful and reliable ways to stay informed on the issues that matter.
The Montegonian uses the power of print and media as a platform to raise awareness of important social, environmental, and media-related issues not covered by the mainstream news. Our goal is to provide citizens with the information and perspectives essential to creating a more just, sustainable, and democratic society.
On the ground, our team is working to create alternative media that will inform, connect, and inspire action at both the community level and state wide, possibly even regionally.
Dear readers and Montegonians,
We (The Montegonian) are an independent, ad-free multimedia and multiple media news platform that serves hundreds of viewers each month. Our news product is special because we make it our priority to go where the silence is. We put a spotlight on corporate and government abuses of power and lift up the stories of ordinary people working to make change in extraordinary times. We do all of this with just a nano fraction of the budget and staff of a commercial media enitities. We do it without ads, corporate sponsorship or government funding. How is this possible? Only with your support. If every visitor to this site posts, comments, submits story ideas, article ideas, general info, community notices etc for Western Jamaica in 2014. Pretty exciting, right? Please do your part today. It takes just a couple of minutes to make sure that The Montegonian is there for you and everybody else in 2014!
Sooooo..... BAAAAMMMM! 2:30pm Saturday afternoon. Paradise becomes abuzz with activity, residents scampering to cell phones, "weh dem deh, weh dem deh?" "Tek dung di line!" At the same time here comes one flock of residents taking a variety of unpopular routes, escaping and avoiding the JPS disconnection teams, who have in tow the long arms of the law. It is also alleged "one white lady weh look like di ooman who own JPS pon di TV did dih deh."
After the moments of flurry and outbursts of fluster and frustration and utter confusion, "nuff" ole me, decided maybe I should take a look in Bread Lane, site of what seems to be the police action and scene of quite a few arrests. Mothers and Grandmothers in police custody, young women and a "baby father." And here is where my head ache starts. The police are man-handling the baby father, who is in possession of his child at the moment.
Now I happen the particular child and new here mother was not in the vicinity at the moment, I also knew the baby father was not a resident of the community but was babysitting and staying in what is his woman's family yard. So technically he is being arrested for a crime he hasn't committed. And att the same time the police while jostling the youth is insisting on trying to palm of the baby off to any arbitrary community member so that he can carry through his arrest by any means necessary. Even if it means he has not left the child in proper or legal custody of an official guardian or family member.
Here is where I made the unfortunate mistake of pointing out to the Police man who I gleaned goes by the name Mitchell, that he is a bit to eager to carry out the arrest without following proper or due procedure and that he can't just give the baby to a passerby. This is when the ass loses his cool. and screams at me "Yuh a fool, aye Rasta bwoy leff di place before mi tek a rock and mash in yuh head side, yuh know nutten bought rights? a stir u come fi stir up supm, cause a problem... a soon kick yuh and nuh stop kick yuh till bend up."
This is where I pause look at him, gaze intently, for I have met rude police men, but this man tops the list as the worst offender and most moronic. In holding his gaze, I see when his certainty breaks, for I am not moving , nor am I intimidated. So eventually I reply, "Lick who?"
To which he retorts with another expletive filled tirade. Then I say to him "Yeah I know my rights, but is like you nuh know them!" he then trys to make an explanation for dealing with the baby father and the issue of the child in the way he is, at the same time still eating up himself and badding up an explanation. At which time I turn to leave...
As I turn to leave, I can see his friend with either the oozy or mini-k/or 16 swinging round his neck like one of Flavour Flave's oversize pendants, is incensed that I haven't cowered, become a coward and completely capitualted with fear. While I a walking away, the Po-Po whom I shall call Gun-pendent is walking me down. When I turn round to meet him, he is already grabbing my left arming and turning me. Now thank Selassie that I have a PRESS ID, which is the first thing that greets him when he spins me, it stalls him. He is now taken aback, and I start chuck more ID's at him.
To which he responds, "Stop! Yuh seem like a educated yute, yuh couldn't have so much paper and nuh have eucation, so hear wah, we a do we ting, and we nuh need no trouble so jut gallang weh yuh a go, go dung deh so and nuh come up yah again, caah u seem like a trouble yuh waan start."
Mitchell then asks him as I am going away... " A who him?" T which Gun-pendent replies "NOBODY!"
So there it is like slaves, we have limited access to resources, police come and arrest on premises without warrants, squatters, landless, dispossessed, and baddup brutalized and pushed around. 21st century slavery I say.
The Montegonian: Bringing Back that Old School Investigative Journalism!
Friday, September 13, 2013
Haile... Greetings in the name of His Imperial Majesty and under his auspices and authority, I and I a seh TJIF... Thanks Jah Is Friday! All when dem a seh a Friday the 13th! Selah.........
ARUNDHATI ROY A writer's reflections on the U.S.-decreed 'War Against Terror', the conflict between power and powerlessness, and a better world on its way.
Quite often these days, I find myself being described as a "social activist." Those who agree with my views, call me "courageous." Those who don't, call me all kinds of rude names which I won't repeat. I am not a social activist, neither am I particularly courageous.... So please do not underestimate the trepidation with which I stand here to say what I must say.
Writers imagine that they cull stories from the world. I'm beginning to believe that vanity makes them think so. That it's actually the other way around.
Stories cull writers from the world. Stories reveal themselves to us. The public narrative, the private narrative - they colonise us. They commission us. They insist on being told. Fiction and non-fiction are only different techniques of storytelling. For reasons I do not fully understand, fiction dances out of me. Non-fiction is wrenched out by the aching, broken world I wake up to every morning.
The theme of much of what I write, fiction as well as non-fiction, is the relationship between power and powerlessness and the endless, circular conflict they're engaged in. John Berger, that most wonderful writer, once wrote: Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one. There can never be a single story. There are only ways of seeing. So, when I tell a story, I tell it not as an ideologue who wants to pit one absolutist ideology against another, but as a storyteller who wants to share her way of seeing. Though it might appear otherwise, my writing is not really about nations and histories, it's about power. About the paranoia and ruthlessness of power. About the physics of power. I believe that the accumulation of vast unfettered power by a state or a country, a corporation or an institution - or even an individual, a spouse, friend or sibling - regardless of ideology, results in excesses such as the ones I will recount here.
Living as I do, as millions of us do, in the shadow of the nuclear holocaust that the governments of India and Pakistan keep promising their brain-washed citizenry, and in the global neighbourhood of the War Against Terror (what President Bush rather biblically calls 'The Task That Never Ends'), I find myself thinking a great deal about the relationship between Citizens and the State.
In India, those of us who have expressed views on Nuclear Bombs, Big Dams, Corporate Globalisation and the rising threat of communal Hindu fascism - views that are at variance with the Indian Government's - are branded 'anti-national'. While this accusation does not fill me with indignation, it's not an accurate description of what I do or how I think. An 'anti-national' is a person who is against his/her own nation and, by inference, is pro some other one. But it isn't necessary to be 'anti-national' to be deeply suspicious of all nationalism, to be anti-nationalism. Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century.
Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap peoples' minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. When independent, thinking people (and here I do not include the corporate media) begin to rally under flags, when writers, painters, musicians, film-makers suspend their judgment and blindly yoke their art to the service of the 'Nation', it's time for all of us to sit up and worry. In India we saw it happen soon after the Nuclear tests in 1998 and during the Kargil War against Pakistan in 1999. In the United States we saw it during the Gulf War and we see it now, during the 'War against Terror'. That blizzard of Made-in-China American flags.
Recently, those who have criticised the actions of the U.S. Government (myself included) have been called 'anti-American'. Anti-Americanism is in the process of being consecrated into an ideology.
The term 'anti-American' is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and, not falsely - but shall we say inaccurately - define its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they're heard and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.
What does the term 'anti-American' mean? Does it mean you're anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to free speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant Sequoias? Does it mean you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?
This sly conflation of America's culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. Government's foreign policy (about which, thanks to America's "free press," sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy. It's like a retreating army taking cover in a heavily populated city, hoping that the prospect of hitting civilian targets will deter enemy fire.
There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in U.S. Government policy come from American citizens. When the rest of the world wants to know what the U.S. Government is up to, we turn to Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert, Chalmers Johnson, William Blum and Anthony Arnove to tell us what's really going on.
Similarly, in India, not hundreds, but millions of us would be ashamed and offended if we were in any way implicated with the present Indian Government's fascist policies, which, apart from the perpetration of state terrorism in the Valley of Kashmir (in the name of fighting terrorism), have also turned a blind eye to the recent state-supervised pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat. It would be absurd to think that those who criticise the Indian Government are 'anti-Indian' - although the Government itself never hesitates to take that line. It is dangerous to cede to the Indian Government or the American Government or anyone for that matter, the right to define what 'India' or 'America' are, or ought to be.
To call someone 'anti-American', indeed, to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian, or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it's a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those that the establishment has set out for you: If you're not a Bushie you're a Taliban. If you don't love us, you hate us. If you're not Good you're Evil. If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists.
Last year, like many others, I too made the mistake of scoffing at this post-September 11th rhetoric, dismissing it as foolish and arrogant. I've realised that it's not foolish at all. It's actually a canny recruitment drive for a misconceived, dangerous war. Every day I'm taken aback at how many people believe that opposing the war in Afghanistan amounts to supporting terrorism, or voting for the Taliban. Now that the initial aim of the war - capturing Osama Bin Laden (dead or alive) - seems to have run into bad weather, the goal posts have been moved. It's being made out that the whole point of the war was to topple the Taliban regime and liberate Afghan women from their burqas. We're being asked to believe that the U.S. marines are actually on a feminist mission. (If so, will their next stop be America's military ally Saudi Arabia?) Think of it this way: In India there are some pretty reprehensible social practices, against 'untouchables', against Christians and Muslims, against women. Pakistan and Bangladesh have even worse ways of dealing with minority communities and women. Should they be bombed? Should Delhi, Islamabad, and Dhaka be destroyed? Is it possible to bomb bigotry out of India? Can we bomb our way to a feminist paradise? Is that how women won the vote in the U.S.? Or how slavery was abolished? Can we win redress for the genocide of the millions of Native Americans upon whose corpses the United States was founded by bombing Santa Fe?
None of us need anniversaries to remind us of what we cannot forget. So it is no more than coincidence that I happen to be here, on American soil, in September - this month of dreadful anniversaries. Uppermost on everybody's mind of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as Nine Eleven. Nearly three thousand civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else's loved ones or someone else's children will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory.
To fuel yet another war - this time against Iraq - by cynically manipulating people's grief, by packaging it for TV specials sponsored by corporations selling detergent or running shoes, is to cheapen and devalue grief, to drain it of meaning. What we are seeing now is a vulgar display of the business of grief, the commerce of grief, the pillaging of even the most private human feelings for political purpose. It is a terrible, violent thing for a state to do to its people.
It's not a clever-enough subject to speak of from a public platform, but what I would really love to talk to you about is Loss. Loss and losing. Grief, failure, brokenness, numbness, uncertainty, fear, the death of feeling, the death of dreaming. The absolute, relentless, endless, habitual unfairness of the world. What does loss mean to individuals? What does it mean to whole cultures, whole peoples who have learned to live with it as a constant companion?
Since it is September 11th that we're talking about, perhaps it's in the fitness of things that we remember what that date means, not only to those who lost their loved ones in America last year, but to those in other parts of the world to whom that date has long held significance. This historical dredging is not offered as an accusation or a provocation. But just to share the grief of history. To thin the mist a little. To say to the citizens of America, in the gentlest, most human way: Welcome to the World.
Twenty-nine years ago, in Chile, on the 11th of September 1973, General Pinochet overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in a CIA-backed coup. “Chile shouldn't be allowed to go Marxist just because its people are irresponsible," said Henry Kissinger, Nobel Peace Laureate, then the U.S. Secretary of State.
After the coup President Allende was found dead inside the presidential palace. Whether he was killed or whether he killed himself, we'll never know. In the regime of terror that ensued, thousands of people were killed. Many more simply 'disappeared'. Firing squads conducted public executions. Concentration camps and torture chambers were opened across the country. The dead were buried in mine shafts and unmarked graves. For seventeen years, the people of Chile lived in dread of the midnight knock, of routine 'disappearances', of sudden arrest and torture. Chileans tell the story of how the musician Victor Jara had his hands cut off in front of a crowd in the Santiago stadium. Before they shot him, Pinochet's soldiers threw his guitar at him and mockingly ordered him to play.
In 1999, following the arrest of General Pinochet in Britain, thousands of secret documents were declassified by the U.S. Government. They contain unequivocal evidence of the CIA's involvement in the coup as well as the fact that the U.S. Government had detailed information about the situation in Chile during General Pinochet's reign. Yet Kissinger assured the general of his support: “In the United States as you know, we are sympathetic to what you are trying to do," he said, “we wish your government well."
Those of us who have only ever known life in a democracy, however flawed, would find it hard to imagine what living in a dictatorship and enduring the absolute loss of freedom really means. It isn't just those who Pinochet murdered, but the lives he stole from the living that must be accounted for too.
Sadly, Chile was not the only country in South America to be singled out for the U.S. Government's attentions. Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras, Panama, El Salvador, Peru, Mexico and Colombia - they've all been the playground for covert - and overt - operations by the CIA. Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been killed, tortured or have simply disappeared under the despotic regimes and tin-pot dictators, drug runners and arms dealers that were propped up in their countries. (Many of them learned their craft in the infamous U.S. Government-funded School of Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia, which has produced 60,000 graduates.) If this were not humiliation enough, the people of South America have had to bear the cross of being branded as a people who are incapable of democracy - as if coups and massacres are somehow encrypted in their genes.
This list does not of course include countries in Africa or Asia that suffered U.S. military interventions - Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Laos, and Cambodia. For how many Septembers for decades together have millions of Asian people been bombed, burned, and slaughtered? How many Septembers have gone by since August 1945, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary Japanese people were obliterated by the nuclear strikes in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? For how many Septembers have the thousands who had the misfortune of surviving those strikes endured the living hell that was visited on them, their unborn children, their children's children, on the earth, the sky, the wind, the water, and all the creatures that swim and walk and crawl and fly? Not far from here, in Albuquerque, is the National Atomic Museum where Fat Man and Little Boy (the affectionate nicknames for the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) were available as souvenir earrings. Funky young people wore them. A massacre dangling in each ear. But I am straying from my theme. It's September that we're talking about, not August.
September 11th has a tragic resonance in the Middle East (West Asia) too. On the 11th of September 1922, ignoring Arab outrage, the British Government proclaimed a mandate in Palestine, a follow up to the 1917 Balfour Declaration, which Imperial Britain issued, with its army massed outside the gates of the city of Gaza. The Balfour Declaration promised European Zionists a national home for Jewish people. (At the time, the Empire on which the Sun Never Set was free to snatch and bequeath national homes like the school bully distributes marbles.) Two years after the declaration, Lord Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary said, “In Palestine we do not propose to go through the form of consulting the wishes of the present inhabitants of the country. Zionism, be it right or wrong, good or bad, is rooted in age-old traditions, in present needs, in future hopes of far profounder import than the desires or prejudices of the 700,000 Arabs who now inhabit this ancient land."
How carelessly imperial power decreed whose needs were profound and whose were not. How carelessly it vivisected ancient civilisations. Palestine and Kashmir are Imperial Britain's festering, blood-drenched gifts to the modern world. Both are fault-lines in the raging international conflicts of today.
In 1937, Winston Churchill said of the Palestinians: “I do not agree that the dog in a manger has the final right to the manger even though he may have lain there for a very long time. I do not admit that right. I do not admit for instance that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly-wise race to put it that way, has come in and taken their place." That set the trend for the Israeli state's attitude towards Palestinians. In 1969, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said, “Palestinians do not exist." Her successor, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol said, “What are Palestinians? When I came here [to Palestine] there were 250,000 non-Jews, mainly Arabs and Bedouins. It was desert, more than underdeveloped. Nothing." Prime Minister Menachem Begin called Palestinians “two-legged beasts". Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called them “grasshoppers" who could be crushed. This is the language of Heads of State, not the words of ordinary people.
In 1947, the United Nations formally partitioned Palestine and allotted 55 per cent of Palestine's land to the Zionists. Within a year they had captured 76 per cent. On the 14th of May 1948 the state of Israel was declared. Minutes after the declaration, the U.S. recognised Israel. The West Bank was annexed by Jordan. The Gaza Strip came under Egyptian military control. Formally, Palestine ceased to exist except in the minds and hearts of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinian people who became refugees.
In the summer of 1967, Israel occupied the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Settlers were offered state subsidies and development aid to move into the occupied territories. Almost every day more Palestinian families are forced off their lands and driven into refugee camps. Palestinians who continue to live in Israel do not have the same rights as Israelis and live as second class citizens in their former homeland.
Over the decades, there have been uprisings, wars, intifadas. Tens of thousands have lost their lives. Accords and treaties have been signed. Ceasefires declared and violated. But the bloodshed doesn't end. Palestine still remains illegally occupied. Its people live in inhuman conditions, in virtual Bantustans, where they are subjected to collective punishments, twenty-four hour curfews, where they are humiliated and brutalised on a daily basis. They never know when their homes will be demolished, when their children will be shot, when their precious trees will be cut, when their roads will be closed, when they will be allowed to walk down to the market to buy food and medicine. And when they will not. They live with no semblance of dignity. With not much hope in sight. They have no control over their lands, their security, their movement, their communication, their water supply. So when accords are signed and words like 'autonomy' and even 'statehood' are bandied about, it's always worth asking: What sort of autonomy? What sort of state? What sort of rights will its citizens have?
Young Palestinians who cannot contain their anger turn themselves into human bombs and haunt Israel's streets and public places, blowing themselves up, killing ordinary people, injecting terror into daily life, and eventually hardening both societies' suspicion and mutual hatred of each other. Each bombing invites merciless reprisals and even more hardship on Palestinian people. But then suicide bombing is an act of individual despair, not a revolutionary tactic. Although Palestinian attacks strike terror into Israeli civilians, they provide the perfect cover for the Israeli Government's daily incursions into Palestinian territory, the perfect excuse for old-fashioned, nineteenth-century colonialism, dressed up as a new-fashioned, twenty-first century "war."
Israel's staunchest political and military ally is and always has been the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government has blocked, along with Israel, almost every U.N. resolution that sought a peaceful, equitable solution to the conflict. It has supported almost every war that Israel has fought. When Israel attacks Palestine, it is American missiles that smash through Palestinian homes. And every year Israel receives several billion dollars from the U.S.
What lessons should we draw from this tragic conflict? Is it really impossible for Jewish people who suffered so cruelly themselves - more cruelly perhaps than any other people in history - to understand the vulnerability and the yearning of those whom they have displaced? Does extreme suffering always kindle cruelty? What hope does this leave the human race with? What will happen to the Palestinian people in the event of a victory? When a nation without a state eventually proclaims a state, what kind of state will it be? What horrors will be perpetrated under its flag? Is it a separate state that we should be fighting for, or the rights to a life of liberty and dignity for everyone regardless of their ethnicity or religion?
Palestine was once a secular bulwark in the Middle East. But now the weak, undemocratic, by all accounts corrupt, but avowedly non-sectarian Palestine Liberation Organisation, is losing ground to Hamas, which espouses an overtly sectarian ideology and fights in the name of Islam. To quote from their manifesto: "We will be its soldiers, and the firewood of its fire, which will burn the enemies."
The world is called upon to condemn suicide bombers. But can we ignore the long road they have journeyed on before they arrived at this destination? September 11th 1922 to September 11th 2002 - eighty years is a long long time to have been waging war. Is there some advice the world can give the people of Palestine? Some scrap of hope we can hold out? Should they just settle for the crumbs that are thrown their way and behave like the grasshoppers or two-legged beasts they've been described as? Should they just take Golda Meir's suggestion and make a real effort to not exist?
In another part of the Middle East, September 11th strikes a more recent chord. It was on the 11th of September 1990 that George W. Bush Sr., then President of the U.S., made a speech to a joint session of Congress announcing his Government's decision to go to war against Iraq.
The U.S. Government says that Saddam Hussein is a war criminal, a cruel military despot who has committed genocide against his own people. That's a fairly accurate description of the man. In 1988, he razed hundreds of villages in northern Iraq and used chemical weapons and machine-guns to kill thousands of Kurdish people. Today we know that that same year the U.S. Government provided him with 500 million dollars in subsidies to buy American farm products. The next year, after he had successfully completed his genocidal campaign, the U.S. Government doubled its subsidy to 1 billion dollars. It also provided him with high quality germ seed for anthrax, as well as helicopters and dual-use material that could be used to manufacture chemical and biological weapons.
So it turns out that while Saddam Hussein was carrying out his worst atrocities, the U.S. and the U.K. Governments were his close allies. Even today, the Government of Turkey which has one of the most appalling human rights records in the world is one of the U.S. Government's closest allies. The fact that the Turkish Government has oppressed and murdered Kurdish people for years has not prevented the U.S. Government from plying Turkey with weapons and Development Aid. Clearly, it was not concern for the Kurdish people that provoked President Bush's speech to Congress.
What changed? In August 1990, Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. His sin was not so much that he had committed an act of war, but that he acted independently, without orders from his masters. This display of independence was enough to upset the power equation in the Gulf. So it was decided that Saddam Hussein be exterminated, like a pet that has outlived its owner's affection.
The first Allied attack on Iraq took place in January 1991. The world watched the prime-time war as it was played out on TV. (In India those days, you had to go to a five star hotel lobby to watch CNN.) Tens of thousands of people were killed in a month of devastating bombing. What many do not know is that the war did not end then. The initial fury simmered down into the longest sustained air attack on a country since the Vietnam War. Over the last decade, American and British forces have fired thousands of missiles and bombs on Iraq. Iraq's fields and farmlands have been shelled with 300 tons of depleted uranium. In countries like Britain and America, depleted uranium shells are test-fired into specially constructed concrete tunnels. The radioactive residue is washed off, sealed in cement and disposed off in the ocean (which is bad enough). In Iraq it's aimed - deliberately, with malicious intent - at people's food and water supply. In their bombing sorties, the Allies specifically targeted and destroyed water treatment plants, fully aware of the fact that they could not be repaired without foreign assistance. In southern Iraq there has been a fourfold increase in cancer among children. In the decade of economic sanctions that followed the war, Iraqi civilians have been denied food, medicine, hospital equipment, ambulances, clean water - the basic essentials.
About half a million Iraqi children have died as a result of the sanctions. Of them, Madeleine Albright, then U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., famously said, "It's a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it." 'Moral equivalence' was the term that was used to denounce those who criticised the war on Afghanistan. Madeleine Albright cannot be accused of moral equivalence. What she said was just straight forward algebra.
A decade of bombing has not managed to dislodge Saddam Hussein, the 'Beast of Baghdad'. Now, almost twelve years on, President George Bush Jr. has ratcheted up the rhetoric once again. He's proposing an all-out war whose goal is nothing short of a regime change. The New York Times says that the Bush administration is "following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat of Saddam Hussein." Andrew H. Card, Jr., the White House Chief of Staff, described how the administration was stepping up its war plans for the fall: "From a marketing point of view", he said, "you don't introduce new products in August.' This time the catch-phrase for Washington's "new product' is not the plight of Kuwaiti people but the assertion that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. "Forget the feckless moralising of the peace lobbies," wrote Richard Perle, a former adviser to President Bush, "we need to get him before he gets us."
Weapons inspectors have conflicting reports about the status of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction, and many have said clearly that its arsenal has been dismantled and that it does not have the capacity to build one. However, there is no confusion over the extent and range of America's arsenal of nuclear and chemical weapons. Would the U.S. Government welcome weapons inspectors? Would the U.K.? Or Israel?
What if Iraq does have a nuclear weapon, does that justify a pre-emptive U.S. strike? The U.S. has the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. It's the only country in the world to have actually used them on civilian populations. If the U.S. is justified in launching a pre-emptive attack on Iraq, why, then any nuclear power is justified in carrying out a pre-emptive attack on any other. India could attack Pakistan, or the other way around. If the U.S. Government develops a distaste for the Indian Prime Minister, can it just 'take him out' with a pre-emptive strike?
Recently the U.S. played an important part in forcing India and Pakistan back from the brink of war. Is it so hard for it to take its own advice? Who is guilty of feckless moralising? Of preaching peace while it wages war? The U.S., which George Bush has called "the most peaceful nation on earth," has been at war with one country or another every year for the last fifty years.
Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons. They're usually fought for hegemony, for business. And then of course there's the business of war. Protecting its control of the world's oil is fundamental to U.S. foreign policy. The U.S. Government's recent military interventions in the Balkans and Central Asia have to do with oil. Hamid Karzai, the puppet president of Afghanistan installed by the U.S., is said to be a former employee of Unocal, the American-based oil company. The U.S. Government's paranoid patrolling of the Middle East is because it has two-thirds of the world's oil reserves. Oil keeps America's engines purring sweetly. Oil keeps the Free Market rolling. Whoever controls the world's oil controls the world's market. And how do you control the oil?
Nobody puts it more elegantly than The New York Times' columnist Thomas Friedman. In an article called "Craziness Pays" he says "the U.S. has to make it clear to Iraq and U.S. allies that... America will use force without negotiation, hesitation or U.N. approval." His advice was well taken. In the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the almost daily humiliation the U.S. Government heaps on the U.N. In his book on globalisation, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Friedman says, "The hidden hand of the market will never work without the hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas... and the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corp." Perhaps this was written in a moment of vulnerability, but it's certainly the most succinct, accurate description of the project of Corporate Globalisation that I have read.
After September 11th, 2001 and the War Against Terror, the hidden hand and fist have had their cover blown - and we have a clear view now of America's other weapon - the Free Market - bearing down on the Developing World, with a clenched unsmiling smile. 'The Task That Never Ends' is America's perfect war, the perfect vehicle for the endless expansion of American Imperialism. In Urdu, the word for Profit is fayda. Al Qaeda means The Word, The Word of God, The Law. So, in India some of us call the War Against Terror, Al Qaeda Vs Al Fayda -
The Word Vs The Profit (no pun intended).
For the moment it looks as though Al Fayda will carry the day. But then you never know...
In the last ten years of unbridled Corporate Globalisation, the world's total income has increased by an average of 2.5 per cent a year. And yet the numbers of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million. Of the top hundred biggest economies, 51 are corporations, not countries. The top 1 per cent of the world has the same combined income as the bottom 57 per cent and the disparity is growing. Now, under the spreading canopy of the War Against Terror, this process is being hustled along. The men in suits are in an unseemly hurry. While bombs rain down on us, and cruise missiles skid across the skies, while nuclear weapons are stockpiled to make the world a safer place, contracts are being signed, patents are being registered, oil pipelines are being laid, natural resources are being plundered, water is being privatised and democracies are being undermined.
In a country like India, the 'structural adjustment' end of the Corporate Globalisation project is ripping through people's lives. "Development" projects, massive privatisation, and labour "reforms" are pushing people off their lands and out of their jobs, resulting in a kind of barbaric dispossession that has few parallels in history. Across the world, as the "Free Market" brazenly protects Western markets and forces developing countries to lift their trade barriers, the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer. Civil unrest has begun to erupt in the global village. In countries like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Bolivia, India the resistance movements against Corporate Globalisation are growing. To contain them, governments are tightening their control. Protestors are being labelled 'terrorists' and then being dealt with as such. But civil unrest does not only mean marches and demonstrations and protests against globalisation. Unfortunately, it also means a desperate downward spiral into crime and chaos and all kinds of despair and disillusionment which, as we know from history (and from what we see unspooling before our eyes), gradually becomes a fertile breeding ground for terrible things - cultural nationalism, religious bigotry, fascism and of course, terrorism.
All these march arm in arm with Corporate Globalisation.
There is a notion gaining credence that the Free Market breaks down national barriers, and that Corporate Globalisation's ultimate destination is a hippie paradise where the heart is the only passport and we all live together happily inside a John Lennon song (Imagine there's no country...). This is a canard.
What the Free Market undermines is not national sovereignty, but democracy. As the disparity between the rich and poor grows, the hidden fist has its work cut out for it. Multinational corporations on the prowl for 'sweetheart deals' that yield enormous profits cannot push through those deals and administer those projects in developing countries without the active connivance of the state machinery - the police, the courts, sometimes even the army. Today, Corporate Globalisation needs an international confederation of loyal, corrupt, preferably authoritarian governments in poorer countries, to push through unpopular reforms and quell the mutinies. It needs a press that pretends to be free. It needs courts that pretend to dispense justice. It needs nuclear bombs, standing armies, sterner immigration laws, and watchful coastal patrols 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, climate change, or god forbid, justice. It's as though even a gesture towards international accountability would wreck the whole enterprise.
Close to one year after the War Against Terror was officially flagged off in the ruins of Afghanistan, in country after country, freedoms are being curtailed in the name of protecting freedom, civil liberties are being suspended in the name of protecting democracy. All kinds of dissent is being defined as 'terrorism'. All kinds of laws are being passed to deal with it. Osama Bin Laden seems to have vanished into thin air. Mullah Omar is said to have made his escape on a motor-bike (They could have sent Tin-Tin after him). The Taliban may have disappeared, but their spirit, and their system of summary justice, is surfacing in the unlikeliest of places. In India, in Pakistan, in Nigeria, in America, in all the Central Asian Republics run by all manner of despots, and of course in Afghanistan under the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance.
Meanwhile, down at the Mall there's a mid-season sale. Everything's discounted - oceans, rivers, oil, gene pools, fig wasps, flowers, childhoods, aluminum factories, phone companies, wisdom, wilderness, civil rights, ecosystems, air - all 4,600 million years of evolution. It's packed, sealed, tagged, valued and available off the rack. (No returns). As for justice - I'm told it's on offer too. You can get the best that money can buy.
Donald Rumsfeld said that his mission in the War Against Terror was to persuade the world that Americans must be allowed to continue their way of life. When the maddened King stamps his foot, slaves tremble in their quarters. So, standing here today, it's hard for me to say this, but 'The American Way of Life' is simply not sustainable. Because it doesn't acknowledge that there is a world beyond America.
Fortunately, power has a shelf-life. When the time comes, maybe this mighty empire will, like others before it, overreach itself and implode from within. It looks as though structural cracks have already appeared. As the War Against Terror casts its net wider and wider, America's corporate heart is haemorrhaging. For all the endless empty chatter about democracy, today the world is run by three of the most secretive institutions in the world: the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation, all three of which, in turn, are dominated by the U.S. Their decisions are made in secret. The people who head them are appointed behind closed doors. Nobody really knows anything about them, their politics, their beliefs, their intentions. Nobody elected them. Nobody said they could make decisions on our behalf. A world run by a handful of greedy bankers and CEOs who nobody elected can't possibly last.
Soviet-style communism failed, not because it was intrinsically evil but because it was flawed. It allowed too few people to usurp too much power. Twenty-first century market-capitalism, American-style, will fail for the same reasons. Both are edifices constructed by human intelligence, undone by human nature.
The time has come, the Walrus said. Perhaps things will get worse and then better. Perhaps there's a small god up in heaven readying herself for us. Another world is not only possible, she's on her way. Maybe many of us won't be here to greet her, but on a quiet day, if I listen very carefully, I can hear her breathing.
This is the text of a lecture delivered on September 18, 2002 at the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States.
